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How’s SOE Customer Support?

A blogger’s problems with Sony VAIO customer service have me wondering how customer service is with the online games. Many people don’t seem to like SOE. Personally, I have never played anything from them except free Planetside, so I have no experience from which to speak, although I have complained about waiting for NCSoft customer service. Commenters have reminded me of Comcast customer service.

Thoughts?

: Zubon

Can’t Please Everyone

A few days ago I wrote about the new “Session Play” being added to Lord of the Rings Online. One of the developers spent some time adding a little fluff to the game. They explained that it is but a small part of the upcoming content patch. The comments on the forums covered the entire range from praise to complaint. I can’t imagine what goes through the dev’s mind when they read this stuff. Must have thick skin I guess, because you can’t please them all.

Continue reading Can’t Please Everyone

Guardians at the Gates 3: Restored Faith

In our last episode, I pondered whether city-building and -defense was a path to certain MMO failure. Robin Hanson has some words that apply well to this or any other radical departure from Yet Another Fantasy MMORPG:

To have the best chance of succeeding in a radical project, you should instead choose just a few related dimensions on which to make radical choices, and then make conservative conventional choices on all the other dimensions. This strategy minimizes the chance that some other project dimension will go badly wrong and take down your central radical idea with it.

While all-dimension-radical freethinker projects have little chance of success, their looming wreckage can be a great place to look for promising radical ideas to pursue…

Or as it has been phrased elsewhere, don’t innovate for the sake of innovation. It is hard enough to think through the implications of one radical change. One commenter adds, though, that sometimes one radical change forces you to change a lot of things.

Continue reading Guardians at the Gates 3: Restored Faith

Vote for Hexaxis (plug)

I don’t usually plug stuff, but I think this is worth it. The Intel 2007 Game Demo contest has started and a new friend of mine has an entry there. He was in the lead with over 800 votes when Intel reset everything to “officially” start the contest…again. So, now he only has 28 votes.

Go check out his game, Hexaxis XXI and if you like it, give him a vote!

I met him a few weeks ago at the Digital Games Expo here in Raleigh and he really impressed me with his skills and creativity.

Thanks!

Session Play

I don’t really even know what to say about this, other than pointing out that it is not April 1st. Lord of the Rings Online is adding “session play” to the game in the next content update.

Session Play is a new system that allows you to play as a character other than your normal character. These characters do not have permanence, so you don’t keep them like you do your Free Peoples or monster play characters. You could play as a Ranger, a Troll, or… a chicken. It’s an opportunity to explore Middle-earth from a different – and sometimes unexpected – viewpoint.

A what?

Continue reading Session Play

Contest Winner

The contest is over, the random drawing has been held. “Lachek” from Ontario Canada is the winner of a signed copy of MMO Evolution. The book was donated by the author, our own Nicodemus aka Robert Rice. Congratulations!

– Ethic