Month: April 2011

Designing My Own MMO

Posted on by Gazimoff

A while back I was challenged on Twitter to design my own MMO. I can’t remember exactly who threw down that gauntlet, but I have a feeling it was Razorbug. In the weeks that have passed I’ve been kicking the tires on this idea, thinking of how I could make a game unique enough to sound interesting yet familiar enough for players to be comfortable with it.

I wanted to share this idea with you partly to see if an “armchair designer” like me can come up with something that you might find interesting. I also want to pass the challenge on – to see what you would choose if you had a development team waiting for your MMO ideas. It’s a great exercise and it challenged me to think in a different way to my normal consumer-critic mindset. If you’re up for the challenge then give it a go!

So without further ado, let me share what’s been in my head these past few weeks…

Continue reading “Designing My Own MMO”

Playing Cards at the Carnival

Posted on by Gazimoff

Confession time: I like to take my time when levelling characters. I’ve tried levelling at breakneck speed and it just isn’t for me. Nowadays I prefer to take things at my own pace – I have a bunch of alts that still aren’t at level cap in Warcraft, while in Rift I’m only about two thirds to cap nearly two months after release. After all, what’s the rush?

Spinks recently highlighted an idea that the Everquest 2 developers are kicking around, where experienced returning players could trade cash for a max level character. I agree with her that the concept feels like a bad one, but that it’s getting difficult to justify why.

There’s a great analogy someone once made that compared MMOs to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Basically put, if the films followed the same path as many MMOs then the opening twenty minutes would be about getting the ring to Mount Doom. The rest of the first film and the remaining two would all be about getting the ring into the volcano. Feels slightly skewed, right?

Continue reading “Playing Cards at the Carnival”

Mages & PvP – Fun, Lethal, or Both?

Posted on by Gazimoff

This guest post is from Bordy, a veteran player of games and dealer in lethal puns. You can find his unique brand of humour on Twitter @snuffleorc

I have played WoW since the retail release. Gazimoff is the one to blame for getting me into it. It was by no means though my first MMO. That honour goes to Ultima Online. Playing with a dial up connection and (in current terms) an incredibly slow PC, I both loved that game and hated it.

My recollections of the game now are vague, so my apologies for anyone who knows better, but to me the world was pretty standard fantasy fayre, although gameplay was fun. Unlike WoW, the game was classless and you picked and chose skills from across a range, meaning that the ultimate combination became so widespread that the bulk of characters were effectively (as far as I could tell) fighter-mages.

Continue reading “Mages & PvP – Fun, Lethal, or Both?”

Cheering the Armchair Designer

Posted on by Gazimoff

The Warcraft community is huge. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people writing, drawing, sharing or discussing something about the game every single day. That’s a staggering amount of people all talking about one game made by a single company.

Having such a vocal community can be a bit of a double edged sword. Whenever a change to the game is introduced it gets placed under intense scrutiny. Sometimes a change will be met with universal acclaim, while other times (although rarely for Blizzard) it’ll be met with disdain. Sometimes a change will be so controversial that it’ll split the community completely.

The most recent controversial change was Call to Arms, an attempt by Blizzard to reduce the time it takes to assemble a group for certain combat roles. While the aim is commendable, a number of bloggers (including me) noticed several flaws with the design as presented. We discussed it, shared it and importantly made suggestions about how to improve it.

Continue reading “Cheering the Armchair Designer”

Bribes, Karma and Recommendations

Posted on by Gazimoff

Patch 4.1 is approaching, although when it’ll actually arrive is currently anyone’s guess. Content and changes are being crammed in on a regular basis, making predicting the arrival date sheer guesswork at the moment.

Call to Arms is one of the latest features to be squeezed into the patch. Essentially the change amounts to a bribe to persuade tanks (and occasionally healers) to queue by themselves for heroic groups by offering them an additional reward when they complete the dungeon.

The rewards on offer to those that respond to the Call are a mix of the following:

  • More gold
  • A chance of a rare gem, flasks or potions (basically more gold)
  • A good chance of a dungeon drop only non-combat pet
  • A rare chance of a dungeon drop only mount

Although the Call to Arms can in theory be triggered for any role, it’ll always go for the one that’s needed most. In the majority of cases this will be the tank, although occasionally it’ll be healers that are most in need. It is highly unlikely that this will trigger for DPS roles.

The goal is that this will reduce the queue times for DPS, providing them with a better LFD experience.

It will not work.

Continue reading “Bribes, Karma and Recommendations”

The Finished Next-Gen MMO Machine

Posted on by Gazimoff

Apologies for the lack of updates, but I’ve been a little busy. I’ve previously talked about putting together a new PC to handle the next range of MMO games on the horizon. This hasn’t been some kind of hypothetical question about building something in my mind – I was really planning on building a new rig. After months of planning and some heavy work during the weekend, it’s finally done!

The parts were ordered, checked and prepped ready for installation. I’m told variously that the dining table looked either like some kind of Geek Christmas or a Shrine to Technology. Either way that makes me some kind of Geek Santa or techno-Oracle, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

Continue reading “The Finished Next-Gen MMO Machine”