This is the core reason why I believe that companies who close down a game world should give the game back to the community in some way. That, or the client should be absolutely free and the user solely need to pay for the monthly service.
For example, even if all the BattleNet servers go *poof* tonight, I can still play Diablo 2 in a local or LAN mode. However if they shut down the EQ2 servers, I am left with nothing but memories pretty much as I and my guild find a new game.
The developers of AC2 should spend their remaining time building some sort of architecture where the remaining AC2 players can host their own game world locally or over a LAN/WAN and continue with their current characters if they so desire. If necessary charge a licensing fee to recoup some costs.
I'm not sure how well it would perform, but I was able to load single EQ zones with an emulator on an AMD 1gig processor with 1 gig of ram a few years ago. From my few short visits to AC2 I don't believe the graphics were much more intensive, however I am totally ignorant of the server-side code. That said, it should be possible to rework that just enough to allow play without the main servers.
If not, then perhaps other MMORPG's could stand to learn something from this and plan from the beginning for obsolescence of their servers, and what they will do for the existing community instead of just simply pulling the plug.
You might like Anarchy Online however their Shadowlands expansion strayed heavily from the sci-fi into the fantasy realm and the entire game suffered, in my opinion. I played the game off and on for years but could never truly get into it after being forced to go through the content in that expansion.
To hit level 220 you pretty much were forced to xp in the Shadowlands zones, although they did add shadowknowledge (SK) gain from killing aliens for the latest expansion Alien Invasion. That was a more recent patch and I'm not sure how it has effected the game as I've been away from it for months.
However the base game has a cyberpunk feel, with "the grid" which is your travel option, actual flight in game with personal planes, war-torn futuristic looking cities, etc. You also install implants which boost your skills and statistics along with the normal armor/weapon loot. The classes are more sci-fi in title but do similar RPG things (doctor = healer, enforcer = tank, etc).
The base game (with no expansions) is entirely free for new accounts so it's worth checking out here . Plus they use bittorrent for downloading!
And no, gamer girls are not the types I want to meet. For the most part, they are not very attractive.
Not everyone defines attractive the same way, so regardless of her physical looks a guy (or another girl) could be extremely attracted to a gamer girl simply due to her hobby. This may come as a shock to those of you with more shallow tastes, but a woman's personality/intellect might be what is the captivating factor in such relationships.
Odd it is in what we deem such an advanced, intellectual society most still look down upon women gifted with more brains than beauty. Such a sickening double standard.
I can agree with this. Look at the success of Neverwinter Nights. Look at all of of the homegrown maps/mods for Unreal, Half Life, etc. Gamers are bending over backwards to create their own content for a company's base game.
I honestly hope to see an MMORPG which will allow this, with proper bounds checking obviously. There is a concern of allowing items/money into the persistent game world from user created modifications. Player mods could start in a sandbox area then move into the developer's own QA when popular enough. When verified and bug tested, that module could be released into the live game.
Care would have to be taken to ensure any advancement or treasure gained in player-created areas was on par and balanced with the game's natural economy.
However it should not turn into a MUD style of build where the world just keeps adding rooms and the old content becomes stale and devoid of life. Sentiment is one thing; when I logged into an old EQ account I instantly felt that shiver of nostalgia looking around in Neriak. However soon after I felt disappointed that after so many years the NPC's were in the exact same place and none of the structure of the city had changed at all! Not a single pixel (other than texture quality).
Revamps to old content to keep it fresh and interesting should also be primary with the user modification community in an MMORPG.
Anyway, I must agree that playing an emulated version can help quench that Evercrack addiction. I used to play with EQEmu just on my own system with no remote server. It was an hour or two of fun running around in the zones I never got to see due to my level (only ever hit 30 myself). I also summoned myself all the best cleric armor and weapons I could find, just to see what it all looked like. I did the same for a few other classes with epic weapons I felt were pleasing to the eye.
In that regard, I can see why SoE is so protective of anyone playing on non-official servers. Once a player sees how silly easy it is to type a command and have Ragebringer pop into your hand (as a cleric nonetheless) spending hours on the same effort just loses it luster. Obviously the social aspect is lost on the detached server, and really that is all that keeps me and likely many others firmly attached to the genre.
I play many online games, and have been repeatedly "complimented" on how I use proper capitalization and punctuation. It's the most unsettling praise I've ever received, to say the least.
My boyfriend has been a tech with Geek Squad here in Ohio for a year now and to my knowledge still only makes around $10 an hour. He started at around $9.
Also, there are only 2 slots for full-time tech staff in his store, and neither of them are salaried. All the rest of the staff are part-timers with insufficient hours + pay to even live indepentdently. Most of his fellow techs work another part-time job just to afford the basics.
Not that it is unusual in companies for the people who actually perform the revenue generating effort to see the least of the monetary rewards.
I agree with you in the sense that it would be fascinating to see how a purely vegetarian society is different (if at all) from our current mix of vegetarian and carnivores.
When you say "interaction with carnivores" are you referring to the exposure to food born illnesses, pollution, and energy comsumptions related to the meat industry? Or is it more the "accidental" things like getting beef broth in your minestrone, or biting into what you thought was a bean burrito but was filled with beef (true stories on my part).
Regardless I still disagree with your theory that the vegetarian diet has not been truly deemed viable. There are many people who are lifelong vegetarians for one reason or the other and the health benefits have been studied. I just don't understand questioning of the basic viability of a diet which has proven medical benefits.
Yes, because the viability of a vegetarian diet has obviously not been thoroughly tested by the millions of vegetarians alive and well in the world today.
I have ordered my groceries online for the past five years and would never consider going back to a store again. I wish food was the same way.
Lucky you! Peapod left the Ohio area only a few months after I started using it, and I've been sad ever since. I truly loved the service.
If I were to start a grocery service I'd try to tie in several other services as well. For example I'd add recycleable pickup, dry cleaning service, movie rental returns, etc. However fast food would be an entirely different animal with much more focus on speed.
I guess that's really all we have until they can break down diapers and Chalupas into data packets and e-mail them to us.:)
However. How can you have a game where people are required to group together to experience the content, if every player can be anything that's needed at any time?
First, let me explain that I do not classify all of the simple levelling in MMORPG's as content. It really depends on the depth of the levelling experience. In WoW, you can complete quests to level so that is more content based. In Everquest you pretty much sat in one place and slew monsters for hours to level - THAT, in my opinion, is not true content but laziness on the designer's part. FFXI follows EQ's method.
Second, I never stated that every player should be able to do everything. I certainly saw the problems inherent in the old UO flavor-of-the-month templates. However you have that problem with classes too. I saw how popular berserkers were in early DAoC, then how popular the ignored sorcerer became after the Shrouded Isles expansion. Both class and skillset balancing are daunting tasks, and are never quite finished.
as a group, and eventually people will specialize in a specific few "must-have" abilities so often that you'll essentially have classes again.
You are speculating that based on current MMORPG design. I'm talking about an entirely new design that would require teamwork based on what you could drum up at the time, not some trinity of established classes (tank, healer, DPS) that is so prevelant in most every MMORPG out today. I am talking about challenging monster AI that changes tactics based on what the players present, not the ever present "chain heal on the tank" type scenario.
you level up is great but there are only a few often-desired classes of build. So you see, it's not lazy, it's a necessary evil. It's also clever because the job classes are uniquely qualified for their roles, and nobody else can handle it anywhere near as well.
This may be fine for unique situations, raids, important quests, etc. However in my opinion you should not need such specialized players for something as simple as grinding mobs to level (if that is part of your game design). In fact, even tougher scenarios should be able to be accomplished without the typical healer/tank/dps combo. WoW did this rather well in that they spread out crowd control over several classes. That versatility is what I see as good design, rather than "only enchanters can mez, only shamans can slow, etc".
If you're horribly inept at healing, your party will die and lose EXP instead of gaining EXP. People will eventually learn to stay clear of you and you will have to retire if you just won't learn to play.
I wish it always worked like that!:) However in my years of MMORPG playing I've grouped with many who I and others vowed never to group with again. Still they still manage to soar to the highest levels.
If you want to be whatever you feel like at any time, go play ToME, or make your own game. MMORPGs are about playing roles - not playing generic everymen.
You still insist on putting the "anything at any time" words in my mouth.:)
Remember even UO was hugely successful during it's time with its "generic everymen" design. Roles are defined by the creator, not some law set in stone (HEALER/TANK/DPS). A Cleric is a role just like a melee fighter with slight healing/magic ability is a role. The laziness is forcing the same roles as every other MMORPG, and building content around it.
Designing classes like this is simply lazy and is a built-in, non-creative stretch to the level grind of a game. This also allows the inept or unskilled to level simply due to their choice of class and availability at the time.
Imagine, you are in a party of 4 who is seeking a healer. The only one you can find looking for group is an idiot you've grouped with in the past who barely heals and expends his mana doing damage instead. You have a number of choices, but the only one to get you progressing in your current state is to bring the dork along with you. If you pass and wait, you may not get another healer or another key slot will have to leave.
I've seen this happen in plenty of games where we "needed" a certain class. Since I play healers all the time it was usually another needed CC, tank, or DPS class. If no other suitable "slot fillers" were found, the idiot came along or your progress/fun didn't happen.
Obviously this design is solely tuned for profit, no designer of a "fun" game would build a system in which you had access 24/7 but could only enjoy the fun when certain tight requirements which are out of your control were met.
There's a certain leech-like quality to the common Slashdot stance that I'm not sure I agree with. It's one thing to not want to pay for the same work over and over. It's another to think you have the right to absolutely any experience made possible by someone elses labor.
I don't believe it's all that cut and dry. I've read many comments about mp3's, bitorrent, etc and the themes I see consistently are:
major music/movie companies are bloated, top-heavy, and produce mostly mediocre content fueled by profits not quality
the current music/movie distribution systems are outdated for the technically savvy
geeks want their purchased music playable on any device they own easily, in the format they most like, without encumbering DRM
most fully desire to spend their money on a product but only if it is what they want when they want, for example tv series which are missed but don't come out on DVD for months/years after airing (Sopranos, bleh)
I am sure the majority are honest consumers who are tired of being treated like criminals with all this DRM
For the record, I do not agree with those who host large numbers of ripped CD's, nor do I agree with the tenent that "it sucks so I shouldn't have to pay". However the music industry had a glorious chance at changing their distribution strategy with the internet - they failed to capitalize and are now simply scurrying around in a panic trying to milk profits from ridiculous lawsuits instead of developing the pricing and delivery structures their consumers demand.
when are they going to come out with the MMORPG where I can play as the dragon, or the inn keeper, or the weapon master? The real future of gaming is to elliminate the NPGs ion favour of humans.
You are correct, however MMORPG design is fundamentally different from normal game design due to the fact that MMORPG success is based on continual subscription volume. If it does not turn a profit, it is no longer a valid MMORPG design scheme. Allowing freedoms like true roleplaying (as you stated) is one of the casualities of such a system.
I have to believe the designers of MMORPGs wish to make a fun game, however the drives of profit force them into artificial downtimes, treadmills, and tedium in order to keep active subscriptions. Content and fun is not high on the agenda.
I too would like to see a living, breathing world in a game. Even Morrowind suffered a bit from the static NPC's who never moved, ate, or slept. Everquest 2 has hints of this (cats chase mice, children chase pets, etc) but it's very rudimentary at this point. I would like to see an entire NPC marriage occur in town, and a celebration in the town square follow. I would like to see crowded nightclubs in a sci-fi setting where you could pay in-game funds to request music from the DJ or a digital library. There should always be a budget in a quality online RPG for a live acting team to create dynamic content (similar the all-volunteer ARK event team in Anarchy Online).
Day/night cycles should have an impact on the world, as should weather. A game world should be alive to the point that simply sitting in town is entertaining. NPC's, player characters, and a live acting team all play a part in that.
However with most media enjoying enormous profits even for mediocre content (think Britney Spears or most box office releases) the threshold will take a bit to rise to that state in the online RPG arena. After all even after 5 years of EQ you still have to slay legions of the same boring mobs in WoW and Everquest 2. Now you just have the savory guise of questing to sweeten the stale broth.
This reminds me of the "escort" type of robots in the movie Artifical Intelligence: AI. When people refer to automation causing job loss they seem to refer to it in the sense of low level labor or manufacturing. I feel intimate robots who would be self-cleaning (safer health-wise), unable to be impregnated, and agreeable to any act imaginable would wipe out the high and middle prostitution market for "real" people. The low end would likely still see human demand as these robots may be priced out of the market of that segment for some time.
I wonder what impact robots will have on the current legality of prostitution and various taboos like animal/child sex. Will having relations with a cyborg child be illegal or still considered unethical? What about a robot dog?
There is also to ponder the case of the spouse who seeks what some call "strange"; the burning desire to sleep with a person apart from their current partner. Would an intimate session with a robot be an acceptable substitute to both parties? Would a person be justified in feeling cheated upon if their spouse slept with a collection of wires, gears, motors, and software?
Some humans find comfort in the familiar. Things that are different, or apart from the herd, are disturbing and to be avoided.
Your comment reminds me of a sci-fi story I read where the basic premise was that most humans in the future rode around on all-terrain wheelchair-type vehicles. They depended on them so much that their legs atrophied and they couldn't walk anymore. When these people saw someone walking (they had an insulting name for them I cannot recall) they would actually try to run them over out of disdain. Do some technologically adept folk look at the Amish in a similar, if less severe, light?
Expansion of the mind beyond the normal and mundane and variety are beautiful things. I pity those who in striving so hard to be accepted by the herd lose their own sense of self and become simply another clone.
I have to agree. It was often 30-40 Alliance versus 10-15 Horde in Tarren Mill on the Silver Hand server. The Alliance rogues alone easily matched all of the Horde defenders most nights.
Instanced battlegrounds with a cap will likely be a far better PvP atmosphere in terms of numbers. However I'm speculating on servers where the Alliance has an overwhelming population advantage over their Horde counterparts, the Alliance likely has better gear and more cash reserves due to more raids and a more robust economy. Thus even with the numbers being equal there may still be a bit of equipment imbalance.
However as a long-time player of the main healing class in both PvE and PvP MMO's, I'm pretty disappointed in WoW's FPS style of PvP. There is no real loss in PvP death, so people can play poorly in hope of living long enough to just kill someone else and gain points. If your deaths counted against your honor points, THAT would make it a little more interesting but would be a huge disadvantage for underpopulated realms.
That, and Blizzard's style of "tedium + repetition = content" in the level 60 game really led me to disappointment in what was supposed to be the "best game ever".
"What's the point of earning money and stats, if you can simply buy them?"
Like World of Warcraft, EQ/EQ2 have many items which can only be obtained if you loot said item off the dead corpse from which it came (No Drop, Bind on Pickkup). While a player could in fact buy platinum in EQ/EQ2 (or gold in WoW) and equip himself decently, there are still quest rewards and instance drops for which he or she will have to play as intended.
In a real example, it was (is?) almost impossible to achieve a placed house in UO due to all the available land taken. If you want a house you either have to bank on the.0001 chance you will come across a decaying home (luck and time) or buy one from Ebay (simply cash).
Some people simply may have more real life discretionary income than free time to invest in the tedium of earning online funds or gaining levels. There will still be content in most games inaccessible to them unless they put in the time.
vs. Player (PvP) combat on a voluntary basis. PvP servers also exist which allow any player to attack any other player, a no-holds barred environment between the two major factions. Finally,
Just to clarify, there are no WoW servers currently which allow a player to attack ANY other player. On the PvP servers Horde players may freely attack Alliance players in Contested and Home territory zones, and vice versa. The difference between Home & Contested territories is that Horde players cannot begin an attack on an Alliance player in an Alliance territory, again vice versa. If a Horde player is in an Alliance territory and is attacked by an Alliance player he then may retaliate because said enemy becomes flagged for pvp.
Note that most of the "Home" zones are where lower level (sub 20) characters would level or major cities. On the PvP servers in high er levels you will be spending a lot of your time in Contested zones where you can be freely attacked by enemies (not freely by your faction mates, however).
You can duel your faction mates but that is consenual, not free-for-all.
The game did not have vehicles when I cancelled and I didn't see plans for them mentioned. Heroes have a number of travel powers to choose from (super speed, flight, and super jumping).
By lairs, do you mean enemy lairs to invade/conquer? CoH does have static missions and places on the world maps in which certain enemy types spawn. There are no player "lairs" (housing) right now but per the article it seems super groups (guilds) will be getting access to those in the expansion.
By making death a penalty, players now have a goal to strive for: survival. Some players will inevitably be better than others, but players want things to distinguish themselves from others. So the players who aren't killed often level quicker, and thus are demonstrably 'better' in terms of the level difference.
Levelling pace in an MMORPG has little to do with how much "better" a player is but more with how much time said player has to invest. An experience debt/loss penalty hurts a person who has 1-2 hours to play a night far, far worse in the short term than one who has the ability to play for 8-10 hours at a time. This is one reason a casual player could get upset and quit after amassing a large amount of loss/debt from an unfortunate death or series of deaths in an MMORPG.
Yes, I do realize knowing how to maximize xp gain can be considered a "skill" (a challenge measured by how hard it is to google that info) but for the most part my previous point stands.
I know it's not what you mean, but Wal-Mart actually does have a web interface for its data called Retail Link. Certain companies (usually leaders in a certain product) are allowed to login and access parts of Wal-Mart's data over a secure connection. At my former job we used this as a source system for our Point of Sale data warehouse.
Basically you can build queries, schedule them, and retrieve the data in certain typical format (Excel, text, CSV, etc). It was a tedious manual process because Wal-mart would not work with us to provide automated text feeds. Granted this was in 2002 so things might have changed since. They were also extremely strict about access (with good reason).
Thank you for an enjoyable game. I only levelled to 34 before it became less enjoyable and more a grind. However I do have to commend you on the Defender class and more specifically the Empathy line. It was the first healer in an MMORPG that I've played (and yes I've played almost all of them) where sacrifice was an important aspect of the class.
For those of you who haven't played, the Defender's Empathy power set was the most robust when it came to heals. However the Empathy Defender had only 1 way to directly heal themselves, with the least powerful group heal. Sure they could use the health regeneration boost as well, but it is more a small HoT (heal over time). The Empathy Defender's biggest heal (Absorb Pain) actually hurts the Defender and makes them unable to heal for 30 seconds or so.
This same concept is shown now in Guild Wars, where the Monk cannot heal his or herself except through their mitigation buffs and one group heal. The monk's group heal also heals enemies which requires an even higher level of proficiency to use in PvP.
My question then, was this a direct way to balance and challenge the top healer class for PvP? I've seen PvP Healing to be a debate in other games (Anarchy Online and EQ especially) and this seemed an interesting way to deal with it and not harm the PvE component too much. I'm eager to see how CoV shapes up for the Empathy Defenders/Controllers.
Buffbots were an issue, but certainly not the only one in DAoC.
Mythic wasted far too much time on PvE and close to nothing on PvP expansion in DAoC. Out of 4 expansions (SI,Homelands,ToA,Frontiers) only 1 (Frontiers) was explicitly for PvP and most of the PvP community agreed prettier keeps was not what they requested over the previous two years.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the core reason why I believe that companies who close down a game world should give the game back to the community in some way. That, or the client should be absolutely free and the user solely need to pay for the monthly service.
For example, even if all the BattleNet servers go *poof* tonight, I can still play Diablo 2 in a local or LAN mode. However if they shut down the EQ2 servers, I am left with nothing but memories pretty much as I and my guild find a new game.
The developers of AC2 should spend their remaining time building some sort of architecture where the remaining AC2 players can host their own game world locally or over a LAN/WAN and continue with their current characters if they so desire. If necessary charge a licensing fee to recoup some costs.
I'm not sure how well it would perform, but I was able to load single EQ zones with an emulator on an AMD 1gig processor with 1 gig of ram a few years ago. From my few short visits to AC2 I don't believe the graphics were much more intensive, however I am totally ignorant of the server-side code. That said, it should be possible to rework that just enough to allow play without the main servers.
If not, then perhaps other MMORPG's could stand to learn something from this and plan from the beginning for obsolescence of their servers, and what they will do for the existing community instead of just simply pulling the plug.
You might like Anarchy Online however their Shadowlands expansion strayed heavily from the sci-fi into the fantasy realm and the entire game suffered, in my opinion. I played the game off and on for years but could never truly get into it after being forced to go through the content in that expansion.
To hit level 220 you pretty much were forced to xp in the Shadowlands zones, although they did add shadowknowledge (SK) gain from killing aliens for the latest expansion Alien Invasion. That was a more recent patch and I'm not sure how it has effected the game as I've been away from it for months.
However the base game has a cyberpunk feel, with "the grid" which is your travel option, actual flight in game with personal planes, war-torn futuristic looking cities, etc. You also install implants which boost your skills and statistics along with the normal armor/weapon loot. The classes are more sci-fi in title but do similar RPG things (doctor = healer, enforcer = tank, etc).
The base game (with no expansions) is entirely free for new accounts so it's worth checking out here . Plus they use bittorrent for downloading!
Not everyone defines attractive the same way, so regardless of her physical looks a guy (or another girl) could be extremely attracted to a gamer girl simply due to her hobby. This may come as a shock to those of you with more shallow tastes, but a woman's personality/intellect might be what is the captivating factor in such relationships.
Odd it is in what we deem such an advanced, intellectual society most still look down upon women gifted with more brains than beauty. Such a sickening double standard.
I can agree with this. Look at the success of Neverwinter Nights. Look at all of of the homegrown maps/mods for Unreal, Half Life, etc. Gamers are bending over backwards to create their own content for a company's base game.
I honestly hope to see an MMORPG which will allow this, with proper bounds checking obviously. There is a concern of allowing items/money into the persistent game world from user created modifications. Player mods could start in a sandbox area then move into the developer's own QA when popular enough. When verified and bug tested, that module could be released into the live game.
Care would have to be taken to ensure any advancement or treasure gained in player-created areas was on par and balanced with the game's natural economy.
However it should not turn into a MUD style of build where the world just keeps adding rooms and the old content becomes stale and devoid of life. Sentiment is one thing; when I logged into an old EQ account I instantly felt that shiver of nostalgia looking around in Neriak. However soon after I felt disappointed that after so many years the NPC's were in the exact same place and none of the structure of the city had changed at all! Not a single pixel (other than texture quality).
Revamps to old content to keep it fresh and interesting should also be primary with the user modification community in an MMORPG.
Why on earth was the parent modded Troll?
*boggle*
Anyway, I must agree that playing an emulated version can help quench that Evercrack addiction. I used to play with EQEmu just on my own system with no remote server. It was an hour or two of fun running around in the zones I never got to see due to my level (only ever hit 30 myself). I also summoned myself all the best cleric armor and weapons I could find, just to see what it all looked like. I did the same for a few other classes with epic weapons I felt were pleasing to the eye.
In that regard, I can see why SoE is so protective of anyone playing on non-official servers. Once a player sees how silly easy it is to type a command and have Ragebringer pop into your hand (as a cleric nonetheless) spending hours on the same effort just loses it luster. Obviously the social aspect is lost on the detached server, and really that is all that keeps me and likely many others firmly attached to the genre.
I play many online games, and have been repeatedly "complimented" on how I use proper capitalization and punctuation. It's the most unsettling praise I've ever received, to say the least.
My boyfriend has been a tech with Geek Squad here in Ohio for a year now and to my knowledge still only makes around $10 an hour. He started at around $9.
Also, there are only 2 slots for full-time tech staff in his store, and neither of them are salaried. All the rest of the staff are part-timers with insufficient hours + pay to even live indepentdently. Most of his fellow techs work another part-time job just to afford the basics.
Not that it is unusual in companies for the people who actually perform the revenue generating effort to see the least of the monetary rewards.
I agree with you in the sense that it would be fascinating to see how a purely vegetarian society is different (if at all) from our current mix of vegetarian and carnivores.
When you say "interaction with carnivores" are you referring to the exposure to food born illnesses, pollution, and energy comsumptions related to the meat industry? Or is it more the "accidental" things like getting beef broth in your minestrone, or biting into what you thought was a bean burrito but was filled with beef (true stories on my part).
Regardless I still disagree with your theory that the vegetarian diet has not been truly deemed viable. There are many people who are lifelong vegetarians for one reason or the other and the health benefits have been studied. I just don't understand questioning of the basic viability of a diet which has proven medical benefits.
Yes, because the viability of a vegetarian diet has obviously not been thoroughly tested by the millions of vegetarians alive and well in the world today.
Lucky you! Peapod left the Ohio area only a few months after I started using it, and I've been sad ever since. I truly loved the service.
If I were to start a grocery service I'd try to tie in several other services as well. For example I'd add recycleable pickup, dry cleaning service, movie rental returns, etc. However fast food would be an entirely different animal with much more focus on speed.
I guess that's really all we have until they can break down diapers and Chalupas into data packets and e-mail them to us. :)
First, let me explain that I do not classify all of the simple levelling in MMORPG's as content. It really depends on the depth of the levelling experience. In WoW, you can complete quests to level so that is more content based. In Everquest you pretty much sat in one place and slew monsters for hours to level - THAT, in my opinion, is not true content but laziness on the designer's part. FFXI follows EQ's method.
Second, I never stated that every player should be able to do everything. I certainly saw the problems inherent in the old UO flavor-of-the-month templates. However you have that problem with classes too. I saw how popular berserkers were in early DAoC, then how popular the ignored sorcerer became after the Shrouded Isles expansion. Both class and skillset balancing are daunting tasks, and are never quite finished.
as a group, and eventually people will specialize in a specific few "must-have" abilities so often that you'll essentially have classes again.You are speculating that based on current MMORPG design. I'm talking about an entirely new design that would require teamwork based on what you could drum up at the time, not some trinity of established classes (tank, healer, DPS) that is so prevelant in most every MMORPG out today. I am talking about challenging monster AI that changes tactics based on what the players present, not the ever present "chain heal on the tank" type scenario.
you level up is great but there are only a few often-desired classes of build. So you see, it's not lazy, it's a necessary evil. It's also clever because the job classes are uniquely qualified for their roles, and nobody else can handle it anywhere near as well.This may be fine for unique situations, raids, important quests, etc. However in my opinion you should not need such specialized players for something as simple as grinding mobs to level (if that is part of your game design). In fact, even tougher scenarios should be able to be accomplished without the typical healer/tank/dps combo. WoW did this rather well in that they spread out crowd control over several classes. That versatility is what I see as good design, rather than "only enchanters can mez, only shamans can slow, etc".
If you're horribly inept at healing, your party will die and lose EXP instead of gaining EXP. People will eventually learn to stay clear of you and you will have to retire if you just won't learn to play.I wish it always worked like that! :) However in my years of MMORPG playing I've grouped with many who I and others vowed never to group with again. Still they still manage to soar to the highest levels.
If you want to be whatever you feel like at any time, go play ToME, or make your own game. MMORPGs are about playing roles - not playing generic everymen.You still insist on putting the "anything at any time" words in my mouth. :)
Remember even UO was hugely successful during it's time with its "generic everymen" design. Roles are defined by the creator, not some law set in stone (HEALER/TANK/DPS). A Cleric is a role just like a melee fighter with slight healing/magic ability is a role. The laziness is forcing the same roles as every other MMORPG, and building content around it.
Designing classes like this is simply lazy and is a built-in, non-creative stretch to the level grind of a game. This also allows the inept or unskilled to level simply due to their choice of class and availability at the time.
Imagine, you are in a party of 4 who is seeking a healer. The only one you can find looking for group is an idiot you've grouped with in the past who barely heals and expends his mana doing damage instead. You have a number of choices, but the only one to get you progressing in your current state is to bring the dork along with you. If you pass and wait, you may not get another healer or another key slot will have to leave.
I've seen this happen in plenty of games where we "needed" a certain class. Since I play healers all the time it was usually another needed CC, tank, or DPS class. If no other suitable "slot fillers" were found, the idiot came along or your progress/fun didn't happen.
Obviously this design is solely tuned for profit, no designer of a "fun" game would build a system in which you had access 24/7 but could only enjoy the fun when certain tight requirements which are out of your control were met.
There's a certain leech-like quality to the common Slashdot stance that I'm not sure I agree with. It's one thing to not want to pay for the same work over and over. It's another to think you have the right to absolutely any experience made possible by someone elses labor.
I don't believe it's all that cut and dry. I've read many comments about mp3's, bitorrent, etc and the themes I see consistently are:
For the record, I do not agree with those who host large numbers of ripped CD's, nor do I agree with the tenent that "it sucks so I shouldn't have to pay". However the music industry had a glorious chance at changing their distribution strategy with the internet - they failed to capitalize and are now simply scurrying around in a panic trying to milk profits from ridiculous lawsuits instead of developing the pricing and delivery structures their consumers demand.
when are they going to come out with the MMORPG where I can play as the dragon, or the inn keeper, or the weapon master? The real future of gaming is to elliminate the NPGs ion favour of humans.
You are correct, however MMORPG design is fundamentally different from normal game design due to the fact that MMORPG success is based on continual subscription volume. If it does not turn a profit, it is no longer a valid MMORPG design scheme. Allowing freedoms like true roleplaying (as you stated) is one of the casualities of such a system.
I have to believe the designers of MMORPGs wish to make a fun game, however the drives of profit force them into artificial downtimes, treadmills, and tedium in order to keep active subscriptions. Content and fun is not high on the agenda.
I too would like to see a living, breathing world in a game. Even Morrowind suffered a bit from the static NPC's who never moved, ate, or slept. Everquest 2 has hints of this (cats chase mice, children chase pets, etc) but it's very rudimentary at this point. I would like to see an entire NPC marriage occur in town, and a celebration in the town square follow. I would like to see crowded nightclubs in a sci-fi setting where you could pay in-game funds to request music from the DJ or a digital library. There should always be a budget in a quality online RPG for a live acting team to create dynamic content (similar the all-volunteer ARK event team in Anarchy Online).
Day/night cycles should have an impact on the world, as should weather. A game world should be alive to the point that simply sitting in town is entertaining. NPC's, player characters, and a live acting team all play a part in that.
However with most media enjoying enormous profits even for mediocre content (think Britney Spears or most box office releases) the threshold will take a bit to rise to that state in the online RPG arena. After all even after 5 years of EQ you still have to slay legions of the same boring mobs in WoW and Everquest 2. Now you just have the savory guise of questing to sweeten the stale broth.
This reminds me of the "escort" type of robots in the movie Artifical Intelligence: AI. When people refer to automation causing job loss they seem to refer to it in the sense of low level labor or manufacturing. I feel intimate robots who would be self-cleaning (safer health-wise), unable to be impregnated, and agreeable to any act imaginable would wipe out the high and middle prostitution market for "real" people. The low end would likely still see human demand as these robots may be priced out of the market of that segment for some time.
I wonder what impact robots will have on the current legality of prostitution and various taboos like animal/child sex. Will having relations with a cyborg child be illegal or still considered unethical? What about a robot dog?
There is also to ponder the case of the spouse who seeks what some call "strange"; the burning desire to sleep with a person apart from their current partner. Would an intimate session with a robot be an acceptable substitute to both parties? Would a person be justified in feeling cheated upon if their spouse slept with a collection of wires, gears, motors, and software?
Some humans find comfort in the familiar. Things that are different, or apart from the herd, are disturbing and to be avoided.
Your comment reminds me of a sci-fi story I read where the basic premise was that most humans in the future rode around on all-terrain wheelchair-type vehicles. They depended on them so much that their legs atrophied and they couldn't walk anymore. When these people saw someone walking (they had an insulting name for them I cannot recall) they would actually try to run them over out of disdain. Do some technologically adept folk look at the Amish in a similar, if less severe, light?
Expansion of the mind beyond the normal and mundane and variety are beautiful things. I pity those who in striving so hard to be accepted by the herd lose their own sense of self and become simply another clone.
I have to agree. It was often 30-40 Alliance versus 10-15 Horde in Tarren Mill on the Silver Hand server. The Alliance rogues alone easily matched all of the Horde defenders most nights.
Instanced battlegrounds with a cap will likely be a far better PvP atmosphere in terms of numbers. However I'm speculating on servers where the Alliance has an overwhelming population advantage over their Horde counterparts, the Alliance likely has better gear and more cash reserves due to more raids and a more robust economy. Thus even with the numbers being equal there may still be a bit of equipment imbalance.
However as a long-time player of the main healing class in both PvE and PvP MMO's, I'm pretty disappointed in WoW's FPS style of PvP. There is no real loss in PvP death, so people can play poorly in hope of living long enough to just kill someone else and gain points. If your deaths counted against your honor points, THAT would make it a little more interesting but would be a huge disadvantage for underpopulated realms.
That, and Blizzard's style of "tedium + repetition = content" in the level 60 game really led me to disappointment in what was supposed to be the "best game ever".
It's like having to decide between voting for a turd sandwich or a giant douche!
"What's the point of earning money and stats, if you can simply buy them?"
.0001 chance you will come across a decaying home (luck and time) or buy one from Ebay (simply cash).
Like World of Warcraft, EQ/EQ2 have many items which can only be obtained if you loot said item off the dead corpse from which it came (No Drop, Bind on Pickkup). While a player could in fact buy platinum in EQ/EQ2 (or gold in WoW) and equip himself decently, there are still quest rewards and instance drops for which he or she will have to play as intended.
In a real example, it was (is?) almost impossible to achieve a placed house in UO due to all the available land taken. If you want a house you either have to bank on the
Some people simply may have more real life discretionary income than free time to invest in the tedium of earning online funds or gaining levels. There will still be content in most games inaccessible to them unless they put in the time.
vs. Player (PvP) combat on a voluntary basis. PvP servers also exist which allow any player to attack any other player, a no-holds barred environment between the two major factions. Finally,
Just to clarify, there are no WoW servers currently which allow a player to attack ANY other player. On the PvP servers Horde players may freely attack Alliance players in Contested and Home territory zones, and vice versa. The difference between Home & Contested territories is that Horde players cannot begin an attack on an Alliance player in an Alliance territory, again vice versa. If a Horde player is in an Alliance territory and is attacked by an Alliance player he then may retaliate because said enemy becomes flagged for pvp.
Note that most of the "Home" zones are where lower level (sub 20) characters would level or major cities. On the PvP servers in high er levels you will be spending a lot of your time in Contested zones where you can be freely attacked by enemies (not freely by your faction mates, however).
You can duel your faction mates but that is consenual, not free-for-all.
The game did not have vehicles when I cancelled and I didn't see plans for them mentioned. Heroes have a number of travel powers to choose from (super speed, flight, and super jumping).
By lairs, do you mean enemy lairs to invade/conquer? CoH does have static missions and places on the world maps in which certain enemy types spawn. There are no player "lairs" (housing) right now but per the article it seems super groups (guilds) will be getting access to those in the expansion.
By making death a penalty, players now have a goal to strive for: survival. Some players will inevitably be better than others, but players want things to distinguish themselves from others. So the players who aren't killed often level quicker, and thus are demonstrably 'better' in terms of the level difference.
Levelling pace in an MMORPG has little to do with how much "better" a player is but more with how much time said player has to invest. An experience debt/loss penalty hurts a person who has 1-2 hours to play a night far, far worse in the short term than one who has the ability to play for 8-10 hours at a time. This is one reason a casual player could get upset and quit after amassing a large amount of loss/debt from an unfortunate death or series of deaths in an MMORPG.
Yes, I do realize knowing how to maximize xp gain can be considered a "skill" (a challenge measured by how hard it is to google that info) but for the most part my previous point stands.
I know it's not what you mean, but Wal-Mart actually does have a web interface for its data called Retail Link. Certain companies (usually leaders in a certain product) are allowed to login and access parts of Wal-Mart's data over a secure connection. At my former job we used this as a source system for our Point of Sale data warehouse.
Basically you can build queries, schedule them, and retrieve the data in certain typical format (Excel, text, CSV, etc). It was a tedious manual process because Wal-mart would not work with us to provide automated text feeds. Granted this was in 2002 so things might have changed since. They were also extremely strict about access (with good reason).
Thank you for an enjoyable game. I only levelled to 34 before it became less enjoyable and more a grind. However I do have to commend you on the Defender class and more specifically the Empathy line. It was the first healer in an MMORPG that I've played (and yes I've played almost all of them) where sacrifice was an important aspect of the class.
For those of you who haven't played, the Defender's Empathy power set was the most robust when it came to heals. However the Empathy Defender had only 1 way to directly heal themselves, with the least powerful group heal. Sure they could use the health regeneration boost as well, but it is more a small HoT (heal over time). The Empathy Defender's biggest heal (Absorb Pain) actually hurts the Defender and makes them unable to heal for 30 seconds or so.
This same concept is shown now in Guild Wars, where the Monk cannot heal his or herself except through their mitigation buffs and one group heal. The monk's group heal also heals enemies which requires an even higher level of proficiency to use in PvP.
My question then, was this a direct way to balance and challenge the top healer class for PvP? I've seen PvP Healing to be a debate in other games (Anarchy Online and EQ especially) and this seemed an interesting way to deal with it and not harm the PvE component too much. I'm eager to see how CoV shapes up for the Empathy Defenders/Controllers.
Buffbots were an issue, but certainly not the only one in DAoC.
Mythic wasted far too much time on PvE and close to nothing on PvP expansion in DAoC. Out of 4 expansions (SI,Homelands,ToA,Frontiers) only 1 (Frontiers) was explicitly for PvP and most of the PvP community agreed prettier keeps was not what they requested over the previous two years.