With a few notable exceptions, levelling in MMOs is a temporary experience. We get a few weeks of meaty questing and cinematics, followed by months of waiting for content updates. It’s the Achilles Heel of the theme-park experience – rich and deep while it lasts, but bland and repetitive once the cap is reached. I’ve…
Tag: design
The Legion Dungeon Love-Affair
‘Thank you for fetching my tools, Wilkins. But, before I can teach you the secrets of Mid-Legion Tailoring, you must carry out one more task’ ‘Yes, Master?’ The scruffy young apprentice looked up, hope welling in his big eyes. ‘Indeed. You see, we have run out of Milk. I’ve heard tales of the Naga breeding…
Crowdsourcing MMO Design
Today, I’m going to look at two related topics. The first came out of a new initiative from Carbine Studios called DevConnect, where the studio asks players for input on potential changes to WildStar. The first topic is about faction barriers – a subject that had grabbed my attention following Liore’s blogpost on it earlier this…
The Changing Face of MMOs
Sometimes, MMO commentary feels cyclical. Back in 2014, we were musing how Blizzard’s cancellation of Titan signalled an end to the grand MMO genre. Now that Daybreak Games has shoved EverQuest Next out of a similar airlock, the same opinion is doing the rounds (although with a little less doom-mongering this time around). Some existing MMOs…
The Stardew Valley Fallacy
Recently, I’ve been playing Stardew Valley a lot. It’s a charming retro game, featuring a young hero who shuns being a corporate slave, trading it for a new life on his grandfather’s farm. But it’s not just about growing crops and tending animals; there’s a little bit of adventuring on the side, and the entire game…
On the Shores of Lag
This weekend was jammed solid with choice for MMO gamers. SWTOR had just ushered in the mission chain to gain HK-51 as a companion droid. Trion launched RIFT: Storm Legion earlier this week. Planetside 2 wrapped up its open beta, while City of Steam started theirs. If you’re into online gaming, you were literally spoiled…
Gaming: The Journey to Service Saturation
I’m going to start with a bit of a history lesson. Back when I was a kid, we used to go to the games store and buy a cassette tape. We’d take it home, play it into the machine, and wait half an hour to play the game we just bought. Sometimes it’d work, sometimes…
Guild Wars 2: Spellcasters Quick Guide
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll probably notice that I have an ongoing love-affair with spellcasters in MMOs. Call it a mage, wizard or sorcerer – if it hurls magic then I’ll probably be playing it. Perhaps it’s because I identify with the thought of an intellectual magus studying to become…
Becoming The Nomad
My approach to MMOs is changing. I used to be someone who sticks to a game for several years, but now I consider changing every six months. It’s something I first felt back in August last year, and explored further when I thought there might be a limit on the number of subscription MMOs that…
Replacing the Superficial Intelligence
I have an opinion on Non-Player Characters. It emerged in the days of the first escort quest I attempted, when the computer-controlled NPC I’d be chaperoning would sprint ahead to certain death at the hands of hungry skeletons. If they weren’t sprinting ahead they’d probably stopped to admire a particularly intricate pebble and forgotten all…