Sorry for the entire and almost complete lack of posts this week… family stuff. Guess I should have called it the “WEEKLY Blogroll”….

What makes an MMORPG an RPG? Nowadays, EVERYTHING seems to be called an RPG. First person shooters like Call of Duty 4 are suddenly RPGs because they include levels (and, arguably, classes as well). So is that it? Is any game with leveling now automatically a Role Playing Game? Zubon of Kill Ten Rats wonders if that’s all there is. Psychochild responds by taking a look back at the origins of the term in pen-and-paper gaming. These days, I tend to regard games that don’t force you into certain paths as more of an RPG that on-rails MMOs like WoW. Zubon has a point when he says Second Life is more of an RPG than most games that claim the title.

Kendricke of Clockwork Gamer looks deep into the folding cash money guild support brings to MMOs and wonders why more games don’t have strong guild support? Wizard101 devs, take note.

Rumor has it that 38 Studios, developers of the secretive Copernicus MMO, is looking for a few more tens of millions of dollars to finish development, a rumor the studio vehemently denies. Nonetheless, Genda looks at the perils of investing in a new business in a highly competitive field and wishes the guys well.

When Tesh hits the space bar in Wizard101, his wizard hops a little bit. This has no effect on gameplay, which is turn-based, not twitch-based. Did KingsIsle add hopping just because MMO players expect hitting the space bar to do something based on experience in other games? Tesh wonders if adding pointless features purely to make WoW-players comfortable makes any business sense.

Speaking of Wizard101, where’s our Harry Potter MMO? Time’s running out, guys! After the final two movies come out, nobody will care any more.

Lots of people are still raw about the EQ2 thing from last week. Quick summary: EQ2 is not WoW, lots of people don’t like the EQ2 character models, and the various newbie experiences need to all be equally rewarding, but otherwise, it’s still a competitive, deep, triple-A title with many unique features. Does that cover it?

Twitter was set ablaze with the news that there would be a MMO set in the world of tween vampire epic Twilight. Xav de Matos of Joystiq wrote “Twilight MMO to stop female interest in reality, threaten human race.” It appears, though, that the human race is safe — it’s only a student project. Keep making babies, folks.

Champions Online launches in about a month, and Syp over at Bio Break is cautiously excited about the game. Will it have enough innovative features to make up for the quest hub/kill ten rats gameplay? It just might!

LaTale, the new 2D action/combo-oriented MMO from Aeria Games has just entered Open Beta. It’s a pretty fun (and sometimes funny) timewaster; I’ll have more on it once I’ve played it a bit more.

And lastly, Openedge1 hates crafting. Just thought you’d want to know.

The weekend went by too fast, as it always does.

Rock, Paper, Shotguns Kieron Gillen had the perilous job of re-reviewing Darkfall for Eurogamer. Eurogamer’s original review score, 2/10, was savaged by the Darkfall developers and players. In Darkfallout, Kieron talks about the perils of being the clean-up crew for a disaster, and why he was shocked at the reaction by some other game journalists to the first review.

Following up on last week’s discussion about how MMOs are like men, women, dogs, or kitchen cleansers, Green Armadillo notices that his dog is a lot like an MMO player. Except we have to go get our OWN food.

Like a whole bunch of people, me included, Peter of Dragonchasers was given a very limited Aion beta key that was good for only a weekend or two back in July. Since then, he has not been able to play in the preview events. Since the game has been released for quite some time overseas and needs very little testing, Peter wonders if this whole “beta” thing is just a ploy to lure people in with a free beta, and then force them to pre-order to play more?

Stingite at The Friendly Necromancer says the world of Wizard 101 is filled with danger, challenge and all that, but where are the pranks, hijinks and mischief you’d expect to find at a wizard school? Where’s the troll phone?

Warhammerer notes that Free Realms now allows you to invert your mouse, and that all jobs will now level faster. Noted :) Also, look out for the new raceway and Demo Driver and Kart Racer quests this very week.

World of Warcraft watchers have discovered the addition of two new Halloween masks into the game, a goblin and a Worgen (wolf people whom you kill by the millions in Duskwood and Shadowfang Keep, iirc). Could these be new player races for the next WoW expansion? When I played, pre-BC, it was widely rumored that Worgen would be coming with that expansion. Would these new races bring new players to the game?

And (via Hudson, so thanks!) Gary Gannon wonders why most MMOs haven’t taken advantage of the rise of social networking and mobile gaming? I dunno, maybe they should, maybe they shouldn’t, but seeing people’s Twitter spam from the games they play just annoys me.

And lastly, the ever-prolific Hudson looks at the recently announced changes to City of Heroes along with the latest developments at its sequel-in-spirit, Champions Online, and figures it won’t be long before you won’t be able to tell the game apart at all. Except one will be a lot more like WoW than the other.

Well, I guess that’s all for today!

I’ve been working on a 3D exploration of famous MMO worlds (well, at least the ones I have on my hard drive), so dig out those old red/blue cardboard glasses and prepare to look at the worlds of fantasy in a new way, sometime this week.