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Player governance in EVE

After all the comments on that last EVE Online post, I gave it a try for the first time today. I basically just worked my way through the tutorials, but had a good time. I can see how the environment might feel tedious after a while, but I’m sure I’ll be playing some more.

I have no idea whether the choices I made during character creation were reversible, but it didn’t seem like it. Man, the whole irreversible character development mechanic is so backwards in long-term games like these. It will be nice when it’s finally died out.

I also saw that CCP just started accepting candidacies for the Council of Stellar Management, or as their news post was amusingly titled, the Council of Stellar Awesomeness. They announced their intent to do this months ago, so I’m not sure how much of this is old news, but the details are pretty fascinating to me. This is a player-elected council of nine members who represent the playerbase to CCP, and CCP in turn promises to “attempt to accomodate all reasonable [emphasis mine] requests by player Representatives” and to “do everything in its power to resolve the topics presented.” They’re taking it pretty seriously, too — each term of the council requires a face-to-face meeting at the CCP offices, with travel (to Iceland!), lodging, and food paid for by CCP.

Continue reading Player governance in EVE

Goonswarm wants YOU

I’ve always been curious about EVE Online, but today I stumbled across something that has made me want to play more than anything else I’ve seen so far:

What a cool guild (er, excuse me, corporation) recruitment. I really think the whole single-server approach EVE has is key here; it creates more of an (authentic) feeling that what you do matters. It doesn’t just affect the 1% of EVE players who happen to be using your server, it affects everyone who plays EVE.

If you are the one guy who tackles the scout who gets killed who doesn’t provide good reconaissance etc etc… you will see the whole EVE blogosphere light up with news about the battle you were in, because it significantly changed the politics and economics of the game for everyone. And that’s really cool.

The main drawbacks I hear about are the crazily complex UI, extensive grinding & downtime, and an emotional emptiness (becuase, you know, you’re spending hours as a gray box flying around in outer space.) And those do sound like pretty big drawbacks.

I’m really tempted to give it a shot, but I feel torn. Could I handle two MMO’s? If something grabs me, I usually really want to get into it, and I don’t think I’m ready to leave WoW behind. We’ll see.

You Are Rated Against Your Hype

Simple guideline: a modest success is better than a grand failure. If you make unreasonable claims, I assume that everything else you say is a lie, and your game will be a parade of delays, disappointments, and broken promises.

Nicodemus hates this guy. Why? Because “CEO” means “you should know better than some idiot on a forum saying, ‘u cant beat wow for with like a billon dollars.'” Spore? Good luck with those expectations. LotRO? Best expansion evar or die. Vanguard? We saw that one. I expected more from Half-Life 2 because the box went on about its being the highest-rated game ever, but it came with the far-more-entertaining Portal.

A successful niche game is a great thing. It knows what it can do, and it does it well. If you want that thing, it is there for you. If not, you are not just getting a bad knockoff of something from Blizzard or Sony. Whatever jokes I may make about Alganon, I respect the David Allen interview that translated to “we’re making a pretty decent DikuMUD/EQ/WoW knockoff that does some stuff differently.” City of Heroes developers humbly remark that they did not know the costume creator would be popular.

Our industry sucks because we accept buggy releases. The PR for our media sucks because we accept unreasonable promotional crap. “Everyone promotes their game that way” is the same thing as “every game ships with bugs.” Some people do a better job, and not everyone spews exaggerations and blatant lies. And some people can live up to the hype.

: Zubon

Mines of Moria Expansion Announced

I’m really looking forward to this!

BIRMINGHAM, UK – March 14, 2008 – Turbine, Inc. and Codemasters Online today unveiled Volume II of The Lord of the Rings Online, the first retail expansion for the award-winning massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG). Announced in Birmingham, the childhood home of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria will expand the online world of Middle-earth to let players explore the ancient underground cities of the dwarves, battle epic characters in the depths, face off with the Watcher, be a part of the fateful release of Durin’s Bane and more! The Lord of the Rings Online expects to open Volume II of its epic story in the fall of 2008 with an increased level cap, two new classes and the introduction of a unique item advancement system.

“The Mines of Moria is one of the most epic settings in all of fantasy fiction,” said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. “No one delivers more quality content than Turbine and with our journey into Moria, we will raise the bar even higher. We are adding vast amounts of content, debuting massive new environments and unveiling numerous unique feature sets, like item advancement, which will create entirely new dimensions of compelling game play and social interaction which are unique to The Lord of the Rings Online experience.”

Read the rest at the official site.

Also, check out the Q&A over at Massively. Featured quote: “We’re completely rewriting and replacing the UI system…”

Massively also has concept art!

– Ethic

More Selling Fluff

I have long pondered the notion of self-funding staff via microcontent. For example, hire more graphics artists for City of Heroes costume designs and then sell their output for a few dollars as an account upgrade. If they sell enough, they stay on. If the model works really well, you can open it up to independent contractors who could make and sell costume pieces, and otherwise replicate a bit of what goes on in Second Life with user-generated content. With the host company taking a percentage. See Julian on fluff for other thoughts.

Yes, I know there are issues there. I liked the idea of putting together Dungeons and Dragons Online dungeons that way, but you would very quickly run into balance issues where dungeons were intentionally too easy or rewarding, because people would buy them for easy xp/loot. See power creep in all the existing D&D books. (After all, why buy the new book if it does not have a prestige class you want to use, and why use one that is weaker than existing ones?) (Yes, I know.)

City of Heroes has kind of pulled this off. Lead developer Positron comments:

Well, the Villain Epic ATs were originally planned for I13, but the brisk sales of the Wedding Pack enabled us to fast track these by getting them budgeted to be done earlier. Every time you see a new tux or wedding dress you can send a thanks to that player for getting everyone VEATs an issue early.

I may be misinterpreting, but it sounds like CoX bought itself more staff time via microcontent. That is the opposite order, but it works as a potential model. Most of my CoX friends bought the microcontent for the jump pack and the Pocket D teleporter.

: Zubon

Steal This Old Idea

Dark Age of Camelot had concentration-based buffs. If you want to limit the number of characters someone can buff, just code that. Recast timers are annoying; Bob wants to keep these five buffs live all the time, done.

Yes, it encourages dual-boxing. Yes, there are times when you do want things to be timer-based. But if Bob can keep this buff on five characters continuously, just let him do it, rather than having him re-buff every four minutes.

: Zubon