So it begins.

Welcome to Thematic Dissonance, my new blog. I am the writer McJigg, I believe in the spirit of games and having theme match your mechanics. If your mechanics do not support your theme, you have what I call Thematic Dissonance. I see it everywhere.

Our current implementation of levels, gating players from each other is dissonant of a living world.

But we needs levels! You may say. I mostly agree. I don't agree with getting a friend into my game, but not playing with him for months until they too are max level.

The giving of better gear to highly skilled individuals in PVP is dissonant of fair play in both ranked and unranked systems.

But highly skilled people should be awarded! You may say. I agree. However I don't think people earning great gear in ranked systems coming down to slay ungeared people in unranked systems conducive to a healthy player pool.

Even just some basic class design tends to run against what a class is. With World of Warcraft as an example...

The shaman move Ascendance, where you turn into a giant half-elemental monster engineered by the villains of the previous expansion with human proportions is dissonant with with the theme of a shaman. The one who's in balance with the elements, a spiritual leader. Playable by orcs, trolls, tauren, goblins, pandarean, dreanei and dwarves.... but not the races of more human proportion...

Sometimes advancement I find dissonant. Again, with Warcraft as my example...

The level 90 talent choices for mages. You spent hours leveling your mage, 1-89 managing your mana a certain way. But right at max level that all changes. You HAVE to change your mana management among these three choices that will very much change how you need to play in general. You trained 89 levels playing one way, for level 90 to be completely different.

I'll be exploring all of these later on in their own posts.

For now I'm just going to list some blogs I read, the ones which inspired me to create my own.

Keen and Graev. http://www.keenandgraev.com/

I don't always agree with them, but I always enjoy their insight.

Gevlon the Greedy Goblin. http://greedygoblin.blogspot.ca/

To him, I am probably both a moron and a slacker. The kind of player he hates to love. Constantly reminding me how easy rules and mechanics can be bent and broken within the rules.

Syn the Hardcore Casual. http://syncaine.com/

I love his insight on single player games, and sometimes agree with him about MMOs.

Thanks to each of them, as I've been reading for multiple years.

Until the next post.

-McJigg