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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You can always say one thing about Blizzard. They do not do things halfway. The new client download for the World of Warcraft Beta made fundamental changes to the game last week, which the testers are even now still working out. Reading through the Patch Notes is a little like seeing the developer’s notes for a game still in concept. The fundamental changes wrought by the newest push are far reaching and are going to take a while to come to understand.

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Today I’ll be talking briefly about the basis of any MMOG economy, the currency. Currency in Massively Multiplayer games is almost universally oversimplified. Coin standards in vastly different games have an overwhelming similarity because game designers are content to use familiar conventions. Players don’t mind because they don’t have to learn a new currency system. But when talking about world immersion or in-world consistency, does the same old same old make sense?

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Beta players are experiencing something of a lull at the moment. The new push is going to be available for download this week, with substantial enough changes that we’re going to have to completely redownload the client. Included in the next push are going to be all of the Hoard races, the Druid class, and a host of changes and fixes. Next week’s WoW Journal will be chok-a-block with new push information. Since I don’t have much else to discuss, I’ll talk a little bit about where I’ve been lately.

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We now return you to your semi-regularly scheduled programming. For the near future, I’m going to get out a Random Dialogue as per normal on Monday, and a WoW Beta Journal on Thursday. Very sorry about last week, but a small touch of the plague had me (and Ekim as well) down and distracted. I am feeling much better, and you should be enjoying a full set of editorials and features this week. Today, I’m going to talk about those unrespected actors that make our MMOG lives so rewarding…the Non-Player Character. Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are a type of mob used to populate the world of a massively multiplayer game with “people”. For your consideration this week are short discussions on NPC interaction and memory, their places in the world, and their relations to Player Characters. This week’s Random Dialogue is dedicated to Martin Sayer, my favorite NPC, who taught me that children as loot equals a gnoll slaying sword.

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Since moving to the RedRidge mountain area, I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling. In World of Warcraft, storytelling is accomplished through questing. Quests are the primary means of getting experience, a good source of cash, a connection to the overarching plot of the game world, a way to improve your tradeskills, and a breadcrumb to introduce you to other area. Today I’d like to introduce you to some of the different types of quests you’ll encounter exploring the lands of Azeroth.

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At the time, I wasn’t doing anything in particular. I had just turned in a quest or two, and was selling off some loot that I had picked up in the process of ridding Loch Modan of those pesky Troggs. A query went out over the guild channel as to whether anyone wanted to head over to the Deadmines in Westfall to have us a crack at the instance. Now, the average level of the Deadmines is around 20 or so. A 20th level character would be most appropriate in a Deadmines run. At the time, I was only level 15, but I strongly considered it.

First, because the person asking if we wanted to go was Silx, the Guardians guild leader. And second, because Silx was only one level higher than me at the time. So I tossed out one or two more pieces of gear, grabbed my axe, and headed for a gryphon. I arrived in Westfall to find some of my fellow Guildmates already waiting. Silx was there, as well as Bluhdemoon. BM has already hit the level cap of 30 and would for the most part be our guide and puller for the Deadmines run. He would lead our little band of level 15 - 30 characters on our merry chase. He’s a great puller and I was glad to see him.

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