Introduction

Hi, I’m Joe, and I’ll be writing way too much about game mechanics, design, and world building.

I first stumbled across KTR about 6 or 8 months ago and have been following it closely and commenting regularly ever since. I’ve been playing MMOs since LegendMUD, Raph Koster’s old DikuMUD. From there, I went into the UO beta, then over to Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, and on and on and on, never getting a character past the teens or so. City of Heroes is the first and only game where I’ve ever gotten to the level cap, and only once there, despite having clocked about 35 months subscribed time. I’ve been a supergroup co-leader and the moderator for the city_of_heroes livejournal community. I’ve also played WoW, and, while I liked the first 50 levels or so, once again, I doubt I’ll ever hit the cap in it.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing posts about the pros and cons of combat mechanics in several current games, programatically generating compelling content, my “ideal” MMO, and similar topics. I look forward to discussing these things with you all.