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There's a story from City of Heroes of how a veteran player, who'd chosen bright and shiny medieval-style armor for his character, mercilessly teased a newbie by boasting of how he'd gotten the armor in an epic loot drop. As any CoX player knows, your costume has nothing to do with your powers. Although powers can cause obligatory aura effects, such as a fiery glow, and some powers give you a weapon, the character's physical appearance is almost entirely up to the player.

By contrast, games that involve gear (such as WoW and AoC) give you the chance to show off the uber loot you've gone to the trouble of getting. The plus side is that everyone can see your cool stuff; the downside is that the very coolest stuff tends to be worn by everyone who can get it, resulting in hordes of people who look much the same. The best gear for any given stage of the game isn't guaranteed to be what you'd like to wear, appearance-wise. You either have to compromise your character's looks or their abilities.

Even gear-centric games tend to let you make some concessions, such as making your helmet invisible. Would you like to see more changes along these lines? Would a piece of uber gear still count for as much if people couldn't recognise it? Is it simple common sense to have your gear determine how you look, or is that an outmoded game concept that should be abandoned in favor of optimum customization?

Loot. As a raider, it is both boon and bane to us. If you're in a guild that has a system you can agree with, then loot can be a wonderful thing. However, if not, loot can often destroy morale and even take entire raiding guilds under. We've all heard stories of the inevitable blow-up that occurs after the piece someone's been after forever goes to someone who just joined the guild.

That said, as we know we have lots and lots of people with quite a bit of MMOG experience out there, we thought we'd ask you what loot systems you prefer for raiding? Do you still think the oldest is best, and like to run with DKP (Dragon Kill Points), or are you all about the roll and distribute. Perhaps you prefer one of the other systems like Suicide Kings, which goes down a list that moves based on who attends and doesn't loot (thus heading for the top) versus those who attend and loot (who land at the bottom). We're curious what you think is best for keeping raid looting "fair."

Take a look at the world around you.
Tell me, why is there so much need?
Because of greed.
Because of greed.

Damien Dempsey, "Celtic Tiger"
(From the album Seize the Day)

Greed. Countries go to war so that the powerful can take land, gold, oil from the weak, can kill them and take their stuff. Greed. The richest 1% of the population of the United States control over 30% of the country's wealth as they clamor for and are given massive tax cuts by the government while, by the government's own estimates, roughly 12.5% of its citizens live in poverty. Greed. Corporate executives with multimillion dollar salaries lie, cheat, steal and commit fraud as they gut their companies and destroy the jobs, lives, retirement funds and futures of their employees. Greed.

No matter how much they have, they want more. No matter how little you have, they want more. Greed. It infests our countries, our governments, our corporations and businesses. It infests our favorite MMOs.

We have tackled the subject of mudflation tangentially a few times of late. It seems to have suddenly become the economic buzzword of MMOs. We have all experienced it. We have come to expect, if not accept, it as part of the games we love to play. And though Wikipedia, in its infinite wisdom, has dubbed it an in-game only phenomenon, I posit a different approach to looking at this occurrence.

Mudflation is an immediate devaluation of previously owned items due to the gain or release of newly available items. This is not unlike technological advance in that the release of the latest new toy makes all others somewhat obsolete. The differences here are the perceived need for the item, the amount of devaluation, and the time frame in which this occurs.

Before I started playing Age of Conan, I had a very strict mindset on how a PvP MMO should and shouldn't work. From my experiences in EVE Online, I was convinced that good open world PvP was not possible with a level system or exotic gear. I was pleasantly surprised to find that although these games are worlds apart, their PvP styles both work and are both fun. In this article, I compare and contrast my PvP experiences so far in Age of Conan with those in EVE Online.

Open world PvP:
One of the main features of both EVE and Age of Conan is an open world PvP scheme that allows players to attack each other anywhere within reason. Age of Conan achieves this scheme by designating certain zones as PvP areas. These areas contain the monsters and quest targets required to level up, making players to put themselves at risk to reap the rewards of levelling up quickly. Towns and the areas around them are designated safe areas where PvP is physically impossible.

Read on as I discuss important PvP issues ranging from death penalty and group gameplay to equipment types and game server model.

There's a bit of a discussion going on in the blogosphere right now about how to handle the topic of dungeon and raid rewards in MMOGs (specifically World of Warcraft, actually, but it universally applies). Tobold started the whole conversation by suggesting that the problem of players leaving to join a better guild when their gear progression is further along than the rest of their guild could be fixed by adding deterrents to leaving, like forcing you to leave any gear acquired with the help of your guild in the guild bank. After all, he argues, you couldn't have gotten those epics on your own. Why should you get to take your gear and walk away with it when 24 other people helped you obtain it, while waiting patiently for their turn?

Other people then made the counter-argument that hopping to further-progressed guilds is only one of the many reasons that people leave guilds, and that tying loot to your guild would give too much power to guild masters and punish people for circumstances that are often outside of their control (what if your work schedule changes and you can't raid anymore? Many hardcore guilds don't allow casual players). There were some more good points made as to why this system would be a bad idea. Still, it's a good thing that Tobold brought this up, because it's a very real issue. Even if tying loot directly to the guild is a bad idea, what can you do to discourage people getting what they need and then leaving for greener pastures?

The behaviorists were like the orcs of psychology. Limited in vision, arrogant, belligerent and intolerant, they ruled the world of scientific psychology with an iron fist from the 1920s through the 1950s. Many of them were very capable scientists, however, and much of their work, especially in their signature area of learning, has stood the test of time. The behaviorists' biggest mistake lay in insisting that the principles of learning they discovered provided a complete and thorough explanation of what people do and why they do it. They thought they had the whole story. They didn't. They only had part of the story but it was an important part. We don't want to make the same mistake the behaviorists made and think their learning theories fully explain what we see people do in MMOs. But we also don't want to ignore the very powerful effects the principles of learning they discovered are having in every successful MMO on the market because when you get right down to it, games like World of Warcraft couldn't be better conditioning engines if they had been designed by B.F. Skinner himself.

Behaviorist learning theory is commonly know as operant conditioning and it is based on the simple idea that actions that are accompanied by good, pleasant, or desirable outcomes are more likely to be repeated while actions that are accompanied by outcomes that are bad, unpleasant or undesirable are less likely to be repeated. In other words, actions that are rewarded are likely to recur and actions that are punished are not. People didn't need the behaviorists to tell them this; the behaviorists' contributions were to clearly distinguish between different kinds of rewards and punishments and to demonstrate how each had different effects on what people do and how they do it. The behaviorists called the learning procedure that has the largest effect on how we play MMOs positive reinforcement. This type of learning occurs whenever a person does something and gets something they enjoy or value as a result. When people are positively reinforced, they are more likely to repeat or continue the action they were doing when they were rewarded and MMOs shower their players with positive reinforcement.

For your own positive reinforcement on this topic, read on.

Well, not me personally (I think), but my my World of Warcraft Shaman sure looks hot in leather. By hot, I mean ridiculously badass and uber. It's not just fun to run around looking like a Tauren Rogue-- it's also functional. You see, I play an Enhancement Shaman. We're the much-maligned, often mocked branch of the Shaman class (especially for PvP where we get kited around or pounded down with ease). Still, I persevere because it's fun to dual-wield while shocking and because I like being a support class. It's nice to be able to toss some heals out sometimes, boost my whole group's DPS, resurrect people after wipes, and still be 4th or 5th on the damage charts. So, if I love my Shaman so much, why am I wearing lots of leather when my class calls for mail? Simple. My primary role in a raid as an Enhancement Shaman is still pumping out damage.

Take a look at the Shaman section of MaxDPS.com, a site that calculates the highest DPS items for a number of classes. If you glance through those lists, you'll notice something interesting: The best possible items in the game for Enhancement Shamans are leather items in more than 60% of the armor slots. Weird, huh? It's like that at every tier to some extent. Unfortunately, those leather items are also the best possible items for Rogues, Feral Druids, and Fury Warriors (in some slots). As you can imagine, this leads to some frustration and drama as everyone scrambles for the same loot (you'll notice that almost everyone shooting down the Shaman in the first thread is a Rogue). Still, the numbers are there. While Shamans have options, leather is often the best thing they can be wearing. What's the deal? Why isn't there more appropriately itemized gear for Enhancement Shamans (and should they get to roll on leather to make up for it)?

Whether you play WoW for the phat lewt or not, we can all agree that the end-game is mostly item-based. How cool do you feel when you're the only one running around with the Twin Blades of Azzinoth? Well, what if it suddenly became much easier to obtain those blades, and everyone was running around with them? Regardless of the argument that item-based raiding is good or bad, it's still nice to know that people are aware of how hard you worked to get your best, flashiest gear. This is also why we hate gold sellers.

Apparently, many players are not too happy about the ease in which high-end loot is obtained after patch 2.4. Over at Kill Ten Rats, they believe the changes are not a big deal and it will actually help players experience this higher-end loot before the expansion comes out. It's the thrill of the hunt, right? It's the exploration of a new dungeon, or the socialization aspect, isn't it? Regardless, it makes us wonder why Blizzard is doing this now. Possibly in preparation of things to come with Lich King?

Loot should always be a secondary concern in MMOs. The modern MMO is a virtual space that allows people to communicate and share experiences in a way that no other medium does, but I've been seeing more and more, the idea that developers should put the concerns of those players whose sole or primary concern is the acquisition of loot above the concerns of other players.

It's the old hardcore vs. casual argument of old – one that I honestly don't think we'll ever see the end of, for the simple reason that applying a hard and fast label of 'hardcore' or 'casual' is fundamentally flawed. There is no magical line that you cross, and in the space between one day and the next suddenly become 'hardcore' as opposed to 'casual', and the idea that you must belong to one of those two groups is fallacy, pure and simple.

Today we're featuring a topic that was actually sent into us by one of our readers. Scott wrote us a few days ago and wanted to know about a practice that's been in place for a while now -- that of item databases. He wondered if people thought it would be half as fun to raid if we didn't know what the loot was. Would we still be interested in putting in the time and the effort if there were no accurate listings of loot somewhere, or mods that showed us what items were available at a click of a button? So as he put it to us, we ask you -- do "spoiler" sites make the game more fun for you? Or would you prefer to have absolutely no idea about loot? Do you even really care, or is it about the thrill of utterly destroying a mob that used to stomp you into jelly, faster and faster until you're through a raid instance before dinner?

After another night spent raiding and ultimately losing the roll for some highly sought-after piece of gear for the umpteenth time, have you ever stopped and asked yourself, "Isn't there a better way they could do this?" The answer, if Stropp of Stropp's World is to be believed, may have been found by those crazy folks at Flagship Studios. Mythos, their new Diablo-killer, will be using a loot system that guarantees all players will be rewarded for their contributions to a battle. Upon slaying a foe, each player will have a separate loot screen from which they can pick up their reward. There's no rolling, no ninjaing, and (god willing) no whining.

Stropp himself wonders whether this sort of system could be adopted by other mainstream MMOs as a way to eliminate all the drama that normally surrounds the whole looting process. To me the issue seems fairly straight-forward. In a more casual game like Mythos, where the gear is really secondary to the experience, a loot system that equitably distributes loot is the easiest way to keep gamers geared and happy. But when it comes to more serious MMOs like WoW or EQ2, the gear is really an end to itself. If ever player got an epic every time they did a raid encounter, people would have finished out the content months ago. Still, it's an interest thought that'll get you thinking about how future MMOs could improve the process.

It's the day after Thanksgiving, commonly known as Black Friday. Today is not unlike your typical day in World of Warcraft. Americans scour the sale ads online and in print, and strategize how they're going to get their loot.

Olibith's Machinima interpretation of "Teh n00b Song", by Pure Pwnage, is the perfect theme for the day. A poor n00b thinks he can just kill wolves in peace, but teh_pwnerer has other plans for him. As little Fyapowa is taunted mercilessly, he tries to fight back, but to no avail.

As you're kicking and punching your way to better deals, think of Fyapowa and teh_pwnerer. Were you the n00b or the pwner today? As a fair warning, the pwner gets his just deserts in the end!

Ten Ton Hammer has been giving us the lowdown on all the shiny new gear LotRO players can acquire in The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu, the new raid instance Turbine added to the game in the Book 11 update. First they listed the coin rewards. Second, it was the gem rewards for Guardians and Champions. They've just launched part three and this time they're covering all the sweetness Minstrels and Lore-masters can acquire with the elusive gems that drop in the instance.

Lore-masters can get a new armor set awesomely and appropriately called "The Elder Days," which gives mad stat boosts as well as some shadow damage mitigation. Minstrels can gather up the pieces of a suit of armor called the "Armour of the Wandering Bard," which provides similarly sweet stat bonuses and tactical critical modifiers. There are new weapons for both classes as well.

It's excellent gear, and all this on top of all the other lovin' Minstrels and Lore-masters got in Book 11. We'll let you know when part four of the guide hits the streets.

If you joined us on day 1, you'll know that we armed you with enough Tabula Rasa loot to bury all the Bane you're killing. You'll also know we have nefarious plans to give a ton more stuff away, so let's get to it!

Today's giveaways are World of Warcraft-related, so WoW players, get your trigger fingers on your keyboards and get ready to leave some comments to win some cool stuff. Our first giveaway gives you a chance to win one of our perennial favorites, a 60-day game time card. Short of being a US resident 18 years or older (be sure to check out the official legalese), all you have to do to roll on this phat lewt is leave a simple comment in this thread by 9am EST tomorrow, Sunday November 4. No fuss, no muss, easy as pie. Mmmmmm, pie...