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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.
.Say that we were to make a MMO based on Firefly. What do you call it? Firefly? Serenity? The Verse? Do you add something like “World of” before it, “Online” or “Adventures” after it? Prefix it with “Joss Whedon’s”? Your goal is to attract the current plays (who might be drawn to The Verse) and a general audience (“Serenity” may not imply “action-packed adventure).
Thoughts?
: Zubon
The problem is, there’s an easy way to be polarizing that doesn’t work and a hard way to be polarizing that does work. They look similar enough from the outside that most people take the easy way and then blame the system for their failure.
By saying you’re only going to appeal to a certain group of people, you give yourself permission and latitude to say no a lot. No, we’re not going to build this feature because the market we’re targeting doesn’t think it’s important. No, we’re not going to change our message because our message appeals to our target market. And, if you disagree, well… you’re not the person we’re going after.
No can be an incredibly powerful tool but it can also be a dangerous one when it shellacs your from criticism. The easy way of being polarizing is to just arbitrarily decide your target market based on what you wish your target market could be and then act all defiant and proud about how polarizing you are.
… Unless you can succinctly and explain what your target market is and why they appreciate your product, you’re not being polarizing, you’re just giving yourself permission to swear a lot and draw whales on your website.
– Xianhang Zhang
: Zubon
One of the features in the upcoming Star Trek Online is the built-in crews that every player has on their ship. Like EVE you’ll have a ship, but you’ll also have your own Spock and McCoy to hang out with after you land on the surface. And who knows? Maybe you’ll also walk around inside your ship and interact with your different NPC group-mates.
This feature doesn’t promise to stay unique for long, as Star Wars The Old Republic is also reportedly going to have companions like they did in their single player games to hang out with. Knowing how this played out in KOTOR, you’ll probably gather potential artifical-group-mates by doing quests like the RPG Suikoden and then swap them in and out depending on the upcoming quest.
In LOTRO, it has been confirmed that the next book-update will include “customizable soldiers that you can train and bring into skirmishes.” What does that mean? Well it sounds pretty similar to the above.
Are NPC friends in MMOs the future? And is that future a good thing or to the detriment of the multiplayer aspect of MMOs?
It’s amazing how time flies. It was five years ago today that I posted my first post here at KTR. Here’s to five more years of fun! I hope you have enjoyed the epic quest so far. Let’s go kill us some more rats.
UPDATE: CONTEST NOW CLOSED – WINNERS TO BE ANNOUNCED IN A NEW POST
To celebrate our 5th anniversary, Turbine has generously donated 5 retail keys for “The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Mines of Moriaâ„¢ Complete DIGITAL DOWNLOAD”. These codes will only work on the Turbine servers. For more details on what is included, follow this link. To enter, simply comment on this post telling me why you would like one of the retail keys. I will choose the 5 responses I like the best in 5 days (on Friday May 15th) and give each winner one of the keys. I’d like to thank Turbine for being so kind!
– Ethic
Your favorite MMO is becoming WOW. Little by little, gameplay mechanics and design philosophy from WOW are being copied and pasted into your world with a thin coat of paint on top. The question is… do you like it?
No producer can ignore WOW. It’s the only MMO which can measure it’s subscribers in the millions. So producers think, “What can we copy in order to get millions of subscriptions?” and “What do we need to have in order for a few million WOW subscribers to feel comfortable making the switch?”
Blizzard does a lot of things right with WOW. So it’s kind of nice to have concepts that work transported to your favorite game. But there is a very large and very real draw back to WOWification. The individual uniqueness of each MMO is being washed away. WOW is the McDonalds of MMOs. If McDonalds has a dollar menu, every other chain will have one soon. Every place you go has basically the same stuff to offer, just wrapped in different packaging.
It’s the niche titles that really suffer the worst. When you have a game which is distinctly not WOW, a title which does things so different that it couldn’t exist in a quest-driven level-based world like WOW, the very thing which made the game extreamly appealing to a small market is erased in favor of being just another watered down version of McWOW.
Turning to the topic of games people here actually play, I finished Plants vs. Zombies. There are 50 levels in the adventure mode, 9 levels of each of two puzzle modes (plus endless), 20 mini-games, and 10 survival levels (plus endless). You can also develop your own, zombie-free zen garden on the side.
Few things are terribly difficult, although I say that as someone who enjoys and is good at tower defense games. Continue reading More Plants vs. Zombies
… the ongoing festivities, but Shack has been reporting that apparently 3D Realms has been shut down and Duke Nukem Forever has been presumably canceled. (seems to be confirmed by the updates on the news article).
Damion pointed us to the list, which is amazing.
“Let four captains
Bear Duke, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.“
Regular readers know my fondness for tower defense games. Still, I must say: Plants vs. Zombies? Fun. Syp covers most of it in his review. My bonus tip is to try the mini-games once you unlock them and Crazy Dave’s Shop. Completing the mini-games gives you a bit of money, which you can use to buy upgrades like the Gatling Pea. Quad cannons? Yes indeed.
I am through 3/5 of the Adventure mode. Super fun. I recommend the read me/FAQ. Get the trial from the official site, but buy it from Steam for half price ($10).
: Zubon
Bug or feature?
Many games with expansion packs have started speeding their players to the end, so that they can be where all the other players are (and need to buy the expansion pack to advance). WoW does this most visibly, even before having you invite friends for triple xp and zebra love. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ made the early levels faster and started running nigh-continuous bonus xp weekends, weeks, and months.
City of Heroes may have done this with Mission Architect. Farming is more or less constant. You can pick the enemy best optimized for your character or make your own perfect foe. Grab friends, smash, repeat. A single run through a good farm will get you to level 20. This differs from normal powerleveling because Architect can be set up to auto-sidekick everyone to the same level range. You no longer need bridges, care in mission selection, or anything: pick your ideal enemy, fill a mission with copies of that one guy, and smash. If that is too hard, add pets that will increase your defenses.
City of Heroes, however, has no endgame. There are a few hard things to do at 50, but mostly you can just keep running missions. A variety of tools let you do pretty much anything at 50 that you could earlier, so it is always better to be higher level, but it is not as though you are raiding or something. Getting to 50 means being 50, maybe farming for those purples.
City of Heroes is, however again, very alt-friendly, complete with sales of extra character slots of more alts. Want to try a new character? Bam, level 20 in an hour, try a dozen new powers. Out of character slots? Bam, $20, 5 more. If people are racing to the level cap and re-rolling, that can only mean more money. Or they quit, but your most competent power-levelers are long-term players who came to peace with the lack of endgame years ago.
: Zubon
We have quite a few things to solve here, and a lot to translate. Unlike the original, for this one we will need a game world that:
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Can accommodate many players, be persistent and offer different stages of experience to different players at all times.
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Can do away with the original division between Geoscape and Tactical Combat.
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Is structured in a way that can support many different avenues of play.
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Is able to be instanced and portioned, as required.
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Is a dynamic entity that can be transformed as the overall gameplay evolves.