My question is what about defense? And magic defense especially! Many of the games we play concentrate on making the attack fun while leaving defense to be completely passive. We either rely on armor, or buffs, some sort of passive defense statistic, or just massive hit points to stay alive while we work the buttons like mad to dish out an attack on the opponent. Sure a few games experiment with ‘stances’ that are managed actively to promote a strong defense but it’s not that common and it’s not all that active either. Now let me be clear that I don’t want to advocate ‘twitch’ game defenses… no dodging arrows or missles or active parrying and shield work. The latency over the internet really prevents those ideas from working as designed.

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