For a game that depends on a stream of income from subscribers or RMT shoppers, the first hour of play must be the top development priority. This is where you hook players. After that, the endgame is important because that is where your players will be spending time indefinitely and where your game’s chatter will come from in the long run. Next is the early game, when you build momentum. The mid-game has already fallen this far down the list, as you have certainly seen in a lot of MMOs, and frankly few care much how good the late-game is because they are already fully committed and racing for the end-game.
I stand by my repeated claim that optimizing the new player experience is of paramount importance. You must grab my attention within five minutes, and you must deliver a satisfying hour or two for my first play session. Without that, any free trial is worthless, and you may even lose some people who have thrown down $50 for a box. This is the part of the game that every single player will see on every single character, and if you cannot do a good job here, I have no hope for the rest of the game. Yes, it is hard to make things interesting while giving the player only a few buttons to play with. Suck it up, we all have hard parts in our jobs. That’s why they pay us. Continue reading ‘Early, Middle, Late’
There is no question that the strong majority of North American MMO players play World of Warcraft. Even assuming a paltry 3 million players are still playing in the twilight of the latest expansion, that is still a magnitude more active players than the next similar MMO in line. Other MMOs like FreeRealms and Runescape muddy the waters as to what is an active or subscribing player or even similar game. But, defining MMO is irrelevant. What is relevant is World of Warcraft is the god-king of MMOs, and like a good god-king, it views itself as above the rest to the degree that they might as well not exist.
Daniel Dociu, concept art god, had a presentation at the recent GDC. Instead of doing bullet point powerpoint slides, he decided to blast a few retinas with some old and new concept art going by at warp speed for the Guild Wars series (including Guild Wars 2 concept art). ArenaNet worked hard to push out a high-quality version of the video so people would be able to stop watching the cam versions. Enjoy!
You know, it’s harder to come up with a witty title that has not been used elsewhere than you’d think. That said, I now present part two of my trial account adventure, where I journey into one of the new kids on the block, Star Trek Online. And as my title alludes to, the goldpammers have gotten there first. I’m going to try not to ride the game too hard, as after all it is new, and that would be like picking on the new kid at school on the playground. That said, it is a well-known name, and of course has lots of baggage with it. I really think the developers did a good job trying to blend in 40+ years of history into a game without it being absolutely required to move around. I am, however, a bit of a Star Trek geek, and playing this game really brought it out. I’m almost ashamed at how many references I was easily able to get. Continue reading ‘Oz’s Trail of Trials, Part 2 – Set Phasers to Spam’
This weekend saw a lot of Wizard 101 play. Obligatorily, the joy I get from opening a load of presents every time I log on is pretty compulsory. Anyway, I have been zapping away at the O’Leary rats (and cats?) mucking about on the rooftops of Marleybone. Right now, I’ve been getting through the Hyde Park zone. I made it to the last boss of the zone, but he kicked my butt pretty hard. The rest of the zone has kept me lightly on my toes. At level 30, however, I think I might be a tad overleveled. I am not sure.
Unlike the sidewalk safe Wizard City and Krokotopia, Marleybone’s safe areas are not as clearly marked. In Hyde Park the whole zone happens across the rooftops, and the corners of the roofs are pretty safe. However, when moving from rooftop to rooftop I had to be more careful watching mobs. As a veteran MMO player, I am not finding this exercise very hard or tiring. There are plenty of MMOs where I’ve had to visualize agro bubbles in order to quickly move past a throng of mobs. I didn’t find Hyde Park much different. Perhaps as I move in to the next Marleybone zones, they will continue to switch up mob pathing and available safe areas.
I plan on continuing on with the Marleybone story. Grizzleheim remains calling to me in the background. I’ve completed the first content chunk of Grizzleheim (Sv. Pass), and I think I have the Vigrid Roughland zone next. Any tips on a good time to make a waylay to Vigrid Roughland are appreciated.
I was curious about how the 100+ comment post affected our readership numbers. Yep, double the number of readers on Friday and over 1,000 unique views. I was surprised, however, that it is not winning on the month. Ravious’s latest Guild Wars 2 post is about 50% higher, despite only having 4 comments; his posts that are actually news consistently get a lot of hits. The winner, though, apart from the front page itself? “A Fable,” a year and a half old, but still periodically rocketing up our stats whenever it has a big day on StumbleUpon. “Game Developers and Porn Stars” also keeps getting hits, largely on the strength of search keywords. Sorry if you were one of the hundreds looking for “game porn,” “game porno,” “porn game,” “games porn,” or “porn games.”
This is also the first time I have not seen Ethic’s Asheron’s Call 2 closing ceremonies in the top 10. People may finally be emotionally moving on from AC2. I never did make that Lugian Tactician.
It’s the end of random week. It was a good one with a guest post on managing community expectations, thoughts on MMO biological conditioning, random raid poop and balls, and I even got to sneak in an article on food. I actually had trouble for the closing post. Should I do a puzzling haiku? How about writing in an errant random matter? I could’ve started an all out attack against other blogs to find my nemesis. It’s Friday after all. All blogger sins are forgiven on this day. I had considered a post on random acts of kindness yesterday afternoon, but Suzina’s latest post cemented the decision. It is nice, after all, to have some synergy on our blogomerate.
I have a confession that I’m a little embarrassed about. Yes, you guessed it, I’ve been playing WOW. I haven’t been spreading that around too much, because of the stigma associated with it. I imagine the next time someone yells at me to “Go back to WOW”, it might actually sting a little. But that’s not what this blog entry is about. Really, this is about someone reacting to me purchasing gold.
I got my snark out of the way. Before I continue, let’s rewind a little bit to the Volume 3, Book 1 Prologue. The Oath of the Rangers starts off with a journey to Rivendell, where I eventually met with Lord Elrond to discuss a letter sent by Lady Galadriel regarding Aragorn’s need for the Rangers. I knew going into this epic quest line that it was going to be a lighter Book entailing traveling about all the old zones. To expand on the content, I was sure that I would be waylaid by tasks as I talked to each Ranger. My hopes were not very high for a meaningful story or new lore, at least, until I got to the new Skirmish set in the Rift.
In the Prologue, Turbine blew me away. They created a kind of montage where Elrond walked with me around his library discussing the whereabouts of the eight Rangers I was to rally. Every few steps Elrond would discuss the whereabouts, demeanor, or skills of the Ranger, and the Ranger would pop into view as if my character was visualising the man we were discussing. I could picture the essence of each zone as Elrond talked. Lothrandir would be just out of the cold wind watching the icy landscape below while northern lights gave color to the snow, and Calenglad would be looking out at the great lake Evendim on a starry night as far off chantings of the broken Angmarim floated from the ruins across the water. The team/person that thought up this scene should be congratulated for far surpassing what could have been a simple laundry list of Rangers to collect.
