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.

For those awaiting glimpses of Wargaming's upcoming action combat adventure on the high seas, World of Warships, the new cinematic will certainly wet the whistle.

Though not a full gameplay video, the very polished cinematic is a hint at the "immersive theater experience" awaiting attendees at E3 next week--hopefully this doesn't mean I'm getting thrown into a pool.

On one of the rare occasions when I actually got to saunter along the show floor at GDC last week, I met up with Chris Cook, Senior Public Relations Manager at Wargaming to talk about the company and its ever evolving stable of titles.

The key word for this year at Wargaming is certainly “expansion.”

As well as growing the size of the company almost exponentially in recent years, including the recent acquisition of Gas Powered Games, Wargaming is focused on expanding its identity across a variety of platforms.

As Chris Cook stated, “We want to give [players] our games no matter what they’re playing on, no matter where they are. Our big focus this year is on mobile; it’s on World of Warplanes for PC and Day 1 on console. It’s going to be a very interesting year for us, a lot of new directions.”

Perfect World Entertainment, the guys behind... well... the MMORPG Perfect World International, have just announced their next blockbuster MMORPG, cleverly titled "Forsaken World." Formerly codenamed Project EM, the PWE team promises that Forsaken World will break new ground by "bringing together the best of Eastern and Western cultures." While the website for Forsaken World a few tidbits about the game, it currently does not shed much information as to how the team plans to get East to meet West in terms of gaming culture.

The General Manager of Perfect World Entertainment, Yoon Im, however, noted that they have been "working with developers from around the world to create a new and exciting experience that aims/strives to appeal to players everywhere. . . This is our first game designed specifically with the Western market in mind and we have high expectations for its success." Wonder what they mean when they say that they designed the game with the Western market specifically in mind!