Kill Ten Rats

Back when I was a youngin’, I knew every one of my neighbors. I used to walk the mile to school every day, although contrary to the traditional story I wore shoes and it wasn’t uphill either way. I used to hang out with my friends down the street without my parents having to worry about me. Ah, good memories of that community. Lest you think this was some Utopia or small town, I should point out that I grew up on the south side of Chicago. Today, I couldn’t name the first name of one of my neighbors, despite living in the same house for nearly ten years. I don’t trust my kids to be 3 houses away without supervision.

What’s your point, Granpa Oz, you say? Things change, move on? Hang on there you whippersnapper; I’ve got an analogy coming. When I used to play EQ, it was for the community. I knew all of my virtual “neighbors”, and they knew me. Gear was frequently passed up and down on the basis of friendliness. People would help you just because. Many years later, that community is all but gone, and the game soured for me. One of my final rants against the Powers That Be was about a lack of “community focus” in my guild’s actions, which was shrugged off. The community was gone, leaving only a bunch of “me”s. Playing WoW, I fail to see any community at all, and I wonder if any of the newer games dawning on the horizon have even given it a thought.

Continue reading WTB Community, PST!

…why this is not a standard business model. Seriously, players will pay you to play your game and then pay you more not to play (portions of) your game.

Counter-thought: the majority of your game has not endorsed RMT. You only need a small minority to support a nigh-endless stream of sales. With 0.1% of the planet playing WoW, you only need about 0.001% of the planet wanting to buy gold to have more than enough customers. How much of your playerbase do you lose by endorsing RMT? Noted effects of “we sell gold” servers and “no RMT” servers? I imagine that, oddly enough, people will play on no-RMT servers and still want to buy gold, despite that being a legal option on the server next door.

: Zubon

Heya, this is Ethic just letting everyone know that a few things have dragged me away from the gaming world lately and guess what? I’m not finding myself wishing I was playing an MMO very much anymore. There is nothing to draw me back right now. You could say that real life has grown more interesting lately. Anyway, this site will continue as there are several other wonderful writers here – you just won’t hear from me that often for a while.

I’ve grown disenchanted by the state of MMOs right now and have cancelled all my active accounts. As always, you can still reach me via email – and feel free to do so. I’m just going to sit back and read some of the other guys here and spend more time with my family right now. See you all around!

– Ethic

Anyone who’s played an MMORPG for more than a few levels has learned that there is a wall you hit. That wall is what you can solo. Once you hit this wall, you need help to pass over it. And unlike every swords and sorcery book you’ve ever read, you don’t call the muscular guy wearing the do-it-yourself loincloth and very sharp sword or the wizened old dude with the book and wand. Nope, you call for a healer. Nothing can change the dynamic of a group like having someone who can refill your precious hit points.

Then there’s that whole supply and demand thing that really tosses the whole plan out the window. Let’s face it – there’s just not enough people out there willing to follow you around and heal you. Slackers.

Continue reading Paging Doctor Bob

Earlier this week, Brian Sinclair over at GameSpot.com posted an article about Brian Farrell’s comments at a presentation at the Lazard Capital Markets Investors Breakfast.

Farrell, the CEO of THQ, was asked why none of the major publishers have done much in the MMORPG market. Instead of saying something along the lines of “well none of the big publishers really have a clue, and if they did get into the MMORPG market, they would screw it up more than it already is” he actually said the following:

Continue reading THQ is “misguided”…

Does anyone want to start a pool to bet on how long it will take for EA to cancel Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online and then kill the studio?

For our younger readers out there, EA has a history of this sort of thing so it would come as no surprise to many people if this did occur.

My guess (and it is just a guess) is that at some point, both games will get less and less attention and support from EA, and the core teams that have been working on both will be shifted to a new mmorpg project that EA wants to make. DaoC should be running out of steam by now, and Warhammer Online doesn’t look that impressive to me, although the thing that EA will be thinking about, is that Warhammer is a licensed property that they don’t own…that means that someone else is getting a cut of the profits.

Continue reading EA Acquires Mythic

Given enough repetitions, the ridiculously unlikely becomes almost certain. After all, someone wins the lottery all the time, even if the expected value of a ticket is always less than it costs.

I mention this because at any given time, for every game, someone is posting that something is wrong with accuracy, or the random number generator, or they are otherwise a victim of how things are being coded. Occasionally they are right, and there is a mistake in the game, but the vast majority of the time a normal random distribution explains what happened. Even for the most hideously freakish events.

Continue reading A Quick Introduction to Probability

If you can read this, you are one of the most fortunate people ever to have existed. You have access to a global communications network so plentiful, cheap, and powerful that you are using it to read commentary about video games. You have all the necessities of life available at a price, quality, and quantity nigh-inconceivable when your grandparents were born, even if your mother and grandmother were both teen mothers. You have the luxury of caring what color your imaginary priest’s robes are.

This is in no way to dismiss your problems in life. Some of you presumably have quite serious difficulties, and every form of suffering really is suffering, no matter how trivial it may seem to anyone else. But there is no point in creating new suffering for yourself when something happens in or to your game that you do not like. You really really care about how the raid is going or whether your class gets nerfed, but at the end of the night you log off and go to bed without wondering whether you will eat tomorrow. A knock on the door at night means pizza, not the secret police, so enjoy the pizza even if it is late.

The game is here to make you happy. The worst case scenario is that you will need a new game to make you happy. So be happy.

: Zubon