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World of Warcraft - Wrath Of the Lich King Is In Alpha
simrook writes to tell us that World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has entered closed alpha testing, as reported by WoWInsider. Wrath of the Lich King, which we've discussed previously, will raise the level cap to 80 and introduce a new class: Death Knights. World of Warcraft remains the most popular MMORPG on the market with over 10 million subscribers. WoWInsider notes, "Various players are being invited to check it out, under a strict NDA."
What makes Nethack is not the randomly generated maps.
It's, on one hand, the fact that the whole world is random. Spell scrolls have different names for each spell in every game. Wands look different. Potions are of different colours.
On the other hand, and more importantly, the game is probably the most convoluted mass of hard-coded behaviour ever. Most items interact with a large portion of all other items in a meaningful manner. In fact, this sort of interaction is key in discovering what items actually do. Want to find out if an item's cursed? drop it on the floor and try to get your dog to voluntarily step on it (it's not cursed if he does). If it's not cursed, feel free to wear it and find out if it does anything unusual. Or zap a wand at the floor to see what it does. If the bugs on the floor stop moving, you're looking at a wand of death -- or perhaps just of sleep. If the bugs go away, it might be teleportation -- or invisibility! You also have to eat, or you'll starve. You'll mostly be eating stuff you kill, but you need to make sure it's both proper food (the gods don't like cannibalism, highly acidic monsters will give you a bad case of heartburn, and tripe rations are really meant for your pet. You might be able to stomach them, but odds are you'll puke, and be even hungrier) and fresh (food decays over time, and one of the first lessons I learnt is that zombies are, by definition, not fresh meat)
It's not the dying.
It's the lack of consequence.
In EVE, the mmo I play, taking a ship out is a risk. Take out a cheap ship, and you're likely to get wtfpwned by someone in a better ship. Take out an expensive ship, and lose it, and you may seriously be out an entire month's money making - but what a rush. Not to mention, if you die a bunch, someone else may move in and take your space.
In WoW, you die. Then nothing happens, you resurrect, and you pay 2 gold to repair your equipment that would be worth 45,000 gold if you could sell it (or more to the point, lost it and had to re-buy it), and then you go about your life.
Death needs consequence. I do agree with your qualm about not wanting to run 1-20 over again - but that's easily solved. You "save" your game in some magical fashion (i dunno, you talked to the tree faerie, and she knows of your deeds, and if you die, can revive a piece of your soul, with a loss of 10% of the exp you've gained since the last level up - whatever). In EVE, this is settled with cloning, but it could just as easily be called "magic".
If you want this in a fantasy game, wait for darkfall.
~X
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It is not lack of consequences that binds people to games like World of Warcraft. It is short term entertainment, or shortly, fun.
I _love_ reality and space sims. This would make EVE Online a ideal match for me, no? But I am very slow to try it, and it is exact of these consequences. Problem is that I don't that much time for games, and even when I do several hours of WoW, my spouse gives me body signs that she would like to get me off that game and computer. And I have lot of other interests too.
So, it is not that EVE online would be bad and Wow would be perfect - it is all matters of point of view. But WoW is king of online games for just that - you can keep your gaming sessions short, it has huge investments in community stuff, usually friends are those people who introduce new players to the game. Almost 60% of the game is only playable when you are have good communications. It feels like fantasy chat with nice story with rich background (altought it feels sometimes plastered together, I like world design and style).
Anyway, even saying all this, I still would like to try EVE, but I still have to find someone giving me 10 days trial to check it out.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Permanent death will never work in a static, quest-based MMO like World of Warcraft. But it could definitely work in a game that actually tries to simulate a virtual world. There was a game called Trials of Ascension that I followed for years. The developers lost funding and it was never released, but I think it had an amazingly well-thought-out design. It was a full PvP, skill-based permadeath game. Characters had 100 lives each, but they were planning on adding a single life server as well. The first central idea of the game was that real power must come via real risk. To become a powerful mage, you would have had to discover a unique set of formulae for your character's spells, all the while risking death from backfire from critical failures. The goal was that about one in a hundred players who tried to become real, full-blown sorcerors would actually make it. Those who succeeded would be rewarded with great power. I feel that that power has more _meaning_ than that of a level 70 in WoW who simply had to grind for 40 hours to get there. This significance is impossible without the risk of permadeath. Another main tenet of ToA was that the world would be run by players. Instead of having a central currency, each town would be encouraged to mint their own currency and value it how they like. The lack of an easy way to bring goods from one place to another, and the selective availability of resources, would contribute to a real scarcity-based economy. Almost all items would be player-made, including player-written books, music and pictures. Towns would be built and territory claimed by player organizations. Players would become the leaders of the eleven religions. There were to be no NPC quests and the sole role of NPCs was as guards and hired workers. This meant that a character could make a positive contribution to their organization from the very beginning. Not just as fighters, but as crafters, artisans, builders, farmers. And it would be that participation that would increase your character's abilities, not running a static dungeon. And if your character died, you would have left a tangible mark on the game. Starting over would not be going through the same old content another time, because each character you make would contribute to the community in a different way. In a virtual world, you're playing both your character and your community. Your effort both improves your avatar and enriches the gameworld. When your character dies, your contributions to the community remain. What it comes down to is this: Permanent death can be implemented in modern games, to great utility. But the game must be designed for permadeath from the ground up. Sticking it in WoW will cause a disaster.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game