.

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.

.

RIFT: Cthulhu Toolkit

I was listening to Massively Speaking yesterday where they interviewed Scott Hartsman, head honcho at Trion Worlds. It’s a great MMO podcast to even begin with, but it was also a great interview. One of my big concerns with Rift, coming off of a lot of play time during Beta 4, was the mushiness of the invasion system. Players need focus and sense, and the middle portion of the dynamic content system seemed to lose both. Hartsman eased my fears in the interview because he talked about how we were seeing the early use of tools in their dynamic content system, and there was a lot more to come.

Continue reading RIFT: Cthulhu Toolkit

Start Small

Projects that will work only if they grow large generally won’t grow large; people who are fixated on creating large-scale future success can actually reduce the possibility of creating the small-scale here-and-now successes needed to get there. A veritable natural law in social media is that to get to a system that is large and good, it is far better to start with a system that is small and good and work on making it bigger than to start with a system that is large and mediocre and working on making it better.
— Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus

EVE Online is a good example of the former. I have about a dozen MMO examples of the latter.

: Zubon

Lego Universe: Commitment Challenge

This morning I logged in quick to see if the much awaited patch had dropped and was disappointed to see it hadn’t. Going to the main page, there’s an article about a new area that will be introduced in “a few weeks”. Even more disappointing is that it says that you will have to learn a new form of combat as what you know is not good enough.

So despite not even being completely finished releasing the first version of its combat/gear system, LU is revamping it. For some reason, I’m remembering Star Wars Online’s famous NGE event. Also, the fact that since launch (October) there has only been 3 very small content additions, one of which was created by fans, not Lego staff, and one was a revision of an existing zone. So besides a zone that you can walk across in under 30 seconds (the holiday Frostbluff zone), there’s nothing truly new from the company since launch. For a subscription-based game, one that promised weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly content updates, this has to be a big red flag.

Cost Disease

GM-run events in MMOs do not scale well, and their compromises mean they pretty much have to be lousy.

MMO PvE content is designed to scale well, in whatever way it scales in your game. If you make a good quest or instance, you can have it running on hundreds of servers at very little additional cost. Having 10,000,000 people play WoW takes far less developer time than having 100,000 people play each of 100 MMOs. This is mass-production, with increasing returns to scale. Computers are good at copying the same thing for more people.

Developer-piloted NPCs do not scale well. They can be in only one place. If you want that NPC to appear in more than one zone or on more than one server, you need multiple humans to pilot them. Programmed and scripted events can be copied, but the human interaction portion cannot. If you want to give every server an equal experience, you are going to need a script, reducing the human element; you are going to need either staggered starts or a large team; and if you have staggered starts, you need some way to cope with people from the fifth server knowing the script already. Sadly, the end point must always be the same, because you cannot support divergent servers. Any human interaction affects only the storytelling, not the plot.

If the developers of EVE Online, Darkfall, or A Tale in the Desert (all sandbox-y games in increasing order of PvP hardcore-ness) want an event, they can go do it. There is a server or two. They do not need to worry about divergence or repeat performances. Single-server architecture is a grand thing. Similarly, players can run their own events and affect the world. Even if most of the “events” are from people who want to watch the world burn, you have a much larger upside potential.

: Zubon

(Page not found? Look harder.)

Lego Universe: Teaching Camping, Grinding, Kill-Stealing, and Griefing to the Next Generation

Tonight a fairly high-expected patch to Lego Universe (LU) will be loaded, bringing with it the missing-at-launch class for all of the factions, along with a new area and a new racetrack. There’s also a great amount of hope that a bank or storage solution will be put in, as there has been a lot of official comments that “something” is coming for a while now. Some of these were promised, but not delivered, at launch, so seeing them come out relatively quickly is good. However, LU launching with such limited content is causing a lot of dissatisfaction among the user base. Nowhere is this more evident as in the zone called Gnarled Forest, in an area called Brig Rock. It is this area that really shows that the “MM” of “MMORPG” was not thought through completely.
Continue reading Lego Universe: Teaching Camping, Grinding, Kill-Stealing, and Griefing to the Next Generation

Shirky’s Call to Action

The choice we face is this: out of the mass of our shared cognitive surplus, we can create an Invisible University–many Invisible Colleges doing the hard work of creating many kinds of public and civic value–or we can settle for Invisible High School, where we get lolcats but no open source software, fan fiction but no improvement in medical research. The Invisible High School is already widespread, and our ability to participate in ways that reward personal or communal value is in no imminent danger.
— Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus

: Zubon

Over-Saled

In the last round of Steam sales, I bought a game at 50% off. A few days later, it went to 75% off. My plan on Steam games is increasingly to wait until I want to play it right now, and then keep waiting until there is a 50+% sale. I have been trained to avoid good sales because of potential buyer’s remorse after great sales.

: Zubon

I Soloed Lego Universe And All I Got Was These Green Coveralls

For Christmas I was allowed to pick my own gifts. You’d think this would happen more often as a middle-aged man, but as a man married to a woman who does not share many of my interests, I tend to get clothes. I happen to wear clothes, so this does work out, but it’s not what I want of course. Need and want are two different things.

One of my 3 gifts was Lego Universe. I found it for 50% off on a Black Friday sale, and for that price it seemed worth it. I find it funny to note it appears that that’s the standard price around the web for the game now. Looks like no one else here (I think Ethic changed his mind on it) has given a review on it, so I figured I would do one for the community at large. I feel that it is important to point out this is a tween-targetted (8-12 years) game, so it’s a bit different from the games I play normally these days. However, I do have a lot of Toontown experience, and several months of Free Realms to compare it to. Both of these games target the same market. I’m guessing Wizard 101 and Club Penguin would also be comparable, but I’ve never given those a run. Enough with the terms and conditions; let’s get to the review.

And for those who don’t want to read the whole thing: For $20, it’s worth it for the Lego fun. If you’ve played another Lego game, on any platform, you will likely enjoy this. I’ve played a week, and feel that it has been a fun play.

Continue reading I Soloed Lego Universe And All I Got Was These Green Coveralls