SOCK is an online role-playing game run by my illustrious predecessor Wonderslime. I know very little about it other than that it is no longer accepting new players and that it is in the process of being finished. No offense to Wonderslime intended, but I never had much of an interest and consequently know relatively little about it.

As my colleague Oliver Motok has said, Lost Odyssey justifies the purchase of an XBox 360. The problem with this equation is that the XBox 360 is a relatively unstable piece of architecture prone--I am sad to say--to self-destructing. Both Oliver and I have found myself on the receiving end of this unpleasant implosion process.

Here is my advice: buy a 360 but do not buy a Gold Live! account or any of their downloadable content. Should anything happen to your 360, the difficulties of getting that nonsense transferred (which I am still wrestling with after more than a month) are practically insurmountable. Only after they saw I actually worked for RPGamer were they even remotely willing to assist me--and then, they could not assist me themselves, only the head of the department could, and he has not called me back yet.

As for Eternal Sonata, I fully expect it to be released here in North America. So much so that I actually sold the copy I owned for the XBox360 once it was completed. I will rebuy it again for the PS3 when it is released. Unfortunately, this re-release on the 360 is most unlikely for Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, so the XBox remains a fixture alongside my other consoles.

My love for MMOs is rapidly evaporating--I hardly play WoW at all anymore and my participation in Final Fantasy XI is ended. I will say that if you wanted to pick a hard MMO to get into, you couldn't do much better than to pick FFXI. Quests give quite marginal rewards, and your starting resources are very limited, so it is extremely difficult to play without assistance. Furthermore, the amount of knowledge necessary for even the most basic level of play is truly vast. One must be aware of how to play their job, know of a variety of necessary quests, comprehend how to write macros, and so on. It is truly a massive undertaking and, at this late stage in the lifecycle of the game, not one I can in good conscience advise to any new player.

This is a pity because it is truly an excellent game and worthy of a look--I just don't feel that you would have a good time trying to make any real inroads into it now that it is essentially ending. This is the real shame about MMOs--once the servers are off, they cannot be played again. The loss of this capability gives me cause for sadness, as has been mentioned before on the podcast.

Oh no, not this question again!

To my mind there is no accurate way to quantify it satisfactorily. The best way I can describe it is to say that an RPG meets certain requirements and has a particular feel. If it deviates too far from this, it stops being an RPG. The only meaningful answer that we can ever hope to come to for any particular title is through a general consensus. If a majority of self-described RPGamers feel a game is an RPG, for all intents and purposes it is best to consider it as such, despite any omissions or additions inconsistent with previous RPGs.

You need to be more specific!

Generally speaking, I like innovation as long as it adds something positive, and doesn't take the player out of the game or detract from the story-telling experience of the RPG.

It seems an astronomical figure to me, but honestly, most very large numbers do. Human minds are not well-equipped to deal with the very large or the very small. For an example, let us take the common brick. We all know what a brick looks like. Now imagine a vast, unending car park. What would one brick look like? Easy. How about ten? Easy. Now what does one hundred bricks look like? Hmm. How about a thousand? Ten thousand? Now about about an hundred thousand? By now you see the problem. It is extremely hard to visuallise these numbers, let alone a million or a billion.

To sort your problem for you: look at the pyramids. They seem big, vast, but just how much so? Well, if you were to take all the stone used in the three great pyramids and use it to build a wall, you could circle France and the wall would be nine feet high and three feet thick. That's a lot of stone, but seeing it laid out in two different ways seems like vastly different amounts.

What am I trying to say here? I forgot. Something about two billion dollars being a ridiculous, unimaginable sum. I would have taken it and retired to an island filled with palm trees and drinks with little umbrellas in them.

Eternal Sonata took our RPG of the Year award for 2007, and rightly so. I feel the ending is weak, but you must be the judge of that. As for Lost Odyssey it is a glorious wonder, the like of which is seldom seen. You will not be disappointed.

I always need letters. Send more letters. Letters, letters, letters.

Yet another pet I have never heard of--and it sounds like he is well-developed, too! Can you think of anymore, readers? Keep them coming!

We talked about the GDC situation on the podcast this week past, and I recommend a listen. There's as much good to say about it as bad (possibly more)--as long as they don't go overboard like E3.

Luminous Arc was given a 2.0 and a 3.0 from our staff reviews, so I am not certain if it is something that should be held up as a model for other games, but it certainly seems to be better than an average of 30% for Baroque. I am not familiar with any translation issues, but now I will certainly be looking for comments on that particular facet of the game. Look for a review from us in the near future.

Cross your fingers. No word yet, but there is still time.