Each week, Chris "Syeric" Coke gives his unfiltered thoughts on the MMO industry. Taking on the news and hottest topics, Chris brings his extensive experience as a player and blogger to bear in Experience Points. This week he breaks down frustrating aspects of the industry, including the recent launch of Final Fantasy XIV.

Yesterday, for the first time since the game's release, I was able to log on to my guild's Final Fantasy XIV server. After eight days and one miracle patch, Square Enix finally seems to be making headway on an issue that never should have happened in the first place. See, this genre has a problem – a few of them in fact. One of them is launches. Another is the publishers and companies running these games. Today I want to look at what, in the words of Peter Griffin, really grinds my gears.

Each week, Chris "Syeric" Coke gives his unfiltered thoughts on the MMO industry. Taking on the news and hottest topics, Chris brings his extensive experience as a player and blogger to bear in Experience Points. Join him as he continues his journey reviewing the features of EverQuest Next. Read part one here!

Welcome back to another edition of Experience Points. This week we’ll complete our two part series reviewing EverQuest Next's features. Last week we examined everything from the game's stylized graphics to movement to multi-classing, but that only told half the story. Today I want to delve into destructibility, StoryBricks, and just how different Rallying Calls really are from what's being offered today – just to name a few. There is a lot to discuss, so let's dive in.

Each week, Chris "Syeric" Coke gives his unfiltered thoughts on the MMO industry. Taking on the news and hottest topics, Chris brings his extensive experience as a player and blogger to bear in Experience Points. This week he breaks down the upcoming features of EverQuest Next and asks if they're all they're chalked up to be.

Sony rocked the MMO world last Friday. With the announcement of the much anticipated EverQuest Next, David Georgeson and his design team laid their cards on the table: this is the future of MMOs, not “the same game” everyone else is making, and we hope it's the game for you. There are a lot of interesting ideas being offered and some of them could even be revolutionary. Others, well... let's just say that the hype machine is in full motion. We did our best to cover it here and bring you the news as it broke. Over the next two columns, I'd like to look at each of the big features, from destructibility to Landmark, and separate the amazing from the overblown. Join me and share your thoughts in the comments below.

Each week, Chris "Syeric" Coke gives his unfiltered thoughts on the MMO industry. Taking on the news and hottest topics, Chris brings his extensive experience as a player and commentator to bear in Experience Points.This week he examines the upcoming game, Revival, and MMO storytelling.

One of the big news drops this week was the announcement of Revival, the upcoming MMORPG from Illfonic. There is a lot to be excited about, but what most caught my eye was the studio's plan to let players impact and shape the game world. To hear the creative director describe it, everything from sacking towns to infuriating gods is possible. Game masters will run regular live events which react to our choices as players and, more importantly, have lasting consequences. It is a game that embraces player freedom and polices it with a tight karma system. We all know that sandboxes make for incredible stories, but here the potential is even more palpable. Will Revival bring us into the next age of storytelling? I think that it's possible and here's why.

Each week, Chris "Syeric" Coke gives his unfiltered thoughts on the MMO industry. Taking on the news and hottest topics, Chris brings his extensive experience as a player and blogger to bear in Experience Points. This week he examines the troubling trends of silence and vitriol in today's groups.

In 2009 the MMO industry changed forever. World of Warcraft was midway through its second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and players were still stuck scouring their servers for fellow dungeon runners. Queue times could ratchet upwards to two hours if you were playing DPS. Groups, while still rushed, were also cohesive and usually willing to communicate through problems; everyone knew a lengthy wait was in store if the group fell apart. Then Blizzard dropped a bombshell: the cross-realm dungeon finder, a tool which would allow entire server clusters to play together, automatically, and on-demand. It worked well and for a time seemed like a godsend. The system had the unintended side-effect, however, of making communication – even just socializing – a thing to be avoided. The dungeon finder enabled a culture of rush-to-reward where climbing the learning curve makes you the weak link. System after system has reinforced this and the genre, once based on players enjoying each other, is now more silent and toxic than it has ever been.

Each week, Chris "Syeric" Coke gives his unfiltered thoughts on the MMO industry. Taking on the news and hottest topics, Chris brings his extensive experience as a player and blogger to bear in Experience Points. This week he examines the expansion of WoW's pet store and how many lessons Blizzard seems to have missed.

World of Warcraft hasn’t been doing well, at least not by WoW standards. In May, it was reported that the game had dropped to 8.3 million subscribers, continuing what’s becoming a quarterly trend of disappointing earnings calls and bolstering the sense that its community is bleeding out. While the game still has more “subscribers” than most other AAA MMOs combined, that reassuring fact is undermined by Eastern players not paying a subscription fee at all and instead paying by the hour. Considering that North Americans are thought to make up the minority of the player base, the increasing decline of WoW in China doesn’t spell good things for the game. Parent company Vivendi is trying to sell off Blizzard entirely. In that light, is it any surprise that a cash shop is being expanded in World of Warcraft? That’s our topic this week, and I’m here to look at just how many cardinal sins it's committing.

Each week, Chris "Syeric" Coke gives his unfiltered thoughts on the MMO industry. Taking on the news and hottest topics, Chris brings his extensive experience as a player and blogger to bear in Experience Points. This week he looks at Guild Wars 2 and what it means to really offer a living world in an MMORPG.

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when “MMORPG” was synonymous with Virtual World. Players approached these games as they would a looming mountain; mysterious silhouettes growing larger with each passing footstep, things that existed before and would exist after and promised adventure deep in its hidden recesses. But somewhere along the line that mountain shrank. MMOs became slaves to their own accessibility, cannibalizing the very intrigue that catapulted them to success. The virtual world faded before cardboard sets and theme park rides. ArenaNet wants to change that. Its goal is, as Chris Whiteside explained, to push Guild Wars 2 as close to a living, breathing world as any MMO has yet come. I’m not sure that’s possible.

MMO players are an opinionated bunch. Since the days of MUDs, we've been debating design like it's a second job. When Guild Wars 2 launched last year, it broke the mold and ushered us into a subscription-free age, reigniting the business model debate. As free-to-play transitioned from evil to expected, our discussions have also shifted from whether free-to-play games should be to how they should be. Some of the best writers in the MMO community weighed in this week and the topic was lockboxes. So let's talk, but make no bones about it: this edition of Experience Points is very much pro-lockbox and anti-naysayer.