Monday Trinity round-up

Happy Monday everybody! It’s been a Garfield one for myself. Last week I wrote a rather long article on issues I perceive with the holy trinity in MMOs and ever since I’ve come across other bloggers contributing views related to the matter and taking the whole topic a step further. It’s been very interesting reads for myself, realizing that there was even more to it all than I initially focused on. That’s why this blogging week starts with a short round-up on more trinity-based articles, for all those interested to see alternative game concepts in their future fantasy MMO.

Nils wrote a very enthusiastic article on overcoming the (un)holy trinity, asking us to bear with him one more time in a follow-up post. I elaborated quite a lot myself in some of the comment sections, getting reminded of just how passionately I actually feel about the classic fantasy genre.

Tesh left his uptake on the role of healing in online games and let us into his very own tactical RPG character advancement system. He’s also listed a way more complete link collection on further reading, so I won’t repeat any of that and simply recommend you visit his article!

Rather unexpected at first, was a great article I read by Gazimoff where he muses over the rift that theorycrafting, or rather elitism has created in today’s WoW community, separating the ‘pros’ from the ‘slackers’. He finds himself caught in the middle of a dilemma which I couldn’t help but connect to the holy trinity issue as well. It’s one aspect I had not considered in such degree but does certainly display another side-effect of very strong role separations and definitions. If a role is all about one thing, your target above all else is to perfect that thing and make it even more efficient. Min-maxing is more king than ever. Or maybe I’m just seeing white Volvos everywhere now, because I drive one myself – you decide. 

Edit: Tobold has written on this since too, or more specifically about the dynamic of the tanking role and how one might overcome that in a classic MMO setup.

…I think I’m at a very bad place now; I’ve successfully thought myself into being really excited about Guild Wars 2 which isn’t good, especially with the launch being another year away….oh well. It appears plenty of you out there share my enthusiasm.

In an attempt to make this article more rambly (ramblier? firefox does not approve of this word), I did actually get one gratification after a very long, tiresome day which is a small parcel waiting on my desk this evening. Funny that I should win a shiny Rift mousepad now that I’ve moved on to a new MMO – seems that old Steelseries lich king pad is meant to go. If that’s not a sign from above, I don’t know what is.

And being tipsy is the only way of healing, true story.