Carolyn-Anne Templeton

I like kids in MMOs about as much as I like them in real life. I think they're adorable from a distance, but I get annoyed when I have to protect them (ie. Lalia in LOTRO will forever be remembered as the stupidest MMO child I've ever encountered).

http://shirt.woot.com/derby/entry.aspx?id=58882

Maybe your life has no leveling in it, but mine certainly does.

I consider school a form of leveling up. You do pointless quests (homework) and challenges bosses (essays/tests) to gain skill points (grades) until one magical day you level up (graduate), and gain a nice new housing item (diploma) that functionally tells very little about how you live your life. Much like an mmo, it's the addictive nature of the grind that keeps you going and the promise of higher levels (a job, for instance), in the future.

@ScottishViking Agreed. I was about to agree with Angmar but... the mob density and just general gooeyness of this area totally outweigh Angmar. Plus, the map in this area is exactly what give Moria it's bad name for being hard to navigate and you're extremely likely to aggro a troll for the mistake. I play a squishy class and, as a result, much death has occured...

@bobfish In the words of TLC, "A scrub is a guy who thinks he's fly and is also known as a buster. Always talking bout what he wants, but just sits on his broke *ss." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av7m_Pgt1S8

@JBTurk Huh. That's funny, because the one thing that grosses me out as a female player are guys being overattentive and nice solely because I happen to lack a Y-chromosome.

Well, that and having to constantly prove my own gender b/c some two-year-old boy accidentally had a crush on some other guy's female avatar and the aforementioned boy is so homophobic that it scarred him for life.

Byregot, because as a singer I must pay homage to all the arts and as a website designer, brilliant construction fascinates me.

Completely agree with all of the above. Just wanted to add to #3... In many instances the 'advantage' of the time gain is a hindrance to actual game play. I purposely avoid those type of boosts in new games because you learn from the slow move through the levels.

Also, I think there's much less of an uproar over LOTRO because it really is more of a PvE than a PvP game. Sure, there's Monster Play, but it's not the same as other games... and will probably be even less so now that only VIPs can access it. I know as soon as my month of subscription runs out, I won't be playing MP for a while.

As you put it earlier, in a pure PvE game there's no real 'winning.' If someone in my fellowship has a stat boost via the LOTRO store, it makes me happy, but it doesn't significantly change gameplay either way.

I myself am glad for the XP boosts, because sometimes leveling an alt to try out a new class can get really frustrating when you don't even get a feel for how the class works until level 20-ish.

I was required to play that game for Model UN in high school! I adored it. Partially because I love politics, but mostly because it recognized the truly random nature of the political system.

I think the problem with many 'adaptations' of a political system in MMOs are that they either try to make a 'right' and 'wrong' path, which doesn't really work outside of a purely comic environment (I find that CoH walks that line particularly well) or they base all politics purely on popularity. In reality, politics revolve around a combination of both plus situational factors that end up making any voting system almost completely random.

I would adore to play a game that incorporated politics as the contemplated gamble that they are.