Building the Theoretical MMORPG: Crafting

Crafting systems in games started back in ancient times when pixels roamed the earth, but have now not only become an automatic include into every RPG, and often appears in other genres as well.  Crafting in each game varies greatly in both purpose and outcome, but in the genre of MMORPG the purpose is to be an economic factor and time sink, and the outcome is boredom and tedium that few people would do if it wasn't for their Skinner box style rewards schedules.  To explain Skinner box from the last section, go watch this video on Escapist's Magazine's website if you haven't already (go ahead, this article isn't going to go anywhere while you're gone; just remember to come back with some flowers and candy to make up for neglecting it's attention).

It's the opinion of this author, and S.Q.U.I.R.R.E.L.S. (Southern Quarter United Independent Reactionary Radicals Engaged with the Legion of S.N.A.P.P.L.E.), that MMORPG crafting would benefit from having several aspects of it redesigned to make it a more fun experience that players may actually enjoy, rather than a time sink done solely for the rewards.  In this article I've broken crafting down into three sections: ingredient gathering, item creation, and crafting economics.  Topically speaking with worded explanatory blocks and bold text:

Ingredient Gathering

Doing it Wrighte: Anti-Physics

Magic, psionics, the force, super science, quantum physics, biotics, miracles, meta-humans, mutants, alchemy, Christmas spirit, and other things along these lines, are all used as a way of doing fantastic things in stories that break all rules of logic and physics.  Since the above list is both incomplete and entirely too much of a mouth full, I'm making a new term for such things that will be used throughout this document: Anti-Physics.  Said term-I-just-made-up (terms made up by this author are canon proper English, and whoever says otherwise is a liar, liar, pants on fire -The Editor)(I do not condone the lighting of lower body clothing of any kind on fire for any reason...though actually witnessing said act would probably make me chuckle a little - The Author) are at best interesting and important elements of vastly creative and well detailed worlds, and at worst contrived plot devices used for convenience and deus ex machina production.  To break down anti-physics into more bite sized chunks for discussion, I've created three sub-categories for anti-physics: Magic, Rooted, and Tech.  So to start with what is effectively the father of all anti-physics, magic:

That Other Category: Learning From SaGa Mechanics part one: The SaGa of the Towers

 The mechanics in Square/Square Enix's SaGa series of games are very interesting and original, especially for menu style RPGs, and deserve to be looked at to see what can be learned from them.  In the "Learning From SaGa Mechanics" articles, I plan on examining the mechanics of the entire series and seeing what  can be applied to tabletop, video game, and MMO style RPGS (what I plan and what will happen are two different matters).

For right now, I'm going to examine the three Game Boy games, starting with the first one, which was originally titled "Makai Toushi Sa·Ga (魔界塔士 Sa・Ga, Warrior in the Tower of the Spirit World ~ Sa·Ga)" according to Wikipedia, but was released over here as The Final Fantasy Legend because the publisher wanted to make more money and Final Fantasy was a well known name already (brand recognition makes the world go round).  So to explain the mechanics a bit:

For some categorical commentary:

Hidden at the Edge of the World: Seizon - Life

Eleven years ago, a manga (manga = Japanese comic and the source of 80% or so of anime (to make a somewhat accurate statistic up off the top of my head)) called Seizon - Life was created, and things that people would consider important happened too, but for today I'm paying attention to Seizon no matter how much my spell checker hates Japanese words.  When I first started to read this three volume series, I was expecting that it would take me three days to do so between getting distracted with the interwebs, eating, and various other activities which a psychologist would probably diagnose as some sort of silly disorder like anatidaephobia (for the curious, that's actually the fear that you are being watched by a duck, and not something I made up for once).  Instead, I found myself having slipped ninety minutes forward in time due to the mystic eastern art of reading three volumes of manga in one sitting.  Seizon was not just an entertaining read, but also stands as a good example to anyone who wishes to write for any type of graphical media of what to do in order to make your work at least 80% more goodererer.