Designing Interactive Characters Class - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 169

4 th Place: 10 XP per guild member
5 th Place: 5 points per guild member
6 th Place: Raid wiped (0 points)

Adding XP had no effect on the level of competition. It was still high, as you can
see in Figure 10.11.

Figure 10.11
Intense competition, but lots of laughter, in the midterm prep.

However, after it was over, one student complained that the physical element of
the competition was out of place in what was meant to be an intellectual
exercise. He pointed out that the mentally agile players were at a disadvantage
when facing more physically fit players. It wasn ' t just prep for an exam. His XP

was at stake! I didn t want to lose the heat of the competition, which the physical

task of racing for the Hat of Knowledge introduced, and the XP total wasn

'

' t

large, but his complaint had some validity. In fact, I wanted to address it.

The problem, as I saw it, lay in the order of events. As before, each guild
nominated a puller who would race other pullers to the Hat of Knowledge. The
idea was that the winning puller would wait for his guild to find the answer in