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MMORPG’s – A Failure to Communicate

     I am writing this article because a question was asked recently: “What will be the next great MMORPG?”  Having over 6000 hours online playing MMO’s over the years, (1700+ in DAOC and 2400+ in WOW alone) I thought I would do a little research and spit out the correct answer.  However, after quite a bit of looking around, I could not come up with an intelligent answer, which kind of aggravated me.  There is quite a bit of talk about Warhammer Online, however with a guesstimate release date of Q4/2007, it is too far away to make it a current candidate. (To tell an MMO gamer he/she has to wait another year and a half for something really decent to be released would be very depressing)   So what is the problem with MMORPG development?  The phrase “The subscription numbers have not reached what was anticipated” is becoming quite common, not to mention cancellations and titles that are currently in development being “indefinitely postponed”.  IMO the problem is a simple misunderstanding about the wants and desires of the end customer, the MMO gamer.

     There are really only two types of MMO gamers, casual players and power-gamers, if you only cater to one, you will lose them both.  Create an MMO for the casual player, and power-gamers will burn through your content in the first 2-3 weeks of release and spread the “Doom and Gloom” of the title not having any “end game”.  Create an MMO for the power-gamer alone, and your casual gamers will feel depressed and useless.  Think of casual gamers and power-gamers as a husband and wife team, try to sell a house or a vehicle to only one, and you will offend the other.  It is a little difficult to define what exactly a casual gamer is compared to a power gamer, many will tell you it is defined by how many hours a week a gamer plays a title, this works most of the time, but is not always the case.  A power gamer can simply be defined as “a gamer that gives playing games a higher priority over other forms of entertainment”.  Let us look at a few misconceptions about MMORPG’s that increase the “failure to communicate” in the current genre.

   “Content is King” – This has to be the single most devastating thing that is commonly believed about MMO’s.  Content will ALWAYS take a backseat to “gameplay”.  Look at the game of Chess, although there are quite a few arguments about its origin date, Chess is easily over 1000 years old, yet how much “content” has been added?  None, Chess still has 32 pieces and 64 squares, so why is it still played?  After over 1000 years has it not become boring?  Chess remains to be immensely popular because it has unparalleled GAMEPLAY.  A very easy game to learn, yet nearly impossible to master, someone out there is always a little better then you, and if you cannot find anyone better, there is always “DEEP BLUE”.  Don’t misunderstand, you need quite a bit of content, however the very core of your development must be gameplay.

   “Only children play games” – A lot of MMO games today seemed to be geared towards the “younger” gamer, why?  The average age of today’s gamer is 33 and has been playing games for 12 years!  93% of computer game buyers are over 18…  If you want a real wake up call, look at a few facts here:

http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php

     69% of American head of households play computer and video games, somehow I do not think a single one of those head of households is a child.  The average age of the MMO gamer is 27.  While it may seem a little unfair to figure in the age of “all” gamers when developing an MMO, just because a gamer does not play MMO’s now, does not mean they will not in the future, remember MMO’s are still new to the gaming scene.

   “You don’t need PvP to make huge hit” – Name a huge hit since 1999(Everquest) that does not have PvP.  You can only program so much AI into the mobs in your MMO without starting to tax resources.  PvP gives players a way to match their skills up against other gamers, instead of whacking on NPC mobs that have limited AI.  I will not say you “cannot” make a smash hit without PvP, but it has not been done yet, and I do not see it as being done anywhere in the foreseeable future.

     So I will ask again, what is the problem with MMORPG development?  The money is there, the customers are there, yet MMO’s seem to be stuck in the mud, and here recently the more you step on the gas pedal, the further down in the mud you are going. (4WD anyone?)  Did WOW (World Of Warcraft) scare you?  It seemed to put more then one MMO in development, right into the trashcan.  But why?  In the months leading up to WOW’s release (Without actual gameplay knowledge) I was right there hyping it up as much as everyone else and was even given the title of “Blizzards ass clown”.  But hey, I knew Blizzards reputation of never making a “crappy” title, even today, gamers still scream for a Starcraft sequel, and still do not believe Diablo3 is not in development.  My original review of WOW, after actual putting some hours into the open beta was “An above average MMORPG, released in a very stale market”, and I stand by that review even after a year and a half and a subscription base of six million+.  Why am I not screaming praises for the largest hit in the history of MMO’s?  Well, there are quite a few reasons.  In 2003 there was a little “incident” and Blizzard lost talent that money simply cannot buy, although I do not know the extent at which Bill Roper, Eric Schaefer, Max Schaefer, and David Brevik would play in the development of WOW, I knew that after leaving, they would not be a part of it at all.  I also saw some promises that never happened, like where is the housing that was promised in closed beta?  Where is the end game?  Am I trashing WOW?  Not at all, WOW deserves every dollar they make every month, they saw an opportunity, and seized it.  WOW gave the entire MMO industry a huge wake up call and showed many people a tiny glimpse of the future attraction of MMO’s.  WOW will also continue to dominate the MMO industry, simply due to the fact of no competition.  At present, to the best of my knowledge, there are 102 active mainline MMO’s with another 94 in current production.  Only three have one million+ subscription bases: Lineage, Lineage2 and WOW.  With 94 in production, there is no lack of creativity, just a lack of understanding of what an MMO gamer truly desires.

     I greatly dislike to bring up a problem without providing an adequate solution, so here is my “Hints and Tips” on how to create an MMORPG, that will stand above and beyond anything that is currently on the market.(Or even in development, that I know of)  Keep in mind I am trying to keep this as short as possible.


     Don’t bite off more then you can chew – If you want that big subscription base it is going to cost you time, money, AND talent.  Time - While in development, you really need to do everything possible NOT to set a release date.  This does nothing more then set up a situation where you announce to the gaming community a release date, and more often then not, that first date comes and goes before your title goes gold.  Now you have a fanbase that is already disappointed before the game is even released.  Now you feel rushed to release the title and this is usually where things start to go wrong.  Money – Being undercapitalized will almost always end in disaster, while I could elaborate on this, I just wanted to make that quick point.  Talent – To make the best, you “usually” need the best.  This can cause many problems as the genre, as a whole, is still quite young.  The developers of past titles that were successful when the industry was first born, may not exactly be in touch with what is expected today, be aware of the current/future trend and how the industry has evolved.  While there is simply no substitute for experience, from what I have seen in these last couple years, something is definitely “lacking”.  You also really need to keep in mind that gamers have already seen and played what is out there today, so you need to bring something new to the industry, because by the time your MMO is complete, the current MMO features will already be digested by gamers and considered an expectation.

     Beta – While your product is in Beta make sure you listen to your testers.  The vast majority of gamers today do not believe that developers even listen to gamers, and from what I have seen, they don’t.  You are creating a world for them to play in, not a world for your enjoyment.  I know this may sound extremely difficult, because you do not know who to listen too, that suggestion you see on your forum could have been posted by a 12 year old that has never even played an MMO before, or it may be someone that has even more experience then myself.  This is why a firm comprehension of what an MMO gamer wants and what an MMO gamer does not want needs to be realized BEFORE you even start developing your MMO. 

     Distribution - While the classic store shelf is normally the way to distribute the game, gamers have recently fell in love with digital downloads.  I myself find it much more convenient to simply pay the cost and download the game from a service such as Direct2Drive.com.  This method really removes the stress of having to worry about being able to play the game in the first week of release, stores being out of stock, etc…  MMO’s are now starting to figure out the advantages of setting up accounts for “preplaying”, this basically gives those that have preordered your title a few days to play before the initial release.  This feature can help especially if you are going to have a huge number of accounts created on the day of release, as your servers are going to get slammed hard, and the last thing you want to do is have a rough release, gamers buying your title and then cussing when they are unable to actually play the game is not a good thing.  A good idea (If you have an open beta) is to allow your beta testers to have the full client on their computer before the day of release and simply have them purchase a serial key to activate the game.  Of course this is even better if you have some kind of pre-play program in line.  Just remember not to allow too much of a pre-play time, 7-10 days is about as much of a jump start as you want to allow.

     Patching - Regardless how well you design your title, you will still have patches.  These need to be delivered to your customer base WITHOUT a huge disruption of service.  Although I am not a fan of torrent distribution for patches, (Too slow) there are other methods, either separate patch servers or mass distribution through services such as Fileplanet.

     Character Creation – When a gamer first starts out in your MMO, he or she is looking to have at least some kind of basic way to customize their characters strengths and/or weaknesses.  Be very wary of giving the players the ability of min-maxing their stats/skills as this can cause unbalance in general gameplay.  It is awesome to give beginning characters the ability to add/subtract from some stats/abilities at the point of creation, as long as this does not allow the character to actually get a huge advantage, or a huge gimp when compared to other players.

     Character looks -   Going out into the world of a new MMO and running into someone that looks just like you, is simply unacceptable.  The best example of how varied character looks can be is probably COH/COV.  Although the character creation in those two titles might seem a bit much, you do not hear gamers complaining about running into other players that look just like them.

     Scalability - Don’t get “stuck” with characters that cannot advance past a given point or level.  If you do this, then what are you going to add in your first few expansions?  Always have the option open to raise the level/stat/ability cap past the cap that is set on initial release.

     Gameplay – The most important part of your title.  It seems that developers try to make gameplay a “lowest common denominator”, whereas all players must be at least “this smart”.  Obviously for the masses this is set way too low.  Do not be afraid to give your players challenging gameplay, and I do not mean simply making mobs of a higher level, I mean a challenge from the first time they play the game.  The gameplay must be fun AND challenging, without being too repetitive.  The easier you make your gameplay, the faster content is burned through, and the less entertaining it truly is.  Of course on the other hand if you make the game too hard, then you will have players quit out of sheer frustration.  There is a happy medium, but the challenge level in today’s MMO’s is set ridiculously low.

     Housing – This feature is so overlooked and when it is not, it is usually abused to the point of being worthless.  If you want an example of awesome player housing, look at DAOC.  Their housing is set in its own area, (which can be quickly ported to from a major town close by) has a method of giving other players access, has a place for additional storage, helps a little as a coin sink, has a couple slots for merchants, as well as a store for player sales. (On a porch outside)  I could even port to my basement from anywhere.  You could also change the outside/inside looks and mount trophies and such.  I would not have newbie’s be able to buy houses right on the first day of release, but more of a “mid-game” option.

     Crafting - This is an area of MMO’s that you either get it right or you totally fail at it, there is no middle ground here.  There are so many options here, I will just list a few ideas that do work.  DAOC has a crafting system where you can buy the materials from merchants, (Higher level materials are purchased in PvP) and the crafting was worthwhile, but not forced upon the player.  Shadowbane had a crafting system that you would actually have NPC’s “roll” the items for you with random stats, then you could take or trash the items as you wished.  Rolling items was timed based and took from a few minutes to hours.  SWG had a crafting system that was liked by quite a few gamers, you could set up harvesters to get the materials and then set up a shop with your finished wares for sale.  Probably the most innovated crafting system is Auto Assault, where you can “break” almost any item and then build it, adding materials to get additional stats.  The chance to memorize the item is a percentage based upon skill level and the level of the item, of course even if you memorized the item you can only make so many before the design “wears out”, I assume this is done so that uber items do not flood the economy.  Any of these crafting systems can work properly, as long as they are executed correctly.  Crafting not only contributes to gameplay, but it also extends the life of your title.  A common debate about crafting is what items should be the best in the game, crafted items or dropped items?  The easy solution is to make dropped items able to be improved upon by crafting.

     Levels? – Not needed.  Having character “levels” really does nothing more then separate the player base and community, which IS NOT desired.  Eve Online does not have any levels at all, instead character strength is based upon skills, stats, as well as gear. (Ships/Weapons)  Players still progress through the game but are not limited to their perceived worth based upon a number.  The stronger your community is, the more players you will have and the longer they will stay with that title.

     Death Penalties - This is another area that is hotly debated.  Although players do not like death penalties, it has spiraled down into a system that death is now almost meaningless in most MMO’s.  Players can be very opinionated when it comes to what is acceptable when their character dies.  There are plenty of ways that a death is dealt with such as: EXP penalties, corpse retrieval, respawns etc…  It would be hard to give you an idea of what would be appropriate for your MMO without knowing the basis or theme of your title.  Basically you should install some kind of penalty that does not over burden the player, I mean come on, he/she just croaked.  However you simply cannot make it a meaningless event.

     Exploits/Bugs – Yes they are in your MMO, you just have not found them yet, but trust me your customers will.  Although it is easy to get angry at a player for finding an exploit and using it over and over again, you must remember that the BEST thing you can do is simply patch it out immediately.  If it cannot be patched out within a short time, then you must find a way to make the exploit unachievable, until you can patch it out.  Do not run all out to discipline a player that uses an exploit, until it is obvious that the player is aware that they are exploiting.  Let me give you an example of how you can really irritate your gaming community by wrongly dealing with what you perceive to be an exploit.  In WOW there were a few treasure chests that a Rogue could get too and access that other players cannot, since the other classes do not have stealth.  A Rogue can easily access the chest and then reset the instance, doing this over and over for hours, players made quite a bit of coin, let alone gaining some extremely high level crafting recipes.  Were the players exploiting?  No, this is not an exploit.  Blizzard did the most intelligent thing they could, they MOVED the chest, the chests that could not be moved were given “guard dogs” that were put between the instance entrance and the chest, since the dogs could see stealth, and players could no longer get to the chest, without getting jumped by the dogs.  Later on, timers were added to instance resets, thereby removing this strategy from the game entirely.  Here is an example of an exploit:  If your character is standing on a rock and can target and kill non-caster mobs that have no way of causing damage to you, then that is an exploit.  What is the difference?  In the case of the treasure chests, the player used initiative to overcome obstacles that prevented him/her from getting to the chest, never punish a player for using intelligence, skill, or personal ability.  It was not fair to the other players or other classes that could not replicate this feat, so Blizzard changed it, which is perfectly acceptable.  In the case of the character killing mobs from the rock, the character is using a flaw in the games design that is “not working as intended”.

     Hacks – The more popular your MMO is, the more you will attract those that will do anything and everything to get an overwhelming, unfair advantage over other players.  This includes those that will use third party programs, as well as read and manipulate packets sent and received from your servers.  Theses should be immediately perma banned, as the longer this type of activity is allowed, the more customers you will lose.  Hacks can come in many different forms, from outright player positioning, (Porting or teleporting) dupe or duping, (The ability to make copies of items) hastening (Moving/Fighting extremely fast) etc…  There is a grey area here as you really need to be specific on what is and what is not allowed, quite a few modders today make UI mods that are usually preferred over the UI that is released with a title, and quite a few of these offer features that give a significant player advantage in certain situations.

     Grinding – Do not let this happen in your MMO.  Grinding is the act of repeating an action over and over again to the point of complete boredom.  Usually this pertains to combat where a player will kill a mob and move on to another mob close by and repeat this for quite awhile, is this entertainment?  Why this feature is even in current MMO’s is beyond my mental comprehension.  Players have become so used to this, that many times it is actually expected and acceptable to a certain point. I would say that from character creation to the end game, if your players have to grind more then 10%-20% of their play time, you will have detrimental effects on general happiness.  A decent MMO that actually has awesome gameplay will lower the negative effects of this activity, but you should do the best to avoid this type of activity at all costs.

     Questing – Usually the desired alternative to grinding is doing quests that are given to the player via an NPC.  Questing can be employed effectively “IF” you can install a wide variety of quests that can last from the beginning of the player’s experience, until they start to hit the end game.  If you simply cannot come up with enough quest content, then at least have NPC’s that will give “Kill Tasks”.(In DAOC)  These are basically mini quests that compromise of going to point X and killing Y number of Z creatures.  Not quite as decent as an honest quest, it is far better to go on a kill task then to grind.

     Forced gameplay – NEVER force your players into an activity or situation, instead always give them an option.  In a current MMO there is a PvP system that FORCES it players to achieve so many points per week or their ranking drops, that is horrid!  What if I am taking my family on a vacation for two weeks?  What if I am in college and have exams that I must study for?  I get penalized because I do not have time to log on this week and PvP?!?  You cannot concern yourself with an individuals lifestyle, they are paying you a monthly fee for entertainment, why punish them if they are paying you, but they do not have time to play?  As I mentioned above, you must cater both to the casual gamer and powergamer, but you must not punish either because they play too much or too little.  In DAOC they have a static PvP ranking system, (When I played it had 100 levels, I have heard that it went to 130 over the years) that you progress through and if you do not play you will still have your ranking when you come back, yes other players may have passed you, but at least you were not punished for not playing.

     TEG(Time to End Game) – You need to have a scale, while in development, of what kind of time frame you want the character to progress through your content.  The average is between 220 and 240 hours from character creation to the end game.  I was the first player in WOW to have all the classes in the MMO hit the level cap. (60)  The fastest was a little under 7 /played days and the slowest was a little over 10 /played days, this is exactly how a progression should be.  Although I did not race through the levels as I was writing articles on gameplay during this time, since I had previous MMO experience as well as open beta experience, I went through the levels rather quickly.  Unless you have an amazing amount of gameplay and content, I would try to keep the time between 200-240 hours.

     PvP - Most likely this will be a critical part of your end game, needless to say this can make or break your MMO.  The first thing that you need to stress is balance, class imbalance is common and widespread in MMO’s today, and is really frowned upon by the community as a whole.  Another feature you must concentrate on is to make PvP consensual, this is easily done by zone management.  Giving players a reason to PvP is also desirable, in real life human beings need no reason to kill each other, there are plenty of reasons: religion, possession of land, beliefs, freedom etc…  In an MMO it is not enough to say “They are evil go kill them”, give players a goal to achieve or an item/area to defend with some kind of penalty for losing ground or an incentive for gaining ground.  I will never forget the first time I heard players in DAOC screaming “RELIC RAID!”  You would see masses of long lines of horses all headed out to RvR to defend our land, this was a reason to PvP as players felt threatened and although the bonus of the relic was small, that was not the point.  The point was that we were being invaded, violated, and we would fight to the death to defend ourselves!  Shadowbane had an open land area of PvP where players could build towns and other players could come and destroy them, this also was an acceptable reason for PvP.

     PvP Rewards – Giving a player a reward for successful PvP is difficult to do in an effective manner.  While having PvP ranks may give a player the ability to make themselves stronger or more effective, this must be a gradual process as you will take a huge risk of making the player too powerful too quickly, or making a player so strong that it gets to the point of being silly.  A good rule of thumb is to insure that two players can kill a solo player of the same level regardless of skill/spec/ability/gear.  Make sure that the rewards you do give are desirable by the player, giving meaningless rewards will not do anything for the enjoyment of the PvP.  SWG had a PvP system in which you could hire NPC’s to run with you after a certain point, DAOC has abilities that could be gained after so many points were achieved, WOW rewards PvP with gear/epic mounts.

     Soloing – A player should have the ability to go from character creation to the end game solo, if the player desires.  While this sounds like it defeats the purpose of an MMO, there are players that play during non-peak hours as well as players that progress slower or faster then other players.  Remember choice is freedom and forcing your players into groups will not work.

     Grouping - There should be some kind of significant incentive to join a group, the common method is to give a bonus to experience gained or items dropped.  An MMO that has a strong number of players in groups voluntarily will tend to increase the life of the MMO as the players feel part of a community.  Also be sure to have some kind of system in place so that a solo player that is looking for a group has the ability to let others know that he/she desires to be in a group.

     Guild support - When players meet and play online, friendships are usually created, and these friends usually like to play together.  You need to have a guild system in your MMO that makes this as effortless as possible.  Players should be able to communicate instantly, of course putting a voice communication in your MMO makes this extremely easy.  A ranking and privilege system should also be implemented to allow guilds to see who has been in the guild for quite awhile and who has just joined yesterday, as well as, who is online and who is not.  In Eve Online you can even set up permissions for who does and who does not have access to “guild property” such as items/gear/ships.

     Setting – Although the fantasy setting is tried and true, do not be afraid to look elsewhere, gamers have expressed a desire for something else as the whole fantasy setting is really getting played out.  How many different types of Elves, Orcs, Swords and Sorcery can there be?  Sci-Fi is always there as well as others.

      Black Market – If your MMO becomes popular enough you will eventually run into the problem of what to do about players that wish to buy/sell items/accounts/coin for real life money.  I have seen both sides of this over the years and there is simply no way you can win this battle, you are more then welcome to ban it, hire staff to patrol Ebay, and take any action within the context of the law to try to stop it.  But in the end you will have to face reality, and reality dictates if there is a demand, someone is going to create a supply.  If you wish to minimize this type of activity in your MMO, you only have three options.  You can ban any kind of player trading, (In game) which will doom your MMO before it is even released.  You can do the best you can to build a solid economy where the buying of coin/items is not really needed since the player has easy access to coin and items.  The problem here is if you make the economy too “loose” then you will have massive deflation and everyone will have the same type of items/gear, if you make the economy too “tight” then you will actually encourage players to go out of game and purchase the coin/items, because of inflation in the game will make these items unattainable by normal means.  The third option is to do what SOE is doing with Station Exchange, simply give the players the option of taking part in this activity in a secure environment, buying/selling between themselves.  There are advantages and disadvantages to all three solutions, which one is best for your MMO greatly depends on what you feel is acceptable.

     At least three antagonists – Do not doom your MMO by only having two sides!  If you do this you run the risk of one side becoming too strong, overwhelming the other side.  This ruins the game for everyone involved, you will also have one side being labeled as “good” and the other side being “evil”, generally whatever side has the race of “Human” and/or “Elf” will be considered "good".  In DAOC you have the Albs, Hibs, and Mids.(Albions, Tree Huggers, and Trashcans, sorry could not resist, LOL)  If one side gets to be too strong the other two can always gang up and work together against the stronger opponent.  Remember you are aiming for balance here, and you cannot have balance if you only have two sides.  Think of the U.S. governments system of checks and balances, it only works with three sides.  If the U.S. President ever gets “out of hand” the Supreme Court and the House/Senate always have the power to remove him.  I don’t like crossing politics with gaming, but in this example it works, so go with it.

     User Interface – Having an interface that gives precise, clear control over what the player would like to accomplish is a necessity.  Having tons of spells and skills on hot bars, scattered all over the screen is not going to help.  Skill/abilities that are not combat related to PvE or PvP should not be on the UI when the player is in the middle of combat, as this does not add to a player’s control.  Also be wary of players creating their own UI mods, some may be better for the actual game that what you created, however others can enter that grey area, on the verge of giving players an unfair advantage over someone that does not have that particular UI mod installed.

     Community – The vast majority of MMO gamers want a community that they can feel a part of, this is another reason why you should offer decent incentives for grouping together.  You can build a great MMO, but if have a horrid community, players will leave rather quickly.  When you are developing your MMO, keep in mind that anything that allows a player to grief another player detracts from the community experience, also pushing solo gameplay will leave a player asking themselves “Why is this a multiplayer game?”  Grouping or soloing must be the player option, with grouping being the better choice. (When other players are available)

     In Game Humor – Although this is not a necessity in MMO’s, it does add enjoyment.  No gamer is going to complain about having a smile on his/her face while they are playing your MMO.  The hard part here is putting humor in your game that someone does not find offending, it is a big world and if your MMO is a big hit then different people from all over the world will be playing it.  Poking fun at a religion, greed, color sex, sexual preference etc… will not help your game.

     Constant Progression – This importance of this cannot be overstated.  Eve Online has a system where you character is constantly progressing whether the player is in the game or offline.  The constant progression should be small but noticeable, if the player cannot play for a week or a few weeks due to issues in real life, and they come back to the game and their character has at least progressed in some way, this immensely adds to the players desire to keep playing the game, as they will not feel punished for “having a life”.  The very opposite of this is devastating to a game, where you force your players to play so many hours a week to achieve a goal.  As I have said before you will have casual gamers and powergamers playing your title, and you must cater to both.  A powergamer should be able to progress through the game at an accelerated pace, but not so much that a casual gamer feels that it is useless to play.

     Secure trading – This should be considered a “gimme”, you cannot allow a player trading system that allows one player to scam or rip-off another player while trading.  A situation where a player can quickly remove an item from a trading screen and insert another, less worthy item, that looks the same cannot be allowed.  The best way to implement this is simply to put in a timed delay, for example if both players have items on a trade screen and one of the players removes an item, the other player will be notified that an item was changed and there is a 3 second delay before the trade can be executed.

   Purpose of being rich – In the end game when the player starts to amass wealth, there needs to be something constructive to spend it on, otherwise the value of the coin will start to lose its meaning.  There is a huge variety of things you can implement in your MMO to solve this problem, creativity would come into play here.

     Player Economy – This is another area where you can build a decent MMO, however if your economy sucks then you will lose players.  Players should have the ability to have an auction house, vendor, or other form of trading where they can display the items they do not want and the price at which they are willing to sell them for.  The best way to implement this is to allow new players to buy useful items from an NPC merchant, up to a certain point in the game.  After the player gets about 25% through the game, the player should be directed to buy player made items or items that other players are willing to sell.

     Mounts/Travel – It is common in MMO’s today to have large travel times to from point A to point B, this is usually due to the MMO having inferior gameplay or inferior content and is intended as a time sink.  At the lower levels of an MMO, travel time should be expected, however when you start to hit the end game players should have the ability to travel long distances rather quickly, of course this would be a good place for a coin sink.

     Instances – Even though these have been around for a little while they are still hotly debated as being a drain on the community, since instances are said to push for solo gameplay or small groups.  Soloing and only being involved in small groups tends to lessen the feeling of a player being involved in, or a part of, a large community.  My advice would make it a communication option, have the player be able to limit incoming messages and requests at the player’s choice.  Also some end game instances may take 8-12 hours to complete, this really limits how a casual player can take part in the instance.

     Storyline Appeal – A decent believable storyline can also add to a player’s positive experience while playing your title.  A lot of players today find the storyline so completely boring that they simply click through content whether it is accepting a quest or listening to an NPC.  Try to incorporate hints or tips in a quest description that would help the player if he/she actually reads it, without making it impossible for a player to complete, which does not read it.

     Server Populations – Server Maintenance Options - Another big disappointment for a player is to log on a server that has either too many or too few players on it.  Of course when starting out you must consider the fact that guilds/clans from other titles will be joining your MMO.  You must be able to give these groups of players the option to all join on the same server.  This can lead to problems if the server they wish to join, already has a large population.  You can easily remedy this problem by giving players and guilds an incentive to start on a different server, such as an initial coin or exp bonus.  The bonus should be small enough not to jeopardize game balance on the server, but it should be large enough to convince the player/guild to join the other server.  When having to shut your server down for maintenance (Or a crash/problem) try to give players an option of playing on another server, if only for a temporary amount of time, until you can get the other server up and running.  Of course for “Patch Day” you should do everything possible to make the patch implemented in an expedient fashion as to not interrupt the player base on that server for too long.

     Public Relations – Always be upfront and honest on your boards while in development and after your title goes gold.  Giving bad release dates, misleading gameplay features, and generally being seen as “unfriendly” will be devastating to your effort.  Always be positive in your attitude and if gamers have questions, then answer them, if you do not know the answer to the question then find the answer, do not take a guess or make something up. 

     Endgame – This is where every MMO to date as failed. (For the most part)  This, IMO, is simply due to a failure of creativity.  When you are creating your MMO, there has to be some purpose to progress to the endgame, there has to be something to do after the character has progressed through the majority of your content.  This is the reason I have stressed so much the importance of gameplay over content, because in the endgame your gameplay will be the only thing that will stop your customer from going elsewhere.  Yeah, you can always add more content through expansions, (The first expansion should be started on even before the initial release of your title) however it is the gameplay that will keep your customers happy between injections of content.

     In Conclusion - Well there you go, if you implement every feature listed above, in an intelligent manner, you will have an MMO that will be far ahead of what is in today’s market.  The MMO genre as a whole desperately needs to evolve.  Of course this is just the beginning as I have thought of numerous features (Besides the implementation of the above mentioned) to add to an MMO that are not in any of today’s MMO’s, whether already released or in development.  So it is very much possible to create a “near perfect” MMO, that does not have a “failure of communication”.  The basic concept to remember is to know your customer before trying to market a product to them.  Do not try to advertise something (Features/Gamplay/Content) you do not have, because in the MMO industry, word of mouth far exceeds anything you can say or advertise.  The MMO community is extremely close, and a few negative comments by people that are greatly respected in the MMO community will overrule any time or money that you have invested in advertising.  I will apologize for the comments being so short as I was trying to keep this under 3500 words, which obviously did not happen anyway.




                                         Mike “Mongoose” Yocum
                                Yocum@earthlink.net

     In article references:

DAOC: “Dark Age Of Camelot”   http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/
WOW: “World Of Warcraft”  http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/
Warhammer Online:  http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/home/index.php
DEEP BLUE:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue
Everquest:  http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/index.vm
Starcraft:  http://www.blizzard.com/starcraft/
Diablo:  http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2/
Lineage:  http://www.lineage.com/
Lineage2:  http://www.lineage2.com/
Direct2Drive:  http://www.direct2drive.com/
Fileplanet:  http://www.fileplanet.com/
COH:  “City Of Heroes”  http://www.cityofheroes.com/
COV:  “City Of Villains”  http://www.cityofvillains.com/
Shadowbane:  http://chronicle.ubi.com/
SWG:  “Star Wars Galaxies”  http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/
Auto Assault:  http://www.autoassault.com/index.html
Eve Online:  http://www.eve-online.com/
Blizzard: http://www.blizzard.com/
SOE:  “Sony Online Entertainment”  http://www.station.sony.com/en/
Station Exchange: http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/

This should be good.  Can you give a little intro (more than logging your hours) as to who you are.  This will help us understand things a bit more!

According to Google, he's nobody. But we'll let him defend himself.

I'm far too lazy to read somebody's 7000 word dissertation on MMORPGs. If enough people tell me it contains many startling new insights that I've never read before, then perhaps I will. So, precis for us - what are the most salient points you are trying to communicate? We're probably more than happy to discuss them in an argumentative fashion, where we get to pretend that you're reading our replies between your posts.

Watch out, he might bring in some heavy hitters:


I think the rest of it speaks for itself, although there's a couple real gems. This one in particular about debugging tickled my funny bone.

We don't need another McMMOG.

(http://www.marriottmd.com/photos/fishsticks.jpg)

Yay!  Fishsticks!

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/words.jpg)

Oh come on, give him a break. We all had the answers after playing the same experience twice. People come to ranting before they're done even starting to learn.

Gotta say though, that post makes me look concise.

um, wow

and to think, someone could've just said "Tig Bitties!"

bestest first post evah!

(will read through it sometime)

[Edit]

Darn, you teh funneh!

A break? So we should read this thing and give insight? What do we have on this forum? 80,000 posts on online gaming or something? Why should we give him a break? I think people have actually written posts called "A failure to communicate" but if he's too lazy to use the search tool, so am I.

(http://ewancient.lysator.liu.se/pic/art/y/o/yocum/blades.jpg)

© Mike Yocum (relation?) (http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/art/y/o/yocum/blades.jpg.html)

I'm afraid of whatever that drawing is of...

(http://www.huge-entity.com/blogger3/scanners-exploding-head-3.jpg)

And we are off!

(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050824/050824_john_stewart_hmed.hmedium.jpg)

  As far as who I am...   I am just a gamer looking for the current MMO genre to break out of the horrid stagnation that it seems to be stuck in.  IMO, as stated, to me it is a simple failure of developers to deliver what the customer truly wants.  I actually read all the replies between posts,(I am a writer for multiplayerstrategies.com, so it is basically my job to read all the replies) the only voice that should not be heard is the voice that remains silent.  If you simply wanted big titties, then go to:(Kiddie safe)

http://www.bullz-eye.com/gallery/tank_tops.htm

 

  No idea, but that is not mine...

You're talking about a genre birthed not by the needs of customers, but by the needs of the developers (whether those needs be an academic experiment with "godhood", a simple need to just make cash, or some other fucked up personal reason). It's going to take awhile before the priorities are reversed.

That's a generalization, of course, but I usually see a difference in what motivation, for example, Sid Meier or Miyamoto has for designing a game, and how and why [insert MMO dev here  :nda:] makes an MMO. In the MMO world, it's all about them (and whenever things are "fun" here and there, it's just a fortunate byproduct to reach their original, selfish goal).

You write for Multiplayer Strategies? The exploit site?

Yea, you're a big part of solving the problem.

With that in mind, broad declarations like "The perfect MMO" need to be broken down into specifics.  Perfect for who?  The developers?  The players?  You personally?  Saying things like "death should have meaningful penalties" and that "The easy solution [to whether crafted items should be more powerful than world drops] is to make dropped items able to be improved upon by crafting" seems like you're projecting a very personal idea of what YOUR ideal MMO would be, in a world unencumbered by budgets and staffing issues.  This isn't helped by the fact that much of these points are very, very nebulous regarding the actual implementation.  It's easy to say that you need to patch out exploits right away or that your customer service should never be unfriendly, but it's not like the guys at SOE are going to smack their foreheads upon reading this and say "Ohhh, never be UNfriendly, I get it now!"

This is like reading "my ideal soccer game" from someone who has only ever watched two World Cup matches.

  Sigh...   Of course to form an opinion about MPS you must be a member.  Being a member you know the colums I write, can you tell me one exploit I have written in the last two years?  If you are not a member then you are forming an opinion out of ignorance?

Mongoose, it's nice to see new faces around here, but ya need to understand everything you've mentioned has been discussed so often they're considered axiom. A lot of discussion revolves around who the players are that want this stuff (since there is no universal constant) and how the delivery actually happens (since writing words is not writing code nor building assets).

Oh, right, my bad. Where you write has no effect on your reputation.

Is the hazing over yet?  I'm trying to keep happy thoughts in my head until June 27.

What's up on June 27th?

Ooh, my birthday! That's very kind of you, Signe  :-)

[edit]

Oh wait...I totally read that wrong  :-(

  The recent 6 million+ subscriber base of WOW already has a few devs saying "well if we only had 10% of WOW subscribers we would be a success".  Why aim for the bottom 10%?  A point you make is that the genre was born out of the needs of the developers, however this has changed, EQ2 tried to push the title with no PvP and down it went, DDO tried to force grouping, wtf?  This is exactly what I am saying, these are not the days of UO and Everquest so why are the devs still trying to push like titles?  Right now there are more players that feel "stuck" in WOW then you can imagine, what is the problem with pushing an MMO to the next level?  When I mentioned "The Perfect MMO", I did not mean an MMO without flaw, I simply meant an MMO that is far above and beyond what is currently on the market and in development.

P.S.  While I encourage all the constructive critism that you guys can deal, what is up with all the flames?(Not directed at the person that I quoted here)  I mean, is this the same as a public MMO board?  When the name of this site was brought to my attention, I was under the impression that it was a mature website, that could give some feedback on the article.  Yet it seems quite a few peeps are more worried about me or my creditenials.  Would it not be more intelligent to comment on the article?  While i have seen 12 year olds match wits with other 12 year olds on public MMO boards, I thought this site was different.  If it makes anyone feel any better, just think of me as a 60 year old acoholic, that uses drugs and does not have a life outside of my cardboard box.(I use the computer at the local library to access the internet)  You will not get me to dabble in a piss contest or get me to try to describe myself to your satisfaction, stick with the topic and explain what mistakes I have made.   If you need some attention or want to have a flame contest send me an email
mcvoll@yahoo.com
and I will let one of the kids play with ya :)

It's Stray's birthday!  How could you forget?  Time to start exercising the spanking hand.

Edit:  Sorry... I totally said that wrong.

  AH...  Then I will apologize as it seems that I am preaching to a choir that has already heard the same sermon a million times.  It was suggested that I post this article on this website by a new acquaintance, so I did not have any personal knowledge of the website before posting.(Typical noob move)  Anyway I now understand why a few peeps are acting a little snotty, since nothing positive will come of this article, hopefully an admin will simply delete the thread.  If not I will see if I can delete it myself, thanks for the heads-up!

"A wall of text hits you for UNSPEAKABLE damage! You are dead."

/agree

I'll print that thing off at work tomorrow and perhaps work my way through it if I can find any spare time on the toilet... err in the library. In any case, I think a point by point analysis is in order. BTW, where the fuck is Bruce?

  You are correct, where I write does not, however what I write does.

Heard the sermon a million times? I don't mean to stroke any egos here, but let's go with invented.

See, it's not the problem that you wrote that up. It's not the problem that you didn't understand what was going on. The problem is that you made no attempt to get to know the site before you wrote a layman's dissertation on the state of MMOGs on a site all but dedicated to them. In other words, if you want us to read, YOU NEED TO ALSO. Follow your own advice there, chief.

Also, get the fuck away from MPS.

Dammit.  Look at what you guys are doing!  AGAIN!

Please, don't run off, Mongoose.  We've not had a chance to properly play with you, yet.

(http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/kitty.gif)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Seriously, jesus.  You guys chased him off faster than I thought.  I owe someone 5 bucks now.

Damnit, I miss all the fun.

What just happened?

National HIV Testing Day!  I can't wait.

You cannot aspire to be Tolstoy and write for the Weekly World News. Yes, where you write matters.

Cheddar set you up!


That's the noob move, not the original posting. You had the most active thread on the board and for better or worse, many people will read your work, so if you believe in what you wrote, put it back.

To sum it up, the MMO industry is plagued by two things (sometimes seperately, sometimes together): Vision-itis or Status-Quo-itis. Yada, yada, yada.

What it needs is Tony Bennett.

This is a guy totally driven by the need to entertain. His first priority isn't what will sell. Nor does he sing whatever he wants to when he gets on stage. He sings what the crowd wants him to -- And he loves it. He lives for it. He'll sing El Segundo a million times in one night if that's what the crowd wants. And he does all of this so well that he ends up making a fat buck out of it too.

Seriously, put it back up. Don't give in that easily. You have our attention, now let us provide counter-arguments and persuade us. The sheer size of that post was disconcerting. Perhaps a series of posts on each topic might be a better approach. Oh, and in the game development forum perhaps if you wish to discuss the topic of design and how it can be improved. But, that's just my opinion. Dennis Miller could be wrong.

Why aim for the bottom 10%? Money. Game publishers are about money. Many game dev studios are about money - someone has to write Madden 2007, the Da Vinci Code game and all the other drek that random people are willing to throw cash at to get made. MMOs are a golden goose if you can develop them properly; a steady subscriber base of 600,000 (or hell, 100,000 if you only want to count the North American market) paying $15/month is a lot of revenue.

It's nice to say that devs should suffer for their art and produce awesome, innovative, rock-solid, fun games. I'd also like politicians to be honest, industrialists to work for the public good, and so on. As long as money is in the equation, someone will be In It For The Money, which means they're not going to give a flying fig about what you think so long as a good crowd ponies up the dough.

But regardless, Greed will save Teldar Paper. Why? Because if the proportion of the population that games expands, then the amount of money flowing around in the games industry expands. Most of it will go to EA, Vivendi and the other fat cats churning out stuff most people around this forum wouldn't use to wipe their ass. But that means the number of people who get bored of that stuff and look deeper into it, scraping around indies and maybe making some amateur games themselves - that population will grow in positive proportion of the mass market. People need to get exposed to stuff to get turned on to it, and that's what the mass market guys are good at - putting accessible games into a lot of living rooms.

I see no evidence provided to support your claim that EQ2 is going 'down in flames'; if you believe MMOGChart, it's hovering around 200k-250k; not a WoW success, but that's still cash money flowing into the bank. Further, I see no evidence to support your claim that the market is 'bored' of WoW. Anecdotally, I know several folks who have been playing WoW since release, raid every week, and are hot in the pants over the next patch. I know some folks who have quit, and an equal number who recently got turned on to it. And since anecdotal evidence is essentially bunk - again, look at their announced numbers or at whatever other source you believe, such as the weekly top selling games lists. WoW is consistently in the top 10, and the subscriber growth rate is still climbing. Consumers are not particularly dumb with their money; if they're sick of WoW, they will unsub and go do something else. What metric are you measuring "stuck-feeling-ness" by?

As for the reactions... you posted a dissertation of broad assertions about what "The Perfect MMO" would be, completely disregarding the realization that games are entertainment, and what's entertaining for Jimmy McCatass is not entertaining for Sally the Wife Who Plays Kingdom Hearts Occasionally. Further, many of your statements were so vague as to be worthless. Companies should hire good people, but maybe they should hire some new people too so they get new ideas. Either implement crafting or don't. Fix bugs.

What were you expecting - the forum to fall to our knees and fellate you for the (dubious) wisdom of what seems to be essentially another guy who writes articles on the internet? Not even Raph or Lum, both of whom have vast reservoirs of credibility capital, could get away with posting that tract as Wisdom without a lot of folks here pointing and laughing. Because, really, what you brought to the table were some stale generalizations about the industry and business, disgused as 'insights', and then peppered them with arbitrary, context-less game design decisions about what would be the Ultimate MMO (for you).

Thank you, drive through.

Isn't it strange how this forum in and of itself is the true MMO that none of us can resist? Perhaps this is the perfect MMO...

[NINJA!]

I had the same thought yesterday.

It was deleted before I had a chance to read it.  One thing I enjoy about these boards is knowing that there are people out there that aren't as jaded as the rest of us... yet.  I'm sorry I missed the chance to give it a look.  I'm like to think I'm somewhat objective about these things.

Oh that guy was as jaded as us, no question. He just hasn't been for two three four five sixish years.

I dunno. I managed to work my way through the whole thing and it read pretty wide-eyed to me. Been around the block, sure; jaded, not so sure.

I'm completely jaded and I still have hope for the future - more than, well, most everyone I know. Why can't those go hand in hand?

I once again offer my services to create the perfect MMO. SOmeone give me 20 million dollars and I will get right on it. I promise to cater to all of the various playstyles!

well, in all honesty I did try to read it but had to go to bed.  But I intended to look at the rest of it this morning.  Ah well, was just having fun.  Just reprint the article and move it to the Design/Dev forum away from the jaded industry chat.  Peopel can discuss there.

I miss him.   :cry:

Flames??  You think these are flames?  I think you should learn to appreciate the "flames" and learn from the (rather weak) assaults.  Some of us come here to be flamed! :)

What are you throwing at him?

Flowers and kisses and these little sparkly bits of stuff I found under the chainsaw.  He should come back and be mean to someone.  Then he'd be accepted.  Why aren't the people who wander in here by mistake more mean?  We should send ForumBot 8.0 beta out to teach them our ways.  We could be happy together.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
This isn't the lodge. We don't sit around drinking a hundred-year-old Scotch and say "Indoubality."

I do.  However, I try to spell correctly while I'm at it.

Sometimes there's just too much 100yr old for that.

Yeah but we should start. I like drunkenly shouting "Indoubitably!" after drinking Scotch.  Oooh oooh can we get F13 smoking jackets too!

Think positive!  :-D

I missed his article, but his tanktop link was titillating. He can't be all bad!

I came in late, and didn't get to read his post.  From what I gather, it was  :dead_horse: and  :cthulu:
followed by  :mob: and then a dash of   :rock: and the occasional  :rimshot:

So, where's the  :hello_kitty_2:?

Because that's profitable, and not everyone needs to have the largest subscriber e-peen in order to be a success. The sooner developers and publishers figure that out, the better.


Neither game has "gone down" and both are still going. "Going down" is the path of games like Earth and Beyond, 10-6 and other failed, closed down games. As long as someone's paying money, they only suck, they haven't gone down.


No problem, if it isn't your money being pissed away on SWG-style innovation that is borken from the gettie. Also, developing is hard. And whatnot.

P.S. Stop writing for multiplayerstrategies.com. It'll help a lot.

So I've been playing Gunbound right?  The funny thing about Gunbound is, sometimes when a person misses their first shot they will just quit.  Some people wait till they have fucked up 3 shots then they quit without a word.  Quitting the board because nobody liked your first post is the same thing.  I really wonder what will happen to personal accountability in a generation or three thanks to the internet.  Even in MMO's I've noticed that guild hopping is becoming more and more common.

Anyways I haven't read the article because it started out like so many other articles about MMO's and it was long as fuck.  I hate to say it but threads that try to tackle every aspect of MMO's are just pointless.  Threads about crafting, economy, combat-systems, loot, spawn distributions, pvp, endgame content, raids whatever.  All interesting, worth reading and fun to participate in.  A single thread that tries to "fix" everything about MMO's at once is never a good idea and always turns into a mess.

Something good has come out of this whole thing though.  I'm intrigued by Stray's rockstar developer theory.  So basically right now the developer's making MMO's get too attached to their "vision" of the world that they forget to add any fun?  Sadly I can buy that.  It also helps explain why these fucktards never listen to anyone during any stage of testing.

Mongoose should really stick around and post again. I've seen worse. We've all seen worse.

[edit]

Scratch that. I've been worse.

I'm actually surprised our brief 30s of fame didn't get more people to register/post. Maybe it's too soon, I wonder if we got a lot of registrants (is that a word?) that are just lurking now.

No.

   

(600k * $15) is a lot, however (6 million * $15) is A LOT more.  I understand the only purpose of creating an MMO is for the profit of the monthly fees, but if you are going to do it, why not go for the most subscribers?  Why piss around with 100k-600k peeps when, with a little creativity and common sense, you can easily have 1-6 million +?  When you constantly aim low, you will constantly miss.(Unless you have a really big gun and cannot hold the damn thing when you fire, like having a 12 year old fire a 12 gauge, LOFL) 

  EQ2 is in flames in comparison to their original hopes.  This was the title that was supposed to be evenly matched with WOW, however 250k does not compete with 6 million, why do you think they actually decided to throw PvP into EQ2?  A failure to you it is not, after all you bring up the fact that it is making money.  However if I was aiming to compete with another title, and just got my ass handed to me like EQ2 did by WOW, then to me I would have failed.

  OMG players are stuck in WOW, you are looking at nothing else then numbers!  You need to talk to the gamers themselves and get their feelings on their experience.  "They will unsub and go somewhere else” Yeah where?  There is no competition to WOW, which is my entire point of the article I wrote, instead of evolution, Devs keep coming out with the same craptacular releases.  Go back to MMOGchart and look at the populations of all MMO's on/since WOW's release, the only games that dropped for WOW was Lineage and Lineage2 and that was less then 1.5 million, so where did the other 4.5 million come from?  Of course you had a ton of noobs enter the genre based upon the Warcraft and Blizzard reputation, but you also had a large chunk of those that join that were simply waiting for another decent MMO to be developed. 
 
  WOW has not been in the top 10 games sold either, (unless you are counting the 50,000 copies bought by gold farmers to replace the accounts that were banned, yes this is added for sarcasm) not for quite awhile, yes you constantly see the expansion pack for WOW in the top 10, but that in itself is another nightmare waiting to happen.  You get what? (No new classes)  A new area and 10 more levels?  With the current majority of the population already at the end game with at least one character, that is most likely already equipped with level 70-83 items?  How long will it take to burn through to level 70?  A few weeks at BEST, then they will be stuck right where they are now.  Blizzard had mentioned that they wanted the initial release of WOW have a level cap 70, but VU forced the release to compete with EQ2.  So look what happened, 2 years after the release and you are now simply having the content that was supposed to be in the game on the day of release!  That is not evolution, that is desperation.

  Yes a lot of the statements were vague, I was trying to keep the number of words under 3,500 as that is the standard to have it printed in a few mags.  I had chopped the article down from 14k to 7k words, so here I will agree that overall the article was "lacking", however there was a simple point that I was trying to make.  So yes, I screwed it up and should have either gone with 3500, or just released it with the 14k.  Would you actually take the time to read the article if it was 14k?

  What did I expect?  Peeps to fall to their knees? (LOFL) No, I simply wanted feedback on what should be added, removed, or changed.  Only when you can add positive influence to the info does it make it worth more.  I do not look for respect or kudos here, as I have no time or desire for mental masturbation. (I have a wife and children for that)  To me it just seems that Devs are throwing away huge amounts of time and money, and yet they still fail to achieve their goals.  Somewhere, someone has to be asking themselves "Why did this title not reach the expected numbers?"  I was just trying to send them a "Mind Of Mencia - De De DEE"

  By the way have you even played WOW to the end game?  Not to cut Bliz on what they promised, that is still not in the game such as housing, and an actual end game, etc...  But the game has nothing at the end, the entire PvP system is a joke, you do not even compete against the opposing side, you compete against each other for points, and if you do not play 60-80 hours a week you will not hit R14, and as stated you have to slit your buddy’s throat to do it.  Look at the video's that are being made week by week, you will see a ton of players that are deleting their characters and trashing their accounts.  These are not noobs that just hit 60 and wanted to make a statement, these are greatly respected players that have been around since day one and just got sick and tired of all the empty promises that never happened in WOW.

  If you have a car and like to drive, then you drive it, even when that car becomes a piece of crap you will still drive it, less you drive nothing and walk.  However when a new and better car comes out, you will buy the better car.  In the MMO industry, there is a general failure to make a better car, which is my point.  There is no lack of money or interest in the MMO genre as a cash cow, just a failure of understanding what the customer wants, which is leading to craptacular cars being built, that is why no one is buying them, and that is why peeps are still driving WOW.  There is nothing to hurt WOW until next year when Mythic releases WAR. (If it is not pushed back)  I have faith in Mythic, as they actually have improved on DAOC and to a point, do listen to their players.  WOW is an above average game and very enjoyable until you hit 60, then there is nothing there, and players will not see this until they hit 60.  Don’t get me wrong I am not a Mythic fanboi, just that I see nothing else at the moment…


FORE!

  No reason to put it back, the entire point was lost.  If it is true that the peeps here are well aware of the MMO industries problems, and simply needed someone to spice up the forums a little, you will have plenty of entertaining material to read in the upcoming days.

  I'll stay, you paypal me $2.50 and keep $2.50 for yourself.(LOFL)

Dont ya'll diss SWG now.... in the realm of "potential", I have never seen a game with more.

and stuff...

  Nah no monthly fees, and I cannot buy any in game coin from IGE.

we didn't drive you away?

/offtopic

Out of interest, what was that point?

  Because if your "hope" for the future happens, then you will be happy.  You cannot be happy and jaded unless you are a sadist, which does not befit how you have presented yourself so far.  Of course if you wanted to send me a pic of your penis with a railroad tie threw it, while you have a smile on your face, then you are a sadist, which would allow you to be jaded and hope for the future :)    

  Need an employee?  I work for cheap!

Yes, you can. You had better look up 'jaded' again ,and understand the context in which it was used.


You know what the problem is here, I presume.

Might wanna look up sadist as well  :-D

  I quite playing after I spent all my points in the first 2 weeks, and found out there was no concrete direction I could go to start working on a Jedi.  The potential that SWG had was removed when you saw the three letters S-O-E...  SOE is the name I cuss the most,(In MMO development) 3 MMO's with them and all three crapped out.  IMO, SOE has the most horrid customer satisfaction reputation, and that was before the overhaul of SWG, which just made it worse.

I think the three letters that ruined SWG were H A M, not SOE. 

  That the entire MMO industry is failing to evolve, this is not due to lack of money, creativity, or personel, but simply due to the fact that MMO devs have no fken idea what an MMO gamer truly wants.

  P.S. Well did I just waste a huge amount of time as I could have just said this and got my point across, instead of the 7k+ words?

While I agree that the mmog industry has failed to evolve much, I disagree with your second statement.  Blizzard seems to have found what MANY people want.  They want a fun game experience in a stylized world with a fairly clean and easy-to-use interface.  Blizzard simplified the mmog experience and this streamlining is paying them handsomely.  While I'm not a fan of Blizzard for doing this, they certainly are in touch with the pulse of the mainstream gaming community. Their numbers support this.

  What did I miss?  Of course I guess it is the difference on how you feel when you are jaded.  I cannot be happy or hopeful when jaded.

Definition of sadism:


sa·dism  (sdzm, sdz-)
n.
1. The deriving of sexual gratification or the tendency to derive sexual gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse on others.
2. The deriving of pleasure, or the tendency to derive pleasure, from cruelty.
3. Extreme cruelty.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
  I was using sadist as in the second example.

It is certainly failing to evolve in all directions. The focus to date has been on evolving the mechanics and interface so as to assuage the concerns of people who otherwise enjoy prior MMORPGs - in other words, same customers, but simply fixing what appears to be broken. For example - WoW is a step up on many prior games in terms of accessibility, reliability, and efficient use of art assets.

So its not really failing to evolve. It's just evolving slowly, which is... the nature of evolution. You say you want a revolution? Well, you know.


Pretty much. Its usually best to start with the simple point here, and add refutations to others' counters if necessary.

I think WoW should show anyone that a little more creativity and common sense is not what made for 6 million subscribers. In short, the games with creativity have not pulled 6 million subs, mainly because the creativity has not been followed by execution. But to an investor, execution is assumed.

Mostly that schild inferred that he is jaded about contemporary game development, not the future, or life in general, I suspect.

Spore. Spore. Spore. Spore. Spore. Oh god, please, give me some Spore. Actually, I tend to agree with schlid. With the exception of Spore, I can't think of any games I'm just weak-in-the-knees excited over, and I fully realize Spore is probably going to blow chunks, and even if it's good, probably can't even come close to living up to the potential I see in it.

One game I'm excited about. A handful of others that I sort of watch but don't expect to ever play. And I'm a 30 year old, white male gamer with a lot of disposable income and free time. On the other hand, I don't play console games much -- so that could be some of it.

Yes. You should be wetting your pants over Red Steel and Zelda on the Wii.

Expectation?  Honestly?  I want to see what Bioware's up to.  And Lum.

I'll take your word for it. I found that game where you roll the ball around quite fun. We Love Katamari or something? I play that with my kid a lot. Strangely addictive.

  Well you have to remember that a  lot of WOW players bought the title based upon Blizzards reputation, which I agree is flawless.  The gaming experience is fun,(to 60) and there is enough content to take you from 1-60 without getting too bored.  But the UI is sub-par this is proven by the fact that modders created the popular CTmod as well as a ton of others.(See links)

http://www.wowinterface.com/

http://ui.worldofwar.net/
  
  While I cannot vouch for the sites credibility, it states to the left the number of downloads, which when I saw it was over 9 million, gamers were content with the UI until something better was created, which with WOW, did not take long at all.  Rumor had it that a few of the mods were done by Bliz employees themselves.  I have no bad or harsh feelings toward Bliz, the blame of where the game went, IMO, is on VU.  I don't want a lot of people to misunderstand what I am trying to say, Blizzard from 1-60 has the best MMO on the market, but this stops at 60.(Remember this was supposed to be 70 when it went gold)  Bliz just fails to "keep the ball rolling", VU desperately needed WOW to pad it's financial statements.  VU has the money now and simply does not care, most of the info from what I have read suggests that developers feel that after the first 2-3 years it is time to move on to the next MMO development.(Maybe a sequel?)  What I am trying to say is that with a little creativity and common sense you can easily take a game and propel it far above and beyond what WOW is.  As I used the example in the article, look at the game of chess, after 1000 years it still has replay value, yet it is only 32 pieces on 64 squares, the key is gameplay.  Today, developers concentrate too much on content, this is a critical flaw in their thinking, as the majority of their creativity and resources should be put into gameplay.  Gameplay is the game feature that will grab you by your throat and hold you there, while you try to breath and smile about it.(Definition of sadism again, LOL)

What I was getting at was the fact that Blizzard created an MMOG that was much more user-friendly than those that had come before it.  They eliminated many of the roadblocks present in older titles and added a dash of style along with some serious brand recognition. 

O.K.  Then we are basically on the same page.  Will you then agree that, with the money that can be made, the talent that is availible, and the modern technology that is here, that the MMO industry is evolving in a retarded manner.(Retarded seems so much better to use here then "slow")

Unless you're trying to have an actual conversation, at which point tossing in pejoratives tends to cause people to react poorly to whatever point you're making, regardless of its validity.

I'll get to your larger post later; don't have the time to spend an hour writing now.

Edit: spelng r hard.

Redundant is a better fit, I think.  And Congrats on making it through the first hazing bit of f13.  Once you mate with Schild, you get the rest of the forums.

  "Retarded" was used out of frustration, and was simply intended to emphasize the meaning of "slow".  It was not meant to belittle or rebuke the reader, only by expressing how you truly feel can you convey to the reader your exact expression.  Sometimes I tend to be an extremist, no harm is meant.  :)

  Do I get to play the male?  It is always better to give then to recieve...

  So you firmly believe that if I had never written for MPS, but instead I had written for F13 since the first day of its conception, what I write would have different meaning?  Although I understand the point you both are trying to make, only a shallow person would judge text on where it was wrote, instead of what the text actually conveyed.  Would it have you extract a different meaning from the text if I was offered a position with Blizzard,(Which I refused) or had an email correspondence with Sebastian Motte about being a tester for Microsoft?  Let us not concentrate on who is better or more experienced then everyone else, but concentrate on what we all want, BETTER GAMES.  You got to be kidding me if you think I would rather be here then playing Jagged Union,(Not released in the U.S. yet) Jagged Alliance 3,(WTF is stratgey First doing with this?) or another round of Civ4.(Don't be afraid to go nuke happy, it does look cool and global warming effects everyone randomly)  I am not playing another round of Civ4 now because I am in a towel trying to answer these comments before getting a shower and having supper, and since the wife just left and took the kids to the pool, I need to order pizza or go to Subway, which brings us to the point...

  We are all here for the same reason, we want to play a better game!

Try to imagine, if you will, that some writers do so with an agenda.  This may open your mind to the idea that I perceive Schild is trying to convey.  If I read in Science that an alien life form had been discovered, I would take it with much more seriousness than if I had read the EXACT SAME REPORT in the Enquirer.  Get it?

I'm staying out of this, it's gotten too weird for me.

I thought I was helping!

I actually started replying before I read your post.

Not to be completely pedantic (well, maybe just this once), but sadism is about the infliction of abuse or cruelty; masochist would have fit your original post better (as I read it).

     Yeah but that is biased because we all know the Enquirer is full of BS, and you were taking something that is widely not believed(Aliens) vs. something that is widly believed MMO evolution is "slow".  I know that MPS had a bad rep in the past,(That is what I hear anyway) but I just do not see it in the site.  Anyway I will not argue this point further as I do not see us changing eithers mind.  If you want to view the words I right as being tainted, that in no way effects me, I am not here to win a popularity contest :)  As I said I understand what you are trying to say I simply disagree and I can guarantee you that you will not change my mind, and I doubt that I will change yours, therefore we must agree to disagree :)

  LOL, the only voice that is not heard, is the one that remains silent.  If you have something to say, then say it, is that not the purpose of your website?  I think you gave up too easy to be cynical... Use the force luke.. er I mean "Vader".

The more you write, the harder it is to understand what the hell you're saying.  Afternoon cocktails?

  I stand corrected.

  No 151 and Cherry Pepsi here, lets just agree to disagree and be happy :)

P.S.  For the sake of clarification I will explain the italicized part.

I understand that you feel that MPS has had a bad reputation in the past,(This is what people tell me) however I do not see this negativity in the website itself.

Scrubbing all the blood off the walls of an exploit site is impossible. The internet never forgets. You're gonna have to deal with that.

I bet he's (Tele-)Mediocre disguised.

  LOL, I actually laughed out loud at this.  Where there is a will there is a way...  I asked an expert on this and the wife explained to me that not even bleach will get blood out, however she said that pure amonia might :)  I have heard about MPS being a sploit and hack site, however I was not there at the time this was going on.  I started writing for MPS the week that WOW was released.  Recently I have taken a leave of absence from MPS, but this has nothing to do with MPS, DDO crapped out, AA crapped out, now there is nothing to write about, which is why I had started on that article.  A few peeps went back to playing DAOC, but that is a little outdated for my taste.

EDIT to add:
  I am going to get reemed on this, as I misunderstood the wife.  If you use peroxide you can get blood out of "fabric" totally.  However if there is blood on a wall pure amonia or "sudsy" amonia(Her words, not mine) will be the best, but will not get the blood 100% of the wall.  Therefore I will simply ask to be judged on my actions, and not my associations, I still say that since I have wrote for MPS,(Last 2 years) it is not the hack/exploit festival that everyone screams about.

He's young and looking to impress.  I'm going to go pull the Rolls out and take the family for a spin before setting in for my evening Sherry and Battleground fun.   After that I think the wife and I will invite over our friend Tesha (she's a model) and have a mindblowing threesome.  It'll certainly be more entertaining than this 'discussion.'

You are a dirty dirty man.

On the "Players are stuck in WoW" thing.  I don't buy it.  If I do not like playing something, I stop playing it.  I've never stayed in a game, especially one that has a monthly subscription fee, if I no longer had fun playing.

But there's nothing better out so they stay!  Well that's a choice, not a trap.

What you're really saying is "WoW is more fun than X, so people stay."  Which.. no matter how I read it, is a good thing.  Nothing sinister.

According to your stuck premise; I am stuck watching the NFL.  Because there isn't another sport to replace it?  They really should develop one, cause I hate football, I just watch it cause I'm stuck.

I think it's better just to say that after nearly two years, many players are growing bored with WoW.  They aren't caught in some crazy virtual tiger pit, waiting for UN forces to make a new MMO.  There are not any victims.

Mongoose, your basic problem is that you think you're a veteran with highly-evolved opinions, but you didn't even know anything about f13.net, which puts you about eight years behind the conversation you are trying to hold.


Do you realise you just said "it is better to give, and receive afterwards"? No you don't, because you come from the pathetic mass of gamers who have lost the difference between the words "then" and "than". No, you did not make a typo and this is not a spelling flame. You wrote what most of your peers would have written: and it's total fucking miscommunication.

  I am not saying the peeps that play WOW are trapped, as they do always have a choice to go elsewhere, yet at the present time there is really no other place to go.  You cannot be "stuck" watching the NFL, because every year there is a draft and the players change teams, players get old and retire, and newbies replace them, therefore your "world" is constantly and purposely changing.(You are always viewing new "content")  This is unlike an MMO, where you go out and kill a mob by a tree, two years later you go out and the same mobs are there at the same trees.  An MMO, being the items and events inside, does not "age" as in real life the NFL content(Meaning NFL players) does age.  Therefore that is an unfair comparison.  To put it in perspective: if every year your favorite team had the exact same players and same record at the end of the year, how many years would you watch it?  The "content" in the NFL is in a constant state of change, thereby renewing your interest to watch it :)

  What can an MMO do to mimic this constant state of change?  Look at RvR in DAOC as an example.  Why not totally remove the entire RvR map for all three realms and put in an entire new map?(Let's say every 3-6 months?)  Shake it up, do not subject your customers to the same content that has been there for years.  The most detrimental thing in today's MMO's is a competent lack of an end game, with a creative mind, there is no reason for this.  Yes it would take time and money to constantly evolve your content in an MMO, but with 6 million subscribers there, the money is incentive enough to do it.  Look at the whole picture, instead of one stadium and one team, and you will see that the possibilities are virtually endless, yet today we are "stuck".

When I go to its homepage, it offers me dozens of exploits for MMOGs. The fact that it has other stuff (written by an ignoramus like you) does not change that.

  Actually I was trying to make a joke, I did not know someone would actually dissect it like that.  Did someone piss in your Cornflakes this morning?

Holy shit I totally missed this.  HAHAHAHA I SMELL GRIEF TITLE!

  Tale in the end the one thing we all must face is reality, sometimes this is more difficult for certain peeps to face.  If you look at every post of yours in this thread, what have you constructively done?  Nothing...  In every post you have not added too, or subtracted from, the topic of this thread, you have not done anything but trolled, so I ask what is your purpose for posting here?  Make a comment on the topic, as I have stated before just think of me as someone totally repulsive, do you have anything intelligent to say on the topic at hand?

Still weird in here, but Tale made the most salient point in the thread:


And as for you:
Who the hell taught you how to write? Fuck, that sentence is like internet transmitted face-attacking knives. Jesus.

You aren't?



I know you don't mean trapped, but you sure as hell mean unwilling to leave.  How is that a bad thing?  How did Blizzard do wrong by creating a game that many players prefer to play over other games on the market?

Stuck and unwilling to go to inferior games (or stop playing completely), are different things.

So are you saying that we are all stuck doing things we don't really like, simply because there isn't something better?  We could be happy or sad with whatever it is, but we aren't as happy as we could be?  That is a stupid premise.  Basically you're saying, "There could be better!"  Well no fucking shit.


Trades are updates.  Draft is expansion.  Comparison works.  Until "Topless Cheerleaders NFL Edition" comes out, I am stuck watching NFL.  The game itself doesn't change.  They just patch in some new rosters every so often, and sometimes change the PVP rules.  No leapfrogging off the line to block kicks, no leading with helmet on tackles, etc.


The most detrimental things in the MMO's of today are other players.  Once developers figure out how to fix that, we'll have better MMO's.  Hopefully there is more to your ultimate MMO than a map that changes every three to six months and a competent end-game.  If you're taking a shot at WoW, because they use their Blizzard name as a metaphor for their patching speed; Then ok, yes they add content slowly.  Two years to wait for an expansion pack is brutal.  Just want you to know though, that the average player isn't so hopelessly addicted to MMO's that they are prisoners of WoW, and cannot leave until another of greater caliber appears.  They'll leave when they get bored enough.

The genre itself is stagnating, that's no fault of WoW.  if anything, the success of WoW will bring more games into the mix.  Sure 90 percent of them will be crap, but hopefully there will be a metric shit-ton of innovation waiting to be cannibalized by another.

This is barely worth it any more, but there a few nits I can still pick. I'm going to Bruce it up a bit so it's easier to block out what I'm responding to. Apologies in advance.


 Because you may also be operating under the constraints of Time, Money and Manpower that your competitors are not similarly under; very few companies could throw as much of these away as Blizzard did on WoW. Why go up to compete against the industry titan when you can't compete with their resources? You can still find a niche, carve out a slice of the industry for yourself, and make a nice chunk of change.

 By your logic, it's not worth opening a small shop unless you're going to compete with Wal-Mart.



Or is it? Go search around for articles back before WoW and EQ2 were released; no one, no one in their right mind predicted that WoW would do 6 mil. 1 million was considered optimistic. 500k was a good estimate. EQ2 was probably aiming for 10% more than the peak level of EQ1 subscribers, which is probably around 500-600k. They're doing about half that now, and growing, from what I hear, which isn't bad at all.

Is it a smashing success? No, it's just kind of mediocre.



Yes, I'm looking at numbers, because I'm asking you to quantify the idea that people are getting tired of a product. In most industries, this is sales numbers. With TV, we have the Nielsons. For MMOs, we have sub numbers. The sub numbers aren't indicating that people are tired of a product.

Entertainment does not exist in a vacuum; if people are tired of WoW, they can not only switch to other games, they can also, you know, go outside. Watch TV. Go see a flick. The numbers indicate that, no, they'd like to play WoW.

I need to talk to the gamers themselves? That's anecdotal evidence, which isn't statisically valid. However, you could try to quantify the observation that people are frustrated and feel stuck. You'd need to get a large, random sample of WoW players - by taking a completely random sample of active accounts' email addresses, most likely - and have them take a survey on the game. Further, if you want to bring my own experience into this, then no, the WoW players I know have been playing WoW since release and still chatter every day about the next expansion, what raid loot they got, etc. (It's rather onerous to try to talk to them about anything else, in fact.)

 With respect to the chart's population data, as you noted, only a small number of games on that chart experienced a rapid decline when WoW came out. A large proportion of the players are therefore either new or maintain open accounts on multiple games. If, as you stated, there was a large number of people "that were simply waiting for another decent MMO", you'd've seen a precipitous drop in other games' subscription numbers, as large proportions of players do not maintain multiple accounts (see Nick Yee's Daedalus Project research (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/) for more on this). This conclusion is not borne out by the chart's data.

Your assertion that WoW has not been in the top 10 games sold is plain wrong: Best Selling Games for May 26th, 2006 (http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10580). World of Warcraft is #2. For the whole month of May 2006: here (http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10638). World of Warcraft, again #2. Whole year, 2005: World of Warcraft, #1 (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7832). Search out more of these numbers if you want; since Thanksgiving 2004, WoW has consistently been in the top 10, if not the top 5.

 Your idea that most people will burn through the expansion content in a few weeks also appears to come from the evident fact that you're a very hardcore gamer. According to Nick Yee's research, over 50% of the MMO population spends 20 or less hours a week playing MMOs. Anecdotally, I have a friend who played WoW casually (1-3 hours a week) for 14 months. He just hit 60 two weeks ago. According to this data (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000758.php), he represents about a quarter of the total market.



Yes, I played two classes to the mid-40s and one class to 60 over the course of an aggregate total of 8 months subscribed. I enjoyed the time I played since I primarily played it with a group of friends and coworkers. After I hit 60, I raided a little, PVPed a little, and then moved on since I felt I was done with the game.

The videos and noise being made are a small but extremely vocal minority of players; if they actually had an impact, we'd see declining sub numbers. Do we? No. So while a few immature power-gamers may be whining up a storm (really - making a video of deleting your character?) the market seems to say that it's not quite tired of WoW yet.

Are some people? Sure. There were people tired of it before it came out. Am I saying that I wouldn't like an MMO with certain other features? No, I'm not. Go read my Wurm article; my personal favorite game features come from the virtual world camp, which are arguably the most trampled-on by a WoW-dominated market.

But fortunately there is some neat stuff coming up; I was favorably disposed to Tabula Rasa and Age of Conan at E3, both of which are due out this year. Warhammer Online could do some neat things for PVP, and that's due next year. There's a slew of smaller games I haven't written about or haven't heard of yet - Pirates of the Burning Sea for one - that are doing different, neat things.

However, the tone of your article was "these things must change and they must change now and in every game to come". It's the sort of naive, absolutist tone you hear on an official board rant. Things are changing, but, like Righ said, it's slow when you look at it on a day-by-day basis.

If you really, REALLY feel that passionately about the points you posted, then get some VC funding and start an indie studio. There's MMO middleware now (BigWorld, for example) that significantly eases the burden on new studios. If you want to go the Hobbyist route, you could try the Minions of Mirth engine.

Welcome to 2001.

12 months * 15 + 50 for a Box = 230.   :-o

By any account thats some pretty fucking good profit on a game. As stated before, a game that still maintains top 10 placement.  We here celebrate generic rage. 

But this... this is psuedo rage.  Or something.  mmm Beer.

I agree. This thread needs more beer.

Sometimes I do. I just don't have anything intelligent to say in response to anything you have posted, except STFU.


I faced reality when I read this:

This is the typical newb mistake:

Go to a new place. Don't get a feel for what the discussion is about, or how it takes shape. Pick a topic. Don't get a feel for what other discussions have already been had on that same topic. Post your own thoughts on that topic on said group, when basic research could have shown you that what you said has already been said 10,000 times before.

Quite frankly it's insulting. If you don't have time to get the lay of the land and do a little research don't expect us to have time to pay attention to you.

He sure posts a lot  :roll:

Heh, a lot of people are paying attention to him, just enough to nitpick him to death.

Sadism, masochism, blood, peroxide, ammonia.

Your wife beats you, doesn't she.

This thread sucks.  Alas, today, it sucks slowly.

Maybe the extreme Scottish cold is finally affecting the Internet backbone.

We could act as a public service and offer Mongoose THIS (http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting.php).

Enjoy in good health.

I'm glad my first post at WT was in an insigificant thread about Hawaii.

(http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/2242/sierrapale0rd.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

Good choice.

More beer. (http://www.washingtonbeer.com/wabf.htm) Just found out that it is being held across the street from where I will viewing the USA v Italy World Cup game. Pity, that!

  LOL, I will make sure she does not see this, as I do not want to give her ideas :)

  I would like to thank everyone for their comments and statements whether positive or negative.  Of course I would have liked it better if we could have actually stayed on the topic at hand, a little better.  Since I have had other questions and comments from other sources that I have sent the article too, I would like to concentrate on them as I feel that this topic has run it's course here.  If I have some free time, I will be more then happy to stop back and see what is happening, until then though, I must concentrate my efforts elsewhere.  Have a good day and I wish you luck in your future endeavors :)

Thanks for being nice. I wish you the best of luck on being an internet-traveling time capsule to 2001 instead of a writer for MPS.

(http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9415/mps3je.jpg)

That was taken about a year and a half ago. The internet never forgets. NEVER. I have about 50 more where that came from. Consider it a hobby.

Hey!  He ditched us!

You bumped my sweet, sweet evidence of his lunacy to a previous page. Bleh.

I was helping.

With?

Umm.  You know.  Stuff.  Like I always help.  With... umm... whatnot.

There's always half-time.

fixed.

See, now that's helping!

Wow, how much faster is 'exponentially' faster?

I mean, do you just go level e¹, level e², level e³?

THE PEOPLE MUST BE TOLD!

Also, in the interests of reducing the amount of stupid on this thread, I present a joke about exponentials....

The cocky exponential function e^x is strolling along the road insulting the functions he sees walking by. He scoffs at a wandering polynomial for the shortness of its Taylor series. He snickers at a passing smooth function of compact support and its glaring lack of a convergent power series about many of its points. He positively laughs as he passes |x| for being nondifferentiable at the origin. He smiles, thinking to himself, "Damn, it's great to be e^x. I'm real analytic everywhere. I'm my own derivative. I blow up faster than anybody and shrink faster too. All the other functions suck."

Lost in his own egomania, he collides with the constant function 3, who is running in terror in the opposite direction.

"What's wrong with you? Why don't you look where you're going?" demands e^x. He then sees the fear in 3's eyes and says "You look terrified!"

"I am!" says the panicky 3. "There's a differential operator just around the corner. If he differentiates me, I'll be reduced to nothing! I've got to get away!" With that, 3 continues to dash off.

"Stupid constant," thinks e^x. "I've got nothing to fear from a differential operator. He can keep differentiating me as long as he wants, and I'll still be there."

So he scouts off to find the operator and gloat in his smooth glory. He rounds the corner and defiantly introduces himself to the operator. "Hi. I'm e^x."

"Hi. I'm d / dy."

MPS did a lot of business from I heard/read from SWG from the Jedi wannabe's pre-patch09.  The whole economy felt like an exploit for awhile and they were there. 

This thread just makes me glad I was around when it was waterthread...

I mean, I still get azzraped on here once in a while but at least you guys can't throw that "you're 8 years behind" shit in my face! *flex*

  And that proves I exposed exploits?  Go back and read...  Find an exploit in my columns...

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/3244/mps0ma.jpg

  Those two are mine...

  LOL, I did not say I was leaving,(WTF would you guys play with?) just that I am concentraing my efforts elsewhere to respond to other comments/questions, as far as the article goes here, it is dead.  But I will still play with ya when I have a few minutes :)

So, are you saying that if you wrote for a white supremacy magazine or some other equally morally corrupt place (like MPS) it shouldn't reflect on how people view you? I'm just wondering.

You're 8 years behind! As the shit-thrower, I should point out that I was only barely around in the Waterthread days and wasn't around before that. But I thought "WTF is this?", joined the dots to LtM, read up on catasses and car fires, and only THEN did I get myself azzraped.

Well, you are playing UO.  :-D

  So what you are saying is that if you live in the U.S. you are a capitalist pig that spills blood for oil?  Or if you live in Kentucky you are a hilljack that has no teeth and chews tobacco?  Or maybe you live in California, so of course you are an illegal immigrant from Mexico?  I know, maybe you have no life and spend the majority of time posting on a website, in the hopes of gaining some personal entertainment from trying to make others feel like smaller then you?  Come on lose the stereotypes and make a competent flame, belittlement, or whatever you are trying to do.  People should be judged for their actions, not their associations... 


  P.S.  I wonder how many ignorant people in the world would use "morally corrupt" to describe the U.S. in general.  I don't know I guess we could say that Clinton was "morally corrupt" for getting a BJ while in office and married?   Is abortion "morally corrupt"?  You are doing nothing more then stating an ignorant opinion, however you are entitled to it.  To you I guess, the world is flat...

Well, since you asked me to outright flame you, OK. But remember, you asked for it.

You're a terrible writer with a 6th grade grasp of English. Your sentence structure is atrocious and your grammar skills are a wreck. You write for the bottom-feeding dreck on the internet because it's who will put up with your shit. You can ask anyone here, I don't think I've ever really gone off on someone like this, especially someone as innocuous with you. You're not a threat to anyone. You're just a naive little dick who was pointed here by Bruce who thought it would be fine to post a giant essay without reading up on the fact we had all of these ideas before any sort of diku-less future was even a glimmer in your eye. The fact that Bruce wouldn't put you on his site should have been reason enough for you not to pull that stunt over here.

I don't mind you sticking around and chatting, there's lots of things to say but there's also lots of things that no longer have to be said. But you said them and you're terribly bad at defending yourself. As such you find yourself at a fork in the road. You can go down one path and be a little whiny dick who goes around posting his senseless completely unoriginal ramblings in drive-by showings of what a douche he is OR you can read up on this entire little section of the internet and what has been written over the last two and a half years (for us, more for others) and maybe come up with some original thought. But coming back around for a chance to stick up for yourself just makes you look stupid. Your analogies are terrible and you miss the point of half the posts made against you. Obviously you're new to the whole moderated and smart forum discussion "thing" so it's probably in your best interest to go radio silent for a few weeks and then come back and ADD to conversations instead of invoking drama that's been settled for a long, long time.

That's what was recommended to me a long while ago. I give you that advice from the sub-cockles of my heart. Not because I like you, but because I hate reading your drivel. But you're obviously passionate enough to keep around if you knew at all the subject matter you were talking about. You've been writing for morons at MPS, deal with it. As arrogant as it sounds, to many people this is the "big league." Most writers from other sites would get shit on also. It's a league about reputation, pride, and relationships. I love my staff here, I love MANY of the readers (the vast majority) and I have given up jobs for this site. I will not have you come in here and peddle your tired shit in my living room.

Was that clear enough?

Neeeeed Signe post.

(http://www.ritilan.com/archives/images/blogimages/012904_ohsnap.PNG)

Also, I'm rather in awe of Bruce at this point.  You ban him, and he uses this guy to fag up the board by proxy.  Devious.

The continuous functions were at a disco. At the dance floor, cosine and sine are jumping up and down, and the polynomials are forming a ring. But the exponential function is standing seperately the whole evening. Due to sympathy for it, the identity joins it und suggest: "Come one, just integrate yourself!" – "I've tried that already", answers the exponential function, "but it didn't change a thing!"

Did I miss the Mongoose-Bruce connection somewhere?

Heh.

Yes, but don't worry.  We're forming a Stephen Zepp/Broughden connection next week.  Stay tuned!   :-P

If Mongoose and Bruce were to join together to form some Voltron-esque forum pest, would the Goose-Bruce posts be so enormous that they couldn't fly more than 100 feet above water?

Science demands an answer imo.

The exponent to levelling is 1.01.

Oooh is he cute! And does he have a firm butt? And will he play furry dress up with me?

  I am not a threat to anyone?  WTF is going through that ignoramus mind of yours?  My intent had nothing to do with being a threat to anything, is was simply to get feedback about an article that I had written, honestly what is going through your mind that you assumed that I was trying to be a "threat" to anyone?(This is quite comical as you do not even understand intent)

  Bruce has articles on his website that are third party, really?  Can you give me a link, I do not see any.  By the way your website(Don't flatter yourself) was not mentioned alone, it was mentioned as part of a list.  Why you may feel your website is "Holy" it is nothing more then a website, along with millions of others...  Imagine that though, I judge this website on what material it contains, instead of being associated with an ignorant, "pissed off at the world", moron such as yourself.  Look at you, what are you actually progressing here?  Maybe if you caught me 15-20 years ago you could get my goat, but honestly you are wasting your breath.  Know what takes you forward, and what holds you back, if you do nothing more then to concentrate on negativity, you will get nothing but neagative responses.(Such as this one, dumbass)  So take whatever the agenda is that you have, and take it forward in a postive fashion, otherwise your wisdom will go nowhere, and you will remain to the world what your are, IMO, nothing more then ignoramus trying to belittle someone else.  Can you not do anything constructive for the topic which started this thread?  Or or you so at a loss of intelligence and words that you can do nothing more then flame me?  Regardless, to me you are nothing more then a piece of online entertainment, held back from actually doing anything constructive by a compassionate hate for the topic(In this case the MMO industry) your are trying to be cynical about.  Although I do not know your actual physical age, your mental age must be quite youthful if you are convinced that you are taking your "cause" in a postivie direction by flaming me constantly.

  If the artcle that I have written contained items or expressions that were well known by the members of this website, could you not have commented in a different fashion to convey wisdom, instead of ignorance?  Although it seems you have at least a tiny hint of intelligence, it is largely trumped over by your lustful hate.  I am not your enemy, I do not develop MMO's and I have no say-so in the features that are inside them.  If you feel that you are all high and mighty then use your knowledge to show others what your point is, this breeds respect.  Acting like an ass and getting all pissed off makes me look at you as a retard trying to piss in the corner of a round room, although I may intially laugh, it has me take pity in the end.  Are you trying to impress someone?  Because I have not learned anything from you yet...  Is your mission to try to piss off all the new members and have them leave so you can say "L00k4t m3 1 m4d3 h1m l34v3, 1 4m s0 c00l"?  Let me explain what will happen here in the future, you will either:

1.  Give up and ban me.(Oh blue-eyed blonde-haired master, should I bring all the books to the town square Sunday morning for a bonfire?)

2.  Continue to act like an ass and put a smile on my face.(Really this is a website on the internet, and the internet is mainly used for entertainment)

3.  You will pull your head out of your ass and and start using words to constructively further the cause of your website, instead of trying to scare people away from it.(This is the only way you will get respect from me, or honest respect from anyone else that has a brain between their shoulders)

  Now before you reply,(I am pretty sure by now you are frantically searching for the reply button by now) think about those 3 choices you have.  And know that neither will effect me in anyway but the third, and I honestly believe you are too ignorant and hateful for that.  SO think of it as what you want from me.  Do you want to admit that you cannot except my opinon or views, then be cynical and ban me.(LOL)  Do you want to further my entertainment value, then continue with your negative ranting and ravings, but please be a little more passionate because I bore easily.  Or do you want to actually earn my respect?  Your choice, choose wisely.(LOL, Indiana Jones flashback, how ironic, because I already know the choice you have made)   

  Comeone, don't get full of yourself, this website was on a list of websites.  It wasn't like I was told "OMG POST ON F13"!!!  Although I do find it funny that you banned Bruce, LOL.

Haha.  2 seconds to copy/paste retort. Suddenly changing your writing style, spelling, and grammar after incoherence? Priceless.





edit.  Errr, I suck at mimicking commercials.  You get the idea.  Seriously, I wish you had just came up with a witty rebuttal. :(

It nearly sounded credible.

Unfortunatey you managed to return to type in the last paragraph.

Telling me you laughed out loud twice at your own immense wit whilst typing it sort of spoiled the moment for you there.

Of rabbits, I can't figure why
They add not, but sure multiply.
They have the potential
To be exponential,
But don't give a toss about pi.

What has the world cometwo?

Let me try, everyone knows my grasp of the grammar sucks perhaps I can get through to him.


Listen, Mongoose, you work(ed) for an exploiter site.  That makes you damaged goods, the same way somebody who works for IGE is a jackass by association you are a jackass by association.  Beyond that, saying you are a "writer" for some 'sploit site gives you no cred.  If you want to just drop down onto a forum and post a fucking essay you need cred.  You have no cred, in fact you have negative cred because you are associated with Bruce and MPS.

Schild doesn't need to do anything and he's probably not going to ban you, this thread will continue for as long as it serves the purpose of providing amusement or until you say something really stupid.  Then it will go to the den, there special people will have a few more good times in it and it will die.

You are the one who needs to make an adjustment, it is COMMON fucking knowledge for anyone who knows anything about internet communities that the initial icebreaker is hard.  There are forums with membership #'s so massive nobody really cares and others with communities so small any new face is welcome.  There are also forums that have newbie introduction sections.  F13 doesn't fit any of these categories.  Your icebreaker was a treatise on the state of MMO's that as so many others have said is 5 years late.  Developers need to focus more on fun less on shiney, often they dont seem to understand simple shit like timesink cockblocks aren't fun (McQuaid I'm looking at you) we know, we've got that, it is a fucking given.

Imagine if you will somebody showing up and posting a lengthy post along these lines:
"Blizzard is fucking great gaiz!  Like seriously, I can't believe how much they own!!  Does anyone agree with me?"

That is what you have done.  It is not too late though, I suggest you just walk away for now.  Don't travel the well-worn path of some loser who shows up, does something stupid, gets flamed a bit and then refuses to go away all the while claiming "I dont care about your stupid site lolz!".  Those guys always get banned in the end because eventually that shtick gets to be very not fun.

(http://www.syndistar.com/product_media/thumbs/spda131stkr.jpg)

Can somebody repost the original post?  I don't know how I missed this "LOL Wife LOL" thread.

  LOL, you honestly lost me here, as I have no idea what you are trying to say.

  I'm impressed...  Now post a reply in your own words, that is not tainted with hate or ignorance, that is in reference to the original topic of this thread.  If you can manage this, I will firmly be under the effect of "shock and awe".

Would I be right in thinking that 6th grade is 10-12 years old in America? In my day, people didn't get out of primary school if they were using a noun as an adjective, whether or not it was a Latin affectation.

<indent><indent>LOL.(stuff in brackets)<space><space>Markup skills of a hebetudinous megatherium.

At Mongooses request.  Ironically I was *somewhat* on his side at first.  He makes Broughden look like a model addition around here.




edit.  Needed more gh.
edit 2.  Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but I always leave my original post up for prosperity sake.  Even when I alter/delete/hate/drunken when I typed it.  REPOST the first page, bitch!  You lost 2 cool points for actually deleting it. 
edit 3.  I do believe we only have a handfull of bans here.  Sir_Bruce, Shockeye, and DV are all I can think of.

Of course I don't think StGabe was ever banned so you never know.

  Woah, are you serious?  So what you are saying is that you are a bunch of stuck up snobs and that only people with substantial credit can post an article here?  Then it is true that I am ignorant, and you have my apology.(It did not mention this when I registered)

  I am associated with Bruce, how did this happen?(Because I got one email from him in regards to the article I wrote, this gives me association?)

   "Don't travel the well worn path..."    I did nothing stupid, I wrote an article on what I feel are the major problems,(And how to correct them) in today's MMOs.  The original article was quite long, a little over 14k words, but I knew that would not get printed anywhere because of the length, so I tried to cram it into 3500 words.(Which did not work)  That is why when a few peeps made comments about how "choppy" it was, I did not reply because they were correct.  As far as me not caring about this site, I have no connections to it, so whether this site fails or becomes a huge success means nothing to me.  If this is my "icebreaker" then fine, bend me over and don't forget the reach around, but if you need credit to post, then I think you are all ignorant.  If everyone that posted had immaculate credit, who the hell would be cynical?

P.S.  Kind of funny how you brought up IGE, with SOE now allowing trading between players and taking cash from every sale, I am disapointed that you did not bring up their name also.  I had written an article on the whole "cash for coin/items/accounts" thing before, however that topic is for another time.  Right now I am waiting for Schild's next Chess move...

Listen dumbass, the whole cred thing isn't new.  When you register then post that day by creating a new thread in any self-respecting non-family forum you are in trouble.  When your new thread is Captain Obvious material not to mention long as fuck.  You are going to take some heat.  This isn't some fucking blog where more comments = more better.

You are currently being the forum equivalent of a telemarketer.   Nobody invited you to come post your essay here.  You didn't send it to the mods and ask if they wanted to front page it.  You just show up and start trying to sell us your ideas.

Just remember if you really dont care what anyone here thinks or says you will just leave.  This logic is infallible.

Counter-claims like: "I'm just returning to your site over and over for my own amusement; BUT I DONT CARE!" only serve to make a poster look pathetic and stupid.

  I have twin 11 year olds going into 6th grade, although there is nothing wrong with the sentence.

Go read the list of people signed up with this community.  Notice the red names?  They are here and interact with us.  For a reason.  IGE is a completely different beast then SOE.  SOE regulates their RMT via regulations and design concerning the game.  One example is the fact that EQ2 only has 2 servers where this is possible; though they do offer free moves for those whom want to join it.  IGE utilizes sweatshop designs in third world countries and has no consideration for balancing or limiting access; like walmart they do not give a fuck what happens to the economy or the people whom their practice affects.  

As far as posting, there is extreme leeway on who posts and what becomes an article. Llava became a blue name quickly.  Illiterate people such as Voodoolilly have also done articles.  Are we pretencious? Sure.  We have reason to be.  Even Bruce had to ask to be allowed to "read" here.


edit.  grammar. We are elite, after all.

You are reactionary.  Want some advice I gave to another person recently?  Step back.  Post some NONE-inflammatory remarks elsewhere.  Instead of trying to defend yourself so much (thus fucking up my internet, by proxy) why do you not try and be part of the community? 

We have TONS of threads addressing various things.  I recommend avoiding Hello Kitty ones, though.  Schild is extremely vocal about it.

Funny. Every time someone flames you, you respond with something akin to this.

Every time someone actually attempts to make points or have a reasonable conversation, you either ignore their ideas or simply assert that you are unassailably correct.

Does this remind anyone else of CNN's "Crossfire" in 2004?

  Yes I noticed the red names and the green ones, normally I do not like to be seen with my clothes off, but I am just a name on the screen here :)  Well IGE is a topic that can be hairy as it is a middle man nothing more, IMO the MMO devs need to take resposibility for this issue.  Although I am not a great fan of what SOE is doing, I do feel that when facing reality, it is the only intelligent choice.  No one can stop this market,(Think of prohibition, enough people with money want it, so a market will always be there) so the actual MMO companies should take the profit from it, maybe using it to make a better MMO...

  It is nothing more then an introduction I understand that, but my flag won't fall, my pride gets in the way.  LOL, we are all human and have our flaws...


P.S.  My secret agenda is to surpass the 380k views and 891 replies that I got on the Public WOW boards, when I got the last of the classes to 60 and posted screenshots, that ain't gonna happen :)  This thread is dead, you wont see me posting in it again, maybe I will look for another topic.  Where is the abortion section, under political?

Now this was a decent response.  Continue with this and you will thrive!  Minus the clothes off thing. 

I encourage everyone to participate here, but (literally) at least half of F13 are lurkers.  Personally, I do not type well in this setting.  I make up for it by kicking ass in games.  The RMT thing is a sticky wicket (as seen in other threads).  People will always stick to their opinions regardless of basis or facts; kinda like how things are in regards to President Bush.  We have some oustanding RMT threads going though, so I will sidestep that tangent.  I will make the request that you repost your original thread starter though; some of our brethren did miss it and if you are looking for intelligent discourse on your writing it does not help to remove it.

Also please do not quote the entire passage + quotes within quotes.  It makes scrolling through a bitch.

(http://www.publicdoman.com/images/ClownShoes.jpg)

Your education begins here Mongoose (http://thejeni.livejournal.com/).

He's trying to make new friends. Though I suppose he could steal my old friends.

WUA Subliminal Vision (tm) GO!


"I am Bruce.  I will take youthful ass.  Ass is pretty.  (LOL)"

It's all there, people!  It's the WUA Code.  Like the Bible Code, only better.

 :heart:

:hello_kitty: MMO will rule the galaxy!

You're not helping make this thread better.

Making this thread better is a futile hope.  At this point we should just go for Worst Thread Ever and enjoy the ride.  Now summon all your compassionate hate, and flame him for the cause!

Oops, the original topic of this thread got overwritten somehow.

Interesting, and non-existent now:


(edit) More pointless stalking! For an example of Mongoose's multiplayerstrategies.com writing, see the boxed "free sample tutorial" here (http://www.multiplayerstrategies.com/wow/index.cfm).


Also his catass PvP character (http://www.wowguru.com/db/profiles/mongoose-id1106148/), and his "I'm a writer for MPS" review of Auto Assault (http://boards.autoassault.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=132553&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#132553) with the hilarious sole response: "Question: what is MPS?". And from a Slashdot comment (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/28/1723200&from=rss):

I gotta agree with WUA on this one...

Shockeye got banned ?  :-o

What did I miss ?  :heartbreak:

Shockeye isn't banned.

You killed him, didn't you ?

Neg.

Dance puppets, dance.

What.  The.  Fuck.

Stop torturing frogs people.  I mean, come on.  You take them out of the jars when they're gassed, open them up, note the organs in your jotters and then leave them on the shelf beside the textbooks.

You do not wait for the ether to wear off and then attach the voltmeter to them.

Kill this please.

 :-o


I thought Schild was one of teh jewboys ?

And finally, to round off my tri-posting in style, I'd like to ask what the fuck Eldeac was drinking when he posted.

I need to get me some of that.

Whatever. It all follows his entire line of reasoning. He assumed it was ok for him to solicit a 7 page essay on a site he'd never been to before. What shocks you about the aryan comment?

Not shocked.

Kinda tingly and giggly at it.

It's like calling Shaft a 'honky' down the phone.

Shaft was a honky...prior to a secret government experiment.  :-o

(http://www.shaftagents.com/page128.jpg)

This is the internet and schild is a player... so that would make him a Jewboi. 

Do try and keep up with the times, Ironwood.  Maybe the internets are not for you.

I am reminded :

#171987 +(7764)- [X]

<Th3No0b> Im going to be the next hitler
<Th3No0b> Im going to kill all the jews and 1 clown
<RageAgainsttheAmish> why the clown
<Th3No0b> See? no one cares about the jews
<RageAgainsttheAmish> lmao


Not appropriate ?  Sure.  This thread was dead anyway, right ?

bash.org is what gets me through work  :heart:

Indeed.

Strangely, I got there this time through a search on Wizard's Hats.  Everytime I manage to forget Bash, I end up there again giggling in my office like some nutjob.

Next I'll look up TV Go Home again...

bash doesn't update enough. I ran across another similiar site that seemed more active recently but just as quickly lost it. Ah, te good geekissues days where there were 15 new ones every day.

I hope the Escapist likes your article.

Oh this thread was entertaining enough for me to blow 2.5 hours reading from front to back. In BigPocketBusinessman terms that was one conference call and a staff meeting.

However, what this thread was missing was more PEEPS! (http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/)

Anyway, thanks for the entertainment, now back to chasing the almighty dollar.

#608067 +(2080)- [X]

<zexis> hmmm you think this statistic is real?
<zexis> every 2 minutes a woman is raped in Ohio
<hal> why doesn't she just move?
<zexis> ?

I  :heart: you guys.

You're welcome =)

Here's one from the Good Ole' Days :

#21018 +(95)- [X]

<Lum_> From tomorrow through Labor Day, a U.S. holiday celebrated on September 3, jeans are fine for all non-customer situations, any day of the week.
<Loafman> Now, is that black jeans or all colors?
<Lum_> all colors
<Xeen> I say we push this as far as it will go.
<Lum_> I got some with no crotch
<Soulflame> ...
<Lum_> I'll wear those tomorrow
<Xeen> Ok, so not quite as far as it will go.

I am trying to hold back the tears ...


I am almost hysteric.

My friends call me Jewbei.

It's pronounced 'Jobbie'.

#9322 +(8495)- [X]

<tag> Ouroboros: lets play Pong
<Ouroboros> Ok.
<tag> |    .
<Ouroboros> .    |
<tag> |  .
<Ouroboros>    . |
<tag> | .
<Ouroboros>      | .
<Ouroboros> Whoops