The Blighted Guild has an in-depth piece on the epic Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest line. It’s interesting to read because I won’t ever have anything to do with it. How do I know that? From the post: Every 200 Fragments I turned in gave me a Proxy of Nozdormu that allowed me to deputize another player into being an Agent of Nozdormu, which allowed them to be able to loot the fragments. With the combined effort of the server and 42,000 fragments later…

Something has always confused me about Massive game conventions. It’s generally agreed that the point of these things is playing with other people. (That’s the second ‘M’ in MMOG.) While the Guild structure is well established, and present in almost every modern game I can think of, smaller groups of individuals who consistently adventure together are ignored by game mechanics.

Given that most fantasy-like titles appear to be reaching for the pen-and-paper experience, that’s very confusing. I have lots of friends spread across many game worlds, but I also have several friends that I game with on a regular basis. Why can’t we form a smaller group to represent our commitment to each other, even though we’re not ‘guild-sized’?

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Scott Jennings waxes philisophic on the encroachment of the many on the few. IE, Asian MMO players as opposed to our own little pond. Makes in-game racism seem even more futile than it already is, huh?

Raph Koster has posted a lengthy missive about what innovation means within the Massive genre. Raph characterizes innovation and adaptation as entropic effects in the videogame industry, draining the energy from a niche as it codifies to meet market demands. Darniaq elaborates on the ideas presented at Raph’s site. He goes into what critique has traditionally meant (or not) to MMOGs, and other aspects of what makes the genre unique.

Both gentlemen touch on something that I’ve heard over and over again from fellow players, but has so far not been seen in the Massive space. The nichification that MMOGs are headed towards, the problems many games have in establishing a meaningful relationship with a player … I see both of these issues as symptoms of a flaw in current thinking about Massive spaces.

The problem: The meaning of the character. Or, in this case, the meaningless nature of the character within the virtual world.

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Aggro Me breaks down the Kingdom of Sky press release. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

Darniaq writes that the SWG timeline may be moving forward. Exciting news if true.

Ethic has a description of the introductory quest in Dungeons and Dragons Online up at Kill Ten Rats.