A "Player" first storyline

I know I promised to do Part 2 of the Professionalism post, focusing on player-to-player interactions, but that post is requiring a lot more detail than expected but is coming! In the meantime, I was reading an article on Joystiq about the "5 Worst Raid Encounters in Cataclysm" and Chase brings up an issue that highlights many of the issues I have with Blizzard's story writing.

"Professionalism" in Gaming Part 1

Today I was reading on Reddit about the first person to kill Diablo in Diablo 3, on inferno difficulty, in hardcore mode. Now that is no small feat...but what overshadowed this, was the conduct of the individual that achieved this and the conduct of Blizzard towards this person over the last few weeks. Suffice to say the two have had a rocky relationship, and it sparked what will become a series of post on "professionalism" and how it might apply to gaming. There are two main topics I aim to address; the conduct of the company towards its players and they to it, and the conduct of one player to another. Today I'll start with company and player interactions.

Putting the Multiplayer back in MMO

Recently I was reading Rohan's defense of the trinity, and while personally I do think it is possible ot have a successful game without the trinity, it got me thinking. I'll save my case for the trinity-less game for another post, but for now I'll dive into the issues Rohan and the comments to the post brought up. Of all the issues with the trinity as implemented in 4-6 man groups there are two big ones I want to highlight: the role of DPS and the role of the "Excess" people. After the break I will tackle these two issues: What turn the third role (DPS) into, and making DPS more of a cooperative activity.