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Originally posted by Billius8

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Originally posted by kovah
Thanks for the update.

Personally, I'm heading to Lenox Mall here in about 50 minutes to eat lunch.  After that I will probably head back here to work and sit around refreshing forums for the rest of the day.

The wife, kid and I are heading my parents place in Vero for Thanksgiving, gotta fly outta Hartsfield-Jackson at 9am on Wednesday, that is going to suck.

I think we are going to her parents for Christmas.  No plans set just yet for next year but as long as you promise to keep us updated on what you are doing I will promise to keep you updated on what I'm doing...

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Take a hike

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Originally posted by kovah
Thanks for the update.

Personally, I'm heading to Lenox Mall here in about 50 minutes to eat lunch.  After that I will probably head back here to work and sit around refreshing forums for the rest of the day.

The wife, kid and I are heading my parents place in Vero for Thanksgiving, gotta fly outta Hartsfield-Jackson at 9am on Wednesday, that is going to suck.

I think we are going to her parents for Christmas.  No plans set just yet for next year but as long as you promise to keep us updated on what you are doing I will promise to keep you updated on what I'm doing...

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And that'll be my game (if it's truly good).  I'm done with waiting years for a decent MMORPG to come out. 

First good MMORPG that comes along; that's where I'm camping.

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Originally posted by Settingsun
No game out of the box is going to beat WoW. A year or two to grow and develope a market, maybe.
Also WoW in entering into the general pubic. Their numbers are likely to get even higher.

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I know hindsight is 20/20, but I think EQ2, had they kept some of their core design values from EQ1, could have challenged WOW.  EQ was a big name and there were big, big expectations.  But they tried too many cutesy, limiting things that dumbed down the game.

But, in the future, if a game takes WOW's basic angle on classes, races, skills, auctions, mailboxes, and combines this with a serious fantasy world (no cartoon graphics) with a significant death penalty, then I think we might see a promising new game.

Dark Age of Camelot has the Saracen player race, which I believe depicted Muslim characters who had adapted to King Arthur's Albion society.  These characters were very well-represented as good guy, hero types you could play (i.e., you could roll a Saracen Paladin, for example).

I think some other games in development will have desert, Knights of Arabia-type continents and environments, so again the "whirling dervish" or desert nomad type (which is sort of the Middle Eastern Muslim of old) will be depicted and playable.

Now the FPS games are a different matter, but they tend to show everyone in a bad light.

The only thing that I cannot accept about PvP (aside from excessive ganking of noobs and making for a bad experience for new players) is that if you are always watching over your shoulder, then whatever PvE encounters you are facing become secondary, marginalized. 

The big white dragon is not as scary as the PvP ambush coming up behind you, so the focus on the game world lessens.  The dungeons and the monsters are not as scary as your fellow PvPers. 

And for me, the game world is the main draw in these games.

A game world (in any MMORPG) can be any size, but I think the following equation should apply for there not to be problems:

Size of World = (matched by) Content = (matched by) Size of player base

A "big empty world" does not cut it.  A big world filled with content, but lacking players, does not cut it. 

That's why I think for new MMORPG's, a smaller world filled with good content is the best place to start.  They can always grow a world with new expansions.  Just my two cents on this generic topic.

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Originally posted by Kurir
To the OP, I raise the BS flag and say that griefing/ganking is not necessary in a game to be successful. We have enough of it in RL, when I play a game I choose to be entertained and not be someone elses source of entertainment. Games that don't cater to my style of play simply don't get my subscription fees.

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If you don't have any griefing (or ganking), then you have a controlled game on "training wheels", with its invisible barriers, invisible rules, and sandbox environment.

There is a trade-off for "immersion"; some folks are willing to pay that price and I understand that.

In my original post, I did not sanction endless rampant griefing.  What I meant was that folks in the world could get in one another's way from time to time, making it a truly shared interactive world, instead of a glorified RPG with training wheels.

Trains are good.  Rampant intentional pulling of trains on a person or party should require CS intervention to punish.  But the occasional train makes the world immersive and fun. 

My best analogy is that of a bunch of mountain climbers on one wall of a mountain.  Some of the climbers are professional, some are amateurs, and some are downright dangerous.  If one falls, this can impact not only his group but maybe other groups.

I think the best world is one in which the participation of other players can impact you some of the time.  And I'm not talking PvP, which in my experience either always gets out of hand or is too hamstrung by "training wheels" such that no one likes it.  (Just an opinion).

Has no one heard of the four gamer food groups?

Caffeine

Sugar

Salt

Carbohydrates

I agree with the O.P.  Maybe setting the game 50 years before the events of LOTR would have been optimal. 

Remember, this is a game about the player adventurers, not Aragorn, Frodo and Gandalf (with the players hanging out in the background and standing in their shadows or holding up the tails of their robes).

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Originally posted by Launvatar
Isn't it true ? am I wrong ? :) :D

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I think that's true of today's MMO's; maybe by January it will be different.

I believe people look at MMO's as more of a serious time investment than other games, and therefore do not want to commit to playing any one game unless they can really anchor down into (i.e., "I'm going to spend several years in this game.")

Was thinking back on some of my best times in EQ, and the ones which gave me the biggest chuckles were things like:

- zone arguments over camp spots

- zone griping over trains

- people complaining over kill-stealing

Now, while none of these should be sanctioned (indeed, should be punished) by the game companies, all of these are important ingredients for being in a game world where people interact, compete, and occasionally step on one another's toes.

Nothing more contrived than a game world with invisible barriers, too much instancing, and too many divisions between player interaction.

Therefore, I think it is actually good that some griefing occurs.

Thoughts?

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Originally posted by PlanoMM

maybe u didnt notice this, but not just newbies rolling new characters, so ur numbers will b off.  time of day, server, and day of the wk all play an active role in population density.  me point is simple, ur not going to b able to tell if the game is dying or dead with the /who command.  and u never mentioned in ur first post anything about the time or day to roll a noob char.  u just said that "Only way to know if a game is growing or dying is to roll up a character and go to noob-land, look around, and draw your own conclusions."  this will get u nowhere.  do that in WOW at a low point in the night, and u might think that WOW is dying cause yesterday there were 3x that many ppl in that zone.  populations go up and populations go down, its the nature of the beast.  me biggest quam with this post is that its being treated like it really matters whether there r 5 million ppl playing it, or 200k ppl playing it.  as long as u have fun, wth do u care how many ppl play it or how popular it is.  btw, i have played WOW b4 and been in the lowbie zones when there was noone at all in the zone, does that mean that the game is dead, or dying?  didnt think so.  so y would u apply that logic to this game, or any game for that matter.

Oo and me real deal with ur post is the fanboi comment.  there really was no need for that.

yeah, and like the ^poster above me just posted, if u were to roll a noob char right now, u would think that the game is at its peak and growing.  but we dont know.  maybe every1 there in the newbie zones on eQII r just rolling alts.  misleading info, eh?

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De-nial is not just a river in Egypt.  Very well, as long as you enjoy the game and it's up and running, so be it. 

But I think I gave a satisfactory answer to the original poster, whom I was addressing anyway.  He asked how you tell if a game is "dying or not".  I answered that question.

Many of us have played several MMORPG's over the years and you can kind of tell when the server community is thriving or dying.  Rolling up a toon on a Saturday night, going into a major city and finding it nearly empty, IS a strong message.  It's a clue, take it for what it is.

Now, you look at WOW's major cities:  packed. (Not that I love WOW, but it is a successful game). 

Look at EQ's 2 main beginning cities:  kind of empty (at least last time I looked at them a month ago).  Those are clues.  Step out into Commonlands or Antonica and do a /who check, and if it's kind of empty, again another clue. 

Follow the path of "clues" through the zones until you find more than a dozen folks and maybe you can start to see the pattern and draw your own conclusions.  If you are in Qeynos at the bank or the auction house place and there is no one else there, well... you don't have to be Columbo to figure some things out.

When they were working on the cancelled version of a sequel, I was really looking forward to it.  It had the right graphics, the right concepts (though I no longer recall them much) and was going to be a major choice.

Of course, they cancelled the project.  Would love to see something new come out.  For the old UO to be so revered (despite its ancient 2D graphics) they must have had something.

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Originally posted by PlanoMM

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Originally posted by Billius8

Only way to know if a game is growing or dying is to roll up a character and go to noob-land, look around, and draw your own conclusions.   With a free trial, this is entirely possible.

You cannot trust fanboi's who tell you the world is packed when they are level 60 and all they are looking at is their other level 60 friends.  But taking a look at the low-level population in a game will tell you all you need to know.

 

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total BS, sry to b so blunt, but thats what this is.  "rolling up a character and going to noobland" doesnt "prove" smack, friend.

Oo and ur "fanboi" comment can also b reversed.  u cannot trust haters who tell you the world is empty when they r lvl 1 and they sit outside the city gate and beg for coin and groups, and when noone responds they come onto the forums and bash the game and try to convince everyone that the game is "dying".  what a load!  im truly sry, but im getting sick of this BS day after day.  if u dont like the game, fine, thats ur choice, noone is holding a freagin gun to ur head and making u play it.  but stop coming in here and trying to recruit followers in ur cult of EQII is Doomed crusade.  My god, grow up.

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I didn't say the game was dying.  About my statements being total "B.S." as you say, I think the logic is really quite simple:

1)  There are a finite number of max-level or high-level characters and they will attrition over time.

2)  It takes new players (i.e., folks rolling up first level characters) in significant numbers to offset the attrition from Point #1 above.

THEREFORE, if you roll up a new toon, join a game (say at a busy time like a Friday or Saturday night) and the server is mostly devoid of lower level characters, then that tells you something. 

And you'd be blind to ignore that.

And I think my logic could be applied to assessing the general health of any game.  I simply answered the post the best way I could, which was to say "roll up a toon and go look."  Nothing wrong with that.

Only way to know if a game is growing or dying is to roll up a character and go to noob-land, look around, and draw your own conclusions.   With a free trial, this is entirely possible.

You cannot trust fanboi's who tell you the world is packed when they are level 60 and all they are looking at is their other level 60 friends.  But taking a look at the low-level population in a game will tell you all you need to know.

Permadeath adds very little (a miniscule amount of more realism; so what) and takes away very much (a recognizable persistent in-game personality).

Permadeath is another one of those silly gaming ideas destined for implementation and doomed to a miserable failure.

Overall, I sort of like the game:  good races, classes, talents, combat, spell system, etc...

However, the tongue-in-cheek cartoon world is beginning to suck.  I have never liked the WOW world or the WOW universe; just their implementation of the game was good.