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Masthead Studios has released the second newsletter for their upcoming sci-fi MMO Earthrise. As with their first newsletter, it's full of hyperlinks to images and audio related to the game, however there are a few new additions this time around. We've read about the game itself in recent months, but until now little has been known about the people behind the scenes who are working to make Earthrise a reality. The newsletter features an introduction to the members of the Earthrise development team at Masthead Studios in the form of a short Q&A for each developer.

Each of the devs discusses what brought them to work on the project, their influences, and what they do at Masthead Studios to further the creation of Earthrise. There's also screenshots of a new area on Enterra called The Nest and a hyperlinked recap of Earthrise's media coverage in the last month. But the real focus of the Earthrise newsletters is on the community, and a number of issues are showcased in the latest iteration.

How pointless are so-called "pointless mini-zones," really? Michael did a post the other day which examined the history of a zone in EverQuest called Surefall Glade. Hitting his links gave me a nice little walk down memory lane -- I have fond memories of Surefall, being an old-school EQ fan who cut his teeth in Qeynos Hills, back in the day. There really isn't all that much to the zone, though. It's like the article says: a cabin, a lake, an archery range, and a few hidden caves with some bears. There's nothing to do but raise your fletching skill, and nothing to kill that's worth killing. Eventually they added some stuff to it, but it was still never anything more than a small, transitional town.

Surefall was the essence of a pointless mini-zone: Most players never had any compelling reason to go there. Still, did it add something to the game with its mere presence? Like Moonglade in World of Warcraft, you could argue that it was kind of a neat place for players to discover and hang out. We get so focused on the "content" of these games that sometimes we forget that exploring a new zone you've never seen before, even if there's really nothing to do there, is content in its own right. Besides, does every single zone in our MMOGs have to be a big quest hub tied to a specific zone? Can't some places just be places?

One of the things that people seem fairly split on lately is the "time" they say is involved with listening to the NPCs talking -- or more properly, reciting the quest text out loud. Some people really like this when coupled with the "multiple choice answer" option that's present in Age of Conan and EverQuest II. Some feel that it leads to greater immersion in the world to hear quests spoken -- and you can always "fast forward" by clicking through if you don't want to hear it. For other people, while this can be a fun and interesting element at first, repeating quests on subsequent alts makes it somewhat annoying.

Where do you fall on this one? Do you like the idea of your NPCs actually being voiced and reading out the full quest text to you, or do you think a cursory sound byte (like how it is handled in World of Warcraft) is all that is needed? Do voiceovers tend to make you pay attention to quest "text" -- or do you just click past it all anyway?

Plenty of MMOs have servers that are supposed to be for roleplaying, but when you log on, you find that a lot of people just act as they would on a normal server. However, you will run into those that embrace the roleplaying aspect of the game, and things are significantly different for them. A run-of-the-mill instance clearing ending with a boss kill can become an epic adventure, culminating in the slaying of a legendary beast and the discovery of rare and valued treasure. Their avatar isn't merely another Night Elf Rogue -- they might have a back-story, a fleshed out history of how they arrived at their current situation, and may rarely ever break from character.

Do you enjoy the immersion of roleplaying, or do you tend to just play the game for what it is and leave RPing to the folks that are into it? Is it something that you will occasionally slip into, or are you dedicated to your in-game persona? Something we're interested to know is, if you roleplay now in MMOs, did you do it before you started playing video games, or did you pick it up since entering a virtual world?

Back in The Day (before all this new-fangled 3D whozits and everything was text-based), when you wanted to roleplay, you weren't constrained by existing character classes or types; you could be anything you wanted. You could be a 10,000 year old vampire bartender, or an infant with a goldfish for a head, or anything in between. Nowadays, there is a clear distinction between player characters (PCs) and non-player characters (NPCs). The former are guided by humans, and the latter are bots.

But what if you had the opportunity to play the role of a traditional NPC? What if you could be that quest-giver, that fish vendor, that city guard? Instead of getting the same spiel over and over as you do now, a player could go have a leisurely chat with an actual person, making your favorite game world feel inhabited and real -- would you be that NPC? Would you do it for experience points that you could transfer to any of your alts? What if there were a leveling system in place for your fish vendor? Would you do it for nothing at all?

As a very basic rule of thumb, it seems to be the case that in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, it's safe to call a person by their real life gender. Males who play MMOs sometimes play them as female avatars, and vice versa. In a virtual world like Second Life, however, the gender of importance belongs to the avatar. The distinction seems to rest on the concept of roleplay.

Obviously it boils down to the player's choice; they decide what they want to be, and how they prefer to be addressed. When they do, if you know the person behind the avatar, do you address them as their avatar's gender, or as their real life gender?

Last week we reported on an ambitious roleplay event happening on Tabula Rasa's Cassiopia server. For those of you who didn't or couldn't attend, here's the lowdown on what happened. The gist of it was to take all control points in Descent and hold them for one hour. Things started off well with the capture of Fort Virgil. The large group then split into various smaller groups and went after different control points around the battlefield. Around the time they were grabbing the final control point, the group lost Virgil again. So Alpha Wolf Tommy (who we assume is some sort of sci-fi Rambo) went and took back Fort Virgil single-handedly.

By this time, the GM who was in attendance by the name of Critters, was spawning things left and right for the group to kill. Eventually Critters surprised everyone by spawning entire packs of Striders, which are strong enough on their own. In the chaos of defeating all the Striders, the group yet again lost Fort Virgil and so the event ended. Although there were rewards for everyone involved as they regrouped at camp Cato. Apparently pleased with their efforts, Critters handed out berets and some obligatory screenshots were taken for good measure.

All in all it sounds like everyone had lots of fun. So like we said last time, we hope these continue to happen at healthy intervals on all the servers.

Tabula Rasa's Cassiopia server will play host to a server-wide roleplay event being held by the 47th AFSEF with the intention of recapturing the Descent continent from Bane control. The objectives are to wrest all control points from the Bane and hold them for a whole hour. We're uncertain if such a thing is possible, but we wish all AFS troops our best in the coming fight for freedom. The event begins at 1800 PST (6pm PST for the military time-confused like us) and anyone interested can meet up at the Fort Virgil courtyard in front of the HQ building. In an interesting piece of news, the event is planned to be GM supported for some "surprises". Your guess is as good as ours on that one.

It's great to see Destination Games supporting community events like this. Hopefully if things go well this becomes the first of many other similar GM sponsored events, because nothing keeps a community thriving more than a common goal. Actually, this would be another of our own wishes for Tabula Rasa in 2008.

Dawn stretches its sleeping muscles and peeks out over the snow capped mountains, coaxing a faint mist to mist to take flight over a frozen lake. Animals of all shapes and sizes begin to stir and wake from a cold night's sleep huddled together in dens and burrows, and bird song threatens to break the night's quiet. A sharp echo snaps through the air as the heat from the rising sun causes the ice on the lake to crack and shift, marking the coming day as faithfully as a rooster's crow, and around the dog-leg in the road comes the faint tell tale sound of boots crunching snow, the clink of freshly polished armour, and a nervous laugh.

It is day break in the mountain valley of Dun Morogh, and the Wee Men march on the irradiated city of Gnomeregan. They have been made aware of the dangers that lurk in the caverns and halls beneath the mountains, and the horrific changes to the citizens that could not escape. Their blades are sharpened, spells learned and remembered, shields shined, and tools checked and re-checked. This is not a task they take lightly, as this city was once a place most of them called home. A place where their families lived, where they were born and grew, and where they had hoped one day to grow old and die in.

But all that changed the day the attacks began in the lowest parts of the city, and there was nothing they could do but grab anything and anyone close, and run for the surface. Now their lives are changed forever, forced into action they became the heroes that their city so desperately needed in it's darkest hour, the heroes that could have battered back the advancing forces and saved countless lives. Some simply call them adventurers, but they know themselves as liberators, saviours and champions to the causes so often forgot in todays world. Though in stature they may be small, in their actions and deeds they are giants.

I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole. That's because today we're visiting the distorted world of the Matrix Online. Here we're witnessing a Live Event for the Machinist faction that took place during the game's hey-day. Jared, who shared this shot with us, explains the game's appeal:

The first two-three months where the Live Events team was online almost every other night, making personal connections to players, organizing the troops and generally stalking the roleplay community. The game may have been awful, but the combination of the live events team and roleplay community made it more than worth it.

We're excited to see lots of people sending screenshots to the One Shots mailbox for games other than Guild Wars. Not that we don't like Guild Wars -- but variety is the spice of life and we love to see shots from games we haven't highlighted lately. (Trust me, we'll come back to Guild Wars eventually!) We only post what you send us send your screenshots and stories from games long dead to oneshots@massively.com. You may see it posted here tomorrow!

Man, talk about the feel-good story of the year. Here's a refreshing article on how Second Life is being used by various people as a therapeutic tool to combat various illnesses and conditions, including stroke recovery, agoraphobia, and what sounds like Asperger Syndrome.

Part of the underlying mechanisms at work here is the ability to safely interact with other residents anonymously, or being able to roleplay frightening situations safely. From the article: "Because the full-color, multifaceted nature of the experience offers so much more "emotional bandwidth" than traditional Web sites, e-mail lists and discussion groups, users say the experience can feel astonishingly real." And when the experience centers on more than just combat, this could be said of more virtual worlds than just SL -- I'm sure there are incidences of these sorts of benefits in World of Warcraft and Everquest, as well.

It's time for the World Health Organization to take a serious look at the health-improving benefits of virtual worlds, and what it means to the millions of citizens worldwide.

[Via Nashua Telegraph]

Hey, check this out. I was pondering something the other day as I passed a Buddhist temple in San Francisco: virtually every religion that has ever been still exists in some form or another. It's said that a god only dies when its last follower has lost faith. That got me thinking: how could this work as a play mechanic in an MMO?

What if you could craft your own religion, the same way you craft a weapon, complete with the deity of your choice, and receive direct benefit from worshiping at its temple? Say, a hefty buff to carry into your next battle, or an automatic resurrection upon any of your teammates? Further, let's suppose that the only way for your god to grow in strength was for you to build temples to it, at which its adherents would pray for a predetermined duration each game session?

It gets crazier: you could proselytize and convert other players to your religion, or defile the temples of your rivals and weaken their god's strength. With a minimum number of followers needed to create a new god, there would be few instances of novelty and 'throwaway', or 'gag' gods to clutter up the system; this would be a serious tactic for use by the devout! There are many ways to make this sort of thing work. What about roleplay? Would there be PvE applications as well as PvP? Is there already something like this in place for some MMO? Someone send me a sign, show me the light!

Justin Olivetti has written an intriguing post on his blog Time Well Wasted, all about how we invest time in our favorite MMOs. He asks the question: how do we choose to spend our time, and what are your options once you've reached a level beyond which you can't progress? Do you create alts and re-climb the ladder? Do you learn to roleplay? Do you become a mentor?

Although his post is geared toward World of Warcraft, it's applicable to most MMOs, and even to some social virtual worlds, with modifications. At what point do you decide that you're done with the game, and move on? Especially considering you'll face this issue again?

(Thanks, Justin!)