A while ago I found this great little game called Puzzle Pirates. Basically you create your little pirate character and then you have to do puzzles to perform certain tasks. The most fun was joining up with other people on someone's ship and going pillaging. You all had to work together and do your own puzzle well in order to help the ship sail, load guns, fix holes, pump water out, navigate etc.

Anyway, it was a great idea and completely smashed the mould of most other MMORPGs out there.

I was happily pillaging and collecting vast amounts of Pieces of Eight since my #1 goal was to outfit my little pirate dude in some cool piratey gear. So I finally saved up enough to buy him a Swashbuckler's Jacket. That's when I found out about item decay. Apparently, after 90 login days my awesome Swashbuckler's Jacket would be reduced to rags. So I had effectively thrown 12,000 Pieces of Eight out the window and my dream of a cool little pirate was completely destroyed. Even though I had 90 days to enjoy my Jacket, I knew that I would have to collect the money again and it didn't seem worth it to me.

I like set goals that I can accomplish and then forever bask in the glory of. I don't like having to keep working to re-create the rewards. I like to move onto other goals so I have a sense of progress. Puzzle Pirates did not provide. Sure I could instead save up to buy a ship which would never decay and then happily sail the high seas on that but I would still not look piratey enough!

Sure, if I was playing a MUD I could imagine what my character looked like and I would have no problems. But when I'm given an avatar, I damn well want him to look cool!

Obviously other people don't want the same thing from their games so I'm sure a lot of them can look past this (and a lot do judging by the 3 million Puzzle Pirates out there). And I can see why the item decay is needed, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with their system. You can't have the same economy that they have without item decay but unfortunately I don't want anything to do with that system.