General Discussion

Well apparently there was an MMO dev from bioware at our college today in Savannah Georgia(SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design) who came for a conference to discuss what it takes to make an MMORPG. He made it clear that he would not discuss Bioware's current MMO though but he did tell some funny stories I wanted to repeat.

He had mentioned that when MMO's are unbalanced, they are simply more fun. Thats the truth to it, but sadly games have to be balanced in some way or else you'll have some unhappy customers. Apparently archers or rangers in UO were a bit too powerful and their ranged weapons were doing too much damage. So the UO team lowered the damage dealt and the players stated that they had "nerfed" their arrows, which is where the term came from. 

Another funny story he mentioned was when he was working on UO, He had witnessed a player kill this little girl's cat, skin it, and then hand the meat to her. In response, he and a few other GM's rezzed/respawned the cat and gave it back to the 8 year old girl telling her they had brought it back from the dead because they had gotten a call from her mother saying how dissiapointed she was lol. And they had hosted a christmas event once where they had all these santa NPC's walking around town, but some players had found a way to undress them to make them nude so you had a bunch of Hoho'ing Santas with no clothes. In response, the GM's gave coal to all the players that caused the problems and they ended up smelting the coal into black armor which wasn't even supposed to be in the game at the time.

Funny stuff haha. Just thought I'd share a bit of what I heard.

"Nerf" comes from the brand Nerf. When you "nerf" something you make it weaker like the Nerf toys. When UO "nerfed" the ranged it was like they were shooting Nerf arrows. To complete your story that is why we say "nerf".

Here is a wiki I found on it, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerf_(computer_gaming)

Originally posted by brostyn

"Nerf" comes from the brand Nerf. When you "nerf" something you make it weaker like the Nerf toys. When UO "nerfed" the ranged it was like they were shooting Nerf arrows. To complete your story that is why we say "nerf".

 

Here is a wiki I found on it, too.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerf_(computer_gaming)

Well I was assuming everyone knew what a Nerf toy was to be honest.

Originally posted by tigris67

Originally posted by brostyn

"Nerf" comes from the brand Nerf. When you "nerf" something you make it weaker like the Nerf toys. When UO "nerfed" the ranged it was like they were shooting Nerf arrows. To complete your story that is why we say "nerf".

 

Here is a wiki I found on it, too.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerf_(computer_gaming)

Well I was assuming everyone knew what a Nerf toy was to be honest.

I love the old nerf wrist rocket launchers. Especially with some straight pins inserted point-outwards in the tips of the nerf darts.

i want hte feeling of playing an mmo like UO now =\ wow does not deliver

Originally posted by tigris67

Well apparently there was an MMO dev from bioware at our college today in Savannah Georgia(SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design) who came for a conference to discuss what it takes to make an MMORPG. He made it clear that he would not discuss Bioware's current MMO though but he did tell some funny stories I wanted to repeat.

He had mentioned that when MMO's are unbalanced, they are simply more fun. Thats the truth to it, but sadly games have to be balanced in some way or else you'll have some unhappy customers. Apparently archers or rangers in UO were a bit too powerful and their ranged weapons were doing too much damage. So the UO team lowered the damage dealt and the players stated that they had "nerfed" their arrows, which is where the term came from. 

Another funny story he mentioned was when he was working on UO, He had witnessed a player kill this little girl's cat, skin it, and then hand the meat to her. In response, he and a few other GM's rezzed/respawned the cat and gave it back to the 8 year old girl telling her they had brought it back from the dead because they had gotten a call from her mother saying how dissiapointed she was lol. And they had hosted a christmas event once where they had all these santa NPC's walking around town, but some players had found a way to undress them to make them nude so you had a bunch of Hoho'ing Santas with no clothes. In response, the GM's gave coal to all the players that caused the problems and they ended up smelting the coal into black armor which wasn't even supposed to be in the game at the time.

Funny stuff haha. Just thought I'd share a bit of what I heard.

LMAO

Originally posted by tigris67

Originally posted by brostyn

"Nerf" comes from the brand Nerf. When you "nerf" something you make it weaker like the Nerf toys. When UO "nerfed" the ranged it was like they were shooting Nerf arrows. To complete your story that is why we say "nerf".

 

Here is a wiki I found on it, too.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerf_(computer_gaming)

Well I was assuming everyone knew what a Nerf toy was to be honest.

.... lol

ahhh UO... those were the days! My 1st graphic based mmo (had been playing MUDs before that). UO was pretty damn awesome for a long time, played it for years. Altho I did play other games at the time to like EQ. UO did bring me far more enjoyment for a long time than any other mmo untill DAoC. The only thing that sucked about UO was trying to get or place a house lol. Had to hit ebay once for one (the ONLY time i would ever or will ever again buy anything in a game with real money, fuck you gold farmers/spamers). But otherwise damn it was good times back then!!

lmao, but were the devs trying to reward them with the coal for being able to undress the Christmas npc's? Or did they give them the coal to say that they were bad and they just messed up giving them an item that wasn't in the game yet? Either way lmao.

Originally posted by alcapwnyou

lmao, but were the devs trying to reward them with the coal for being able to undress the Christmas npc's? Or did they give them the coal to say that they were bad and they just messed up giving them an item that wasn't in the game yet? Either way lmao.

It was not meant to be any sort of reward for hacking the game lol. he has said he had to leave his home Christmas eve to go deal with the issue so even though they may have gotten a chuckle out of it, it wasn't necessarily a great thing. But the coal was basically like a slap on the wrist or something of that sort I'm guessing. Oh, and he mentioned that everyone received mini Christmas trees with 8 lights that could be lit for Christmas and that everyone lit their tree at the exact same time on Christmas day and crashed the servers lol. Thats funny as well.

He basically said that UO was one big open MMO experiment where the devs and many other future mmo devs learned what to do and what not to do. He meantioned that the UO type game will most likely never be seen again tho.