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The Cast at Camp Matrix Online
Kate Thompson writes "The Boston Phoenix followed up the news that Matrix Online would be hiring live performers to play characters from the movies (Morpheus, the Oracle). The article looks at what qualifications you need to be an events implementer (or "imp"), how they get their scripts, and how Lawrence Fishburne felt about watching an imp play his part. Warner Bros. apparently has big plans for this - they consider the Matrix Online to be the 'fourth Matrix movie,' and they want players to feel like they're actually shaping the Matrix story. It's not clear, though, how far they'll really take that."
It'll be hard for them to do once they've lost all of their players. I bought the game, played it for three days, deleted it and then spent a half hour on the telephone trying to talk to a human so I could disable my account (you can't cancel your subscription any other way than by calling their technical support lines).
The game is boring. You can play for hours and hours and hours and be lucky if you come across another player. And there's not really much reason to party up with other players. And the crafting system is kind of lame. And the missions are incredibly repetative. Essentially, the game is just DULL. I usually get bored with an MMORPG before long, but I've never become bored with one in only three days before.
I really regret wasting my money buying the game. It's a good idea, poorly implemented. Besides, every single jackass things they have to wear a neo trench-coat. How original.
Camp NAMBLA!
All the actors play all the characters. I wonder if that also crosses genders.
The first post states that is game is boring, etc. after they played the game for a WHOLE three days.
... these people CHOOSE to repeat similar missions over and over ... they are not forced to.
The world is so vast that you could not expereience all the content in three days. No way in hell.
MXO is a fun game. If you enjoy the world of The Matrix movies, you will enjoy this game.
There are a lot of comments about repetetive game missions. The thing is
Join this game, invest some REAL time (more then three days) and immerse yourself. MXO is a very solid and fun game.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
From the article:
There's no industry standard job description for an "imp," and most of the 13 men and women on the team come from what Hewitt calls "unorthodox backgrounds." But he explains some of...
Wait, wait. Back the fuck up.
Thirteen? Thirteen people? That's it?
Considering any MMORPG is considered a huge flop unless they get at least 100,000 players, how much can 13 people possibly impact game play for the overwhelming majority of players?
13 People ammounts to a rounding error. There are zero live performers to interact with in this game. All hype, no story. Moving on.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If you want to shape the matrix story...
1. Go online and open a merchant account.
2. Slap the matrix logo on every piece of crap you can find.
3. Profit...
That's the most substantive plotline of the Matrix.
for the poor bastard who gets to imp as Neo.
There will probably only be one line on the page:
"whoa."
It seems like they put a lot of work into their graphics, but in the end its not fun. The only thing you can do in the game is level up. The best way to level up is to run from point A to B to C. Its all waypoint running. I played through one of their live events, it was so dumb it doesn't get justified an explaination.
God spoke to me.
I played my share of (and assisted other people playing) "dynamic quest" characters during a stint as a guide in EverQuest. The response from the players was formulaic: Big Continuity Character shows up in a zone, with rumblings and zone/server broadcasts to get the attention of the players. When the players do show up, the Big Continuity Character has some lines to deliver, but since typing is a lot slower than speaking - and is far slower than the ADHD most of the players evidently have - the game spam quickly overtakes the plot, making it impossible to get anything out of the game unless one is logging their chat to a file for later processing.
People start crowding around, severely increasing lag for everyone (including the quest actor, whose typing rate decreases sharply due to the video lag), and if the Big Continuity Character happens to be evil, two other factors increase lag even more: One, everybody thinks there's gonna be a fight, so they keep every buff in the spell book on themselves, meaning spellcasting spam is pretty much nonstop; and two, some people think that the only way to get lewts is to start the fight themselves, meaning that the quest actor can't get the lines out what with being attacked constantly.
There are all sorts of people that show up at these events - some are intent upon getting whatever lewts and rewards they can, some see the hundreds of people standing around as a good motivator for committing the MMOG equivalent of whipping it out in public (i.e., chat spam, frequently strewn with vulgarity), and some try to roleplay with the character regardless of the obviousness of some other plot unfolding which doesn't involve that particular player. Only a few are actually there to find out what's going on.
The result is that dynamic quests in a production environment are unfulfilling for all involved. Even when a guide or GM showed up in public and chatted with the players, the response was usually positive - but everything went downhill quick when a quest was involved.
The problem with MXO is the problem with SO many other MMORPGS... everyone wants to be the same person. For example, in Star Wars Galaxies, it's a Jedi. Sure there are a few diehards who play successfully as other characters, but most everyone wants to be a jedi in the Star Wars universe. In the Matrix, everyone wants to be "the One" (even though Neo is a hired character, you get my point). In any situation where there is one uber-character who totally kicks butt, there will be NO fun in the MMORPG world. Games like EQ and WoW work because you can be successful as many different types of characters. If there's not a (reasonably) level playing field, then everyone's gonna want to be the character with the advantage. Which makes the game suck.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
It's kind of like watching a car wreck in slow motion. You're certain you know the outcome, and you get the feeling you really don't want to watch, and you can't believe people are making such mistakes when a layman can armchair it.
You just can't run events for a playerbase of that size without volunteer recruitment from the playerbase and imposing order to help manage the masses.
MxO's reliance on an in-house acting guild is clever, but these actors are not putting on a play. They're more like GMs in the world's largest tabletop campaign, interacting both with players and with each other.
If these actors had a brain, they'd stop acting and start delegating. Don't play Morpheus: play Zion's Council. Use your authority to establish a player community, and interact with that community on your own terms. Eventually you'll build a community that can start taking some of the tremendous strain off your staff.
Neil Stephenson would be proud. Can you say, "Diamond Age?"
Now if we can only get The Oracle to raise our kids for us....
Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
The matrix is pretty fucking camp, online or off.