Because of the fact that the Red Cross doesn't want others using its symbol, the Green Cross has now become symbolic for first aid kits and the like.
When I was first becomming a FF, then EMT, and finally an EMT-P (Paramedic), all of my CPR and other basic classes were "Green Cross Certified". Because the American Red Cross wasn't the offical provider of the books, etc. Almost none of the medical equipment we had on our ambulances had the Red Cross symbol on them, either. It is why you see the image of normal sinus rhythm from an EKG on ambulances, and the letters EMS.
Look at a box of Johnson's & Johnson's Band-Aid brand of bandages. I don't think the current ones have the Red Cross symbol on them anymore. They used to. I know the 3M bandages don't.
I still think it is strange that the US government has given the symbol such drastic trademark protection, since there is prior use. It *is* called the Greek Cross for a reason.
However, I am not sure how successful they will be going after game manufacturers. If the manufacturer gets too much pressure, they just move out of the US, and viola! No problems anymore. It doesn't matter what the Geneva Conventions say. The symbol isn't being used in a negative fashion.
Besides, did anyone notice that the healing symbol in Half-Life 2 is a green cross? Some companies have already switched.
Um, I was running Windows 98ME, but wanted to upgrade my memory to make EQ run better. I couldn't go past 768MB of RAM and get full use out of it without upgrading to XP. I figured that 1GB of memory would come in handy for other things, too. So, I did it.
It wasn't stupid of me. I bought the O/S. That memory restriction that was in 98xx was just something that wasn't easy to overcome. I understood there were ways you could modify the O/S to recognize the extra memory, but most Windows applications still wouldn't use it. So, it was either get a new O/S, or not upgrade my memory to where I wanted it.
I don't see your plan having much of an effect, unfortunately.
If a single lvl 1 rat is a challenge to a lvl 1 toon, why do you believe that 12 lvl 1 rats would be a challenge to a lvl 10 toon? There is nothing that says the mobs will scale like that. In fact, I haven't played a game where that would hold true.
Those lvl 1 rats are designed to be challenging to a lvl 1 player. They are made to have a reasonable chance to hit that lvl 1 player through the toon's expected armor/skill level. A lvl 10 character should have a much greater chance of avoiding that.
Those lvl 1 rats are also probably not an experience kill for a lvl 10 player. It wouldn't make sense to make mob farming that easy.
I never felt like I was really grinding that much in WoW. Just about every time I was killing something, it was to accomplish a quest. They made the grind feel like much less of a grind. Sure, you may have killed 50 mobs to get the 10 items you had to turn in. But, you were rewarded not only with the mob's XP, but the quest XP and quest item(s). It made you feel that your time was being well spent.
EQ/EQ2 had a horrible grind. DDO has got too much grind due to lack of content, causing you to redo the same quests too often to level. (That's my only real beef with DDO. I can live with blocking, since I don't even bother that often, playing a cleric mostly.) I blame EQ more than anything else, since it put more grind into MMOs than any other I can recall.
But even games like Diablo II had grind in it. Could you try to go right through as fast as possible and fight Diablo? Sure. But, you got a lot further along and had an easier time of it if you redid certain parts. Lord knows I must have done chapter IV all the way up to Diablo a half dozen times, grinding up gear and experience. Why? Because I got there pretty damn fast, and needed more levels and skills to survive Diablo.
Not all single player games have grind, but many do. And I consider those quests that are "Go from point A to point B. Kill mob at Point B. Bring item back to Point A to check in. Go to Point C to show item to NPC. Come back to Point A for reward" to be just as much of a grind. I don't play games to run across the map 3 or more times through places with no more encounters just to complete some quest. It's grind.
Trust me, I understand about what TFA was talking about. Heck, my wife and I duoed in WoW all the way to 60, with rarely grouping with our guildies due to time constraints on our part. My wife is working on her masters degree, and I do some editing on the side. We played most nights, but only for about 3 hours a night. Weekends may have been more.
From lvl 10 through lvl 50, we were almost always in XP bonus. We weren't power gamers. We took our time, and we had fun with it. And due to that bonus we were almost always under, we reached lvl 60 about a week after the power gamers in our guild did. That week happened to be mostly due to us taking an actual vacation.
So, as I said, WoW did it right. You were rewarded for having spent some time offline. At low levels, the impact doesn't last as long, because it is easier to get through a level. But that one week off while we were in our mid 40's; that XP bar was blue for more than 2 weeks afterwards. But the reward had limits, in that it could only reach a maximum of 1.5 levels worth of blue XP.
There has to be limits on it, or folks will create a character, and then eat XP.
Besides, you could earn real XP in AC, at least early on in the game, due to it's pyramid helping system. There were folks that assisted various newbs by the hundreds, then earned 10% of whatever those newbs earned in XP. I knew guys that wouldn't play their toon for a week due to being away, and come back to find they levelled. Pyramid schemes were the rage up to the point I quit about 3 months into the game.
Wow's idea that you could spend a week (at least at launch) with that toon being offline and end up with 1.5 levels of 2x experience worked. It was incentive to bring your alts out once in a while, and have them gain a level fairly quickly, then put them back in the closet for a week or two.
But you still had to do stuff to gain that experience, and quest rewards weren't doubled. Only actual mob experience doubled. You had to work for it. It was just easier to get somewhere on that less used toon.
But just gain experience while off-line? What's the point in rewarding people for doing nothing? Next you are going to ask that you be given a stipend for not playing that character? The character should get free currency because they weren't played?
No offense, but you play MMOs to accomplish something. I don't want to accomplish something by NOT playing.
Or, as Herm Edwards, former coach of the NY Jets put it, "You PLAY to WIN the GAME".
It is possible that in later creations of the CDs, they fixed that.
Most of the time, when a game has been out long enough to hit the bargain bin, it is no longer version 1.0. It is 1.3 or something. So, there are no patches, and if the patch fixed the problem, viola.
I'm not saying that IS the reason, but it is possible.
I guess the RISCISO group was website based. I hadn't heard of them. I've seen the ones that use Usenet to distribute to anyone who wants the software.
Even those Usenet groups are dying down. The last time there was a sting, the volume of posting dropped from about 25 titles a day to about 10 titles a day. About 2 months ago, it dropped again, to about 2-3 titles a day it seems. This is probably why.
Even without those types of pirates, I think you will be seeing a lot of software stop being pirated. The more titles require on-line play with servers to connect to, the easier for the software companies to make sure there is a digital handshake that would be hard to get around.
Besides, you see a lot of the software companies releasing games that have major bugs in them, requiring a patch that has to be downloaded. I am suspecting that this is one of their methods to defeat the ISO type pirates. Sure, someone can download their game. However, it is basically a free demo that will crap out on you about 5 hours into gameplay due to a major bug. In order to fix said bug, you have to download the patch, which re-installs whatever copy protection the ISO type pirates removed. A simple process, but effective.
Secure-ROM 7 apparently also seeks out such programs as Daemon Tools and refuses to let the application run if it is installed. Even people using stuff like Blind Write and other tools that try to hide applications like Daemon Tools are failing to mask their usage.
Personally, I am kind of tired of the pirated software stuff. The software companies are going to harder and harder methods of protection, and it can and does catch paying customers in their path.
I own a copy of Atari's "Dungeons & Dragnons: The Temple of Elemental Evil". I had played it when it first came out, and not really played it again. I had used Daemon Tools to hold an image of the original CD 1, so I didn't have to swap so much. (I'm an admitted game junkie, and I'm tired of swappings CDs when I want to play Half-Life 2, as opposed to Sacred, as opposed to NWN, etc.) A HD crash more than a year later wiped the CD image out. When I went to re-install, there was a new patch to put in, so I installed it when I loaded the game again. The problem is, they added new protection in the latest patch, and said protection told me that my original game CD was not valid. Calls to Atari were a joke. They refused to fix it because when they asked for a diagnostic to be run, it identified that Daemon Tools was found in the registry. Even uninstalling it, they refused to help. I offered to mail them the original game box first, and they could return me a new box with new CDs. No dice.
Many game companies are offering free demos of products available to download from places like fileplanet. So, there is no need to pull a full cd image from some place that is going to require a patch that will re-enforce the pirate's efforts, anyways. But, people that buy the games can suffer, and find their software is ruined years later by a patch the are supposed to need.
Personally, I think half of the patches for Blizzard's Diablo II: Lord of Destruction that have been done over the years is to reinforce copy protection.
I was not too pleased with the article failing to mention so many other games out there. They author(s) stuck to only the big names in gaming, using WoW,, FFXI EQ/EQ2, CoH/V, DAoC, SG:G,, AC, and a mention of the soon to be released DDO.
What happened to Eve, Linenage II, Guild Wars, and various others? No mention of the psuedo-betas like Silk Road or any others?
I can live with some of their assessments. DDO is going to take top prize for A/V when it is released. The graphics really are that good.
As for WoW being the king of PvP, that is only by default, imo. Too many people are playing the game in general, so they get an automatic "best PvP". In reality, with population imbalances on many servers, it is often a joke. (On Uther, the Horde could start a PvP instance right away. The Alliance were known to wait for hours, especially early on.)
I don't see any game doing a perfect blend of PvE and PvP. They tend to be counter-productive. You balance for PvE, and PvP gets skewed. Balance for PvP, and you break something for PvE. PvP causes a lot of developer headaches, because a tactic gets used and abused, or not used by rumored, and then all hell breaks lose. (Anyone else remember the "nerf rogues and their stun-lock" arguements, with the length of stuns reaching up to 30 seconds after a week? Yet it was impossible to really stun beyond 10, and only in perfect situations.)
If you are going to do PvP, do PvP. If you aren't, don't try to add some half-assed version of it to appease the minority. Do whatever you are best at.
I've seen player made content, especially in a game like Second Life. Much of it is pretty sad. Some of it is exceptional.
It really depends, imo, what type of MMO you are talking about.
Games like The Sims, Second Life, and other "social" MMOs can thrive easily on player made content. Those games are mostly about playing an alternate persona. At least in Second Life, fashion was everything. You were looked at by what outfit you wore more than your ability to actually have social skills. So, those that could create great outfits made a huge difference in the game. They also made a decent about of cash.
For RPGs and the like, storylines come more into play. Just creating a game where you hack-n-slash your way through to some goal, with not real plot to speak of, is just a remake of nethack or moria. It works for FPS, but most folks want plot with their RPG.
If you look at the history of MUDs, you see that a lot of them are very generic, based on a particular build, and then the owner of the MUD and some of their friends would get around to adding player made content. With a few exceptions, they were awful. Most of them found out it wasn't as easy to create dynamic storylines that kept people interested. 90% of them ended up being played by the creators themselves, and a few bored souls that found one that fit their niche.
The same held true with many of the player made NWN modules. Some of them were really well thought out, with a decent storyline that made you want to play through them. Most of them were fairly mindless hack-n-slash events.
It's a lot of hard work to make a dynamic storyline and then add the content to make it work. A lot of work with very little pay-off. They become labors of time and love for the creative process, and the talent to make it interesting to others. That's rare.
Look at art. A lot of people out there can draw pictures, and paint paintings, and take pictures. But how many of them can inspire the viewer to feel something? Sure, anyone can take a picture of a frozen landscape, but how many will make us see and feel things like the late Ansel Adams did? The artist has to have an eye and a feel for what they are looking at, and be able to transfer that to their medium. That is where true talent lies. I can take pictures. I even have a great digital SLR camera. I have a pretty good eye, and I've caught some great images. But nobody is going to confuse me with Ansel Adams.
Well, when someone is creating a MMO or adding content to one, I *want* them to do better than I could. I want them to do better than 99.99% of us could. I want to be entertained. I want to get into the storyline. I want to see encounters that make sense. I want difficulties to overcome that aren't impossible. I want tactics to matter and make sense.
Besides, if the player isn't creating the whole game themselves, then there needs to be a master plot, and then have the player content fill in the pieces of the puzzle. Most important, they need someone with the vision to stay the course, or make changes to support a truly inspired idea. Trying to manage various unpaid people to follow along with that master plot, working as a cohesive unit, would be difficult at best. Great ideas are a dime a dozen, but the ability to craft them all together into a final product aren't.
Just banning Chinese IP ranges won't cut it. You are making an assumption that ALL farmers are Chinese. It wouldn't surprise me if Russian Mafia types are doing the same.
I mean, they can't just survive on kiddie porn, can they?
It was essentially the same in Lineage II. That game was taken over by farmers in a brutally fast fashion. Within a few months of release, the economy was already hopelessly borked.
As long as there are game economies that allow you to make items, buy/sell items, and store bucketloads of cash, you will see farming done. In fact, of all of the many MMOs I have played (over a dozen, either in beta, live, or both) there have been problems with the economies, with the exception of CoH/V (which doesn't really have one.)
I see one of the biggest problems being that, especially here in the U.S., there is a sense of entitlement. And you have to buy that entitlement.
Players want to have stuff to show off and brag about (the e-penis effect), or simply to be the best at the game in the shortest possible time. So, they are willing to spend real life cash to have these in-game entitlements.
It is no different than their buying cars that they cannot really afford to have. My wife works for a major car manufacturer's credit company. You would laugh at how many people lease luxury cars because they can't afford to buy them, and then default on the car lease because even it is too much for their wallet. Their tales of tagedy all boil down to the fact that they should have never obtained the car they did, because the just have enough income to afford it. The car lease became popular because people wanted to drive what they couldn't afford. It's a sucker's ploy, and look how many suckers you know.
It's also like getting a huge cell phone plan so you can talk to your friend down the street, instead of using a land line. Or getting a lot of "bling bling" for showing off. Or decorating your body with numerous and stupid looking tattoos. Or breast implants/liposuction and other cosmetic surgeries. They are all luxuries you don't need. And most folks are willing to pay through the nose for them.
The farmers know this about MMO players, especially with us Americans. (Hey, I am one of those Americans, and I shake my head at the way kids today think they DESERVE stuff.) They prey on that. They probably run more sweatshops than all the sneaker companies combined.
Basically, different people think different things are good and/or bad in another person's playstyle.
Examples:
You are a person that likes to take their time going through a dungeon/instance/raid. You want to be thorough. However, you aren't able to find a group with your regular friends, so you do (oh, the horrors!) a PUG. The people you get stuck with are of the OMGZERS HURRY UP! mode. You stay with them, because you don't want to get a horrible score for leaving too early. Your play styles clash too much for it to be a friendly group, and 5 other people give you a negative rating.
You are in a group, and you normally play a laid back style. Your wife is sick, but is letting you play. You get in a group, and an hour into the session with a PUG, you wife tells you she is really ill, and wants to go to the hospital. Half the group is adult and understands. The other half gives you a negative mark for leaving before it is over.
You are playing a game that allows PvP. Your party encounters some griefers that manage to kill you all after you had gotten along easily for the last hour. The other party members want to gank back right away, but you want to finish the mission. They rate you all negatively.
3 examples, all possible. There are hundreds more. And most folks just aren't capable of giving an honest opinion. Some 14yr old little pissant isn't going to care that your wife is pregnant and about to have the baby a month earlier than expected. You ruined their gaming experience by having the audacity to have a family emergency. They are going to rate you negatively.
Also, you could stack the ballot box, in effect. Don't like another player? Get friends to group with that person, and slam them.
Lastly, people can and will create griefer toons. Most games allow some levelling to be done solo, if not all. In WoW, I could solo a druid or other toon to lvl 10 in less than 6 hours. I can hit 20 in less than 20 hours. I can then go about with that character and make other players live's miserable. Then delete the toon and start again. Too much rep on that server? Pick another one.
I don't see it working. It's too easy to change your identity. And there's no way I want other folks knowing my account name. They don't need it, but if they get it, someone will eventually attempt to hack your account.
Word of mouth on the forums works. Heck my WoW realm forum was full of "This person is a ninja-looter" threads, and people started to keep list of confirmed ninja-looters. And all it would take is one group all saying "Toon A ninja-looted", and even if the lied, you were now blackballed.
So, why bother giving another avenue to grief, cause problems, and the like?
Slow to fix bugs? They are speed demons compared to Blizzard!
How many months was WoW live before they had a test server?
How many times in Blizzard did we see bugs that were known and widely complained about on their test servers go to production, simply because Blizzard didn't want to fix it?
How often does Blizzard make hotfixes for exploits, but leaves bugs in the game until the next scheduled patch?
I played EQ2 for about 2 months, tops. The game itself was boring to me, and these newbie character changes probably will help a lot. (Not having any real idea of your character's strenghts of weakness until 10 and 20, because that's when you chose them? DOH!) But I saw SoE patch nearly every single day when I logged in. Blizzard patches once a month at best. SoE added a ton of content. Blizzard hasn't.
No, SoE did bug fixes. Sure, some of the bigger ones may have taken a little longer, but they DID in fact fix bugs, and often. If it was a minor bug, they fixed it and got it into production fast. It was the most pleasant aspect of EQ2, really.
Blizzard doesn't fix anything fast. Their track record of holding back bug fixes for a single update is poor, especially when they are minor fixes to client or even more, server.
NCSoft even fixes bugs more rapidly in CoH/V than Blizzard does.
And if Blizzard doesn't collapse those guilds and send all members a harassment email, the people that tried to form the GLBT guild should be able to sue for defamation.
Blizzard took a stance. That is their right. However, they better decide to enforce it unilateraly, or they are in a heap of trouble. And don't think the ACLU wouldn't have a field day with bringing up examples, and making Blizzard change things.
Ah, you are putting extra words into my mouth that I didn't speak. I never said "if you are roleplaying and picking the opposite sex, you are a freak." Yet you seem to think I implied it.
I could really care less if some guy wanted to roleplay a girl, or vice versa. If you are a guy and you ARE going to roleplay a girl, more power to you. It *is* roleplaying, after all. However, there is roleplaying, and then there is roleplaying.
Some people think "hey, I logged into this game called WoW, and I am playing an elf druid that can change into a bear, cat, sealion, or jaguar! I'm roleplaying!" And yet, they don't roleplay a thing. They don't go OOC to talk about the new car they bought, college, etc. They are playing a game, but they aren't really playing a role.
Then there are those that really immerse themselves into a game. For the time in the game, they are that character. If they have to go OOC, they will say "OOC, bio break" or the like. They truly enjoy that, and love playing with like-minded folks. And especially for guys, if you are roleplaying the opposite sex, you usually trip yourself up sooner or later. That can, for some people, ruin the immersion that they are enjoying. (Not that a thousand other things won't do the same, but some hardcore roleplayers are almost obsessive about this kind of "mistake".) Sure, it's childish, but then again, I've watched all too many hardcore roleplayers throw a tantrum because someone broke character.
I have friends that are gay. I get along with them just fine. I'm also married, and expecting my first child in May. I have no issues with my own heterosexuality, nor do I have any issues with anyone else's choice of consentual and legal sexual partners. (And before you try to read something into that, I mean "no pedophiles", not something about sodomy being illegal in many states.)
Stop trying to read so much into statements. You'll live longer!
Some of us guys eventually get tired of staring at a guy's ass. So, we switch to female toons, so we can look at a chick's ass.
Unless you are actually "roleplaying", and not out to kill and have fun, who gives a flying as to which character sex someone else selected?
And yes, it is true that in the early days of EQ, female toons got stuff just handed to them. But, that time is not nearly so prevelant nowadays. It won't work nearly as easily in WoW as it did back in those early EQ days.
I actually went back and played the original Ultimas. I, II, and III were all just incredible. I played the later ones, but they started to lose the feel a bit. Great games.
Wizardry (the original) can still make me salivate. I first played it back in 1982 if I remember correctly. And I could probably still navigate all the way to the bottom. Contra Dextra Avenue, anyone?
Nethack/Moria... I can blow hours on end with either one, just to see if I can FINALLY reach the end of it. More than a dozen years later, I still haven't gotten to the bottom of that damn dungeon! But every few months, I give it a whirl.
Both Fallouts were great, but I didn't really enjoy Arcanum, even though it was the same engine and mechanics. I can play them both, but I'd love to see a similar game (more mature audience) with better graphics come out.
NeverWinter Nights still makes me have a lot of fun. One of these days I will complete it using every single class.
The Icewind Dale/Baldur's Gate games still are fun to me. Fun engines and good stories.
But the big winner for me has been Diablo II. I have played the original, and lots of similar ones. Sacred was probably the best knock-off. But Diablo II (plus LoD expansion) is the king. I just am not bored playing it. The different items to get, enhancements, and the like... Whew! Time to salvage that from my recent HD crash!
Man, some of the games I remember make me feel my 39 and some change years. Ugh!
SWG was pretty much a failure. It could and probably should have been the hottest game ever made. The whole SW franchise was getting a kick in the pants with new movies after over 20 years of nothing, yet still remained a huge fixture in people's minds. The only way this game could fail is if it sucked. Much like City of Heroes couldn't really fail. Who hasn't dreamed of playing a superhero as a kid?
Whoops! SWG failed. It was horrible at startup, being quite possibly the buggiest "gold release" I have ever seen. It was corrupt, as players were exploiting the crap out of it for a while. It was boring for a lot of people, with a common theme of people leaving the game being "I never thought it would be like THAT! It sucked!"
Everyone that I know that bothered to purchase it (after hearing the consistently bad reviews from beta testers, as well as the not-so-hot reviews from some game magazines) quit the game within the first 3 months, it was obvious that the game just wasn't that good. Sure, some people will like it. Some people will like a game, no matter how bad it is, or what it's theme is.
So, SoE realized it blew it, and then spent all this time trying to come up with a way to save what should have been the golden MMO game for the decade. They saw the PvP in WoW and other games being more "in your face, action packed" than what they offered, so they tried to throw the same type of thing at SWG.
The bottom line is, when a game is completely borked, a revamp isn't going to draw old customers back, or get you new ones. It is going to just piss off the few remaining players you had. And SoE did just that.
On the one hand, it is nice not to have to pay a monthly fee. The advantages are obvious. No extra $$$ output from your original purchase price. More players. Less difficult to get your friends to play.
On the other hand, with the monthly fee, you tend to get better service. More bug fixes. More content updates. More money (supposedly) sunk into servers and GM support. Less players that are playing once a week or less.
For the amount of time you usually spend playing a MMO towards "end game" content, is $15 a month really that much? That's most likely cheaper than taking a date to a movie one Friday night a month, and that doesn't include dinner! I can't understand why folks balk at this small amount of money, when they probably spend 20+ hours a week in game. You couldn't even rent movies from Blockbuster and get 20hrs of entertainment in for less than $15 a month. So why bicker over it? If you can't afford it, don't buy the game.
I feel that the no monthly fee model tends to work better with the PvP type enviornments. Much of the content comes from the player's skill, not the world. Content isn't as important, because it doesn't dictate the play style.
The monthly fee gets the non-PvP centric games more content. If PvP isn't the main purpose of the game, then content becomes critical to the success of the game.
The bottom line is, though...if a game sucks, not having a monthly fee isn't going to help it that much. Even games that don't suck, like Guild Wars, doesn't have all of its player base playing once a week or more. I played it for all of 2 months before I was bored out of my skull. Lack of content killed it for me, since I wasn't all that gung-ho on PvP.
Besides, the lack of a monthly fee means that sooner or later, they are going to start in game ads on us. I'd rather pay $15 a month and have no ads, than pay nothing and have ads slowing down my gameplay. And don't think it won't happen.
Jack Thompson just rolled over in his future grave
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35% Of Parents Game
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· Score: 1
Poor Jack. If more parents would spend time with their kids, instead of using the idiot box (or game console/pc) as a babysitter, so much of this crap would die down.
I know quite a few parents that play various PC or console games with their children. I had several guildmates in EQ who were father/son or mother/son. One woman, whose husband passed away, taught her son how to play his father's characters. It helped them stay closer.
I know that my wife and I play MMOs together a lot, and even some non-MMOs like Diablo II and the like. Our first child is due in May, and the house is already wired for network. Once our daughter reaches an age where she shows genuine interest in games that we may be playing, she will be more than welcome to join us. And, we will be more than eager to play whatever games stike her fancy.
So, this article doesn't surprise me. It would have been nice to see a breakdown of demographics, though.
TFA was pretty boring. What is so special about a game designer finding out he can't do Product Management?
There is a reason most business models have a project designer and a project manager. Let the design guys come up with all their great (or whacky) ideas, and let the managers decide what will and will not work. Most people aren't geared to wear both hats, much less both at the same time.
Product Management is all about making sure the development pieces all fall together, and get done in a (yeah, right!) timely fashion. They shouldn't have to spend their time doing design, and you don't want your design folks managing.
In a nutshell, I read this as more of a "Don't make more out of my being asked to step down from a position I really didn't have the skills for" type of article. As far as that goes, kudos to Rick Dakan for being man enough to admit he wasn't cut out for the job.
There is nothing wrong with a designer saying "I couldn't cut it as a product manager". Product management is only fun when the project is done and done well. Otherwise, it is a nightmare. Design can be a blast, though.
I read TFA, and I am not sure why the author decided to write it. While he makes points, they are moot, imo. I mean, WoW pretty much has an archetype system in the way that you craft your character's class with skill points. And for all of that, you have most classes using only 2-3 builds per class. Nobody cried that much about it. (Well, they did on the forums, but people are still using cookie cutter models.)
Priests in WoW used one build if they soloed to 60, and a 2nd build is they were grouping. Once hitting 60, they went with either the PvP DPS types or group-healing build.
Fighters either used a shield build or a DPS build.
Rogues used either a stealth build or a weapon/combat build.
Warlocks just got laughed at. Come to think of it, so did paladins.
Even the 2 hybrid classes of shaman and druid only saw 2 builds as a general rule.
So, their archetype system devoloved down into being able to split their characters into only a few realistic builds.
EQ was sadly locked into fairly rigid thinking by most of its players. I did some fairly hard LDoN quests with a druid and/or shaman as a healer. For a solid 6 months, a SK and sometimes a pali was a better tank than a warrior for most encounters. Monks were no longer the kings of pulling, as SKs did it better.
Besides, to me, it wasn't the holy trinity, but the holy quad. I really wanted a shaman along in my groups. Heck, as a wizard, I really wanted a BL, too. Kitty-Crack really made my life a lot easier.
I don't see how archetypes makes it that much easier on Devs. Folks need to get out of the "all classes must be balanced" ideas. Each class is a tool to be used in certain situations. Cross-over abilities don't hurt too much, as long as it doesn't go TOO far. EQ druids could heal, but not nearly as well (or effeciently) as a cleric, and they couldn't rez. If druids could heal as well, who would ever want a cleric?
So, let them use archetypes. Most MMO players think inside the box, and won't even TRY alternatives. Me, I went through most of WoW with my wife's druid as my rogue's only healer. We made it to 60 before some paladin busted her confidence as to her ability to heal as well as a priest.
Oh, and DDO isn't balancing the classes. Mostly because the PnP game isn't about balance, but group composition. It has been refreshing to see folks fit their roles. Of course, all groups wait for a cleric, unless they are all WF.
Since you didn't play the game, and your only knowledge of the game is from the article and my review, you are making a valid arguement without knowing why I said what I did. Traditionally, *almost* all MMORPGs have revolved around combat.
Sociolotron advertised combat, magic, and PvP as part of their MMORPG experience, along with sex play. But the combat stuff was so poorly implemented, that it was clerly used as a teaser to get more people to play the game than probably would have, especially early in the beta. PlayerDark advertised in some alt.binaries.pictues.* newsgroups looking for people to participate, and his post CLEARLY indicated that combat was a vital part of the game. The forums and website indicated it was an important part. It never was. Almost all revenue and experience comes from harvesting raw materials, and maybe protecting yourself from the wimpy mobs that are sometimes in the area. Exicitement? No.
Second Life and The Sims Onlie are called MMORPGs, but they aren't ones in the classic sense of the term. Are they both Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games? Yes.
Some websites, like betawatcher have even started to use MMOFPS and MMORTS in addition to the normal MMORPG term to differentiate. I suspect they will soon coin MMOSIM for games like Second Life and The Sims Online. They really are life simulators, instead of a classic MMORPG.
So, take exception. When someone says MMORPG, people think of games like UO, EQ, WoW, CoH/V, AC, and the like. They don't think Sims Online, Second Life, or Sociolotron.
I'm not saying you are wrong. Your point is valid. I think you are nitpicking a trivial matter, though.
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With DDO going live on Feb. 28th of this year, Atari should be getting some of the revenue for that. How much is the question.
Considering that DDO is one of the more anticipated MMO releases for 2006, their profits should get a kick in the pants.
Because of the fact that the Red Cross doesn't want others using its symbol, the Green Cross has now become symbolic for first aid kits and the like.
When I was first becomming a FF, then EMT, and finally an EMT-P (Paramedic), all of my CPR and other basic classes were "Green Cross Certified". Because the American Red Cross wasn't the offical provider of the books, etc. Almost none of the medical equipment we had on our ambulances had the Red Cross symbol on them, either. It is why you see the image of normal sinus rhythm from an EKG on ambulances, and the letters EMS.
Look at a box of Johnson's & Johnson's Band-Aid brand of bandages. I don't think the current ones have the Red Cross symbol on them anymore. They used to. I know the 3M bandages don't.
I still think it is strange that the US government has given the symbol such drastic trademark protection, since there is prior use. It *is* called the Greek Cross for a reason.
However, I am not sure how successful they will be going after game manufacturers. If the manufacturer gets too much pressure, they just move out of the US, and viola! No problems anymore. It doesn't matter what the Geneva Conventions say. The symbol isn't being used in a negative fashion.
Besides, did anyone notice that the healing symbol in Half-Life 2 is a green cross? Some companies have already switched.
Um, I was running Windows 98ME, but wanted to upgrade my memory to make EQ run better. I couldn't go past 768MB of RAM and get full use out of it without upgrading to XP. I figured that 1GB of memory would come in handy for other things, too. So, I did it.
It wasn't stupid of me. I bought the O/S. That memory restriction that was in 98xx was just something that wasn't easy to overcome. I understood there were ways you could modify the O/S to recognize the extra memory, but most Windows applications still wouldn't use it. So, it was either get a new O/S, or not upgrade my memory to where I wanted it.
I don't see your plan having much of an effect, unfortunately.
If a single lvl 1 rat is a challenge to a lvl 1 toon, why do you believe that 12 lvl 1 rats would be a challenge to a lvl 10 toon? There is nothing that says the mobs will scale like that. In fact, I haven't played a game where that would hold true.
Those lvl 1 rats are designed to be challenging to a lvl 1 player. They are made to have a reasonable chance to hit that lvl 1 player through the toon's expected armor/skill level. A lvl 10 character should have a much greater chance of avoiding that.
Those lvl 1 rats are also probably not an experience kill for a lvl 10 player. It wouldn't make sense to make mob farming that easy.
I never felt like I was really grinding that much in WoW. Just about every time I was killing something, it was to accomplish a quest. They made the grind feel like much less of a grind. Sure, you may have killed 50 mobs to get the 10 items you had to turn in. But, you were rewarded not only with the mob's XP, but the quest XP and quest item(s). It made you feel that your time was being well spent.
EQ/EQ2 had a horrible grind. DDO has got too much grind due to lack of content, causing you to redo the same quests too often to level. (That's my only real beef with DDO. I can live with blocking, since I don't even bother that often, playing a cleric mostly.) I blame EQ more than anything else, since it put more grind into MMOs than any other I can recall.
But even games like Diablo II had grind in it. Could you try to go right through as fast as possible and fight Diablo? Sure. But, you got a lot further along and had an easier time of it if you redid certain parts. Lord knows I must have done chapter IV all the way up to Diablo a half dozen times, grinding up gear and experience. Why? Because I got there pretty damn fast, and needed more levels and skills to survive Diablo.
Not all single player games have grind, but many do. And I consider those quests that are "Go from point A to point B. Kill mob at Point B. Bring item back to Point A to check in. Go to Point C to show item to NPC. Come back to Point A for reward" to be just as much of a grind. I don't play games to run across the map 3 or more times through places with no more encounters just to complete some quest. It's grind.
Trust me, I understand about what TFA was talking about. Heck, my wife and I duoed in WoW all the way to 60, with rarely grouping with our guildies due to time constraints on our part. My wife is working on her masters degree, and I do some editing on the side. We played most nights, but only for about 3 hours a night. Weekends may have been more.
From lvl 10 through lvl 50, we were almost always in XP bonus. We weren't power gamers. We took our time, and we had fun with it. And due to that bonus we were almost always under, we reached lvl 60 about a week after the power gamers in our guild did. That week happened to be mostly due to us taking an actual vacation.
So, as I said, WoW did it right. You were rewarded for having spent some time offline. At low levels, the impact doesn't last as long, because it is easier to get through a level. But that one week off while we were in our mid 40's; that XP bar was blue for more than 2 weeks afterwards. But the reward had limits, in that it could only reach a maximum of 1.5 levels worth of blue XP.
There has to be limits on it, or folks will create a character, and then eat XP.
Besides, you could earn real XP in AC, at least early on in the game, due to it's pyramid helping system. There were folks that assisted various newbs by the hundreds, then earned 10% of whatever those newbs earned in XP. I knew guys that wouldn't play their toon for a week due to being away, and come back to find they levelled. Pyramid schemes were the rage up to the point I quit about 3 months into the game.
Wow's idea that you could spend a week (at least at launch) with that toon being offline and end up with 1.5 levels of 2x experience worked. It was incentive to bring your alts out once in a while, and have them gain a level fairly quickly, then put them back in the closet for a week or two.
But you still had to do stuff to gain that experience, and quest rewards weren't doubled. Only actual mob experience doubled. You had to work for it. It was just easier to get somewhere on that less used toon.
But just gain experience while off-line? What's the point in rewarding people for doing nothing? Next you are going to ask that you be given a stipend for not playing that character? The character should get free currency because they weren't played?
No offense, but you play MMOs to accomplish something. I don't want to accomplish something by NOT playing.
Or, as Herm Edwards, former coach of the NY Jets put it, "You PLAY to WIN the GAME".
It is possible that in later creations of the CDs, they fixed that.
Most of the time, when a game has been out long enough to hit the bargain bin, it is no longer version 1.0. It is 1.3 or something. So, there are no patches, and if the patch fixed the problem, viola.
I'm not saying that IS the reason, but it is possible.
I guess the RISCISO group was website based. I hadn't heard of them. I've seen the ones that use Usenet to distribute to anyone who wants the software.
Even those Usenet groups are dying down. The last time there was a sting, the volume of posting dropped from about 25 titles a day to about 10 titles a day. About 2 months ago, it dropped again, to about 2-3 titles a day it seems. This is probably why.
Even without those types of pirates, I think you will be seeing a lot of software stop being pirated. The more titles require on-line play with servers to connect to, the easier for the software companies to make sure there is a digital handshake that would be hard to get around.
Besides, you see a lot of the software companies releasing games that have major bugs in them, requiring a patch that has to be downloaded. I am suspecting that this is one of their methods to defeat the ISO type pirates. Sure, someone can download their game. However, it is basically a free demo that will crap out on you about 5 hours into gameplay due to a major bug. In order to fix said bug, you have to download the patch, which re-installs whatever copy protection the ISO type pirates removed. A simple process, but effective.
Secure-ROM 7 apparently also seeks out such programs as Daemon Tools and refuses to let the application run if it is installed. Even people using stuff like Blind Write and other tools that try to hide applications like Daemon Tools are failing to mask their usage.
Personally, I am kind of tired of the pirated software stuff. The software companies are going to harder and harder methods of protection, and it can and does catch paying customers in their path.
I own a copy of Atari's "Dungeons & Dragnons: The Temple of Elemental Evil". I had played it when it first came out, and not really played it again. I had used Daemon Tools to hold an image of the original CD 1, so I didn't have to swap so much. (I'm an admitted game junkie, and I'm tired of swappings CDs when I want to play Half-Life 2, as opposed to Sacred, as opposed to NWN, etc.) A HD crash more than a year later wiped the CD image out. When I went to re-install, there was a new patch to put in, so I installed it when I loaded the game again. The problem is, they added new protection in the latest patch, and said protection told me that my original game CD was not valid. Calls to Atari were a joke. They refused to fix it because when they asked for a diagnostic to be run, it identified that Daemon Tools was found in the registry. Even uninstalling it, they refused to help. I offered to mail them the original game box first, and they could return me a new box with new CDs. No dice.
Many game companies are offering free demos of products available to download from places like fileplanet. So, there is no need to pull a full cd image from some place that is going to require a patch that will re-enforce the pirate's efforts, anyways. But, people that buy the games can suffer, and find their software is ruined years later by a patch the are supposed to need.
Personally, I think half of the patches for Blizzard's Diablo II: Lord of Destruction that have been done over the years is to reinforce copy protection.
I was not too pleased with the article failing to mention so many other games out there. They author(s) stuck to only the big names in gaming, using WoW,, FFXI EQ/EQ2, CoH/V, DAoC, SG:G,, AC, and a mention of the soon to be released DDO.
What happened to Eve, Linenage II, Guild Wars, and various others? No mention of the psuedo-betas like Silk Road or any others?
I can live with some of their assessments. DDO is going to take top prize for A/V when it is released. The graphics really are that good.
As for WoW being the king of PvP, that is only by default, imo. Too many people are playing the game in general, so they get an automatic "best PvP". In reality, with population imbalances on many servers, it is often a joke. (On Uther, the Horde could start a PvP instance right away. The Alliance were known to wait for hours, especially early on.)
I don't see any game doing a perfect blend of PvE and PvP. They tend to be counter-productive. You balance for PvE, and PvP gets skewed. Balance for PvP, and you break something for PvE. PvP causes a lot of developer headaches, because a tactic gets used and abused, or not used by rumored, and then all hell breaks lose. (Anyone else remember the "nerf rogues and their stun-lock" arguements, with the length of stuns reaching up to 30 seconds after a week? Yet it was impossible to really stun beyond 10, and only in perfect situations.)
If you are going to do PvP, do PvP. If you aren't, don't try to add some half-assed version of it to appease the minority. Do whatever you are best at.
I've seen player made content, especially in a game like Second Life. Much of it is pretty sad. Some of it is exceptional.
It really depends, imo, what type of MMO you are talking about.
Games like The Sims, Second Life, and other "social" MMOs can thrive easily on player made content. Those games are mostly about playing an alternate persona. At least in Second Life, fashion was everything. You were looked at by what outfit you wore more than your ability to actually have social skills. So, those that could create great outfits made a huge difference in the game. They also made a decent about of cash.
For RPGs and the like, storylines come more into play. Just creating a game where you hack-n-slash your way through to some goal, with not real plot to speak of, is just a remake of nethack or moria. It works for FPS, but most folks want plot with their RPG.
If you look at the history of MUDs, you see that a lot of them are very generic, based on a particular build, and then the owner of the MUD and some of their friends would get around to adding player made content. With a few exceptions, they were awful. Most of them found out it wasn't as easy to create dynamic storylines that kept people interested. 90% of them ended up being played by the creators themselves, and a few bored souls that found one that fit their niche.
The same held true with many of the player made NWN modules. Some of them were really well thought out, with a decent storyline that made you want to play through them. Most of them were fairly mindless hack-n-slash events.
It's a lot of hard work to make a dynamic storyline and then add the content to make it work. A lot of work with very little pay-off. They become labors of time and love for the creative process, and the talent to make it interesting to others. That's rare.
Look at art. A lot of people out there can draw pictures, and paint paintings, and take pictures. But how many of them can inspire the viewer to feel something? Sure, anyone can take a picture of a frozen landscape, but how many will make us see and feel things like the late Ansel Adams did? The artist has to have an eye and a feel for what they are looking at, and be able to transfer that to their medium. That is where true talent lies. I can take pictures. I even have a great digital SLR camera. I have a pretty good eye, and I've caught some great images. But nobody is going to confuse me with Ansel Adams.
Well, when someone is creating a MMO or adding content to one, I *want* them to do better than I could. I want them to do better than 99.99% of us could. I want to be entertained. I want to get into the storyline. I want to see encounters that make sense. I want difficulties to overcome that aren't impossible. I want tactics to matter and make sense.
Besides, if the player isn't creating the whole game themselves, then there needs to be a master plot, and then have the player content fill in the pieces of the puzzle. Most important, they need someone with the vision to stay the course, or make changes to support a truly inspired idea. Trying to manage various unpaid people to follow along with that master plot, working as a cohesive unit, would be difficult at best. Great ideas are a dime a dozen, but the ability to craft them all together into a final product aren't.
Just banning Chinese IP ranges won't cut it. You are making an assumption that ALL farmers are Chinese. It wouldn't surprise me if Russian Mafia types are doing the same.
I mean, they can't just survive on kiddie porn, can they?
It was essentially the same in Lineage II. That game was taken over by farmers in a brutally fast fashion. Within a few months of release, the economy was already hopelessly borked.
As long as there are game economies that allow you to make items, buy/sell items, and store bucketloads of cash, you will see farming done. In fact, of all of the many MMOs I have played (over a dozen, either in beta, live, or both) there have been problems with the economies, with the exception of CoH/V (which doesn't really have one.)
I see one of the biggest problems being that, especially here in the U.S., there is a sense of entitlement. And you have to buy that entitlement.
Players want to have stuff to show off and brag about (the e-penis effect), or simply to be the best at the game in the shortest possible time. So, they are willing to spend real life cash to have these in-game entitlements.
It is no different than their buying cars that they cannot really afford to have. My wife works for a major car manufacturer's credit company. You would laugh at how many people lease luxury cars because they can't afford to buy them, and then default on the car lease because even it is too much for their wallet. Their tales of tagedy all boil down to the fact that they should have never obtained the car they did, because the just have enough income to afford it. The car lease became popular because people wanted to drive what they couldn't afford. It's a sucker's ploy, and look how many suckers you know.
It's also like getting a huge cell phone plan so you can talk to your friend down the street, instead of using a land line. Or getting a lot of "bling bling" for showing off. Or decorating your body with numerous and stupid looking tattoos. Or breast implants/liposuction and other cosmetic surgeries. They are all luxuries you don't need. And most folks are willing to pay through the nose for them.
The farmers know this about MMO players, especially with us Americans. (Hey, I am one of those Americans, and I shake my head at the way kids today think they DESERVE stuff.) They prey on that. They probably run more sweatshops than all the sneaker companies combined.
And it works.
Basically, different people think different things are good and/or bad in another person's playstyle.
Examples:
You are a person that likes to take their time going through a dungeon/instance/raid. You want to be thorough. However, you aren't able to find a group with your regular friends, so you do (oh, the horrors!) a PUG. The people you get stuck with are of the OMGZERS HURRY UP! mode. You stay with them, because you don't want to get a horrible score for leaving too early. Your play styles clash too much for it to be a friendly group, and 5 other people give you a negative rating.
You are in a group, and you normally play a laid back style. Your wife is sick, but is letting you play. You get in a group, and an hour into the session with a PUG, you wife tells you she is really ill, and wants to go to the hospital. Half the group is adult and understands. The other half gives you a negative mark for leaving before it is over.
You are playing a game that allows PvP. Your party encounters some griefers that manage to kill you all after you had gotten along easily for the last hour. The other party members want to gank back right away, but you want to finish the mission. They rate you all negatively.
3 examples, all possible. There are hundreds more. And most folks just aren't capable of giving an honest opinion. Some 14yr old little pissant isn't going to care that your wife is pregnant and about to have the baby a month earlier than expected. You ruined their gaming experience by having the audacity to have a family emergency. They are going to rate you negatively.
Also, you could stack the ballot box, in effect. Don't like another player? Get friends to group with that person, and slam them.
Lastly, people can and will create griefer toons. Most games allow some levelling to be done solo, if not all. In WoW, I could solo a druid or other toon to lvl 10 in less than 6 hours. I can hit 20 in less than 20 hours. I can then go about with that character and make other players live's miserable. Then delete the toon and start again. Too much rep on that server? Pick another one.
I don't see it working. It's too easy to change your identity. And there's no way I want other folks knowing my account name. They don't need it, but if they get it, someone will eventually attempt to hack your account.
Word of mouth on the forums works. Heck my WoW realm forum was full of "This person is a ninja-looter" threads, and people started to keep list of confirmed ninja-looters. And all it would take is one group all saying "Toon A ninja-looted", and even if the lied, you were now blackballed.
So, why bother giving another avenue to grief, cause problems, and the like?
Slow to fix bugs? They are speed demons compared to Blizzard!
How many months was WoW live before they had a test server?
How many times in Blizzard did we see bugs that were known and widely complained about on their test servers go to production, simply because Blizzard didn't want to fix it?
How often does Blizzard make hotfixes for exploits, but leaves bugs in the game until the next scheduled patch?
I played EQ2 for about 2 months, tops. The game itself was boring to me, and these newbie character changes probably will help a lot. (Not having any real idea of your character's strenghts of weakness until 10 and 20, because that's when you chose them? DOH!) But I saw SoE patch nearly every single day when I logged in. Blizzard patches once a month at best. SoE added a ton of content. Blizzard hasn't.
No, SoE did bug fixes. Sure, some of the bigger ones may have taken a little longer, but they DID in fact fix bugs, and often. If it was a minor bug, they fixed it and got it into production fast. It was the most pleasant aspect of EQ2, really.
Blizzard doesn't fix anything fast. Their track record of holding back bug fixes for a single update is poor, especially when they are minor fixes to client or even more, server.
NCSoft even fixes bugs more rapidly in CoH/V than Blizzard does.
And if Blizzard doesn't collapse those guilds and send all members a harassment email, the people that tried to form the GLBT guild should be able to sue for defamation.
Blizzard took a stance. That is their right. However, they better decide to enforce it unilateraly, or they are in a heap of trouble. And don't think the ACLU wouldn't have a field day with bringing up examples, and making Blizzard change things.
Ah, you are putting extra words into my mouth that I didn't speak. I never said "if you are roleplaying and picking the opposite sex, you are a freak." Yet you seem to think I implied it.
I could really care less if some guy wanted to roleplay a girl, or vice versa. If you are a guy and you ARE going to roleplay a girl, more power to you. It *is* roleplaying, after all. However, there is roleplaying, and then there is roleplaying.
Some people think "hey, I logged into this game called WoW, and I am playing an elf druid that can change into a bear, cat, sealion, or jaguar! I'm roleplaying!" And yet, they don't roleplay a thing. They don't go OOC to talk about the new car they bought, college, etc. They are playing a game, but they aren't really playing a role.
Then there are those that really immerse themselves into a game. For the time in the game, they are that character. If they have to go OOC, they will say "OOC, bio break" or the like. They truly enjoy that, and love playing with like-minded folks. And especially for guys, if you are roleplaying the opposite sex, you usually trip yourself up sooner or later. That can, for some people, ruin the immersion that they are enjoying. (Not that a thousand other things won't do the same, but some hardcore roleplayers are almost obsessive about this kind of "mistake".) Sure, it's childish, but then again, I've watched all too many hardcore roleplayers throw a tantrum because someone broke character.
I have friends that are gay. I get along with them just fine. I'm also married, and expecting my first child in May. I have no issues with my own heterosexuality, nor do I have any issues with anyone else's choice of consentual and legal sexual partners. (And before you try to read something into that, I mean "no pedophiles", not something about sodomy being illegal in many states.)
Stop trying to read so much into statements. You'll live longer!
Some of us guys eventually get tired of staring at a guy's ass. So, we switch to female toons, so we can look at a chick's ass.
Unless you are actually "roleplaying", and not out to kill and have fun, who gives a flying as to which character sex someone else selected?
And yes, it is true that in the early days of EQ, female toons got stuff just handed to them. But, that time is not nearly so prevelant nowadays. It won't work nearly as easily in WoW as it did back in those early EQ days.
I actually went back and played the original Ultimas. I, II, and III were all just incredible. I played the later ones, but they started to lose the feel a bit. Great games.
Wizardry (the original) can still make me salivate. I first played it back in 1982 if I remember correctly. And I could probably still navigate all the way to the bottom. Contra Dextra Avenue, anyone?
Nethack/Moria... I can blow hours on end with either one, just to see if I can FINALLY reach the end of it. More than a dozen years later, I still haven't gotten to the bottom of that damn dungeon! But every few months, I give it a whirl.
Both Fallouts were great, but I didn't really enjoy Arcanum, even though it was the same engine and mechanics. I can play them both, but I'd love to see a similar game (more mature audience) with better graphics come out.
NeverWinter Nights still makes me have a lot of fun. One of these days I will complete it using every single class.
The Icewind Dale/Baldur's Gate games still are fun to me. Fun engines and good stories.
But the big winner for me has been Diablo II. I have played the original, and lots of similar ones. Sacred was probably the best knock-off. But Diablo II (plus LoD expansion) is the king. I just am not bored playing it. The different items to get, enhancements, and the like... Whew! Time to salvage that from my recent HD crash!
Man, some of the games I remember make me feel my 39 and some change years. Ugh!
SWG was pretty much a failure. It could and probably should have been the hottest game ever made. The whole SW franchise was getting a kick in the pants with new movies after over 20 years of nothing, yet still remained a huge fixture in people's minds. The only way this game could fail is if it sucked. Much like City of Heroes couldn't really fail. Who hasn't dreamed of playing a superhero as a kid?
Whoops! SWG failed. It was horrible at startup, being quite possibly the buggiest "gold release" I have ever seen. It was corrupt, as players were exploiting the crap out of it for a while. It was boring for a lot of people, with a common theme of people leaving the game being "I never thought it would be like THAT! It sucked!"
Everyone that I know that bothered to purchase it (after hearing the consistently bad reviews from beta testers, as well as the not-so-hot reviews from some game magazines) quit the game within the first 3 months, it was obvious that the game just wasn't that good. Sure, some people will like it. Some people will like a game, no matter how bad it is, or what it's theme is.
So, SoE realized it blew it, and then spent all this time trying to come up with a way to save what should have been the golden MMO game for the decade. They saw the PvP in WoW and other games being more "in your face, action packed" than what they offered, so they tried to throw the same type of thing at SWG.
The bottom line is, when a game is completely borked, a revamp isn't going to draw old customers back, or get you new ones. It is going to just piss off the few remaining players you had. And SoE did just that.
It's kind of a mixed bag, to me.
On the one hand, it is nice not to have to pay a monthly fee. The advantages are obvious. No extra $$$ output from your original purchase price. More players. Less difficult to get your friends to play.
On the other hand, with the monthly fee, you tend to get better service. More bug fixes. More content updates. More money (supposedly) sunk into servers and GM support. Less players that are playing once a week or less.
For the amount of time you usually spend playing a MMO towards "end game" content, is $15 a month really that much? That's most likely cheaper than taking a date to a movie one Friday night a month, and that doesn't include dinner! I can't understand why folks balk at this small amount of money, when they probably spend 20+ hours a week in game. You couldn't even rent movies from Blockbuster and get 20hrs of entertainment in for less than $15 a month. So why bicker over it? If you can't afford it, don't buy the game.
I feel that the no monthly fee model tends to work better with the PvP type enviornments. Much of the content comes from the player's skill, not the world. Content isn't as important, because it doesn't dictate the play style.
The monthly fee gets the non-PvP centric games more content. If PvP isn't the main purpose of the game, then content becomes critical to the success of the game.
The bottom line is, though...if a game sucks, not having a monthly fee isn't going to help it that much. Even games that don't suck, like Guild Wars, doesn't have all of its player base playing once a week or more. I played it for all of 2 months before I was bored out of my skull. Lack of content killed it for me, since I wasn't all that gung-ho on PvP.
Besides, the lack of a monthly fee means that sooner or later, they are going to start in game ads on us. I'd rather pay $15 a month and have no ads, than pay nothing and have ads slowing down my gameplay. And don't think it won't happen.
Poor Jack. If more parents would spend time with their kids, instead of using the idiot box (or game console/pc) as a babysitter, so much of this crap would die down.
I know quite a few parents that play various PC or console games with their children. I had several guildmates in EQ who were father/son or mother/son. One woman, whose husband passed away, taught her son how to play his father's characters. It helped them stay closer.
I know that my wife and I play MMOs together a lot, and even some non-MMOs like Diablo II and the like. Our first child is due in May, and the house is already wired for network. Once our daughter reaches an age where she shows genuine interest in games that we may be playing, she will be more than welcome to join us. And, we will be more than eager to play whatever games stike her fancy.
So, this article doesn't surprise me. It would have been nice to see a breakdown of demographics, though.
TFA was pretty boring. What is so special about a game designer finding out he can't do Product Management?
There is a reason most business models have a project designer and a project manager. Let the design guys come up with all their great (or whacky) ideas, and let the managers decide what will and will not work. Most people aren't geared to wear both hats, much less both at the same time.
Product Management is all about making sure the development pieces all fall together, and get done in a (yeah, right!) timely fashion. They shouldn't have to spend their time doing design, and you don't want your design folks managing.
In a nutshell, I read this as more of a "Don't make more out of my being asked to step down from a position I really didn't have the skills for" type of article. As far as that goes, kudos to Rick Dakan for being man enough to admit he wasn't cut out for the job.
There is nothing wrong with a designer saying "I couldn't cut it as a product manager". Product management is only fun when the project is done and done well. Otherwise, it is a nightmare. Design can be a blast, though.
I read TFA, and I am not sure why the author decided to write it. While he makes points, they are moot, imo. I mean, WoW pretty much has an archetype system in the way that you craft your character's class with skill points. And for all of that, you have most classes using only 2-3 builds per class. Nobody cried that much about it. (Well, they did on the forums, but people are still using cookie cutter models.)
Priests in WoW used one build if they soloed to 60, and a 2nd build is they were grouping. Once hitting 60, they went with either the PvP DPS types or group-healing build.
Fighters either used a shield build or a DPS build.
Rogues used either a stealth build or a weapon/combat build.
Warlocks just got laughed at. Come to think of it, so did paladins.
Even the 2 hybrid classes of shaman and druid only saw 2 builds as a general rule.
So, their archetype system devoloved down into being able to split their characters into only a few realistic builds.
EQ was sadly locked into fairly rigid thinking by most of its players. I did some fairly hard LDoN quests with a druid and/or shaman as a healer. For a solid 6 months, a SK and sometimes a pali was a better tank than a warrior for most encounters. Monks were no longer the kings of pulling, as SKs did it better.
Besides, to me, it wasn't the holy trinity, but the holy quad. I really wanted a shaman along in my groups. Heck, as a wizard, I really wanted a BL, too. Kitty-Crack really made my life a lot easier.
I don't see how archetypes makes it that much easier on Devs. Folks need to get out of the "all classes must be balanced" ideas. Each class is a tool to be used in certain situations. Cross-over abilities don't hurt too much, as long as it doesn't go TOO far. EQ druids could heal, but not nearly as well (or effeciently) as a cleric, and they couldn't rez. If druids could heal as well, who would ever want a cleric?
So, let them use archetypes. Most MMO players think inside the box, and won't even TRY alternatives. Me, I went through most of WoW with my wife's druid as my rogue's only healer. We made it to 60 before some paladin busted her confidence as to her ability to heal as well as a priest.
Oh, and DDO isn't balancing the classes. Mostly because the PnP game isn't about balance, but group composition. It has been refreshing to see folks fit their roles. Of course, all groups wait for a cleric, unless they are all WF.
Since you didn't play the game, and your only knowledge of the game is from the article and my review, you are making a valid arguement without knowing why I said what I did. Traditionally, *almost* all MMORPGs have revolved around combat.
Sociolotron advertised combat, magic, and PvP as part of their MMORPG experience, along with sex play. But the combat stuff was so poorly implemented, that it was clerly used as a teaser to get more people to play the game than probably would have, especially early in the beta. PlayerDark advertised in some alt.binaries.pictues.* newsgroups looking for people to participate, and his post CLEARLY indicated that combat was a vital part of the game. The forums and website indicated it was an important part. It never was. Almost all revenue and experience comes from harvesting raw materials, and maybe protecting yourself from the wimpy mobs that are sometimes in the area. Exicitement? No.
Second Life and The Sims Onlie are called MMORPGs, but they aren't ones in the classic sense of the term. Are they both Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games? Yes.
Some websites, like betawatcher have even started to use MMOFPS and MMORTS in addition to the normal MMORPG term to differentiate. I suspect they will soon coin MMOSIM for games like Second Life and The Sims Online. They really are life simulators, instead of a classic MMORPG.
So, take exception. When someone says MMORPG, people think of games like UO, EQ, WoW, CoH/V, AC, and the like. They don't think Sims Online, Second Life, or Sociolotron.
I'm not saying you are wrong. Your point is valid. I think you are nitpicking a trivial matter, though.