MMORPG.com has a piece on the new and updated Endless Ages, which I only note because it was the first MMOG I reviewed for MMORPGDot. It sucked big hose back then. Here’s hoping new management brings it up to speed.

In the original, the items were extremely visually limiting. Rapid Reality has added hordes of weapons, armors, jet-packs and other toys for players to earn and do battle with. The game almost felt like a cartoony version of Tribes once they got suited up and started flying around.

I want to share with you an experience I’ve been having for the last month or so. Mostly my MMOGing experiences have been me in a corner, doing my thing. I write about it here and sometimes on my site, to be sure, but other than my fiancee occasionally joining me in a game there’s been something of a disconnect between my personal life and my life inside the Massive space. Enter (are you tired of me talking about this game yet) City of Heroes. Myself and Enich dropped on it, of course, for the good of MMORPGDot, but I was surprised at the other early adopters. In particular, a couple that I’ve been friends with for a while jumped on it. They’ve been long-time Everquest players, and the gentleman in the relationship is fairly hardcore. The lady in the relationship, when she talks to me about the switch now, says that City of Heroes had a huge impact on their relationship for the better. He was so far out ahead of her in levels that he had to play an alternate character in order to group with her, and their was much frustration all around. Sidekicking in City of Heroes ensured (and ensures) that they can always play together no matter the gap in levels between them.

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Another summer, come and gone. That means that the annual pen and paper gaming faire, GenCon, has once again brought together a mid-sized community of 15,000+ gamers. Last week we ate, we laughed, we watched movies, we dressed up, and most of all, we gamed. While GenCon is mostly an exhibition for tabletop gaming, there were several massive games showing their stuff at the con this year. City of Villains was the only massive game to have any big news released at the convention, but there were interesting things afoot for massive gamer and paper gamer alike all week long.

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Reviled by the religious right and misunderstood by many, Pen and Paper (or Table-Top) roleplaying plays an important role in the subtext of Massively Multiplayer game design. This week I’ll be attending the annual Gen Con game convention on the occasion of Dungeons and Dragon’s 30th anniversary. As such, I thought it might be useful to reflect on what pen and paper gaming means to mmogs, to people in general, and to me.

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Star Wars, Warcraft, Middle Earth, Final Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons..franchises are here to stay in the Massive genre. For better or worse companies see franchised entertainment as “money in the bank”, a safe way to enter the massive market without having to come up with your own intellectual property. The merits of franchised vs. original ideas have been debated endlessly elsewhere. Personally, I think a franchise game can be just as good as a game with an original world, if not better. It’s all a question of what you do with the IP and if you make a fundamentally fun game out of what you’ve been given. Today I’m going to mention a few intellectual properties that I think would make good massive games. I’m sure each of these in turn have been bantered about by the fan population, but I think it’s worth discussing just the same. The key is to envision what sort of game mechanics would go well with the established franchise. A turn based game set in the James Bond universe would probably not be a big seller. Though the idea of a trading-card based Bond game might have merit….

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Combat is the heart and soul of many massively multiplayer games. “Go whack the foozle” is the jist of many quests, combat proficiency is very much required to make it through some of the higher level areas, and bragging rights often center around how much damage you can do in a single strike. With combat playing such a central role, it’s interesting that we haven’t seen more variety in combat design.

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One trip to the Origins Gamefest and the wedding of a good friend later, I’m going to be back on the regular with the Random Dialogue column. Assuming that moving to a new apartment and Gen Con don’t get to me this coming month. Ahem. Anyway, before I left for Origins I picked up the main book for the new Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting, Eberron. As you may or may not already be aware, Eberron is going to be the setting for the Dungeons and Dragons Online game being developed by Turbine. The campaign setting is set on the continent of Khorvaire, which just recently finished up a century-long war between the former members of a great nation. The MMOG is going to take place on the continent to the south of Khorvaire, known as X’endrik. You know all of this, of course. Both the MMOG and the RTS are going to be centered in X’endrik, as Wizards of the Coast enjoys the profits it can snag from Keith Baker’s new campaign setting. Without the hangups that come with doing a Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk game, these forays into digital media can be as great or as poor as the designers want them to be, and there will be a minimum of expectations going into the experience.

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