Submitted by Abalieno on June 13, 2006 - 19:17.
I don't know why when I write on a forum I'm able to explain an idea in just a few lines, when instead I have to write something here I write and I write and it never ends.
So there's this thread on Grimwell that presents a rather old problem that I examined too many times to remember. Nothing new, but it works as a short summary of my points.
Geldon: I've found that MMORPGs are generally better when I've got a lot more players to group up with. Lately I've taken to trying to identify the most populated server and starting a character there - and it's paid off quite hansomely. Comparing servers on Dungeons and Dragons Stormreach, I've found it's the difference between waiting five minutes to get a group to not being able to find one at all.
What bugs me is this: Why shouldn't I be able to access the entire player population?
Darniaq: Technical limitations are linked to costs too. Uni-servers require a very different financial evaluation model many are not accustomed to.
Grimwell: Tech limits and costs can only account for so much of the equation. Another part is 'developer vision' and the perks/limits thereof. Some developers are not pleased with the current implementations of Uni-Servers and have (likely) convinced themselves that it can't be done (for X reasons).
Global servers aren't really an "useful" possibility, but there are many other better solutions that can maximize the benefits and still use current technology without pushing the boundaries too much.
The problem is to allow the "permeable barriers": the possibility to have a flexible system that lets the players travel between servers, switch classes and roles, factions and so on.
For example the "betrayal quest" in EQ2 is an example of "permeable barrier" since it allows you to switch faction if you want.
Traveling between servers would be another implementation of permeable barriers.
My idea was rather simple: let's retain the server structure we have now, but let's also work on a system that can transfer characters from a server to another. Then we transform this process from an OOC one (where you go to a page and ask the transfer as in WoW) to an IC one. Where your character steps into a portal and that portal is part of the fabric of the game.
On top of that we add a system of automatic rules so that the portals switch from "green" to "yellow" to "red", regulating actively both the population and PvP factional unbalances.
For example, let's say the server is flagged "red". It would mean that you can move out of it, but not in. Let's say you are in the red servers but you want to join your friends. Well, you cannot ask them to join because the server is closed. But you can always move out and join them.
So, again, the "barrier" is permeable in the sense it still defines a space, but without trapping you inside.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 12, 2006 - 21:05.
...I think I survived.
I had to visit the dentist to get one of my wisdom teeth pulled out. I have all four of the fuckers, but at least the other three seem healthy enough to stay there without problems. This one instead it's about three years that loses pieces even if it never gave me pain. So it was about time that I had to take the decision to have it out before it decided to go bitchy.
Problem is that I have some problems with anxiety in general and things like this one can easily put a bad strain on me. I lived the last weeks in apprehension, with many worries, in particular after the nightmare stories from Lum and Dundee about a year ago :) On the other side I'm a rather rational guy, so I usually try to fight the anxiety that way, and it really doesn't work. I mean, *rationally* I'm okay. I'm not scared or anything. Sometimes I feel like there's someone else in me that I cannot understand and who does *everything possible* to give me more troubles. While rationally I may be able to control my silly worries, the "emotional side" gives me all sort of knee jerk reactions. It's so damn awful because it's an irrational way my body reacts and I cannot do anything about it. Like sudden, very bad sensations, totally unexcused. I cannot control these and even if I'm "rationally" relaxed and determined to not give my anxiety too much importance, the body still decides to react his own way, and I can just stare like if I'm watching someone else. Leaving me the desire to punch this other guy right in the face, and start giving orders, "This body isn't big enough for both."
It's so fucking irritarting, even more because it makes no sense. I really HATE the way my body gives me all sort of problems ADDED on top of something I need to do and that I'm worried about. For someone rational like I am this is totally unacceptable. I would need my body to follow *exactly* my orders so that everything can go in the best way possible. "Rise the left hand" and I rise the left hand, "don't panic" and I don't panic. Instead it's exactly the opposite and the actual problem that I have to face becomes a much smaller issue that those problems rising from anxiety itself. It's a goodamn, totally irrational and unexcused vicious circle that irritates me to no end. Why the fuck my body needs to be my biggest threat? And how's this tolerable?
As I said I know no ways to fight all that effectively, so I just wait. I learnt to understand and expect these sort of rections so I know what is going to happen and if I don't feel well I can just wait the situation to pass. I can just try to ignore all that, even if it's not really possible. It's an added burden that I could totally do without, but my body has another opinion and I still haven't found a way to part ways, heh. So even this time I knew that despite the tension and the worries I just had to go through it and suffer it. And trying to control my thoughts rationally to ignore as much as possible the way I feel.
The whole thing about the tooth went smooth. Much better than I expected. I felt no pain at all and after the first moments I was also quite relaxed (at least as much relaxed as I could hope to be). I kept my eyes shut and my mouth open the whole time and I didn't even notice when my tooth came out. I was worried that it could shatter since it was already crumbling on its own, instead it came out all at once and rather easily. I was expecting much more violence. I was somewhat relieved and glad to not have to suffer complications and such (if you are anxious you are overly worried about things going wrong, you know). So at the end all the worries were again unjustified and what I did felt really like a minor thing to not even consider. The dentist (a she) told me to lay down still for a minute and then go sit in the other room. I was feeling good enough, I thought it was everything okay. Relieved.
So I go sit in the other room but one minute later I'm on the doorway again, "Uhm... I'm not feeling good." All at the sudden another knee jerk reaction, something I never felt before. I was sitting, glad that I went through the whole thing the best I could hope. I wasn't expecting anything else. Instead all at the sudden I felt a very bad sensation in my stomach and then spreading to the chest and rising to the head. And I could only go, "What the hell. What the fuck is happening to me *now*?" See, this is the kind of total separation between the rational side and the emotinal side. I was feeling okay, relaxed finally. And then all at the sudden that very bad physical sensation, totally unjustified and that I just didn't have an idea from where it came from and why. The dentist told me then to lay down again and stay there some more. She explained me that it's the sensation you have when you are going to "faint" and she told me it's not so rare. It happens when you go through something you feel emotionally troublesome and intense, no matter how you are convinced of the contrary or try to minimize (as I was trying to do) and then you relax all at once. Sugar in the blood goes down and the system reacts with a "shutdown".
I finished to be much more scared about what happened to me afterwards than the extraction of the tooth. Since I'm an anxious type I knew what to expect and the way I feel "bad". I don't think this trip to the dentist was more troublesome than other episodes but I've never been on the point to "faint" before. It was something new, that I wasn't expecting and pushing further that limit and lack of control over my body. I didn't like this at all.
So next time I have to go to the dentist I will be as scared as I was today. With the difference that I will be scared *of myself* and my irrational reactions, instead of the dentist. I cannot trust me in any way. Now explain me how the hell this can make sense and how I can tolerate it.
God sucks as a designer. He really does suck.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 12, 2006 - 13:13.
If you don't have a clue, "20th Century Boys" is one of the very best mangas produced in Japan. Coincidentally, even a huge success over there (author is Naoki Urasawa). If I don't survive today, this is my last post :)
This is a real song made by a fictional character. One of the best characters ever.
ENDOU KENJI - LOST KENJI TAPES - BOB LENNON
Hi ga kurete doko kara ka curry no nioi ga shiteru
Dore dake aruitara ie ni tadori tsukeru ka na
Boku no o-ki ni iri no nikuya no croquette wa
Itsumo doori no aji ga mattete kureru ka na
Chikyuu no ue ni yoru ga kuru
Boku wa ima ieji wo isogu
Rainen no koto wo iu to oni ga warau tte iu nara
Waraitai dake warawasetokeba ii
Boku wa iitsuzukeru yo gonen saki juunen saki no koto wo
Gojuunen go mo kimi to koushite iru darou to
Chikyuu no ue ni yoru ga kuru
Boku wa ima ieji wo isogu
Ame ga futte mo
Arashi ga kite mo
Yari ga furou to mo
Minna ie ni kaerou jama sasenai
Dare ni mo tomeru kenri wa nai
Chikyuu no ue ni yoru ga kuru
Boku wa ima ieji wo isogu
Sekaijuu ni yoru ga kuru
Sekaijuu ga ieji wo isogu
Sonna mainichi ga kimi no mawari de
Zutto zutto tsuzukimasu you ni
--
Approximate english translation (I have the correct italian version which is rather different):
The sun goes down, and I can smell
curry cookin', somewhere.
How long will we have to walk
before we get home?
Will the croquettes from my favorite shop
still taste the same,
waiting for me?
Night comes down upon the earth,
and I'm hurryin' home.
They say
the ogres will be laughing next year.
And I say
let 'em laugh all they like.
I'll keep talkin' about
five or ten years in the future.
And fifty years later, If I'm still with you.
Night comes down upon the earth,
and I'm hurryin' home.
Well the rain may fall
and the storms may come
And the spears may fall.
Let's all go home.
They can't stop us.
Nobody has the right to stop us
Night comes down upon the earth,
and I'm hurryin' home.
Night around the world,
the entire world is hurrying home.
And I pray that these days will
continue for you,
forever and ever.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 12, 2006 - 06:04.
This time the silly claims about the european market are coming from an official press release (that I lost in my "notes" file when it appeared a few days ago and recalled when it was quoted on F13) and the textual words of Mark Jacobs (that I keep for posterity mocks as I always do):
“The initial partnership between Mythic and GOA resulted in Dark Age of Camelot being the number one MMORPG in Europe for many years,” said Mark Jacobs, CEO and President of Mythic Entertainment. “With WAR our goal is nothing less than to take Europe by storm and regain that leadership position in the European market.”
It looks like talking big about the european market is the new trend.
The actual news is that Mythic is again in partnership with GOA to manage Warhammer in Europe. I'm not going to comment this as I always played DAoC on the american servers, so I cannot judge their work, but I'll say that it's a very bad decision on all fronts to keep the US and EU servers separated and inaccessible to the same account, and I'm not glad at all to see this pattern repeated. This time I'm not going on with that crusade, though.
Other vague "news" are about the release planned for "fall 07" and the contemporary release, but we knew about these already.
I don't really think they will regain "leadership position". WoW has now nearly 1.5M subscribers in Europe alone. For the first time the european market is getting bigger than the US. DAoC, when Mythic considered itself "number one" in Europe, topped in EU at around 150k or so. Come on, it's not even on the same scale.
Let's make some predictions about the numbers Warhammer will get in EU and US. Let's see who will get closer. My idea is that the reasonable goal that Mythic should take nearly as an imperative (meaning that it won't be a "success" and that they should start dancing if they reach it, but that the devs should work *hard* to reach it) is the 250-280k EU+US that DAoC had at its peak. Anything less would be a delusion (in particular with the silly claims above) and I don't think that the game will move too far away from that number (meaning that I don't expect them going far above either).
I have this theory that sequels, or semi-sequels like this one, are never able even to top the original title when it was at its peak. I always criticized "sequels" in the mmorpg genre and I think they are a total waste of money when much better *commercial* results could be obtained by truly supporting the main title (meaning giving it more and more resources, instead of less and less), like CCP is doing with Eve (which grows constantly despite being three years old and recently reached more than 100 developers involved full time with it), instead of eroding progressively the resources from the game to migrate them somewhere else and then see an obvious decline as the direct result.
So my idea is: Warhammer won't top DAoC when it was at its peak. They could go slightly above or slightly below depending on the quality of what they are doing (and I think some ideas are promising if they don't cripple them with the usual bad execution), but that's what I'd take as a reasonable goal. That's what I'd tell my devs if I was Mark Jacobs. Go for that. That's our goal.
"Regain that leadership position in the European market" is laughable. PR or not they should have never said something like that.
Maybe after launch, if they hit that 250k mark, then they could start to work *hard* to solidify and INCREASE their market share (you know, the mythical positive trends that seem a chimera for a mmorpg). Like the hard work EQ2 is doing despite being a retarded sequel. But then there's always this stupid risk that the resources will be moved on yet another stupid new project, instead of supporting the development to make the first title more solid. And just watch it passively declining and fade into oblivion (also because it HAS to be killed, as the interest and hype MUST be shifted to fed the "new").
Which was DAoC's own destiny with that foolish "Imperator" project first, and Warhammer now.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 11, 2006 - 10:09.
One of the minor but constant problems in DAoC is that the test server has always had extremely low population, which doesn't help Mythic to test the patches thoroughly. In the years they tried many times to encourage the players to play there and there were guys like Uriel who transformed this problem in some sort of personal crusade. But the results are rather poor and Pendragon is still not so useful as it should and could.
A while ago Mythic decided to encourage the players through special events, prizes and by hinting that they were going to listen feedback only from those who actively tested the changes before venting off. I think I participated to one of the first events, a few months before the launch of "New Frontiers". I don't remember exactly how it worked or what we were supposed to "test", but it was in the form of a simple PvP siege to a keep with one realm defending and two trying to get in. It was kind of fun. DAoC's "real" PvP is always plagued by specialized groups and arranged 8vs8 encounters or the alternative of *extremely long* downtimes while you sit at a keep waiting for leaders to decide what to do next. Having a "directed" experience with a set goal and all players focusing on it was fun, with no downtimes or dicking around.
Then the server crashed. But, again, it was some of the best fun I had in the game. And it crashed because we were a lot of players involved in a rather massive fight. Things that don't happen often anymore, sadly.
Recently I've seen Mythic promoting every kind of awkward events, like "naked races", and I really wonder what they are trying to test like that.
The problem of the "test server" and convincing people to play there is a general one afflicting every game. And it's for this reason that it's kind of interesting to see WoW's test servers with the exact opposite problem. Queques going constantly above 5k. More than five thousands of players *waiting* to test, with another 3500 stuffed in. Plus all those who tried to get in but didn't bother to persist.
Of course this is partly due to the scale of things. WoW has like more than 200k of contemporary users, while DAoC is today around 11k. But this isn't the only reason. Months ago the patches were more interesting (like the addition of the Battlegrounds) but the test servers were relatively empty.
When things changed? When Blizzard started not only to allow server transfers (Mythic does this too), but when they also added premade characters at max level and even fully equipped, epics included. The test servers became suddenly "true" test environments. People started to flock there to test new talents builds and classes that they didn't bother to level up, even raid content to be prepared when the patches will arrive on the live servers.
Now let's see things nowadays. Mythic is going to add a new Battleground (Cathal Valley), with a 45 - 49 level range. Well, I'm interested in this. It's Emain. The layout of the zone should be exactly as Emain in the "old frontier". It should be a relatively small zone where the PvP could be quite intense instead of excessively slow as it is now on the "New Frontiers". So I'd gladly test this, without the need for "events" or other oddities to motivate me. But I cannot. You are a fool if you think that I'm going to create a new character to level up to 45 and equip it just to test a BG. I cannot transfer my characters there either because they are at level 50. I cannot de-level to get in the BG, which is capped at 49.
The point is: are the players "not testing" because they don't want to, or just because the testing environment offered is simply not appropriate?
Blizzard learnt this. They give you premade characters ready for the use and people liked this because they could finally "test". For their own interest and the game. So I wonder. Why it isn't reasonable to ask for a test environment where I can make characters and set their level manually, test skills, get all kind of equimpement from a "dispenser" without the need to farm for money, infinite respecs and all the rest?
If one game like WoW, where the character progress and discovery is the WHOLE game, doesn't worry about spoiling the fun by offering premade characters, then I wonder why DAoC couldn't do that and more. With a game where the fun is actually *crippled* by the mindless progression that the "Catacombs" expansion managed to stupidify beyond belief.
I'd be glad if I had the possibility to level up manually a character to 49, outfit it with decent equipment, spec it properly and running a few minutes later right in the new BG to have some fun. And maybe respec or try another class if I want to.
But there's more to this. Developing such a system now would mean eating a significant amount of programming resources to a game whose support is being slowly eroded. Is this worth doing just to support a test server?
Not at all. Or maybe it is.
When the new Battleground will be patched on the live servers, I won't be able to play there again. I wish I could, but the same problem on the test server applies here. I'm not going to endure to level another character and equip it up to level 45 and above just to step in the new Battleground. The grind is unsustainable even if leveling is absurdly fast nowadays. But it's just excessively dumb and I don't have access to dedicate powelevellers like the 90% of those who still play the game. I won't bother even if I would have an interest to play.
And here's the "revolutionary" idea, that could also excuse the work I suggested above on the test server: what about allowing the characters to "de-level" temporarily and access all the Battlegrounds in the game, from the first to the last, instead of getting locked in the current one only?
The implications of this simple idea shouldn't be underestimated and the result could justify the use of those scarce resurces that the game still has. It is something similar to what I suggested for Warhammer and I think it's something worth experimenting since it could have a strong, positive impact on both games.
I think it's time to dare for DAoC. Which doesn't mean about risking to ruin even what is left, but about pushing it closer to its real potential. This idea is just about giving the players a choice they don't have currently. A change of rules that could be simpler and cheaper to implement but with a stronger impact since it's about changing and streamlining structures more than adding tons of new content. Improving the accessibility for new and veteran players more than alienating those few who are left. I think the game needs an impulse, a push. And I think this idea could be a very good start.
I'll return on this to explain better.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 10, 2006 - 05:50.
Yesterday I was taking some notes about minor details and design bits in WoW and here's a list with smaller things, often not noticed, that this game does FAR better than every other mmorpg in the market. I think the Blizzard's care and unmatched execution can become particularly evident from these smaller details, that are often more than details.
- Great terrain textures. Blizzard's art direction has been praised many times, but in this case it's the particular of the ground textures that I noticed and that I think is a demonstration of a wonderful work. No other game has beautifully painted textures as WoW (to compare with the dullness and variable quality in EQ2). It's one particular piece taken out of all the graphic in the game that isn't easily attainable. The one that better demonstrate the talent of Blizzard's artists. You could criticize the cartoonish style of the art direction or take graphic bits from other games to demonstrate that something better is possible. But the ground textures are absolute, unmatched masterpieces with all the other games widely outperformed.
WoW ground texture gallery
I think the ground textures represent the very best part of WoW's art. This becomes particularly evident when you compare the game with other games that can rival with it when it comes to render impressive environments, like Guild Wars, whose ground textures try to imitate WoW's style but still failing to match the art quality. People may find silly that I point out a detail like this one, but the ground textures have an extremely important role on the graphic impact. Often in these games the ground textures are just repeated patterns that give a strong sense of dullness. In WoW the environments are immersive not only because of how they are modeled and varied, but also because the dull effect given by the "tiles" is removed for the most part.
The beauty of these textures is then not also due to the work of the artists, but also to the way the graphic engine was engineered. High-res textures on the terrain and long clipping planes are often enough to cripple the framerate in games with expansive outdoor locations. In WoW the textures on the terrain retain a decent resolution, the clip plane is amazing and the performance is still great. From this perspective you cannot desire more. These textures also take advantage of a pretty "shader" effect (I think it's a specular mapping) that makes the texture "highlight" under the sun at a certain angle. Even here Blizzard's choice is a very good and solid one. This effect is used consistently on all the textures for the terrain in the whole game, it's doesn't cripple the framerate at all compared to other shader effects that you can see in other games and it is also really well used to add detail and realism. So they always keep an eye to the performance of the engine, while only selecting those "fluff" effects that really contribute to the graphic impact, to then reuse them consistently.
Even when it comes to the design of the graphic engine all the smaller details are examined carefully and then added to the game only when they are truly excused and relevant. And not just thrown into the mix casually and without much though. Which corresponds to the overall philosophy used by Blizzard: toying with less elements, less "crowdedness", less noise. But with a much higher quality standard to pass before something makes through to the game.
A game-y approach. Instead of adding complexity and delving in it, WoW took the mmorpg genre and put it under a magnifying glass to carefully examine it, simplifying as much as possible, radicalizing some elements, removing the bad-habits and the superfluous, and continuing to polish while striving for "perfection". A model of a game where nothing is unjustified or experimental.
A detail of the graphic engine as the one I described is just a confirmation of the recipe used.
I'm also worried about "The Burning Crusade". I fear that those artists that did those masterful pieces of art could be between those who left Blizzard to join one of the companies that recently spawned. So let's hope that I'm wrong and that the talent is still strongly in Blizzard's grip. Those arstists are priceless. Whoever they are.
- No artificial linked encounters. In EQ2 the designers, following a similar mindset used for Vanguard, decided to "expose" more and more the "wires". While in other games like DAoC you can never easily tell those mobs that are "social" (so that aggro you by bringing along other mobs) and those who are independent, in EQ2 instead you can target the mob you are going to pull and the interface tells you directly if there are other mobs linked or if your target is detached and can be pulled safely alone. Actually in DAoC the "social" reaction of the mobs was often, in fact, a reaction. If you pulled solo you could get just one mob, while if you were grouped you could get more than one. In both EQ2 and WoW the pulling mechanics aren't "reactive" in the sense that they vary depending on how many players are in the pulling group (in WoW the level of the characters affects aggro radiuses, though), but it's here that WoW differs from EQ2 and that I think it is far superior from a design point of view.
In EQ2 it's the interface that tells you which mobs are linked and it's the designer to place these encounters by hand and decide those that are linked and those that are "solo". So the mechanic is completely "external" to the game (see my OOC-design critics). You just "read" it through the interface and react accordingly. This was a major gripe for the players, in particular coming from the EverQuest Classic, since pulling and learning the encounters in that game was a puzze-game in itself, that was purged in EQ2.
WoW differs from that approach even if it keeps things extremely simple. There isn't any "social" flag system that defines which mobs are linked and which mobs aren't. I don't know if there are special cases, but from what I observed the mobs simply react to a fixed radius throughout the game. If the mob you are pulling is at a close distance from another, then those mobs will run to you together. Out of that radius it will be a single pull.
The interesting design approach here is that the model is consistent throughout the whole game. Without cases that disrupt or contradict the experience. The players slowly grasp the rule because this rule is a constant, so it can be "grokked" by the players (using a term Raph used on his book to define the mastery of a pattern) even if they haven't fully realized it consciously. It is a consistent in-game behaviour because these mobs don't react to scripts defined by a designer, but on a somewhat "physical"/immersive element that is familiar to every player: distance. Already in the first ten levels of your character, while trying to make through a cave without aggroing the whole place, you start learning the "safe" distance between the mobs so that you can pull safely without getting more than one. And then you continue to re-apply and re-experience this rule till you have fully mastered it. Till it becomes "instinctive". So that it's actually about removing the filter of the interface to move closer to a "visceral" pattern.
The result of this is that "mastery". The possibility to learn to track down mobs and pull them at the right time. Which is a so much better design choice then the one used in DAoC, where these mobs behave accordingly to rules that are hidden to the players (leading to frustration and a not-consistent game), and the one used in EQ2, where the wires are blatantly exposed.
Terrain inclination and physical barriers. Here DAoC is another example of how-not-to-do-it and WoW a good example about how to make it work, also directly linked to the previous point. In the "New Frontier" overhaul to the PvP zones, DAoC's designers decided to add tactical elements and a better role of the terrain in the mechanics by creating zones that could not be passed and one-way barriers (cliffs, valleys etc..). The idea is not a bad one, but the implementation, as it not rarely happens in DAoC, was awful. The reason of the failure of this mechanic was that these barriers were arbitrary.
Those barriers were placed by hand by the zone designers following their own tactical reasonings that could have been good or wrong, but the problem was that they became "invisible walls" that the players could not figure out consistently. You just couldn't guess where you could expect a "wall" and where you could instead manage to move through. As you can imagine this can be truly frustrating and the players ranted constantly about it for that reason. The "feature" was also even more crippled by another bad implementation. These invisible walls not only prevented you to pass, but they also made your character stop moving completely, so that you had to turn in the other direction and then move again, removing the possibility to "slide" against the wall to find an "opening".
This was an engine limitation in DAoC (I could be wrong, though). The game didn't allow to create one-way physical barriers. Or you had a zone border (so a two-way block) or you could run even up a cliff at full speed (actually much faster since speed was only horizontal and didn't factor the verticality).
Often WoW is mistaken on this aspect. Some players think that it's the texture that gives cues about where you can go and where you cannot, but the texture is not an active part of the mechanic, nor the one that is really utilized by the players. It's the engine of the game that automatically determines the places where you can go from the places where you cannot, depending on the inclination of the terrain. It is then the world editor that the designers use to also pick the appropriate textures.
Even here the mechanic, as for the one ruling the behaviour of the aggroing mobs, is consistent. The behaviour is a constant that the players can slowly grasp and then reuse naturally. At a glance I can tell you where my character is probably able to walk and where I expect to "slide back". I can guess where there are the passages and where I could try to "push". This because while playing the game I've learnt to parse the concept of terrain inclination and it is now a spontaneous guess that can happen without me actively trying to have coscience of it. Like for the "distance" concept used to figure out which mobs I'm going to aggro with a pull, the "inclination" is another physical, consistent and familiar element that all players can grasp and reuse.
It is consistent because both the "inclination" and "distance" are elements coming from *within* the game and not out of it (like a script or a flag). And "game-y" at the same time because instead of striving for a simluation, they decided to simplify and reduce the pattern to just one, easy to grasp, element that is a constant used then for all the encounters. So they picked ONE element out of hundreds possible (game-y), while choosing it *within* the game world (intuitive for the players and coordinated with the "immersion" in the virtual world).
There isn't even the need for visual cues that tell you where you cannot go because the textures change from zone to zone, while it's the terrain inclination to be the constant. So the element that is always reused and that can be grokked more naturally and then applied effectively.
Even here game design is carried over to the game engine to support features and behave consistently. And it's again another great demonstration of Blizzard's flawless execution.
- No mindless fetch quests. What? No fetch quests? WoW is filled with fetch quests, why I say it has none?
Because it is true. In the sense that there are no quests whose only purpose is to make you waste time by walking from point A to point B. This mindset is simply missing from the game. There aren't unexcused quests as a pretence of making you waste time with unfun bits of the gameplay (to an extent). It would be stupid to add a quest whose only purpose is to make you walk just to waste time and, in fact, WoW usually avoids this.
There are instead PLENTY of mmorpgs out there who use the fetch quest exclusively as a time waster. A good example is again DAoC, where the latest two expansions had a vast amount of mini-quests (tasks) whose only purpose was to be a time waster (see also my comments here).
In WoW, instead, there are no deliberate and exposed "time wasters". At least if you don't consider the whole game as one. To explain better, WoW uses "fetch quests" but with a precise function within the game. Never unexcused (see the constant?). These fetch quests are instead tools used actively by the game designers to direct the players. So their purpose is not only alien to the "time waster" idea, but also quite important in the dynamics of the game.
These fetch quests are often used to conclude cycles and make your character travel to new zones where its adventure will continue. They highlight a path and lead the player by hand. So it's not just about completing a boring task that the quest asked you, but about building "narrative bridges" (or "rails"), used to connect the various locations and stories in the game and avoid the player to feel lost and clueless or move out of where he is supposed to be.
The quests aren't just a method to deliver content in this game, but also as a learning process to let the players slowly discover the possibilities the game has to offer. And that "learning mechanics" becomes then on its own the very best form of gameplay that the game has to offer (and with an awful replayability since you can only learn stuff once).
And it's another great example of how even the most stupid form of quest in WoW retains a strong role and function that works so well that is often not even noticed.
A well-oiled game. A masterful engine.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 9, 2006 - 10:06.
From his own MMO bloggage (because Slashdot wasn't enough).
Firstly he quotes Blizzard's rep on the increasing gap and accessibility barriers between casuals and hardcore:
Those with orange texted items are still unique and beautiful snowflakes. As the game evolves, the current “to-die-for” items will be yesterday’s news. Everyone will be chasing the “next-big-thing”, and so on and so forth.
Then he comments:
Which, to a degree, I get. Just the same, my hopeful words from the last post (My hope is that the folks at Blizzard are aware of this and are taking steps to address this issue.) seem even more naive now. Blizzard is well aware of the issue; they just have no intention of doing anything about it.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 9, 2006 - 08:46.
Not really talking about mmorpgs, but rather pertinent with what I'm writing these days. From an interesting interview about the design of Ep1 (part one here):
Gabe Newell: What we try to do is get people through as much entertainment as possible. This is an argument I have with Warren Spector; he builds a game that you can play through six different times. So that means that people pay for the game, but don't get to play five sixths of the game, which I feel is a mistake. You spend all of this time to build stuff that most players will never ever ever see, and I feel we try to maximise... I mean, I understand the exploration impulse and we try to make people happy doing that because it's an important part. Exposition, exploration, combat and so on are things that we need to make sure are present, but if only one per cent of your customers see this cool thing that takes five per cent of your development budget, that's not a good use of resources.
This other part also fits quite well with the discussion about accessibility barriers and "noise":
Gabe Newell: It's one of the critical things that playtesting shows. If there's a capability and 80 per cent of people aren't figuring it out then that's probably a defect in the design. Not to be heavy handed, but the most ridiculous example is to have a hole with a Zombine hand sticking through with a grenade. You'd catch on pretty quick! "You know, I'll do something to that thing!" I mean, you'd never do that, but that's a kind of approach you use to get people to understand that there's now a new choice available to them at that point in the game.
Erik Johnson: That's why playing catch with Dog with the gravity gun was so important to the whole game.
Robin Walker: If you look back at Half-Life 2, many of our training things were doing multiple stuff where you might be learning a new gameplay element, but at the same time you're learning about a character that you're interacting with who might be telling you something about the world, and the relationship between you and the character you're dealing with. For example, the cop who tells you to pick up the can, which we want you to press use, but at the same time you're learning about the relationship between the Metro Cops and the players, and the way they use civilians. But at the same time you're building this animosity between you and this character that eventually you'll be able to deal with when you get a weapon, and so on. Our training is all there throughout the game, but it's fairly well disguised with you doing multiple things at the same time.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 8, 2006 - 23:43.
From Eve-Online's dev blog:
While we're in the technical design stages, I get to write crazy things about wanting to completely rewrite the turret system and do stuff like make turret animations miss.
While you are at it, what about scaling the "shake" effect on a missle hit with a % calculation on the damage done to the ship?
Crazy things, indeed.
P.S.
And physical missle launchers. So that missles come out of the launchers instead of spawning in the air. Maybe with pwetty missle-shooting animation/effect?
And better graphic representation of the damage states.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 8, 2006 - 04:39.
Again on the concepts of "gated content" and "permeable barriers".
In the second part I tried to explain that the idea of "gated content" didn't negate the possibility to have stories, but instead enhanced it. But that's just one inherited application of the model. Originally the idea wasn't about "parallel worlds", each with its own rules, progression and story, but about general patterns. Like "solo" play, PvP, groups and raids.
So not only the different parallel worlds are accessible because "contemporary" (with the player "gated" from one to the other), but the general patterns on which they are based are also "contemporary". The player has a choice about which *type* of content he wants to experience. The rule is: experience the type of content you prefer without your character being penalized.
This is why I started to describe this model by analyzing the "endgame". There's no need for an "endgame" when finally all the different gameplay patterns that the game has to offer are always open. There's no "before" and "after". There are no obligatory passages. There are no barriers between the players that prevent them to group and enjoy the game together.
This possibility not only offers an open choice to the players without penalizing the characters they play, but it also leads to a game where the players will be much more inclined to take advantage of the different types of content the game offers. When you can easily "switch" between the different gameplay models, then you are also much more inclined to experiement with all the game has to offer.
Which is the real original goal behind those ideas: start with a familiar single player style of experience that a vast public can grasp and recognize with, and then "branch up" the game, progressively, slowly opening and disclosing all the different patterns and possibilities the game has to offer. Like the PvP sandbox. One part is used to "gate" the players to another without scaring them. Without crippling these possibilities with huge accessibility barriers or high prices of admittance.
Mass market, to me, means the possibility to absorb that public by making the game as accessible as possible. Without slapping them in the face with an insane amount of "noise". The idea of "gated content" and parallel worlds is about the possibility to layer different complexity levels, one on top of the other, so that you can slowly convince the player to experiment and learn with all the various possibilities offered.
Which is why "gated content" and "permeable barriers" are strictly tied together and have similar purposes. Educate, "lead" the players through the complexity of a virtual world.
From another perspective: you cannot hope to have a commercially successful PvP game without a PvE side that slowly convinces the players to look over to the other part. The goal is to make that transition as smooth as possible, still without forcing the players, but instead *encouraging* them to switch freely between the parts. Following their own preference.
My idea is: if switching between the gameplay patterns is simple and without penalizations, then the players will be naturally inclined to "cross the lines" (the permeable barriers) and see what's on the other side. And then consider where they want to be, making their own choice.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 6, 2006 - 13:00.
I return again on the fancy term "gated content" to focus more on some concepts that were misunderstood.
It's already frustrating not being able to convince the few who care to read what I write. Even more frustrating when I discover that not only I didn't convince anyone, but that what I wrote was also completely misunderstood and that I'm being criticized for things that I didn't even thought. In particular because I put a lot of effort trying to explain what I mean in the most clear and direct way. Receiving critics is always good, it's less good when what I write is misrepresented. There's no worse failure for me than that.
In these two articles I associated the definition of "gated content" to the "endgame" and the "world traveler" concepts. To understand things better you could also use this reference (tripartite model).
1- There is no "endgame" in this model because the idea of "gated content" erases a "before" and "after" in the flow of the game. What your character does and the different gameplay patterns he can have access to are defined by a personal choice. Your own preference. Not impositions. Not obligatory passages.
One of the steps to reach that goal is about removing "level mechanics" in favor of a skill system. The purpose here, as it is widely known, is to reduce the power differential, but, in particular, to remove the bad habit of using levels to decide the content that you can access and the content that is out of reach. With a skill based system there may be still a significant power differential between a newbie and a veteran, but it is at least possible for people to group together without the game mechanics getting in the way, crippling the experience you gain, limiting the loot you can use and not allowing you to be in certain places. The gap is narrower and more natural. The game doesn't put artificial barriers between you and your friends. This is the part that should be more familiar of the idea.
The other part involves the content in the game. "Gated content" means that there are "contemporary" realities. The "world traveler", aka the player, can switch between these realities following his own preference. While in other games you move from solo to groups and to raids, in my idea I separate the direct ties and make all those "contemporary". As your character is created you can decide, for example, to solo, to group, to PvP or to raid. Do only one of them, do only those you care about or all together. It's your choice. The game doesn't force on you a pattern, nor it cripples your character because you didn't do a specific thing.
2- I've been accused of being willingly to remove the story component from mmorpgs and since this cannot be more FAR from the reality, here some precisations in that direction.
Quoting myself again:
I NEVER wrote that the stories should be removed. This cannot be more false since it's NOT what I think.
The point is that a mmorpg shouldn't be about just ONE story with a start and an end, because simply that's not what a mmorpg should do.
Story elements CAN and SHOULD be integrated in that "world traveler" model, aka the "gated content".
EACH WORLD, or sub-world can have its story. The character IS YOU. You don't need other characters to experience more stories, and those stories in those worlds CAN and SHOULD "end". But not the game and not your character.
Each "gated" world, each reality, correspond to a different story that you can live. A different character that you can become.
The "game", as the overall structure that supports and contains all these worlds/realities, never ends. The NeverEnding Story. The real ideal behind these games. It's over only when there aren't anymore ideas, when there aren't anymore players who want to hear and be part of fantastic stories.
Instead the stories you can experience within each of these worlds WILL and SHOULD end. They can be linear and represent finite story lines. Maybe where to return one day when something new happens that destabilizes the temporary calm you achieved in a previous mission. When the designers of the game decide to move that particular story onward. You step in the gate and become once again that hero in that world. Like when you went back to Britannia with each new chapter of Ultima.
In WoW you cannot go in the Deadmines or Gnomeragon with a level 10 character. When the flying isle of Naxxaraxxwhatthefuck will be released with the next patch you won't be able to see it and play there if you aren't already part of a selected group.
Imho it make sense when your devs puts months of work to release a new zone to let it being experienced by as many players as possible. Instead of cockblocking it behind severe accessibility barriers.
With the model I'm describing you can. There are no barriers separating you from your friends. Everything in the game is offered. And it's you to determine your experience by making your choice. You could just PvP, just soloing, just raid if it's what appeals you. But it's your own choice and all the other possibilities would be always open to you in the case you decide to try something else.
The "gated content" is a model used to actualize the possibility of contemporary realities.
The player "travels between worlds". A world traveler.
You can travel to a world and become a knight, travel to another and become an adventurer, and then a merchant, an hunter, a member of a revolutionary movement that is trying to overthrow a regime, a partisan, a diplomat, a crusader, a paladin, a jester, a doctor, an exiled, a "stranger in a strange land", a demon from another world, a spy, a noble, a soldier taking part on a large siege, a thief, a treasure hunter, an explorer, an archeologist, a wayfarer, a beggar, a mage in search of knowledge, a sailor, a pirate, a revered king, a fugitive, an outcast. A predator or the prey.
A level 50 character or a level 1. All these things at once.
No, you don't "shapeshifts". But the dwellers of these worlds can see and treat you in many different ways. They can have many different points of view and offer many different perspectives. In some worlds your powers don't work, and in others they are much stronger.
These realities preserve their linearity if it's needed. In the case of the world where you are part of the revolutionary movement maybe you cannot just start the revolution as you put your foot in that world. You'll have to first organize things and all the rest that the story is setting for you. They can then be independent from each other or intertwined. For example you could need a special key to reach some place that can only be obtained from another dimension.
Such is the multiverse.
But the most important element is that there are no "you need to be this tall to enter" accessibility barriers.
If you want an even simpler definition think about a game as an aggregator of multiple, possible stories. That is my sandbox ideal. The early Ultima RPGs had already a beginning and an end, but in between they aggregated many different stories, characters and situations that you could discover, learn about and interact.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 4, 2006 - 06:58.
The release of "Prey" (the FPS) is approaching.
In about twenty days 3D Realms will release a free demo that will show both the multiplayer and the single player portion. From the rumors it seems to be a very good demo with a lot of content in it (I miss the shareware days). The actual game is going to be released for the beginning of July.
The reason why I write about this is because this game is not "just another shooter", but one that is adding some quite innovative features that will add some new patterns and break some conventional ones. I'm interested to see how all this will work out. I think the demo is a perfect opportunity to have a peek at how those new features will impact the "flow" of the game and see if they'll really add to the fun.
I wrote already in the past about the game because I believe in those ideas and, if the technology is solid as it was publicized, it could really open so many new possibilities.
Previous articles - here and here. I think the only part I haven't commented is that the game will also have an option to dynamically adjust the difficulty while you play. Just another interesting (and optional) feature to throw in the mix.
A summarized feature list taken from my old post on a forum:
- Portal tecnology opening at every angle breaking the euclidean space
- Different gravity/physics systems active at the same time (ceilings, walls, planetoids etc..)
- Environmental hazards and mobile rooms (the environment moves and can hurt you. No static or fixed)
- Gravity flipping (entire environments flipping upside down with you inside)
- Wall walk (switching orientation, no ladders)
- Spirit walk (switching to a spirit world where you just can use a bow but you can move through impassable barriers in the physical world)
- Death walk (instead of "game over" you enter the spirit world killing flying demons with a bow to quickly regain a decent amount of health before being thrown back into the action)
- Adaptable difficulty system (as you play the game monitors your performance and tries to dynamically adapt the difficulty, this can be turned off)
And I would even add a good HUD design and all sort of imaginative "alien" weapons to that list.
From the latest weekly update, about the innovative approach:
Back in the old days with Doom, ROTT, and the like you had just left and right to contend with. Quake introduced up and down to the mix, and it's pretty much stayed that way until now. While Quake allows for incoming fire to come from almost every direction, the base play remained the same, as you had to be "on" something - up and down were constants for the most part, despite the Z axis now being brought into play. Prey changes that with gravity flipping and wall walking.
And some interesting updates about the delivery system (that I think and hope will be also used for the demo):
One other section that has been tested a lot is the Triton delivery system. Sure, you can go to the store and buy a box, but you will also be able to buy the full game over Triton, and this needs testing. The last few beta builds we got at 3DR have come through Triton, which is kind of cool. What's nice about the Triton system is that you don't have to wait for the entire title to come down to play. After a certain percentage of the game has been downloaded, you are asked if you want to start playing right away. You can choose to start playing (depending on your download speed) after a short while, and the remainder of the game will be streamed to your computer in the background while you play.
My hope is that they don't screw this. First worry is whether this is supported worldwide or just NA, because it would suck if it's limited. Then I hope the final game, and maybe even the demo, will be preloaded at least a few days before, as Valve does with Steam. It's a convenience both for them (spread the server load on more days) and the users (have time to download even on slower connections).
In the meantime I got Half-Life 2 Ep1. It took me almost two days to finish the download on my slow connection, but I was oddly able to play when it was still at 87%. While I was waiting I also got the Darwina demo that was only 20Mb or so (and what is fun is that those are 20Mb of sound files, since all the graphic is generated, and sooo pretty) and five minutes later I was already buying the full version. Right now I'm more hooked up in Darwinia than HL2.
That said, the new chapter to HL2 is really good, with an even stronger cinematic feel. As they defined it, it's a great "rollercoaster". Everything is still on rail, heavily scripted. Plenty of "whoa" moments, cool stuff, wonderful ideas and decent plot. The starting sequence (when you have already the control) is simply amazing and I watched it with a grin on my face. The commentary system is also interesting for those who love the dig the design, even if they seem to end exactly when you would like to hear more details.
The new technical bits aren't so noticeable. The HDR is pretty but it's also heavy on the framerate. After the magnificence of Oblivion and Quake 4 the textures seem less impressive, but the overall level design is still good. The animation system was also reworked but I didn't notice the difference to be honest. In fact I think the animations still aren't on par with the cinematic feel and still look rather faked and awkward.
I think the main innovation about the episode is the presence of Alyx and the "single-player co-op", as they defined it. The interesting part is that she isn't just a bot following around, but a fully scripted character that has possibilities different than yours, so enhancing the interaction and possible variations in the game. As other people have wrote the annoying part is that Alyx sometimes pushes you around as she tries to run past you.
There was a lot of discussion also about the price, which I consider a bit too high. As written on Q23.
With much lower production costs I think Valve's first goal should have been about reaching a much larger audience by making the price more convenient and accessible. But that's just me striving for ideals as always.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 2, 2006 - 06:08.
There was a discussion about EQ2's UI on the FoH's forums and it made me think that too often people tend to completely ignore the most obvious things. While they tend to consider what is instead absolutely irrelevant.
So here why WoW racked up millions of subscribers worldwide and why it dwarfed every other mmorpg:
First Postulate on Mmorpgs Subscriptions: If you suddenly double the minimum hardware requirements, then even your potential subscribers base is HALVED (if not worst, considering the scaling).
There, I said it. WoW's success is for the biggest part contained in that line. No need for thousands and thousands of pages and design researches. Just one fucking line.
Hello? Accessibility barriers. The GREAT MAJORITY of people on the internet have computers that SUCK. This is why browser-based games are popular. Not because they are "casual" games, but because they embrace a MUCH BIGGER potential subscribers base.
Crappy internet connection, instable, badly configured system, old drivers, conflicts, incompatibilities. All these are the NORM for PCs. Not everyone is a geek who assembles his computer, runs benchmarks, reads hardware reviews and figures out obscure quirks in the Bios of the motherboard. This is also why the consoles are much more popular. Not everyone has the patience and dedication to swallow that. In particular after having spent considerable amounts of money for that hardware and STILL managing to see games running like crap.
WoW broke the market in three moves:
1- Low hardware requirements, wider compatibility (here)
2- It launched EVERYWHERE, localized and with a good support (here)
3- Game design all focused to simplify a genre and make it accessible/usable (here)
WoW became so popular because it lowered the accessibility barriers. BOTH from the hardware requirements perspective AND the game design. It's accessible. Its engine is the best out there. It runs more smoothly and without incompatibilities compared to any other mmorpg, old or new. And in nearly all the cases IT EVEN LOOKS SO MUCH BETTER.
Seamless world, smooth framerates with tenths of players on screen each with particle effects and perfect animations, no jerky LOD, impressive environments and clip plane, beautifully painted textures, consistent art direction throughout the game.
Not only it is a charming experience because it runs great and doesn't stutters or crashes all the time, but it even looks great.
And here we come to that discussion about EQ2's interface:
--
I don't know if it's a Nvidia vs Ati issue but the UI simply eats a lot of resources. I use the standard EQ2 UI + maps here and I can be in a zone with 30+ FPS or another with 15 or so, the UI still eats up significantly processing power.
Arguably WoW has the most powerful and flexible UI out there, but where it really shinies is in the fact that it takes nearly zero resources. I can have the barely needed on display or I can open hundreds of buttons, windows, features and energy bars and the game maintains roughly the same amount of frames per second.
It's obvious that it's a matter of how the UI in EQ2 and WoW are engineered at a basic level and rendered on screen. It's surely not a matter of "optimizations".
The point is that in other games the UI really does not impact the framerate. In EQ2 it does sensibly. Now it could even get optimized but the fact that it takes resources will hardly change if it's not recoded at a very basic level, I suspect.
And don't bring up the "focus to support hardware for the years ahead". Slowing down the game just because people have more powerful hardware is not an argument. If I'm buying new hardware it's because I want new possibilities supported, not so that I can swallow horrible engines.
If your hardware requirements are high, then the game better demonstrate that the slowdown is worth it (and it usually never is). Instead of just an excuse for a crappy engine.
--
EQ2's engine is already heavy enough without the UI slowing it down even further. One thing is about supporting better graphic possibilities and advanced engines, another is having high hardware requirements because the engine is not so great. Here the competition is stronger because these things CAN be easily compared.
The same applies to Vanguard. If it looks like crap, then better run *very smoothly*. Because noone swallows extremely demanding engines AND overall deluding graphic quality.
Which is also why I have that terrible nightmare.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 31, 2006 - 01:14.
There are a few concepts in here that I consider particularly important and that have been recurring in what I write. The beginning of the reasoning was an article about the future of the "endgame" over at Nerfbat and it became a good occasion to explain better two terms that I created and that I keep reusing. They are two general design principles that come as a result of my observations and I consider them important because they are more like philosophies that effect radically the way a game can be designed, even if on the surface they are easy to grasp.
These are the two terms and a general definiton for both, then I'll go more in detail about the second:
- "permeable barriers". While the concept is rather broad and extended to the theme of the "accessibility", my definition follows the idea of "lines drawn on the ground". These lines define and regulate a space, but at the same time the player has the possibility to cross them. So they don't transform into "cages". Concretely the idea of permeable barriers offers a single character the possibility to change class, use different skill-sets, switch faction, travel between servers, develop special affinities and proficences and so on. All these "states" define what a character is and can do (think to a class), but they are never completely permanent and definitive and they can be reverted. The "betrayal" quest in EQ2, is a concrete example of the application of the concept of "permeable barrier".
- "gated content". This is specifically about the "content" of the game. In particular it refers to the *types* of content, so, implicitly, the variety that the game offers. It's an idea particularly suitable for a sandbox game, but not only. Each "gate" corresponds to a different pattern available. It is woth noticing that a "gate" here is a conceptual idea, not an actual gate in the game that leads to different sub-games. The main idea of "gated content" here refers to the coexistence of these patterns and the possibility of the player to choose what he *prefers*. One type of content doesn't exclude or preclude another. Not only each type of content available isn't forced on the player (you are at "x" level and have to do "x"), but it also always exists and remains accessible, valid and pertinent throughout the life cycle of that character. Without getting replaced. Instead of passing from casual content to hardcore raids as two distinct and exclusive moments, all these content types coexist as parallel lines. (btw, even here there's a drift of the term, since I also use it for the accessibility when I use a type of content as a "door" on a different type. Not only to switch content types then, but also to integrate them.)
The first point is that the whole idea of "endgame" is silly. A division between two different games, the "main" one and the "endgame" has no reason to exist.
The very first question should be about which one is better and more appealing. In some cases (DAoC) the endgame is where the fun is, you have to endure the treadmill so that you can finally reach it. In other games (WoW) the "main" game is much more appealing, while the endgame is a complete change of pace that not many players enjoy (but tend to endure).
Why this division?
We basically have two ways to play the game. The only motivation to this distiction is that it adds "variety". Okay. Then, if this distinction is about adding variety, a much better design choice would be about INCORPORATING that variety in the same model. So that you aren't bound to a "before" and "after", but instead the two patterns cohexist and you can switch them based on your preference.
The original model here is the sandbox. Or the idea that says that adding variety to a virtual world is a winning choice. The one that accomplishes more the "mission" of these kind of games and enhances the fun. The variety always adds to the fun when the players are NOT ENFORCED into a one-way, obligatory path.
So the idea to have different patterns available in the same game is not a good one. It is an *essential* one. But an essential one that needs to be presented to the players on the same level. And not separated in two moment. The "before" and "after". Univocal and selective.
The "main game" in WoW, the one that is responsible to its success thanks to its accessibility and polish, is all focused on "progress". Not just in character power, don't let the appearance fool you. But also and in particular in "escalation". This is something that WoW does MUCH better than EQ2, for example. Meaning the way it leads you around the zones and then progressively adding more and more elements, with the world really starting small and then branching up. Sense of wonder. It's a sense of progression that follows the whole game and that really involves much more than the character. It involves the world outside and the way the game, step by step, adds elements to the puzzle. Brush strokes that progressively realize an impressive painting. This hooks the players better than everything else because the game not only gives you the correct amount of short-term goals, but also long term expectations and revelations.
There's a problem in this model, though. It gets spoiled. The first time you go through it is really the best experience you've ever had, but once it is spoiled, the sense of wonder and perfect progression don't work anymore. You can create alts, explore the starting zones you haven't seen yet, but it's never like the first time through. After three-four alts it even starts to get annoying. Blizzard is planning for new races and starting zones in the expansion but just adding those won't work. It's the model of the game that gets spoiled and you know already what type of progression and what kind of content you are going to see. "Reskinning" this experience won't do the trick because the experienced player has already generalized all that type of content (kill ten rats, get ten pelts, these are generalizations). He knows already how things work, he knows already that type of "escalation".
The game doesn't impress anymore, it loses its original, strong emotional impact.
The strength of WoW, and the reason why it will continue to be successful, is that for the brand new players this type of perfect progression is retained at no loss. You could have started to play when the game was released or start to play now and you aren't going to miss anything. The game is so carefully balanced that it will be preserved perfectly, while other mmorpgs age horribly and become nearly impossible for a brand new player to get into. Impassable barriers that isolate the "before" and "after" of the community. Which leads to a stagnation and the consequent slow drift into oblivion. It's not just about the "retention" of the subscriptions. It is rumored that WoW has a rather bad retention but one year and half later and it still sells more than 50k boxes each month just in NA. Without new players a mmorpg doesn't go anywhere and old mmorpgs don't lose those new players because they look old. But because the accessibility of the game fell to pieces as a consequence of bad design choices and models.
Often the "good" endgame is about the PvP. The majority of the ideas on Nerfbat, in particular those that I consider valid, are about PvP. It's not a case. "Stalling" is a good mechanic for PvP. Similarly to how the convergence is much more appropriate than divergence in PvP. If every couple of weeks there's an alien invasion on the world that completely destabilizes the PvP scenario, the players would be pissed off. Because the best mechanic for a PvP environment is a "stall". A fixed situation where then the players can manipulate some elements and play their game. But something under their control, not something impromptu or surprising. The "endgame" works in PvP because it is a stalling situation. Finally no other elements come to disrupt the conditions and the players "converge" in a similar situation. PvP needs this sort of "space" to exist. A set situation that reunites the players instead of dispersing them.
What's the endgame in WoW? Well, you cannot gain anymore levels so what is left to do is improve your gear. As a design model it doesn't seem really motivated, it is a silly idea. So why we arrived to it? The biggest game out there cannot be founded on something completely unmotivated, it would be crazy.Well, we arrived to that model not as a design choice, but as a productive one. A "progression" game is like football. You move horizontally, as a front. You cannot move backwards, it would be an heresy (see how hated are exp losses on a death). You are doomed to go on. At some point the game ends because the developers could add only so much content, it's always a finite space (and randomly generated content is also still finited) so, eventually, you arrive at the end. And what then? What am I chasing? The "endgame" here isn't a "necessity" of game design. It's just a necessity of the production. An excuse so that, despite the game is over, the players could feel motivated to continue to play and pay. "Raiding" is in this case the perfect choice to bind that request with a type of content that is structurally redundant and vain.
Think to the "main game" as a bait. Once they "fished" you they can throw you in a bucket of water and keep you there for a long while. Raiding is that "bucket of water".
The absurdity that I often underlined is that this model that is supposed to "preserve" content, since it's the most precious and scarce resource in the game, does exactly the opposite. It *erodes* content and removes it from the game since it's heavily based on the mudflation. Instead of valorizing ALL that the game has to offer, this kind of model just keeps devaluing and replacing constantly. As a continue, counterproductive reaction that finishes just to put a strain these worlds till they collapse.
So is this really the best model to use? Or maybe it is just a spontaneous drift and negative "maturation" (sophistication) of a genre that has lost track of its true principles and drive?
Let's imagine a different scenario and let's say that the content team has finished a small zone with all its quests, dungeons and overall story arc that unifies the various parts. A month later the zone is patched in the game but this time ALL the players can enter and experience it. The player who just bought the game and has been playing for a week as the veteran player who has kept an account for two years. And hopefully they'll even play side by side.
This doesn't mean that the sense of progression should be completely lost since all the content is always accessible. See for example these ideas. My idea is more like a collection of story lines. These can be totally independent or connected. But, while separated, they would retain their own linearity. In a game like WoW this already happens. There are story lines and themed quests, think for example to an instance and all the quests that are linked to it to form a story. Where that model doesn't really work is in the fact that those stories (even a bit too limited in potential) are limited by level. If you skip a part, going back wolud be rather silly. So my idea is about freeing these storylines so that the content never gets obsolete and remains always interesting for the same character. With no distictions between the "endgame" and the rest.
And yes, at the end there could be those ideas vaguely outlined on Nerfbat. But not as a "BAM! endgame". Not as a sudden event that completely changes the game you are playing. But as an evolution from the current model to one that contemplates all these possibilities right from the start. My idea of "gated content".
The idea of the player (and character) as a "traveler of worlds". Who passes smoothly (the idea of "permeable barriers") thorugh different types of content (PvP, group, single player, raid etc..) depending on his personal preference more than external imposition.
I imagine the design concept of the "gated content" visually like a number of portals that can be opened and that lead the character exactly to that type of gameplay he is looking for. A number of "opened doors". Possibilities available. The character is an "enabler" but the lack of a level system keeps the choice always "flat" and valid instead of higly selective. The "traveler of worlds" is the idea of a character that isn't strictly defined, but a roleplay point of view. Ideally that character could enter a portal and become a level 1 guy. Or enter another portal and become a level 50. Or enter another again and become a merchant. The same from the point of view of the content. Dungeons runs, epic raids, PvP territorial conquest, tournaments, storylines. These elements should work like portals that should never be dependent on a obligatory, imposed choice. The game shouldn't cage you into one pattern or one role. It's the player who decides what he wants to experience.
In a sandbox all the options should be available and valorized. And not as in SWG where the game was trying to lock you in one role to preclude all the rest the game had to offer.
These realities should coexist as possibilities.
There are four main points that should be at the center and that I continue to repeat:
- Accessibility
- Immersion
- Gated content
- Permeable barriers
What's the concrete consequence of all this? How concretely changes the game? For example the raid content wouldn't be anymore the obligatory "endgame", nor the only option you have past a certain point. The raid content would be just one *type* of content always available and always valid (and if you want to know concretely my idea of raid content, motivations, execution and reward, look here). Along with all the other types of content/patterns that the game has to offer.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 30, 2006 - 18:06.
In the last few days I've been idle here because, beside being sick, I discovered another geek paradise. The Napster of comics.
On the internet you can really find whatever you want, if you know where to look. The problem is always about finding it. In my case I was frustrated because it's more than a year that I keep waiting to read "Avenger disassembled" (one of the lastest Marvel crossovers). I own every single issue to this day (published over here, not the originals), "House of M" is starting and I'm still stuck to a year ago. This because I miss two issues of Thor right at the beginning of the story arc and decided to wait till I was able to get them. I'm quite picky about these things. The problem is that the crossover was published on a not so popular comic book series, over here, and I was never able to find the copies in a normal newsstand, nor from a specialized shop since they sold out and the publisher still hasn't decided to reprint them. One year and I still have holes in the plot.
So I decided to look on the internet to see if I was able to find a place where I could read the issues I was missing and maybe even find a correct "reading order" so that I could read the whole crossover linearly. I KNEW that there was somewhere a super-organized place archiving meticulously all that was being published. It happens for everything that is vaguely part of the geek world, games, manga, anime, movies, music, pr0n. You would be amazed about how some of these places are organized through a bunch of complicated .cvs lists, directory structures, CRC checks and so on. Beside the moral and legal implications of their questionable activities, the dedication and care of the internet pirates is amazing. They create museums and encyclopedias. So often you find things you have been looking for years without success. It's really not so much about getting stuff illegally to avoid paying it, but more about an *opportunity* to experience things that you wouldn't have otherwise. It's similar to the feeling I was having as a kid when I was riding on my bike for two hours during the summer to reach a city nearby and pass another couple of hours in a book shop finding sci-fi and fantasy books (Van Vogt, E. E. Doc Smith, Heinlein, Moorcock and, of course, Lovecraft were some of my favourite authors). A discovery, a world disclosed. The money is just the opportunity but the world you are interested about is elsewhere. The money is a barrier between you and that world. We aren't interested in the money, or to spend. The consumer mentality isn't the one of those who have interests and passions, but in the one of those who rise barriers in the culture. We are naturally meant to share experiences and to communicate. If I draw a comic I would ideally like it to be read by as many people as possible, and not have an high cost so that only a small group has access to it. This is the mentality of the internet pirates.
Of course it doesn't work. It's a silly utopia. If I'm an author I need my stories to sell or I wouldn't able to get what I need to continue to create them. If the pirates distribute my stories freely they steal my work and kill what I do. They kill me and my possibility to continue to communicate. It's kind of obvious that this model is wicked because it gets legitimation from a system that inhibits the original purposes. I'm here to communicate, but the only way to communicate is to create a barrier around what I do, so that only a limited number of people can have access to it. It sucks! I know it's inacceptable and I know that this world was designed by an idiot. But things work like that and our very reality is based on compromises.
The internet, as in other cases, brings up some basic contradictions of our real world. It happened with the music. You cannot stop people to hear and enjoy the music. It's a *perverse idea* to pretend to transform the music into a commercial product. The music is meant to be heard by the largest number of people. The music shatters paradigms, it shatters barriers, overthrows governments, it changes the world. You cannot confine it. You cannot create borders, lines of separation, barriers. The music is meant to cross them. It's its very nature. Nothing does that better than music. An artist ought to know this, but at the same time he cannot comply with his principles and the principles of what he does, because our real world imposes a value, a price on everything. A quantification of everything. A silly idea of the private property, even if everyone was born on this world and should have the right to walk everywhere.
These are all contradictions and we are all victims in a way or another. Our practical compromises want everyone to conform and comply, with the contradictions and everything. There aren't real answers. But we know that we all have inclinations that aren't exactly going in the same direction this world is. And so we'll keep dragging behind us those contradictions. We ought to love our world, even if it sucks.
So I was looking for those two numbers of Thor. It's wasn't a problem of money. If I read something I want to sit on my armchair, not in front of the PC. Reading doesn't work on a computer. It's a year that I try to find those two friggin numbers but they are sold out and it looked like that I had to start reading without the beginning of the story. So I started to dig the internet to see if I was able to locate one of those corners where you can find everything you ever desired. And I found it.
This time it's not about hidden chat channels, newsgroups or torrent sites. The pirate comicdom lives through a program called Direct Connect. Here some linear instructions to step into this wonderful geek paradise who can offer more than you ever desired.
You can get the latest version of the client from here. The installation and configuration is rather straightforward. This type of peer2peer is based on themed hubs/chatrooms where the users share their hard-disk directories. The most important step is to find the right hub and be able to access it.
These hubs usually have three requirements that you have to satisfy if you want to enter them and stay. The first is about sharing a minimum amount of content before you join the room. It can go from zero to 15 Gigabytes, so the real problem is about having already something to share before you can become a cog of this machine. The second requirement is about sharing content appropriate for the hub. So if you share 5Gb of pr0n and the room is about sharing music you risk to be kicked out as soon as someone spots you. The third requirement is the simpler one and is just about opening enough upload slots on your client. The more hubs you join at the same time the more slots you have to open, which is not recommended since one hub has more than enough stuff to keep you occupied for months. You can increase the number of slot from the "file" - "setting" - "sharing" screen.
To find a good hub and start this journey you go to this site. Here you can search for the public hubs available. In this case we are looking for comics so you type "comics" in the search field on the right and press the button. The list you'll get is a good place to start, but remember that you need to meet the requirements. Here I'm on a ISDN connection, which is barely better than a modem. If I was able to lurk and get enough stuff to meet those requirements I think everyone can.
The best hub for sharing comics seems to be megaman.gotdns.com - if you cannot connect at all it means it is down (it was yesterday for a full day). If you can connect but cannot manage to enter it, the error message should give you enough hints about why you cannot get in (not enough slots open, not sharing enough content). The requirements for this hub are 5Gb of comics or "cartoons". You can then read in the detail the rules when you join.
If you don't have those 5Gb you could find other rooms who have lower requirements. Another very good one is comicshack.no-ip.info which wants you to share 2Gb. And the one with the smaller requirements I could find is thewatchtower.no-ip.info:1411 - which requires only 1Gb but that is also much smaller. The idea is that you start to grind the treadmill so that you can get access to the better hubs. At the beginning I didn't have enough "on topic" content, but you can easily gain some time by sharing other stuff and hope you don't get reported. I know it worked for me :) Other options could be about getting initial content from torrents or newsgroups.
When you are in the hub you can start browsing the legendary library of Alexandria. Whatever has been published is probably available in a way or another. Old, new, it doesn't matter. You can find everything, it's amazing. If you know already what you are looking for you can just use the search function. For example if you want the issue 80 of Thor (one of the two I needed) you just type "Thor 80" in the search box. The client will start looking for all the users in the hubs where you are connected with that issue. The great majority of the files are in a .cpr format. This is something like a faked format, you can manually change the extension of these files to .rar or .zip and unpack them. Or use a particular program. Inside there are just simple .jpg files. In my case I just unpack them somewhere else and use an old version of ACDSee. An issue of 24 pages is usually around 10Mb or so. Quite agile even with a not so fast connection.
When you have the list of the files you can order it by size so that you can see what's the more popular format and get it. Sometimes the scans have a variable quality but in general they are decent. Another good idea is to check the "slot" field on the list. If the first number is not zero it means that the user has an upload slot available, so you can start the download right away. No waiting queues. Since the sharing happens between just two users the download speeds are good.
While you download a file it is possible that the user disconnects or that you lose the connection, but the program allows you to resume the downloads. To do this you just need to go in the "download queue" window, click on the file in the queue and "search for alternate". This system will check the CRC of the file, so even if the results have different names you can be sure it's the same file. If the previous download was interrupted you can take it here from another user and the program will automatically resume the download on the same file. Quite simple.
The other way to find the files is about clicking on one of the users in the chat and "get file list", this will download the full directory list with everything he is sharing at the moment and here you can start to explore and get some suggestions. Like entering a library and starting to browse what is exposed.
And a whole world discloses in front of you :) Things that I would never be able to find over here. Past issues of Astro City, the first issues of Grendel, Dave Sim's Cerebus, Jeff Smith's Bone, the first mini of Longshot drawn by Arthur Adams that I lost so many years ago, the delicious Alan Moore's "Lost Girls", De Matteis superb (and unfortunate) "Seeker Into the Mystery" mini, Warren Ellis' "Transmetropolitan", Rising Stars, Grant Morrison's "Kill Your Boyfriend" (I bought and lost this one TWICE. One lost to school friend and another to a.. uhm, girl. I simply love that comics, it inspired my adolescence) and, yes, even those two issues of Thor that I was desperately looking for a year. Finally I can start reading the crossover and I was even able to pull a complete reading list order from an user who had all of it organized :)
See, it's all stuff that I thought I had lost forever, or that I had no hope to find. Things that aren't being translated over here and that I don't have the opportunity to read. Tomorrow I'm going again to a specialized shop to get some other things that I had ordered. I am not going to stop reading comics because I found a well with no end on the internet. In fact this has lighted my interest again. I think I'll never download things that I can buy because a scan on a monitor just cannot compete with really reading. In fact it could happen that I go buy something that I initially discovered online and that I want in my hands.
Another example is the DC universe that here has been published randomly. Now I can finally dig those absurd crossovers like "Crisis on Infinite Earths". I had never thought that I would have the possibility to read it. Here I discovered crazy reading orders that group more than 700 issues. From the original crossover to Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. These comics don't arrive here and for sure I would have never had the possibility to read them and all those tie-ins. Money or not, it just wouldn't have happened.
I don't know how many of those "pirates" that share up to 500Gb of stuff are avid comics readers, but I suspect a lot. I suspect they are some of the most passionate fans that Marvel and DC have and that still buy real comics on real paper. Of course this is always dangerous. I was thinking about why Marvel or DC don't support these kinds of archives directly, offering themselves directly high quality versions of those comics, for example as a service with an accessible monthly fee as it happens for mmorpgs. This wouldn't become a way to make a lot of money, but it surely would extend the reading public and would also give more life to old comics that are still worth reading but that everyone ignores. The archive is bottomless, it's sad that all that stuff doesn't get read anymore.
I guess this doesn't happen because nothing stops a pirate to take even that material and made it available to everyone else for free. That would be a real piracy. Not anymore about sharing a passion and let people read things that would be ignored or forgotten otherwise, but just stealing to avoid to pay even a small fee. Again the ideals don't work really well and we are left to lurk in the illegality to nourish a passion.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 28, 2006 - 17:25.
There's a comment from J. (Vs Jessica Mulligan, hehe) that I really enjoyed:
Yeah yeah, I know, players eat the content, they should be allowed to make their own. No argument there. So why are so many of the supposedly ground-breaking attempts by developers to put the tools in players’ hands so they can make their own content done for games that have user bases that are marginal at best?
I’ll have to take your word on whether Nevrax planned Ryzom Ring from the beginning, but whether they’re being given away free doesn’t make much difference to me, because I don’t know anyone who plays Ryzom. I’ve been wrong about such things before, but unless someone builds some pretty impressive stack of Legos, I doubt much noise is going to be made of any of these projects other than they exist and are available for someone to get busy making more fun, because there’s not enough fun to go around.
I’m not trying to look “edgy.” Rather, I’m annoyed that what many assume is a grand corner-turn in the business of making games looks like one big excuse on the part of developers to shove the business of making games wholly onto their player base. Yeah, it works sometimes. But the developers end up adding a new discipline to their works: Publisher. And that always works well, when a developer decides they’re good enough at business to rely on the work of others, right? No reason to question their motives or future success, right?
Cut me a break, here.
Then let's talk about PvP :)
Submitted by Abalieno on May 28, 2006 - 16:56.
I started writing a lengthy post to explain more in detail some ideas that I consider particularly important and dear to me but now I'm rather tired and I don't have the strength to edit it in a final state.
As a teaser I'll say that it is about the "endgame". What it is, why we have a word to define it, what is its design purpose and role. How to solve radically the problems it presents. Then ideas and comments on the raid content and one important reason about why WoW's PvE is still much more "powerful" and successful compared to EQ2, even if it gets old rather quickly.
You can do your homework and answer those questions on your own :)
I started writing after reading on Nerfbat "The Future of the Endgame". He wrote from a general point of view. I'll do what he cannot do and go in the concrete details. And solutions.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 27, 2006 - 06:15.
"Epic, heroic, pe-petuual struggle..."
Some leftover still from the E3. In this case an hilarious video interview with Paul Barnett (a "design manager", something along the lines of a Mythic - Game Workshop coordinator) who explains what the Warhammer universe and Mythic's game will be about.
Now I know who Paul Barnett really is.
Ramus from Lunar: Silver Star Story!
That small sound clip is an almost perfect parody of Mythic's plan with the game. Sneaking in the cave where the WoW dragon is sleeping without waking it and get back what is legitimate of the Warhammer franchise.
"Now that the warm weather has melted the ice near the dragon's cave, there isn't any time to waste getting started on our big adventure! If we hurry, we may be able to sneak in without waking the dragon. Then we can get a fantasitically huge diamond from its lair worth thousands and thousands of silver, making us filthy stinking rich and very popular in the process!"
The first line is a reference to the time that has passed since WoW's release, with Blizzard having secured their position and success with the game. Thinking they don't need to do much else to continue to tap from that bottomless source of money, not fearing any competition. The dust settled, it's all calm. "If we hurry" is about the correct timing of the launch for Warhammer. And the huge diamond is the symbol of hopes and dreams (popularity! money!), of something that is being stolen back and forth to the point that noone knows anymore to who it legitimately belongs. WoW stole from Warhammer setting and lore, and Warhammer is going to use WoW as a direct ispiration and open antagonist to lure back those players that WoW brought in the genre.
...Or, in other words:
--
Three reasons why Warhammer is a great licence for a MMO:
1- Iconic look
2- An excuse to smash the living crap out of each other
3- A-pe-pe-cciual work with no ending from where to draw from (lore, backstory etc..)
Three "devices":
1- Zone story arcs - With the theme that defines a contested zone
2- Racial story arcs - Race vs Race
3- World story arcs - Between the races, plots, trickeries, "convoluted excuses" to fight etc..
"Everybody fights everybody, for-ever! That's all we are interested in."
Race cliches:
"The greenskin are soccer hooligans. All they do is wander around, pick up sticks and try to hit other people. There are no long term plans, no long term concepts. There's a group of soccer thugs, on the march to glory."
"The dwarfs are the northern(?) working class of England. They live down mines, all they want to do is get drunk. They just want to fight people who call them "short". They have no money, they are very proud of their holes in the ground."
"The high-elves are British posh people. Never done a day working in their lives. Don't understand about "doing the washing". Have had too much time, so they read the la-dee-dar-dee books, get really good with the swords and doing special magic."
"The dark-elves are English posh people who have taken drugs. Basically Lord Byron. They've got money coming out their ears. They have taken a load of opium and have decided that they can run the goddamn world and can have it any way they want."
"The humans. The empire is basically humans. You know, wonderful dreams, terrible nightmares. They don't really pay attention, build huge amount of technology. They like to explode and destroy the world. Cut down all the forest, they don't really understand it."
"The Chaos is humans that have been totally corrupted, tentacles, crab claws, extra eyes, horns. Some people get confused and think Chaos is like the devil. No, no, no. It's not fire and brimstone, it's chaos. It's custard falling from the sky. It's an arm that turns into a sword. It's the ability to cut open your arm and mice(?) pour out rather then blood. It's chaos, it's corruption."
"It's not a computer game. It's a total hobby experience. We want you to buy this game, and never buy another one."
"We want you to spend all your time playing it. We want it to involve: skill, commitment and imagination.
- The more skill you put in, the better the game is, the better you feel.
- More commitment you put in, you got piles of money, you got a great(?) of played, the more the game rewards you.
- Imagination. Over in America they call it "immersion". It's not immersion. Immersion is playing Half-Life and not realizng the house is burning down. And your wife's left you. And you haven't slept for weeks. Imagination is: I played the game and then I want to talk about it, go to the websites, draw pictures about it, have t-shirts, I wanna think about what I'm going to do when I play next week, I talk to all my friends about it.
If you get skill, commitment and imagination, you get a total hobby experience. And a hobby experience should grab you to the core of your being and be the only thing you want to do.
That's the game we're making."
Submitted by Abalieno on May 26, 2006 - 06:13.
Here's a poll I've noticed on EQ2's forums (need to be subscribed to answer):
In other words 76% of those who answered the poll prefer to play up to a full group, while a small 14% likes larger groups.
I bet that in WoW the raid lovers would be even less in comparison.
--
Adding some comments. I'm often (more often than you imagine) a "solo" player but I don't like this general trend. In fact I believe it's pretty negative for the solo players, the community and the overall game.
It's important to understand these trends and not just dismiss them superficially. In this case the situation is not encouraging. And that poll could be considered more as an "alarm". Something that is also generalized to all mmorpgs, so not a specific problem of EQ2.
Stealing a comment from Darniaq that has some implications in what I'm describing:
* Sometimes, yes, people just want to get in for 15-30 minutes to kill some stuff. So forced-grouping is a problem for them.
* Other times they're just shy. They want the opportunity to see other people, and experience the economy, but they won't want to openly interact.
* Other times they don't match the requirements of a group. Like, how many guilds would let a pickup raider join them on an AQ run if that raider still had green equipment?
* Other times someone just rubs them the wrong way, but leaving ostracizes them from the larger group.
I think there are design implications if the players start to deliberately avoid group content. It's a symptom that needs to be considered seriously because it may say that something in the game doesn't work too well.
In my case I said I'm often a solo player. But the real truth is that what I do depends above all on the *game* and not on my personal preferece of a playstyle over another. There are mmorpgs where I NEVER grouped with anyone even if I played for months. There are mmorpgs where I passed the majority of my time in groups and got even quite involved in the community.
Are solo players growing consistently in the genre because they really don't want to bother with other players, or because they bump against accessibility barriers and design models that aren't exactly encouraging and rewarding the cooperation?
Is "solo play" a real necessity or just a reaction to a lack of accessibility?
I have my answers as always and I know about these problems rather well since when I started playing mmorpgs I could barely write some words in english. Being "shy" isn't a small detail, in particular when you face something completely new to you. Game design can do a lot in these cases, to overcome those "barriers".
In fact I think there's noting more important and pertinent to game design than that.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 26, 2006 - 02:22.
Haha, this one is really fun.
SirBruce's E3 report was linked on Vanguard's forums beside other places and it got the attention of Brad. The result is great.
Both with their usual shortcomings. SirBruce desperately attempting to defend his credibility with the result of ridiculizing himself more than what everyone thought possible and Brad continuing to use EQ1 as a quality standard (combat more action oriented than EQ1, beta longer than EQ1).
Two noteworthy passages, because I'm mean:
Actually with the gamespace growing my estimate has grown too. I said in the past that we'd likely do 250k-500k. I think now we could on the more optimistic side go north of 500k.
Along with Turbine with MEO and Bioware with the undisclosed project, they are the third company now to consider the 500k at arm's reach. Fun how WoW is feeding silly dreams. Everyone wants a slice of that pie.
And:
heck, I took back Lum to see everything and his report was pretty positive
That's just because Lum is now always nice and optimist :)
--
EDIT: More from Brad:
We do need enough subscribers such that Vanguard is a profitable venture such that Sigil can go on, making expansions and the like, as well as achieve meaningful profit sharing with our employees.
As I've said, however, to achieve that requires around 200k. I think given the appeal of the game, it's design and focus on immersion, long term gameplay and retention, freedom, etc., the size of the audience we are targeting, how much the gamespace has grown, the assertion that a significant number of people for whom WoW was their first game will find themselves wanting a game like Vanguard for their next MMOG, and the fact that because of our pedigree that we will attract a significant number of EQ 1 and EQ 2 players (and I don't mean just existing subscribers -- EQ 1, for example, while it peaked at between 450-500k subscribers, also has sold 2-3 million boxes -- so there are a huge number of people who played EQ 1, for example, over the last 7 years that while they aren't currently subscribers, were at one time, and are likely to be looking for the 'next' EQ)... I think if you consider all of that, a very conservative number for Vanguard is between 250k and 500k, a likely number 500k+, and a more bullish number one that approaches a million.
And from Lum:
More to the point, Vanguard is a game aimed at a very specific market: people who played Everquest 1 and wanted "more Everquest". I don't think it'll make the 500k+ numbers that Brad McQuaid's talked about, but it will make enough to carve out a respectable niche, much like Eve. There's easily 100-200k ex-EQ players out there who miss Vox raids. (Most of them post on FOH's boards, I think.)
Honestly, niches are where you're likely to see originality and new design ideas, not in World of Warcraft version 2.4.
I did warn the Sigil guys at E3 that the people who post on beta forums are not the people who are going to be playing when the game goes live, more often than not. I've yet to see an MMO where the message board traffic didn't drastically change as the game transitions from beta to live. Expectations change, massively. The game is no longer a dream or an ideal, it's a service.
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