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One of the MMO industry's most recognized names, Richard Garriott, is about to become the world's sixth private citizen to participate in a space mission aboard the International Space Station. The trip into space comes at no small cost through Space Adventures, and the whole experience of gearing up for the trip is documented on Garriott's dedicated site. The MMO tie-in is that Garriott's space walk is part of "Operation Immortality" which we've touched upon in the past here at Massively.

Garriott fans can watch him launch into space via streaming video at NASA TV, NASA Select TV (Australia), or the NASA TV Public Channel. Haters can do the same thing, just describing it as "seeing him strapped to a rocket and shot into space." It's all about perspective. Regardless of whether you think Operation Immortality and the trip to the International Space Station is interesting or not, it's a first in the industry. If you're in the Austin area, there will be a space watch party at Opal Divine's Penn Field restaurant, with live music and pre-launch activities.The launch is scheduled for October 12, at 1 pm Kazakhstan time. Since we suspect most of our readers don't reside in Kazakhstan, that's Sunday at 2 am Central, 3 am Eastern, and midnight Pacific. Best of luck with the flight, Richard.

Some of you surely played EverQuest back in the day. Whether it was your first MMO or not, one thing's for sure: it was the first huge MMO. When we say huge, we're not referring to subscription numbers; we're talking about the size of the world. It was much grander than that of Ultima Online, Everyone who played EQ remembers his or her first trip from Freeport to Qeynos or vice versa.

That trip was a very dire one, especially for a level 10 character. If memory serves, you had to go through Kithicor, the goblin dungeon of Runnyeye, the Beholder's maze (that was the most dangerous part, since it was all narrow canyons), the orc-sieged Highpass Hold, and of course all of the Karanas, griffins and giants be damned. It was not safe. It also took a really, really long time. If you were coming originally from Faydwer, before any of this you also had to take a fairly long boat ride -- certainly much longer than the almost-instant inter-continental rides in World of Warcraft.

But the journey was exciting. It actually felt like it was an epic adventure. In most recent MMOs, fast travel is prevalent and everything is streamlined to take as little time as possible. As the genre has become more casual with regards to travel time and danger, have we lost something? Are there no more epic cross-continental treks full of thrilling close calls?

Once more with feeling!

Welcome to the third and final (planned) installment of our series on closed-resource economies in MMOs. So far, we've laid the foundation of the system and discussed how starting out, leveling up, and gaining loot could work. Today we will be exploring how crafting professions could still be possible even when the law of Conservation of Mass applies and how banking might function.

There's been a lot covered so far so if you haven't already, i recommend reading the first two posts. But since I know that gets into the TLDR length, here's a very quick recap.

In order to maintain a constant level of stuff in the game, new items could only generate once old items leave the game. Money would function in the same way, except that it would flow from NPCs to monsters (meaning any monies collected by NPCs would spawn as loot) in order to recirculate. There would need to be additional gold sinks (some of which we will get to in just a minute) and limits on the number of characters per server. Each server would then "age" as the average level of characters on it increased.

A write-up at Gamasutra of an AGDC panel featuring MMO developers who have begun working on web-based projects gives us an opportunity to explore the new (some would say it's actually the old) frontier of massively multiplayer gaming.

There are many MMOs that are experienced via a web interface (such as Sherwood), but traditional gamers have largely shunned the trend. Why, then, did some of the most hardcore MMO developers (including Dan Ogles, Raph Koster, and Scott Hartsman) abandon the traditional MMO in favor of this new frontier? Some of their work, like Ogles' Loudcrowd, is barely recognizable to traditional gamers.

They offered some answers on the panel. For example, Koster (originally of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies fame, now working on the creative platform MetaPlace) said that game devs have more to learn from web devs than vice versa. Ogles talked about using Adobe Flash so anyone can embed elements of the game anywhere on the web they like. It's worth a read if you're able to work through some pretty technical development speech.

If there's one thing people love to do, it's quote Mythic employees. So let us continue that trend. In a recent interview with MTV Multiplayer, Warhammer Online's Mark Jacobs stated his case for why people should play Warhammer Online instead of World of Warcraft. But in stating his case, he brought up an interesting point: "All online games have a lifespan." True, there's no denying that everything has a lifespan (except maybe plastic), but we all know what he's saying here.

Over at Matt Mihaly's blog, he focuses on Jacobs' words a bit more. Sure WoW won't live forever, and it may not always be the dominant force in the Western MMO scene forever, but when will its lifespan end? With Ultima Online still pulling a profit after 11 years, do we see the next generation of gamers eventually playing the exact same games as us in 10-15 years from now? That's a scary thought.

The MMO genre is more than World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online. Here's what's going on in the rest of the world.

World of Kung Fu opens screenshot contest
From September 15th to the 30th, VestGame Entertainment has partnered with zownder.com to create the first World of Kung Fu screenshot contest. "This contest really gives us the chance to showcase the awesome graphics and spectacular artwork that forms such an integral part of the game", says David Clarke, World of Kung Fu's North American Producer. The Grand Prize includes a permanent Xuan Wu mount and over a hundred rare items such as high level Forging Vouchers, Advanced Craftsman Charms, Sky Pearls, and much more. For more information, visit either founder's website.

Gaia Online brings Snoop Dogg and the Incredible Hulk to the virtual mall
Each month, residents of the virtual world Gaia Online have a chance to vote for their favorite real-world celebrities as part of the Celebrity Snare section of the website. As an example, the latest items to have been made available are Snoop Dogg's hairstyle, and the Hulk's torn-up purple pants. "Gaia Online is truly an extension of our users' real life interests and passions and Celebrity Snare is just another way we're enabling Gaians to customize their online persona and express themselves to the community," said Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia Online. "The same way fans hang a poster on their bedroom wall or wear a t-shirt with their favorite band on it, we're enabling our users to establish a connection with the celebrities they admire." Further celebrities to go virtual will include Elvis Presley, Justin Timberlake, Tila Tequila, Paris Hilton, Raven Symone and Marvel's She-Hulk.

Mythic passed on word that Ultima Online, the game a lot of folks think of as the grandaddy of modern MMOs, is getting a new expansion. Alongside games like Meridian 59 and EverQuest, UO launched the US fascination with massively multiplayer games, as well as the careers of several of the country's biggest online designers. The expansion continues that fascination with the realm of Lord British in a new content pack called Stygian Abyss.

Stygian Abyss will offer a number of new features and gameplay elements for die-hard UO players. First and foremost is the ability to create a new character of the gargoyle race! The gargoyles have come through a portal in the land of Sosaria, visiting the lands of Britannia from their original home on the world of Tel Mur. As a gargoyle, players will be able to fly overland and have basic familiarity with missle weapons and Mysticism from the get-go. Other features of the expansion have yet to be fully detailed on the website, but it sounds as though there will be at least one new dungeon, new spells, and new equipment. The full release is below the cut.

Player vs. Player gameplay has undergone a drastic change in recent years. Games like Meridian 59 and Ultima Online didn't pull any punches. Anyone could kill anyone anywhere, and the penalties could be quite severe. When you died In Meridian or UO, you dropped all of your gear. The person who killed you could steal whatever he or she pleased.

Of course, in games like that, gear wasn't quite such a big deal. In Meridian a sword would wear out after a few of hours of use anyway. But combined with stat and skill losses, death in the games of the 90s was comparatively harsh. Now, in World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online, the stakes are lower. You have absolutely nothing to lose by dying in PvP in WoW, and AoC and WAR's designs aren't much more aggressive.

But here's a question from a veteran of the oldschool: with stakes this low, does PvP really matter? Will it really get you sweating? Will you really care that much about winning or losing? Some oldschool folks will argue that PvP is boring and meaningless now that death has been de-clawed. Maybe we should go back to the barbarism of the old days. What do you think?

When I first started playing MMOs I was in college. I'd bounced from major to major but ultimately settled on Economics (from a starting point of Medieval and Renaissance Studies - how'd that happen?). Like other economists in games like EverQuest and Ultima Online, I was thrilled to find a lively economy and interested to apply classical economic models in the study of it. The most basic of these models is the typical supply and demand curve.

Any economic model starts with price and quantity. The higher the price, the more suppliers want to sell but the less consumers want to buy. As the price decreases, more consumers are interested in purchasing, but fewer suppliers are able to produce profitably. In theory, there is a magical level in the middle where supply and demand meet. That is equilibrium (see graph).

What I have since found, which is furiously debated by other economists in the field, is that the typical supply and demand curves do not fit well with the economies of most MMORPGs these days. Depending on the game, add-ons used, and availability of additional market data, there may be sort of invisible caps to the price, and thereby the quantities, of goods traded. Furthermore, auction house fees and vendor sales act much in the same way as taxes or subsidies in real world economies.

I've been thinking recently about loss. Having been incredibly lucky with my own brush with the possibility of losing my World of Warcraft characters, I got to thinking. Not only about what I would have done if things hadn't worked out for me, but about how loss works in MMOs today.

Last week, Gabriel wrote a fantastic column about item decay in games past, present and future. I've been playing Diablo 2 again lately, for obvious reasons, and I had found myself thinking on the similarities and differences between the durability system in Diablo and WoW.

I've said before that my MMO career started with Star Wars Galaxies, so I don't have the long-term experience many of the other writers here at Massively do. I've never had to worry about making corpse runs in Everquest, or had to concern myself with losing my items in Ultima Online. While Galaxies did have item decay, it wasn't set to a punishing degree – items did wear out eventually, but at a reasonable rate. When an item eventually gave out, you crafted yourself a replacement, or you picked one up from another player. By doing so, you knew you were contributing to the economy, so if you tried hard you could convince yourself that you were actually helping the game.

I continued to hack and slash the isometric sprites until I noticed they were starting hit a lot harder. Thinking it was time to repair I checked my inventory and was greeted with the sight of a naked me! Unlike its MMO cousin, the first Diablo actually destroyed armor when its durability reached zero. I felt somewhat sheepish about it, but then I had a funny thought. Could you imagine if World of Warcraft followed the same design? Raiding would take a lot longer as people constantly left to repair after every two or three deaths. Tanks would be even rarer since they would have a much higher chance of losing items. The problems with that scenario quickly mount up and it's easy to see why Blizzard changed the durability system slightly when putting it into MMO form. That's not to say you will never find item decay in a MMO, especially if you explore some of the less mainstream games.

Lets go back about ten years or so to the original EverQuest. Now it isn't my intention to pick on any one game, I just happen to be more familiar with it than Ultima Online or Meridian 59. For the sake of immersion let me assume the role of a 1999 copy of EverQuest that you happen to be playing on your gaming machine back in the last year of the last century.

You just died in EverQuest. How dare you die! Since you had the nerve to be defeated in combat, you'll now be required to run from your binding point -- which could potentially be very far away -- to your dead body, which contains all of your equipment and bags that just happen to hold all of your inventory. If you fail to do this, then you lose all of these items. Oh but you've already lost some experience and possibly de-leveled if you happened to have recently leveled up.

Hey! Why are you logging out? So what if you think you'd rather play Half-Life right now, this is the game you're paying for monthly. Don't you think you'd better get the most out of it? Hah! See? I knew you were only bluffing. All right, now get to running, noob.

Specie (n) - any type of coined money, usually of metal. Also used to describe commodity metals.

The crafting systems of MMOs have taken their queues from many different sources to find minerals for mining professions. The usual, generally lower-level, metals such as copper, tin, or iron, are seemingly universal. But as you level you may run across some rather odd materials that are difficult or impossible to find in real life.

Today we will be looking at where the metals seen in games came from. Common or rare. Real or created for the sole purpose of sounding like it could be, these are the metals of our games.