I am sure that anyone who has played a massive multiplayer online game has at one point in time ended up in a group with someone who played the game horribly. It may have just been an off night for them, or perhaps they didn’t know what they should be doing, or they were wearing the wrong gear, or just maybe they did not have the skill to play well.

I want to take a look at something that in the past I have overlooked. Player skill level. MMOG’s are not like your typical first person shooter, or even a real time strategy game where sheer dexterity, reaction speed, and quickness will often determine how good the player is. At the same point in time skill does make a difference in how well a player does. How quickly I can react to a situation that is going bad, and correctly heal the right person can make the difference between the group wiping, and narrowly surviving.

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