A few weeks ago, my wife finally got her beta invite to the upcoming MMO that I have been playing a lot of and really enjoying. I can’t wait to share my thoughts but they will have to wait until my NDA restrictions are lifted. So anyway, my wife logs in, makes her character and I start to show her around a bit, and not five minutes in, she looks over at me sheepishly and blurts out, “I miss Warcraft!”
Month: November 2007
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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.Advice and Arrogance
Last week Shortpacked!, a web comic set at a toy store, had a series starring That Guy:
I give you well-thought-out advice, and you don’t drop all your plans and do what I say? How arrogant are you? I just fixed everything, and you reject it.
The adventures start here and run for five strips.
I think you’ll see the relevance.
: Zubon
How Players Are Affected By Solo Activities
Previously, I discussed some of the reasons why I prefer to solo through most MMO content. This got me to thinking about something I’ve noticed since switching back from World of Warcraft to Guild Wars. Players in World of Warcraft, despite the ease with which the game can be soloed, seem to be far more likely to form pick-up groups than players in Guild Wars. I began to think about why this might be. I’ve come to the conclusion that this, like so many other things in life, is determined by a number of factors adding up to an individual’s experience within a game. Continue reading How Players Are Affected By Solo Activities
Developer IP and Identity
The character of Statesman is part of City of Heroes. NCSoft bought City of Heroes, but Jack Emmert, the Statesman himself, did not go along. So Mr. Emmert no longer has rights to that identity. I imagine the same thing happened with Lord British, and will with General British if Mr. Garriott leaves NCSoft.
Is that right? How does that work? Does the new IP owner ask the original fellow to stop using that name/handle/whatever? It is not as though Mr. Emmert can log into City of Heroes on Statesman, but it might cause some oddities to have a forum post from Mr. Emmert (anywhere, not just about CoX) under that name.
I like the notion, “We just bought you. Please vacate your identity by 5pm. Security will escort you out.”
: Zubon
Why I Play Multiplayer Games By Myself
Akela Talamasca at Massively posted today about why he enjoys soloing through his favorite MMOs. This is something that I find myself enjoying as well and I’d like to share a few more reasons why it can be fun.
Akela lists his reasons as such:
Feeling of being a hero, not a nameless part of a team.
Inability to trust other players.
Time management.
For my situation, the first two certainly apply. I enjoy being the star of the show and I detest when other players lower my enjoyment of a game. Time management isn’t a big concern for me, as I tend to be the one scheduling the guild events and trying to get everyone together.
Nicodemus in San Fran…
I’m going to be in San Francisco the evening of November 26th through November 28th for the Dow Jones Consumer Technology Innovations conference at the Sofitel Hotel. This is sort of last minute, so I am scrambling around to make arrangements…I need a pickup from the airport (SFO) around 11p on the 26th and a couch to crash on. Anyone interested? Otherwise, I’ll head over to couchsurfing.com because I’m cool. Email me.
Yes, we are presenting at the conference. Something wicked about AI-driven evolving and adapting ecologies, as well as dynamically scaling player driven economies. Yeah, no kidding.
Explorer Content
A week ago, I noted the degree to which Explorers can chew through content. Explorers explore not only geography but also mechanics, so complex play options with many interactions can keep us going for a long time. For a great example of this, head over to Van Hemlock and see what he has been doing with Guild Wars. With hundreds of skills available, but only one skill bar available at any given time, Guild Wars provides lots of options for builds. He has been taking single skills and making builds around them, then taking them out for test runs. Read some of his posts to see how those are working out.
: Zubon
I Don’t Use the Test Server
- I do not pay to beta. Well, being an MMO player, I effectively do, but let’s minimize that.
- I do not want to get bored with the new content before it goes live. Why play it on Test when I will probably be playing it a dozen times live?
- I do not expect bugs that I find to get fixed. If you find a bug and report it, it will probably go live and get fixed later, rather than delaying the patch.
- I do not expect my opinion to matter. If am not going to play Forum Warrior to defend my view of any changes, and they don’t seem to have much of an impact anyway.
- I do not have enough information to test. Patch notes of “improved stability” do not help me. Some changes are made without notes, some of which gets noticed on Test. Other changes are in the notes but are not there, some of which gets noticed on Test. Documentation of what the content should be and do can be incomplete or flat wrong. Figure out what you want me to test, tell me, and then I may actually be able to test it.
- A Tale in the Desert spoiled me. If you found a bug there, it could be fixed live. There was no “wait for the next build in five days.” If half of something is broken, testing the other half around that is going to be annoying if not completely meaningless.
: Zubon
Staying Out of the Console Wars
By being a PC gamer, I don’t need to deal with this. Don’t click that link. That is Jason Booth, arguing that development for the PS3 is harder than the Xbox 360, because all its superior features just give developers ways to work around its problems to bring it back to normal. And then several hundred people named “Anonymous” showed up to say things that I cannot bring myself to quote, even for explanatory purposes. There are about 500 comments as I write this, and I am scheduling this to post a week in the future so I can purge my brain before coming back to our own comments thread.
Before anyone comments here, there will be no PS3 vs 360 discussion. None. If you wish to post that fans of [the other system] are deluded fanboys and trolls, there, Mr. Booth already has a ruined comments thread for you, to say nothing of the hundreds of forums so polluted. I’m sure that bribery and fellatio were involved in all your opponents’ projects, yes, thank you.
: Zubon
Tabula Rasa Reviews
Tabula Rasa is sending out some choice quotes from various reviews and I thought it would be fun to pick my own quotes from the same reviews.
Lets start with the quote they chose from a Gamespy review:
“The MMO genre just got a serious dose of adrenaline thanks to Richard Garriott’s reinvention of online combat.” – Gamespy
Here is a quote from the same review chosen by me:
“… complaints about a memory leak and slowdown from the community … gameplay bugs … quests that won’t give the player credit for completing them … triggers that only go off for only a few members in a party, forcing players to run missions multiple times.” – Gamespy