[MMOs] Economies of (digital) Scale

Some time ago I mused that the primary fun of playing a goblin in a game like WoW was that each server represented a relatively small market and as a result there were plenty of openings and opportunities for quasi-monopolistic behavior. Between this and going over the perceived issues with Guild Wars 2's trading post, I've been asking myself what I would want to see in an MMO market.

Time of death; 1 month before release

A common complaint I hear these days is that gaming is too formulaic. A new Assassins Creed, Call of Duty, Battlefield, FIFA, Madden and so on are expected every year. Critics note that E3 in recent years has most sequels than original ideas. Concurrently, I've been privy to joining several closed betas in the past year, and I begin to wonder if the gaming community is working against its own interests in how it handles them.

[RP] Injecting your own Lore

One of my pet-peeves when roleplaying in an MMO are the people who have decided to create their own lore and abide by it rather than the setting of the game. While certainly, they have some right to do that, and if their circle accepts that it seems fine. However I find all too often that in MMO-RP this person wants everyone to accept their revisions. I think this irks me most because the way I see it, Roleplaying in an MMO or other game is akin to co-writing some fanfiction....there's give and take.

Learn 2 not die, or, "It's simple, stupid!"

Go to any random MMO forum, find a thread in which the writer is asking that some boss, ability, mechanic or basically anything mean to be surmounted. Maybe you find the issue the poster is bringing up simple, maybe you agree with the difficulty. I however, will bet you that somewhere in that thread, or ones like it, is someone who's response amounts to "It's fine, learn to play."

Guild Wars 2, a month plus some

Guild Wars 2 represents an oddity for me; it's the first time I have been able to keep myself off the hype train preceding a major release. Ironically, the result of me essentially becoming unaware of it until just before release is that I do not seem to be suffering the same feelings of disappointment as some other bloggers. I feel as though people build these games up to be some great thing, to offer them a sense of wonder they felt long ago (that frankly can never be replicated), and then they find any reason to hate the game when it fails to provide that. After the break, a few improvements I think the game could use, and some comments on the common criticisms.