Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories

A World of Warcraft player's guide to Warhammer Online
Whether or not you see many similarities between Blizzard's epically popular title and Mythic's Warhammer Online, the reality is that World of Warcraft players are going to feel very comfortable in the brand-new game.

Is WoW hitting a plateau?
Seems like a silly question with the imminent release of their second expansion just within our grasp, but over at Dailygame.net, they've speculated a bit on when that plateau might finally hit World of Warcraft.

Burning Crusade's quality delayed WAR, says Jacobs
While Warhammer Online is decidedly not trying to be World of Warcraft, a recent interview with EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs shows that they were at least influenced by the quality of WoW's The Burning Crusade.

Braid creator rips on WoW, talks artificial rewards and social gaming
In an interview with Gamasutra, game designer Jon Blow (who created the critically acclaimed Xbox Live Arcade game Braid) had a few things to say about World of Warcraft. His criticisms could be just as easily leveled against any Diku-based, WoW-like MMO.

CrazyKinux answers EVE Online questions for WoW players
If you're a World of Warcraft player looking for something completely different, head over to CrazyKinux's blog and read what he has to say to WoW players looking to make the move to the alien beast that is EVE Online.

MMOGology: Why bother with story?
I recently went through a burn-out period on MMOGs. In addition to a job change and lots of personal commitments that limited my time, I'd simply grown bored with the genre. I think we all go through those periods. Times when we're just done with the grind and we need to recharge our gaming batteries on something different.

WoW vs. LotRO: The future of MMOs
The comparison is always made between any fantasy-based MMO and World of Warcraft. It's just the nature of the beast these days. In a recent editorial over at Warcry, they compare Lord of the Rings Online with WoW ...

Making/Money: Conservation of Mass - Part 2
Welcome back for Part 2 in our series on closed-resource economies in MMOs. Last week we discussed how starting out in this *completely hypothetical* system might work, what some of the basic rules of operation might be, and what it would take to keep money available to players.

AGDC08: Exploring the Endgame
The words on the first slide of the first talk at AGDC are evocative enough. "Damion Schubert, Lead Combat Designer, BioWare." Damion is a well known commentator on the MMO industry, a prolific writer and an entertaining blogger at the Zen of Design site.

AGDC08: On avatar rights and virtual property
If you're anything like the average MMO gamer, you click through that 'shrinkwrap license' without even batting an eyelash. The End User License Agreement, or EULA, is just a speedbump in the logon process for game players.