Tobold has reworked his MetaLevels concept, and posted it up on Grimwell. I like the way that man thinks.

All level-based games have a maximum level, for example currently 60 in World of Warcraft. While you are below this level cap, you have two choices on how to increase your meta-level: You can either just increase your character level, or try to get better equipment and increase your meta-level over your character level. The problem with the latter solution is that it gets exponentially harder the bigger the difference between your meta-level and character level becomes. As soon as you reach the level cap, improving your equipment is the only way left to you to advance your character.

n3rfed has more details on the Everquest progression server set to open soonish. On reflection, that might actually be kinda interesting.

So, as thought, SOE is not trying to introduce a true classic server complete with everyone’s earliest memories of when they first touched a Wood Elf breast. But dubbing it a newbie server? Those poor, poor fools. An army of SOW-enhanced boots crushing their spine and rushing towards Innoruuk will accompany the thought that perhaps, just perhaps, a significant part of the population on this server isn’t newbie like them. 

WarCry brought my attention to some GM ‘amusements‘ perpetrated on about-to-be-banned farmers.

“2 GM’s teleported the soon-to-be-banned characters to their location, and then chased and killed them using boosted characters of their own, and said things like ‘Enjoy WOW’ and ‘you have some adena please’. They recorded the whole thing, and made a video which can be downloaded from a link in their Forum Post. I’m rather torn between my dislike of Gold Farmers and my dislike of GM’s who behave like unprofessional asshats.”

I’m not really a big fan of asshaberdashers.

The first part of a several part Lum novel entitled ‘How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Grind’ details the way his character was dragged to level 57 by supportive fellow players. In his case, his wife. I totally relate, as the only reason my dwarfy Paladin even made it to 59 is because of external pressure. My external pressures were a warlock, a priest, a hunter, and a paladin who mocked my lack of ability with the class. So, you know.

“Much of this I blame on WoW missing some key social tools (such as a working Looking for Group tool), but to be honest most games tend to ignore these tools when they exist anyway. But if I didn’t have the out-of-game social connection to this guild (aka “honey, if I make dinner tonight will you PLEASE get me Onyxia keyed?”) then I’m pretty sure my WoW career would have ended at level 30.”

As seen at some of your other, finer, on-top-of-the-here-and-now blogs, AlwaysBeta is liveblogging a Blackwing Lair raid. I post this because he’s actually doing it as I type this. They just got past the Broodlord, and his screenshots are tre excellent.

Nerfgard has a rundown on what is a proc, a syntactical exercise that I think is well worth checking out.

PROCess - “Proc” is short for “process.” This is generally the most widely accepted origin of the word “proc.” Of course, you are processing a procedure (see above), so it’s entirely possible that process is derived from procedure and proc is shorthand for process. 

This is his favorite, and mine too, apparently. At least, it’s what I put down as the origin of the term in Gaming Hacks, so I guess I knew what I was talking about. For that one line. In an entire chapter.

I personally enjoy the definition of catass much better, if only for social reasons.

1.) Revamp your MMOG in such a way as to make a lot of people dislike it.

2.) Decide to gain back lost customers by stealing features from other popular Massive games.

3.) ???

4.) Profit!

In a nutshell the Expertise System will allow players the ability to differentiate their characters from others of the same class by allowing specialization in certain aspects related to that class. As a character gains levels, they will earn Expertise Points that may be spent in a number of different trees. Each class will have access to at least three different trees. Some examples of these are a Class Specific tree, a Weapon Specialization tree and a Galactic Warfare tree.