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Raph Koster on Fire

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the need-a-bucket-stat dept.

This week's Escapist has a in-depth article talking with Raph Koster. Author Allen Varney and Mr. Koster go over his best-selling book, the Ultima Online days, the debacle that is Star Wars Galaxies, and what he's planning to do next. From the article: "I'll make an exception for the NGE. I don't think you can or should change a game that radically out from under a user base. You dance with the ones that brung ya, whether they are the market of your dreams or not. They have invested their passion and built expectations about where they want the game to go. Changing things out from under them isn't fair in my mind, especially given how they have been loyal to you in times of trouble. It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."

2 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Why this article? by MrCopilot · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Who cares? Put him out.

    Out of all the articles that get linked here from the escapist, I never see the good ones. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/55/20 Titled :The Short, Happy Life of Infocom by Lara Crigger

    News for nerds indeed. Actually most of the articles in this issue are better, 20Million Sims Online Failure, CyberSex

    Thanks for the text editions http://www.escapistmagazine.com/print/55/18 Sims

    --
    OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
  2. Re:Kosner Sucks. by JavaLord · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Koster created virtual worlds with UO and SWG that are unlike anything that exists today--particularly the completely directed experience that is WoW 1-59.

    WoW 1-59 is totally 'directed'? Really? It seemed pretty open ended to me, you can get experence from doing almost anything. You want to quest? There are billions of them. Some are as simple as "go kill 10 of whatever" while others are long questlines. You can get experence from pvp'ing within battlegrounds. You can get experence from simply grinding. You can level any of a number of professions.

    Most importantly, you can log in for 30 minutes to an hour, and significantly advance your character. Especially at 1-40. That is why WoW is successful imo. You couldn't do that in SWG, at least not for the first few months I gave it.

    If anything, you have it backwards. WoW 1-59 is fairly open ended, WoW at 60 is totally scripted...It's raid or barely advance.

    Not to mention he's one of the few developers trying to let players "become the actual content" and "effect the world."

    Yet he believes that he should be cracking down on behavior he doesn't like, rather than allowing freedom which is what most people want in a virtual world. He can go buy old MUD/MOO games all he wants but the people who played those are a significantly different kind of player on average than the one who plays World of Warcraft.

    I could play all of WoW and never interact with anyone outside of my guild. Koster's worlds throw everyone together, force dependency, and say "you figure it out." I'd take that over the "shared single player" of WoW any day.

    If you think you can go 1-59 and not interact with anyone outside of your guild, you obviously didn't play on a pvp server. If you think you could have played at 60 pre-honor system/Dishonorable kills and not interact with anyone, you didn't play on a pvp server.

    I'm sure you can get away with it now, because any incentive for world pvp in WoW is dead, and will remain dead even in 1.12.