Kill 10 Rats: The Modern MMO Paradigm

Have we reached a pinnacle of MMO innovation? ZAM considers the precedence set by the world's most popular MMOs, and what it means for the future.

Have you ever wondered what the modern MMO landscape might look like if the forerunners of the genre had been different? The multiplayer text-based games, MUDs, of the late 80s and early 90s ran on pre-Internet, dial-up networks called Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSs. These games helped to pave the way for early-generation MMOGs like Neverwinter Nights; the first MMOG to feature graphics instead of a text-only or ASCII art interface.

Next came the classics; the pioneers of the MMO industry like The Realm, Ultima Online and Everquest. But it wasn't until World of Warcraft that MMORPGs truly went mainstream, breaking down the walls that separated RPG fans and PC gamers. Both Everquest and WoW changed many gamers' preconceptions about the role-playing genre. They exemplified a new breed of MMORPGs that didn't rely so much on turn-based combat, text-heavy interaction and many other inherent staples of traditional RPGs.

When I see the products that consistently rise to the top in today's lineup, it makes me wonder if the modern "mold" of MMOs is cured to a rock-hard standard, or if we might still see an innovative change in the mainstream market. Also inspired by an editorial I stumbled upon recently; Colin "Seraphina" Brennan's "All hail the modern MMO gamer—a twitchy, frothy mess," I'm more curious about the current MMORPG paradigm than ever. Will players embrace unfamiliar MMO concepts, or are we stuck in a market that will only produce viable games if they follow tried-and-true designs?

I realize that gamers might be tired of seeing World of Warcraft used as a model to compare and contrast all other MMOs to. But regardless of which angle you view it from, WoW has set a precedent in today's market—there's just no denying it. With 11 million subscribers, it's either the best MMORPG ever made, or the most accessible.

It's only natural that subsequent MMOs would try to follow in the footsteps of giants like WoW and EQ. Once the industry finds a recipe that works; i.e., one that's successful, major developers aren't going to waste a substantial amount of time and money trying to re-invent the wheel.

This is a concept you can observe in almost any industry—just look at the soda we drink. Despite the large number of beverage companies that exist, most of the soda flavors on the market are derivative of something else. There might be dozens of different kinds of cola or lime-flavored soda, but they're all based on popular brands that established an earlier market presence. Every once in a while we might see something innovative appear (remember Crystal Pepsi and OK Soda?), but these products usually only attract a niche customer base or eventually die out.

Although the analogy is crude, it's an accurate way to describe the concept of market precedence in any industry, MMOs included. An established precedence helps explain why you'll find so many similarities among the most popular MMOs, whether it's in graphical design, the UI, level progression or gear itemization. It's not necessarily a matter of one MMO "ripping off" another; if players learn that a floating exclamation point over a NPC's head means there's a quest available, developers will use game elements like that to their advantage. A few months ago, ZAM featured an editorial about that very topic.

But to broaden the subject a bit more, let's take a look at an excerpt from Brennan's editorial, which I mentioned earlier:

[…] Take the gimmicks away from the boss fights in WoW and your skills don't matter.  You end up with a whole UI loaded with junk and crazy people attempting to theorycraft their way out of a virtual paper bag.  It all comes down to what armor your[sic] wearing at the time, because that's what WoW does to make sure people don't get ahead of themselves.  (Because content lockdown via random item drops is the best thing a game designer can make.)

Brennan is specifically referring to the demise of tactical thinking in modern-day MMOs. She argues that—beyond a few exceptions like EVE Online or FFXI's "skillchain" system—most of today's MMOs lack many of the tactical combat mechanics that attracted so many people to traditional RPGs in the first place. Some people even feel that MMORPGs are slowly leading to the demise of traditional RPGs.

It's one example of how market precedence can dictate the types of MMOs developers choose to invest in, even years into the future. When a successful MMO paradigm is established, it can be surprisingly difficult for the industry to collectively break free of that archetype. The "Quest: Kill 10 Rats" joke is a testament to this concept. The idea of an adventurer heading to the outskirts of town and slaying X number of monsters had become an archetypal pattern in modern MMO design, long before WoW came along.

When you take a moment to consider how many other MMO design elements wound up being paralleled in some fashion within today's games, the concept doesn't seem that far-fetched. Level progression, hit points, mana, spells or abilities, action points, talent points, roots, stuns, AoE—the list goes on, and those are just examples of character and combat mechanics. People tend to gravitate toward the familiar; an issue that's become a double-edged sword when it comes to MMOs.

Brennan's standpoint revolves primarily around the idea of real-time combat versus turn-based combat. She admits that the two types of combat can't easily be pigeon-holed into a "which is better?" argument, since it's really more like apples and oranges. It's just one aspect of MMOs that's used to illustrate the influence that precedence has over the industry. But it's a good one, because it's a mechanic that exemplifies a current MMO paradigm that will prove difficult for developers to break free of.

To expound upon this particular idea, try to imagine the alternative: some kind of hybrid real-time/turn-based combat system. Then try to imagine that system used in the world's next "big" MMO; one with more than a million subscribers, or even the eventual "WoW-Killer," whatever that might be. Imagine the difficulty developers would face in acclimating new players to something so new and unfamiliar. Not many developers and publishers want to take that chance.

Even though every new MMO that comes out is different and unique in some way, they all seem to have been built on one another's failures and successes. When developers do try shifting the paradigm, the results are usually met with mixed reaction. For example, when Mythic developed Warhammer Online, it envisioned a way to bring back spatially-relative combat by adding character collision to PvP. The goal was to create situations with more tactical realism; tanks in the front, physically blocking and protecting the casters and healers in the rear.

Unfortunately, WAR's character collision detection was met with heavy criticism. Most opponents blamed it on buggy coding, although many people simply weren't used to the mechanic—they just couldn't "get comfortable" with something so different from the "norm." The same is true of Darkfall's combat system, which takes place in real-time but is meant to be more tactically-played than a typical fantasy MMO.

We might be on the threshold of witnessing a new shift of the MMO paradigm as "next-gen" game types like first-person-shooter and "superhero" MMOs grow in popularity. So far, most MMOFPS games released have been poor examples of an MMO, with nothing more than an upgradeable character and a multiplayer server to warrant the "MMO" prefix. But as new games are developed, it's inevitable that innovative gameplay will also emerge.

Someday we might see the successful implementation of hybrid real-time/turn-based "standard" in MMOFPS games, at least. I'd love to see something similar to the V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) combat system used in Fallout 3. Until the right blend of action and tactical combat can be achieved, I'm afraid Brennan's assessment of contemporary MMOs might be correct.

When it comes to classic fantasy or hack-and-slash MMOs, it might be a longer period of time before we really begin to see new games that don't rely so heavily on tried-and-true formulas. Some things look promising, like the flight system used in the upcoming Aion, or the "sandbox"-style gameplay we're hearing so much about.

But these are still just baby steps when silhouetted against the sprawling landscape of the established MMO paradigm. You also have to consider if a drastic change in that landscape is desirable, or even warranted. There's a reason the wheel hasn't been re-invented thousands of years after its inception. It's been upgraded over the years—refined—but never truly changed.

Maybe the modern MMORPG isn't much different, having already reached its optimum potential. A decade from now, we might still be hunting down those 10 rats and furiously hitting "1" on our keyboards, waiting for a cooldown to refresh. But for gamings' sake (and to keep Gary Gygax from rolling over in his grave), I really hope that's not the case.

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Keyboards and rats
# Aug 08 2009 at 1:43 PM Rating: Decent
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A decade from now, we might still be hunting down those 10 rats and furiously hitting "1" on our keyboards, waiting for a cooldown to refresh. But for gamings' sake (and to keep Gary Gygax from rolling over in his grave), I really hope that's not the case.

I seriously doubt that we will be "furiously hitting '1' on our keyboards", but we will still probably be chasing those rats.

The reason that I think we won't be hitting the keyboards is the real innovation that WoW has - the programmable user interface. There is as much (if not more) innovation in the player community as there is in the developer community --- and we are a larger group. The WoW UI is very dull (perhaps even dumb), but when you can change it to a heads-up targetting display, the nature of playing the game changes. It becomes easier to play. Game developers are borrowing ideas from the WoW players not just for WoW, but for other MMORPGs as well.

As far as the rats go, we will be stuck with them for quite a while. We were fighting them in 1978 when I started playing RPGs. You have to start somewhere, and those rats (and their ilk) are so traditional...
Good article
# Aug 08 2009 at 7:40 AM Rating: Good
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Many solid points made in the article, well done.

I'd like to see 2 new rpgmmo's developed, one for the PVE crowd, one for PVP. I think games that try to do both compromise too much.

I thought Warhammer was going to deliver the PVP, found it lacking myself (though innovative in some ways). I actually liked Battlegrounds in WoW (though contrived) until they changed to cross-serving queing. That killed the community (before it was with and against familiar people --I was on a great server for it) and my interest in WoW pvp.

I lean towards the EQ camp over WoW, so it colours my response here as I have learned my heart is in PVE.


PVE:

-Graphics that aren't cartoony (WoW). War got some of this right, depends what NPC or PC race you are looking at. Character customization ala City of Heroes or even Vanguard.

-small raids (maybe 18) to ensure community and tightness

-awesome quests (like Coldain prayer shawl, epics, etc.) but no 5% spawns that occur every 27 minutes or 1 week timers. Also, don't put quest drops on npc people are going to farm.Make me work sure, don't make me sit.

-Useful factions on a logical system. I liked Wow here. War's chapter idea was intersting but ultimately too linear for my tastes. EQ has too many factions, most of which matter for nothing.

-limited soloability. Success while soloing yes, best and most efficient way to play --not if you want community.

-useful classes. EQ distills down to tank, dps, healer and utility. The AA system is brilliant as EQ did it. WoW, EQ2 and War are easymode in this respect. Paladin and Shadowknight should be earned titles (as an example) and if you do the work to have Harm Touch and Lay on Hands as a tank... Great! I actually like the guild wars example of you can have 1000 skills but only use 8 of them at a time. So tactical!

-minimal instanced content (i.e., The way Deadmines was done in WoW with a real zone acting as the entry/lead-up to it is good), but instanced content where it is needed such as dungeons. Too much instances without "real" areas in between makes the game feel empty = dead.

-skill-based character development. Skill and player/character experience must be greater than gear. Gear as the elite determiner kills the game. It would be better to raid for elite skills.

-loot and coin minimized (warhammer did this well in my view) but quest reward gear needs to be useful more than 2 levels if the gear must be the main source of character stats (WoW and War both bad for this, you have no attachment to 98% of your gear).

-no dye! Sounds like a minor thing, but it gives reason to hunt specific armor sets (and as a developer so much easy to make 30 different coloured sets of the same armor drop in different places, but justified in a no-dye game). Fashion builds the community and identity, as strange as that sounds. The EQ2 dressing window where you set the visible slot look (but dont actually have to wear the item) is a really good solution to this.

-A valid, useful and fun to do tradeskill system. EQ doesn't shine here (with apologies to the EQ fanatics in this regard). WoW's system had some potential here, and Warhammer's seemed to need more fleshing out to actually be useful.

I'm sure I could go on, but that's enough for now.

PVP wise I won't offer ideas, since I would likely not play it.
The Future may already be here...
# Aug 08 2009 at 12:27 AM Rating: Decent
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As I read the above, I kept thinking of the MMO that I first started playing just a year or two ago. Guild Wars. You speak of a more dynamic, more challenging future, but I think perhaps you are underestimating the present.

Not to toot Arena and NCSofts horn for them, but they did make a rather interesting new twist on MMO's...and not just because there are no monthly fees.

I have always loved the PvE element, so I don't really know much of the PVP element of Guild Wars, but here are a few points in regards to your own points....

Level Grinding: GW only has 20 levels. As a result, level grinding isn't a very big part of the game. So why would you play it beyond achieving level 20? Well, there is still a lot more to the way the game is played. In all honesty, lvl 20 is achievable by the time you finish the first section of each Campaign. With this as part of their design, they had to give the players something more interesting to do right from the start. 2 things, in particular.

1. SKILL CAPTURES: Each campaign has thousands of skills. Only a small portion of them can actually be purchased. The rest require the skill "Signet of Capture". You have to go and kill a boss who has the same proffesion (Class in standard MMO Terms) and then use the Signet of Capture. It will then offer to replace your Signet of Capture with one of the skills the Boss knew that you don't. This is, in fact, the only way to obtain certain "ELITE" skills.

2. BUILDS: This is, by far, one of the most interesting aspects, and one of the most technical and tactical. There are two types of areas. Towns and Explorable areas. All your quests and monster fighting takes place in the Explorable ares. All your prepairing for battle takes place in towns. In towns, you can change how you distribute your attribute points, and chose your skills. In the Explorable areas you can't. This is where the tactics come into play. You can only use 8 skills at one time. From the thousands of skills available, even if you have them, you can only use 8 at one time.


Builds have to be done to understand in full, but the perfect example of the near diabolical cleaverness of this system is what is called a "55 Build". First created for a monk character, this is a build that, through Attribute, Skill and Armor Choices, reduces a Monks hit points from around 300 to 55. Why would you do that?...because as a result, if you play it right, you can make it so that your monk never dies. A 55 build, played just right, creates an invulnerable character. What fun is that?...Well, the fun is in seeing how long you can keep it up, cause if you activate the wrong skill at the wrong time.....you can easily die.


Now that requires some skill. That requires some brains. That requires more than button mashing.
The Future may already be here...
# Aug 09 2009 at 3:08 PM Rating: Decent
Guild Wars did so many things right in terms of innovation. Examples would be instances and henchmen. Here's what they did completely WRONG: made it free to play. That move brought in the lowest common denominator as far as player base in concerned. I find it really hard to get into the community spirit when Silverpoopoo is asking me to group or Phagboilezrider wants to trade some gear. These are both names I actually encountered and remembered during my time in Guild Wars. That said, name filters are a beautiful thing - and make them as strict as possible. Otherwise, I agree with your assessment of GW.
The Future may already be here...
# Aug 08 2009 at 3:23 AM Rating: Decent
Absolutely a great read. I was dismayed to see the absence of City of Heroes/Villains when you mentioned superheroes MMOs. COH/V was my first true MMO, and I have been playing games for years, like many others.

I like your writing style, the only thing I think that could have improved the article would have been the citation of references, just to add weight to the author's opinion.

MMO, or Massive Multiplayer Online games mean just that. Massive. Multiplayer. Online. You touched on use of branding and creating a game that follows a formula. The quest based style of playing has been around for many years, and WOW certainly tapped into the market by offering a game that was very easy to learn, but difficult to master. I think that Blizzard took MMOs to the next level because you can play WOW any way you want to. Various features like the simple questing, or the complex questing to the use of teams in dungeons, to pvp combat in battlegrounds, even the auction house and crafting all add to the game mechanics and have a broad appeal to people. The WOW world community is huge, even retaining people long after someone may put the game down and not play. WOW really could be said to be a modern world video game, not seen since the days of PacMan.

Many players look at the gaming industry from a player perspective, but the developers have to also look at the playability from a business perspective. WOW has been successful from the business model it follows. Offering a solid product that people want and constantly adapting the product to accommodate as many people as possible without breaking the game. The World of Warcraft brand is staggering and a game would be considered successful to have one million subscribers. WOW is by far the industry leader, and when you want to copy a cat, you have to copy the right cat. That is why we see so many new games with similar features that WOW incorporates.

I also loved the analogy of Kill 10 Rats. Questing and building a character provide a sense of ownership because a person puts time and effort into the character and the sense of ownership also compels a person to continue on. This is a passive form of sales causing repeat business. An average player may start at level 1 and hit 80 in a few months, but a new player might take longer. An expert player would hit it under a week. Regardless of the person's skill level, everyone is able to play the game and by renewing the subscription, WOW has repeat business. Other game producers are trying to tap into Blizzard's formula for repeat business, so again, we have another reason to copy WOW's formula.

Lastly, with any product or service, the customers are always right. This cliche statement means a lot of things, including the loud and obnoxious person yelling in the local retail store to the manager caving in to get said loud and obnoxious person satisfied and out of the store. The manager does not cave in because the obnoxious person is right, the manager caves in to save the business being affected by the disturbance. Other customers may become upset and react by not making any purchases. The customer is always right because it is the customers who ultimately decide if a product or service will be profitable. The individual consumer is really what makes the economy work or not work, regardless of what the media may try to convince us.

Loved your article! Thanks for inspiring me to write as well :)
Something Organic
# Aug 07 2009 at 11:27 PM Rating: Default
While having a vision of what a world is supposed to be and a direction on where the game world is supposed to go is great in the mind of the developers, a good deal of them forget one major element... the hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who live in... the people who are paying to live in that world of theirs... the ones 'renting' and paying their pay checks.

Take WoW, the tentatively reigning king on a tarnishing throne. Massive player base that has managed to survive living in a most static of game worlds. Plot lines and quest chains left hanging, an over abundance of 'FedEx'ing quests, and a general ignoring of what players do. In the early days... there was fighting over towns, battles between players for control of zones... the quests in the area hint at a conflict raging in these areas but nothing ever came of it. The designers forgot we were out here doing that. In fact, there were on more than one occasion that large scale player organized battles led to server destabilization, lag, and crashes... and GMs warning everyone to stop doing what they want and go do what the developers intended. We were trying to push our desires into a world that we should of been able to affect. We wanted something organic.

Instead, we had the organic feel of zone wide fighting squished by the creation of sanitized, cookie cutter battles that were all very tiny and were really kind of insulting if you had done something more fluid before hand. But they were now isolated away in tiny little fights in tiny little zones that reset once the fight was done. That didn't work so they sanitized it again, simplifying it again, introducing points... now it was an equation... they didn't look at giving something worth fighting... just thinking all we wanted was just fighting.

Fighting with no true point is of no value. When questing and fighting the environment... the environment should be dangerous... it should not be a badge of honor to die like someone said in an earlier post. Verse the environment, you are pushing forward a storyline... but it shouldn't be 'kill 10 rats'... give a better job then that. Make us use our noggins. Also, don't leave plot arcs hanging... Blizz started to figure it out with Wrath but they dropped the ball still there.

But again, fighting for no reason is not worth it... and just fighting so you can get points to spend on special gear is not a valid reason. You might as well just give us money for it and go spend it like real money. Now, take something that was now very cookie cutter and simplify it even more... you now have Arena. Its so lifeless compared to ancient days of zone wide wars that might last hours and have no real defined goals... boom... 5 minutes if you are lucky. Rinse, lather, repeat... no lasting consequences... no camping... no conquest...

No war.

That is the whole point after all of having factions, yes? To instigate conflict between those factions? To bring people to their knees for opposing your faction? If they submit and let you go by unchallenged, pity on them. That is what an organic world would be like. Some games have that... even if they are flying spreadsheets. By making conflicts not have meaning, by having loss be painless, and by having every fight be a cookie cutter you Que up for... you take away any purpose to it.

Put all of this together and you get what is in essence boring quests, disjointed stories, and less than memorable fights that don't leave a lasting impression on the players. Perhaps developers should stop just mindlessly going on about their visions of a storyline or imagined goals of player balance or slight engine tweaks when they are not needed and actually turn and watch what the players who play the game are actually doing and tailor the story and world towards them... and cater to a more organic world.

Make it worth our subscription fees.
...
# Aug 07 2009 at 10:32 PM Rating: Decent
I think moreover the answer to the future is finding a happy medium between the 1 step playability of wow (or easy mode, as it stands in the mmo world), everquests after peak level system of aa's and community, and the other elements of the FFseries and NwN lines.
Finding this medium probably won't come out of eq3/vangaurd2 or anything like it.
And convincing people to step back up to a hard risk/hard reward type of game is going to be a hard sell.
The cruisy/easymode games are going to hold the top spot, because like it or not, most people are lazy butts, and games that they don't have to sweat over,.. are going to be their thing.
Economics
# Aug 07 2009 at 8:37 PM Rating: Decent
I would be happy just to have WoW quality MMORPG with stronger economical model and better social structures. I want a MMORPG where you have family, tribes, kings, nations and slaves and all these roles are could shift during game play. You social status in the game is never in the stone you could rise to fill a role of a king and You could be a king and lose a major war and wake up as a slave next day. I want social ladders I want reason for pvp for example king is forcing me to pay too much taxes lets go rebellion against him etc...
Shmanks
# Aug 07 2009 at 5:37 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thanks guys.

And BigZ, I just checked the link to Brennan's editorial, and it seems to be working for me. Did you try Googling the name of the editorial? Lemme see if I can find any mirrored links...Hmm, couldn't find any...You can try going to her root URL at experiencecurve.wordpress.com and clicking the "Previous" link at the bottom a couple times until you find the editorial. It's about halfway down on the third page. I really recommend checking it out; it's a good read.

I also agree with you about the "Fisher-Price Effect" when it comes to certain MMOs. More than anything though, I'm still hoping we see at least one more major paradigm shift in the MMO industry. Something that looks and feels totally unfamiliar to the current standard and places more emphasis on the tactical gameplay expressed in some of the articles linked in this editorial.
Glad people are thinkin about this
# Aug 07 2009 at 1:44 PM Rating: Decent
I look forward to reading Colin's article... but it doesn't seem to wanna load right now. From the title, I can pretty much guess the tone. And it's probably one I would agree with.
I too have become dismayed with the state of online gaming over the last couple years. It's something I refer to as "the Fisher-Price Effect". In general, the dumbing down of gaming. While I enjoyed Wow for a while, I came to loathe the over abundance of quests like "Hand this note to that guy standing across the room, come back here & I'll give you phat lewts". And EQ2, no doubt due to pressure from the monetary success of Wow, has begun to follow closely in it's footsteps in the dumbing down process. I've actually, after 5 years away after having played since beta, have gone back to EQ1 for a bit. I'm not sure it can hold my attention for 5 years like it did the first time, but it has some of the things I've come to miss. I miss the challenge. I miss having to work for stuff. I miss having death actually carry some sort of penalty. Someone hold my beer while I puke... but I may just... no... I can't make myself say it... I think I might miss... The Vision(tm Brad "Can't Finish a Game With a Gun to My Head" McQuaid)!!! *cough spit gag* I used to despise camping a mob... now I find myself looking for a named to camp. ******* endlessly about corpse runs... now it's almost a medal of honor to have died. My gear is crap right now... and I LOVE IT, cause I'm gonna EARN some that's better.
Somewhere along the way some good ideas were murdered... or perhaps a better word is sacraficed. Creative zone & quest design was sacraficed on the alter of development tools that allowed producers to crank out cookie cutters zones & quest arcs. The idea that levelling up shouldn't be the whole point of the game was valid & honorable, but the implimentation of the concept was horrendous. I could prattle on in the vein, but I'll just add that viable tradeskill economies were also similarly abandoned.
But I have hope! No doubt somewhere down the road we'll see EQ3. The certainly the absorbtion of Sigil might make it FEEL more like Vanguard2... but that's another discussion. The Everquest franchise is still too valuable to not continue to exploit. And I have high hopes for an EQ3. I mean look what they have to take from. Imagine a tradeskill system that's a combination of SWG (awesome harvestable resource idea & crafting system), EQ1 (difficult yes, but made being a grandmaster crafter a REAL accomplishment) and EQ2 (did away with EQ1's streaky skill up path... just please don't make it THIS dumbed down & exploitable)... along with whatever ideas they wanna steal from other people's games. And we might even have a producer for EQ3 that will understand that you CANNOT have a sustainable economy, including tradeskilling, with out permanent decay of gear & weapons. Making everything no-drop is NOT the answer. Stuff simply MUST wear out & go away. Imagine mobs that set their level, difficulty & loot table when you aggro them. Imagine quests that do the same thing. No more being forced thru quest lines the way the developer wants you to go. You find a quest, you do the quest, it's always at your level. Also greatly cuts down on camping. I could go on & on.
The holy grail is right there... just a few years development time down the road. Perhaps no one more than Sony has more history & knowledge to draw on, given that smart people are at the helm. Uh-oh... now I'm dreading that it's Sony... ;) Maybe the game could be designed by a board of gamers?? I can round up about a dozen people with 10+ years gaming time each... surely WE couldn't ***** it up, right? ;)
Woot
# Aug 07 2009 at 1:32 PM Rating: Excellent
26 posts
Thanks Wax.

That was one of the best and most unbiased MMO centric articles I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

Peace,
rsjabber.
Woot
# Aug 07 2009 at 4:26 PM Rating: Decent
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I second that, great article.

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