Yeah, merchandising is much the same as Item malls, although they are physical items, they are just another profit channel companies use. Though not many in the MMO space. Which surprises me for some of the bigger ones, as geeks and gamers are notorious buyers of collectible swag.

Now maybe this goes to Item Malls, but WoW and SWG both have an additional source of income. TCGs… Players buying into the trading card games based on the MMO with the hopes of getting special cards for special Item Mall type items. It’s a scheme that both appeals to the collectionists and gamblers… and quite frankly, at least with WoW, it’s quite a profit machine for them.

Anyways, good read as always.

My main issue with item malls, which you give a great example of is the over powering content, and remarkably it’s usually free to play games that are guilty of this more than any subscription game I know of.

I encounter this far too often myself. I used to play an MMO Mud game called Imperian. The ’special credits’ were called Credits. You bought them with real life money, or you bought them in-game from other players.

They were pretty much THE only way to get the best armour and weapons. So either you grinded for months and bought loads from other players to buy one weapon or you sunk into your wallet for $40-50 and got it that way.

I didn’t like it naturally. It created such a power gap that those with the money were the most feared players.

I do like how D&D Online handled it, mostly anyway. I could buy from the store what I could get in game. Just quicker and easier from the store.

I bought a +1 Scimitar, but I could have paid 1000 gold or so for one too. Nothing in the store was unique, except classes/races and some content. The content bit was what I didn’t like as you were pretty much forced to run the same content over and over or buy the extra stuff.

For World of Warcraft, with the level of content, content quality, server quality and good connection I get. I’m happy to pay the monthly fee. I have played many many MMOs, WOW is one of the best in all ways, especially in lag XD

Mike :

Got this for my 5 year old and other than having to read everything to him it was great. He managed to find the Nightmare Crown with very little help (except for reading) in about 2 weeks. I am so proud of him and how he played the game!

That’s wonderful, it’s a great game for kids, I like how it not only has the reading component, but the abstract thinking on the part of analyzing, but the reconstruction components, and to a small degree the lock picking, though haha, not a life skill I want my kids to learn LOL.

bob :

but how do you decorate your headquarters

Hiya Bob, sorrie for the late answer, if you haven’t figured it out however, it’s with the force manipulator on the “blue energy spots” in different rooms.

quietone513662 :

I recently purchased thi game for my kids how do i get it to speak in english?anyone know

They speak Simlish, it’s just how those crazy Sims roll.

jake :

can u help i cant figure out how to anaylyze da crystals in the part where u have to see if it is real

I do wish there we more guides for this, I might go through and take screen caps of various puzzles for people.

KIMBERLY :

I need help analyzing the big eggs in the tree, i can’t figure out the molecules, I was looking for letters in the woods an came up upon the eggs! someone help!

Yeah, there is a trick to it, I’ll go see if I can do that analysis again and take a pic of the results, I got through it through a lot of trial and error.