Tag: themepark

MMORPGs have a rags-to-riches problem. It’s one found in the roots of the pen-and-paper games that inspired the MUDs before them. Life for characters in these games is a progression ladder. They start as young, skilless, penniless adventurers, over and over. They’re told to climb that ladder to improve their skills and fortunes and fame. Get experience. Level up. Practice….

Massively’s Mike Foster coined this lovely phrase last week. “EVE Online offers me many opportunities to engage [a] sense of curiosity and my love for ‘horizon gaming,’ which is my term for playing just to see what comes next,” he wrote. Not for gear. Not for levels. Not for ganks. Not for socializing or achievements or a fat gold purse….

I want to go home again, and I’m not alone. When Ultima Online launched in 1997, its housing system was both wonderful and terrible, like much of the rest of the game. If your keys were stolen or lost, your house was compromised forever. Homes didn’t decay if abandoned, so they took up space and prevented others from placing, and…

But then I took an arrow in the knee. In fact, it was Star Wars Galaxies that urged me to rise above dabbling in thees and thous and transformed me into a smart-ass, quick-thinking pirate queen. I never broke character in spatial chat. Every toon had an elaborate backstory. My guild founded a roleplaying metropolis. I stayed up until the…

The media embargo for Star Wars: The Old Republic’s beta dropped yesterday, and Massively produced two different impressions pieces summing up the beta, both of them from guys who willingly and happily play themepark MMOs but who have more than once declared their preference for sandboxes. I saw the game about a year ago but was only in the regular…

Anyone who knows me knows I love sandboxes. There’s something about an interactive simulation that’s a lot more engaging and replayable than yet another scripted themepark. And one of the best aspects of the best sandboxes is a strong player economy. The economy game is basically PvP for smart people. No — observant people. It’s as much about anticipation and…

The finished version of RIFT (as finished as an MMO ever is) confirms most of my published pre-launch perceptions: It’s a strong MMO, perhaps even the strongest of the third-gen MMOs. Perhaps it’s even a transitionary fossil, a link between the WoW-era and the incoming SWTOR and GW2. I find it impossible to judge a game independent of what’s come…