Category: General

An MMMOGIG is not a game, even though it might sound like some new twist on the MMO. What is it then? Well, it stands for Minnesota Massively Multiplayer Online Game Interest Group. I just got back from our first official meeting and I must say it was a really terrific time. To be in a room full of people that share your passion for these games is great, certainly when you have been so used to people not even knowing what an MMO is in the first place. I’m not going to go into too much detail as it has already been covered pretty well. If you are near Minneapolis at all and have an interest in MMOs, I strongly encourage you to join our meetup.com group and attend the next meeting. We had at least one out-of-state visitor (Zonk from Slashdot and MMOG Nation) tonight and he made a 4-hour drive to attend.

What I will say is very simple: This group is very passionate about MMOs and yet what we are all looking for in future games is quite varied. If you can make an MMO that can satisfy every gamer in the room, you will be very rich.

It was great to meet everyone tonight and I look forward the the next meeting.

– Ethic

Hexedian posted this in our forums and it is a good topic so I wanted to bring attention to it:

I’ve been thinking for while, and I’ve come to the conclusion that most MMORPGs that we see today are simply too easy. Not that the time to acquire power is too short, I don’t mind that either way, but understanding an MMORPG, and playing it to near perfection, requires next to no skills from the player.

Now, that may seem intuitive for the people who are used to being made fun of because they play a game that doesn’t require skills, but one has to understand that it doesn’t have to be that way. MMORPGs can be every bit as challenging as the next shooter or platformer, without necessarily asking the player to time rocket jumps to the perfection. Why, one of the best catalysts of skillful gaming, human opponents, is, by definition of massively multiplayer, already common in large quantities. The only thing required, then, for skills to play a more interesting part, is for players to be able to make a difference in the game that doesn’t come from having bigger numbers next to their name, or simply more zerglings to attack with.

So, I’m wondering (And obviously trying to start a conversation), has any fellow rat-slayer had any idea of how to make MMORPGs more interesting skill-wise?

Continue reading MMORPGs Are Too Easy

Returning to a topic I started a while ago, am I on the cutting edge, or am I recommending that MMO companies commit suicide? There are several games that have tried some form of robust housing and city building/defense system, and almost all of them have been disappointing.

Asheron’s Call was the weakest performer of its crop of games, and its sequel did worse. A Tale in the Desert and Wurm Online are niche games. Shadowbane and Horizons have a recurring feature at GU Comics called “the Bug Zapper,” and Horizons still beats Vanguard as a model of how not to make a game. Star Wars Galaxies … yeah. Wish never went live. EVE Online is the lone winner of the pack, although didn’t it hit 100,000 subscribers before it added player-owned outposts and starbases? Age of Conan is the next test case, although its high violence and gore quotient may affect its results.

Is this just an apocalyptically bad idea? Perhaps the technology was not there in the past, but it is now becoming viable, like voice chat? It is not the sort of thing you can easily add to an existing game. You cannot just paste some cities on the side and call it good; that is meaningless. Where would you put it in Azeroth or Middle Earth? Shadowbane built around the idea, and it fit EVE’s existing structure perfectly. I know I am not the core MMO audience, since I do not play WoW, but am I completely in left field here?

: Zubon

is StarCraft 2 not Worlds of StarCraft. Maybe in a while.

: Zubon

ITwire.com reports that Google recently filed a patent for monitoring player character behaviors in MMORPGs to build user profiles which are then used to target in-game advertising to players.

I used to think that the people over at Google were pretty smart. Apparently, they are dumber than a noob begging for gold. Oh wait, we should show that guy advertisements for credit card offers.

One would think that Google staffers would at least run a quick search on what a MMORPG actually is. They are supposed to have the world’s most powerful search engine, right?

Continue reading Screw Google! And stay out of my games!

Being tagged for five reasons why I blog reminded me that I was tagged for five things you don’t know about me, before my flashdrive ate my post. Rather than rewrite that, I am going to tell you about what I do for a living and the perspective it gives me on game development.

I am firmly of the belief that many gaming projects fail or are executed badly not because of any problem in design but because of poor processes. Some really creative and dedicated people do excellent and inspired work, but they have no interest in the various meta skills that keep organizations functioning and keep things organized over a multi-year project. It still works for some small teams, but coordinating operations is a separate skill set from game development, just as coding is a separate skill set from graphic design. Even people who can do it all do not have the time to do it all themselves, and it shows in games that have brilliant features but poor overall coherence or ones that consistently fail to fulfill promises or meet deadlines.

Continue reading 5 Things About Planning

Again returning to our comics section, Order of the Stick: Start of Darkness has been released. Or it should have been; I had to delay my trip to the comic shop today, which means I will not be able to check for a week or so. Anyway, if you have a copy, please tell us all whether it is worth buying. :)

: Zubon

I have sometimes worried about how freakish we sound using our gamer jargon. There is an old (Gen Con?) sketch in which two TSR employees are discussing Top Secret: SI in a bar, in which they terrify the patrons (and get arrested) by excitedly discussing having shot a bunch of people on their latest mission. Our own people get confused looks when we talk about raining fiery death upon our enemies and who got that huge gun that dropped.

Then I heard my brother telling some poker stories, one of which involved a poor fellow who kept losing despite repeatedly flopping the nuts. And no one even blinked.

: Zubon

I was away from MMOs for a little while this year, so could someone tell me if the vocabulary shifted?

• Does “inc” now mean, “I intend to solo this group, so the melees should just watch the enemies run by”?
• Does “pulling” now mean, “I’ll distract this one while half the group rushes into the middle of the spawn”?

I hate looking dumb because I don’t understand what’s going on.

: Zubon

You have had a few months to work on those New Year’s resolutions. Hopefully you are looking a bit better and not gunning for supermodels. We are now ready to meet some women.

Today’s edition of our occasional series for the introverted heterosexual male focuses on assortive dating and mating. Our dominant theme will be supply and demand, along with how birds of a feather flock. Economics, psychology, and gaming, woot!

Continue reading Dating for Gamers Part 3: Spawn Points