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2,000 Posts

We just hit another milestone here at KTR: 2,000 posts (with 12,000+ comments). Let’s take a quick look at some of the numbers behind that number.

Busiest months:
1. October 2008 – 82 posts
2. April 2009 – 69 posts
3. May 2009 – 61 posts (so far)

Most popular topic:
1. World of Warcraft – 282 posts
2. City of Heroes/Villains – 224 posts
3. Lord of the Rings Online – 214 posts

Busiest authors:
1. Zubon – 910 posts
2. Ethic – 577 posts
3. Ravious – 88 posts

Zubon is a machine. Oops, I wasn’t supposed to let that secret out!

– Ethic

Arena.Net: Set my people free

I’ve been revisiting Guild Wars lately (btw, the Zaishen quests seemed to reactivate things somewhat, so kudos there). If you’ve been reading these pages for a while, you know GW has a special place in my heart. No, I’m not married to it, it’s not even my girlfriend or a crush or anything like that. But it’s been a good friend, and we had a lot of fun together over the years.

Nobody’s perfect, though. However, just as in real life, you glance over other people’s imperfections just to maintain your sanity and play well with others. The problem with GW-as-a-friend is, to put it quite simply, it’s a very bossy friend. It’s a good friend, no doubt about it, fun to be with, special and entertaining. But there’s no escaping its rails; most of the time you do things the way GW wants you to do them, and may God help you.

With GW2 around the corner (ha!) maybe there’s still time for Arena.Net to take a look at the new friend they’re building up, and maybe make it a little bit more accomodating. The dynamics, I think, definitely need to change and players need to be given more freedoms.

Continue reading Arena.Net: Set my people free

Light Themes

You know, MMO’s aren’t particulary good at theming.

Take the medic class in Star Wars Galaxies.  Sure, when the game launched you could be a doctor and sit at the hospital doing doctor things, but today’s medic is more combat oriented.  The purpose of having a medic to take into groups is clearly driven by the tried-and-tested gameplay mechanic of having a healer in a group along with a tank and someone to deal out the damage.  The medic as it stands today, doesn’t really resemble any kind of medical professional, either in reality or in Star Wars.

This medic class can instantly heal a person who’s running and shooting with a “bacta bomb” or heal an entire group of people in mid-combat with a “bacta spray”.  Playing a medic doesn’t feel like playing a medic.  It feels like playing an MMO healer with skills like “group heal” and “single-target heal”.

To be fair, playing a healer in fantasy MMOs doesn’t fair much better.  You know if you pick a priest in a game that you won’t be doing much praying.  You won’t have to attend church or give any sermons.  You’re going to run around clicking buttons that make your friend’s health-meter go up.

Continue reading Light Themes

Redefining Value

I have changed my mind completely. For most people, MMOs are horrible entertainment value for their cost. This is by design: the mechanics stretch the content across the maximum time possible, rather than deliver the fun in the most efficient and effective way. The money cost is cents per hour, but the time cost per entertainment unit is far larger than in other forms of entertainment.

Continue reading Redefining Value

Chipotle MMO, Redux

Paul Barnett, Mythic’s Creative Director, is front-lining a round of some very interesting interviews.  MMOGamer has a brutally honest interview where the interviewer explains exactly why he stopped playing Warhammer Online.  The piece seems very real and far away from any marketing agenda.  There is also a video interview at Able Gamers, which is quite good.  I love how Barnett explains things.  He should have been in What the #$*! Do We Know!? or Life After People to also give his thoughts on quantum spirituality and mass extinction.

Anyway, in a follow up to the post on a highly-focused Chipotle MMO, I wanted to present an idea that Barnett gears toward in both interviews: asset-light games.  Two snips from the interviews:

We’re getting more casual players, and wider audiences who are less obsessed with the old-school. You’ve got people who want to have their gaming time defined. “I’ve got half an hour before I’m going out. I know playing this game will only take half an hour,” or “I’ve got to put the kids to bed. I know that if I let them play this game, I can say ‘you’ve got one more level’,” knowing that one more level means 30 minutes and you can get them to bed. (from MMOGamer, emphasis mine)

So I think in the modern era you’re going to see more and more asset-light online games.  You’re not going to see as many asset-heavy online games, purely because they cost too much money and I think that that’s how the market is going to diverge.  So you’re going to have people who do things like . . they want to play Fishing online, asset-light.  They throw the rod with their iphone.  They really knock in buy using their little finger and they catch fish and they feel very happy, and it’s a sort of very shallow, very quick game and it doesn’t really take much effort.  You play it maybe for a total of maybe 5-hours in your life but you play it in 2-minute chunks.  There are going to be more games like that . . . fun, interesting. (from Able Gamers, emphasis mine)

 I completely agree with Barnett.  More and more online games are going to be designed for specific activities for a specific amount of time.  I can only imagine what would happen if Popcap (you know, the other game company that prints their own currency) decided to make an MMO, but I would bet my bank account it would be a Chipotle MMO.

–Ravious
I’ll just ask the first sand creature I run into

Hat Tip: Sanya Weathers at MMORPG Examiner

Wish list

Today on the Lotro USA boards, a developer asked “What would make you want to log in?  I’ll stay afterhours to build it”  He makes quests, deeds, and areas, so he asked that suggestions be limited to something he could actually do.

I’ve been watching the thread grow all morning.  Unfortunately, I play on the European version of the game, so I can’t post on the American forums, but it’s quite interesting.  How do you say what you want in a quest with just a forum post?  I want content that has a good reward, that is fun to play, that feels good… I want content that doesn’t suck.

It’s easy for me to nit-pick individual game mechanics like a DOT in PVP being removable, or a particular class being overpowered.  But when it comes to world-building, it’s like art.  It’s like trying to describe what kind of painting I’d like.

Flash Variations on a Theme: Launches

Consider as a case study three variations on what are essentially the same game:

In each, you launch your little person into the sky, get rewards that you can use to buy upgrades for your flight, and repeat until you hit the cap. “Better” means getting more upgrades faster.

Continue reading Flash Variations on a Theme: Launches

Chipotle MMO

For those blessed to have one nearby, Chipotle is a “Mexican” fast-food eatery.  The menu is sublime.  Customers choose a base (taco, burrito, salad, etc.), a protein (steak, carnitas, chicken, etc.), a salsa, and a few more condiments.  Compared to many Mexican-food eateries, including Taco Bell, the choices are simple, but the comparatively few things that Chipotle offers beats most of said eateries hands down.  In-N-Out Burger and Chik-Fil-A are two more food chains that follow this principle of few offerings that can’t be beat.  This is not a new concept by any means.  America is one of the anomalies in the world that has the restaurants that serve just about everything one could want from pizza to steak to tacos to salmon.  If I had a choice I’d rather go to a hawker court and buy from three separate stalls, and receiving a food item of mastery from each cook who has dedicated his or her career on that one item.

This post brought to you by my tinfoil wrapped carnitas burrito.

I thought about how so many MMOs seem to want to be an Applebee’s.  Combat is central, but not always refined.  There is crafting.  Player housing.  Pets.  Solo PvE.  Raiding.  Quests.  Missions.  Stories.  NPC’s.  Titles.  Traits.  And, all manners of PvP.  They are all over the place trying to dip their hands in to a bit of everything in order to keep your interest (read: subscription).  What if we had MMOs that would rather be like Chipotle?

Continue reading Chipotle MMO

Real Life Lacks Chat Channels

The chat system is a major flaw in the design of the universe. Generally, all communication is proximity-based. There are technological workarounds that let you speak to someone remotely, and you can modulate your volume, but the lack of normal user-defined chat channels is a major problem.

Take parties or bars, for example. I do not like being in a room with twenty-plus people, all of whom are shouting to be heard by the people immediately around them. Why can’t we set this to a series of chat rooms so that people are not talking over each other? Even if the IRL server has a limit on how many channels it supports, could we at least get a few per zone? That would keep the noise down, and it would have the added benefit of not forcing people to be next to each other if they want to communicate. Bob could stay in the conversation while he goes to get a drink, and you could send a tell to someone across the room without using a shout.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the new system of cell phone-based tells. It is a great improvement over the old system. I just think we could do so much more if we got past this spatially defined paradigm that our chat system seems stuck in.

: Zubon

Also, my wife thinks I’m no fun at parties. Curse my sensitive hearing!

The Players Are Not Monolithic

People post claiming to speak for “the players,” or developers talk about what “the players” want, but there is no single coherent bloc of “the players” (see also “the people” in voting blocs). There may be a majority, or a vocal minority, but “the players” are a diverse group with conflicting interests, even if you have a highly self-selecting group of players organized around a single niche.

floon
The Lord of the Rings Online Team
Re: Minstrel Icons

Originally Posted by Sirus05
/rant on

Can we please, please, please stop changing the minstrel icons? I absolutely hate logging in to a new patch, and find the icons are all changed around again. I can appreciate that the icons look pretty, and that this latest change of icons on the test realm is in response to the last time they changed the icons, but it’s getting really confusing having to relearn what the icons mean every single patch.

/rant off

So what part of the icon thread the last time confused you? That you guys had valid criticisms of the icons, and that we changed them based on the very passionate response of the minstrels?

Can we please, please, please remember what you guys asked for just a month or so ago?

Why does this particular example bother me? First, the quoted poster preempted the developer’s response by saying he understood exactly what the developer went on to say. Second, the response is an incoherent, “Some players, possibly including you but who knows, complained about change x, which we are changing again, so why are you complaining about changing x again?” Third, a complaint about procedure (changing something every update) is a separate matter from the content (is this one a good change?). Fourth, as a developer, you do not get to mock your players for providing feedback, particularly when it is legitimate for the previous three reasons. If you are supposed to be one of the professionals here, you must act like a grown-up, and you do not get to abuse your paying customers just because you cannot please everyone.

: Zubon

Or maybe I’m just annoyed at the people who keep changing our forms at work, so I need to get a new one every time I go through the process. Yes, I get that the new form is easier to use. It has gotten a little better each of the five times you have changed it in the past two years. Unfortunately, dealing with a new form every time takes me longer than the hassles in the old ones.