When Roy Trubshaw and I worked on MUD1, we saw it as a means of giving people freedom. For players, freedom to do and to be; for us, freedom to make our imaginations real (well, OK, virtual). Most of the early UK virtual worlds that followed had that same sense of idealism. After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers.

The difficult question is this: do virtual worlds (and virtual communities) now have more controls, gates, filters, rules, because a single generation’s unique and unreproducible historical experience has become an inflexible structural precedent that defines all future online sociality, that is the ur-culture that gets reproduced as ritual and expectation, or because the first generation of players and talkers online discovered some universal and general truths about how modern human beings will behave socially when they’re given the technological capacities to do so?

When Roy Trubshaw and I worked on MUD1, we saw it as a means of giving people freedom. For players, freedom to do and to be; for us, freedom to make our imaginations real (well, OK, virtual). Most of the early UK virtual worlds that followed had that same sense of idealism. After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even stranger. Someone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted points. Ian made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic research. While I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers.

The difficult question is this: do virtual worlds (and virtual communities) now have more controls, gates, filters, rules, because a single generation’s unique and unreproducible historical experience has become an inflexible structural precedent that defines all future online sociality, that is the ur-culture that gets reproduced as ritual and expectation, or because the first generation of players and talkers online discovered some universal and general truths about how modern human beings will behave socially when they’re given the technological capacities to do so?

MMORPG.com Final Fantasy XI Correspondent Tristain Belisle writes this quick piece giving suggestions to players who might be having a hard time figuring out how to store their in-game stuff. advertisement Inventory is something we all never have enough of for the most part, as it is. As many know, we all start off with 30 slots initially which will suffice for doing general things but really, it's not enough at all. In order to make the most out of our swamped storages, mog houses, mog lockers, and inventories respectively, there are multiple quests and little things we can do here and there to gain some space for our equipment, food, weapons and the like.

MMORPG.com Warhammer Online Correspondent John Lisenby writes this overview of the Wtich Elf class, complete with a list of skills attainable by that class.Check out Page Two advertisement The Witch Elf is a fast hitting, up in the front lines person. They are much like the rogue you see in most mmo games. They use poison, daggers, and stealth to get the job done. They are a female only class. No male Witch Elves. Though it looks as though they are wearing barely anything for armor, do not let that fool you. They are light armored and pack a lot of speed and power.

MMORPG.com Warhammer Online Correspondent Louis Rossi writes this overview of the Shadow Warrior Career in Mythic Entertainment's newest RvR game. In the overview, Rossi looks at the effectiveness of a number of the career's damaging abilities. advertisement The High-Elf Shadow Warrior is your classic ranged DPS class, or is it? Upon playing a shadow warrior a while, you'll discover a few things differ between yourself and the traditional ranged, non-magic damage dealing classes plaguing so many other MMOs these days.

On November 15th, MMORPG.com hosted a dev chat with the folks from Runes of Magic. Today, we post the log from that chat in its entirety.

Our new Star Wars Galaxies Correspondent writes this short article giving a few play tips for players who may have left the game and are planning a return. advertisement "Even though you played SWG, you are not a vet of the game you just joined"

Volume II: Mines of Moria is the first expansion pack to be released for the MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online: Shadow of Angmar. As the title suggests the setting of this expansion is the underground dwarf city of Moria.