Posts tagged character-advancement 
The Road to Mordor: Six wonders of the newbie world
As I reported last week, I've recently rerolled as a Hobbit Minstrel in an effort to refresh my attitude toward the game, to get a different perspective, and to continue my series in which I go through all of the single-player quests in the game. It's been, in a word, smashing. Having been ...
The Soapbox: Level the playing field
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Levels exist in every single MMORPG on the market today. There ...
Chasing carrots, and why we do it
A while ago, Kill Ten Rats advocated a rather interesting approach to solving the problem of any tedious grind: cheat. More viable in a single-player game (but still possible if you're willing to use methods of dubious legality), the reasoning was to cut away the reward portion and see if you were ...
The Agency's character advancement stays true to skill-based gameplay
In most MMOs, we're used to our time investment leading to a character that is overwhelmingly powerful, compared to a player that is fresh out of the gates. For example, a level 30 is going to thrash a level 10 in World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online, barring gross incompetence from the higher ...
Mixing skill into a multiplayer game
Clockwork Gamer posted an interesting look at skill in MMOs the other day. He categorizes skill in online games into three areas: character gear and advancement, game knowledge, and player skill. Character gear and advancement can be done by anyone-- the longer you've played a game, it's almost ...
Lore and storytelling in the MMO genre
KillTenRats has a good commentary up on lore and its role in MMO games. Story in videogames is a tough thing to get right, and it's even tougher in a world where you don't just have one hero-- you have hundreds or thousands of them. (Sidenote: while it's not an MMO, Portal-- my vote for Game of the ...
