I am really getting sick and tired of every MMO turning healers into pseudo-DPS classes. I don’t know who started this trend, but whoever it was needs to be chained up with the guy who invented bind on pickup crafted items, thrown into a pit, and have lotion lowered down to them while being reminded to put it back in the basket. There are a lot of gamers who actually enjoy playing true support classes and true healers. They don’t need OMFGWTFBBQ dps to keep them happy in between times where they “have to (omg I might hyperventilate)” heal.  This obsession with making healers into DPSers always causes severe balance problems. After all, why just DPS when you could DPS AND heal? This quickly results in nerfs, and for some reason developers always go straight to the heals for their nerfs. Imagine how that makes the people feel who actually play healers to… *gasp the horror*… HEAL?

(NOTE: That’s Dr. Cuddy, from House, M.D., if you are wondering about the girl<->topic connection.)

The Stupidity of this DPS Healer Phenomenon

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EDIT: I promise this is the LAST POST ABOUT THE WIKIPEDIA incident for a while. The next post will be much different!

This is the last part, and for a while I hope the last time I’ll blog or post on this issue. There are role playing games that need my developer attention, and I loathe having my real work interrupted by this sort of thing. In this last section, I will focus on the bigger question that has arisen from the whole sordid mess:

What should fans and developers of MUDs/MMOs do now?

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The article (and discussion) continues. For the full story, with all the details, read my article here: Wikipedia’s War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG .

So, what is wrong with Wikipedia and how can it be fixed?

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This is an abbreviated version of the story designed to get some discussion going. For the full story, with all the details, read my article here: Wikipedia’s War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG .

1) Wikipedia is full of people gunning for an administrator promotion. In the current climate, the easiest path is getting articles deleted and getting players banned. These acts somehow show you understand what is best for Wikipedia.

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That headline is a grabber, isn’t it? I did not purchase Wrath of the Lich King so I have no practical knowledge regarding the current state of WoW raiding. I suspect it is not significantly different and still has the same problems that always annoyed me. I created this topic so those of you playing WotLK can educate me. I will start the discussion off by recapping a few things I hate(d) about WoW raiding, and the readers can tell me if WotLK is more of the same, or a major improvement.

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A very disturbing trend in the MUD, MMORPG, Virtual World marketplace is the steady dumbing down of gameplay that doesn’t show signs of stopping. With each new generation of games, they get easier and easier and are more about pure time investment than skill.

Meaningless Death, Excessive Quest driven advancement, Rapid Advancement Speed, and Hyper Specialization are all areas where the dumbing down of online games has really gotten out of control. I’ll talk about each of those things in this article.

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I had so much fun trashing raiding as it exists in current graphical MUDs over here, I might as well take another hack at it. I will explain how raiding as it is generally implemented in graphical MMOs provides a false, deceptive, and personally damaging sense of accomplishment.

False Sense of Accomplishment from Raiding

One of the very serious, negative effects of the current design of “raid content” is the false sense of accomplishment it gives people. I was checking a couple of WoW blogs recently, and many of them have gigantic, gushing stories about the enormous sense of glory and accomplishment they felt when they finally downed some boss that had been wiping them for weeks or months on end. The way posters glowingly patted themselves on the back you’d think they had just earned a huge promotion at work or won the Nobel Prize.

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I love MUDs, MMOs, virtual worlds, (insert your favorite term). I love making them. I love playing them. I love talking about them. I hate raiding. I hate the current obsessive focus on a MUD’s “end game.” There shouldn’t be an end game. The draw of open ended, online multiplayer worlds is that they don’t end. But the constant dumbing down of MMOs is such that people expect to be able to race to level cap and then participate in the “real game.” I’m going to put aside the fact that I find this absurd, and focus on the current popular form of “end game”: raiding. Oh, and I intend to utterly savage the concept of raiding as currently implemented in MMOs.-

Ok… I lied a little.

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