Massively Multiplayer Games Quickified

It's the last day of the first month of 2006, and already there are plenty of new things brewing on the Massive front. World of Warcraft's community is abuzz with news of the Raid content Jeff Kaplan mentioned over the weekend, and details on the 1.10 patch, which is to feature priest updates and weather cycles. City of Villains has big changes a-coming as well, with content for levels 40 to 50 going in, as well as new zones and a new mission type. The Mayhem missions sound like they're finally living up to the promise of 'being a villain'. The EQ2 server combines are the least of the changes occurring at SOE. Chris Kramer did an interview with GamerGod about some of the sweeping changes inc, touching on the free Planetside scheme and mentioning the Sony Station blog, which so far just has an intro from John Smedley. More romantically, FFXI is rolling out information on its Valentine's Day event. Valentione's day is the chocolate and hearts holiday as only Moogles could imagine it. It's fun to play for love, but also fun to play to crush. Guild War's world championships are taking place in about two weeks, with the first place purse weighing in at $50,000. Vanguard's own brand of hardcore lost a little bit of mystery this week with the release of a features list. Finally. Even though you can't win big bucks for playing them, Eve and Ultima Online continue to please their players with updates and releases. Eve's Creative Director spoke with OGaming about plans for outer space in 2006, and UO will see a new player tour and seasonal spring items. It's a good spring for Massive gaming. Update: 01/31 20:30 GMT by Z : I knew I would miss one. A reader wrote in to mention that Anarchy Online is gearing up for some great new stuff in the 16.2 patch, as well as in the upcoming expansion Lost Eden.

Comments

One thing

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only one thing I would want to be added to all of the hordes of MMRPGs out there:

A plot.

Re:One thing

[Palshife]

Sorry, I didn't hear you. I was too busy talking to an unassuming cheese shop owner in Stormwind about assasinating a government official. Why he seems to have connections to SI:7 I'm not entirely sure, but he seems to know more than he lets on. Could it be its because he has closer ties to Edwin VanCleef than he wants to admit? Time will tell. Now if you'll excuse me I have to find some gnome named Tyrion if I want to stop the Defias Brotherhood from tearing the power structure of Stormwind, and by extension the Alliance, apart.

Above plot copyright of Blizzard Entertainment.

Re:One thing

[lgw]

And will anything you do or don't do on this quest affect the game world in any persistant way?

Even in single-player games, it's amazing how seldom your actions affect the world. Sure, there's backstory claiming it's all very epic and important, but it rarely shows up in the game at all.

With MMORPGs I've yet to see a game where ordinary quests by ordinary player had any persistant effect on the game world at all. Occasionally you'll see an "event" with two possible outcomes in which the entire server population participates, but that's not really the same.

Re:One thing

[Golias]

And will anything you do or don't do on this quest affect the game world in any persistant way?

Actually, in WoW, you do affect the world in persistant ways sometimes. How? By instancing.

Play a human cleric, and one of your newbie missions will be to find a wounded knight and heal him. Do so, and he returns home. There is no longer a wounded knight resting against that tree for you.

When some other cleric gets that quest, there will be a wounded knight there waiting for him, but there will never again be one there for you to deal with.

It's not quite the same thing as being able to chop down a tree and have the whole game world see that you did it, but that kind of permeranent change would require almost as many devs and players.

Re:One thing

[tyroney]

So when I read a choose-your-own-adventure book, it doesn't have a plot because I can go back and the first parts are still the same? Just because your actions don't regularly remove/add content for other people doesn't make thier effects invalid.

Re:One thing

[Lord Kestrel]

Guild Wars is doing a persistent outcome in their expansion, which is supposed to come out sometime between now and the end of June.

According to what they are saying, on the new continent, there are 3 "factions". The local continental population "Cantha", and then two extreme right and left wing factions. They control various parts of the continent, and your guild chooses a side to fight for. Through guild battles, and other pvp/pve type (quests, battles, whatever), you can add towns to one faction or another. Apparently if one faction manages to take over the whole continent, something special will happen. There hasn't been enough information released yet to find out if that's all, or if there is more to it than that.

Anyways, it's at least some type of persistent effect on the world even if it isn't exactly like you're describing.

Re:One thing

[lgw]

While some don't consider GuildWars an MMORPG, I think this idea is pretty cool. The Arena.net folks (developers for GuildWars) have shown a great willingess to try new things.

Re:One thing

[Teese]

umm, the parent comment is strictly in regards to the grandparents comment on plot.

Your logic implies that no book (except those choose your own adventure books), movies or tv shows have plot - since the viewer has no say on outcome or cannot make a persistant change to the Universe.

A plot does not in any way indicate that the user has the ability to change the story.

Now, maybe you weren't replying at all about plot. In that case you probably should have started a new discussion, or made it clear that "ok sure, they do have a plot, but I don't want just a plot, I want to make a permanent, measurable change in the story's arc - unlike almost any other genre of entertainment. I'll hold this MMORPG to a higher level of standard then any other entertainment medium I have - and then complain about it!"

Re:One thing

[Kesch]

The problem is making a mutable game world that can withstand the mutilations of hundreds of users. When the game designers make content, they want everyone to be able to experience it, not just the first 10 people to finish the quest. They can only really do small things. Examples:

FFXI: They had a territorial system where grinding your ass off and doing quests could change territorial control to your faction.
WoW: Although not permanent, there are two dragon bosses that when killed will have their head displayed prominently in the capital city for a time.
WoW(again): This one time, as I passed some NPC's, they started chatting with each other about my gnome, praising him and such. Although not huge, it was very uplifting.
WoW(last time): Although you seem to be against huge singleton population-wide efforts, Blizzard is currently in the middle of the one time war effort. You really get the sense that your contribution matters and that it is a huge team game of everyone working together to complete a massive quest with a long lasting impact on the world.

The best way game designers portray a sense of cause and effect is with quest chains. They have you follow a story line and refer to your previous actions as you follow the chain. I'd be intrested to hear though if any one has a solution for a mutable MMO feature that he or she thinks could work. I can't come up with anything good right now.

Re:One thing

[lgw]

It's not quite the same thing as being able to chop down a tree and have the whole game world see that you did it, but that kind of permeranent change would require almost as many devs and players.

This gets repeated often on game design forums, but it's simply not true. Many MMORPGs now have fully automated mission generation: a simple premise and an instanced adventure area are randomly genererated (from templates). Instant quest.

Everyone is just scared to put the same automatic world generation logic into play in the shared areas, or they're just so used to very small worlds they can't imagine it otherwise.

There are no longer any technological limts preventing the shared world from constantly changing and evolving in response to player actions. If I don't like that orc encampment outside of town, I should be able to take a party and kill all the orcs and torch their campp and build a lemonade stand where it used to be. The game can create a new orc encampment somewhere no one is looking at right now. As time passes in the game, large areas my become "civilized" in this fashion, but that's just a matter of either making the world big, or occasionally setting up an orc invasion (or if your artists have had a few months to add a new creature type, an invasion of new content).

If you can randomely generate an instanced dungeon, you can randomely generate a shared dungeon which is discovered somewhere and lasts until someone figures out how to make it go away. Very little development work required.

Re:One thing

[F_Scentura]

"There are no longer any technological limts preventing the shared world from constantly changing and evolving in response to player actions."

Not on a game the scale of WoW.

"If I don't like that orc encampment outside of town, I should be able to take a party and kill all the orcs and torch their campp and build a lemonade stand where it used to be. The game can create a new orc encampment somewhere no one is looking at right now. As time passes in the game, large areas my become "civilized" in this fashion, but that's just a matter of either making the world big, or occasionally setting up an orc invasion (or if your artists have had a few months to add a new creature type, an invasion of new content).

If you can randomely generate an instanced dungeon, you can randomely generate a shared dungeon which is discovered somewhere and lasts until someone figures out how to make it go away. Very little development work required."

You're confusing an instance with world content. "Very little" my ass.

Re:One thing

[lgw]

Automatically generate world content from templates.

See, that wasn't so hard. Choose the theme for a new area from a list of the kinds of areas you have templates made for. Bandit camp, visiting caravan, newly discovered underground area, whatever. Choose the race of bad guys who live there. Populate the area based on the spawn table for that race.

The plotline in current MMORPGs are drawn from a small pool of ideas, so just make a list of plot elements for the game genre, and have nearby NPCs generate random quests for that area, for basic content to get started with. This will gove adventurers an in-character reason to explore the new area.

Then choose a goal for the bad guys from a list for that kind of new area. Sacking a town, finding the Dingus of Great Power, whatever. Set a time limit. If some adventurer discovers what's going on in time to stop it, and defeats the enemy leaders, the world changes and the area goes away, becomes ruins, whatever's appropriate. If no one discovers the plot in time, the bad guys *succeed* and the nearby town is destroyed, the Dingus of Great Power is used to summon a demon that ravages the landscape, whatever. There are only 20 or so fantasy adventure plots anyhow, it's easy enough to automate.

Because it's all auto-generated from templates, you can make your world big enough that you don't have thousands of adventurers sumbling across every square inch of landscape every day, so you can have enough content that new areas last a while. Also, when it's trivial to add randomly generated world content, it's pretty easy to turn a writer's ideas into world content. No more "3 days to write a good idea, 3 months for world design and artwork".

Re:One thing

[lgw]

A book is not interactive. The plot involves events that happen to the author's characters. Other events may be going on in the story, but if the characters aren't involved it's just backstory, not really plot. A minimum of continuity is also required for a book - if the heros kill the Evil One chapter 3, and he's back in chapter 5, the author has some explaining to do.

An MMORPG is interactive. The plopt involves events that happen to *my* character. Other events may be narrated by NPCs, but if *my* character is not involved it's just backstory. MMORPGs seem to just through continuity out the window. If I'm following some alleged story arc and kill the Evil One, and he respawns 15 minutes later, and the same NPC is offereing me the same quest again, WTF?

So perhaps it's continuity that's lacking, if you want to define it that narrowly, but it's hard to find any immersion in a plot (in a book, movie, MMORPG, or whatever) where the characters' actions have no consequences.

Re:One thing

[lgw]

You mentioned in passing a very immersive and very easy way to make your actions affect the world: have NPCs know about you. City of Heroes did this as well. Defeat a menace to a town? Have the guards salute you, and shopkeepers hold the door for you, and random NPCs point you out to passers by. For a while, anyway, until the next guy is famous.

Re:One thing

[ManiManiStatue]

Shadowbane.

Re:One thing

[AlexMax2742]

EVE Online. The players, quite literally, make the storyline. Not EVERY single player, but large player run corperations figure in prominantly into the ongoing storyline.

Re:One thing

[atrus]

I agree with you here - this has always bugged me. Its a single player game with friends - nothing changes. You raid the same place over, and over and over, and kill the same boss over and over. But all games have some level of this. The closest to "totaly free form" is the player vs. player side in EVE, where players wage wars against other plays to conquer territory and stations. Its what also drives the whole economy forward, since once you get blown up, your ship is no longer there (you may get an insurance payout up to a certain amount, but for the fancy Tech 2 stuff it never even gets to 50% of the value, and it never covers the modules).

EVE does have the mission and complex (dungeon) aspect too, but you generaly don't play the game soley for those.

Re:One thing

[Lord_Dweomer]

While I agree with you at heart, I don't think you fully understand the situation.

We have the technology, but what people don't realize is that as these games become more popular, with much larger populations, the game world needs to increase as well. That should help let them make more procedural content. The problem they keep running into is most likely that there are players who will do things just to disrupt the game. Imagine the effect of that if they could make permanent changes in the game world. Not to mention that if you killed an orc emcampment or something, and it didn't reappear....eventually it would be near impossible for anybody to start a new character, as the only things that would be left alive are things that were too tough to be killed.

So its really a sociological problem.

Re:One thing

[lgw]

All of the problems you mention can be solved by making the world bigger. How can you even get the feel of a real adventure if you can't just start running and dissapear into uncharted territory where you're unliekly too see another person untill you head back to town. From what I hear, the original Asheron's Call was like this, and it made up for many game flaws.

Of course, if automatic world generation is done well, the world can be quite large indeed. While making the world larger isn't completely free, since there's game state to maintain, most of the costs of a MMORPG world scale with the number of players, not the size of the world (especially now that storage is so cheap).

You just have to make it clear where new players need to go. You can have an ever-expanding civilized area, with no monsters at all, and just spawn new players at villages on the border. You can also stage server events which contract the civilized areas dramatically, if you like destructive events (and I've never seen a GM who doesn't).

Re:One thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Plot?? You call that a plot?? Sorry a plot in a video game is something that we can change, something we can take part of. 99.999% of ALL WoW players don't even READ the bubbles before clicking COMPLETE QUEST and GET A NEW ONE. WoW is nothing but the lowest common denominator of MMORPG. Of course it has the most players, it's the most water downed boring experience that EVERYBODY can seemingly get into. Of course that has the problem that after about a year of game time, you have seen EVERYTHING the game can offer. After that there is little reason to keep playing.

Re:One thing

[geminidomino]

That's part of the problem, though. At least as I see it.

Don't assassinate him. Yet the Defias never seem to overrun Stormwind anyway. Or kill him, but then try to roleplay with someone else who killed him. Yeah.

Not to mention the massive spoilers that particular game puts out itself. I remember my young, fresh-faced, bright eyed level 5 rogue, coming into Stormwind with a few measly silver to his name to learn a trade.

Next thing I know? There's a frelling dragon screaming all through the city.

Re:One thing

[Daengbo]

I'm not really a gamer, but I think that I'd play your game, but only because I like role playing. I never realized that MMORPGs worked the way that you say that they currently do. It sounds idiotic, and why would I want to play in a world where nothing ever really changes. Up to this point, I haven't played them because they just don't look any fun.

So I say "code it," if you can, and not in some flippant, "If you want feature, then add it" way. I mean really. If it's within your ability, I think that it would be great. Make it so that when the cleric opens a rift in the ground to swallow some eveil city, not only is the city gone, but the plate tectonics change. When a horde of locusts is called in, the crops are ruined, the locusts spead to other areas, there's massive famile, and the characters can't buy food. When a tornado is called down by a mage, the weather pattern over the whole continent shifts a little. Make hurricanes and tidal waves to destroy the ships and harbors.The possibilities are endless.

So that things don't get too civilized, create an unassailable "hell" or "Mordor" (however you spell it) in a part of the world where evil things keep respawning and resettling. Make it all use AI. The really powerful characters can "retire" to live in the city and do whatever they want, but who'll want to play a retired character? If your world is harsh enough to keep knocking civilization down, then it'll never get out of hand. Program the AI and let it handle the economy, the pilgimage of elves across the plains to their ancestral home once a year, and whether the inn has room for you or you need to sleep in the stable.

Make characters die often, especially the powerful ones. Becoming powerful just makes you a target, you know. Suddenly there are quests against the major players in the game. Although I don't understand the way guilds work in WoW, it sounds like it sucks, and you should find some way to avoid armies running around full time, perhaps disease or food supply or something. Make the world tough, because it's an adventure, right? Make the harshness a constant in your game, so that it can be adjusted up or down depending on how civilization is doing. Or just let the demons overrun the world, reboot the game and make everyone start over from scratch. Either way, it sounds like good role-playing, if less hack-and-slash than most people are used to. It doesn't even have to be graphically great, I think, if the "change the world" premise is sold well enough. Think of it as networked nethack with AI on a grand scale.

Finally, make sure that it has SEX, because that in and of itself will cause the game to sell. If characters can go to a brothel and pay to have sex while the player watches the action and whacks off at home, you'll be rich, and both the players and characters will be eternally poor. Of course, for that part, the graphics will have to be more than nethackish. ...
( |\ --> ( |/ \\o// --> :P^\| ) just won't make it there. ;)

Re:One thing

[Daengbo]

One more thing -- make sure that "magic points" and "Karma" or whatever you use are an economy unto themselves. Like maybe some regions are more magic-prone than others, and points recover based on an algorithm, but no more than x total point for everyone in the area per day. The points get rationed out or something. If there are 800 magicians staying in a city for a magicians convention, then, nobody is recovering anything until the convention leaves town, PLUS there's no room in the inn and you'll be sleeping in the stable again. ;)

Re:One thing

[tekkou]

Granted, it's not on the scale that people would wish it to be, but FFXI has a player-adjusted world. Every week, stats get tallied for which country gained the most conquest points in each of the world regions. The nation that gains the most gets 1st place, then 2nd place, and 3rd (obviously). This does quite a few things: - the nation's shops get better items when they're in 1st - you have more items to spend your conquest points on from the nation's guards - you can be warped from your capital to any of the outposts that your nation controls - items/equipment sometimes have stats that are based on whether or not your nation controls the territory you're in - the 1st place nation gets NPCs that will quiver your arrows/bolts - you do not collect crystals in territories your nation controls Yes, they're not OMG earth shattering or anything, but it definitely had a huge impact on the game (I haven't played in over a year, so I don't know if it still impacts as much).

Re:One thing

[lgw]

I see you have detected two of my career ambitions: make an MMORPG and make an ASCII-art porn server. ;)

I'm currently working on writing a great set of RPG rules. The rules systems used in MMORPGS are about 20 years behind the latest ideas in Pencil-and-Paper RPGs, primarily because of licensing issues (and a real lack of understanding that this is important). City Of Heroes was the first MMORPG with professional game design, and it was deliberately simplistic and colorful.

A combat system that merely involves each side applying damage until one side falls just isn't that interesting, and has none of the back-and-forth feel of real melee combat.

The MMORPG will come. It may only have 100 players, and may be delayed until I'm financially independent, but it's inevitable.

Re:One thing

[fitten]

There have been many people talking about persistent changes in the game world for a long time. For examples: trees grow, if you chop one down, everyone sees a stump there. A large field in this one area has a lot of travel across it, a path forms if enough players take the same path across it over time - note that different servers may have different paths across the field as their server's travel patterns may differ. etc.

Some games have even had persistent changes (one time event for each server). EQ had Waking the Sleeper and WoW has this Slithus opening thing.

However, there are two major issues with having one-time content on a large scale. The first is technical... bandwidth. To broadcast all the persistent changes in a world (remember, these happen almost constantly) requires a lot of bandwidth. Game communication still has to cater to modem speeds because a significant portion of gamers still use dial-up - enough so that you don't want to eliminate them from your potential market. Some compromises can be made, however. "Canned" changes, like those mentioned above, are possible because they require just a server-side setting and only maybe a small change be sent out over the network once to tell the client which graphics file(s) to load (of course, you have to send all the sets of graphics out in patches ahead of time). The downside of this is that the changes have the feel of being canned. They are either one change or they are a small set of changes that get cycled as world events dictate. Those type, the small set, lose the illusion after a while. This will change over time as more of the world gets connected via broadband (and faster in the future - fiber to the home :))so this will sort itselve out eventually. In any case, bandwidth ultimately takes backseat to the biggest issue which is just the massive amount of content that has to be created.

The *biggest* problem to overcome doesn't deal with graphics like "put a stump here" or "put a path here" but just the consumable content. Some games may make this an illusion by having different quests to the same instance flagging certain characteristics - the first quest you go in and beat the prince so the second quest reflects that the prince is dead in the instance. This is pretty flexible but it isn't "world" in that you can still see other people wanting help to go kill the prince that you've already killed. It's usually a nice compromise but it still isn't world persistent. For world persistent events, the one-time nature of it presents a HUGE burden on the game content developers. It may take months for the developers to design an encounter around a king in some distant castle only to have that king killed the first night it is put onto a server. First, this type of content means that only a very tiny subset of the players will ever see it so it is a lot of work for just 40 people to do in one night. Second, most game players want to experience "everything" in the game and the vast majority of content will not be seen by the vast majority of players in this type system. So, it becomes a massive amount of work to provide that type content to a few hundred players (out of several millions, for example in WoW). The logical alternative is to fall back to canned encounters that randomly spawn every so often but with minor changes... the boss has different colored robes, maybe a different class (for rpgs), and the like. However, this illusion is quickly seen through and isn't much different (if at all) from the instancing quests and the like.

So, basically people want to have the single-person game experience where all their actions have an effect on the world but they also want to play the game with 100s (1000s, 10000s, millions) of players. There's no easy solution that doesn't feel canned (which removes much of the excitement and entertainment of it).

There are many other issues as well... for example you mention the two outcome scenarios... that's, in effect, creating two games and a

Re:One thing

[lgw]

While better than nothing, theonly players who *personally* affect their world in this way are players that lead massive alliances that can affect the server's balance of power. I did that once, in DAoC, and it was really more hassle than fun. Plus next week it shifts the other way and it's just like nothing ever happened.

Re:One thing

[lgw]

You make some good points.

"Canned" changes, like those mentioned above, are possible because they require just a server-side setting and only maybe a small change be sent out over the network once to tell the client which graphics file(s) to load (of course, you have to send all the sets of graphics out in patches ahead of time). The downside of this is that the changes have the feel of being canned. They are either one change or they are a small set of changes that get cycled as world events dictate. Those type, the small set, lose the illusion after a while. This will change over time as more of the world gets connected via broadband (and faster in the future - fiber to the home :))so this will sort itselve out eventually.

While you're right that this is limiting, it's the low-hanging fruit. It would be a giat step forward just to have the canned changes. Small changes, like a blastable world, can be fun, but they're not really important to plot. Blastable instances wouls let people have fun just destroying the countryside without having to deal with the bandwidth or griefers.

For example in WoW, if you had an event where the Horde took over the world somehow, say that all Horde characters were then able to advance to level 100 but the Alliance could not, you'd expect almost all your Alliance players to want to leave that world and transfer to another (or just quit the game).


Well, PvP realm balance is a whole different world of hurt. But I'm focused on PvE content here, and overall player-vs-monster world balance can be sovled by fiat by the GMs - in fact, that's what I would expect all the non-automated content to be built around. The same smart world and quest designers working to acknowledge sweeping changes that playes have made, and introduce new challenges (and never just put the world back the way is was) in a way that makes sense in-character.

Re:One thing

[Palshife]

I'm sorry 99.999% of WoW players feel that way. Did they realize what they were buying when they started drafting $14.95 a month to Blizzard? Plot is not mutable by definition, and suspending your disbelief with other players is required to enjoy the plot that's written. Someone else mentioned it in this thread, but the plot in books isn't any different.

And to the 0.001% of WoW players that can read, man great game, right? ;)

And hey, it's not the end of the world if you stop playing after a year! Just ask yourself if it was $229.40 well spent.

You and the other people in this thread that claim to have this all figured out stand to make boatloads of money if you were to get out there and do it as opposed to complaining about how others haven't.

Re:One thing

[PurplePhase]

I'm in full agreement with you, and highly interested in the MMOG - or a true MMORPG and have similar ideas of my own, though perhaps more socially-minded.

And for some reason I want to say that your link above may be a copy of the original Evil Overlord list, though I don't know how often they update even though they say they're still taking submissions. I think the other lists aggregated on the sff page have homes elsewhere too, but I'm too lazy to substantiate that claim right now.

8-PP

Re:One thing

[Schitzoflink]

Uh the sex thing is a little out there...and the reason that it being hard wouldn't work is becasue many people don't play for the challenge or anything close to an actually adventure, they do it to get the best stuff and the most gold/stuff/lvls so they wouldn't like to get "punnished" for being powerful

Re:One thing

[Schitzoflink]

They have some Bliz. N. folks working there don't they?

Re:One thing

[Schitzoflink]

And within that civilized area you could have PvP and player run factions that conflict in non violent/econimic ways...IE Merchants and Govt.

Re:One thing

[Daengbo]

Sex was a joke, included for Slashdotters' benefit. The other ideas are serious, though.

Re:One thing

[CountBrass]

WoW(last time): Although you seem to be against huge singleton population-wide efforts, Blizzard is currently in the middle of the one time war effort. You really get the sense that your contribution matters and that it is a huge team game of everyone working together to complete a massive quest with a long lasting impact on the world.

Only in the sense that woman at home in the UK during WW2 could sense the contribution of their frying pans helped keep the spitfires flying (which was actually bollocks but helped keep up morale).

The current "war" is simply the latest in a long line of "let's drain stuff from the economy by getting the players to give away vast quantities of metal/cloth/herbs/whatever". Zero imagination on Blizzard's part leading up to, surprise, surprise, yet another 40 man raid dungeon 95% of the players will never see inside.

Re:One thing

[C0rinthian]

Even in single-player games, it's amazing how seldom your actions affect the world.

I'm still trying to figure out how this is insightful. Yes it sounds great in theory, but can you imagine the nightmare of actually making such a beast? It's ugly enough making enough content to keep people busy for months in a static enviroment. Now if every player could effect some lasting impact on the game world, you need to make more content for each possible version of the game world. The more branching trees in the timeline, the more 'ability to change' you grant, the more content you need to make. Exponentially more content. Add in the fact that a large portion of this content will NEVER be seen because that particular branch isn't picked, and you can start to appreciate just how much money and time is being thrown out by this model.

Re:One thing

[C0rinthian]

40 man raid dungeon, 20 man raid dungeon, as well as solo and 5-man quest content. AQ is not just for raiders.

Re:One thing

[lgw]

Your points are valid, but these are problems any good PnP RPG gameworld designer learns to solve. There's no reason to design content that's never seen. If you are trying to write for branches upon branches uon brnches, only one of which will be picked, you're just doing it wrong. The point is to make the world automatically adapt to whatever branch a given party takes on a given quest.

When the results of hundereds of quests add up to take the game world in a direction you didn't expect - then you have some work to do, but only for the direction the server actually went. You don't try to script all possibilitis because a RPG is not about following a script. Playing "guess what the designer intended me to do" is a very lame game indeed.

eve online

[greywar]

And eve online has some upcoming faction wars.

Finally Some Casual Content

[Quaoar]

I'm happy that the new patch is including things that will please almost ALL players...namely, weather effects and an upgrade to the blue sets which casuals can obtain. I don't play anymore, but when I did I was a priest, so I hope that whatever changes they make to the class are decent enough to make me want to come back to the game. However, Naxxramas is stupid and a waste of resources. I am so sick of the 40 man raid content. There are now 3 zones for the hardcores, which are maybe 5-10% of the server population. 5 man stuff is absolutely the most fun for me...the 10 man places are OK, but anything more than that quickly becomes a pain in the ass. I know SOME people like the huge raids, but I would have thought the current content would have placated that crowd for a long time. Give us more 5 man dungeons!

Re:Finally Some Casual Content

[Negatyfus]

How about some content for *both* the raiders and non-raiders? That's what Blizzard wanted to offer all along, anyway. There are enough people that do like the raiding instances as well as players that are more into the smaller instances. Stop prolonging this war.

Re:Finally Some Casual Content

[CountBrass]

The gp is right. Blizzard gives far too much love to the under-working dweebs who can afford to waster their lives of 10 hour long 40 man raids to the dungeons of utter tedium.

The problem is "the raiders" aka "no-life dweebs" have been getting it all and it's time Blizzard re-focused and concentrated on the majority of their paying customers instead. Let's face it, "the raiders" happilly run through a dungeon that consisted of a single straight corridor for years if the boss at the end had a) sufficently epic loot and b) a wide loot table (so it takes you a long time to see it all).

What's needed is more 5 man content spread through out the levels for those of us (the VAST majority) who either play a single character casually or play multiple characters, where running through the same instance becomes a major bore.

They also need to do something about crafting: why is it that only those prepared to endure the tedium of multiple 40 man raids can ever craft the best "stuff"? That's just wrong.

Blizzard need to re-structure the game so that 1-60 is primarily PVE and the end-game is PVP orientated, not huge dungeon orientated and the focus is on the vast majority of their customers: the casual gamer.

Re:Finally Some Casual Content

[Negatyfus]

I've seen so much debate about this whole mess and both raiders and non-raiders always sound one-sided. The truth is, of course, that there are many more types of "casuals" and "hardcore" players than this. I could be described as a raider. I wouldn't like the raid in your example and I would think many more would agree. Sure, there are some that are only out for the loot, just like there are casuals that are addicted to it. I, for example, couldn't be arsed to grind the instances for those blue sets. And I don't care. Only those obsessed with character progression and PvP put too much importance on items. Those, are of course large portions of the game, but there are others.

What the game needs is both more raid content and more content for smaller groups. Not everyone is content with running through the same instance dozens of times, be it 40-man or 5-man. Unfortunately, the discussion ends with the fact that Blizzard cannot make content as fast as players can consume it, so you get repeatable content-- this lies at the heart of the issue.

Re:Finally Some Casual Content

[Khaotix]

If your arguement is time consumption - saved instances are a counterpoint
If your arguement is size constraints - join a large guild. The best things in WoW will require the efforts of many people.
If your arguement is that there aren't solo alternatives - What are craftable epics? I admit they need to work on improving craftables, but you can make epic level gear, get high end enchants on items ... what about that doesn't equate to phatlewts? Sorry if it takes you a long time to farm the arcanite - you want something good then you need to put in the effort.

My guild MC + BWL runs take less time than maraudon did originally.
4-5 hr runs aren't quite marathon sessions of gaming. In addition end game raid content is intentionally designed to allow it to be broken up into segments. You could do 3 sessions to complete MC if you wished.

Personally MC bored me to tears after Ragnaros was on farm status. Same with BWL. Once everything has been done, it's boring. The reason we farm those instances is because a) it's something to do b) the gear is nice.

Casuals can play ZG. Soon there will be tier 0.5 epics to earn.

The primary fault of Blizzard is not releasing enough content and not releasing it fast enough. It's improving slowly but

Why the priest is being reviewed

[buffer-overflowed]

Is pretty damn obvious to anyone who has had a priest for a long time.

They nerfed the class entirely too hard pre-release(particularly disc and holy, shadow is fine it just falls into the same pitfalls all other casters do), and now they're hopefully rectifying it.

Eve Updates Do Not Please

[aldheorte]

"Eve and Ultima Online continue to please their players with updates and releases."

This sounds like uninformed marketroid speak to me. CCP, creators of Eve, released a patch in late December, which was pretty disastrous. Many basic elements like buddy lists, some basic agent services, and other things were broken and some still remain broken. Furthermore, lag remains very bad in central areas, often to the point of not being playable or characters getting 'stuck'. It is true that CCP has announced an upgrade to better hardware in February, but so far that is a future promise, not current reality, and the lag problems have been going on for months.

Most concerning is that significant gameplay problems continue to be ignored, making the player versus player experience very difficult (especially in the finding and pursuing) and exposing most non-expert characters to totally arbitrary destruction at blind gate ambushes (transitions between solar systems - you must 'jump' blindly through a gate and if there is a fleet on the other side in the next solar system, you just die unless a pro with properly designed ship), an issue that has never been satisfactorily dealt with. Also, there is a serious problem with the use of instant bookmarks, allowing people to jump directly to gates and avoid any fleet defending the gate, which feeds into this blind ambush problem as defenders must then go to the other side and hope for a blind ambush. The side effect of the need for bookmarks is that everyone wants to carry thousands of them for safe and shorter travel (travel times have soared with one of the patches), and this is apparently saturating servers and performance.

Finally, a most pressing problem that has the player community in an uproar is the advent of ISK (the currency of Eve) farmers, some using bots, that are mining continuously in the safe areas and in NPC corporations not subject to player attack. Many of the ISK farmers are suspected of selling their ISK for real life currencies in violation of the EULA, and many are thought to operate from Asian 'sweatshop' outfits. These players are routinely reported to CCP, who apparently does little about them since the same players are seen doing the same thing week after week, nor does CCP seem to be taking the problem seriously. In fact, groups of vigilante players started taking it upon themselves to engage in 'suicide' attacks to destroy farming ships.

CCP has furthermore somewhat legitamized the transfer of real life currency into ISK by allowing the sale of time cards, bought from CCP, for ISK. The buyer lengthens their subscription, the seller gets ISK. Since it is allowed by the EULA to sell characters for ISK, this means that anyone who wants to get a quick edge up in Eve can simply sell time cards, buy a well-trained character, and buy all the ships and equipment they want. Now, people have different opinions of whether this is a good thing or not, but it underscores the fact that CCP is exercising an inconsistent principle, on one hand claiming that ISK sales are not allowed on the principle of fairness of in-game competition, but on the other allowing out of game actions to affect in game rewards when there is a profit motive.

Eve has its good points as well, but I cannot let that uninformed platitude fly. As for what's the worst problem of all, well, all of them, but buddy lists not working and not being fixed for over a month is pretty much up there as it was broken in the December patch and its dysfunction compromises the social fabric of the game (are your friends online or not?) and player versus player fighting (are your enemies on or not?).

Re:Eve Updates Do Not Please

[LakeSolon]

Speaking from personal experience I am quite pleased with the recent patch. And from the continually growing subscriber base and repeated topping of the concurrent player numbers I gather that on the whole people are pleased with EVE.

The points you bring up are certainly valid, but they are relatively small details. The initial patch problems were resolved quickly, as usual. With regards to the gameplay issues: EVE is quite massively complicated, much more so than any other game I've played (and I've played a fair few). I've been deeply involved in EVE for just over 3 years now, and I'm always learning new things every day. There has been great progress all along (people return to the game all the time, amazed at the changes), and I believe CCP has demonstrated they will continue to improve things. Yes there are problems that need to be resolved, but I can not let that gratuitously negative rant fly.

Re:Eve Updates Do Not Please

[riprjak]

Oh no! Somebody call him the WAAAAAHMBULANCE.

Speaking as another EVE player, there are niggles and annoyances, yes. But as CCP continue to take positive steps to resolve the issues Im going to agree with TFA.

err!
jak.

Re:Eve Updates Do Not Please

[joper90]

hmm. i thought I would try this today.. but the account page is down, is this sort of stuff the norm and to be expected?

First impressions...

Re:Eve Updates Do Not Please

[riprjak]

There was a small burst of outages late last year, but other than the daily maintenance, its not usual that the account pages are down.

They have a downtime every day from 1100 to 1200 UTC that sometimes runs long like yesterday (if they are deploying hardware upgrades or bugwrangling the cluster).

err!
jak.

Quickified?

[Kesch]

I tried looking up Quickified. It couldn't find anything, but it suggested quizzical which seems appropiate.

P.S. Stop making so many good MMO's. My time and money are unfortunately finite values.

Re:Quickified?

[eagle52997]

It could refer to "the quickening" from highlander fame.

Also left of the Karazhan preview (WoW)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/town hall/karazhan.html

Some information on a 70th level instance from the WoW expansion...

FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[falcon5768]

Treasures of Aht Urhgan just got its worldwide April 18th release date along with the second of the new jobs being announced (Corsair, a pirate/gambler mix that uses a special gun to support and buff party members based on luck) along with the reveal that ToAU will have another "Jueno" like main city hub added that will also somehow involve enemy raids into the hub city.

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[Fr05t]

There have also been rumors flying regarding a level cap increase. I'm guessing it would only be 5 levels, and the real benefit would be the advantage of having your subjob capped at 40.

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[Hades-]

Now if only they would reverse the BST changes or have something I could play only a couple hours a night with... then I'd happily come back. :(

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[Fr05t]

Yeah I have a feeling I'm going to level my BST31 in mothballs until they finish 'tweaking' the class.

I do understand *why* they made the changes to try to fix MPKs. They will eventually find a different way to do it, or make BST a viable party class. The biggest problem will be the BST !Party mentality. It's hard to get an invite when you're a BST :(

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[falcon5768]

well a few things I DO know about the next expantion

1) SE basically said 75 is it, what they are doing is expending the merit system even further beyond the extra merit points added in the Dec update. There are plans to have "merit only" abilitys added to the game where you will have to spend merits to get the ability to further expand your character. As it is currently a fully merited character would = a lvl 85 player.

2) SE has said that they plan ToAH to have a lot of solo content, if this is true or not we will see in a month when it makes its public debut at FFXIFest in Santa Monica, but if this IS true, it would go very much into why SE would ballance the BST solo capabilitys to = a normal players abilitys.

There is one more job comming, yet again another mage type character, so it would see SE understands there are too many melee types and not enough mages.

There is going to be one more major announcment involving ToAU which will be revealed at the FFXIFest by the developers themselves in a panel.

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[0racle]

In interviews with SE they have said the level cap will not be increased and there are no current plans to do so. Level 75 is going to be the highest you can go for the foreseeable future.

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[_xeno_]

It's just as well. Maat can go to hell.

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[Psmylie]

For whatever reason, they decided that the "walk back to homepoint in a non-aggressive fashion" was not the route they wanted to go. Thus, the vanishing monsters. Honestly, even if I wasn't a BST, I'd rather have them walk back instead of vanishing. It just feels more real.

As far as leveling BST goes, it can still be done. I know, I hit 75 finally, after the patch, all solo. Some levels are just a lot more tricky to solo, and some camps are no longer as good. Grab a duo or trio of Beastmasters, though, and you can totally whomp on anything in the appropriate zones.

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boy! After the craptasitic Chains of Promathia, I'm sure that everyone's really excited about a new expansion pack! I can't wait to see what new excessively difficult dungeon they create to prevent people from using expansion pack content in this new expansion! Maybe it'll require two alliances to get to the single-party instanced boss this time!

Why anyone still plays that game is beyond me. I think the worst thing about it is that I now know I'll never see a fun Final Fantasy Online, that I know that the Final Fantasy MMORPG will be stuck in the PS2 age from now until eternity. Kinda like how I absolutely hated the Final Fantasy movie for ruining our chances of ever seeing a good Final Fantasy movie, Final Fantasy XI means that I'll never get to play a good FFOnline. It's sad, really, so much wasted potential.

Re:FFXI is also gearing up for its April expantion

[falcon5768]

oh look its my little troll who posts 2 days after the fact so he can get his word in when now one is looking and is too chicken to even sign his name to it. Give it a rest man, people have bashed you enough.

Simple solution

[Asmor]

Simple solution to getting as much time and money as you need!

while (true) {
    time++;
    money++;
}

Re:Simple solution

[Kesch]

There's a bug. I tried that code with a few modifications:

while(1) {
    time++;
    money++;
}
PlayMMO(time, money);

The problem is, I never got around to the PlayMMO part.

Re:Simple solution

[CableModemSniper]

Yeah just like real life, if all you do is increase your time and money you can't do anything with either.

Re:Simple solution

[BasharTeg]

Beats this common implementation:

while(1) {
        PlayMMO(time, money);
}
time++;
money++;

I know I'll be modded down for this but...

[Miraba]

Zonk, it would be much easier on the eyes and brain if you broke this into several stories. I know that some people might complain about the lower content density, but 16 links in one paragraph does not entice me to see what that content is.

You are so wrong

[greywar]

Well as a fellow player let me give you some informed non-marketdrois speach. You call the December release disastrous. You have not been playing many mmo's then. It was a fairly pain free update compared to most of their competitors. Lag-I've never had many issues with it. its certainly not a major peice of my experience. The game is suffering some growing pains, but lag is not horrible or bad like the above poster tries ot make it sound. NO ONE in my guild of 30 has ever had a character stuck as you mention. Non-expert characters being ganked-yeah a minor issue, our guild just tells them to not go below .5 security systems. If they do-then they run the risk. Last night one of our newbs was ganked. wow....the guild bought him new equipment and spent some effort hunting for the perpetrators. It was FUN. The ISK farmers-ccp recently made a REAL sweep of them. Notice WOW they do this, and nothing changes? I checked yesterday and the major ISK farmers were still not able to sell ISK-because they had been wiped out. ALL MMO suffer from this, but the makers of eve make some real meaningfull efforts to stop it. You saying its a major issue in eve kind of tells me you have not played many mmorpg's. Eve is the only one I have played where they werent a issue. I have never ever had anyone I know griefed by farmers in Eve. Its FAR from a pressing problem. The time card issue IS kinda true-you can trade time in game for ISK. CCP has made this allowed. From some GM comments it is not a popular thing, and may be reviewed. And generally I know if my friend are online or not by simply looking at my guild chat channel.

Re:You are so wrong

[Maarek Stele]

Eve is the only MMO that contains one Shard(server). There are no mirrors, nor are there any subservers that you transfer to for missions(dungeons). Within every MMO that's I've played there's been lag from the server, but considering the size of the system and the number of users, CCP has out performed Sony Entertainment and even Blizzard.

Re:You are so wrong

[CountBrass]

So what you're saying is that if you take out the fact that others (Sony and Blizzard) designed their game well and off-loaded dungeons to separate servers then CCP are better than them?

Well I suppose if you ignored Da Vinci's genius then he was a lot more stupid than I am.

Re:You are so wrong

[C0rinthian]

They didn't design the games better, they designed them differently. Eve doesn't use instancing because it goes against the fundamental game design of their persistent world. It's a design choice. They want everything to happen in the same space, and it does. No other MMO provides as unified a game universe as Eve, and the players are quite grateful for that.

Go mention instancing or sharding on the Eve forums and see what kind of reaction you get. The players don't want these things, and are making their choice known by choosing to pay CCP for their game instead of SOE or Blizzard.

WoW 1.10 Patch Notes: Addendum

[TJWitz]

* Priests and Paladins have been removed to keep in line with our policy about not bringing religious/political/sexual mentionings into the game. I imagine this would actually be a thing players would appreciate, since Blizzard can't balance classes anyways.

Re:WoW 1.10 Patch Notes: Addendum

[eagle52997]

Oh darn, might as well remove those warlocks too, those pagans. And all Tauren's, since they worship the "earth mother". Hmmm, lets change the plot too, and remove all references to the "Titans" and the "Burning Legion", which are clearly references to angels and demons. We'd better remove those spirit healers too, cause ghosts can't exist unless we have spirits, which implies an afterlife which implies divine beings.

Lets change the name too, how about "Politically Correct Adventures"

Re:WoW 1.10 Patch Notes: Addendum

[Anonymous Coward]

And no more violence. If you want a player or NPC to pretend they're 'disappointed' (don't worry, they're really happy) you wave at them. Tapping the player was considered, but this could be a sign of sexual harassment, abuse, and/or rape.

Re:WoW 1.10 Patch Notes: Addendum

[murdocj]

since Blizzard can't balance classes anyways.

This is hilarious... one thing Blizzard is well known for, back to the first days of Warcraft, is producing polished, well-balanced games. Having played EQ1 for many years, I can guarantee you that WoW classes are FAR more well-balanced.

Re:WoW 1.10 Patch Notes: Addendum

[TJWitz]

One of the reasons blizzard has publicly acknowledged for a lack of new classes in the upcoming expansion is their diffuculty in balancing the currently existing classes. Go to their forums and do a search for 'expansion classes' or perhaps 'hero classes' - I've lost the reference since I stopped playing WoW.

Believe what you will, but War2 wasn't balanced - the races were practically clones of one another, yet the ability for humans to micromanage the paladin's heal ability wasn't interfaced well enough for it to compete with the fire & forget nature of bloodlust. Blizzard has learned since then, but their best balance was probably hit in Starcraft at or after the time of Brood Wars, but it certainly wasn't balanced at release. Polished, yes. Balanced... not quite.

Re:WoW 1.10 Patch Notes: Addendum

[soaro77]

The fact that you still see plenty of every class in WoW shows that the classes are actually balanced quite well. If there were a superior class to all others, everyone and their dog would be playing that class. This has been evidenced in other games ( Jedi in SWG ) in the past.

Re:WoW 1.10 Patch Notes: Addendum

[murdocj]

but War2 wasn't balanced - the races were practically clones of one another, yet the ability for humans to micromanage the paladin's heal ability wasn't interfaced well enough for it to compete with the fire & forget nature of bloodlust. Blizzard has learned since then, but their best balance was probably hit in Starcraft at or after the time of Brood Wars, but it certainly wasn't balanced at release

Balancing the races is clearly extremely difficult. It's interesting that you bring up the micromanagement issue with War2 Paladins, and then say that Starcraft was well balanced. In Starcraft, I tended to play Protoss, which probably weren't the strongest but required the least "micro-management". I always wanted to play humans, but there was just too to do to take advantage of their abilities, certainly more micromanagement than Warcraft.

As far as the classes in WoW, I've only played a few classes, and only two up to high levels, but as far as I can tell Blizzard has done a superb job of balancing the classes. Certainly far better than EQ did on first release. I started a rogue in EQ shortly after it was released and gave up after a few months because he basically couldn't do anything. I know rogues have been improved enormously since then, but we are 6 years down the road now with EQ, and people are STILL complaining about balance there.

Re:WoW 1.10 Patch Notes: Addendum

[C0rinthian]

I think the fact that you can see every class bitching about every other class being overpowered is a good indication that the balance is pretty darn close. Not perfect, but it's close.

There's only one real MMORPG

[CherniyVolk]

www.eve-online.com

Please, come a little closer to my Thorax, my "blaster-rax".

Re:There's only one real MMORPG

[elrous0]

Please, come a little closer to my Thorax

How about I come close to your larynx and you promise to swallow? Or do you only suck IN THE GAME?

-Eric

Players effecting the world

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as my experience with the genre goes, Ultima Online seemed to be the most interactive and the most believable. While the game seemed to lack perhaps a greater "epic" feel you will find in most of the other games, it held a quality of completeness, each tree and element of terrain had a purpose, and crafting was very realistic. Players could build their own "towns" and communities in the forests, and while it may not have a major impact on the entire world, each server was left unique because of that level of interaction.

Re:Players effecting the world

[fitten]

The most unique part of the game was the "Bug of the Week" feature combined with the "God class of the Week" feature. The bug of the week feature made gaming lively... what would be the exploit this week? I can die everything (even game things like lamp posts and even other players against their will) my favorite color. Every week something would be introduced to the game that made another/different combination of skills god-like so you would rework all your skills to match that (or just let the bot macros do it for you). Basically these features added together made the game more like Quake where everyone avoids everyone else at all costs for fear of PK or being subjected to the latest bug (get died from head to toe in bright lime green just for standing next to another player for 1 second and it cost you in-game money to redie all your equipment back to the colors you had) instead of an MMORPG type like the EQ series or WoW where you sought out other players to help you accomplish things.

I played a bunch of the single-player Ultima games. I've never been so disappointed in a game in my life than in Ultima Online.

Re:Players effecting the world

[CountBrass]

DYE! The word is DYE! Perhaps if you spent more time in class and less playing games you'd know that?

Priests are tougher than you think

[Toxygen]

I've got a 60 priest with full tier 1 gear, half of tier 2, plus some nice pvp gear from the battlegrounds, and I can tell you that I can give most any other player a run for their money. Hell, I can beat a rogue even if he gets first strike and they're DESIGNED to beat down casters. Mostly specced for disc too, with only 11 points in shadow, so I don't think they were nerfed too hard at all. If you recall the beta, pretty much every class got nerfed down across the board.

I used to be full holy spec while I was still running instances, and believe me when I say that the holy tree helps a LOT more than you think as opposed to speccing shadow or disc then being a main healer.

The issue is that priests aren't FUN where they're most needed. Everyone wants you to group with them, but they expect you to just healbot all day and you end up watching health meters the whole time. If something goes wrong, the first thing a lot of people say is "where were my heals" when the fact is that the group was simply outmatched or unprepared. I don't even run instances or raids anymore, it's all about the battlegrounds. In the chaos of AV no one gets upset at one person if they die. I'll heal if I notice you're low, I'll nuke if I see a half dead horde trying to run away and I'll dot, fear, and dispel liberally. It's so much more enjoyable than keeping noobs alive, and I can't see how a talent review will change that.

EQ2 adds PvP

[Osmosis_Garett]

I'm not surprised that there is no mention of the PvP addition to EQ2, but it is definately the most interesting of all of these announcements.

Nail on the head!

[coder111]

You have hit the nail on the head. That's the problem with 99.5% of RPGs and space shooters out there. Both single and multi player. Your actions don't really influence the world. I wish someone at long last would combine Civilisation/Master of Magic global strategy engine + RPG, so that you are one man in a world that develops by itself. Make it so that if you sack a town it remains poor/broken/slaughtered, but eventually gets slowly rebuilt of abandoned. Make it so that if there is an unattended wilderness, various beasts start breeding there and expanding into adjacent areas and overruning/harrasing nearby towns. Make groups of monsters moving around the world with purpose (raiding other towns and expanding their own lairs). Add multiplayer capabilites to that world, and you have a massive hit.

Also, it is possible, and maybe easier to make a space shooter along similar lines. Master of orion/Space empires world (galaxy) development combined with something like Privateer space shooter. Such a game would make a killer hit.

This would require some game AI development, and lots of balancing, but creating such a game is mangeable with 1/20 of the budget Blizzard has. I'm still curiuos what is it that none of the game developers tried to make such a game, when the capabilites were there for that last 5 years or so...

I once wanted to make a similar free game myself, but then i got a job, way too much work, and the project got abandoned...

--Coder

and David 'Zeb' Cook left Cryptic

[merigold77]

Also an announcement that "Lord Recluse" no longer works on City of Villains was sneaked in in the last day or two.

NCSoft subtle announcement that Zeb Cook no longer works for Cryptic and they wish him well in future endeavors. Still we're all wondering what those'll be?