True story : My friend bought Asheron's Call 2 a month after the game came out. He said it was cool so I picked it up. I finished the newbie area in the beginning and then went through the portal to enter the world.. only to get smacked down by 2 level 20-30 wizards who were owning the newbies as they came out. Some players tried to run down the hill to get away, fireballs chased and kill them. Others tried to jump off the hill... but were killed when their wimpy level 3 selves smashed into the ground 5 stories down. A few berserk ones tried to attack the wizards... no chance, they were sitting on the hill behind the portal and you couldn't get up there without knowing exactly which path to take up (bug abuse).
After seeing 6 people get killed at least 3 times each, and getting killed 4 times myself, I quit, I uninstalled, I unsubscribed, and I never looked back since. You want PVP in a game? Go figure out a way to implement it into a game without fucking newbies in the ass. Otherwise quit complaining and go play Morrowind if you wanna be an uber-god character and smack around some helpless NPCs.
You did realize that you clicked on the DARKTIDE link, which brings up a WARNING that you can and will be killed by other players.
If you played on a normal consensual pvp server (which most people would do starting out if they do not know the game) then you cannot be killed right out of the training dungeon.
How is that a true story? It sounds more like a perpetuated myth spewed by someone that does not play pvp games.
you should check out celestia: an open source solar system visualization tool. it is avaliable at http://www.shatters.net/celestia
there is a windows installer if you are running that and don't want to be hassled with compilations, or you can download the source from cvs to compile either on your linux or windows machine
It all comes down to people having more money than you could realize, and they can't really take it with them when they die. When people can making upwards of $5,000 a day, they become shrewd in the fact that it would take them 7 days of playtime to obtain an item worth $400. It just doesn't make sense to them, and as people approach middle age, they still want to feel as they accomplished something in game and they can do that through thier 'real world power'. It may sound crappy and might ruin the game for others, but that is the way that it is.
And about that patch/hack thing thing affecting the economy of the world, there were people early on (~1yr) in Asheron's Call duping pyreals (the currency) without anyone else knowing and selling them on ebay for ridiculous amounts of money. Six months later the method got out and the bug was fixed, yet that person had $10,000 in his pocket. Again, it might not be the best example, because he was using faulty code to generate income for himself, but things like you mention have been happening since the first online brokers appeared.
This thing about Dragon Empires is that the premise of the game sounded EXACTLY like Shadowbane when it came out. I mean EXACTLY. I don't have the press release handy, but it was almost like the DE people copy and pasted GoD Game's press release and published it as thier own.
Now, fast forward 2 years later when the Shadowbane implementation left a bad taste in alot of people's mouths, and you find that Dragon Empires hardly even mentions that they are going to be a full asset pvp/gvg/zvz game (unless of course, they did a complete 180 with thier game design).
These next generation MMOGs need something to keep people interested, and that is mainly due to game play and its implementation. And it won't be the hyped up games like Horizon either, I think it will be something a medium sized development house puts out.
Either way, we shall keep playing betas, reading message boards, paying thier monthly fees and we will keep being disapointed.
Some people like to discuss game design, criticize and point out flaws in current games and discuss the artwork of said games on web forums (like this one), in IRC or even IRL moreso than they actually like to play the games themselves.
So for $40, if they can post on slashdot or wherever saying that "when I saw Miyamoto talk about that, he said etc etc" then $40 is small potatoes.
Whats funny is that the computer science technical program that I'm currently in, the MSCS with a specialization in Multimedia and Creative Technologies, is no longer even mentioned as an option on the USC Computer Science graduate program page. However, it is still mentioned in the CS Program Brochure
I think that the department is transitioning the programs over to new requirements, moving the Multimedia and Creative technologies MS degree to something called the Master of Science in Integrated Media Systems. Maybe having something to do with the creation of this new Masters of Fine Arts.
I should check my usc email... (probably just a bunch of colloquium spam!:-))
There is already a Masters in Computer Science with a specialty in Multimedia and Creative Technologies (MSCS:MCT). Basically, as close to 'Game Development' can be without being called such.
I think that this is just the artistic complement to the technical degree.
Yeah, and I believe that DAoC used a canned engine and middleware server code while most other games wrote thier graphics engine and server protocols from the ground up (which isn't neccesarily a good thing!).
That could be why the development cycle was so short.;-)
The more that I've been reading/. lately, the more it seems that Game Myth aka Risk Your Life has the right way to go about it (at least in terms of the various games that I've been looking at). Although the English engine is currently in development, it seems to be the solution that a lot of pvp type MMORPG players are looking for. It is a persistent world with character development and learned skills and such, but the combat (spell, ranged, and melee) is all FPS like. Meaning you have to pick and choose which abilties you want to learn as you 'level'. It really is a neat-o system.
Its too bad that
I think thats what the North America/UbiSoft fork is doing.
If you read the first news story on the Watershead site it is an interview with Ubiq who seems to be some sort of lead SB Ubi admin. In the article, http://www.waterthread.org/news/107724070845526.ht ml he talks about whats needed in shadowbane.
I think he has a pretty good grip on it, but i guess like everything, the devil is in the details (and implementation!).
His list:
1) Increase overall client stability, and performance of both the client and the server. 2) Make it easier to rebuild after a lost war. 3) Ensure that a siege event is about the right duration. 4) Make trebuchets and other siege equipment more important to sieging. 5) Make walls more effective and cooler. 6) Reduce tree camping. 7) Spread people out. 8) Improve guards. 9) Improve accountability. 10) Get rid of Player Stacking. 11) Improve city management. 12) Improve the siege atmosphere.
Without trying to sound like an overzealous fanboy, you don't want to look at Lineage 2. If you've been following games lately, you will know there was an asian game called 'Game Myth' that had an open beta last year. The only problem is that you had to understand korean or whatever to sign up, login and interact with the game.
Anyways, they are doign an english port called Risk Your Life that is going into beta real soon.
If you never played the original Game Myth, I would look around for some reviews and such. Since it integrates FPS like combat schemes and skill, I'm surprised that the article did not mention it. It is pretty much under the radar, and I suspect will only be a cult favorite like some of the games coming out.
"Moreover, I think technology is becoming extremely competitive. Better to try a field like nursing or maybe look for something in biotech."
Close. People should study math or physics. You get enough exposure to technology in those majors that you can pick up whatever new technologies it is that you will need in any typical job situation. And with the math and logic skills that you will develop companies will actually want to hire you.
Of course your coding might be loose and ugly, but it is >alot easier for companies to teach good coding practices than higher level mathematics.
"The very notion that I have to get permission to send you a marketing message doesn't make sense and is not good public policy," said Richard Gingras, Goodmail's chief executive.
What the hell? It >does make sense from a consumer's perspective, and it might not be good public policy to a corporation because how else will people really know that they want thier product? Unless they actually knew that they needed it, and looked for companies that would produce it?
I would assume that if you did the same with New York you would get similar numbers. There are som very rich people in New York City as well as some very destitute people.
Big cities are where the wealthist live and the poor go to find shelter.
Moscow is no different than New York, Detroit or Chicago.
You underestimate the influence of Ken Karl and the rest of the Microsoft employees that were involved in the publishing of Asheron's Call 1 and 2.
Ken Karl is known for taking the development updates and content additions in the direction that Microsoft wanted to take. If you look at Asheron's Call 2, you will find that alot (IIRC) of the design choices were not done by Turbine, but rather heavily influenced by Microsoft. Also, when Ken was appointed head of AC1 over at MS, things started to take a different turn in regards to game balance mainly in the realm of awards.
I haven't played either AC in over a year, so things may have changed a bit, but never, ever bash Turbine in regards to thier ability to put out a quality game product. Instead Bash thier publisher (which in all cases so far has been MS).
IANAGD, but I think that as games transition to pure 3d modeled worlds (away from side scrollers or 2d sprite based games) thier complexity rises exponentially.
By complexity, I mean the amount of time making independent code objects to handle each and every interaction that could take place in the world. This involves AI scripting for the mobiles, interaction scripting for the static items and world physics for everything else.
No longer can people write one set of libraries that will apply to each and every level of a game. I guess what it comes down to is that things can't be re-used as much as in days past: independent developers rely on the fact that people want a fresh outlook on games, not the same rehashed EA clone and it takes a lot more work to create something like that now (without the $$$$$ middleware).
I think people misunderstood what the parent poster was saying. Its not that he has Gator's Software installed on his machine, its just that Internet Explorer KEEPS ASKING HIM TO INSTALL IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER again until he says yes, every time he visits a page (not site, but page!) that would make a reference call to Gator's software. The popup isnt an advertisement, it is a system popup asking him to install the software.
Note that this is no less intrusive than pages that have Macromedia Flash on them, and repetitively being asked to install Macromedia Flash to view the page properly instead of somehow turning off the IE software install "pop-ups".
Slashdot Mirror
True story : My friend bought Asheron's Call 2 a month after the game came out. He said it was cool so I picked it up. I finished the newbie area in the beginning and then went through the portal to enter the world.. only to get smacked down by 2 level 20-30 wizards who were owning the newbies as they came out. Some players tried to run down the hill to get away, fireballs chased and kill them. Others tried to jump off the hill... but were killed when their wimpy level 3 selves smashed into the ground 5 stories down. A few berserk ones tried to attack the wizards... no chance, they were sitting on the hill behind the portal and you couldn't get up there without knowing exactly which path to take up (bug abuse).
After seeing 6 people get killed at least 3 times each, and getting killed 4 times myself, I quit, I uninstalled, I unsubscribed, and I never looked back since. You want PVP in a game? Go figure out a way to implement it into a game without fucking newbies in the ass. Otherwise quit complaining and go play Morrowind if you wanna be an uber-god character and smack around some helpless NPCs.
You did realize that you clicked on the DARKTIDE link, which brings up a WARNING that you can and will be killed by other players.
If you played on a normal consensual pvp server (which most people would do starting out if they do not know the game) then you cannot be killed right out of the training dungeon.
How is that a true story? It sounds more like a perpetuated myth spewed by someone that does not play pvp games.
you should check out celestia: an open source solar system visualization tool. it is avaliable at http://www.shatters.net/celestia
there is a windows installer if you are running that and don't want to be hassled with compilations, or you can download the source from cvs to compile either on your linux or windows machine
It all comes down to people having more money than you could realize, and they can't really take it with them when they die. When people can making upwards of $5,000 a day, they become shrewd in the fact that it would take them 7 days of playtime to obtain an item worth $400. It just doesn't make sense to them, and as people approach middle age, they still want to feel as they accomplished something in game and they can do that through thier 'real world power'. It may sound crappy and might ruin the game for others, but that is the way that it is.
And about that patch/hack thing thing affecting the economy of the world, there were people early on (~1yr) in Asheron's Call duping pyreals (the currency) without anyone else knowing and selling them on ebay for ridiculous amounts of money. Six months later the method got out and the bug was fixed, yet that person had $10,000 in his pocket. Again, it might not be the best example, because he was using faulty code to generate income for himself, but things like you mention have been happening since the first online brokers appeared.
This thing about Dragon Empires is that the premise of the game sounded EXACTLY like Shadowbane when it came out. I mean EXACTLY. I don't have the press release handy, but it was almost like the DE people copy and pasted GoD Game's press release and published it as thier own.
Now, fast forward 2 years later when the Shadowbane implementation left a bad taste in alot of people's mouths, and you find that Dragon Empires hardly even mentions that they are going to be a full asset pvp/gvg/zvz game (unless of course, they did a complete 180 with thier game design).
These next generation MMOGs need something to keep people interested, and that is mainly due to game play and its implementation. And it won't be the hyped up games like Horizon either, I think it will be something a medium sized development house puts out.
Either way, we shall keep playing betas, reading message boards, paying thier monthly fees and we will keep being disapointed.
Some people like to discuss game design, criticize and point out flaws in current games and discuss the artwork of said games on web forums (like this one), in IRC or even IRL moreso than they actually like to play the games themselves.
So for $40, if they can post on slashdot or wherever saying that "when I saw Miyamoto talk about that, he said etc etc" then $40 is small potatoes.
Someone posted a link to the article in its original form on graffe's forum:
c id=8610851
;-)
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100998&
It is funner to read than the submitted story because you get all the 'wdupz whizzy poo were u been? ^_^' replies from his guild members.
Whats funny is that the computer science technical program that I'm currently in, the MSCS with a specialization in Multimedia and Creative Technologies, is no longer even mentioned as an option on the USC Computer Science graduate program page. However, it is still mentioned in the CS Program Brochure
:-))
I think that the department is transitioning the programs over to new requirements, moving the Multimedia and Creative technologies MS degree to something called the Master of Science in Integrated Media Systems. Maybe having something to do with the creation of this new Masters of Fine Arts.
I should check my usc email... (probably just a bunch of colloquium spam!
There is already a Masters in Computer Science with a specialty in Multimedia and Creative Technologies (MSCS:MCT). Basically, as close to 'Game Development' can be without being called such.
I think that this is just the artistic complement to the technical degree.
Yeah, and I believe that DAoC used a canned engine and middleware server code while most other games wrote thier graphics engine and server protocols from the ground up (which isn't neccesarily a good thing!).
;-)
That could be why the development cycle was so short.
Thats because it is more difficult to program good AI than it is to program adding 15x life. :)
The more that I've been reading /. lately, the more it seems that Game Myth aka Risk Your Life has the right way to go about it (at least in terms of the various games that I've been looking at). Although the English engine is currently in development, it seems to be the solution that a lot of pvp type MMORPG players are looking for. It is a persistent world with character development and learned skills and such, but the combat (spell, ranged, and melee) is all FPS like. Meaning you have to pick and choose which abilties you want to learn as you 'level'. It really is a neat-o system.
Its too bad that
I think thats what the North America/UbiSoft fork is doing.
t ml he talks about whats needed in shadowbane.
If you read the first news story on the Watershead site it is an interview with Ubiq who seems to be some sort of lead SB Ubi admin. In the article, http://www.waterthread.org/news/107724070845526.h
I think he has a pretty good grip on it, but i guess like everything, the devil is in the details (and implementation!).
His list:
1) Increase overall client stability, and performance of both the client and the server.
2) Make it easier to rebuild after a lost war.
3) Ensure that a siege event is about the right duration.
4) Make trebuchets and other siege equipment more important to sieging.
5) Make walls more effective and cooler.
6) Reduce tree camping.
7) Spread people out.
8) Improve guards.
9) Improve accountability.
10) Get rid of Player Stacking.
11) Improve city management.
12) Improve the siege atmosphere.
Without trying to sound like an overzealous fanboy, you don't want to look at Lineage 2. If you've been following games lately, you will know there was an asian game called 'Game Myth' that had an open beta last year. The only problem is that you had to understand korean or whatever to sign up, login and interact with the game.
Anyways, they are doign an english port called Risk Your Life that is going into beta real soon.
If you never played the original Game Myth, I would look around for some reviews and such. Since it integrates FPS like combat schemes and skill, I'm surprised that the article did not mention it. It is pretty much under the radar, and I suspect will only be a cult favorite like some of the games coming out.
that is the saddest and truest and best post ever.
wc -w FILENAME
"Moreover, I think technology is becoming extremely competitive. Better to try a field like nursing or maybe look for something in biotech."
Close. People should study math or physics. You get enough exposure to technology in those majors that you can pick up whatever new technologies it is that you will need in any typical job situation. And with the math and logic skills that you will develop companies will actually want to hire you.
Of course your coding might be loose and ugly, but it is >alot easier for companies to teach good coding practices than higher level mathematics.
I believe that the correct term is "Drinking the Kool-Aid."
You know that one guy that mixed up a bunch of special kool-aid back in the 70's?
"The very notion that I have to get permission to send you a marketing message doesn't make sense and is not good public policy," said Richard Gingras, Goodmail's chief executive.
What the hell? It >does make sense from a consumer's perspective, and it might not be good public policy to a corporation because how else will people really know that they want thier product? Unless they actually knew that they needed it, and looked for companies that would produce it?
I would assume that if you did the same with New York you would get similar numbers. There are som very rich people in New York City as well as some very destitute people.
Big cities are where the wealthist live and the poor go to find shelter.
Moscow is no different than New York, Detroit or Chicago.
remember the lack of corpse decay? server wide lag due to never-disappearing player bodies? That was some real nice content in AC1. :)
But yeah, I think that the original poster was alking about AC2 which was supposed to rely on 'Player Created Content'. Whatever that means.
You underestimate the influence of Ken Karl and the rest of the Microsoft employees that were involved in the publishing of Asheron's Call 1 and 2.
Ken Karl is known for taking the development updates and content additions in the direction that Microsoft wanted to take. If you look at Asheron's Call 2, you will find that alot (IIRC) of the design choices were not done by Turbine, but rather heavily influenced by Microsoft. Also, when Ken was appointed head of AC1 over at MS, things started to take a different turn in regards to game balance mainly in the realm of awards.
I haven't played either AC in over a year, so things may have changed a bit, but never, ever bash Turbine in regards to thier ability to put out a quality game product. Instead Bash thier publisher (which in all cases so far has been MS).
IANAGD, but I think that as games transition to pure 3d modeled worlds (away from side scrollers or 2d sprite based games) thier complexity rises exponentially.
By complexity, I mean the amount of time making independent code objects to handle each and every interaction that could take place in the world. This involves AI scripting for the mobiles, interaction scripting for the static items and world physics for everything else.
No longer can people write one set of libraries that will apply to each and every level of a game. I guess what it comes down to is that things can't be re-used as much as in days past: independent developers rely on the fact that people want a fresh outlook on games, not the same rehashed EA clone and it takes a lot more work to create something like that now (without the $$$$$ middleware).
I think people misunderstood what the parent poster was saying. Its not that he has Gator's Software installed on his machine, its just that Internet Explorer KEEPS ASKING HIM TO INSTALL IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER again until he says yes, every time he visits a page (not site, but page!) that would make a reference call to Gator's software. The popup isnt an advertisement, it is a system popup asking him to install the software.
Note that this is no less intrusive than pages that have Macromedia Flash on them, and repetitively being asked to install Macromedia Flash to view the page properly instead of somehow turning off the IE software install "pop-ups".
But isn't Doom 3 DirectX 9.0 compatible?
That means that it will be running solely under windows, and *never* be ported to linux/MacOS X.
Planetside is dead.
Savage is the game to be playing.