The Escapist, Issue 28: Extra!

[Evil Avatar]

The Escapist Extra! (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/28/22) is online for Friday the 20th. This week's issue looked at the good that gamers and their communities do. Casual Friday takes a slightly different look at gaming communities, with new articles including:


Mark Wallace: One Night In Arathi (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/28/22)
Even when every game mechanic is designed against it, there are still occasions when gamers would rather be social. Mark Wallace narrates one of these occasions, a personal experience from World of Warcraft.

John Walker: Sick Of Healing (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/28/26)
Though common in tabletop role-playing, playing a supporting role was never a major focus for video games until online multiplayer became popular. John Walker tells us why he's no longer going to be one of those supporting roles, a healer in an MMOG.

[agentgray]

It must be a slow news day if we're posting the Friday updates of an online magazine.

Any rate, the healing article was a good find. I normally don't read their Friday extra until the follwing week, but bah, work sucks today.

Update: I just want to say that this is the most beautiful magazine on the web, and my company is in the publishing business. The Eve ads are gorgeous.

[Nite_Moogle]

The Arathi article is a good one. I've not seen something quite that drastic happen before, but sometimes you run into another player that just knows you're out there to finish a quest and not ruin their shit and you can get along. The problem is for every player like that there are fifty jackholes that see a red name and gank you on sight.

[Roc Ingersol]

I've been bitching about healing for years now.
Massmogs need to dump combat healing classes outright. Maybe keep potions and crap - but don't make a class whose sole job is to heal people, and then necessarily create a class whose sole job is to keep monsters off the healer. It's lame. Lame lame lame.

Get rid of healers. Give casters their own survivability tools. Then we can do away with brain-dead agg rules, the 'tank' role - all that crap.

You know - make PvE more like PvP, in terms of having to think and react to every situation, and not just boil every single encounter down to the same process.

[Varsity]

Whenever I read the Escapist, I start to cringe when I see them use words like 'play' and 'game'. They are so puerile compared to what we are using them to discuss.

[IIArchonII]

Healing is like being goalie, its as important as it is boring.
On my old WoW server healers were like 10% of the population, but they're about 40% of most end game raids.

[Raven_payne]

I've been bitching about healing for years now.
Massmogs need to dump combat healing classes outright. Maybe keep potions and crap - but don't make a class whose sole job is to heal people, and then necessarily create a class whose sole job is to keep monsters off the healer. It's lame. Lame lame lame.

Get rid of healers. Give casters their own survivability tools. Then we can do away with brain-dead agg rules, the 'tank' role - all that crap.

You know - make PvE more like PvP, in terms of having to think and react to every situation, and not just boil every single encounter down to the same process.

You must be talking about MMOs like Final Fanstay XII. A bunch of guys gang up on one monster while only about 2 of the people in the group take damage and one person stays way in the back and heals....repeat...repeat...repeat...repeat...repea t...Level up!! W00T.

I had such high hopes for that game,(not saying it's not good) but it wasn't what I expected it to be.

[RevXwise]

Mehh... both of these articles are kind of random. The healing article is just a bunch qq'ing.. the people who actually play the games a lot will appreciate the role of healer and won't bitch at them if people die. Also, I tend to help out every alliance I see (yeah i'm a carebear) and I've had lots of experiences with different alliance through emotes (i also play on a pvp server)

[destoo]

I always play the healer/support, but I've been playing with friends both on paper (D&D cleric, Ship Captain in 7th Sea), live (priest for the religious order of Castenza at Bicolline (http://www.bicolline.com)), and on crpgs (bard and druids in NWN)
I kind of feel his pain, but when everyone knows how to "know your role and shut your mouth" the flow of combat is better for everyone.

John Walker is a rogue journalist, a rambling man, roaming from magazine to website, writing about videogames before anyone can stop him.

Rogue Journalist. That looks like an interesting dual class. I'll try that on my next character.

[player66]

w00t!!!!!!!!!

[DarkEternal]

Mehh... both of these articles are kind of random. The healing article is just a bunch qq'ing.. the people who actually play the games a lot will appreciate the role of healer and won't bitch at them if people die. Also, I tend to help out every alliance I see (yeah i'm a carebear) and I've had lots of experiences with different alliance through emotes (i also play on a pvp server)
Yes, the people that know the importance of the healer won't whine and moan, but the unfortunate part of that is that the majority aren't those kinds of people. I completely agree with the sentiments in that article, healer sucks. For every person like you, there's a countless number more that just won't shut up about how poor of a job you're doing...