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Sorry for the entire and almost complete lack of posts this week… family stuff. Guess I should have called it the “WEEKLY Blogroll”…. What makes an MMORPG an RPG? Nowadays, EVERYTHING seems to be called an RPG. First person shooters like Call of Duty 4 are suddenly RPGs because they include levels (and, arguably, classes as well). So is that it? Is any game with leveling now automatically a Role Playing Game? Zubon of Kill Ten Rats wonders if that’s all there is. Psychochild responds by taking a look back at the origins of the term in pen-and-paper gaming. These days, I tend to regard games that don’t force you into certain paths as more of an RPG that on-rails MMOs like WoW. Zubon has a point when he says Second Life is more of an RPG than most games that claim the title. ...

The weekend went by too fast, as it always does. Rock, Paper, Shotguns Kieron Gillen had the perilous job of re-reviewing Darkfall for Eurogamer. Eurogamer’s original review score, 2/10, was savaged by the Darkfall developers and players. In Darkfallout, Kieron talks about the perils of being the clean-up crew for a disaster, and why he was shocked at the reaction by some other game journalists to the first review. Following up on last week’s discussion about how MMOs are like men, women, dogs, or kitchen cleansers, Green Armadillo notices that his dog is a lot like an MMO player. Except we have to go get our OWN food. ...