Come help save mud history

[Ingmar]

We just rebooted every 25 hours and everyone lost their gear. 

[WindupAtheist]

Regarding WoW housing:

Even the relatively unsociable new-to-genre console kiddies without a hint of roleplay in them would cotton to the system if it were pitched correctly. These are people who whip themselves into a frenzy killing 8000 bandicoots just to see "Achievement: Bandicoot Buttfucker" pop up on their screen and check itself off a list for absolutely no visible benefit. Throw in a ten-foot tall gold statue of their character ripping the head off a bandicoot to put in the foyer of their castle, and they'll go apeshit. You have a bunch of trophy room PVE/PVP acheivement shit, some gold-sink shit, and some craftable shit for people to put in there.

"But WUA, what's the point? I mean do we want people to stay in their houses and depopulate the cities, or hang in the cities all the time, in which case why even have houses?"

We want people to visit their houses, but not spend all their time there. What's more, we want people to visit other people's houses so as to facilitate the real driver of most MMO interaction: good old-fashioned e-peen envy. So we add... say... some sort of house-based item that makes all raid buffs last 50% longer for the night once you click on it. (Or whatever, really.) Then when the whole raid visits to get the buff (travel time should be nil) they're thinking "Man Bob is really fucking pleased with that gold statue of himself. I need to grind me some bandicoots and show him what's up!"

Then, as a developer, the system gives you ways to mess with player behavior without touching game balance. People aren't running Dungeon X enough because they don't think it drops enough good loot? Let people steal paintings off the walls of the boss room and put them in their house. Have lots of random ones that don't show up every time. Have rare ones. People can't bitch because, after all, they don't really NEED paintings. But we all know that a certain demographic will go poopsock-berzerk for months or years trying to collect every last one.

I mean nobody runs the high-end old world dungeons for loot, but there are people who make a fucking lifestyle out of running Stratholme solo over and over again hoping to get that mount the Baron drops 1% of the time. Now you can get people doing that to every dungeon looking for rare deco widgets, and if they really get to hate it they can just stop, since it's not something that provides a gameplay benefit. It's optional grind.

Economy is getting too inflated but you've already added nuclear-powered flying mammoths that can hold 12 people and cost a fortune? Gold-plated floor tiles in your mansion for only 300k! People would love wasting money on conspicuous-consumption bullshit just to make their guildmates go "Jesus Christ Bob, how much money do you HAVE?!" as they step into the house to get their buff.

Does a certain crafting profession need some love? It's trivial to give them some new house widgets to make. I mean if you gave them something useful to make you'd have to worry about how it balanced out against similar items, how it affected PVP, yadda yadda. But this is easy. And the crafters won't care, because the stuff they're making WILL sell.

To be completely cynical: There are ways to tickle people's reward-response (good) that don't involve speeding up mudflation (bad).

[Merusk]

No, I played games with rent.. and then never logged in to those muds again.

Again, bullshit "you must login" req's make me not play your game.

[WindupAtheist]

I just nosed past Stratics, and UO is having their new "event moderators" set up "offices" in the old Counselor's Halls where you can leave a note in a "wedding book" to contact them and set up an in-game wedding. I have no desire to get e-married, but the whole thing is so deliciously old-school RPful that it makes me want to go back. *sniffle*

[schild]

Agh, I am soooo sick of arguing about SWG. Time has moved past it.

But it hasn't moved past muds?

Hence (you knew I would drag it back here) the desire to get this shit written down in that Wiki, so that we at least know that we're repeating history.

 

Inevitable. If you think it's new, it probably isn't. But like I said before, it's a nearly impossible feat (a history of MUDs, that is). Of course, there's always this thread. Or the entire forum. ^_^

Edit: clarity.

[Raph]

Agh, I am soooo sick of arguing about SWG. Time has moved past it.

But it hasn't moved past muds?

Sigh. Least mudlike of any of the bigger MMORPGs, certainly. But whatever. :)

[Raph]

No, I played games with rent.. and then never logged in to those muds again.

Again, bullshit "you must login" req's make me not play your game.

Yeah, there's good reasons why most everyone has moved away from harder manifestations of this. That said -- I reference Pokey (one of the more popular Facebook apps) for a reason. They make you login every few days to feed the damn dog. Or else, a friend can feed it for you, thus making you come back out of guilt.

The mechanic is manipulative and uncomfortable. It's also not going away. If forcing you doesn't work, the game will use subtler psychological tricks on you instead. WoW's doing the same things, only in a less obvious format. Rest XP helped you keep up with the Joneses... it also serves as an incentive to come back to claim a "bonus." Etc.

[Slyfeind]

DaoC added housing and it killed the capital cities within a week.

Were capital cities really that popular to begin with? Honest question, because I rarely went there. It was only (as Twat pointed out) to grind trade skills, and I quit DAOC shortly after housing was introduced. I don't remember capitals being bustling centers of social activity, like they are in most other games. And they weren't centers of travel, because they were off the horse routes...at least when I played. You had to hop off the horse in Mag Mell, then autorun for about 2 minutes.

So...yeah, completely ignorant of them one way or another, but definitely worth bringing up.

[Sheepherder]

The mechanic is manipulative and uncomfortable. It's also not going away. If forcing you doesn't work, the game will use subtler psychological tricks on you instead. WoW's doing the same things, only in a less obvious format. Rest XP helped you keep up with the Joneses... it also serves as an incentive to come back to claim a "bonus." Etc.

Or level three alts at once for maximum efficiency. 

And they weren't centers of travel, because they were off the horse routes...at least when I played. You had to hop off the horse in Mag Mell, then autorun for about 2 minutes.

Note to future MMO devs: your capital city should be a travel hub.  Also, travel should be really fucking fast so that people can actually play your goddamn game.

[Fordel]

They were never as concentrated as they are in most other games, it's true. Partly because they were sort of out of the way, partly because so much of the games focus was on RvR, so the Portal Keep became the other competing hub. There was definitely a consistent and non-trivial population of players in them pre-housing though.

Post housing, ghost town.

The only exception was the Dred capitals, being the only truly safe zones on those servers.

[tkinnun0]

Your paragraph gave me cognitive dissonance, tkinnon0. "Only in the most pedantic sense. You can make more than one item in one go, and more fundamentally, the multiplicity of items is only there as a mark on a ruler, since any given recipe you buy is guaranteed to be 5-30 of exactly the same action with exactly the same result, then you have another ruler with hash marks on it." I mean, for me, you described the essence of repetitive clicking. Again, your mileage may vary. :)

I recently ground my jewelcrafting to 440/450, so let's take this slightly outdated guide for 1-350 as an example. If you have already gathered the raw materials, you need to craft items from 22 recipes. That's 22 clicks to select a recipe, 22 times to type in the number of items to craft and 22 clicks to 'create'.

In contrast, your trainer has 70 recipes for levels 1-350. So if you buy all of the recipes (and why wouldn't you), you'll actually click more times buying them than crafting! And the crafting would probably take less than 10 minutes! And once you're done you'll never ever have to craft those items again!

Which brings me to my bigger point, in that saying crafting in WoW is "pressing the same buttons over and over" misses the forest from the trees. Sure, WoW is a button-controlled game, so to start an action you need to push a button, but it is the planning and execution leading up to the pushing of the button that is the true crafting in WoW. Do you play the gathering game yourself? Do you search for good deals on the Auction House? Or do you get in a guild that let's you take them from their bank for free? The actual act of crafting, the resulting item and the level-up to the skill are just the exclamation point, a confirmation of a job well done.

Saying crafting in WoW is "pressing the same buttons over and over" is about as silly as saying raiding in WoW is pressing the same button over and over because there's a confirmation box that you have to click before you can loot a boss.

[pxib]

To be completely cynical: There are ways to tickle people's reward-response (good) that don't involve speeding up mudflation (bad).

While you're channeling Dogbert, I think it's worth noting that the ideal subscription game would dissuade people from logging in while simultaneously inspiring them to continue to pay the monthly fee. Players buy the game (and every expansion), sets up accounts and pay every month, but neither plays nor requires customer service for the actual game. The more they can experience offline and alone, while still justifying a monthly fee, the better the business model.

Design that and you'll make a mint.

[Venkman]

Like I said earlier (and I'm sure I wasn't the first in five years to say it): WoW doesn't have a crafting game. It has a resource-gathering one. And that is merely an extension of the entire game, which is about gathering the resources to further optimize your character at specific points on your path of... optimizing your character.

Not that I care at the moment. 18 months later (on and off) and I still love flying my epic engineering copter 

That said -- I reference Pokey (one of the more popular Facebook apps) for a reason. They make you login every few days to feed the damn dog. Or else, a friend can feed it for you, thus making you come back out of guilt.

Client-less MMOs, one of the reasons general browser-based ones have taken off. Anytime really, and soon anywhere on your smart phone (current in some cases). Further, Facebook is an asynch MMO after a fashion, so you've got the built-in compulsory keep-up-with-the-Joneses factor already (good for YoVille too). Finally, Facebook is a neophytes haven of experiences veterans have gotten bored of years ago, a place where a lot of the same crap that tried and died from the core genres can be tried again because it's new to them.

Ya know, kinda like WoW 

Preserving history lets us point and mock at all the newbie mistakes being made. But the value of this isn't helped by these mistakes being made with tens of millions of dollars behind them. What really needs to happen is for there to be a presicience model of sorts, some toolbox by which developers with humility look at what they're planning against what was tried against the team they have and/or can get and gives themselves a scorecard featuring probabilities.

Right now the industry still feels very much like a bunch of developers who think they are building a game they themselves want to play without having the capability to recognize the holes in their talent or resources to actually pull it off. I used to think this was bad project management, but it seems deeper than that.

[Margalis]

I think it's telling that some of the most successful MMOs come from companies without previous MMO experience, even though the industry as a whole seems to think that veteran status is important above all else. It's like how NFL coaches don't play to win but rather play to not get criticized. You won't get attacked for kicking a field goal on 4th and inches, even if it's not the right move. Similarly the MMO industry puts tremendous value on "proven" talent, even if that talent is a proven failure. (I'm not calling anyone here a proven failure, I'm just referring to the musical-chairs quality of MMO development teams)

That said -- I reference Pokey (one of the more popular Facebook apps) for a reason.

I really don't get why people keep pointing to things like Facebook, Habbo Hotel and other such schlock. It strikes me as the typical scenario where everyone behind the curve attemtps to catch up by weakly replicating an existing success. This week everyone wants to jump on the social networking bandwagon, but what reason is there to believe that something that works for Facebook would work for an MMO?

Why not point to Hopscotch, or Boggle, or eating food - all fairly popular activities?

Over the past couple years every VC firm on earth has been inundated with me-too social networking concepts and this strikes me as the video-game manifestation of that. Concept X is popular so let's copy concept X.

[Raph]

I think it's telling that some of the most successful MMOs come from companies without previous MMO experience

I am not sure the stats actually match up to that, with the obvious exception of WoW. Do they? (Makes me want to run some numbers).

I really don't get why people keep pointing to things like Facebook, Habbo Hotel and other such schlock. It strikes me as the typical scenario where everyone behind the curve attemtps to catch up by weakly replicating an existing success. This week everyone wants to jump on the social networking bandwagon, but what reason is there to believe that something that works for Facebook would work for an MMO?

Why not point to Hopscotch, or Boggle, or eating food - all fairly popular activities?

Because those cheesy Facebook things are the things both stealing MMO mechanics and reaching massive audiences with them... it's not bc it's faddish, but bc it's working.

[Triforcer]

And facebook makes how much in monthly subscriptions again?  Sub model v. FTP (or an ad model, which is not possible in an MMO except to an extremely limited extent in most settings) model is the fabulous, fluorescent-pink god of Comparing Apples to Oranges. 

EDIT: Is this why microtrans is the newest MMO fad?  Does the MMO cognoscenti really think the industry can sustain itself by me paying a dollar for a hot purse on the arm my gigantically round-eyed anime girl avatar, and two dollars to have a border of pokemon dancing around my screen?  Wouldn't the industry collapse when the dreamy boy in homeroom finally was impressed enough to text your customer? 

[Sjofn]

We just rebooted every 25 hours and everyone lost their gear. 

Deep down, I loved the daily reboot. Something about going out with no gear and punching animals to death so I could skin them and make shitty armor amused the shit out of me.

[Margalis]

I am not sure the stats actually match up to that, with the obvious exception of WoW. Do they? (Makes me want to run some numbers).

And why exactly are we making an exception there?

Does anyone honestly believe that WOW would be the same huge success had it been helmed by a dream team of MMO industry vets?

Because those cheesy Facebook things are the things both stealing MMO mechanics and reaching massive audiences with them... it's not bc it's faddish, but bc it's working.

Food reaches an even more massive audience. And people actually pay for food.

Anyway logging in once a day to feed your pet is the Tamogotchi, not the MMO.

[Ratman_tf]

We've all certainly managed to pee in Raph's cheerios and haven't been on-topic since page one.

 

[WindupAtheist]

Raph's real design challenge is to make a game that everyone won't want to rant about and derail his every conversation for years down the road. 

[FatuousTwat]

DaoC added housing and it killed the capital cities within a week.

Were capital cities really that popular to begin with? Honest question, because I rarely went there. It was only (as Twat pointed out) to grind trade skills, and I quit DAOC shortly after housing was introduced. I don't remember capitals being bustling centers of social activity, like they are in most other games. And they weren't centers of travel, because they were off the horse routes...at least when I played. You had to hop off the horse in Mag Mell, then autorun for about 2 minutes.

So...yeah, completely ignorant of them one way or another, but definitely worth bringing up.

Pretty much. They were ugly, buggy, unnavigable messes. There were still places in TNN where you could fall through the world even after Atlantis was released. Camelot was slightly better and the other realms capital city was even worse.

[Venkman]

Food reaches an even more massive audience. And people actually pay for food.

Anyway logging in once a day to feed your pet is the Tamogotchi, not the MMO.

Logging in once a day to empty your harvester is different how?

The food analogy is just being pedantic. Might as well talk about air too while you're at it (I'd say water, but people were able to monetize that  )

Facebook is about similar usage patterns. No, there's not a lot of money being there, at all. Too much time just getting free stuff out that people are used to not paying for it. As a result, I suspect social networking sites are the current bubble. HOWEVER, and it's a big ass freakin' "however", the cost to try something is a hell of a lot cheaper. If the game fails, well, it doesn't take a triple-mortgaged house and entire family savings with it. That inspires more to try, more to iterate, and more evolution in general. Ya know, kinda like MUDs.

And this goes back to the other recurring theme you also mentioned: that it takes an outsider to really shake things up. Well, to be an outsider is to also accept that some of the "rules" don't apply to you.

And why exactly are we making an exception there? {in regards to Raph's response to your points about most successful MMOs coming from outsiders}

Blizzard was technically an outsider, but only in the sense that this was their first MMO. Given the incestuous nature of this industry, and that Blizzard was already in an adjacent space, I don't think that necessarily applies. Better examples would include Sulake, New Horizons Interactive, and Ganz 

[Slyfeind]

We've all certainly managed to pee in Raph's cheerios and haven't been on-topic since page one.

Yeah but if we stayed on topic, this wouldn't have gone anywhere.

Raph: Let's make a wiki
Others: ok

Thread ends.

[Nerf]

Back on the topic of MUDs, and non-DIKUs at that, I have to throw in a favorable mention to two of my favorites.

Genocide - http://geno.org - Pure PVP, everyone picks race/class combo at beginning of each match and is thrown into the world naked.  Run around and grab armor/weapons/items laying on the ground in the different (randomly spawned each time) zones to wear or sell for heals.  Advancement was a points system that was nothing more than e-peen, and at 5,000 points you became a regulator and were immediately given a dev char so that you could design your own area and submit it for consideration to be made active.  Played this for years, loved it, you could log in and play for a match or two or all night.  If you logged in mid-match or died early, there were a host of ascii games to play to pass the time-- connect 4, poker, blackjack, etc.

Ground Zero - Another pure PVP, round-based game with e-peen being the only advancement.  When you logged in you were automatically placed on either the red team or the blue team, and ran around the randomly generated map looking for weapons to take out the opposing team with.  Tanks, Napalm air-strikes, and some other goodies were also lying around.  The end goal was to push THE BIG RED BUTTON that was somewhere between the 2nd and 4th basement floors, guarded by a nasty fucker with an RPG.  Whichever team pushed the big red button set off the nuke, winning the game.  Server reboots and it all starts over again.  Just mindless fun, like Unreal Tourney in text with a much larger, randomly generated map and persistent e-peen points.

Fuck, thats a great idea.

[Ratman_tf]

We've all certainly managed to pee in Raph's cheerios and haven't been on-topic since page one.

Yeah but if we stayed on topic, this wouldn't have gone anywhere.

Raph: Let's make a wiki
Others: ok

Thread ends.

Yeah, but bitching about Raph's ideas is the same old thing.

[Venkman]

You'd think with how well that history is documented (read: burned into our brains), we'd not keep repeating it... 

[Slyfeind]

Yeah, but bitching about Raph's ideas is the same old thing.

It's not just Raph's ideas we're bitching about. 

[Xanthippe]

/necro
I don't know how I missed this thread when it was first out (probably because I was playing WoW too much), but given the heavy discussion earlier about forced downtime and all that, I figure it fits.



Nobody has mentioned ZenMOO?

From http://www.subgenius.com/subg-digest/v4/0027.html:


I never was able to advance in this - either getting kicked off for fidgeting, idling or answering the koans incorrectly.  Was it real or just a perverse joke?

It still bothers me.

[Shannow]

Cant be bothered wading through 9 pages of rotting thread...
Anyone mention the MUX's and MUSE's and MUSH's and stuff?
The Battletech and Star Trek ones were excellent for different reasons (the Star Wars ones for some reason always sucked) with gameplay that STILL hasn't been replicated today in the MMOLG industry.

[Margalis]

Remember when Facebook games were the future. Lol.

[Merusk]

Heh.

[Bzalthek]

They still are.  We didn't mention it was a dystopian future.

[Xanthippe]

So nobody remembers this?

I was thinking with some friends one day, and I decided that our quest for
virtual reality is always out of reach.  For, if we reach *virtual* reality,
we have created another reality.  Thus, I decided to make a Mu* (or, in this
case, a MOO) that went the opposite direction.  Virtual reality with a
non-reality.  How much can a person on a MOO *not* do, and yet do *a*lot*?
In ZenMOO, activity is necessary, for one cannot simply connect and leave
the terminal.  However, over-activity is punished by disconnection.  *That*
is how much one can do without doing.

http://www.luckymojo.com/avidyana/gnostik/mud/zenmoo-questionnaire.txt

I'm leaning toward perverse joke, but I want to know.

[Margalis]

Sounds insane.

[Soukyan]

If someone were to give us an alternate finished and complete on day 1 instead of buggy and half-assed folks will pick it up.  AOC was on the road to actually realizing part of this with the way its combat worked, but Funcom failed to deliver a finished product, again. (No surprise to me.)  

When were MUds ever released as feature complete games? And when were they ever finished? Perhaps there were a few, but the MUDs that I remember and played were always works-in-progress. Hell, that was a large part of the fun for some of them.

[edit]Holy fucking fail on my part. I just replied to a post from 2009. *sigh* I'll leave it up for the free mocking fodder. Have at me, jackals.[/edit]