This is a good post, and I recommend reading the whole thing, but the most important point to me is what do you spend your time doing in-game? And is it fun?
If you expect your players to spend most of their time at the level cap, the post-cap game is rather important, ya know? If most WoW players are at the cap, those raids and/or the PvP better be lots of fun, or else hitting the cap is a suggestion that people quit playing your game. Maybe alts are lots of fun; that’s how we roll in City of Heroes.
That is not a suggestion that you make time-to-cap take longer. If the leveling game is fun, people will make alts to keep playing it. They will keep running your quests for the fun, even without experience points. If not, a longer time-to-cap is bad because it means less fun in your game, although really it means throw away your entire game, because we already have dozens of level-based MMOs, some of which are pretty good.
I’ll rephrase that last point: if your game is 250 hours to the level cap, make sure your game has at least 250 hours of leveling fun, and 1000 would be better so that people can play some alts. If your game is 2000 hours to the level cap (hello classic EQ) … I’m betting there was not 2000 hours of fun, so let’s move on. Once you have players at the level cap, you need enough hours of fun there to keep them playing. And no, taking the same amount of fun and trying to stretch it out by lowering xp/encounter or making you re-run each part until it is not fun does not work: that just increases global suck.
: Zubon
Lori Drew has been indicted for using MySpace. If you haven’t heard of the case, she allegedly created a false profile as a teenage boy, started an online relationship with a neighbor girl, then drove her to suicide. I turn to Orin Kerr for the gamer-relevant part:
To understand this case, you need to understand the government’s theory. The indictment is not charging Drew with harassment. Nor are they charging her with homicide. Rather, the government’s theory in this case is that Drew criminally trespassed onto MySpace’s server by using MySpace in a way that violated MySpace’s Terms of Service (TOS).
Here’s the idea. The TOS required Drew to provide accurate registration information, not to harass or harm other people, and not to promote conduct that was abusive. She didn’t comply with these terms, the theory goes, so she was criminally trespassing onto MySpace’s computer when she was logging into her account. The indictment turns this into a federal felony conspiracy charge by arguing that she did this in concert with others to obtain information and to further tortious conduct — intentional infliction of emotional distress — violating the felony provisions of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2).
In other words, logging on while violating the TOS is the same thing as hacking the servers. Further bad behavior makes it a felony. As a legal theory, Prof. Kerr suggests, this is not a winner. But if it is, your MMO can not only ban goldfarmers/spammers but also put them in federal prison. And that also applies to people who were banned for abusive language, since this case is explicitly about violating the TOS to inflict emotional damage.
: Zubon
I will not play Age of Conan or Warhammer Online on launch day. I am taking a wait and see attitude on new games. Prove to me you are worth playing and I will play. Blind faith and hope are not rewarded.
There is no rush. A good game will be around for many years. The longer you wait, the more content gets added. A lot of folks are getting worked up about Age of Conan’s early access program. They have a limited number of slots and they can’t handle more, because they are not prepared. You do not want to be a part of that. Besides, what is the rush? Seriously, it’s not that important.
Relax.
- Ethic
When using caffeine, your target dose is 100mg. This may vary based on body size and tolerance, but 100mg is an average effective dose. You get this from one cup of coffee (mug-sized), one espresso, three cans of cola, two cans of Mountain Dew, or ten candy bars. It should take effect in about 15 minutes and ward off sleepiness for about 4 hours.
If you can, save caffeine use for when you need it. Complete tolerance develops somewhere in the neighborhood of 1g per day. At that point, you need the caffeine to function properly, and you will go into withdrawal without it. Mild overdose begins around 300mg (remember that it wears off and no longer “counts” after four hours), and 10g is the average amount to kill a human. That is about five liters of espresso, so you are unlikely to reach 10g without pills.
If you are staying up late playing, make sure that you are not too drowsy to tank. Caffeine does not counteract the effects of alcohol. An awake drunk is still drunk, and if you are too drunk to drive, you are too drunk to heal me.
: Zubon
Information taken from Alertness Solutions, Wikipedia, and reading the sides of cans.
If you want to trade x for y, it means that you have x and wish to acquire y. To take the classic Settlers of Catan example, if you have wood for sheep, that means that you have lumber which you wish to exchange for someone else’s livestock. You can make “for” work in the opposite direction by saying you wish to receive sheep for wood, but please do not let this advanced example confuse you.
FAQ
Q: How about WTT STICKS 4 STONES? That’s “four” not “for,” so it means I have the rocks, right?
A: I will end you and all you love.
: Zubon
Scott Hartsman’s roundtable at IMGDC was about scripts, stemming from a blog fight that I had missed. I summarize the consensus as, “Scripts are often implemented poorly. If you are going to use them, take them seriously and design them well.”
Designers know that players will work creatively to get around restrictions. Players are bound by the limits of the code, not the intent of the vision. If a system can be broken, it will be. Programmers should know the same thing about designers. If you place artificial restrictions on the designers to keep them from mucking something up, they are still creative people who will find ways around them, sometimes breaking things more interestingly along the way.
If you want to see how this applies in your game, think of how one thing can break while a seemingly identical other thing still works just fine. There is a good chance that two developers used the same tools to create the same outcome in different ways. The latest patch changed something that one implementation depends upon, while the other is unaffected; for more fun, both could be broken in different ways. Good programming practices were not adhered to, and now the game is much harder to update. Now multiply that across several dozen people working over several years, most or all of whom now work on other products. Have fun maintaining the code!
To explain the title, “x is often implemented poorly” is a common issue. Jason Booth explained that about procedural content, which is neither a panacea nor the destroyer of worlds. Jeff Freeman explained that about forums, which can use valuable tools or useless noise. It may be a bad sign that some tools are misused more than others.
: Zubon
In our continuing series on online and ancient communication, our friends at Language Log have discovered that l33tspeak was responsible for the fall of Rome.
The villain was none other than txting, that widely-feared destroyer of civilizations. While IM and SMS had not yet been invented, the Romans used a medium that motivates textual concision even more strongly: marble.
I shudder at the use of “8″ in words like “l8r,” but we had entire millenia where you did not write vowels.
: Zubon
It is Sunday, bedtime. I have the urge to stay up until four. Heck with this, we’ll get some fast food and play late into the night. We’re going to hang out, play some games, maybe watch a movie or something. Anyone up for Settlers?
Wait, no, I’m a grown up. I have work in the morning. Oh well; most of my friends live out of state, or too far in-state, and have work too. Being responsible sucks.
: Zubon