Tag: endgame

SWTOR Endgame: Fixed!

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been talking with a couple of people about the state of endgame in Star Wars: The Old Republic and we pretty much all agree the same thing – it’s good when you can get into it. The lack of an LFD tool and low number of raiding guilds mean that a lot of players are left choosing between PvP or daily quests.

That isn’t such a great choice for me – my PvP skills are slightly worse than my ability to paint the Mona Lisa using tarmac, with my feet, and blindfolded. Daily quests have a tendency to get very old very quickly, leaving me looking at raiders like a kid with his face pressed up against the toy shop window, peering in at all the goodness without being able to take part.

So we had a think about what else we could do, and we think we have a solution that everyone will enjoy.

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My Struggle with Sandboxes

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been having a bit of a Minecraft kick lately, after finally getting enough time to enjoy the recent(ish) updates. The world generator now spawns features like abandoned mines, subterranean strongholds and populated villages as part of an Adventure Mode overlay.

The great thing about this Adventure mode is that it’s entirely optional. You can either spend time building the huge mine cart roller coaster you’ve always wanted, or you can build the portal, traverse the Nether and defeat the Ender Dragon. Or you can do both at the same time.

It’s also convinced me to check out the limited selection of sandbox MMOs currently available. After digging into EVE, Wurm Online (a previous Notch creation) and the Glitch beta, it becomes pretty obvious who these games are aimed at: builders. Go to this location, harvest these resources. Go to that location and build something with what you’ve gathered. Sometimes there’s a “kill ten rats”, but before you can do that you have to find a tree, cut it down, mine some iron, learn how to blacksmith, until finally… the rats have gone home for the weekend.

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The Necessity of End Game

Posted on by Gazimoff

Today’s article is a guest post from Honor’s Code.

Let me put on my armchair Game Designer hat for a moment. Put yours on as well and join me as we think about AAA MMOs.

I think we can agree on the goal. All of us, from the bean counters at production houses, to the developers, the QA Testers, to the players themselves, want a great game. What we want to create is a great ride, an experience if you will. We want an experience that can be picked up and enjoyed and shared with a wide variety of people. This is necessary to create a reliable and sustainable fan base which in turn brings in enough revenue, with whatever business model is used, to keep the servers running and keep us and our employees gainfully employed.

While we can all agree on the goal, how to get there is the topic of vigorous debate. At a high level, we want an immersive world with many fun activities to engage in. We know that different people find different activities fun, so we will need a wide range of activities. We don’t want to force any players to do things they find ‘unfun’ so many of those activities will need to be optional.

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