The other day I got a funky quest reward in Lord of the Rings online: A one-time use item that can be used to snare a monster (supposedly for easy killing.) I don’t know if these are commonly available elsewhere, but I’ve only seen this one so far and find it both curious and problematic.

Playing in the Rift beta brought up an old question in me. How do you get players to care about anything but levelling up before they get to the maximum level?  and I still like what I wrote there. Today I’ll take a different approach to the topic though.

On I talked about how there are too many crafting ingredients and trash items dropping in MMOs. Today I’ll have a look at equipment drops and consumables and actually have examples of games that improved much on the now standard way to do this.

Have you checked your inventory in the MMO of your choice after an hour of adventuring lately? Chances are that it was full of magic items that might warrant another look, slightly less magic items that will be sold to a vendor right away, ingredients for seventy million different crafting professions, consumables that heal you, […]