Monthly Archives: April 2009

Character Advancement Part VII – Endless Grind Points

Posted on Monday, 27 April 2009 by Ferrel

Lately I’ve been working on several articles that all revolve around character advancement in MMOs. They were originally going to be a linear series like Guild Science but I’ve decided to do the articles out of order “Star Wars” style. … Continue reading →

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Character Advancement Part III – Skill Based

Posted on Friday, 24 April 2009 by Ferrel

One of the lesser used but no less interesting forms of character development comes from the “skill based” system. Please understand that I am not talking about “skill based” in the sense that certain PvP players would have you believe … Continue reading →

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Free Realms Beta Review

Posted on Thursday, 23 April 2009 by Ferrel

SOE was kind enough to send me a beta invite to their new MMO, Free Realms, a little while ago. I gave it a spin and have been waiting for the NDA to pass before I could release my review. … Continue reading →

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Digging deep: Problems in MMO development

Posted on Wednesday, 22 April 2009 by Ferrel

Scott Hartsman, a noteworthy MMO producer and personal favorite of mine, has put together a rather wonderful article on his blog regarding some of the problems with MMO betas and launches in general. It is worth the read but I … Continue reading →

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Character Advancement Part II – Level Based

Posted on Monday, 20 April 2009 by Ferrel

It is safe to say that roughly 99% of MMO players are familiar with the level based progression of their characters. They grasp the concept of logging in, slaying monsters or completing quests, and gaining experience until they gain a … Continue reading →

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Character Advancement Part I – Introduction

Posted on Friday, 17 April 2009 by Ferrel

One of the topics that I’ve wanted to tackle lately was the advancement of characters in MMOs. It has taken me a while to collect all my notes together due to the sheer size of the topic. This can also … Continue reading →

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WCPI and Blogrolls

Posted on Wednesday, 15 April 2009 by Ferrel

It does appear that there has been a general hush over the Warhammer blogging community lately. Not a lot of news is coming out from Mythic and not a lot of us are writing about the game. This is not … Continue reading →

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The math behind loot drops

Posted on Monday, 13 April 2009 by Ferrel

When it comes to any sort of MMO there is never universal agreement on what frustrates players. There is, however, agreement on individual things that do frustrate us all. One of them is “broken” drop rates. I am a big … Continue reading →

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FerrelQuest, Always too easy

Posted on Friday, 10 April 2009 by Ferrel

The longer that I “play developer” on my private EverQuest server the more I have an appreciation for the frustrations that the professionals have. The biggest challenge I’ve been facing lately is making appropriately difficult content. To say the least … Continue reading →

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