occupations
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Storyboard: Being who you aren't
There is, as I have discussed, a group of roleplayers for whom the game is the thing. If the game doesn't allow you to be a moisture farmer, then why would you want to pretend to be a moisture farmer? Similarly, if you're not actually a master of the marketplace or sitting on huge assets in the game, why would you want to pretend that you are? I am not one of those people. I'm playing a financial wizard partly because I am not a financial wizard. And it's not that I don't love games where that's a viable option, but that's a different discussion. However, this does raise the question of how you can pretend to portray something you aren't intimately familiar with. If I'm playing a doctor, I'm going to run into the simple problem that I'm not a doctor in real life (full-time writers rarely receive extensive medical training). All of roleplaying is some degree of pretending to be something you're not, but how do you do so when it's something that's a bit harder to fake?
Spotlight on the Forsaken World occupation system
Forsaken World, the upcoming free-to-play title from Perfect World Entertainment, has been seeing a pretty big publicity push of late. The most recent official spotlight puts the focus on the game's occupation system, which is somewhat akin to a crafting system while at the same time being quite a bit broader. Yes, the system includes the option for players to craft their own equipment as well as contains side professions such as alchemy -- but it also includes more unusual options, such as becoming a socialite to unlock hidden quests or predicting the future with astrology. According to the spotlight, some occupations are obtained automatically via leveling. Others must be unlocked by spending Job Points, which are earned as players progress along the game's main storyline. While characters have a wide variety of different potential specialties, there's no way to take part in every single occupation, thus forcing players to pick and choose what would work best for each character. If you're looking forward to Forsaken World, take a closer look at the preview, which promises to add another level of variety onto the gameplay.
Ryzom patch adds new boss, occupations
Yumeroh, Community Liaison for the science-fantasy MMORPG known as Ryzom, writes in to tell us about the upcoming 1.9.0 content patch. The game, which recently made headlines when the developers decided to make the source code and art assets freely available under the open source GNU Affero General Public License, continues to update and expand the commercial client as a service to existing customers. The new content patch will introduce a marauder boss called Dante the Teaser, as well as a new game mechanic called Occupations. Occupations bring a bit of structure to the game's traditional sandbox skill-building system, and were designed to further roleplay opportunities, introduce new player goals, and allow for progression via regenerative items. Players will need to perform collection and processing tasks specific to each of the new occupations (examples of which include Butcher, Magnetic Cartographer, and Florist) in order to obtain and progress with the new regenerative items. The items then act as temporary stat boosters when consumed. You can check out all the details on the official forums.
