LFG

[zhai]

The other Homeless Moon folk have wildly outstripped me in posting lately, so I am going for the TKO this evening and catching up on some things I've been meaning to post here. Apologies to those on my LJ who will get it all at once.

Jay Lake's recent post on writer ages reminded me of something I was discussing with pantlessjohnny at last ReaderCon, and later

Comments

[zhai]

I just want to say that your facility with the RPG lingo as applied to the writing experience completely made my evening. ;)

Yes, definitely the big trouble with this is that some people are going to adhere to the unspoken agreement of a guild and only level up when they get together with the group, and others are going to get caught up in meatspace, and that one guy is going to play all night and show up on a giant cat. So there is movement between guilds and they come into being and collapse frequently over time. One of the other things I appreciated about Odyssey is that I think it rather uniquely managed to bring together people who were entering the same phase and so had the potential to be a really long-lasting guild as opposed to something temporary, reacting to drama from another guild, or just a group of friends that gets together on the weekends occasionally.

The game is always rigged, but I think that the outlook from here is actually positive. There are more servers available than ever before, with different contexts and purposes, not just geared toward PvP or crazy mindless leveling. The 14 year old who can play all day and doesn't have to pay rent is still going to have a bit of an edge, but it's not a race, thank Glycon, and the climate is better for the non-hardcore. As usual, it comes down to the long term benefit of playing the game to make it work for you, rather than scheduling your life around it -- ultimately staying out of that non-hardcore section has a greater chance of avoiding burnout.