f13.net

Happened to think of an interesting game mechanic while looking at another thread.  Since I've played a grand total of three MMO games in my life, however, I can't be entirely certain someone hasn't done it already:

A camp of orcs (or whatever) spawn at a random location in the world.  Every X hours that they remain unkilled, the spawn moves up a notch in terms of difficulty and area.  For every Z number of orcs killed, the spawn moves down one notch, disappearing entirely when destroyed at the lowest level.  Each day thereafter, the whole thing has an increasingly high chance of starting over elsewhere.

This serves to allow players to make a mark on the world, albeit in a limited way.

"Oh shit, better kill those orcs next to the river, or else by tomorrow they'll be swarming all over the road."

Or...

"Crap, the mine is full of orcs.  Round up the guild and let's go exterminate them."

To a very limited extent, Horizons did this.

MEO (Middle Earth Online....Or LotR online...Whatever the hell it's called), supposedly makes some high use of instancing to do things like this. Kill an Orc camp, for example, and the next day you'll see a group of Dwarves in same spot cleaning up and setting up shop.

Did anyone else picture Crushbone Orcs and tents appearing in the middle of Freeport when they read that description?

Sounds like a neat idea, but you would have to be careful about caps and randomization.  With caps to high, an area that is left alone for a while will become unkillable to all but a select few.  On the other hand, If the randomization was done improperly finding an appropriate level camp could be either too hard (all behind near-unkillables) or too easy (A level X camp appears at site Y every Z hours).  But if you laid it over a more hard-coded foundation it would be neat - for example Loch Modan in WoW could be hard-coded to be between level 10 and 20, and use Troggs, Ogres, and Kobolds, but their location and difficulty and the fluff behind them could change.  Invading the silver mines to the N at level 13-14 one day, and emerging from the excavation site at 19-20 the next, with a comensurate change in quests.

Of course assuming you can do all that, you still have to make the change meaningful.  A level 14 kobold can't be the same as a level 14 ogre which can't be the same as a level 14 foozle.  Without giving all the mobs more skills and AI than they already do this would be difficult, but not impossible.  RPS type damage triangles may work, but I dunno.  Still, a neat idea even if the difficulties make it purely theoretical.

I'm not sure I'd trust Dev talk from MEO about MEO.  though I haven't been following them religiously, what I have seen seems to indicate a higher than usually level of pie-in-the-sky wishing that usual in an MMO, and in this industry that says quite a bit.

The idea makes sense though. The only way to do it without pissing everyone off is instancing.....Which is pretty much the antithesis of world mechanics that he's hinting at.

Strategy games have certainly been doing this for years, albeit on a much smaller scale.  "Shit, the Zerg have a hatchery growing at the southeast resource node... send a dropship down there quick or there'll be hundreds of 'em!"

The mechanic is problematic at least in the current MMORPG mould, which could use changing no question. The thing is grp A will find the 'tough' camp and kill it repeatedly until it's 'weak' then move on. Group B unknowingly following behind is going to get essentially worn out table scraps from the other group. No matter how you work it - this will happen, unless as suggested above, everything is instanced, or you completely change the kill mobile bags of xp/loot paradigm.

We were going to do it in Ninth Domain. Unmolested spawns would increase in size and strength, and ultimately begin draining the nodes of crafting resources in surrounding areas. The resources would be pooled in their camps, becoming a reward for clearing them. With enough pooled resources, they mobs would "build" defensible outposts.

Which means zip since that project lost funding, of course.

Well...perhaps you divide the entire gameworld into territories/zones, and use control or and/or conquering of those as your means of advancement or achievement.  For example, divide the world into Risk-like areas, where certain regions are more desirable to capture and control for different reasons(coastlines easily defendable etc.).  I think it would ideally work for smaller-pop servers, though, something like a few hundred players max.  Though, I do think that would make all MMO's better.

Tell me the alternative was NWN. I want another reason to be angry at that piece of software.

Yeah, this idea runs into problems when applied to the WoW/EQ model.  Lots of good ideas run into problems when applied to the WoW/EQ model, because that model is a goddamn abomination.  Not to harp on my favorite subject again, but...  The weakest possible character in UO had 55 health, while the strongest had 112.  A run of the mill suit of armor reduced damage taken by 40 or 50 percent, while the most uber reduced it by 70 percent.  They disrupted the reasonably level playing field by adding a ton of uberitems, but it was still better than a system where an endgame character was hundreds of times more powerful than a newbie.

As long as such is the case, your world is always going to have to be static and carefully controlled, with content segregated by level.  Otherwise you're gonna have catasses bitching about having to plow through grey shit on their way to town, and newbs bitching about getting raped by ubermonsters.  The field has to be level enough that your average critter can at least engage a powerful character long enough to take a couple whacks, without being able to blow out a newbie in one hit.

Levels were a simple and convenient way to track character advancement when the games were being played on a tabletop or a very limited old-timey computer.  Someone needs to realize that the concept is fucking outdated already.  Furthermore, I'd love it if a developer decided there was a happy medium between total progress-halting chaos and bland theme-park sterility.  As it is, we can't have anything in these games be a surprise, because someone might be inconvenienced by it.

EDIT:  As an aside, UO recently did *something* like this.  Britain was "invaded" yet again.  Monsters would start spawning near the dungeon Despise, and if they weren't killed at a sufficient rate, more would spawn closer to town.  If that spawn wasn't killed, another spawn point would appear even closer to the city.  Eventually you'd have monsters running around Brit bank killing spammers, and the players would have to pummel successive spawn points until the "head" of the invasion was pushed out of town.  The only problem was, there was no fucking end.  You could never put a permanent stop to the spawning, and the damn thing dragged on for months.  Eventually everyone just did their spamming in Luna, and Britain was full of monsters all the time.

UO originally had orc camps that would randomly spawn around the map. It was part of the ecosystem thing I think. If they weren't killed they would despawn and respawn somewhere else or maybe they just moved once a week. I don't remember. Killing them didn't increase or decrease their strength however.

"Wish" did most of this back in beta.

I love EA.

UO had something like this a few years ago. The programmer who created it called it "Evil in a can". Basically the system could dynamically modify spawn rates and numbers based on how much the players focuesed on killing the monsters. The original use was to create spawns that would generate monsters and as players killed them, the spawns would change and eventually spawn a boss monster. Killing the boss monster would end the spawn for a time.

We used a modified version of the system to run some of the orc and savage spawns in the scenario ongoing content which were pretty close to what you are talking about. Players could defeat and stop spawns of orcs while unchecked spawns would increase in number and difficulty.

I'm guessing they used another modified version of the same system in the recent event that WindupAtheist mentioned.

Those "scenarios" you guys were running, that started with the orc/savage war, were goddamn brilliant.  For those who don't know, each one introduced a chunk of new content, and could affect the shard in a permanent manner based on what the players did.  On a lot of shards, the city of Yew has been destroyed for several years thanks to a scenario that those shards happened to lose.  That was some fairly ballsy shit.  A shame they quit doing it.  I think EA decided it was too expensive or some such.

You think Blizzard or SOE could maybe sink a couple million into doing something like this?  Naaaah...

Blizzard runs something called Elemental invasions where teams of elementals randomly spawn on certain maps during the week. They are denoted by portals near the elementals. Killing enough of the invaders spawns an elite boss elemental worth a hefty amount in loot. I've helped kill off one of these invasions before, and I can say it's a fun time.

Two things are bad about these invasions. One, they don't go anywhere. Say the players leave them alone for a while, they don't expand on their spawn territory. I think they should. Two, the bosses are too easy. My group of five took one down after a few attempts. A good tank, mage, healer, DPS, secondary healer combo would do the trick easily.

I do give them props for trying, and perhaps it's a step in the right direction for world events.

Also, it is more profitable to farm the elementals and ignore the bosses as they have something like 10 times the droprate on essences as their non-invasion cousins but stop spawning when the boss dies...

Dundee did exactly this on a UO gray shard (I think it was probably Ackadia) long before we hired him for SWG--sometime in 99 maybe?

The SWG POIs were supposed to do something of the sort, but never did.

MUDs, of course, did this long long ago.

Gemstone 3/4 has/had invasions on a sporatic basis.

Once, there was a worldwide event for a week; a War.

Suffice to say, it was worth it, even if I couldn't actually hit anything.

Oh yeah, when the undead boiled up. I remember that. The vanguard always clawed their way out first, so the less experienced hunters could at least fight them off and get to safety, and the dragging/healing/instaports/field hospitals that got set up in the places they couldn't go...

Heh. Right, that's what made it worth it. There were a few rooms in the game warded against undead and creatures of any type, and people could set up a no-fighting zone on the go if needed to get somebody back up. So you could actually rescue someone or get rescued.

In the days of the continuous MMOG world, I wonder if it's possible to establish such 'safe havens'.

--GF

The funny thing about the scenarios was they didn't really take that much time to create. We had 3 people on the scenario team and generally we could create an 8 week event in about 8 weeks (including testing) - which was faster than normal publishes. They were also really unobtrusive to the service. Over the course of about 10 months, we did 26 publishes and about 10 client patches and not one caused any kind of crash or had to be rolled back. I think we had two bugs get through during the first scenario that were considered "immediate" and both of those were fixed within 24 hours. After that we only had really minor stuff. The nice thing about doing the updates weekly was we could hotfix any minor issues the following week. Compared to other UO publishes, the scenario stuff was incredibly clean. We developed a pretty nifty system of working with QA and budgeting time in our schedules to create specific QA tools that they would need to test our stuff. I think we had 2 or 3 QA people assigned to the scenarios and considering the amount of content they had to test in a relatively short period of time I’m still amazed at how quickly they turned things around.

The scenarios ended after I joined the UXO team and I never really understood why. We had evidence that they were having a positive effect on retention and logins were way up during the months the events were running.

Anyway, we used that “evil-in-a-can” system as the basis for lots of the stuff in the scenarios. The first was when the Orcs and Savages were fighting for control of the Orc forts. Players could take a side and which creature they fought more would determine who ultimately won the fort. We also had Orc camps spawn outside the cities that were being invaded which would affect the strength of the city invasion spawns if players didn’t attack the camps. The second scenario had these magical generators that would spawn golems until players used a panel on the generator and solved a puzzle to shut it down. We also used the evil in a can system for the final battle in the Exodus dungeon – players had to defeat Exodus’ minions to restore order to the Gargoyle town. So players at that time actually got to turn what was a monster spawn area into a full fledged city, complete with Gargoyle shopkeepers and two new crafting systems. The last use was the Yew attack you mentioned. I can’t recall what players had to do to save the town and push back the swamp though.

Conan MMG claims they will heavily feature player influenced dynamic spawning type stuff.

*knock on wood*

No, what I am talking back is the Bregandian War....they even went so far as to have GM's run around as a few "key" characters. They would launch attacks out of thin air, had roving bands of high-level mobs, captured a few people and held them as prisoners, and even taunted us publically.

Creativity FTW?

From the company that brought us "entirely underwater settings", "many of the quests will be unique in nature so, when a quest is finished, you nor anybody else will be able to complete the same exact quest again" and "each clan will have their own building" in the Anarchy Online launch.

Googling AO Previews For A Better Tomorrow (http://pc.ign.com/articles/131/131500p1.html).

If used correctly I'm sure it could be fun as hell. I don't think it will be that fun if it's the main objective to lvl in a game though. Dynamicaly spawning camps and have the players search and destroy the ones apropiate to their lvls could mean a lot of in the long run boring searching.

As HRose said, Wish had a primitive version of this in beta, and the final target was pretty sophisticated.  The solution to the "table scraps" problem was mostly a matter of *scale*, Wish was going to have a very large world where there were always going to be areas that hadn't been visited recently.

Another piece of it was a sort of "species manager", there was going to be a maximum number of creatures of a given type and a maximum amount of power for the groups of them to divvy up (there were also going to be minimums).  This was all tied together with the cilmate and terrain type overlays, a given creature might have 80% affinity for mountainous terrain, 40% for hills, 10% for grasslands, and 0% for desert and swamps, and a similar set of affinities for different climates.  So although the Foozles might be most commonly found in a certain area, they'd show up in others as well.  And if the Foozles were intelligent, each "camp" would have an RTS-like AI managing it, and each city would have something similar (trying to keep players from taking it, or trying to take it back).

Artificial ecologies have been studied by academics for about 20 years now, there's a huge amount of prior art that wasn't available when UO's virtual ecology blew up in their face.  Truth is, an artificial ecology isn't even all that *hard*, anyone who has kept a tank of fish alive for a significant period has solved the problem.

--Dave

I think what really stops MMOG teams from this kind of virtual ecology is the one question all game features should be asked. Will this make the game any more fun for the majority of users?

Frankly, it's a good idea for worlds, but in MMOG's that are games, it will just mean that people will be inconvenienced, either by not finding mobs they can fight or not finding mobs that are worth fighting. And that's not fun. Virtual worlds are about circle-jerk academic theories, MMOG's are about games. Nothing wrong with either one, but one is not something a mainstream audience should ever be exposed to, because they CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH.

And yes, in the DikuMud fog MMOG's currently have, this idea is all bad.

It's taken this long for them to figure in-game economy, it'll take another 10 years to figure out in-game ecologies.
Just as designers learned to strip out the unfun aspects of economy, they'll eventuall learn to extract the fun parts of ecology and bring them in. And there'll be much rejoicing.

EDIT:  :|

As with most things, it can be, but it's not guaranteed to be. When you get down it it, you're just talking about a very sophisticated method of dynamically generating landscape encounters. I think many people would enjoy the experience of raiding, pillaging, and burning down mob forts. The question is, is the ecology running the forts designed robustly enough that eveyone can share and enjoy? Or will the spawns get camped into submission before anything cool happens?

It's a system I was very nervous about balancing, but goddamn the end result sounded like fun. Especially when we started talking about unmolested mob forts launching raids on player-owned cities.

Just to be clear, this was something from my last job at the (now defunct) STE, nothing to do with BioWare.

A lot of this talk sounds like Horizons, or what Horizons had the potential to do at least.  Blight anchors?  Not enough cowbell.  Seeing the word DIE scrawled on the ground in blood during world end?  Exactly the right amount of cowbell.

Not just.  Take the random encounter bit, and add a few scenarios where they affect the game.  If orcs (whatever) spawn between town A and B, they affect supply lines.  What does that do?  Kick up prices in town on certain goods, or reduce supply (or both).  If there's a little bit of AI, you can have power vaccums filled by different types of mobs.  Orcs getting hunted to extinction?  Maybe there's a surge of trolls, or whatever else, in the area.  Maybe even take over their camps, and change loot drops.  If you have a mission system, tie spawns into that; different sides offer missions against one another, or Human (again, whatever) cities. 

It isn't just an encounter when it affects gameplay; that's dynamic content.   

Hehe..I have to admit it's interesting to see the turn-around on the perception of this idea from the 6 months ago or so when I proposed it across a few different threads. As Roac mentioned, the deepest and most interesting parts are not only the actual presence of the npc's themselves being dynamic, but most importantly how they affect the rest of the environment, from power vacuums to dynamic missions, to other semi-emergent behaviour based on how the player populations interact.

This sounds very cool in theory but I think it will pretty boring in practice. For example if orcs has spread and reduces supply to a city, which means prices sky rocket, I think something like that will only irritate players. If you're in the area and want to buy arrows for your bow, and the price has doubled because of orcs, then that might be cool the first time, but after that it's just a mechanic which means you can't get your precious arrows. Leting trolls kill off all the orcs, and the other way around if the players helps the orcs might suffer from the same fate. If people wants the loot tables of the orcs, then killing off the trolls will only be bothersome. The same way if for example orcs are prefered to kill for xp.

I think it will be pretty hard to create a system like this which will be cool beyond the first hour of experiencing it. Missons could make it more intresting but I'm yet to see dynamic missions being fun in the long run because in the end they're all just built up around the same base of ingredients.

I was going to post something similar. Legitimating an idea just for the sake of it and without a real good motivation. As I wrote in the past this is mostly an experiment for geeks than something valuable to offer in a mmorpg.

All I see, right now, is even the absence of a slightly more complex scripted encounter system. And the possibilites of this system are nearly ENDLESS. Just look around and you'll see how even the most advanced WoW often isn't so different from autoattack.

So why mess with all these overly complicated structures when they offer nearly nothing?
In my simplified representation it's on the PvP that you want "Virtual World" elements and where you develop systems that can be reused. Because PvP games become so much better in the form of "toys" to use and re-use. They are naturally apt to go in that direction and form correlations up to a complex system.

Instead the PvE needs the story to tell, the set experience that you can find immersive and challenging. So the product of a "narrator" who knows what is going to happen.

Of course this changes if the use of monsters spawns points becomes a "toy" to use in PvP. Now, *THAT* is something fun.

It helps to broaden the range of things that can be fought to some benefit.  In a game where players run from level 1 to 100, and everything four levels below you is "grey" and worthless, while everything four levels above you is certain death, a developer can't really do jack shit except lay the content out in a careful linear track for the player to follow as they level up.

Also, I don't want a complete "virtual ecology" in my game.  Nor do I really want a "virtual world" as I think the term is intended around here.  What I want, as I've said before, is a game that pretends to be a world.  Go ahead and keep spawning endless Evil Clerics at the Evil Temple you carefully built into the gameworld.  That's why it's there, and sometimes you do just want to kill stuff without considering the ramifications.  But maybe once in a while some of them could go ahead and attack the Good Temple, only stopping after we've killed enough of them.  Shit, people are killing Evil Clerics anyway, right?

You want what Horizons promised. You want the world to react back in ways that are not always predictable.

I think WUA should give Horizons a try.  You just have to install .NET and you are on your way to kicking that UO habit.  I'll invite you into my guild and give you a snappy title.  We can sit around complaining about Bowman.

People play Horizons?  After they cut like 2/3rds of their playable races I figured the project was pretty much doomed for everyone who wasn't a dragon-nut.

I shall investigate this here Horizons game.

*sighs*

But you know, if UO had kept up the scenario system Calandryll was talking about...  Maybe added that city invasion thing, but included the ability to actually win...  I'd still be riding the UO bandwagon, shitty graphics and ninja elves be damned.  Players being able, by their own actions, to save a city that would otherwise have been destroyed (and WAS destroyed on other shards) was good shit.  Would have kept people on their toes beyond that point, knowing that the "bad guys" could actually win if enough players didn't kill foozles or what have you.

The issue of "reducing promised playable races" doesn't even make the cut for the list of reasons to avoid Horizons.  That's so small-potatoes compared to the other shit, or lack of other shit perhaps.  I have forgotten most of the reasons, actually, but managerial retardation is in the top three.

I was mostly kidding, but WUA, if you actually do start up a toon in Horizons, I will invite you into my guild as promised.  I won't be playing, however.

You do realize we lean you that way because we hate you. Truly. I'd link you to my review of it, but sadly, it's on that previous site.

Sending even WUA to Horizons is cruel.  You should all be ashamed.

It's supposed to be a learning experience, shhhhhhh. It builds character.

He seems to care for UO a great deal.  It is not unthinkable that he might like Horizons.  Just think of the classes as skills with subskills.  It has playable elves, though... and worse.  I need someone to help me farm water golems, anyway.  In Soviet Horizons, resource nodes mine you!

I made a suggestion for SWG several months back, and I still do. It isn't UO 2.0 or anything, but it's probably the best alternative.

Heh, it's like we are trying to set him up with one of our girlfriends with a good personality.

He could probably use a little meatplow heffer action.

For Diku-based, LevelQuest gameplay, virtual ecologies and the related AI systems are not of much use.  So, if that is the game a designer wants to make, and he's got the $100M in funding it will take to enter that market now that WoW is on the scene, have at and enjoy.

Myself, I think that LevelQuest mechanics have pretty much hit a dead end, and although the market dynamics will keep that design scheme commercially viable for close to a decade, the handwriting is on the wall for those who care to look.  Since I don't have any interest in refining that formula, and don't see how I could get that level of funding, I'm going to look in other directions, towards where I think these games will be when they're done evolving.

Look at WoW: Is it really, at a design and implementation level, anything more than "EQ Done Right"?  And do you really think that EQ nailed the problem of MMO entertainment on the second try, and there's no point in doing more than refining that?

"Virtual Worlds" in their idealized form are not practical yet, but they are inherently "larger" in potential than Diku mechanics.  All the arguments about why they can't be contained inside Diku games are missing the point, you can't put a 5 gallon bucket into a 1 gallon milk carton, does that mean that 5 gallon buckets can't possibly hold as much water as a milk carton?  There is a "possibility space" of potential online game design which is much, *much* larger than that of Diku-like games.  "Virtual Worlds" represent the urge to explore that possibility space to its fullest.

--Dave

I'm only vaguely aware of Horizons.  It's a commercially unsuccessful class/level game with playable dragons, and that's about all I know on the subject..  Precisely what is asstastic about it?  As for SWG...  I'm a Star Wars geek, and an MMOG geek, but for some reason I really don't want to play a Star Wars MMOG.

Next time there's a free trial (I think it's been pulled for now) give it a try. Raph is a big part of why UO is what it is, so some things you'll find familiar in SWG. If you don't want EQ, don't want elves, want something more shiney than UO, want to do things with your character in addition to advancing him, then you may like it.

PS combat in SWG is ass. Have fun!

My nephew is the biggest Star Wars geek ever and he won't go near SWG.  He can't explain why, either.

The nature of the Star Wars license is the polar opposite of any MMORPG I've ever heard of.  A successful Star Wars game pretty much HAS to make you The Hero, it has to have a journey with an ending, and can't afford to make you dick around grinding for months before getting to the really cool stuff.  Otherwise it isn't Star Wars.

I want to be Luke Skywalker as he goes on adventures, blows shit up, and helps to destroy the Empire forever.  I most certainly do NOT want to be Luke Skywalker as he fucks off being a n00b on the moisture farm.  And while having the dragon respawn over and over in an oridnary MMORPG is annoying enough, having the Death Star respawn endlessly to be blown up by successive "heroes" just ruins the whole thing when it comes to Star Wars.

Worse still if you tell me I can't blow the Death Star up at all, for "continuity" reasons.

You can't blow up the Death Star. I think the Death Star is already toast in the game's timeframe.

The first one, anyway.  The theme park missions hint at the construction of the second Death Star.  And part of the original plan for the game was to gradually advance the timeline through the next two movies.  Maybe someday there'll be a giant JTL-based story arc that culminates in everyone getting to take part in that climactic battle over Endor.

And maybe someday monkeys will fly out of my butt.   :roll:

...carrying 900+ ore. And THEY will lead us into a new enlightened generation of SWG!

I would sign up in an instant if this were true.  And if they have Ewoks.  Unlike some I like the yub yub song.  My inner child RULES my psyche.

Possibly because, as a game, it sucks the very marrow of the earth.

We all agree on that.

The point is: what is the actual difference between a "diku" and a "Virtual World"? How you define them?

From my point of view the definition is in the focus. A game with only one type of gameplay isn't a Virual World because a Virtual World is essentially a complexity. So a world where there are many different elements all tied together to form a complessive project. Often the mmorpg we can play right now don't have different elements, or when they have them, they are all detached.

This is also why I expect all this potential to have a better use in the PvP. The PvP is already essentially a complex system where you can have a precise role and effect and not just play in the background. A Virtual World implies you have an impact, small or big. Limiting this approach to the PvE will just offer a sandbox that is fun as a toy, till the novelty wears off. Like an aquarium.

It's instead with the PvP that those "toys" become fun. Because it's finally about you and the other players. It's about a real society that can have an impact and force consequences.

No, thats actually not the point, there are already valid definitions for Diku derived games and virtual worlds.  A Diku based game could be a virtual world, it's just not likely too be because the mechanics of that style game don't lend themselves to more nebulous playing experiences.  Look at crafting in every Diku based MMOG, they always make it some repition based level system because thats the 'Diku way' thats what the mechanics of the rest of the games systems are so the rest of the games envorments have to be focused on supporting that mechanic.  So you get stuff like 15 'levels' of wood each one exclusive and successive to the next when in a virtual world wood would be wood (heh) with varying properties inhereit in it being wood not in what it's level is.

A little clearer, levels of wood (heh, again) are an artifical construct designed to support a level based system there is no analogous feature of wood in the real world.

They already have Ewoks. Rabid, pyschotic Ewoks that will rip out your intestines on site. Which is ok, because anything that justifies the killing of Ewoks is ok.

It would be terrible if you had to relocate for such abuse.

Oh.  Well then I am a filthy liar because there is no fucking way I will ever play that shit fest again.  Of coruse I also told myself I would never play EQ2.   :hello_kitty:

Someone give this man 10M to design something that doesn't suck ass, STAT!

MahrinSkel, also makes very good but disturbing points, but basically something we all agree on already.  Everquest clones have reached a dead end with WoW, but nobody knows the over/under on how long it will take for somebody to grow the balls to attempt a virtual world.

Links please. I never got the Diku-MUD references 'cause I've not been a whole lot interested in the text-thing.

People have been attempting virtual worlds all along. They've just either been text MUDs (which is a much more efficient but not nearly as profitable or as marketable a VW as a graphical MUD), or suckass time-draining grindfests. Or Pk-grief infested shitstorms of up and down viability.

Virtual worlds won't be mass market for a while, but they will need mass market money to be viable. If there is a successful mass market MMOG in 10 years, I'll be surprised. We still have another 5 years of DIKU-a-likes, followed by a good 2 or 3 of dying Dikus. Virtual worlds won't be mass market until broadband is ubiquituous and affordable. Then it'll take some maturation of the idea that you are represented online by a virtual avatar.

By the time I'm 50, MAYBE there'll be a good 2 or 3 VW's. And a whole shitload of other sort-ofs.

Probably the most disgusting thing to me about Horizons is the blatant lying.  David Bowman makes Smed look like an upstanding character.

Horizons has bad performance and plenty of bugs.  Combat is harder than before they "fixed", so getting a single class to lv100 is irritating, especially since you only see fifty people online at a time.  Getting two or three classes to a respectable level can be kinda grindy.  The only non-standard thing they managed to get into the game are the playable dragons, which are still not fully implemented.  Honestly the damn thing is still in a beta state, and I don't mean that in a WoW way.  They say they are rewriting the game from scratch.

I'd agree, although I'd like to hope we get there before I'm too old to notice.  But for now, I'll settle for making some of the more interesting "Sort-ofs".  Look at ATITD: A game entirely based on crafting and politics, no PvE, no content, and the interesting thing about the "Story" is how the players react to it and change it.  Sure, it's niche, but it's a *successful* niche product.  By any rational logic that doesn't start from the premise of "Where do we put $50-100M that will give us a better return than a mutual fund?", ATITD is as much of a success as EQ or DAoC, more successful than EQ2, AC2, Horizons, or anything from EA Online since they accidentally released UO.  It's not proportionally as successful as WoW, but what is?

There are a lot of pieces of the VW concept that can be effectively and profitably explored as games in their own right.  In fact, from a certain point of view, *every* successful game premise is simply a piece of a VW that can make money on its own.  VW is what we *all* really want, games is what we get in the meantime.

--Dave

But he didn't know that.  Even before it was released, he had already written off the concept of a Star Wars game.   He just knew it couldn't measure up to his expectations, regardless of how good and popular it might become in the world of gaming.  He's THAT much of a Star Wars nerd. 

Me?  I didn't much like the Star Wars movies, and I didn't like most of the game.  I was never into comics but I play CoH.  I've never even had the slightest urge to play D&D but I'm looking forward to trying the game.  Sheesh... no wonder sometimes I feel like I'm all alone on the intarwebs.

Perhaps Signe, but I love that avatar.  Hotter then Betty Rubble.  For real.

I totally stole it.

Do you sleep?

Sometimes.  Usually I go to sleep rather early but I've been having a sleeping disorder marathon recently.  I'm very stressy at the moment.

Anyway, Rocky Horror Picture Show is on tonight and I'm still excited from doing the Timewarp.  Again.

Heh, I take it you never experienced the old, REAL events, when there were Seers in UO.  Some of those were super cool.  Of course, lots of them were just inbred, RP circle jerks.

When I heard about the feature list for Horizons, the word "fetuspault" immediately came to mind.  People who bought into that game were dopes.

ONE HUNDRED MILLION??? That's freaking insanity.  It's time for the niche guys to start spitting out games for a fraction of that price to please their respective audiences, instead of trying to please, and "WOW" everyone.

I'm with Arnold on this one - $100Million is a bullshit number.

Why? Because $100M won't buy Blizzards popularity. NO ONE, with ANY amount of money can equal Blizzards success - except Will Wright - fortunately he has no fucking clue what he's doing when it comes to online gaming. Or else we'd all be catassing for more closetspace. Literally.

That said, an efficient developer probably could have made WoW whatwith it's simplistic graphics and simplistic skill system and simplistic everything else - just like all the other Blizzard games - for probably half the cost Blizzard made it. Unfortunately they could put World of *craft on the box but more importantly they couldn't put that little boxed Blizzard logo in the difference.

It's not what's in the box that counts in this case. Money can't buy you that.

Personally - I'm willing to play a lot of games to see what they have to offer. I lasted less than a month in ATiTD. I'm huge on economy - see my 8 months in SW:G for proof (and I *hate* Star Wars and the world it's based in - but I wasn't obsessive compulsive enough to play through ATiTD. Simply put - Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon did the same thing ever. Problem is - there are a RACK of games that would make great parts of a virtual world. Diablo for loot and Windwaker for combat, the standard lego system for building houses w/ each block costing money, animal crossing/harvest moon for crafting/outdoor economics, SW:G for naturally occuring resources, etc etc so on and so forth. Really, what needs to be done is for the MMORPG to leave the PC, get on a control pad with voice chat for groups and guilds, have some adventure like twitch that's more Zelda-y than Dead or Alive-like and become a flat rate addition to XBL or something. Because honestly, it's the only way you'll compete with Blizzard. Use their own method against them.

(Ideas/Systems from Other Games + Engaging combat + Blender + a Couch) - (Tedium + Immersion breaking bullshit¹) = Success. It's simple really, if you don't let your ego get in the way as a lead developer.

Oh and FUCK Narrowband users. They don't deserve the intarweb. They deserve AOL 2.0.

¹ Like the DPS on a weapon or the actual percentage to mitigate damage on armor. Or Loading Screens (Have the zone slowly fade in or something)...Seriously.

I want to see a game where your character is a HERO from the start.  No advancement at all.  Yes, you can win certain luxuries and titles and whatnot from PLAYING, but no time whatsoever would be needed to make said character effective.

Instead, I'd like to see a system more like, say, Streetfighter.  Your character has all of his abilites from the start, but you will need to develop the skill to activate them.  Just because you can activate those abilities does not mean you will be successful.  You will need to learn how to activate them at the proper time, string combinations together, and learn how to activate defenses to deal with attacks, powers, and combinations being performed by your enemy.

Well, then you might as well just be playing a persistant ranked version of Dead or Alive. There isn't much world when everyone starts with the same stuff - basically the only people left after 2 months of people realizing they suck will be the people who are naturally good. While I hate grinds, there's a certain obvious appeal of timesinks. Particularly for developers who want people to pay by the month. The problem is, very few of these games have enough good content to last out a month. Hell, I would say none of them do. Good content is hard.

Your thinly disguised hatred of Blizzard is wearing a LOT thin.  They got the reputation for a reason.  That reason is that their games are FUN to a vast majority of people.  The fact that you're not one of them does not make everyone else wrong.

An Efficient developer could make a WoW with simplistic graphics and simplistic skill system and it would suck nuts.  They already have done.

I couldn't stand EQ and I couldn't stand SWG and I couldn't stand AO and I couldn't stand EQ2.  I went through an intense period of playing Wow, which is only slacking off due to the LvL 60 content (which is, by and large, group-driven.)

This is NOT a co-incidence, nor is it blind faith.

It's certainly NOT simply due to the brand name.

So you're claiming that WoW only succeeded because it had the Blizzard logo on the box?  I'll buy that it was a major factor in making it the biggest MMO to date, but that's not relevant to the effect on the market.  Blizzard added roughly 1.5 million US and European subscribers to the market that would not have come in this early without WoW, as near as I can figure it.

And another developer could not have made WoW for significantly less, frankly.  I have to give Blizzard props, they knew what they were doing, and did it right.  Blizzard put 100 people to building content over 2 years before launch.  That's an order of magnitude more manyears than went into any other MMO before that (EQ2 was a bit closer)  They spent $40M, also an order of magnitude more than anyone before.  EQ2 was also in that ballpark.  EQ2 would not have been considered a failure if WoW had not been such a collossal success.  It hit 250K in less than 3 months, it took UO 2 years for that, EQ1 a year, and 6 months for DAoC.  They followed along a very predictable market growth curve: WoW blew the curve out, and nearly doubled the market almost overnight, something that hadn't happened since UO and UO had a lot smaller market to nearly double.

Anyway, WoW and EQ2 are on the scene now.  They have a huge content investment, which both are adding to.  To bring a new game to market using the same core gameplay and design, a developer is going to have to make at least an equal investment in content, and probably more.  And WoW/EQ2 are recapitulating the DAoC/EQ1 faceoff, both games are going to be adding more content at a rate commensurate with the creation of the original game.  To compete with that, to raise the bar on the next iteration, it's going to take $100M+.  DDO might manage to get out the door before WoW/EQ2 get too much of a lead, but any games not going to launch in the next 6 months based on the EQ/Diku formula are going to need 9 figure budgets, or they're going to need novel gameplay and radical design differences.

--Dave

Wow. As someone who's only had broadband for two years, and who's friends all do not have broadband...that's a pretty assholish thing to say.
I further disagree with what you said.

Something in your coffee, man?

you would think with the enormous amount of Greyhawk/ForgottenRealms content out there plus that of the basic system (e.g. equipment, spells, etc.) they would be able to give WoW an even run content-wise.

Edit:  in terms of detail minus content (e.g. modules) I loved the Rolemaster and MERP systems most.  Was really really disappointed to hear that whomever wasn't going to use or could use MERP in MEO (or whatever it's called now).  They had amazing detail -- I remember the modules had incredible architecture plan-like details of buildings etc.  Beautiful artwork.   /sigh

That's the oe thing I did agree with Schild in his post. I WANT to advance/customise my character, so there better be advancement or why should I bother? It can be shallow, it can be completely broad (as in, you don't get more powerful in absolute terms, but you get different abilities/skills), but it better be there or I might as well play counterstrike.

I fucking WANT Niche games, and I want them now. The sooner MMOG developers realize they do not have to try to compete with WoW's numbers (and investors realize the same thing), the better.

I want niche game styles (PVP), niche subject matter (cop dramas, sports, soap operas, sci-fi that isn't licensed or shitty), and niche pricing schemes (pay per scenario, time-based usage, time-limited subscriptions). But it's going to take a lot of investors and developers getting their heads out of their asses, realizing that measuring e-market peen is fucking stupid, and moving on with their lives. It's also going to take more off-the-shelf products like the Complete Characters things I wrote about in another thread to make it happen.

As for why WoW was so successful:

1) FUCKING BLIZZARD - don't deny this didn't have a significant impact on box sales, because it did. If the game is even halfway decent, just getting them in the door is a win, because they will stay once they are there.
2) It's a fun game, for an MMOG.
3) Asstons on asstons of content.
4) A significant focus on content that can be approached solo and casually, so that the real hardcore time commitment that Diku-Mud based MMOG's force on you doesn't really hit you until you are already addicted to the current gameplay. By the time you hit your 50's or 60's, you're already used to playing 2-4 hours a night/play session.
5) PVP that isn't mandatory or forced upon anyone without warning.
6) Low system requirements. Really low.
7) Koreans and Asian gamers in general are apparently batshit insane. Zerg farm keke la ^__^

It's successful despite the fact it's a buggy POS, Blizzard couldn't run a good service if their dicks depended on it, and they had a shortage of boxes for awhile.

I'm not denying that.  But Box sales have nothing to do with something being a good game.  It's merely an indicator after the fact and NOT a very damn good one.

And WoW is a good game.


I think also, you can't say that popularity of brand is the be-all, because you would then have to explain SWG.  Which, as I may have mentioned, is God-Awful.

God-Awful, but still managed to get "second place" in subscribers at the time of its release. And that was despite the face-stabbing bugs, the lack of it really playing to the license at all, lack of Jedi, etc.

I will make a bold statement. Had SWG not been a Star Wars game, it would have had about half as many subscribers.

I don't mind some customization, either. But for a pvp environment, it's can't be a power differential. It's got to be customization akin to Planetside's, where a rank newbler can take out a vet if played well, and make a difference for the team either way, by being support class or whatever.

I discount the small multiplayer stuff, because it doesn't hold up in practice. There is so much to be said for not only the persistant world, but the unified servers. I hate trying to find a server in BF2, the time wasted with that crap is, to me, second only to smacktard behaviour in reasons I don't play BF2. I like just logging in to my character in PS and jumping into a battle.

On the other hand, if SWG had not been a Star Wars game they would not have been limited by continuity restraints, could have left out Jedi all together, and probably would have been a better game. But you are right, it still would have had less subscribers.

A Blizzard box means a Blizzard games means The Largest Demographic of Fans of any other company besides Maxis - but as we can see, Will Wright doesn't have a big ball to play with in the online arena.


They wouldn't have come early without Blizzard. WoW has nothing to do with it. I mean it's nice to give them props - and I do to - they made a Blizzard game. That's all they had to do. Seriously. Look at every game they've made in house with only one branding on it (Blizzard). Look at the sales. THey could have released Shadowbane and it would have been the best game ever. Why am I firmly convinced of this? Because of what you say below.


Having played EQ2, their greatest failure is the plastic models. Short of that, there's an assload going for it - including stability that WoW will never have. Unfortunately SOE can not compete with the name Blizzard. They'll never be able to. The only people Blizzard competes with is themselves.

I'm not knocking WoW here. I'm just saying it had very little to do with it. Even Arena.Net couldn't compete with Blizzard. Even though they were Blizzard 1.5, had no subscription fee, and had PvP in at launch (proving, once and for all that PvP is niche). I mean, WoW is a super zoomed in version of Warcraft III with the players as miscellaneous grunts, complete with item pickup and leveling. THey did what they needed to do to put a box on the shelf with the Blizzard name on it. Good for them.

I think one of the important things, that I haven't said yet is this.

WoW is not to the MMORPG industry what:
Warcraft II and Starcraft were to Realtime Strategies.
Diablo 1 & 2 were to hack'n'slash.

Warcraft II and Starcraft created a successful subgenre within an industry. Sure, there are RTS games that are better and worse, and some that sell incredibly well (millions and millions of copies - Age of Mythology for instance). But they made some necessary changes to the genre, and made skirmishes and short games tolerable.

Diablo 1 & 2 changed hack'n'slash forever.

WoW did nothing new. It was what anyone with any knowledge of Blizzard would expect from them. In the areas that matter to me - combat, player housing, economy, and crafting - WoW did nothing better than anyone else. They did a tolerable job on crafting and player housing, but managed to make a cohesive product with no super weak points. No super strong points either - except for one thing: The exp curve. That last thing is uber important. But not as important as being a Blizzard-produced Warcraft game. Oh, it's also very colorful. Had it not been for CoH, I'd say that's pretty new for the green/brown-centric industry.

Unless you played Horde. /rimshot :dead_horse:

Except they aren't using any of that - possibly because they've been done to death, and there are rights issues (though not as many as with Dragonlance). Setting is the 3.5E official world of Eberron. Which is possibly even less known than the WoW world.

I can't believe that EQ2's DoF expansion is entirely in the desert.  WTF were they thinking?  Just what I don't want, brown, brown and more brown.

Hello, yes?  Can I have some extra brown with my brown?  Thanks!

As a GW fanboi, I am surpose to stand up a say something...
but A.net really screwed the pooch.

I still maintain, as I always have, that the MMO of the future once we are done with DIKUmuds will be a cross between Battlefield style resetting, Shadowbane-like ability to affect the landscape, and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory leveling model.

Remember how everyone said that SB was teh ROX in beta because everything kept resetting, so no one guild could just crush and own everything permanently?  Picture a twitch Shadowbane (or where everyone started out with the equivalent of "lvl 60" MMO skills) done right, a MMO-size fantasy BF2 map where permanent structures could be erected with incredible speed, that reset everything every two weeks.  Dragonriders, airships, mass 100 person spells that could drop an enemy city into the ocean...but it didn't matter because it would all end in a week and you could try a different strategy.  I'd fucking pay for that.         

I like persistency....and worldliness as well. Something like that would be cool and all, but I hope there's something more to offer in the future than just more games...Especially ones that revolve around a single activity. Like fighting (which I like too, but one can only take so much). I want something that can do that well -- along with just about anything else.

The future of MMO doesn't concentrate on a single game. It's a myriad of games connected by a central social hub, cities or countryside or whatever. You can go to the frontlines of the world war, then later on head back to the safer areas and play a round of golf with your buddies. You could race back with your ricers, or maybe steal a helicopter.

The whole idea of combat + crafting making things diverse is very small-minded imo. GTA is the closest I've seen to what I think a persistent world should be like...and it's not even close. Maybe GTA + Madden (sorry) + Links LS + NFS:Hot Pursuit + BF2 + Thief + Deer Hunter....ad nauseum.

Yes folks, it's true. I was trying to say that when the PS2 version came out...Seems like it's mainly the gangster thing that's holding some people back though.

"I'm not knocking WoW here. I'm just saying it had very little to do with it. Even Arena.Net couldn't compete with Blizzard. Even though they were Blizzard 1.5, had no subscription fee, and had PvP in at launch (proving, once and for all that PvP is niche). I mean, WoW is a super zoomed in version of Warcraft III with the players as miscellaneous grunts, complete with item pickup and leveling. THey did what they needed to do to put a box on the shelf with the Blizzard name on it. Good for them."

I disagree Arena.net's problems stem from allot of other things, hell look at your list the exp curve in GW sucks balls.  Why you say?  Sure its short as shit but so what, I'm only there to pvp and your telling me I need to get through all these fucking missions that have allot less inteligence for the most part then the ones I remember from the beta.  Oh and I have to group because henchmen are gay, oh and other people are fucking retarded as well.

You dont design the best pvp system in a good while then say, ok now dick around so you can have the skills you need to compete.  But whatever, that is neither here nor there because we all still own the game and when their first xpack comes out many will go back and try it, myself included.  So here's to hoping some of the genius from the other Blizzard games can unfuck the whole xp curve, skill aquire system a little bit, and make henchmen suck less, oh and add even cooler pvp stuff I have never thought of.

Words of wisdom, Lloyd. Words of wisdom.

I need to get an image for this, I'm using it alot...ok here, we go...

(http://home.twcny.rr.com/iamthey/images/shining02.jpg)

probably not.  Too much of the first year+ problems were serious data arch. design flaws and connectivity.  Fundamental things like character profiles and quest items/tasks were only being stored intermittently, or disappearing after zoning.  Add to that rampant sloppy shit like warping, LD's, dupes, and prolly some deep hair raising shit we don't know about it, but can smell from release notes and job "opportunities", all would've meant a much less patient player base.  A lot of people stuck around because there was no WoW, and Jedi was a lure, but fixing PvP and the GCW was the real carrot.  If SW wasn't the driving franchise I expect most people would've left.  SWG would've been just the Sims in Space with PvP and hairy humanoids.

Keep in mind that SB's attempt at a "recycling server" failed miserably...of course, they made everyone start from level 0 every 3 months and totally build up, but even with faster exp, much faster building and less upkeep (required farming), it still didn't make it past one cycle. the idea does sound good, but it seems a lot of people get quickly frustrated with having to do everything over and over again as well.

Nothing Shadowbane has done after it's first 3 months is of any value to this discussion, since the sb.exe probably fucked everyone who would have played on that server more than once in their tiny little anuses.

And no, I would not have wanted to relevel from 0 in SB because leveling in that game was fast but BORING.

I think the grinding-up-from-level-0 thing might be a larger part of that than you're giving credit for. Doing the same thing over and over isn't frustrating if that thing is fun and if there's some variation in it (which is all but guaranteed in a pure PvP game).  PvE grinding is not fun and never has any variation in it.

A Counter-Strike server resets its state every five minutes or less.  People still don't seem to mind playing round after round on de_dust.  I suspect, though, that if you had to shoot a bunch of NPCs for a minute at the start of each round before you could start playing, people would get annoyed.  Even a short grind is still a grind.