Muckbeast

Permadeath was never a tremendously popular feature in MUDs, but it was common enough that it did have a certain following. Some players consider permadeath a vital component of roleplaying, and they feel it adds a significant amount of excitement and tension to a game.
I certainly understand why no commercial MMORPGs have experimented with the [...]

If you aren’t reading The Psychology of Video Games blog yet you are missing out. Between that site and a few other blog posts I’ve read recently (like Wolfshead’s lament about WoW’s Growing Immersion Deficit) I was motivated to write an article about designing group contest events in MMOs. This is just a small part [...]

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while. This article at MMORPG is the final push over the edge.
Most MMOs have gone with the shard/server approach. Each copy of the game has a distinct community. You make characters on a specific server, and the character can only be played on that server. Each [...]

Intereting article on Gamasutra today: Opinion: If You’re Not Having Fun, Play Something Else
The part that really resonated with me:
Instead of thinking “core versus casual,” we’d be served to look at things like complexity, challenge, difficulty and tedium as components of specific genres, rather than universal concepts that must be reduced across the board for [...]

Wolfshead has started a really great discussion on his blog: Waiting for the Next MMO Revolution
The reason why I’m in a perpetual state of angst is that I feel that the MMO industry has squandered all of the great potential that was evident a scant 10 years ago during the first MMO revolution heralded by [...]

I want to revisit a favorite issue of mine. New Grind, Just like the Old Grind: Quest Heavy Advancement.
When people read that article, they often get the wrong idea. I don’t hate quests (or missions). I don’t think a 100% mob grinding game is the way to go. What I hate is when a game [...]

One thing about Threshold I have always taken a lot of pride in is the fact that our population is almost an exact 50/50 split of men and women. I think this one fact has been vitally important to the strength of our community. This is incredibly common in the MMO industry, however:
“Currently, 64% of [...]

I always loved the idea of Guild Wars. I love their business model. I love so many of their game design concepts (full respec in town at will, great end game, many features designed to enhance community and social aspects, etc.). Unfortunately, when I played the game I just couldn’t get into it. The inability [...]

My wife and I played a lot of this back on the Gamecube, and years later we picked it up for the DS as well. We loved it in both incarnations. We keep meaning to pick it up for the Wii. Should we?
Benjamin Sell has been working on a ton of great guides for the [...]

CO might be a good game. You can read my Champions Online Preview here. But there is a serious problem, and it points to an even MORE serious problem.
Hyper customization is the primary USP (Unique Selling Point) of CO. There are no classes. There are just tons of powers to choose from. This is wonderful [...]