Excellent insights, Julian, but I think that maybe I wasn't clear about something. When I said social contract, I didn't mean that each player needs to endure the grind (that, after all, is a product of bad game mechanics or design). I was referring to the sense of fun and meritocracy that one gets from participating with others as equals. I love the part in JC Herz's "Joystick Nation" where she's talking about meritocracy in early social arcade gaming: On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere.

i guess i am holding out hope that if the game gets redesigned the right way, ebaying will either not happen at all or, if it does, not spoil the game. Let's say there was an effect if people talked about Britney's baby. Let's say her publicity company paid SOE to give +1 hit points every time the word "Britney" was said in conversation. Hey, you don't HAVE to say the word if you don't want - you can get your guild healer buddy to restore you instead. On the other hand, you can slap a macro on a hot key and be instantly healed just by chanting the Britney mantra. Is the game still fine? What if it cost you a cent, would that make it fine?

If eBaying isn't a problem, why sell objects at all? Why not just give them away to anyone who wants them? If it's so great that people can just hang out with their guildies, why not let them do so without charging them $600 for their equipment? Why not just let them equip with whatever they want? On the one hand this may seem like technical arcanum, but note that we all often pretend this point in our discussions and comments on Terra Nova and elsewhere. It is how most of us conceptualize a simulation.

I'm not talking about the Priests and Paladins we see in World of Warcraft, Everquest 2 and probably lots of other games I haven't played. Religion for character classes like these is more often than not a game mechanic, something which is used to explain the source of their powers.

If you're a fan of SOE games, you may have noticed some big changes this week to the Station Launcher beta. Similar in function to the PlayNC launcher for NCsoft games, Station Launcher manages games, updates, and downloads, but it also allows you to chat with your friends across the SOE titles. While the idea of it is appealing, there have been problems with how the Station Launcher functioned.

Sony Online Entertainment is a unique company in the MMO industry. Not only do they have a stable of games, they try to make it easy for you to play all of them. Our giveaway today celebrates this with an SOE game sampler. We have a great box with 30 days of gameplay for Planetside, EverQuest, The Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and EverQuest II all included! Plus, we'll throw in two additional 30 day time cards.

Game Update 50 will coincide with the release of EverQuest 2's next expansion, The Shadow Odyssey. We've already show you how fantastic the new content drop will look from the dungeon-crawling perspective, but there are a handful of other features that will be added into the game at the same time.

Ultimately, we become so close to the subject matter that we stop being able to objectively judge content. That's one of the reasons we try to avoid any definitive statements in preview materials. We're so used to MMOs that we try to adopt a passive viewpoint, a somewhat-impartial observer for the prospective player.

The latest EverQuest II expansion, The Shadow Odyssey, will launch this week on November 18th. In advance of the launch, Stephanie Morrow of Beckett Massive Online Gamer recently interviewed some members of the EverQuest II design team -- Noel Walling (Design Supervisor), Paul Molina (Game Designer), Adam Stevens (Game Designer) and Carlos Mora (Associate Game Designer). Here is also a very interesting mmorpg game called Everquest 2.