Murder, FFXI, and Ninety-Nine Nights

Gamasutra has a few great writeups of some of the sessions I didn't make it to. Murder, Sex, and Censorship covers some of the moral elements that go into game creation. Creating a Global MMO was a talk given by some of the folks behind FFXI, on the challenges of creating a multi-hemisphere online title. All about Ninety-Nine Nights was an examination of the character design put into the 'massive warfare' title for the Xbox 360. Interesting stuff. The morals session actually became quite heated, thanks to the presence of CA Assemblyman Leland Yee. From the article: "'How many people do you think have been hurt by video games? How many people have been helped by video games?' Gee asked. 'This technology will allow us to have a full spectrum chemist, or a full spectrum virus,' which school children, scientists, or doctors are able to experiment with in a safe environment. Gee also noted that, socially, legislators should care not only about keeping children from harm, but also about helping them."

Comments

Ninety Nine Nights

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played the demo, and it seems to be just a button masher. I expected a lot better from the Rez/Meteos guy. Maybe someone who's had more time with it can say if it has any depth/skill/strategy to it at all?

Re:Why not ask WoW about global MMORPGs?

[patio11]

I bought FFXI totally because it gave me the opportunity to practice Japanese with real people without having to leave the country. Unfortunately, my textbooks hadn't included the phrase "punishing level grind which you have to repeat multiple times". But it was a worthwhile experiment, and while there was a certain segment of both the JP/NA (North America) playerbases that was rather unhappy with the arrangement and wouldn't dream of grouping with The Dirty Foreigners (TM) I did get in quite a few groups that had a great time despite language barriers. Incidentally, "You can practice English here without paying by the hour!" was a selling point in Japan.

Now, the reason for an Aussie preferred server isn't that Aussies like playing with only Aussies. The reason for an Aussie prefered server is Aussies (and you can throw me in there, because now I live in Japan and are closer to their timezone than the US's) have peak playing hours which are waaaaaaaaaaay off the American ones, and when WoW is in its MMORPG moments you need a bunch of people playing together to make it fun. For example, our weekday raids last four hours starting at 1:00 AM in the morning California time, and require 20-40 people. Or, much more irksome, PVP starting up on a server requires several dozen players simultaneously online, attentive, and desiring PVP. Designating a server as Aussie preferred just lets everyone know "Hey, if you go here you can find people in your time zone".