MMO Gaming

The year is quickly coming to an end. Normally I wouldn’t write anything in particular, since I already had my personal first year wrap up months ago, but everyone else is doing it, and hey, I’m a follower. Also, I haven’t posted much at all this month and I feel if I don’t post today then I will not start posting again regularly tomorrow, which would cause all sorts of problems.

Though certainly not the best year for MMOs there were definitely more interesting happenings than in many years prior. To highlight some of these goings on I decided to create a best (and worst) of list for whatever categories happened to pop into my head. If you’ve got your own “Best…” or “Worst…” post it in the comments; I’d love to hear.

Best Game Update/Patch

EVE Online: Trinity - Though it could be argued that this is more an expansion than a patch I’ll consider it, for the sake of having two separate categories (and winners) a patch, rather than an expansion. I’d say an expansion would be something you buy extra.

Now then, what makes “Trinity” so great? In case you didn’t hear, this is the patch where they completely overhauled the graphics, showing off some incredibly shiny new ships. There was other stuff too, of course, but that takes a back seat to the graphics, it’s the real reason people were so eager for it.

Pics via CrazyKinux

(more…)

There is a large break in the design process between PvE and PvP. There is little, if any crossover. Designing a game for one of these things doesn’t really work. Just ask Auran. People expect both from their MMO and when they get only one they feel cheated.

The problem, of course, from a purely developmental standpoint is that this requires (close to) twice the amount of work to be done. First you design one area of your game, and then the other and you have features for each. This wastes a lot of time and usually means the game is still heavily focused to one over the other (most likely PvE over PvP.) Essentially it becomes a matter of progressing through PvE content to advance (gain levels) and then, in the end, using those abilities to PvP.

But why? Why design a feature set for each and then have them be (for the most part) mutually exclusive? Why not mix them together a bit? Make PvP, entirely, a worthwhile (or hell, even doable) form of advancement. Design one set of features, reuse them between your PvE and PvP.

Don’t create battlegrounds for PvP and dungeons for PvE content. That is a waste of perfectly good development time. Make an instance which can do both. Mix them together. Allow them to be separate also, of course, you should still be able to choose one or the other just don’t design two different areas for what amounts to the same basic thing.

That’s not to say such an approach is not an investment of time, it certainly is, in designing the ability and tools to do this correctly in the first place, but, after having been implemented it allows much greater freedom to design really great areas. If your designers spend time on less areas they can make those areas really great. They can nail down the look, the sights, the sounds, the feel, they can get it all where it needs to be at.

And, speaking of double-dipping, why do we separate our genre’s so harshly in games? There is another waste if I’ve ever seen one. I think that will have to wait for another time though.

mmo, mmog, mmorpg, mmo gaming, game design, pve, pvp

I, like a great many people using Wordpress, use Akismet for my spam protection. I’ve been noticing a problem recently though. It’s letting through things, more than once, which I have already filtered out as spam. This is annoying.

Not so say it isn’t a great filter, it still is, as it blocks hundreds of comments each day (and has never blocked a legitimate comment to my knowledge) but the ones that get through just seem like such a pain.

Where do MMOs come in to this picture? Primarily in thinking about how to detract from in-game spam (of gold, or power leveling services, etc.). I’m not sure how to go about it. My problem is, you see, not that I don’t have an idea on systems that could be put in place (beyond what any of the current games are doing) but that I can’t think of a system that is inherently beyond being overcome in a relatively short time.

I started using Akismet when this blog first went up. That’s just over a year now. In that time some comments are already starting to slip through the cracks. Spammers are not stupid people (or the people creating the bots doing the spamming, depending on what it happens to be.)

I’ve noticed this trend for a long time in my time administrating/moderating communities as well. As soon as you implement something meant to stop spammers it works for a short time and then they circumvent that and you are back to square one.

So, how can we combat this in an MMOG? Giving it some thought the best I could come up with was spam filters (similar to an Akismet or any other type of spam filter) is applied inside your chat system. Any messages that are considered “spam” by the computer system are filtered out so they are never seen by the general audience of your game but it will still show for the spammers. This would be similar to an “auto ignore” feature built into the chat system.

Text that the filter is unsure of would be sent through once and could then be “reported” by players as spam. After it reaches a certain threshold of reports it flags all additional messages in that same auto ignore bank.

Similarly players could report any message that slipped through the cracks as just a normal message and it could be then removed as spam and flagged as ignore. (I’ll ignore for the moment the obvious useful administrative options that this would give any CSR as far as reports go.)

Of course this isn’t flawless by any means. The system could be abused by players, and will be, no doubt. But, I think adding in an auto filter for chat is the next logical step to take. Pure reporting works fine for a while, but as games get bigger, and the business of breaking the rules of those games get bigger, we need to find different ways to attack it.

Just some random things I was thinking about, back to your business now.

Apparently, having already seen my glowing review of AFK Magazine and enjoying that so much I was recently sent an e-mail by Dave Taylor from Gamerzines.com Specifically he directed me to Issue #2 of their MMOZine.

I was not informed of Issue #1, which is just as well, because I seem to like second issues much more than first.

Now, as happy as I am to randomly pimp a site here for the free post it allows me, there actually was something in the e-mail I was sent that I did want to pass along, I’ll just quote to save time.

This issue we have a free LOTRO item giveaway thanks to CodeMasters, so the item is Europe servers only. All readers need to do is request a code via the form in the magazine and we’ll send them it via email. Then they retrieve it via their COG account for use in game. The item is called the Glass of Aglaral and it restores +1 Hope for a 1 hour period on each use. Handy when you’ve been defeated.

I don’t happen to be playing LotRO, nor am I European, however, if Sitemeter is to be believed a large portion of my readership is from various places in Europe (and a shockingly large number from Brazil, but that’s another story) so I thought it was worth passing on.

As for the magazine itself? Well, I haven’t gotten very far into it but a few things I did like. First being, you download the PDF to view it. We all know how I feel about in-browser viewing of magazines I think.

Another nice thing, their reviews. I didn’t see a single number anywhere. Just a few days ago I was discussing with my brother how I would much prefer to get rid of scores given to games and just make people actually read text so they could decide whether the game was for them and not be forced to look at some arbitrary number someone set up.

All things considered I’m liking it so far and I’ll be watching it from here on out. If you are interested you can check it out here.

mmozine, gamerzines, mmo, mmog, mmorpg, mmo gaming, mmo reviews

I’ve been enjoying several other bloggers taking the time to do this, so I thought I’d throw some rather odd search terms used to bring people to the site. I can’t be sure exactly what a great number of these people are looking for, but I’ll give it a shot anyway.

First, let’s start with some visit depth statistics based on search words.

• 37 people arrived here when searching for “rabbits” I assume they ended up here but I can’t be certain because I am actually listed several times under that search.
• 4 people arrived here when searching for “rf online wine” I’m not sure what they wanted. Did they misspell the word “whine”? Who’s to say, but my only thoughts on RF Online are posted here. A quick hint, don’t bother with the game.
• MORE THAN ONE person ended up here after searching for “http://www.gamingmmo.com”. Folks, I don’t mean to be rude, but at some point it is easier to just type it into your address bar rather than do a search for it.

Okay, enough with the numbers, let’s just move on to some normal, everyday, ridiculous search strings.

• wow stats kills the most players - One could assume you wanted to know about the player who has the most PvP kills in World of Warcraft, but with that kind of shoddy searching you’ll never find an answer. Try to write something comprehensible. Unless of course you were suggesting that WoW stats actually kill people, in which case I would disagree, but WoW itself does kill people…seriously, search it.
• turtle sex - Oh the many “Turtles do it…” jokes I could make here. I’ll refrain though, this is a kid friendly blog, assuming, you know, you’re kids are adults.
• i hate mmo’s - And you have to search this to find other people like you? I’m confused? I hate relish, but I don’t go searching for it on Google.
• wow cancer aldor - Scryer loving bastard.
• shirts outfitters adventure darkest - Random. Search. String. Anyone?
• mmocruch - Though some annoying bitches would yell at me over a typo, it looks like I get the last laugh because people searching make typos too.
• tabula rasa pets wont attack - Hint: They are non-combat pets.
• im running tabula rasa on vista - I’m running it on XP, do you want a freaking cookie or something?
• why won’t you talk to me? - I’m going to go ahead and guess it is because you are a little creepy.

I’ll stop there for now. I’ve purposely omitted a great number of some of the more disturbing search terms, for fear that my site gets higher in those rankings than it already is.

funny searches, stupid searches, mmo, mmog, mmo gaming, mmorpg

Rhyming not intentional but awesome regardless.

All this talk about the NDA on PotBS being lifted got me thinking. NDAs are annoying with the way they are currently handled. Don’t get me wrong, the idea behind the NDA and having testers agree to it is solid. Of course, those who actually care about the NDA aren’t the ones who would bash a game still in a testing phase anyway, but that’s another topic entirely.

Tobold, in a comment on his post (linked above) gave a quick and easy rundown of the purpose of the NDA which I think is one worth repeating.

(more…)