zone-chat
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Perfect Ten: Annoying things you hear in general chat
General chat, sometimes called "Barrens chat" or "zone chat" or "the party line," is both the bane and the secret fixation of my existence. It's like a text-based reality show that plays out in real-time whenever I log into an MMO. If -- for some rare reason -- I'm bored of playing the game or talking with friends, at least I have the jibber-jabber of screeching opinions to fill my eye sockets. It's safe to say that general chat earns its bad reputation, but have you ever stopped to analyze exactly why that is? I have. I have traveled that long, terrible path, and at the end I peered over the edge into the abyss, and the abyss told me that I was a carebear who needed to L2P. Here are my findings.
The Daily Grind: What weird things have you learned from an MMO?
The main reason that Ms. Lady and I knew about Steve Irwin's death wasn't because we were watching the news. It was because it was all over general chat in World of Warcraft. It seems like a strange way to learn about things, but general chat in most MMOs is kind of like that. You find out about movies, learn about strange occupations from your fellow players, and sometimes discover games you'd never have guessed existed without the help of other people. For all that area chat channels can be a mess of bitterness and insults, sometimes you wind up learning interesting things there. And on other occasions, one little quest line or offhand mention can prompt you into a frenzy of research on references or obscure science or whatever. So what's the strangest thing you've learned because of an MMO? Was it something that you happened to notice in chat or something that inspired you to learn more? 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!
Lost Pages of Taborea: Grouping basics
This week, I've been thinking a lot about Runes of Magic's ability to cater to players with different MMO backgrounds. Many players may never have played a subscription game from the West, while others may never have experienced the different mechanics found in Eastern F2P MMOs. What you get is a banquet of food and all the guests aren't sure of the proper etiquette or rules or when it's time to eat. If we stick with a food analogy, the group feature would be a main dish. Lots of F2P MMOs have been imported from the East, and they don't handle grouping in quite the same way as Western subscription-based games. In fact, the ideas of raiding, pick-up-groups, and instances that can be found in almost any Western MMO, don't exist in most F2P games. This article takes a look at some specifics of grouping in RoM, including the recruitment board, experience debt, looking for a group, and etiquette.
