Brent, buddy, you know I love what you do. But jeezus … your top ten list suuucked.
The Virgin Worlds podcast is a happy part of my week, every week, and at first I was enthused when a ‘Top 10 MMOGs’ list began back on the 12th. Instead of listening to the first back at the start of the month, I waited until the second half was released to start listening.

My biggest beef was the assertion that the higher numbered MMOGs were somehow ‘better’ than the lower numbered ones. I realize it’s less interesing when a top ten list doesn’t imply ranking, but in this case I think that’s the way I would have gone. Otherwise, it seems somewhat offset to compare almost decade-old work to brand new stuff. Likewise, games built on a shoestring compared to juggernauts like WoW? Blah.

I don’t care that WoW was #7. It’s iteratively better, not evolutionarily. Totally agree. You guys are obviously approaching the games from the POV of MMOG snobs, and I respect that at least. No problem.

But Jeezus. The fucking Warden? You’re complaining about the Warden? You’re complaining about their bad Customer Service? “Hi, this is 2003, I want my complaints back.” You then go on to discuss how Asherons Call is better than WoW, because some of its shitty content was hidden from most of the players. That is the most ass backwards thing I’ve ever heard. It’s a game, guys, not a scavenger hunt or geocaching. The point is to have fun, not spend time searching for content. (Subtle glares at Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest.)

On top of that, you then ranked Everquest 2 above WoW on your list. The hell? I’d love to know what alternate reality you folks are living in where EQ2 is a ‘better’ game than World of Warcraft. EQ2 is just like the majority of SOE’s games: lots of promise, plenty of potential, flawed execution. The traditional SOE recipe for failure has kept the greatness of EverQuest 2 from dominating the MMOG conciousness, and positioning it higher than WoW on the list is not going to change that.

Other crankiness elicited by your list:

• Guild Wars is Multiplayer, and it’s Online, but it ain’t Massive by most definitions.
• You should be ashamed of yourselves, making us Westerners remember that Lineage II exists. You gave children nightmares and made our crops blight!
• Ryzom’s big ticket to fame is it Frenchness. Okay, the Ring is really good. I’d like it more if the game the Ring was built on wasn’t so damn boring.

Since it’s my blog and I’ll second guess if I want to, my list would have looked more like this:

1. Everquest – teh Winner!
2. World of Warcraft – your new lord and master
3. FFXI – the much overlooked asskicker
4. City of Heroes/Villains – tights make everyone happy
5. Dark Age of Camelot – PvP’s home turf
6. Everquest 2 – so much potential
7. Ultima Online – Grandpa
8. Eve Online – funnest screensaver ever
9. Puzzle Pirates – puzzles are the future
10. Star Wars Galaxies – what not to do

All whining aside, I liked the obvious effort you put into the feature. Nice work, gents. Just, less ganja next time you working on the Science.

1up has more details on the Chocobo breeding program that Square/Enix will be introducing to FFXI very soon. I was really excited by what sounds like a cool idea … until I was reminded why I don’t play FFXI. The scale:

… chocobo breeding isn’t something that happens either instantaneously (like in a game like Monster Rancher) or even over a few days. In fact, the length of time required to successfully hatch an egg makes growing elemental ores look like child’s play. Over the course of approximately one to three months, players will have to check on their egg at least once a day, much in the same way one must check their plants daily, lest they wither.

FFXI, like Eve Online, is a game that I wish I could clone myself to play.

I’m drowning in GDC ‘goodness’ right now, but even far from my RSS reader it didn’t escape my notice that the next FFXI expansion will have chocobo racing and breeding! I know this has been announced for a little while, but 1up has pictures!

On Tuesday, James Mielke put up the 44th article in his ongoing ‘My Life in Vana’diel’ column. I’d like to expend a few words talking about the series, which is far and away my favorite ongoing column. Milky never fails to entertain with the tales of the Roundabouts.What I enjoy most is his ability to sum up the community aspect of Massive Gaming. A lot of the conversation I read about MMOGs centers around the technical, the player whine, or the academic. Milky does a little of all of that, but primarily he is getting across what it’s like to be in a place and in a time. What he offers is a slice of life, in a community inside Final Fantasy XI.

In the presence of dozens of Dynamis veterans, learning the ropes of a successful Dynamis in both San d’Oria and Windurst (Windy is considered the hardest of the initial four Dynamises) proved to be insightful, rather than frightful. These guys are all business and it shows in the clean and efficient manner in which they dissect each instance. Dynamis-San d’Oria can be tricky, especially when you run into the flotilla of Summoners with their avatars out. Any one of those avatars has the ability to one-shot the whole alliance with an Astral Flow, but with Makkini at the front along with his pulling party of BLMs and mages, sleeping them was little trouble. Slowly but surely we made our way through the thoroughfare of South San d’Oria, dispatching the various Vanguards we encountered (Hawkers and Dollmasters – BSTs and SMNs – were the most important), and blowing up the time-extending Serjeant Tombstones and Voidstreaker Butchnotches as we needed.

I highly recommend reading along with the series, which begins a long, long time and many, many levels ago.

At the start of the weekend, Darniaq posted a think-out-loud piece on the urban spaces in Star Wars Galaxies. He’s talking about Massive games in general, but the urban environments in SWG are a great example of his argument. Namely, that instead of pushing player interest out of the cities it should be focused inward to provide more interesting city-based gameplay.

I couldn’t agree more.

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My Life in Vana’Diel – 01/06/06

Richard Bartle’s very well read Players who Suit Muds is an essay designed to give players and designers a way to talk about Player Types. It’s an incredibly useful tool, and was later made into a test designed to measure your Bartle Quotient. If you’ve ever seen someone’s signature and it said something like “34% Explorer, 42% Socializer”, they were referring to their results from the Bartle test. This is all well and good, but how do the concepts of Player Types actually help us as players? It’s nice to be able to brand yourself in such a way that people understand you, but what is the benefit? In the past, the different MMOGs have been examined for what kinds of players they mainly appeal to. I’m going to go into some specifics today as regards how the different player types will interact with some of the newer games that we’ve seen become available. Down at the bottom of this article I’ve included a list of most of the major MMOGs and the player types they cater to.

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