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Mission Maker

I resubscribed to Star Wars Galaxies to try the new content that has been added since I last played. I remember reading the press release about one of the features which had been added called “Chronicle Master”. Apparently, it was like the mission creator system they used to talk about having in 2003. The press release claimed that over three million quests were made the first month. Considering SWG’s last reported subscriber numbers, that’s a lot of quests! One individual even created over 6,000 quests that month.

So now that I’ve had a chance actually try this system, I can say that SOE didn’t make anything worth bragging about. The reason an individual would create thousands of quests in a month is because everyone who wants to make cool quests has to grind for hours before they’re allowed to make anything worth doing. Almost all of the quests I’ve made have been made using a mouse recording program while I was asleep. Anyone that made six thousand quests in four weeks probably did the same thing. Every single one of those quests is as engaging as you imagine.

Why is that developers put in massive grinds into these things? I know they want me to play longer, but the ability to find well written player content would keep me playing a lot longer than a massive grind.

Level Up at School

The Daily Illuminator notes a Multiplayer Game Design class where

… Students leveled up, with an “A” being Level 12 at the end of the semester.

From the syllabus:
Class time will be divided between fighting monsters (Quizzes, Exams etc.), completing quests (Presentations of Games, Research etc.) and crafting (Personal Game Premises, Game Analysis Papers, Video Game Concept Document etc.).

Reportedly, class attendance and scores were up significantly. …

: Zubon

Guild Wars – War in Kryta

The haze has cleared leaving us with the upcoming content – War in Kryta.  Yet, calling it upcoming is not really the best word because it has started coming now.  It really started in-game with Mr. Thackeray’s attempt to sweep the ice queen Gwen off her feet.  Players that have completed the Eye of the North or done specific Wintersday quests are able to collect items from across the lands to prepare a picnic where possibly Thackeray could propose.  Players can get pretty good gifts in exchange for helping Thackeray out.

Last night there was an update that added the Trial of Zinn and the White Mantle Peacekeepers.  The Trial of Zinn follows the aftermath of Zinn’s Task.  Zinn, a rival golemancer to the main story’s Oola, accidentally sent out a few golem in Zinn’s Task to assassinate world leaders.  Players are tasked with stopping these rogue golems.  Now, in the Trial of Zinn, Zinn must stand before the Arcane [Asuran] Council for his crimes.  The White Mantle Peacekeepers are bandits hired by the White Mantle to maintain peace.  This posse comitatus (wink at Tipa) of course are antagonistic to players allying with the Shining Blade, which is about all of them.

It is pretty cool that instead of a big, honkin’ drop of content and goodies at the 5th Anniversary, which is what I believe most people were expecting, ArenaNet is choosing instead to ramp up.  It seems that a lot of players are dusting off their accounts to come back to the free updates.  The other weeknight, Fort Aspenwood, which is my go to for casual PvP, was absolutely hopping.  I’ve also seen a lot of Tweets from people coming back.  Guild Wars birthday is April 28th, and with the pace that has been set, I think we will see a few more truffle bites before the birthday cake comes.

–Ravious
deficient in the cognitive facilities requisite to fully comprehend the truth

Developer Recognition

Warhammer Online is doing something pretty cool with four lucky bloggers: Gaarawarr, Mykiel, Shadow-war, and Werit.  They invited the four to visit Mythic Entertainment and sit down with the WAR Design team for interviews and discussion.  There is a real heavy emphasis on interactivity via Twitter too.  I love seeing stuff like this because not only is it a fan dream to meet developers but bloggers are fonts of communication… so everybody wins.  The event got me thinking about developer recognition regarding bloggers.

Continue reading Developer Recognition

DDO: Static Style

Last night was the first night of the Massively DDO static night, officially called “Massively’s Nights of Eberron”. I’ve always said that I’d love to play DDO in a static group so I rolled up a Cleric the night before and then logged in last night. I expected maybe 15 or 20 people to show up. I’d guess it was closer to 50, including some famous folks like Psychochild and Green Armadillo. Syp would have been there but instead he was off doing something important like “welcoming a new baby into the world”. Yeah, whatever dude. Seriously though, congratulations!

The first thing that confused me is that we all were on Korthos but some of us had snow and some had sun. We had to all get to the sunny version which meant we had to sail to Stormreach and then back to Korthos. At this point we tried to form groups of 5 to do some quests. I invited one person and we stood around waiting for others to express interest. Eventually we got a group of 4 together, 1 Cleric and 3 Rogues. Off we went with voice chat enabled.

Continue reading DDO: Static Style

Leaderboard Prejudice

Sanya Weathers, an blogger of exponential blogs, has started writing over at the community manager watering hole, Metaverse Mod Squad.  In the latest post she discusses the fiscal responsibility of the community management team (not without comparison to another department), but the crux of the post is on Leaderboards.  Sanya writes that “achievement, respect, and a sense that time spent on your product is not time wasted can all be checked off with leaderboards, or whatever you want to call your comparative ranking system.”  Dan Gray at his blog echoes Sanya’s thoughts by saying “it’s free content, it’s recognition, and it’s a fantastic tool for your community.”

There is a dark side though.  A darkness that harms community.  We shall name it “elitism.”

Continue reading Leaderboard Prejudice

New Annals in Design Stupidity

We are all familiar with the principle that you can design anything as a bonus or a penalty, right? You can give characters a “hunger” debuff, or you can give them a “well fed” buff for eating food; if you balance enemies with the assumption that everyone will have eaten, the practical effect is negligible, but players like the idea of being rewarded instead of being punished. Similarly, most games give you the normal amount of experience if you are “rested” in some form, rather than saying that you only earn half xp if you play too much. No, it’s not “bonus xp” where you are somehow putting something over the very developers who implemented it.

Most Facebook games reward you for logging in every day or having many friends. Many will even give you increasingly large bonuses for playing many days in a row or for having many friends. I have found two that take the opposite approach to an idiotic degree. Hotel City is the latest from Playfish, and if you go a few days without playing, cockroaches will take over your rooms so you must pay to clean them out. Yes, they punish you for returning to the game after an absence. Food Friendzy randomly hits you with a “21 Club” tile. If you have at least 21 friends playing, you get 21 points for landing on it; if not, you lose 21 points. That sounds like an unfortunate prospect to bootstrap: “Come play this game with me where we get punished for not having enough friends playing. No, not many, we’ll need to recruit about 12 more, why do you ask?” It is also one of the worst excuses for a game I have ever seen, where the entire gameplay is picking tiles at random to get points. Many of those tiles will make you lose points, including “lose all” and one that flips your score from positive to negative. And then they will mock your “strategy” if your score ends in the negative.

: Zubon

Guild Wars – War in Kryta Recap

Day by day the viral campaign for Guild Wars and believably its 5th Anniversary is bringing life to the Guild Wars community.  Almost every weekday it seems some small piece of the puzzle drops even if its an image that just becomes slightly less blurred.  I can barely keep up with it, and I definitely seem unable to tell the story here.  But, other people can.  Neo Nugget and Borx at Guild Wars 2 Guru forum have put together an excellent recap walking all late-comers step by step through what we have found in the viral marketing campaign.  The thread covers everything from the webpages that were discovered to the Facebook status updates for each faction.

Continue reading Guild Wars – War in Kryta Recap

SWTOR, the real WOW 2

Once upon a time, a western MMO was announced three years before it’s targeted release date. The developers tried to hide their more simplistic graphics engine by making use of “stylized” graphics. Some were turned off by the graphical design, but others argued the graphics would age better than realistic looking games. Besides, it promised to be a “seamless” world, which is worth something. Despite being the company’s first MMO, people trusted the developer because of their reputation for only releasing quality games. The developer had a reputation for making the some of the best games of their genre. The game of which I speak is Star Wars, The Old Republic and Bioware. But all these things could also be said of World of Warcraft and Blizzard.

Continue reading SWTOR, the real WOW 2