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The Daily Grind: What's your favorite MMO political system?
Politics is a nebulous word when it comes to MMORPGs. Relatively few companies market the "political" aspects of their games, mainly because these aspects are player-driven. There are a few exceptions, and though En Masse is getting a lot of press for the TERA political system that it unveiled at this year's E3, it's not a new idea. Games as diverse as ArchLord, RF Online, and Aika have toyed around with the idea, and Star Wars Galaxies even offered a Politician profession and light-duty mayoral tasks related to the game's player cities. For today's Daily Grind, we'd like to know your take on MMORPG political gameplay. Do you prefer completely free-form player-created content such as that found in Darkfall, EVE Online, and Perpetuum, or would you rather see a mixture of hard-coded mechanics and player interaction similar to what En Masse is hyping for TERA? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Mog Log: The directed route
First things first: I should have pimped this last week, but the Aetheryte Radio Network's community show had me as a guest for the most recent episode. If you'd like to listen to my dulcet tones alongside Steak and Fusion as we discuss the game, The Mog Log, and how much we all hate Final Fantasy VIII, you are most definitely in luck. And because we've seen the last Final Fantasy XIV update we're going to get this year, the game seems like the thing to discuss. With the most recent update, pretty much anything that players claimed was just plain broken has been trimmed up and cleaned. (Whether or not that should have been the case in September is another discussion altogether.) So we're moving into the new year with everything working and a new team primed to start taking the game forward. So what exactly will that entail? Now that the functional issues of Final Fantasy XIV are tackled, there's just the other half of the equation to deal with -- making the game more engaging for a broader playerbase. Or to be more specific: the easy part is done, and now it's time to work on the hard part.
