MMO Gaming

Unfortunately people’s opinions are so varied that it is hard to try and decide what is “perfect” for people. However, I think you can make a reasonable attempt at developing something good that will reach a large audience.

I mentioned a while back about how to make a good MMO. You know, the one with the letters and nothing else. Well, there was a topic over on Guild Cafe about what you would have in your perfect MMO, so I went ahead and replied with a few little things I wanted to say, but then thought I’d like to more fully flesh these ideas out over here. I’m thinking I may touch on these early next week in more depth, but I wanted to quote my post now. Feel free to ask any questions before I get ready to write the post completely otherwise I’m sure I’ll be missing things.

Setting
Multiple. Essentially taking place along various moments in the game universe’s time-line. The Isaac Asimov book The End of Eternity gives the best depiction I can think of in relation to what I’m referring to.

Advancement
Again, multiple. Various ways to advance including a PvP-centric way along with a PvE-centric way. Crafting/building is also a form of advancement in itself, such that if a player wants to be a merchant he does not necessarily have to still go about leveling up/increasing stats/etc. Something like what EQ2 has with their being separate levels for crafting vs. adventuring, except there wouldn’t be the whole level/xp thing at all, and you wouldn’t have to increase both of them if you only wanted to play one.

PvP
PvP isn’t forced, but encouraged, and it isn’t FFA but it does allow the chance for people of one faction to attack their own other players. This is accomplished through various PvP venues, such as world objectives/control points, political struggle in the game world (rioting/revolutions, that sort of thing.) Also keep in ideas like an Arena style PvP outlet and perhaps even instanced PvP areas as well for certain places.

Property
Players can build up and own many things. Guild Halls, houses, shops, etc. Not true for every city, but many areas that start out as maybe small towns or villages can be built up over time and become thriving metropolises.

In case anyone missed it, here’s a couple of items you need to check out. First, an interview with Mr. Bartle, yes, that one. And second, some follow-up comments on his blog.

Read them, I think you’ll enjoy.

Normally if I’m plugging a site it isn’t anything huge. It’s more often than not another blog. This time is a bit different. Guild Cafe is a community for online gamers and they are doing a lot of things right. On the whole I’m not a big community person. Actually, that’s almost the exact opposite of the truth. I love communities. I love managing them, I love moderating them, I love creating them, I’m a huge fan. The problem with most community sites I’ve seen is, well, they aren’t that great. Blogs and forums are great community but so many sites seem to think they can call themselves a player community site with just those things in place. Don’t get me wrong, if you have those things you can have a great site, in fact, I’m a member of plenty of sites like that and enjoy my time there, but that doesn’t make you a real resource to any group of people.

What Guild Cafe is doing has. They are a great resource as it is now. They can become a better resource as more people sign up and use it, so I recommend you do so. Take 15 minutes and fill out a bit of info on yourself and come join in the discussions.

Some interesting things are going around at the moment, none of which I will comment on at the moment. That said, some upcoming games are really starting to take shape and I’ve gotten the chance to check out a few of them. I’m liking what I see for the most part. Of course, as I said, I’m not sharing anything yet, but there is definitely some cool stuff on the way.

What exactly is it? Sorry, I won’t even give that away. Soon though.

It’s getting closer to time to buy myself one of these. NCSoft signed on to an exclusive deal with Sony. I think Microsoft may have some explaining to do with their online offerings now. With NCSoft and SOE (obviously) working exclusively with Sony for online gaming, it may turn things around.

I’m curious, will they be porting games over, or are they going to work on some completely new stuff designed and built for the PS3 technology? Have to wait and see I guess.

As I normally do when I see a new incoming link I’ve decided to give a bit of free publicity. Today’s lucky winner (and by “winner” I mean “person who linked me”) is Backle. Apparently, Backle has nothing to say. I’m working him into my rounds now but I have only one problem with the blog so far…he’s mentioned the CU/NGE and how great SWG was before it. Don’t get me wrong, everyone seems to talk about SWG at some point, and I’ve no real problems with that, but I think it’s time we remember how great SWG actually was pre-NGE. Here’s a hint…it wasn’t. The game wasn’t incredible, it wasn’t the best MMO since Ultima (or EQ, if that was your thing) it was an interesting game, which had the potential to be great but wasn’t long before the CU/NGE happened.

That being said, it certainly was a different breed of MMO when it first came out.

At any rate, that’s the new link for today, I’m sure I’ll be putting up another soon.

I haven’t really been following The Chronicle of Spellborn at all. I don’t know why, I guess I just don’t have the time to devote to each and every game that is coming out and this one fell by the wayside. At any rate though, I did want to bring attention to an interview Cuppy did over on her blog about the game.

I must say, maybe I’m missing a lot, but nothing is immediately jumping out at me from what they say. That’s not a bad thing, because chances are, if something did jump out, it would be negative. I’ll try keeping an eye on this one from now on…you know…one of my extra eyes.

chronicles of spellborn, interview, cuppytalk, cuppycake

I must say that hearing back from an actual person rather than an automated response is absolutely the way to go in relation to almost anything. I’m all for automation when it makes sense and makes life easier, but automatic responses to 95% of inquiries are just a bad idea. Sure, sometimes it is incredibly frustrating to deal with dozens or hundreds of the same thing every day over and over again, but that’s life, deal with it. A real person responding to a question, one that isn’t a form letter mass-mailed out to dozens of people with only the name changed, can make a person’s view completely change. You’ll probably find that 9 out of 10 times you’ll gain more time, money, and respect from that person than the time and money you put into giving that real response.

So, quite a while back I talked about how to re-work the WoW LFG system that was implemented to make it better. Apparently LFG tools, on the whole, haven’t gotten better.

I decided, that being the case, that I would take the time to work on further ways to improve how grouping is done in MMOs. Tomorrow I’ll be looking into how this will work exactly but there are a couple of key points that are important about the system.

1. Depth - The system should allow for a lot to be done. That is, it needs to be a powerful tool in getting groups and should allow extra options for those that want them, but shouldn’t require a manual of it’s own to figure out…which brings me to…

2. User Friendliness - Let’s face it, if people can’t understand how to use it, they won’t (and most times when they do understand how to use it they don’t anyway.)

3. No spam - Very few people like the LFG spam flooding the various chat channels, encourage the use of private talk in setting up groups.

There will be more to go on later, but those are some key elements to think about.

lfg tool, lfg, looking for group, questing, group quests, groups, pug

I had to laugh when I saw what I got for my blog rating:

Mingle² - Online Dating

Sorry all you young folk…you’ll have to bring a parent with you to visit my blog I guess.

Via Patrick

E
EA
ES
EK
A
AS
AK
S
SK
K

That’s the formula. The trick is making each path meaningful in it’s own way. The other trick is defining each of the above and how they actually end up getting enjoyment from the game. I think it is almost safe to say you can throw out the single letters. So we are left with even less (but the ones we have are more complex of course.) Anyway, throwing this out there as I’ll be using it soon for some other topics.

Something’s been bugging me lately. Some of it from other blogs, some of it from forum posts around the net, some from random articles I’ve stumbled across, and they all seem to have a very different idea of one thing relating to MMOs than I do. So, I’m going to write an article on my idea for a part of a game design I would like to see done right. I’m interested to see where it goes to be honest so I’ll take a little extra time to write it, but I’ll let you know which one it is (if it isn’t obvious enough.)

For the record it’s about how player characters relate to the game world…yeah…I’m sticking with that.

So, the LoTRO patch came out. It’s rather large and I still haven’t even begun to look at the patch notes, so I’ll have to get on that. As I’m not really playing it at the moment though I’m not all that fascinated with the changes. I will say it bodes well for the game though, glad to see Turbine is going to continue with what they normally do, keep putting out content for their game. And quality content it appears.

Oh yeah, and Vanguard is merging servers sometime soon. I’m not saying anything else on that.

For the moment I really can’t decide what to play. Generally speaking I’m just trying to hold out a while until some of the games I really want to check out hit stores. Tabula Rasa, Warhammer, maybe even Age of Conan (though I’m really not all that into it at the moment.) I’m thinking of maybe trying out Sword of the New World. It seems like it has some interesting mechanics to it but I don’t hold out a ton of hope (I’ve heard a few people say already it is just a mindless grind.)

And yeah, I mentioned podcasting a while back, which hasn’t been forgotten. It’ll come eventually.

I don’t know, any suggestions on what I should play? Heck, I’d hit up LoTRO again probably if anyone’s got a good group of people to play with.

tabula rasa, warhammer online, lotro, lord of the rings online, age of conan, mmo gaming, mmo games, sword of the new world, upcoming games, beta test, vanguard, server merge, shores of evendim

So, I come to write up a post for today and I’m greeted with a new incoming link to my blog. What is the new link? Of Ice and Fire. Now, I don’t immediately recognize the user name, changling bob, but I’m sure I’m just missing this from someone’s comments at some site. So, whoever you happen to be, welcome to a free link from my blog and one new reader. Look forward to seeing what you have to say.

Now though, seriously, who are you?

link, trackback, new blog, mmorpg, mmog

So, it’s been a while since I actually spent any time talking about what I’m playing. To be honest, I’m hopping around in between a couple of games at the moment. LoTRO has not gotten much attention. I have a few characters and I enjoy playing them, but the game just isn’t that fun for me to continue and try real hard with it when I don’t really know anyone else to play with (which would make the game much more enjoyable I imagine.)

Mainly I’ve been playing EQ2 and Space Cowboy even more recently. EQ2 is fun, but a bit slower to progress (for me, not knowing the landscape or the quests or anything of the sort) and I don’t have anyone to play with, so I’m kind of missing out (I think I need to find myself a guild or something.) Space Cowboy I’m having a lot of fun with though, mostly because it’s one of those games where I just don’t feel like I need to care (it’s free to play) about leveling or spending time. With LoTRO and EQ2 I feel bad about not playing since I am spending money for the privilege. I imagine, if I had gotten the lifetime membership to LoTRO right away I may be feeling a bit different about the game now, but since I’m not, and I’m stuck with a monthly fee, I’m not sure if I’ll be sticking with it really.

To be honest the next game I really want to play is Tabula Rasa. I know I’ve mentioned it before (several times) but it really is the only thing jumping out at me and has been for quite a while. Age of Conan looks somewhat interesting, but I’m actually liking it less the more I hear about it. Just doesn’t seem like my cup of tea. Warhammer sounds like fun, but it has already been delayed to ‘08 and is heavy PvP, which has also never been my thing.

Anyone have their eye on something else I should check out, old or new?

tabula rasa, warhammer online, mythic, ncsoft, lotro, lord of the rings, everquest, everquest 2, pvp