The mere mention of “microtransaction” used to make me completely ignore a game, write it off, and immediately form a negative opinion.  Has anything changed?  Only slightly.  I still believe that 99% of games that use a MT business model are crap and that they should be written off and ignored.    Not all of them are crap though.  Finding even one that is a gem makes me question the idea just slightly.

Ideal: If a MT system is going to work then it must sell me items that I want to buy and not items that I feel like I have to buy.

Can such a system exist?  It just might be a paradox.  These cash shops work by giving people free to play games with a cash shop full of things they want to buy but also that they have to buy.  Worse is that the items they have to buy are consumable or temporary and will be gone quick enough that the players return to buy more because they feel compelled to continue purchasing.  Eventually the games become more expensive than a subscription model to the point of being Play to Pay.

Finding a game that uses a business model but is also worth playing because it’s a good game raises all sorts of problems.  First, why the business model instead of a subscription model?  Clearly they must feel that they can make more money with the business model.  Red flags should be going off everywhere now.  You’ll never make more than a subscription model if you can’t get people using your cash shop.  By design, cash shops require players to use them in order for them to work.

Whether it’s epic gear or mandatory consumables, the player will always be driven to the cash shop by the game in some way.  If we’re battling them purely on principle, and we stick to our guns, every business model I have ever encountered loses right here.  However, if I set the principles aside for a second (not diminishing them mind you) and look at the practical application, perhaps some form of balance might be found.

Making up a scenario (that will sound familiar) for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the most obtrusive MT a game sells is a potion.  If you buy the potion and I don’t then you’ll have a slight advantage because you will have 40% more HP.  Most people would then say this is being “forced” into using the cash shop to remain competitive.   If the cost is something like $0.05 for the item, and it’s expected that you may buy a few per day, we’re looking at two things. 1) an obtrusive cash shop but 2) Not a lot of money.  Setting aside our principles which would be screaming to be unleashed at this point, we can walk away paying less than a subscription fee.  Throw in a few more extras for yourself and you can even still pay under a subscription fee’s cost.  If players set a budget for themselves at a firm $14.99/month, is the business model workable for games that don’t blatantly cross the line?

I’m wishing that I could take a stance on this issue and say one way or another that this is workable or not.  The greater part of me is clawing at my insides to get out and scream “HERETICS! YOU SHALL ALL BURN!” at even the thought of buying anything from a cash shop.  But there’s one little part inside saying “this can work if the game is worth it…”

I guess the stance I’m taking at this point is that there are some games that defy logic.  There are business model games that should clearly be subscription model games — everything about them screams AAA subscription model with Mill+ subs, but a business model is used and one tiny little fly in the ointment is added to make people want to use the cash shop.  Do we throw out such games or do we give them some thought?  I’m truly torn.

Conceding that microtransaction models force players to use the cash shop by nature and that an ideal cash shop can never exist, is it possible that a high caliber game can come along and justify use of that cash shop as long as it remains at least somewhat reasonable?

Where once there was no room for discussion now lies a tiny crack for some rational consideration …. maybe.

The last time I wrote about MMO death penalties was in 2008.  I know the topic is not a new one, but I always like to revisit subjects like this and strike up new discussions.  Two years is like an eternity in MMO time and it’s expected that opinions and thoughts on a topic will change.  New games release and new death penalties

What is a death penalty?  I like the word penalty for a few reasons.  It implies a negative.  Just by the definition alone, a penalty is a punishment, a required payment, a painful consequence, a disadvantage, or a handicap.  That about sums up what we know about every penalty in MMO’s, right?  LOTRO will give you dread, Darkfall you lose your stuff, EQ you lose experience and have to find your corpse if you want your stuff back, WoW you get sent back to a graveyard for a ghostly-corpse run and item damage, DAOC you lost exp but could mitigate it by returning to your gravestone, in Allods you’re debuffed and all your stats are lowered by 25% for a period of time, and so on.

Death penalties in MMO’s are needed because they add tension and they make the player think about what he is doing instead of rushing in.  As I’ve always said, no one should want to die.  Death should be feared, unwelcomed, inconvenient, and it should bring with it a sting that would make you not want to experience it again any time soon.   Without a penalty like this, death would be meaningless and it would trivialize everything in the game that has to do with death.  If you lost nothing, including time (which is the most valuable commodity that everything comes back to in a MMO), then facing a dragon would not scare you; exploring deep into unknown territory would not be as exciting; defying the odds would be less satisfying.

Finding the right penalty for each game is important.  Obviously losing your gear permanently in a game like World of Warcraft is inappropriately harsh.  Likewise, having to run back to your body in Darkfall would be equally inappropriate.  When does it cross the line?  In Allods Online, a game currently in closed beta at the time of this entry, the death penalty was changed to be harsher.  The original death penalty took the player to a waiting area called purgatory where they could wait a period of time based on their level and frequency of death.  To leave purgatory early they could bribe their way out by spending a reagent called myrrh which they could purchase from a vendor.  The new death penalty keeps the purgatory system but adds onto it a debuff that lowers stats by 25% and can stack up to 4x based on the frequency of death and lasts longer based on the level of the player (~50 min at level 40).  To remove the debuff, players can spend additional myrrh.  When all is said and done, a max level player will lose ~3.5g and be sent back to a respawn point.  To give you some sort of frame of reference to go by, I have an average of 200g on me right now at level 40, Astral Ships cost 1500 gold, and an average green item can vendor for 10-20g.

Have the developers in Allods Onlone gone too far, or is the death penalty now just right?  As someone who plays the game at max level, I hate dying now.  I don’t like losing my money and I don’t like having to pay a lot or get a debuff.  I don’t like being sent back to a respawn point.  I do not want to die and I want to avoid it at all costs.  Yet, I acknowledge that death can be overcome and does not stop the forward motion of my character’s progression.  As much as I hate it, I have to admit it accomplishes what a death penalty should.

Some people want no death penalty at all in every MMO they play and others want perma-death.  The perfect solution is somewhere between those two extremes.  Here are some of the death penalties that I think work well.  Feel free to comment with yours.

Exp Loss – Works well in a game like DAOC.  You lose exp but regain some when you get back to your gravestone (corpse) or get rez’d by a cleric.

Exp Debt – You go into debt and must work off the debt with half your experience before you start gaining exp again.  It doesn’t work well in a strictly quest-to-level game unless there is an enormous excess of quests.  Works very well in sandbox games and games with more kill-to-level systems.

Item Damage – This works hand in hand with many death penalties to boost the sting.  Repairing gear costs money.

Debuffs – Whether you work it into the lore or not, a debuff can be a way of charging people coin or making them wait and both of those things hurt.  These tend to be considered cheap death penalties if they do not cost coin or last a short period of time.

My absolute ideal death penalty works hand in hand with my skill system.  My ideal MMO is a psuedo-sandbox and has a skill system masking experience gain.  To explain it as simple as possible, you basically gain experience for what you use and then allocate that into corresponding trees.  If I use a sword I gain sword experience.  There is also another form of exp called pvp experience which can be allocated to gain points in the PvP tree.  When you die in PvE combat you take on a hefty exp debt that must be worked off.  If you die in PvP, you lose PvP experience which is allocated to unlock abilities useful in PvP but do not incur any exp debt.   The higher up you are in the PvP tree (the more exp you have) the more you lose.

I’m very curious to hear other ideas on death penalties and how you would go about implementing them.

Massively Multiplayer may just be a tag or a marketing slang term now to some, but to others like myself it has real palpable meaning.  When I think of a game as Massively Multiplayer I have immediate expectations of certain aspects of the game.  In my idea of what constitutes a MMO, which I expect differs greatly from yours, the following things are necessary.

• Large-scale social interaction
• Collaboration/Cooperation with other players to accomplish goals/objectives
• A persistent world
• The game world continues without interaction

I do not have a magical number of players that I feel are required to make something ‘massive’ because I consider these types of games to be qualitative and not necessarily quantitative.  There does, however, need to be enough that we can consider it “large-scale”.  There must exist between this large number of players the means to and the necessity for social interaction.   Cooperation with other players is an important part of this interaction.  Where social interaction can end in a chat window, cooperation picks up and ensures that players are actually doing things together and relying on the participation of the other player in order for actions to happen.  In essence, this means that the game should not be single-player.

A persistent world is one that exists regardless of whether or not the player is there.  For example, if no one were in Orgrimmar (Orc capital in WoW) today it would still exist waiting for players to enter.  This differs from the idea of creating instances for players when the world is needed.  A world appearing to meet the needs of the player but being turned off or not being there when the player is away is not a persistent world.  An example of this would be the battlegrounds in World of Warcraft or the missions in Global Agenda.  The world there is not persistent.  I’ve also added the point that the game world must continue without interaction.  This is slightly redundant if you’re able to include that within your understanding of persistent, but I wanted to include it in there to further address the issue of creating a world at the demand of the player instead of the player being created to participate in the world.

Now let me combine my ideas about RPG’s with the ones about MMO’s to create what I feel makes a MMORPG:

• Story plays a central role, and the players are involved as characters participating in the world while this story unfolds.
• Large-scale social interaction and collaboration bridge involvement with a two-way interaction between the game and/or other players.
• A persistent world that continues regardless of the interaction from players.
• Combat is more considered than a pure action game and incorporates tactical concepts.
• The player’s character grows over the course of the game developing skills, abilities, etc.

There aren’t many MMORPG’s being made anymore in my opinion.  I think that most fall into some sort of “MMOG” subgenre and in many cases they’re starting to create their own.  It would be nice to see a MMORPG again but I’m beginning to think that the games have “evolved” or “lost their way” because players do not enjoy this style of game — or do they?  I think it’s harder for a team to create a MMORPG because of the way in which the world of the game and the social interactions and story must be a central focus rather than the individual being the focus.

If your ideas differ from mine I would be interested in reading them.   Please feel free to include yours, especially if you’re going to critique mine, so that we can have some form of discussion.

Shacknews‘ Evening Reading piece by Garnett Lee this evening was about the Bioware definition of RPG.  Bioware feels a RPG constitutes three things:

• Story plays a central role, and the player’s involvement as the character can change the outcome of that story.
• Combat is more considered than a pure action game and incorporates tactical concepts.
• The player’s character grows over the course of the game developing skills, abilities, etc.

That’s a fairly standard definition.  Their explanation of the three as the mirror, the chill, and the journey respectively are probably more telling in how Bioware designs their RPG’s.  I think Bioware is as good a place as any for us to establish a starting point because their RPG’s are widely acknowledged as some of the best.  As good as their RPG’s and insight on what constitutes an RPG are,  I think they’re missing a few points.

RPG’s, more than any other type of game, require social interaction and collaboration.  Whether it is with a NPC or a real person on the other end, the word ‘interaction’ is necessary to clarify that two or more things are coming together to have an effect on each other.  From there the first point about the player’s involvement as a character in the story means more than simply taking the role and choosing an outcome (or not).

In defining what a RPG must have, I feel it is important to define something they must not have. A game must not have a focus that detracts from the harmony and equality of all the above working together if it is to be called a RPG.  For example, if a game is all about competition so much so that it overshadows a story being told then it is not a RPG.  If a game is all about the act of killing something so much so that everything is tailored towards this goal then it is not a RPG either.  An example would be the Diablo franchise which is widely considered “Action-RPG”.  I would argue that this should not include the “RPG” tag, but rather Action-Adventure or some form of hack and slash and/or dungeon crawler tag.  The difference between Diablo and Mass Effect can be quickly seen in the emphasis being placed upon the combat in Diablo over the interaction and involvement of the player with his/her story and development.

Let’s look at Keen’s Definition of RPG now:

• Story plays a central role, and the player’s involvement as a character can change the outcome of that story.
• Social interaction and collaboration bridge involvement with a two-way interaction between the game and/or other players.
• Combat is more considered than a pure action game and incorporates tactical concepts.
• The player’s character grows over the course of the game developing skills, abilities, etc.
• Equality and harmony must exist between the aforementioned points without one or more taking precedence.

Tomorrow I plan to address the definition of “Massively Multiplayer” and combine it with my definition of RPG. The result should shed some light on where I am coming from when I say that a game is not a RPG, MMO, or MMORPG. This will also give everyone the opportunity to express their opinion on the subject and allow us all to brainstorm, publicly or privately, how games can be designed and developed to incorporate these traits.

Have you ever seen people telling others that they’re ‘just being nostalgic’ when they reminisce about a game they played?  Maybe you’re one of those people.  It comes across as dismissive with a negative connotation as though the person being nostalgic can’t possibly be thinking clearly or that their memories are somehow wrong, inaccurate, or out of date for today’s way of thinking.  Can anyone tell me why?

I see nostalgia as a good thing.  In fact, I see it as a great thing.  Nostalgia means longing for something past.  More often than not, when someone pulls the nostalgia card, they are using a definition that includes the person longing for something in an idealized form.  Why is that bad?  Before I expect someone to answer that, I’ll tell you why I think it is a good thing so that the ball is then passed to their court.

For me, when I’m being nostalgic it’s not because I’m thinking of something that was and can not be again.  When I speak of a game and how great it was, it’s not because I’m thinking of something that did not happen.  I’m not longing to play a character again that I played ten years ago. I’m not longing for that guild I was in.  When I say that DAOC was a great PvP game that handled a multi-faction war better than any other MMO it’s not because I have some dillusional state of mind.

I know that I can never experience EverQuest again.  I know that I can never experience Star Wars Galaxies again.  Ultima Online will never again see the light of day in its true form.  Even World of Warcraft’s original form “Vanilla WoW” is something of the past.  Those games are gone.  Their spirit lives on and we can all love them for that.  However, when someone like myself truly gets nostalgic about those games it’s because I see more than just the great game I can never have again.

It’s about gameplay.  When I get right down to it I am talking about the design of the game.  When I think about games of the past and I wish for games of today to adopt their enormous worlds, their level of content, their complexity, their ability to evoke an emotional response,  and a specific mechanic it’s because those things factored into the whole.   If one insists on telling me that this is nostalgia then I would say nostalgia is a good thing.  If nostalgia allows me to remember good game design, remember exactly what I liked about a particular game, and then want to implement it in a newer generation then that is a great thing.  We can and should learn from the past.

Personally, I think it’s more than nostalgia.  MMORPG’s today are missing something – more than something – and I really long for them to get back to at least having what they did a few years ago.  As I mentioned in my ‘We’re Working Backwards‘ entry, I think that we need to seriously reevaluate where we’re at right now.  If we’re “moving forward” then why are the games so severely lacking compared to yesterday?   I challenge this perceived forward motion as being nothing more than a more efficient way of treading water at a profitable point.

That’s a subject which I intend to explore soon.  However, this entry is purely about nostalgia.  If people insist on telling me and others that we’re being nostalgic then I ask them to tell us why it is bad; I’ve told you why I believe it is good.  If nostalgia allows me recall what I know to be better, even if its my opinion, then why should that ever be used as a way to dismiss one’s argument?  In the context that I have spoken about today, the only context of the word I know to be true in relation to “longing for the past” in games, how could this be a bad thing?

In 1999 players were welcomed to the world of Norrath, one of the most expansive and immersive experiences ever encountered.  In 2001 the realms of Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard gave players the chance to participate in a three-way war for territorial domination comprised of keep assault and relic sieges.  In 2003 the limits of a player’s ability to interact with the world were stretched further than ever before in a Galaxy far, far away.  These are but a few examples of many games that released before their time.

Looking at what the MMORPG’s of the past were able to accomplish and what is being designed and attempted today, does it not appear as though we are working backwards?  If someone who knew very little about these games were to look at the industry objectively, would they not see the pinnacle of what today’s players want in a game released a decade ago and the path to that point clearly illustrated in a straight line of regression as each new game releases?  Dark Age of Camelot, for example, had the ideal three-way realm war.  As new games released, such as Warhammer Online (ironically made by the same developers), doesn’t it seem like WAR should have come first and then Dark Age of Camelot?    The same holds true for each of the examples I gave and many more.

Why are we moving backwards?  Why are the games today releasing as mere shadows of what came before them?  It only makes sense that we should be moving forward and making each new game better and better, building upon what came before, in order to achieve further success.  Yet, today a game releases and it’s brushed aside with comments like “It’s not as good as…” or “Why didn’t they include or learn from ….”  and then the game is set aside after only a few months to wither away and be set on auto-pilot with a skeleton crew of developers as they move on to the next project.  Sadly it’s looking like the MMO industry has become a salvaging operation with the mindset that there’s more money to be made in selling it for parts.

To correct this problem, why not make games that push the boundaries of what we knew?  Release a game that rivals the ideas presented in DAOC, AC, or UO.  Why not design the games to release at a point where they mirror what was once considered the peak of perfection and then push just a little further?  Even taking bits and pieces from several games and refining them into a polished game works — that’s how we got World of Warcraft. This is why people ask for DAOC 2.  It’s not just nostalgia.  It’s the ability to recognize a model that released before its time that could have astronomical results today.  I do not believe there is a soul among those of you reading this right now that can’t look at a game from the past that you thought was amazing and then add ideas to it that would make it even better.  If you can come up with those ideas, why can’t developers?

This industry started and became as big as it is today because of the potential recognized in the older games.  What released since then does not reflect that though.  What is holding us back?  I do not believe for one second when people tell me “the time for that has past”.  Bullhooky!  You’re crazy if you think millions would not eat up a game built with the ideals of DAOC, with the graphical capabilities of today, providing that ideal three-way true territorial realm war.  You’re off your rocker if you think an enormous open sandbox game where players can populate the landscape and involve themselves in the social dynamics of a complex player-driven society, economy, and conflict would not blow away the success of today.

Do we have the wrong people for the job?  Are there not enough idea men out there? Is it a problem of not enough money?  Technology not good enough?  I don’t believe any of these issues are true, nor do I believe that if they were they could not be rectified.   There is an enormous amount of untapped potential — yeah, yeah we all hate that word now — but it will never be fully realized workingbackwards.  You do not move forward by starting from the beginning and breaking each new game down to be only a bi-product of the original.  They may have released before their time, but it’s not too late to start again and make them only the beginning.  There is money in it, fun in it, and amazing games just waiting to be made.

I think this next year is going to be an exciting one!  I’m going to refer to 2010 as “The Year of the IP’s” because we have Star Trek, Star Wars, WarCraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Final Fantasy, and others all at our fingertips.  I think we’ll be looking back in 2011 and calling this “The Blizzard of 2010″.   I took a couple risks in my predictions marking some games as delayed and giving others release dates.  I was tempted to say it all was going to be delayed but that’s both depressing and no fun.  I started with 10 predictions but I’ll add to them as I think of more.

1. Star Trek Online will be a quick pit stop for the impulse buyers, fans of Star Trek, and the crowd of desperate MMO players who want something new.  It won’t see great “success” in the form of continued high praise and accolades from a large share of the playerbase nor growing numbers.  It will have a moderate start due to so much apprehension created over Cryptic’s handling of Champions Online and taper down quickly as players experience the new combat, come down from the nostalgia high, and prepare to move on to the next big 2010 title.  When people leave they will credit the content as being “not enough to keep their interest”.

2. SWTOR will not release in 2010.  “When it’s finished” will be used as another meaning for “Avoiding Cataclysm”.  No one can blame them.

3. Cataclysm will launch in November.  It will, yet again, be another high quality expansion that will rocket WoW forward.  The expansion will raise some controversy before release.  I have a feeling that they’ll make an announcement that will upset the hornet’s nest and have players shaking their fists.  Maybe some new way of doing content or an announcement about PvP.  Whatever it is, players will forget all about it when the game launches.

4. Free-to-Play games will continue gaining more momentum.   They’ll get closer to AAA quality in the form of games like Allods.  This will attract the attention of the AAA market leading to the the AAA subscription model moving even deeper into the realm of microtransactions.  What we saw in 2009 will only be the beginning.  Perhaps the upsetting announcement in Cataclysm?  By the end of 2010 it will be popular belief that microtransactions on the whole are still not where this industry should go, but everyone will tolerate them more as being tacked on to the subscription model.

5. Diablo 3 will only be mentioned briefly in a “coming in 2011″ announcement.  Even then we won’t believe them.

6. StarCraft 2 will release in late summer, perhaps near August.  StarCraft will be a huge success and resurrect RTS gaming.  The planned “expansions” or additional campaigns set to release will keep SC2 and RTS games on everyone’s mind.  Prepare to see more in the future as this remains one of the few markets that PC gaming still controls.

7. Final Fantasy 14 won’t launch in 2010.  They will announce a January 2011 release.

8. Global Agenda will see moderately high success at launch and continue to be a title that players think they can go back to, pick up and play, and enjoy.  It won’t be quite what everyone expects and as a result they may lose a chunk of players, but they’ll continue to add to the game throughout 2010 to entice people.  “The next best thing” will be Global Agenda’s biggest enemy.  The best thing they have going for them right now is that they’re trying something new that players haven’t seen before.  When they’re no longer new, what will hold people?

9. PC Gaming as a whole will see a rise as exclusive titles such as StarCraft launch and others like Diablo 3 and SWTOR come a year closer to launch.

10. E3 Predictions:  A new console will be announced for 2012.  Nintendo will finally give us a new Zelda for the console announcement.

What are your predictions for 2010?

I have to be careful how I look at 2009.  This year has been one with many regrets and it would be easy to fall into a negative mindset.  I think it is far more productive to look at my regrets and try to learn from them, grow from them, and plan for next year to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Regret: I missed a great year of Console gaming.
I don’t consider myself a console gamer like Graev. He will play every major console release. That’s his preferred method of gaming. Mine has always been PC. Yet, this year I look back at all the titles released on the Xbox 360, PS3, and even some on the Wii and I can’t help but wonder why I haven’t made the transition to at least a partial console gamer. Demon’s Souls, Assassin’s Creed 2, Uncharted 2, Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Ghostbusters, Batman, Brutal Legend, DA:O etc., etc., the list goes on. We got all these games in 2009 for the consoles and I didn’t touch any of them. Many of them are exactly what I enjoy: RPG’s, Medieval, Adventure.

New Year’s Resolution: Become a Console Gamer even if it’s just a little bit.
There’s going to be a lot more console gaming for me in 2010. I plan to take the list of games from above and get through at least three of them. I’m also going to sit down and play the games that come out in 2010. It’s going to require a conscious effort. If it’s a matter of feeling disconnected from my community that I’m always on Ventrilo with when gaming then I’ll pull out my Netbook that I got for Christmas and set it on my lap to voice chat. I’m not going to miss out on another year of great gaming simply because I’m a PC gamer.

Regret: I got discouraged and a little more jaded because of the MMO scene.
As I pointed out yesterday, the year for MMO gaming has been dismal. I let this get me down. There was even a moment when I threw my hands up and said “I think I’m done with these games”. It was after Aion’s launch and I was in my 30’s when I started realizing that I wasn’t able to enjoy the game anymore. 2009’s MMO’s all started out as great prospects. They looked great on paper. The ideas developers were presenting seemed to coincide with exactly what I wanted. When reality set in that they once again exaggerated, lied, or presented their game to the players contrary to how they actually designed it (or planned to continue designing it) I started asking questions like: “This is it? This is the best these developers have to offer?”

It took a while for me to realize that I could look at these games and learn more about what I do not want, how to detect a lemon sooner, and how to avoid it in the future. When I looked up I realized that I hadn’t done a good job explaining these feelings on the blog. I explained them on the forums, talked about them with Graev, and even to friends on ventrilo but for some reason I wasn’t getting them to the blog. When I did get to the blog it seemed like I was bipolar. One day I liked a game and the next I didn’t. There was more to it but it was my fault for not portraying that.

New Year’s Resolution: I’m going to do a better job this next year writing about my experiences with the games.
I’m going to do a better job of stating it how it is to you guys. That’s always been my plan. It’s how we started the blog — as gamers telling the players everything, exactly how we see it — and I want to do a better job of living up to that. There are thousands of you that read what I write every day and I want to continue providing you with the type of content you’re looking for when you visit this blog. It’s always been about the truth, the raw emotion, and broad discussion of gaming. It’s going to be a lot better in 2010.

Regret: I’ve lost touch with what, exactly, I want in a MMORPG.
Do I want hardcore PvP or objective and goal oriented PvP? Do I want themepark or sandbox? Do I like games with the quest-to-level model more than grinding? In Darkfall I questioned whether or not hardcore was really for me. I thought I liked grinding and then I played Aion. I’ve lost a little bit of my identity to this swinging pendulum we call a MMO industry. Every way I turn I see extremes and a new way of doing this and that. What was once grinding, or what I thought was grinding, clearly isn’t the same thing today. Questing to level is actually fun in some games and not in others.   I didn’t analyze things well enough this year.

New Year’s Resolution: I’m going to find myself or do a better job at working towards understanding what I want.
This next year I’m going to do a better job of looking at how things are changing so that I can identify why I liked something five years ago but do not like today’s version. I think this will help me understand how to better critique the design of these games as well as avoiding the problems I mentioned in the previous regret. I hope that while I break down the various changes that we’re seeing we can get some great discussions going. As developers begin changing the way they design MMO’s, and we can’t deny they are, I want to stay on top of it better.