Month: October 2006

David Noonan comments:

That’s the curse of being a game designer—you see so many versions of things that sometimes you can’t remember which things actually see print, in which books, and under which names. If a game designer answers a rules question of the top of his or her head, be a little suspicious. Those heads are crammed with previous versions, playtest versions, and Versions That Should Not Be.

This makes sense to me. At work, once a project is inexorably out of my hands, I sometimes flush it from my mind so that I do not worry about what changes six people down the line are going to make; if I am asked for input later, I can recycle those synapses. Other times, I am the mental archivist who explains that we did that project two years ago under another name, or we changed it half-way through and they are thinking of the old version, or we have yet update the documentation to reflect reality, or…

When you hear a dev make an off-hand comment, he may be thinking of any version of the game starting in pre-beta up through things on internal test, planned for the future, or designed and then scrapped. They may have a different internal name for whatever it is or use some hodgepodge of technical meanings. Really, they are trying to give you the right answer, but you may want to double-check in a more structured environment.

: Zubon

What’s the most popular MMORPG activity around besides guessing if that mostly naked elf you’re dancing with is really female (hint: no) that everyone is doing? Guessing the release date for Blizzard’s expansion! This is a fun for all ages kind of show, and has the user base in a Furor. Ha! I made a silly in-joke there, you can tell I haven’t had my morning Dew yet, can’t you?

Anyway, if you peruse the beta forms, and you’re welcome to do so since they are not secured, you’ll see posts ranging from “Almost ready!” to “Um…so where’s my content?” That hasn’t stopped retailers from selling it. My favorite has been EBGames, who originally estimated the release for March 27, 2006 (this was shortly after BlizCon) and has continued to slide the date slowly south. Out of morbid curiosity, I went a-wandering the web and found some dates the sellers are currently shucking.

Continue reading Pin The Tail On The Date

Ok, I haven’t posted much lately (for lots of good reasons, none of which I will bore you with here), but after reading Ethic’s recent post on farm status I couldn’t resist opining a bit.

Several of the comments posted on his topic seemed to confuse the differences between repeating the same quest/mission/instance over and over to obtain a piece of loot with the satisfaction of repeating a quest for the thrill of achievement or the sheer fun of adventure, or even the replayability of games like Tetris or Minesweeper, where the gameplay is repetitive (then again, it is the same for Chess and Monopoly, isn’t it?).

Continue reading Farming…again and again and again and again and again

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: Zubon

[Crusade] David Allen wonders whether his upcoming game should restrict the number of trade skills you can have/master/use. I am going to vote for “no.” If you are already combining EVE’s time-based character development with a standard use-based character development, there is no need to place a hard cap on the number of skills you can learn. Time will do that.

In this case, you need to pick one of two routes. EVE’s route was to make so many skills that no one would ever be able to cap them all, since they keep adding new skills occasionally. You could also just decide that it is fine for someone to hit all the time-based caps, some number of years down the line. Of course, when it is “some number of years down the line,” you can change your mind and keep adding skills to push the horizon away. Just don’t do the Learning skills thing.

Also, if I may offer a bit of writing advice, never use the phrase “to the next level” twice in an essay that short. If your game promises to make the very concept of trade skills ding twice in one night, you better deliver something spectacular.

: Zubon

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: Zubon