fantasy-tropes
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The Daily Grind: Is magic too common?
Maybe I think about these things too much and should just give in to the tropes, but it often bothers me how prevalent and common magic is in MMOs. I grew up reading loads of fantasy books where magic was a difficult talent to cultivate and amazing when it was performed. But that's not how it is in MMOs, is it? Our magically apt characters already start out with a full array of spells and are granted new ones with nary a training sequence. And even if you aren't a mage, the fantasy worlds themselves are so littered with magic that navigating them becomes an exercise in not going blind from all the particle effects. It's kind of like cell phones: When you think about them, they're amazing, but they're also so common that they don't impress anyone any more. Is magic too common in MMOs? Would you be open to a game that treated the occurrence and acquisition of magic as a rare and life-changing event instead of a never-ending laser light show? 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 Daily Grind: What fantasy trope should be retired from MMOs?
Tropes: MMOs are chock-full of them. From pirates running rampant in every fantasy setting to the "save the world from cranky dragons" narrative, it seems like developers go to the same well for inspiration more often than not. Sometimes that's OK, because we do like the familiar and to see if these game creators can do something unique with them. But sometimes enough is enough. So what fantasy trope should be retired from MMOs? My vote is and always has been for giant spiders. It's not that I'm creeped out by them or anything, it's just that I'm so very, very tired of seeing them in every game. Not only are they physically impossible, but it seems like a cheap method to try to induce a bit of squirmy apprehension instead of actually working for it. Yes, your game has big spiders. Congrats. You're as special as white bread. What say you? What trope would you like to see banished, never to return? 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 Daily Grind: What stock fantasy tropes bore you to death?
There are certain fantasy elements that just seem to come up time and again, no matter the game. With fantasy being the dominant genre for MMOs, even less-traditional fantasy games such as RIFT tend to fall into certain standard models. Elves and Dwarves run about, with the former in forests and the latter in mountains. Warhammer Online draws upon some of the setting's unique flavor, but amidst the Chaos, cults we still find savage Orcs, good High Elves, and super-evil Dark Elves. Reading enough fantasy and playing enough fantasy games can start to feel like rehashes of the same material at times, since so many different games draw from the same well. So what fantasy tropes particularly get under your skin? Is it a certain set of racial traits, a tendency toward the same sort of stories in quests, or just a general feel? Whether you love or hate fantasy settings, what tropes of the genre bore you to death? 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 Perfect Ten: Weird staples of every fantasy MMO
If you take some weird, outlandish, or out-of-the-ordinary item and then saturate your life with it, sooner or later the bizarre becomes the accepted norm. So much so, in fact, that you'd cease to even think about it. I mean, do we ever question those magic boxes known as "microwaves" that mysteriously heat up our foods? Does anyone blink twice anymore when small computers tell us how to drive instead of nagging spouses? What about Carrot Top? Likewise, fantasy MMORPGs have erected trope after trope that we no longer question -- or even notice. Actually, the only time we'd notice one of these is if a game failed to include it. No matter how illogical and sometimes silly these MMO staples are when you think about them, we've been around them so long that we would no more notice them as we would the individual keyboard buttons that we type on daily. Still... you're thinking about them right now, aren't you? Those keys, cruelly dominated by your pecking fingers, pushing them back into place. What a techno-bully you are! In any case, come with us as we count down 10 weird staples that every fantasy MMO seems to include.
