All Posts by Arioc

1. Everquest 1 - Immursion, socialization, epic scale, graphics for the time, addiction.

2. Asherons Call 1 - Feeling of a sprawling real world, climate changes, progressive story, monthly content updates, the feeling of trully being alone in a massive world and making sure to gear up before you left town.

3. World of Warcraft - Addiction, Style, Personality. Lost me with the raid game though....

The Asherons Call 2 team suffered issues interally with their dev cycles, loss of staff, and funding. This led to a greatly diminished team left to support the live product while the dev team (which was forced to release a feature incomplete game due to pressure from their microsoft funding) was moved onto another project (presumably LOTR since we heard about LOTR while we were still early in WoW's development). 

Asherons Call was a fun game, I played it for about a year till it's eventual cancleation. 

Let me list it's pro's:

• Seamless world chopped up into 3 islands.
  
• Unique looking races with unique classes distributed among them.
• Many ties to AC1's loot system and creature spawning.
• Evolving storyline with world changes each month to progress it.
  

Some of the con's:

• Unbalanced character classes, some able to solo the most difficult content, others unable to survive except against the weakest monsters.
  
• Many incomplete or unused areas in the world.
• Lack of content updates or novelty with each patch.
• Limited weapon and armor growth. Gear only went up to level 50 and then capped out, all players were at their maximum potential very fast.

The game started off lacking much content, and players blew throught he content quickly demanding the promised features such as world evolution, a more robust tradeskill system, more interaction with the enviornment and player housing, decay and other such things which were hyped in the PR for the game. Allowing the players to impact city growth was a big one Turbine tried to sell but never got around to doing. Alot of negativity brewed in the community for the game, while at the same time alot of hope for the eventual maturity of the game.

Turbine hired a new community relations manager who tried to open a dialogue with the player base, but while this tamed them for a while the lack of significant updates or features each month left many players bored and wanting more of a challange. Some classes like the defender were grossly overpowered able to solo group mobs while others like the alchemist could barly kill a drudge. More class changes made the zerker the top dps class, and then tacticians could set up turrents and go afk and come back level 50. (Ok that's a bit of an exageration, it took some minor upkeep but they did very little work overall the turrents did all the killings, finding a fast spawning location was the big challange).

Players got the ability to respec so they'd make a tactician, get to 50 then respec to zerker. Flavor of the month became commonplace and there was a great sense of unfairness. Lack of features, feeling your class was being ignored, fluff updates like a 10 minute dungeon which gave you a reward of a pair of bunny ears on your head verses anything really challanging left people bored.

Turbine added hero classes but again they were unbalanced and slim on content. It took 10 levels to unlock the first hero ability. Then another 10 for the next, each could be used only once or twice before you had to recharge them by killing tons of group mobs. It was more like a one trick pony each class got that most didn't use because the refresh time took so long.

Lack of content, imbalance, lack of interest in the game was what ultimatly led turbine to close it's doors. The server pops dwindled to nothing, people kept waiting for some patch with tons of new content but nothing came. There was a last ditch effort made to create an expansion which introduced the empyreans as a playable race but the just didn't spur enough interest. The content was mostly 1-50 again and all the people with level 50 toons were bored with nothing to do. Ontop of that the 1-50 empyrean classes also suffered from balance problems and lacked any significant differance in play style from the core classes.

Hope that answers your question.

You should make blanket statements such as "It's ready for release" and follow them up with comments which discredit your statement like "According to rumor and hearsay". If the game was ready for release the dev's would have it out the door immediately to be able to make money off of it to pay off the debt incurred from development.

As much as you want the game to be out, making inflammatory statements based on hearsay and rumor only further propagates disinformation and sullies the image of a company who has not done anything wrong by casting them in a negative light based on conjecture and rumor.

I understand you want the game to be out, you're bored and want something new to play. But these sort of inflammatory posts only work to the detriment of the game and it's company by focusing negativity on a project that hasn't even been released yet for no reason.

I believe he was trying to be sarcastic and do one of those classic MMORPG "this game rocks!" subjects and then listing reasons why it dosn't rock. You know, it's all the rage these days. But I believe some poor english grammer might have miscommunicated his intent. At least that's my take on it after reading it.

I'm not exactly sure what the point of the post is OP. I've played MMO's with the system you've described and played level MMO's. Are you advocating the skill system over levels or asking why players prefer one over the other?

From a developer point of view sandbox systems like this are notoriously hard to balance, and provide content for. Content must be generic enough to cater to any mix of skills.

For examples of this sort of system; look into an old game called Asherons Call 2. In it you picked a race and could progress down the melee, magic, and ranged tree's which each broke into sub-classes of those archetypes. Players diversified as they chose differant branches and leaf skills along that branch, ultimatly filling the tree. As some classes were more desired and others got perks, players wanted to be able to respect to leap to the newest content which may have favored melee's or ranged. Thus they allowed respecing, which further complicated things because players would gain exp as one class, then shift to another which they felt was more potent later but lacking earlier. It really sparked a flavor-of-the-month mentality and caused an imbalance of healers to fighters to ranged players.

Gonna have to go with GM event in EQ1. I was part of a server event where the GM's were controling the NPC's and acting out a big event (this was the opening of the plane of hate and when Kithicor became cursed). There was a big war going on in several zones around and the champion for each side appeared gathering their player and npc forces to march to high hold, but kithicor was where the fight would happen. I did my best to roleplay and rally people getting into it and enjoying it rather then mocking or begging for loot. In the end alot of us died, had stories to tell and had a grand time and reveled at the change in the world.

A week or so later I was told there was an npc in nektulos talking about the war and the fallen champion, so I came over cuz I loved GM events and the gm recognized my name and made mention I was in the war and such and so on. Ultimatly I was to escort a GM controled NPC through challanges and area's seeking out places npc's and unwraveling a story to recovery the soul of Lanys T'Vyl from hate. I gathered some friends and we all went through the story, the GM's helped with clues but we really felt like they let us drive the story and figure it out. When we completed it, my friends got some artifact rewards and I got a badass shield called The Shield of Hatred which had a unique texture on it (was the bone rib cage) and had regen on it. At the time it was one fo the most badass items on the server (well before Kunark) and I recall being so geeked I couldn't stay in my chair. I was cheering and excited, it was deffinitly the most thrilling event I'd been part of in an MMO and I really felt like the hero of the story.

It's a shame you can't get the same feel from a scripted event that everyone eventually goes through. When it's rare and unique it means more, but that means not everyone gets that feeling. Still my fav event evah :D

Link for nostalga: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=1132

So this is an old debate but I'll reitterate it for the benefit of anyone who hasn't heard it before.

The balance between sandbox and structure has ramifications which greatly affect the ability for developers to control a game world and create interesting content for it. In todays jaded culture we want epic stories, anime and cinema have made CG commonplace and it's harder and harder to wow audiences and gamers alike. Games like AION with their vast illustration like settings are attention-getters, while mundane environments like dense forest is less amazing to the average gamer.

Game companies keep trying to push the envelope for epic content, but that content has to be tailored to the setting. EQ2 does a good job of escalating it's story from local threats to dragons to gods themselves.

Bare with me, there's a reason for that tangent. A sandbox game is a delicate thing to balance, with statistical numbers for skills which can come out to thousands of permutations when trying to balance the numbers. Give a wizard the unarmed ability and make a decent unarmed weapon and woops, that wizard skill he took to make him tank as a wizard now enhances his unarmed and he's a monster with that weapon. Adding content to a sandbox world has to be done slowly to check the numbers with each new item. It would not be possible without  large organized staff of designers and number crunchers to add dungeons with tons of new armor and weapons and fun fluff items because of the unforseen ramifications that might occure when x skill is combined with x skill and x item is used.

Anyone who recalled UO had a fairly limited number of skills, sure you could wear heavy armor, weild a mace, a sword, or an axe and it pretty much stopped there. By limiting their skill set they reduced the number of possible combinations and kept the math from getting out of control. But players wanted more variety, more choices, more ways to customize and become unique. Asherons Call expanded the skill list and began to stumble into that pit. Ogg templates (refering to a player who maximized two core skills and ignored others to become insanly powerful) became all the rage and people realized that it's great to have 12 abilities your' good at, but to trully dominate you just need to be the best at 2. Suddenly weaker and faster weapons were better then slower more damaging ones. The multitude of skills became boiled down to a few core ones people picked and gone was the diversity and variety for the most part, and the "you gimped yourself" lines started popping up.

Other games did better, SWG had it's uber classes and other combinations which felt gimp, but there wasn't a sense of epic scale to the game. Because content had to be watered down to a degree to support the many templates. Otherwise players complained that I cannot do this quest, it's too hard for me, while others breezed through it. Without core rolls in groups people were a hodgepodge of abilities and designers could not foresee what tricks, and abilities players would use to trivialize content.

The lack of epic and challanging content led to a lull in excitment for the big sandbox world and of course Lucas stepped in and said "We want it exciting!" so they had to create classes so they could create content to cater to classes and balance the numbers. If you know exactly what a jedi a smuggler and a creature handler can do you can tailer the content to utilize their abilities so they all play a roll rathe rthen just everyone dpsing the mob to death.

Also when it comes to designing quests, the designers need to kick out a ton of content. If I told you the next big MMO has 200 quests and each is long and involved you'd probably scoff at first at hearing a MMO with only 200 quests. If you heard 2000 you're jazzed even if 600 of them are kill x number of wild pigs. Designers have set numbers and thus can offer rewards specific to classes, to tailor content and rewards to follow the lore of your character. Yer not just Joe the guy who can swing a sword and heal, and cast some defensive buffs, and maybe wear plate. Yer Joe the Paladin, crusader of justice. You have a goal and mythos and they can tailor content for paladins.

My ideal game is a sandbox, I'm right there with ya. I want characters who sleep, walk around, not always available, I want to pace myself in a quest because I know I can't just clickfest through it and get my reward. MMORPG players are impatient, faster, better, now now now. There are some who stop to smell the roses but for the majority of them time is money and they want their moneys worth.

Thus the delema is customized content vs player customization.

I consider a sandbox game to be based upon building blocks that the player combines to form his or her hero. Rather then being a paladin or shadowknight you're a character who picks skills which imply those rolls and abilities and can futher customize the abilities of your character through swapping skills or purchasing new ones. This allows for a multitude of combinations rather then set classes. The trade off of course is customized gameplay for that class and unique abilities based on the classes mythos.

Sandbox worlds are more then big seamless height fields (although that does seem to be one of the big defining elements of them). Dynamic elements are what make a world a sandbox world. Moving storms, change in plantlife or growth. When static elements are defined for a region which never change (i.e. WoW zones which remain the same from release till now, same problems, same flora, same fauna, same npc's standing in 1 spot). Dynamic npc's who wander around, do errands and sleep/eat are another element people associate with sandbox worlds. 

Vanguard is more structure and less freedom, I say it's a moderatly sandboxlike world with very eq character classes and progression. At 50 you're the same as the other guy of your class at level 50 barring any item differances. That level 1-10 quest area you grew up in has the same tree's same quests, same monsters, no change will ever be seen there. So it's far more structured then sandbox.

Few MMO's trully ever got sandbox, Asherons Call 1 and Ultima Online was the closest I ever experienced in an MMORPG. Oblivion/Morrowind for RPGs.

Everquest 2. It has tons of content to keep you busy for a long time, and keeps getting updated with free content and zones between expansions. SoE keeps releasing alot of free liveupdate content like raid zones, new player races and starting cities. EQ2 really does have the most content updates per month then any other MMO I know.

The lore stated that Neriak had many "caverns" which made up the Everquest version of the underdark. Fallen Gate was dubbed that by the agents of Qeynos who tried to raid Neriak during the War of the Fay (All this is in the in-game and web-site lore). Queen Christanos Thex saw her city under siege while her army was away in Faydwer sacking Felwithe and Kelethin and was powerless to rebulk the forces of Qeynos, so she caved in the major tunnels which led to Neriaks greater portion.

The Darklight Wood was once part of Nektulos Forest (and many elements are reminicent of it here) but was cut off during the shattering. Fallen Gate was the farthest enterance to Neriak that Qeynos could utilize to enter the cavern network since Neriak forces still held Nektulos under heavy patrol. What happend to King Naythox Thex I don't know, perhaps he went out with the army to Faydwer (I might have missed some lore) but the Queen took over and she began to reshape Neriak and rebuild her Tier'dal army. The Guild of Necromancers and Shadowknights (The Dead) now runs the City since they were her personal guard and prized creations. The Lodge of The Dead has been enhanced to become the Queens Royal Palace and her son and daughter now reside in it with her.

I actually think another poster said it best when he was refering to the loss of that magic fuzzy feeling we had back in UO. Alot of mmo's today are being designed with game mechanics first and a story slapped on second. The games where the company really planned out the world, the hero's, villians and plots are self evidant to us when we play them. No one can deny the feeling of cohesion when they played Oblivion and really felt like all the flavor was there when they learned about Tamriel. UO players recall the extensive lore behind Britannia, or the extensive story behind Asherons Call. In the beginning some companies approached a MMO like they would a game of D&D. They'd come up with the setting, plot, characters and locations, and then improvise the game as the players wandered through their predesigned settings. The best campaigns felt cohesive and had plots which related to one another in the grander scheme.

Even World of Warcraft has a good world feeling and lore because the zones and characters pre-existed from the story developed in the previous 3 RTS titles. It's not like Metzen came up with it overnight, he and other designers brainstormed alot of story and setting before the mechanics of the game were ever in. Rather then adding nameless badguy in dark tower_03 for the 20-30 levels to kill for loot, they added a character from the games or stories to challange, It felt much more meaningful then just another named boss in a dungeon.

It's funny you should say Granda Espana required your hands to be busy, I found just the opposite and that's what turned me off. I made my group of 3 (I saw very few fighters, mostpeople took ranged characters) and just moved to a dungeon room with fast spawning monsters and hit spacebar to have the characters auto-fight. If a monster spawned close enought hey'd rush over and kill it. All I had to do was occasionally click on an area to have them collect loot. I found as my characters got higher and higher the grind became far mroe obvious, I think I found maybe 8 quests between levels 1 and 32 and was limited to only abouyt 3 zones for my level range I could "grind" in by hitting spacebar. Ultimatly it felt like as the grind with each level got longer I'd be afk more often letting my characters level themselves. I played the game for a few weeks but ultimatly lost interest in running it so it could play itself.

Right now there's alot of "new kid on the block" syndrome. People are investing their cravings for something better in the newest game on the market which even mildly attracts them. The same thing happened with WoW when it first came out, to post negativly on wow ment being flamed to hell and back by fans of the game and people who wanted the game to be the answer to all their desires. Now with LOTR they're investing emotionally again and hoping this game is everything they want. Ultimatly another MMO will come out and there will be another comparision AOC vs LOTR maybe, and the same arguments and flip-flop will side with AOC. And then again. Hot new games are both hot, and new for only so long.

Nope to what? Explain.

So I often read these and other MMORPG forums because like many of you, I grew up with UO, AC, EQ1 and played some D&D in my youth. I'm 29 now and still think back to when MMO's were first branching into the 3D realm with Meridian 59 and the possibilities of a truly open ended, giant fantasy world.

The only thing I thank Sigil (VG) for is the cool electric guitar music during combat in Qualia. It sparked my interest in music which ignited my carier in music. It wasn't till I was in a jacuzzi of champaign with two bombshells indulging in lude acts that I realized I had a greater purpose. Channeling my love for music into my passion for quantum physicls I was able to bypass the Heisenberg principale and create teleportation. By a strange twist of luck, this also unlocked the secret for time travel, where I found myself in the future filled with people in robes and really mellow music. It turns out society does indeed worship Bill and Ted, and that it all came about due to Vangaurd. So Thanks Sigil...

Thanks for sharing! Shot 69 and 63 look cool, but I'm afraid something about the game just dosn't make it very visually appealing to me. Maybe it's the lack of detail and personality on the characters faces, or the way the world looks, I dunno kinda washed out. I can't put my finger on it, maybe it's an issue with lighting. Regardless, I'm not trying to talk art here. Thanks again!