player-creativity
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Some Assembly Required: Desert homes of Vanguard's Qalia
Player housing. Now there's a topic you don't hear from me much. Oh, come now, I talk about other topics, too... sometimes... once in a while! You have to admit, it's hard not to talk about housing. It's by far one of the best canvasses for showcasing player creativity available in MMOs. And Vanguard has top-notch player housing. Back at the inception of Some Assembly Required, I took you on a tour of housing on Vanguard's island of Kojan. Of the three continents, Kojan was an easy first choice; from the very beginning I wanted a house there to soak up the unique flavor of the area. However, Kojan is by far the smallest continent with the fewest housing plots; contrast its six housing isles to the 22 chunks with housing available on Qalia and you can see that more opportunities abound to find the perfect home-sweet-home in the land of Arabian nights. By the sheer volume of plots involved, you can see that touring Qalia is quite the undertaking! Not one to shirk my duties of bringing demonstrations of player creativity to you, I forged ahead to highlight the advantages of Qalian living and compile this gallery of amazing ingenuity -- including a Foosball table!%Gallery-158807%
Some Assembly Required: SWG housing extravaganza
The sunsetting of Star Wars Galaxies. Beyond the obvious, that statement holds more meaning for me, something deeper and more personal. See, throughout my years in SWG, I would often stop whatever I was doing just to sit and watch the Tatooine suns set. Honestly. Just a simple act of sitting upon the plateau -- sometimes alone, sometimes with friends -- quietly watching one of the universe's greatest pleasures inside an MMO. It was amazing to me how vibrant this galaxy was, filled with so many little details that breathed life into it in a way that I think is still unmatched. Details such as sunsets made the world real, but what really made it "home" was the housing. Few, if any, games can claim the mastery of housing that Galaxies attained. Quite frankly, it is still the standard by which I measure housing. And there is almost no way to sum it up and do it justice in one short article. Despite this challenge, Some Assembly Required dedicates this 12th issue to immortalizing (and hopefully prodding future developers to emulate) one of the greatest housing systems ever and highlighting the very thing that made this great feature phenomenal: incredible player ingenuity and creativity. But don't just take my word for it. A number of readers joined in and sent in screenshots of and waypoints to these expressions of creativity. So step on over the threshold for our tribute in word and image to SWG housing and the player creativity it engendered.
Some Assembly Required: Issue #2 -- There's no place like home, Kojani style
Good mornin'/day/evenin' everyone and welcome to the second edition of Some Assembly Required. It is my pleasure to be your host this time as we delve into the realms of player creativity and ingenuity. And let me tell you, I am quite excited to take on this challenge; in fact, it is this very aspect of gaming that I love most! Hopefully, you won't mind my skulking around your houses and events as I seek out all that is player-created. On many occasions, Jef and I might very well tag-team as we crash -- I mean attend -- your various functions (although I don't think he is much of a skulker). For my inaugural SAR column I chose to focus on one of my favorite canvasses of creativity: player housing. Both housing and decorating are things I am quite passionate about; there are few aspects in games that let you express your creativity like housing. Of course this is certainly a broad topic, so to avoid a 30-thousand-word column with enough pictures to bog the site down, I narrowed this showcase to the world of Telon (and the continent of Kojan in particular) in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Luckily, no packs of wild dogs nipped at my heels as I ventured about for this first exhibition of player decorating. Open the door and enter past the cut for a tour of housing in Kojan.%Gallery-128862%
