Are you a Troller? Were you trolled by a torller? Do you want to know something about trolling? Our columnist Stephen Marshall will share his opinions with you and tell you what exact the trolling is.

Continue reading The Delicate Art of Trolling.

A long time ago in a land far, far away, I knew a stranger who played a certain video game eight hours a day, at the least. It did not bother him. His life was stable otherwise, if unhappy. Many were too wrapped in social anxiety to breach the subject directly, and even those who played with him referred to him, with equal parts honesty and insult, as 'our most dedicated player'.

Continue reading What will Addiction and Honesty Bring You, My Stranger?.

Why not let people say what they want, and have a personal filter for the game, where the filtering is client-based rather than server-based? Why ruin those lovely, evocative phrases for some prude who feels as if their moral righteousness should be placed on everyone else? I like to curse.

Continue reading That Guy Just S**t all over My Shoes!.

Quests, in a way, are treated like a necessary evil more often than not. The question then arises – what makes a good quest? Why aren't there more of them? And most importantly – what, if anything, can be done for better quests?

Continue reading Collecting a Billion Rabbit Pelts: the Current State of Quests in MMOs.

When I first played EVE Online, I (reasonably) did not trust the praise my comrades gave to the game. A two hour tutorial? What in the name of gratuitous interstellar explosions could justify such a thing? There are spaceships, sure, and that sort of thing can get complicated, I'm told, but two hours? Can't I watch a movie and then learn it on the fly? Can't I just substitute my ignorance by making pew pew noises over the microphone? My comrades would have none of this. Two hours later, I realized that the tutorial was actually worthwhile. A month later, I realized I was playing a game unlike almost any other MMORPG.

Continue reading EVE Online and the Power of Personal Influence.