I think there’s been promises of persistent gaming worlds since Asheron’s Call tried to be different from Everquest. Good luck to future developers, I guess.

Two things:

1) This is why I keep telling you to give up your stupid WarCrack and join in the Pirates of the Burning Sea — The world changes based on the interaction of players. One day, I jumped into the game — and we started attacking ships on the outside of ports, and threw the port into contested status, and then we would conquer them.

By doing that, we would get better prices in port, the flag would change, as well as various other changes.

I just pulled up the webpage, and it seems as though the game is going free-to-play with a premium member setup http://www.burningsea.com/page/f2p It hasn’t launched yet, but when it comes out I highly suggest going down that road

Also check out the wiki http://www.burningsea.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Now 2) When you laugh, is it typically a quick short chuckle?
When I “laugh” its typically either a quick short burst like “heh heh” or I just breath out loudly.

I never really noticed how short it was, until a kid asked me why I laugh funny at school. Then I was thinking that Sheldon has a distinct short-laugh too.

Is the “short laugh” a geek thing?

The lack of phasing elsewhere is yet another reason I quit WOW. I just could not get over how much fun it was to actually ACCOMPLISH something in the game – have it actually PROGRESS. Then I get dumped back into the non-phased world. Yuck.

I’m an ex-player, but I know enough about it to fill in some info (my wife still plays).

Phasing wasn’t added to the game engine until WotLK, just 2 years ago, so that’s why you only see phasing in the late content: the DK starting area, the Northrend 70-80 zones, and a level 74 quest that takes you through phased versions of Orgrimmar (it’s funny seeing oblivious people still in this phase who are unaware that they didn’t finish a major questline and hadn’t yet wondered by Orgrimmar is always so empty for them), Stormwind, and the Undercity. There are a few level 80 daily quests that use phasing, so many people are used to seeing it every day.

They’re redoing almost everything with the release of Cataclysm next month so you can expect this to be used across the lower level zones really soon (including players who don’t have the expansions), not just at the higher levels. I know for a fact that the goblin and worgen starting areas, which new players can potentially do right away, will do phasing much like the DK zone.

Cataclysm is also supposed to solve some confusing issues with phasing. In Northrend it would be confusing, particularly in Icecrown where phasing is used very heavily across the whole zone, if you were trying to meet up with friends in a phased area. You’d see them as a dot on the minimap but they were not visible to you, with no indicator that there was a phase mismatch. It was also interesting riding a multi-passenger mount (especially the flying one) through a phased zone, where the riders and driver were all in their own phases. Sometimes you’d fall off, sometimes you’d keep riding along with an invisible driver.

Lord Of The Rings Online does this too. The start area is the same for levels 1 to about 7. Then you enter a single player instance to carry out some stuff and when you emerge the town where you started out will be…different (not wanting to spoil it). Not sure if that is condidered an instanced start area, but the starting area is not connected to the actual MMO world.

I am going to play Guild Wars 2, just because Ree Soesbee worked in the design team. I would have played it anyway, because I really liked the Guild Wars 1 series. But the fact she worked on the scenario is a sign of quality. For those who do not know her, she used to be one of the main authors and creator of the Legends of the Five Rings fictions, many years ago.