Nucleon

Here's a complication though. Mid-game if/when people start roaming their gold/xp per minute goes way down unless they are getting mad kills. Sometimes if the opponent is smart, it ends up with a lot of poke and prodding at each other, and no real opening for an initiation.

In these situations, I've seen numerous times where a character will keep laning/farming (in another spot of the map) using wards for protection. After a few minutes they end up out leveling the pack and start rolling faces. I usually play a tank, and I've fallen victim to roaming too early and ending up underleveled than if I had kept farming.

I think it's fair to see in LoL: always be killing. Whether it's your opponent or minions, if you aren't, you are falling behind someone who is.

Everyone keeps ripping on how Diablo 3 is so far from it's roots, but seriously I can't think of any key features which are in it's "roots" that are lacking in D3. Yes, they removed the skill/stat allocation features, but that is because it was a terrible flawed system that result in broken builds, forcing characters to re-roll if they put even 1 point in the wrong place. Sure it's punishing, but it's simply not fun.

Also, I'm saying it now: The RMAH will be a game changer in gaming history. Once it comes out with D3 I'm pretty sure gamers will request in nearly all other games. By allowing *all* gamers to buy and sell goods for both gold or cash (with only a fee if it sells), it will cause intense competition that drives prices of goods to the floor. This will single handedly gut the black market of gold farmers and stolen accounts which plague online games. It seems like basic economics to me.

But as always, people hate change so of course the RMAH is the next great gaming satan. The same was said about the "pvp ending battlegrounds" or the "community gutting Dungeon Finder". Good luck releasing an MMO today without those features.

@Ecto Wait what? What type of champion do you want them to do? The only champion that isn't AP Carry, Tanky DPS, or assassin would be a support.

So you're saying you wished they released a support character, the kind of character that players near universally hate playing and the one which Riot is trying to figure out what do with since the starved support meta is no fun players.

Secondly, of course they make decisions based on what sells. Do you want a company to make decisions based on what won't sell? They are a business. But they are also a F2P business, so the instant (and I mean instant) they stop competing, players jump ship for DOTA, HoN, or DOTA2.

@Vancha "Most consistently successful mmo since 2003"

Wait what... based on what numbers? WoW's subscriber base is roughly 30x larger (CCP stated in January 2011 they had 360,000 total). Lineage 1 and 2 both boast consistently higher numbers. Even EQ2, Lotro and EQ1 have or had as many subscribers as Eve. Every single one of those games has segregated servers, many by Region as well.

While I do like the concept of one big server, it's a pretty outrageous claim to say that Eve is the most successful MMO since 2003, unless of course "most" means "distinctly middle of the pack that runs way behind Blizzard."

Remember those days when EQ was top dog and every gaming company was grumbling about how it's impossible to knock them down. Well it's been a long time since those days. The folks over at SOE have shown us with game (SWG) after game (EQ2) after game (Vanguard) after game (DCUO) after game (Matrix Online) that they badly lack the design vision and organizational discipline to to execute a solid game.

For as much as we slam Blizzard. Their approach of iterating, and iterating and polishing seems to be a far more successful strategy than a wide portfolio of lackluster, buggy and visionless games.

Wow... that's a new low.

"Hey all you fans that worked hard to build your character, here's some contest winner who gets it for free!"

I mean if you got a maxed out character to start, how long would you even play for? What would you do? Sounds like a 1-way ticket to boredom.

I'm not much of a tinfoil hat'er, but this just seems odd. In most industries "Jam-packed schedules" means "lots of stuff being produced and released" which also means "lots of stuff to hype!". So why would they cancel Hypecon 2012?

I have my fingers crossed for D3, but I'm just not sure, from watching the beta footage, that it is really *that* much more awesome than D2. Still we know nothing about Titan and whether it's even an MMO or an MMOFPS.

The future is definitely very stormy for Blizzard. What makes them successful was putting out incredible games that dominated their Genre (WoW, SC1,2/War1,2,3,D1,2), but once the ship starts sinking will the money-men behind the scenes let them get back to core concepts, or will they be fast-releasing garbage to simply cash out until it's over.

I would not be surprised that the upcoming investor call says something like 1,000,000 lost subscribers, and D3 coming out in 3 weeks (even though it's clearly not done yet).

I've almost always been a standard PvE AAA-mmo player (WoW, EQ, UO, EvE). But I'm absolutely loving the complicated meta gaming involved in LoL. For a game with basically 3 maps, there is a *lot* of strategy and skill required in doing well.

All for the price of well... $0. I don't plan to play anything else until D3/GW2 comes out.

What matters, more than raids, instances, or anything, is that there is fun, character-advancing content, that you can play regardless of how high your character is. Without that, an MMO won't have the longevity to really make a splash. People often play the same MMO for months and years, you can't do that without a well designed "max level content" also known as END GAME.

The whole "there is no end game" comes off, I think, as elitist hand waving. "Oh 'end game', we're above that, our game is so genre bending and mind blowing that we don't need content or things for you to do."

Players may complain endlessly about the treadmill of end game in current MMOs. Although they may constantly point to the gear rewards as the cause of the problem, or content too easy to access, the real root problem is that walking THAT iteration of the treadmill is simply not FUN. Players do not mind going up the gear treadmill if it's a fun experience. That's what WoW got wrong about the LFD raid finder... yes it made gear and raids accessible, but it didn't make them fun. They did nothing to deal with the things that make raids un-fun: jerk-off players.

Is there anything that's not made better by experimentation? I mean really, experimenting and the creativity required is the necessary precursor to meaningful innovation.

Lets not kid ourselves though, this is the standard business cycle. Experimenting is always the hallmark of the up-and-coming companies and not the top dogs. Young companies with nothing to lose and lots to gain experiment, fail and die, or succeed and take over. The big companies stick to their tried and true business plan and release solid dependable work and capitalize on the fruits of their enormous market reach.