Come help save mud history

[tkinnun0]

I think it is that people there are socialising in spite of the game mechanics, not because the game assists them to do so (outside of providing basic communication tools). Raph can correct me if I'm wrong.

That's not right.
1) You can teleport to Dalaran for free from most quest hubs once you reach level 74 or so.
2) Dalaran is located in the middle of Northrend, making it a natural hub.
3) Dalaran has portals to every other major city, making it the natural place to bind yourself to.
4) Dalaran has portals to all PVP areas.
5) It is the most graphics-heavy area in the game. The other day I noticed that the toy shop has a small toy train running on top of its doorway.
6) And much much more...

It is definitely intended as the place to be.

[UnSub]

I don't play WoW, so I can't say.

Within CoH/V, the email system is only used by gold spammers, but the global chat system is epically good at getting players together, even across servers. The Pocket D (dance club either heroes or villains can enter) is mainly used by RPers or as a convenient meeting spot. Travel powers would appear to give more people time to talk since you can get there quicker or (for flight) autofly in the general direction so you've got your hands free.

[Raph]

A few pages ago Raph said that players have inertia and need to be prodded to get off their asses and kill slimes, now he's saying that players need special incentive to stop killing slimes and talk to their pals. Which is it?

Sigh.

An object at rest tends to stay at rest. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. You do remember high school physics, yes?

When the whole game's incentive structure is around "get people to move move move" then yes, if you want them to stop you need to give them counterincentive.

You could also have less incentive to move move move, but then you get something fairly sleepy that the gamers say isn't a game at all.

- un-optimize traffic. In other words, have timed gates or places where you wait
- reduce the amount of "global" anything, such as purchases, teleports, etc

These are great examples of what not do do: make the game a pain in the ass for people who want to play it in a way they enjoy.

If you want to chat with your friends fine, but don't punish me because I'm not a chatty Cathy.

I was not saying "do all of these" or even "do any of these." I was listing ways that have worked, for better or worse.

Global purchasing has historically reduced social interaction because it means that people don't have to go back to a central location. They can mail order everything to their spot in the distant area where there's only two other people.

Global teleport works to undo the loopback and crossroads styles of mapmaking referenced above. It can, as observed elsewhere, also help socialization in other ways.

Times gates... I knew someone would complain. :) Yes, it can mean things like healing up, rest time, long-term cooldowns, waiting for transport, or timed access to places. Timed gates even in a go go go are not necessarily even going to feel like waiting. Think the tense moment in the locker room before all hell breaks loose in the game. PvP muds used this very effectively -- and people chatted while there, and in fact formed very tight bonds.

[Venkman]

I realize you think you're being misunderstood, but the issue is deeper than the recurring programmed-downtime one we've been having since SWG beta

It continues to be a good example of what separates popularity from immersion.

MUDs were built by and for the tech fringe looking to escape into the virtual, to be the vanguard of the metaverse. But that market is shrinking by percentage against the aggregate consumer market.

Nowadays, games are all around all the time in all points of consumer engagement. The mass market comes with a very different expectation. They don't even consider themselves "gamer" because that very label is becoming less relevant. It's taken longer to impact MMOs because of established traditions, but it's affecting us now through WoW.

The new-person-off-the-street, the vast majority of MMO players now that started in WoW look at it very differently. They're not coming immersive/escapist MUDs. They're coming from Bejeweled on mass transit, Solitaire, Fishdom, Pogo, maybe Club Penguin now (it's been out long enough), and so on. NONE of these are designed for multi-hour sessions at the expense of eating and physical interaction. This is the essence of "game snack" and is a major growth component of these industries. They game and socialize together, multitasking without being programmed too because of split-attention.

And while veterans may complain about the pace of WoW, let's be real: we're kids in a candy store. The very rate of our individual achievement has always been set by us. We're the ones that backwards engineer for the optimal path. In WoW, the rails are more apparent, but also much faster. It's an achievers paradise where of course our old methods of interaction don't apply. And the market has changed too. Our dreams of a popular genre have been realized (though to some in a rather Monkeys Paw fashion ;-) ).

Veterans haven't lost their ability to interact. They've just had to adjust how they do so to account for the new market that joined us.

[WindupAtheist]

As an aside, I always wish someone would copy the house-building from UO. Not the "fill up the world with urban blight" part, but the "design a custom building tile-by-tile" part they patched in a few expansions after Trammel. (Put it all in instances, whatever.) Then give everyone unlimited teleports back and forth between their home and wherever they were in the world. Like how in KOTOR you could poof back to your ship to swap party members, then back into the field to keep playing without having to do all that walking.

Then everyone can still run around the world being directed between locations, but you can still meet your friends "face to face" at the drop of a hat.

[Lantyssa]

Which is more or less what I suggested with a bit of housing thrown in, so I'll completely agree.  The housing instance can even be its own isolated little social hub to make sure friends can step out their door and socialize but can't sell if the designers don't want you to be able to quickly port to town, sell, then return.

[Draegan]

Why is your average MMO player going to meet someone in game to chat when they can just chat in a private/guild channel or on vent?

The person who likes to hang out with people on screen and just talk is shrinking.  Even if you build a game for "social interaction" in game etc, you're still going to have everyone in their own social circles talking out of game in vent.  You're not instantly going to create a virtual society.

[sidereal]

Sidetrack of a sidetrack, but don't assume that building voice chat into the game is a good idea.  Having that aspect of community handled by a third party has a bunch of benefits.  Like the fact that you can establish a group of friends that carries across games.  I suspect we'll move to a model where there's a standardized API for voice-chat, a bunch of third parties implement chat servers with various features, and game makers just hook into the API to do things like automatically creating chat groups for raids and so on.

[Draegan]

If every game has built in voice who cares then?  You can still use vent if you want.

[Ingmar]

I just want to say that I am fully 1000% behind simulated hydrological cycles.

[Musashi]

  But the fact is that earlier in the game's evolution they actually didn't include any sort of LFG system, and were reluctant to include it for that very reason. 

I don't know where you got this but it's dead wrong. WoW had a lfg system in beta and early release. It was taken out when they were scrambling around trying to prop up their failing database servers. It was a very simple system where you could flag yourself as lfg and people could search for class and lfg flag.

Yea, you may have been confused by when I say 'any sort of LFG.'  And that is wrong.  I'm speaking mainly about a comprehensive UI LFG that you could use from anywhere, and you know, people would actually use.  They didn't put one of those in until they started patching in TBC.  But yea you're right.  I think I even remember flagging myself, then doing a /who lfg and seeing my name alone on the list.

[Raph]

I realize you think you're being misunderstood, but the issue is deeper than the recurring programmed-downtime one we've been having since SWG beta

Oh believe me, I know. That's why  imade that green comment a ways back.

It's taken longer to impact MMOs because of established traditions, but it's affecting us now through WoW.

I have to point out that the average hours of usage for WoW are smack in line with past MMORPGs. WoW has not actually effected change on this front. What games DID have lower snack-sized sessions? uh... SWG. ;)

Not having access to private data, I don't know whether the median point changed with WoW.

[Raph]

Why is your average MMO player going to meet someone in game to chat when they can just chat in a private/guild channel or on vent?

The person who likes to hang out with people on screen and just talk is shrinking. 

It's actually growing, just not in games but on websites that are rich social environments. You are getting more and more places where live chat is popping up (Meebo, Facebook, etc), and even asynch tools like Twitter are being used as synch chat. In a lot of ways Twitter is becoming web-based IRC.

[schild]

What games DID have lower snack-sized sessions? uh... SWG. ;)

This is a big, giant, crock of shit.

[Raph]

What games DID have lower snack-sized sessions? uh... SWG. ;)

This is a big, giant, crock of shit.

Average player session length (per session and per day) in SWG was dramatically lower than EQ, EQ2, EQOA, UO (I have no access to WoW stats, of course). Average monthly hours, however, was larger. The only conclusion is more sessions, shorter.

It's not even hard to see why. People checking in every day or so for a short time to check harvesters, vendors, and the like. Much more asynch, pop-in-pop-out behavior.

[Ratman_tf]

Everything's about SWG again!  Anyone care to comment on the NGE?

[Ingmar]

What games DID have lower snack-sized sessions? uh... SWG. ;)

This is a big, giant, crock of shit.

Average player session length (per session and per day) in SWG was dramatically lower than EQ, EQ2, EQOA, UO (I have no access to WoW stats, of course). Average monthly hours, however, was larger. The only conclusion is more sessions, shorter.

It's not even hard to see why. People checking in every day or so for a short time to check harvesters, vendors, and the like. Much more asynch, pop-in-pop-out behavior.

Is that actually a positive? It sounds like what I find annoying about Nile Online. It requires a lot of attention but I have to spread it all out through my day instead of being able to just take an hour and be done with it.

[DLRiley]

Why is your average MMO player going to meet someone in game to chat when they can just chat in a private/guild channel or on vent?

The person who likes to hang out with people on screen and just talk is shrinking. 

It's actually growing, just not in games but on websites that are rich social environments. You are getting more and more places where live chat is popping up (Meebo, Facebook, etc), and even asynch tools like Twitter are being used as synch chat. In a lot of ways Twitter is becoming web-based IRC.

Live chat among people you already know. I know very few people who use Facebook to talk to strangers. The last true bastion of random chatter amongst random people for no reason is the forums. And even then how many people simply get banned for not fitting that particular forums social environment. I mean your having this discussion in F13 forums for gods sake...

[Venkman]

I have to point out that the average hours of usage for WoW are smack in line with past MMORPGs.

Bell curves  In all seriousness, as there been any surveying done of the non-core userbase as it applies to playstyle? It's easy to get veterans to take MMO surveys, but that's going to skew.

And I should have clairified something I've been harping on for awhile.

WoW was designed as a succession of snacks that players can choose to consume as a meal. This has attracted both snackers and meal-seekers. Other games were meals that only attracted those predisposed to wanting that.

I should also mention that I abhor the term "snack", but it seems to have gained traction in certain corners of the bizdev side of the industry...

This all reminds me of the "satisficing" discussion from a few years back. A lot of us veterans will say we'd like WoW plus a bunch of the stuff we missed from UO. And yet the game is obviously adequate without them. The same can be said about traditional views of interaction. Given that people are collaborating in the real world with tools that once were relegated to the technophile fringe, and virtual worlds. So why would they "need" (and retroactively therefore miss the lack of) socializing as supported by dart and chess boards in a virtual tavern or through laborious regeneration time?

At the same time, the emerging browser worlds actually skew more heavily on a world of activities than on a linear game. WoW is the pinnacle of old-skool games done right, but I won't be surprised when they apex and start changing the game to appeal to the younger crowd coming up differently.

But I'm biased. I've long wondered what it would be like to focus on the game first to become successful enough to latch on the experiential world later. ;-)

[Ratman_tf]

But I'm biased. I've long wondered what it would be like to focus on the game first to become successful enough to latch on the experiential world later. ;-)

I think that was SWG's main problem.  Not enough fun adventure. Too much tradeskills and social spaces. There was no good balance there.

[WindupAtheist]

Why is your average MMO player going to meet someone in game to chat when they can just chat in a private/guild channel or on vent?

Both my roleplay and non-roleplay UO guilds tended to hang out 'in person' a lot, despite the existence of guild chat channels and Ventrilo servers. We tended to hang out in person WHILE sitting in Ventrilo. Let me see if I can figure out why in my own mind.

Part of it was the fact that if you give everyone the tools to build super-customized houses, most of them will build something, and a lot of them will like having other people around to see their pad. Any decent-sized guild is likely to have at least one or two people who like building a cool place and having everyone hang out there. Since your house was typically the place you stored the bulk of your gear/materials/consumables, there were plenty of purely workmanlike reasons to be there as well.

Part of it was the fact that teleportation was totally and completely trivial. If you weren't actively doing anything, your guild's hangout (whether it be a public bank, tavern, or a player house) was just sort of where you would end up while you figured out what to do. If other people were there, you would invariably start chatting via overhead "speech" rather than interrupt the flow of guild chat.

If you create a private Ventrilo channel and pull two people down into it to talk to you, you're sort of expected to have something important to say, and anyone who's not in there might wonder what it was. But if you just breeze past their house to shoot the shit while they sort their ore stockpiles or whatever? That's casual.

I dunno. I'm half asleep and need to think on it more, but like I said, even in the age of Ventrilo, even a totally non-roleplay UO guild would have a "guild house" where everyone would go to meet and goof off.

[Slyfeind]

This all reminds me of the "satisficing" discussion from a few years back. A lot of us veterans will say we'd like WoW plus a bunch of the stuff we missed from UO. And yet the game is obviously adequate without them. The same can be said about traditional views of interaction. Given that people are collaborating in the real world with tools that once were relegated to the technophile fringe, and virtual worlds. So why would they "need" (and retroactively therefore miss the lack of) socializing as supported by dart and chess boards in a virtual tavern or through laborious regeneration time?

This actually happened to me. I met one of my former DAOC guildies, and RL friends, in WoW about a year ago. We were standing in Stormwind chatting. After about ten seconds, I was honestly confused why he wanted to chat with me in Stormwind, when we could continue chatting while in separate ends of the world at the same time. The reason I felt so antsy, I concluded, is that Blizzard directs the player so well that no matter where you stand in the world, there are subtle clues as to what you should be doing next. If nothing else, there are clues where you can go to find that out.

Since then, I have been trying to find a place in any of the WoW zones where I honestly felt lost. So far, nothing. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, the terrain slopes and the objects point towards areas where quests, raids, trade skills, and PvP start. This makes it really hard to sit in one place when there's practically a dotted line and big flashing glowy arrows telling you to click on this NPC.

(Editted for clarity)

[Venkman]

That's level design. What we've gotten in other games is world/sim design. The difference is absolutely palpable. Neither is right or wrong, there's only how it measures against the overall game and how it works for or against the premise.

Of course, feeling lost is connected to feeling a risk. And in WoW, there really isn't any. You'll never lose your corpse in a lava flow, it will never be looted by someone else, and there's local graveyards all over the place (heck, they just added a few dozen to the old world).

And that's game design, not world design

YMMV.

And here we are back into the what-if exercise of a 3D pre-Trammel UO with a $100mil budget 

[Ratman_tf]

That's level design. What we've gotten in other games is world/sim design. The difference is absolutely palpable. Neither is right or wrong, there's only how it measures against the overall game and how it works for or against the premise.

I'm thinking about my first experience in Everquest, which was wandering around the starter Night Elf city (whatever the fuck it was called) with no one to talk to and nothing to do for what felt like hours. The only reason I stuck with it past that point was that I knew there were people and things to do in the game from message boards and watching my friends play. But if I had gone in cold, I don't think I would have given it much past 5 minutes before logging off in frustration.

[Righ]

The last true bastion of random chatter amongst random people for no reason is the forums. And even then how many people simply get banned for not fitting that particular forums social environment.

Here on f13, less than one in 500 people are banned, and yet I still hold out hope.

[Slyfeind]

That's level design. What we've gotten in other games is world/sim design. The difference is absolutely palpable. Neither is right or wrong, there's only how it measures against the overall game and how it works for or against the premise.

Absolutely, and that's entirely my point. If you put all the awesome SWG SL UO Etc fun fun things to do in the taverns, but the entire game is pointing you towards the PvP arenas all the time, it doesn't make a difference how fun your dartboards are. Players are going to flock to the arenas, or they're going to feel like they're doing something wrong if they stick to the taverns. (And if those dartboards are more fun than the PvP, players will complain that too much work went into the dartboards.)

[Venkman]

Game players want to be driven to game play. Giving them the tools to make their own fun has never had as much appeal commercially. The perfect hybrid of both could theoretically work, but so far we haven't seen that (it cost that much just to make a game).

I'm thinking about my first experience in Everquest, which was wandering around the starter Night Elf city (whatever the fuck it was called) with no one to talk to and nothing to do for what felt like hours.

This got me thinking. Even all these years later, and never having played a Dark Elf, I immediately remember "Nektulos". 99% of the zone and area names in WoW though I couldn't care less about. It reminded me of a discussion I had with my wife awhile back about contempotary pop culture references for our generation.

• Real life: how many kids nowadays are going to have generation-defining common memories like Star Wars Ep 4, E.T., early Van Halen, etc.
• MMOs: how many players nowadays are going to have memories beyond the actions they made in certain games.

Popularity seems to come with the adverse affect of blunting real standouts. This is probably just the LCD effect. You gotta blunt something to make it more mass marketable. But how much of this is connected with the amount of folks aware of a thing?

There were less movies like E.T. back in the day and therefore more people went to see it. There were less people playing MMOs when we accepted crap we're so glad WoW and Eve don't have.

This is probably just a typical Art vs Market question, but I also like to try and find the middle. There's always the fringes that hate when things become popular or can't figure out why anyone could possibly like a thing. But I prefer the merge.

[Fordel]

Instead of things were better back in the day, they were more memorable? 


 

[WindupAtheist]

You could also have less incentive to move move move, but then you get something fairly sleepy that the gamers say isn't a game at all.

Honestly I'd rather have a game that just lets me putter along at whatever pace I like, than one that's stop-and-go. In other words build a game that's at least a little "sleepy" and not the one that shoves you along with directed experiences and then slaps on the breaks with mind wounds or some other mechanic.

UO did a good job of this, by which I particularly mean the post-Trammel game. You could go kill monsters forever with zero downtime if you felt like it, not even time spent running/flying like in WoW, but the game was still pretty mellow and chatty because it was relatively unfocused.

There's room in the marketplace for a game that's basically "updated UO/SWG minus all the bad legacy stuff that was inescapable once decisions were made". You know, dedicated PVE/PVP servers instead of a Tram/Fel split, housing set up so as to avoid urban blight, no HAM, no silly permadeath alpha classes, yadda yadda. It wouldn't need to have cutting edge graphics or lots of labor-intensive directed content. It wouldn't require a WoW budget or deliver WoW numbers, but it could probably grab a couple hundred thousand people and keep them basically forever.

I mean UO is how old and ridiculous-looking now? But there are still enough subscribers left that they're developing an expansion and just now started a whole new "EA employees roleplay and run live events with the players" program. In 2009. Even if EA's woes make them shitcan it tomorrow, it's been 12 years and the point stands. A game that was built along those lines from the start, not so much to grab a bazillion people and take on WoW as to be super sticky, could probably be a steady earner for 10, 15, shit, 20 years.

I mean you think I'm a UO partisan? Shit, I'll fuck off and play WoW for long stretches. But there are people in that game I know who are just straight-up "Fuck you I'll quit when they unplug it and not before!" Those are your fucking DREAM customers.

[Delmania]

Instead of things were better back in the day, they were more memorable? 


 

Nostalgia: helping you remember things the way you want them since...

[FatuousTwat]

No MajorMUD article? This wiki is dead to me.

You write up MajorMUD and I'll write up Tele-Arena.

Bonus Points, show me where the Minotaur is and where the Cyclops is along with the Bronze, Copper, Iron keys.  No cheating!

You mean in MajorMud? Minotaurs are in the wooden passages on the island with the labyrinth and ancient crypt, Cyclops is in the hazy swamp under the black house, and I have no idea where the keys drop. I think they are part of the level 10 quest?

[schild]

You mean in MajorMud? Minotaurs are in the wooden passages on the island with the labyrinth and ancient crypt, Cyclops is in the hazy swamp under the black house, and I have no idea where the keys drop. I think they are part of the level 10 quest?

He meant tele arena and you don't need a key in the labyrinth in Major Mud afaik.

[FatuousTwat]

Nope, you don't... I'm playing right now, haha. A friend said he had started playing on one of the old boards, and I joined him.

[DLRiley]

The last true bastion of random chatter amongst random people for no reason is the forums. And even then how many people simply get banned for not fitting that particular forums social environment.

Here on f13, less than one in 500 people are banned, and yet I still hold out hope.

There is never more than a dozen people replying to a topic at any given time. You have gotten your wish.

[Stephen Zepp]

Heh--late to the party so I missed all the cool stuff, but I'll try to write an article about ACK!Mud and Shades of Evil--we didn't have that huge of an impact in the overall MUD world, but we did do some things that had not been seen many places before to solve some rather unique socialization problems, so maybe it'll be an interesting read.