Right now I’m planning a trip. Despite having traveled back and forth across the country relatively often over the past decade or so, I haven’t been on a really big all-out vacation in over a decade. I’m pretty excited about it. In my case, I’m heading towards DisneyWorld. What has this to do with MMOGs, you may ask? Well, why can’t your MMOG character go on a vacation? What has he done to deserve the never ending slog through monster after monster with no reprieve in sight? I think a vacation is mightily due for our online personas.

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I thought it only fitting that since today is the official launch date of Yohoho Puzzle Pirates that I would discuss something MMOGs are missing nowadays: the Mini-Game. Despite the heavy layer of abstraction that most MMOGs place on their game systems, developers for the most part seem to be reluctant to include a component like a mini-game into systems like crafting or harvesting. I feel strongly that this decision is a detriment to the genre. After all, why would we want to have fun in a game?

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