changing-games
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Storyboard: Roleplaying for churn
Odds are good that you're going to be moving on from your current game of choice at some point. I'd even ramp those odds up to nearly absolute under certain circumstances (if you're the sort who claims newer games aren't engaging whilst hopping from game to game on a regular basis, for example). This leads to a bit of a problem with a lot of roleplaying stories because there's a very real possibility that your character's arc is going to be truncated as a result. It's not intentional, but it happens just the same. You spend time building up character relationships at launch, and then as the three-month mark rolls around, people start leaving, playtimes drop off, you get tired of some of the game's systems... and the next thing you know, the people who cared about the character you've been building for some time have all evaporated, leaving you to either make your character relevant again to a whole new group of players or just stop bothering. One of the things I've been both considering and playing with of late is the idea that maybe this can be embraced instead of feared. Rather than planning something of indeterminate length, you can try working with the assumption that you've got a more limited window to work within and pace yourself according to that.
MMOGology: I lost a friend to WAR
Last week I wrote about Blizzard's Recruit-a-Friend program and my experience leveling through World of Warcraft with triple XP. The Recruit-a-Friend program is a seemingly brilliant strategy on Blizzard's part. In addition to recruiting new players, it also serves as way of keeping existing players occupied while waiting for Wrath of the Lich King; players that might otherwise divert their attention to Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. Who can resist the allure of triple XP, right? My friend Rob couldn't and for a while we enjoyed the rush of leveling as fast as we could. But the thrill of light-speed-leveling wasn't enough to hold his attention for long. It was still the same content we'd run through time after time. An astute reader of mine, Jeromai, left the following comment about my last article, "There's a sidelong danger to power-leveling fast. All the content you once enjoyed as content now becomes a means to an end. It's a headlong race right towards the burnout phase of a game." Jeromai couldn't have been more right.I logged into WoW a few nights ago, ready to blast through another level or two with my friend. He never showed. A few days later I called him up and realized I'd lost him to WAR.
