Over at my personal workblog, I recently raised my eyebrows at the unwieldy press release promoting the holiday events of Chinese MMO Elf Online, which seemed funny because of its inscrutable English translation. Veteran game developer and blogger Jeff Freeman was intrigued by Elf Online too, and took an Online World Atlas-style pictorial trip through the open beta, chronicling a funny journey full of inexplicable mechanics and non-sequiturs. "As it is meant to be a humorous game, pointing-out funny things about it is not intended to be criticism," Freeman respectfully prefaces, stressing that he's actually enjoying Elf Online very much.

Freeman learns that Elf Online actually bucks some key MMO trends, offering a quest compendium, letting your pet have a job, and allowing your character to fight in baby mode. Right, as a baby.

The whole tour's worth reading; this is just one highlight:

"All the quests that I completed were all of the kill 5 of this, kill 10 of that, collect 4 of these by killing 4 or more of those sorts, excluding quests sending me from one NPC to another. Stock MMO quests.

One other quest some might consider an exception, was the become-a-soldier-quest itself, after killing 7 of something, being required to swear that my little guy would fight to the death for the Imaginary Goddess."

[Jeff Freeman -- How I Spent My Vacation (Elfing)]