Massively^™

Raiders, PvPers, explorers, achievers, item market players, roleplayers, power levelers. What do all of these people have in common? Well, they can all be found in our MMORPGs. Jaye at Journeys with Jaye has written a great article that centers around the fact that many of us tend to focus on our MMOs as single player games. We tend to dismiss others in the community when they don't play the same way we may play (which is referred to as "the best way to play a game").

We also tend to dismiss a game's community in favor for the game's mechanics. Reviewers tend to focus on how the game plays and functions in a solo environment, regardless of how friendly, active, or welcoming the community may be. For all the reviewer knows, the community might be the saving grace of the game. If you have the time, jump over to Journeys with Jaye and check our her article. It's well written, and worth the read for any MMORPG player.

As we've previously covered on Massively.com before, virtual worlds researcher Edward Castronova's new book is entitled Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality -- but if you want to know if it's actually worth reading, there's a review over at Rik Santos's personal blog.

I'm almost tempted to pick up a copy, but to me, serious real world influence from virtual worlds feels a long way off. When governments can't even accept gaming, the idea of them trying to learn from MMOs doesn't seem likely any time soon.

And yes, the author is the same man who recently demanded a female dwarf. Comments from that post show he isn't the only one!

As a final humiliation to what might be, according to the reviews, the worst MMO of the year, WarCry reports that EB Games is now selling Fury for only $29.99. Yes, for only $30, you too can play the game that reviewers said "fails on literally every front."

Poor Fury. They tried so hard, and failed so, so badly. The devs over there are still holding on as hard as they can-- they promise that things will get better and that things will get fixed soon. But when retailers drop your game's price by $20 in the first month of release, the writing is on the wall. Better luck next time, Auran.