How politics works in the TERA MMORPG

I’m a big fan of politics in RPGs. In some settings it’s the politics that make the game for me.

Back with the other internet dinosaurs and when I had time I used to play a lot on MUSHes. This wasn’t because I was writer. As you can tell – I’m not. This was because I really enjoyed the sort of politics that could only happen in a RPG when enough people played it at once and didn’t have to shout over each other to be heard. In fact, LARPs are attractive for the same reason.

Politics are the dangerous gravity that threaten to lure me into MMORPGs. Some games do well – EVE springs to mind as a game in which player politics are very important – but others rather skip over it in favour of dungeon crawling.

This trailer for TERA looks to be very promising. This is a high fantasy MMORPG and yet it is making the effort to be clever with its politics.