Real Money Transactions: Doing it right? Part 1

Like it or not, real-money transactions (RMT) are a huge part of the MMO industry today. We gamers tend to have strong feelings on RMT because it cuts to the very core of why many of us play MMOs.

An equal jumping off point, where progression is based on merit, skill, and persistence more than luck or initial status. People treasure MMOs because they're a fresh start, a place where everyone begins at the first step and determines their own status thereafter. This is perhaps an idealistic view of a game world, but it is certainly an attractive one to anyone who perhaps isn't top-of-the-ladder in real life. Proponents of this concept feel that RMT muddies the water, allowing someone to simply buy their way to success in-game through real-life success. Whether this is true, or even a bad thing, is completely subjective.

And yet on the other side of the fence are game developers (in this case more the publishing side than the coding side) who see a great opportunity in RMT, exactly because if the opportunity to buy your way to success is available, many people will use it. RMT is undeniably lucrative, when implemented correctly, as evidenced by the number of games running completely off of RMT income, as well as the increasing number of games supplementing subscription/advertising income with RMT options.

Personally, I don't believe there is a catch-all response to RMT. While I believe an industry based entirely around using out-of-game funds to purchase your in-game way to success would be perhaps the worst thing that could happen, I also recognize RMT as an opportunity for existing games to expand themselves, and new (often independent) games to get off the ground without a formalized subscription system.

There are dangers, of course, in mixing real and digital currency, as evidenced by the RMT "black market" that exists mostly within games that don't formally allow and regulate RMT. Once someone begins to base their livelihood upon earning in-game assets to sell for real-life money, staying within the rules of the game becomes much less apparent. Certainly, people see spammers in general channels desperately trying to sell their goods for cash, but the less-openly-visible effects aren't usually discussed. Hacking and cheating is far more prevalent with someone playing the game to make an income than with someone playing the game with the intent to have fun and participate in the community (see the social contract theory article). When one's sole incentive is to gain at any cost, we see things like 24/7 camping by bots, market inflation by constant farming* (there is a misconception here, I'll get back to it), spamming, harassment, and thievery. This grief is further exacerbated by the fact that many companies take a hard stance against unauthorized RMT and will quickly punish both accounts that took part in the transaction. The problem being, as discussed above, that the RMT farmer has no social attachment to their character, and can simply start anew, while the buyer (who, admittedly, shouldn't be breaking the rules) loses everything.

However, those who despise RMT are too quick to overlook the benefits it has brought to the industry. As I mentioned above, many a game has blossomed in the past decade because RMT offers an incredibly cheap way to enter the market and earn revenue on a very short timescale (microtransactions). Additionally, one would hope that with more revenue flowing into game company coffers, at least a portion of this would be reinvested in the game, allowing for more content and support for even those who don't use RMT (opponents would claim that this money is pocketed).

But the past few months have shown me a side of RMT that I believe is vastly overlooked: it is an incredible vehicle for charity. At its core, people don't give to charity precisely because it is what it says on the tin: giving. It is human nature not to want to give something for nothing. We have tax incentives, of course, and other small benefits (a free tote!), intended to make people feel that charity is more worthwhile. Obviously a company could not "Sell inventory for charity", simply because they'd be out the cost of the inventory and would themselves be making a donation. The difference with digital goods, however, is that they're zero-cost to make, and can be made incredibly desirable.

EverQuest, for instance, recently put a couple of charity items in their microtransactions store. Just a couple little "fun" magic items: A teddy bear you can hug and a doll. Buying the bear contributed the $5 (500 station cash) value to charity, and was generously matched by SoE (a $10 donation in all). Buying the doll donated to the popular children's charity-by-gamers Child's Play.

Lets examine the equation here (ignoring the matching for now, that was just generosity on the side of a company).
Player - Gets an in-game good he or she considers worth $5.
Charity cause - Gets $5
Game company - Gets a happier player, but no money.

Thing is, there is no -$5 to create that bear, not even a -$0.50, because digital goods create value almost from thin air. $5 in cash just got turned into $10 in value (possibly more, if the game company somehow accounts for the fact that the player is more likely to stick with a game they bought assets in).

I can't be the only one simply amazed by this. Let us stop ignoring the elephant in the room for a moment and consider what would happen if WoW (which I use for the sake of massive population) were to offer a completely unique stacking effect that gave each player some sort of small effective boost. What if WoW proceeded to offer this effect at $5 in some sort of microtransaction store, with the benefits going to charity? Ten million dollars would go to charity within a couple weeks, at nearly no cost to, well, anyone. Would there be some measure of drama over the incident? Of course, but I firmly believe that would be heavily outweighed by the fact that the money is saving lives and not simply lining pockets.

This post would not be complete without mentioning the tiny (but hugely significant) blurb that actually got me to write this out. CCP (the developers of EVE online) recently released the following statement:

Dear EVE Players,

Along with the rest of the world, we at CCP have been following the devastating impact of the earthquake of January 12 on the people of Haiti. The situation is as dire as ever for Haiti's brave population, even with the rush of goodwill and aid from many countries, international organizations and countless individuals-including many of you. In 2004 we assisted a collection amongst EVE players to help with the Southeast Asia Tsunami relief efforts and we have figured out a way to use our PLEX system to facilitate such a collection again...

Now, EVE's RMT system is worth an entire article by itself and I'll discuss it at a later date. But what this means in simple terms is that you can donate in-game money, basically have CCP convert it into cash, and send it to Haiti. Own a moon-mining operation in nullsec that brings in billions? That can save lives. Just score an awesome kill on some poor fellow's hauler full of goodies? That can put food in someone's mouth. Sure, the time->money exchange rate isn't great for most people, and they'd be "better off" picking up more hours at work and donating cash, but the issue here once again is that they get to do something they enjoy and make the world a better place at the same time.

That blows me away.

Join me next time in Part 2 of my discussion on RMT wherein I'll talk about what kind of RMT systems there are, what kind of games use each, which kinds are healthy, and which kinds aren't.


*The misconception in question is that many people believe if you buy currency, you're causing direct economic inflation. This can sometimes be the case if someone has found a way to duplicate money or is cheating to get it, but the vast majority of sold assets are acquired through gameplay. Money is simply changing hands, and this does not cause inflation. As much as I despise RMT in certain games, it irks me that people try to scapegoat it as the cause of every issue in a game when much of it is based off of economic principles that don't actually have anything to do with RMT.

The "my game" fallacy

This can probably be applied to real-life politics as well, many MMO concepts can, but I'll stick to the metaphor here.

If you've spent any time on your favorite MMO forum, or even just arguing with someone in game, you've probably heard this one: "This is my game, I'm paying for it, I can play it however I want". It may seem contrary to the concept of freedom that draws so many people to MMOs, but while you're free to make a large array of choices, you aren't allowed to play "however you want".

There are basically two sets of rules in MMOs(and in life). The hard-set legalities of the official system, and the social etiquette. These are going to vary from game to game, of course. A game that tries to project more of a friendly image is going to make the official harassment rules more strict, whereas a more harsh-styled PvP game might let players take advantage of eachother with no official recourse.

Social etiquette, on the other hand, usually tends to be more standardized: Don't be a jerk. The specifics of how to not be a jerk depend on the game, but usually involve respecting other player's PvE areas, not engaging other players in combat when they have no fighting chance (notable exceptions for games that encourage preying on undefended targets), sharing loot, etc.

The main difference here is how you'll be punished should you break the rules. Breaking official conduct can result in tangible recourse, like a suspension of an account, taking of your private assets, or even a ban. In general, these rules are more respected than the ones created by the community because the consequences are inescapable and usually inarguable.

However, not as many players consider the consequences of breaking the rules created by the community, which is where this whole "My money, my playstyle, my game" argument usually comes in. The actions taken by the community against people who break widely-accepted rules can be just as devastating as official actions, and are, ironically, sometimes more respected than the official rules (using 3rd party cheating programs but being careful not to intrude on anyone's camp, for instance). While GMs and customer service staff can remove your character from the game, the community can take the much harsher action of removing *you* from their society.

At its heart, an MMO is a society. Your $15 a month entitles you to use the server, and your good behavior entitles you to take part in the society and all the benefits this implies (for real-life application of these principles, see social contract theory). This relationship between you and every other player goes both ways. As their actions affect you, yours certainly affect them (whether you want them to or not). Each choice you make, at least in most MMORPGs, can ripple throughout the entire community, even if you think you're just off on your own doing your own thing. This is the heart of the difference between a persistent multiplayer game and a singleplayer or traditional multiplayer game: the interdependency of every player with every other player.

This is a tough concept to handle, because it negates the "Mind your own business and let me do my thing" idea that is so often brought up when players complain about other players (both in the most basic in-game disputes and in large-scale class balance debates). Everyone else's business *is* your business, to some extent. This is notably true in games with a thriving player-based economy, while it may be less true in heavily instanced and segmented games.

Few games demonstrate this concept so eloquently as EVE Online. EVE has a number of factors going for it that make it a perfect place to disprove down the "my game" fallacy. First and foremost, there are several completely different (and even opposing) playstyles. Secondly, the intricate player economy makes the effect each player has on each other player a very real thing, even if an individual could have little effect on their own. Browsing the EVE forums, you will find no end to the people who think the game should pander to their playstyle, either by making their particular profession easier, more fun, or safer.

These players, like many others, simply refuse to see the big picture. Yes, you're entitled to get a shot at the game world. Yes, the goal of the developers should be to create a fun, challenging, and engaging game. But it is your responsibility to seek that fun within the rules (both official and social) of the game. If you want to be spoon-fed interesting content, if you want to break everyone else's playstyle on the march towards your own, you have to realize that wouldn't be good design. Such pandering towards one particular segment of the population inevitably makes the others restless. Development time should, of course, be spread around the popular playstyle to insure that most people are enjoying their experience, but all too often players believe that their own personal way to play is in someway better than someone else's.

In the end, MMO players have to realize that despite the fantastical setting of the game, the massively multiplayer nature of the game is going to force it to operate very similarly to real life. You aren't always going to get what you want, you aren't the most important thing in the world, and mere existence doesn't mean you deserve everything the game has to offer. You have to ask yourself: If I really did get everything I want, would I continue to enjoy and play the game? Because the devs ask themselves that every time you propose a change, and they're much better at answering those questions impartially.

Discussion Friday: "Exploits" fault or freedom?

Some people hesitate to use the word "exploit" in forum/game discussion because of the negative connotation it carries with so many people. This likely rises from the idea of "an exploit" being equivalent to "a punishable offense", and indeed sometimes this is the case. However, in the vast majority of cases, an in-game exploit is something more subtle. Something useful, for sure, but not necessarily unbalancing in its own right. Unintended, surely, but at the same time a component that generates fun.

I believe much of what makes modern choice-based gaming successful are what many people would call "exploits", but it is important to distinguish how I define this term as opposed to some of the other popular definitions. I discussed the "Oh nos, bad things you should never do or talk about" position above, and the most relevant standard definitions of exploitation are as follows (from dictionary.com):

1. use or utilization, esp. for profit: the exploitation of newly discovered oil fields.
2. selfish utilization: He got ahead through the exploitation of his friends.

So how would I define an exploit as it pertains to gaming, especially the MMO environment. Simply "Anything that can be done, to a level of benefit, that was not considered by the developers at the time of design".

Now, this certainly encompasses things like dupes, abusing broken geometry, and these types of exploits are definitely to be looked down upon and fixed. The kind of exploits I admire, however, are those that thrive in ingenuity. Any class in EQ can claim to have developed tactics that weren't necessarily intended by developers. And, indeed, while some of these exploits are fixed-nerfed (I don't consider the terms mutually exclusive), still others live on and actually become part of classes. Case in point: Both snare kiting and feign-death pulling were entirely unintentional byproducts of skills put into the game that were "exploited" to great use by players. This is not to be looked upon as a bad thing, but rather as a conjunction of the tools given by developers and the ideas of players together creating an unanticipated result, and I believe this to be a Holy Grail of game development.

To explain that statement, we have to go back to the history of MMOs. In the most rudimentary sense, you can trace them back to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), of which some were simply text-based MMORPGs. Certainly the modern MMORPG was influenced by things like roguelikes (both classic roguelikes like Nethack, and more modern roguelikes like Diablo I/II), but the first games we could consider in the same genre as, say, EQ or WoW, were the graphical MUDs. MUDs, in turn, were a blend of the traditional text-based adventure game which added the freedom of deciding your own path and interacting with others. Freedom is the key phrase here.

The modern fantasy MMO also has its roots in D&D, this is fairly obvious to anyone looking at especially oldschool EverQuest content (gelatinous cube, anyone?) This, like MUDs and roguelikes, is the extension of the goal to "play D&D on the computer". This goal, although not in so many words, has been central to modern fantasy game design. Players want a world with rules, sure, but only in the most basic sense. What players really want is freedom. Just enough information, structure, and restrictions to get them going, and the ability to flesh it out from there.

This is why exploits are the Holy Grail of MMO game design. Look at EQ, one of the oldest modern MMOs in existence. Play for a few months and about half of what you'll learn are hard-set game laws and mechanics, the other half is how 10 years and millions of players have bent these rules, combined the tools they've been given, and carved out a path ultimately of their own choosing through the game. In EQ, we define an experienced player not just as someone who knows "Hey, I'm a warrior and I'm supposed to tank and use the taunt button", or "Hey, I'm a cleric, I heal", but as someone who knows how to use those basic tools, along with an ability to think on their feet, to adapt to the situation.

This beneficial situation arises from a couple facts.
1. Players will always always have more time to figure out how things work than developers. There are just way more of them, playing for way more time, and trying way more different combinations of abilities.
2. EQ's depth of content, in particular, means that the developer team today likely doesn't know as much about the entirety of the things available in EQ as the veteran players do, and as a result don't always anticipate that, "Hey, this new expansion ability might work really well alongside this ancient clicky".
3. This is a big one, the developers don't immediately try to quash innovation. Yes, every class has been burned by one of their favorite unintended (but not necessarily overpowered) tactics being fixed-nerfed, but each class will also tell you success stories of how some of those little tactics became a permanent part of their class.

Now, I say all this with the experience of having been beaten down by "exploit-fixes", surely. But I believe EQ is much more lenient (indeed, *must* be much more lenient) with this than other games. Some developers have an issue with the players "Not playing the game the way I designed them to", and these individuals are entirely missing the point. You needn't show them the path up a mountain. You needn't give the boss one weakness. You needn't provide set skill paths along which players can choose to be "An A-style warrior or a B-style warrior". Give them freedom, they will fill the space between your mechanics with ingenuity. They will climb the mountain if you build it. They will kill a boss creature even if you give it no weaknesses (Hi, Kerafyrm kill). They will create their own specialized sub-classes out of the abilities they pick and choose from the ones that are available. Just give them the structure and set them free.

What do you think?

Discussion Friday: Hardcore vs. Casual in EQ

More than anything, I'd like this blog to become a place for discussion more than pure author exposition. I recognize that a blog, perhaps, isn't the best place for this, but neither is a forum, really. Perhaps one day someone will develop a web medium whereby the opening poster can set the discussion in motion, and it'll flow fluidly instead of a straight line of responses down the page. In any case, I digress.

It is my hope that I will manage to come up with a discussion topic at least once a week, so without further adieu I'll present the first subject on which I've got a lot to say, and I hope you will as well:

Hardcore vs. Casual in itself can be quite a large discussion, so I've tried to confine it to this particular game. I hope to have a chance to discuss it as it applies to the industry as a whole at a later time, but for now this is quite topical as the talk on the EverQuest forums has once again become heated over this particular subject.

In short, EverQuest's newest expansion, Underfoot, is quite a large step-up in difficulty over the last expansion, Secrets of Faydwer. Mobs respawn quicker, in general, they hit harder and have more HP.

My personal playstyle is spotty. Some days, I am definitely a hardcore EQ player, pursuing my goals for hours and hours (or, if time allows, days) on end. Other days, I'm more interested in casually achieving a few things in an hour or two of quick play. What makes the MMO medium so great is that it supports this through a breadth of content. At the risk of running into a cliche, compare EverQuest to a more linear game like Halo, or indeed one with scaling like Oblivion. In either of those games, if you're high-level and want to fight pathetic enemies for a casual good time, you have to start anew, with a new character (although doing this in Halo is pretty meaningless, due to a lack of character progression). In EverQuest you simply go back to where the weak things are and kill them. This issue arises, however, when new content is released. Should it be hardcore content, or casual content? In a perfect world, I believe new content would be continually produced for everyone, but at a different rate. I see something fundamentally wrong with equally splitting development time between casual and hardcore content when casual content is made, by default, by aging hardcore content. For my personal view, I believe SoD was a bit on the easy side, and Underfoot is a refreshing challenge, *but the easy SoD content is still there for anyone who wants to do it*.

The issue is that people view EQ as simply "the latest expansion", and not "the game as a whole". If I want to kill trivial content with my eyes closed (and I do enjoy that, often), I go to easy_content_land (my poison of choice is RSS). If I want to be up against content that will really make me pull out all my tools and face it at near-100 %, I'll go to the latest expansion, wherever that may be. You can't can't work that in reverse. Old content doesn't suddenly become challenging, but new content does become less and less challenging as time goes on (due to new expansions upping the ante for progression, and slowly trivializing the old game in an attempt to make you seem new and shiny and strong). The zero-sum effect of increasing PC power at the same rate as increasing mob power is another discussion topic by itself, of course.

This all traces back to everyone wanting to have a reason to purchase the expansion. However, I don't think what is best for the game during this expansion cycle was to make an all-encompassing for-everyone expansion.

Now, several times during this debate I've made the point that the opposition wants "carbon copies of content (namely, SoD content) that is already there". This is a strawman. In truth, this is a delusion on my part because I don't want to come out and say what I actually think the people campaigning for easier Underfoot content want. Namely, they want less difficulty, but they want the loot to remain the same. They want a loot pinata with little risk, as much of SoD was. This formula works great for Diablo and its ARPG ilk, but I believe much of EQ's fun has always been from overcoming challenges, as opposed to simply looting the next shiniest thing. A shift from progression/challenge-based fun to loot-based fun for EQ is not a good direction, and is part of the reason gear as-of-late has become so much less interesting. I see Underfoot as an attempt, both on the player and developer side (because, make no mistake, players guide development too), to make content that is satisfying to beat not just because you got a +9 Longsword of Winsauce, but because for a moment there you didn't think you could win.

These kind of debates are always ready to open old wounds and rehash the age-old casual vs. hardcore questions. A particularly well-discussed point of contention, especially as it pertains to EQ, is whether raiders (people who adventure in two or more groups of 6), by their very nature, deserve better equipment than players who adventure in a group of 6 or less. For full disclosure, I'm almost entirely a group player, and oftentimes a solo player. In these discussions, however, I often find myself siding with the raiders, but not for the reasons many of them profess. The idea that raiders are somehow more skillful, or that they put in more hours for their equipment, is a dead end. Skill, effort, and the grind are universal to both the group and raid game. No, what really makes raiders "deserve" better equipment is simple: they face bigger challenges. To make a boss monster difficult for 2+ groups, it (usually, barring unique design) has to hit harder than a mob tuned for 1 group. This means the tank needs better armor to take those hits. It is a factual point based on simple tuning. Once that is established, though, there is plenty of wiggle room. Many have proposed that raid-geared characters are "nerfed down" to group-level gear in group content. Honestly, barring the massive logistical troubles of implementing a system like this, it isn't a terrible idea. The main problem I'd have with it is that going backwards on progression in any kind of character-building game is simply unfun.

Another oft-mentioned point is that raiders get too much development time devoted to their particular subsection of the population. I don't believe this one either, simply because most expansions are vastly vastly weighted towards the group side. For every raid designed, there are usually four or five group missions, not to mention all the static group zones.

But I'm not posting to hear people agree with me, what do you think?

My Gaming History

If I'm going to blog about gaming, I think a good place to start would be my personal history of gaming.

I owned a Nintendo, of course, and later an N64 (I had a friend with a Playstation, best of both worlds!), but I wouldn't consider my initial experience with consoles to be what made me fall in love with gaming. I am, first and foremost, a PC gamer. There are a multitude of reasons for this, but I'll leave that to another post.

It is important to note that this isn't anywhere near a full history. For every game mentioned, dozens were beaten, this is merely a viewing of particular landmarks. Like most PC gamers, I got my feet wet on the old Oregon Trail and similar simple text adventures, but the first true-blue "modern" PC game I ever fell in love with was Civilization. There is something intoxicating about the control a game like Civ grants you. Few people in real life can claim any sort of real power, but in a game world you can move armies, build cities, and create a culture. Ever since that moment that I became so engrossed in Civilization, my life as an avid gamer has not ceased. As a rule, games that I can "beat" are to be pursued in quick fashion until beaten, while games with consistent replayability (like RTS games), unending challenges (like, say, ARPGs) or multiplayer (MMOs, most modern FPS games) I try to stick to a few key titles at a time. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to become an active player in too many longterm games at once. The difference between a longterm and shortterm game is another thing worth exploring in another post, but I digress.

If we model our behaviors after our rolemodels, we probably garner our taste in games from those we know as well. It was my uncle who introduced me to Starcraft and a whole new world of real-time interactivity. Starcraft had the rush-inducing sense of power that Civilization offered, but without the "hit the enter key and see what happens" of the turn based world. Certainly, it was less strategic, but it was far more tactical. And it was beautiful. Every well-made game is beautiful in its own time, somehow, but the simplicity of the graphics in Starcraft don't fade as much as some other games.

I'd seen Diablo on the shelves, and was vaguely aware that the same people that made the (so awesome!) StarCraft had made it, but I wasn't truly aware of how different it would be. When a friend finally convinced me to pick it up, I quickly found a entirely new level of fun. I'd played some Final Fantasy games, but the difference here was customization. I love customization. it can be fun to play the story of another character, but my enjoyment comes more from making that character my own. Again, fun is found in control, but this time in a different sense. Choices on a personal scale, to generate a story all your own.

Diablo 2 was in many ways a step forward as well as a step back. As much as I relished the updates and the fact that Blizzard chose to keep the essential formula intact, I felt something was lost in the transition to more hard-set classes as opposed to malleable archetypes. As much as developers may strive to offer choice in classes, the end result is usually that there are too few classes to cover choices, and that the choices within the classes themselves are usually more black-and-white than a whole scale of options (you can use a spear well, you can use a bow well, or you can be bad at using both, but what if I want to use a great maul with the bow class?).

It is at this point that I must mention Unweb. Unweb is a story of innovation in the days before browser gaming become absolutely massive. Unweb was unique, it was fun, it was catchy, and I am sad it isn't still around. Basically, you entered in a URL, and www.Iamunweb.com parsed the HTML (and a few other statistics?) of the site, and generated a monster (and loot!) that you then entered into text-based combat with as your character. Unweb is just one of the many innovative little titles that have caught my eye over the years, but it stands out always as the one that didn't drive me away in the end, it simply ceased being. You can read a postmortem here if you're more interested.

It would be early in the new century when I was introduced to the game that I would continue playing for a decade. EverQuest, the first "big" 3D MMORPG. My views on EQ can (and will) fill many a post. MMOs seem to be taking over the modern market, and with good reason. They're cash cows, for one, a game studio used to have to continually produce content to produce revenue, but with an MMO you're getting people to pay simply for the priveledge of playing your game. On the player side of things, they're fun. True persistence in a gameworld means that few hours of playing has a much larger significance than your simple satisfaction. You can literally spend thousands of hours and at the end of it all, see a result. The way I play EQ has changed over the years, and like anyone else I've had my cycles of burnout and rediscovering the magic, but EverQuest has always remained a strong and fun title for all the years I've played it.

Thats not to say I haven't dabbled in other MMOs, of course. I tried SWG, I tried Pirates of the Burning Sea, I tried EQ2, LotRO (very briefly), Age of Conan (again, didn't own it myself), EVE Online, and more recently Aion and Fallen Earth. Every one of these titles bring something unique, but most of them feel essentially similar to EQ. The major exception EVE, the only MMO that I've tried that has truly done their best to be what I guess you could consider an entirely different genre. The others are good, but until someone can successfully improve on the EQ formula instead of giving it a different skin and a spin (topless women, eyepatches, ninjas, wings, what have you). The snowball of innovation rolls over it all, of course, trying to pick up the best of each game and move onward, but I can't help but feel some of the more intriguing features of MMOs have been lost in the drive to make things more and more accessible, achievable in a shorter timeframe, more easy to metagame, and what have you (another post in itself).

I haven't *just* played MMOs since they've come about, of course. I get my dose of the essential gaming nutrients by keeping up with single-player RPGs when I can. I much prefer the westernized RPGs (most of Obsidian, Bioware, and Bethesda's portfolios, as well as the now-defunct studios like Black Isle). I've been known to get cheap thrills off of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. For puzzle games, Puzzle Quest enraptured me by tying some persistent progression to mindless puzzling (something that many puzzlers are missing in their straight line of "a bit harder than the last level" challenges). I don't eschew First Person Shooters, although I certainly wouldn't consider myself a hardcore FPS fan. I enjoy a good multiplayer match, and appreciate that modern matchmaking technology (usually) means I won't get utterly destroyed out there (I've got some bad memories of being "the newb" at a Counterstrike LAN party). My enjoyment of strategic games has never stopped either. I thoroughly enjoyed WC3, as well as the spin that DotA put on the game, once again incorporating character building. If you're noticing a trend, I believe character building can improve almost every genre, if implemented properly (this isn't permission to shoehorn it where it doesn't belong). The "Total War" collection mixed civilization-building and fast-paced combat very well, but the aging leaders left me feeling like I was treading water to keep at the same level. Again, not a condemnation of the feature, but it isn't my cup of tea.

So what am I currently looking forward to? Few PC gamers could claim they don't have something exciting coming down the pipe for them as we enter 2010, and I'm no different. Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 are well-anticipated, of course, despite some doubts on my part that Blizzard will get them out any time before the world ends in 2012. Mass Effect 2 can already be pre-ordered on Steam, so I'm pretty confident I'll be getting to play that one soon enough. Lets hope ME2 lives up to the first title in the franchise which has that BioWare (KotOR1, Jade Empire) charm of forcing me along someone else's railroad while giving me just enough choice to make the story my own and keep me playing.

I've got nothing but high hopes for the future of gaming. Maybe gaming as a whole will swing more towards the casual easy-is-fun crowd of fans, but I'm confident that there will always be a niche market for the complex, massive, and deep games that hardcore fans can't get enough of. This is particularly true as more and more people who've grown up on modern gaming become developers, and pursue their own dreams of "the ultimate game".

"I wonder if I can solo that charm aug quest in HoS"

Every journey begins with a first step. In this case, the first step happened to be the first thing messaged to me after I hit the button to make my very first blog post. I am Tulisin, I play EverQuest (kudos if you could somehow glean that from the title of the post), along with many many other games. Sometimes I'll have a musing, whether it be about EQ, MMOs, gaming, or the technology industry in general. Instead of copy/pasting each rant/brilliant scheme/annoying complaint to each and every person I try to strike up a conversation with, I've decided to simply compile them there and pass out links. Less ear-bleeding, less finger strain, more good times for everyone.

Anywho, this site is particularly sparse, and my first order of business is going to be to fill it with sweet, sweet content and maybe spruce up the template a bit.