We cut our teeth (as code hackers / engineers) on MUD, MUSH & Muck code.  Before there were Yahoo chatrooms, fellow students were writing MUD-ish chat environments (Monochrome BBS FTW).  It was a rite of passage to wrestle with DikuMUD and AberMUD code, and bring up a custom MUD for some friends.  Darn it, I wouldnt know 1/2 of what I do about UNIX network programming if it hadnt been for hacking on MUD, BBS and MOO code late at night in college.

Anyone interested in writing a MUD engine in a modern language (say, Groovy, Java or ... Erlang)?  I'll host the github code repo for the project and contribute.

Three faction PvP and martial arts? Sad to say, that neatly describes the ill-fated (and now dead) Matrix Online. Sure there was Gun-Fu thrown in with the Kung-Fu, but at the end of the day there was a lot going for it.

R.I.P MxO.

My character never seemed to be high-enough level to participate in the big live events, but I recall breaking news to my faction of the exact location of an Unlimit assault, and directing traffic from the nearest hardline to get as many players into the fray as possible.

I loved the parties in-game (OMG do the Vixens throw a GOOD party!) - and having LESIG / LET characters attending parties, having fun with the Effectuator changing our RSI around.

I particularly enjoyed the one-off small story events --- Tick-Tock talking about the moment of New Years, when time in the Matrix ticks back a year to keep everything a virtual 1999.

Collecting code fragments (and selling them for huge profits!) during the Blue Sky event, and the follow-on in-game concerts was fun.

And did I mention all the player-run "parties" with live DJs ... I know of no other game with such a great social scene! (Club Succubus or Theoria's apartment FTW) - thanks to the devs for all the Cake Vendors at the Vixens parties!

Possibly a good reason someone from the community at large should step up and offer to be the MMORPG SGW correspondent, so the editors at large can focus on the broad view -and- updates arrive in a timely fashion.

While the pessimism is probably called-for in looking at who is signing up, I am confident that the decisions made by CME will reflect in the quality of testers that are called to participate in the beta. It's been said so far that those chosen would be people who have distinguished themselves in their involvement. I take my lessons from the old gold-panning days --- an awful lot of river's got to go by before you turn up a nugget of gold, the more registrations (the more river) the greater chance of a few absolute golden testers appearing. I just hope that I get the call... :-)

In one of the interviews (Dev Q+A podcasts that is) I believe that they covered this question. Basically they said that there would be natural geographical features (ocean, rivers, forests, cliffs, etc) that would establish a natural boundary to a region that wouldn't break immersion for players. What they didn't cover, of course, is quite how large an area they plan to map out for us. I'm hoping that they get the balance right - too small and it's not going to feel like we're doing enough exploration, too large and we'll never bump into other players!

OK. I'm curious (please dont take this as a flame) but how is it that player housing increases immersion in a given game. Surely all it does is replicate "The Sims" all over again - that dreaeded time-suck that caused me WAY too many hours of missed sleep.

I'll freely admit that I am a total packrat (heh, I admitted it live on air in my podcast even) so the ability to store my excess stuff would be nice. But housing? How does having a place AWAY from the main-flow of the player population and ALL-BY-YOURSELF help the immersion in a MMO (where the emphasis is "massively multi-player")? How does it help immersion in the game's missions and story-line when you're squirreled away and not playing the content?

It makes no sense to me. Surely it's better for the overall community to press players out into the big-wide-world and have them play the game together. If I wanted single-player house-decorating I would play "The Sims" on my PC, and disconnect the network cable.

I play "The Matrix Online" (MxO) and people think I'm mad - I'll go off and explore the MegaCity. I will look for interesting locations to capture screenshots. For a while I was writing fan-fiction based in the world of MxO, and decided to scout out locations for the story. I would post chapters from the story on my faction's (err, guild's) website and other folk would capture screenshots to illustrate key descriptive passages.

I've taken the XP grinding at an amazingly slow rate, playing only a few hours a week, tops. Who cares that other people are reaching the level cap before me? I want to experience the ongoing story in the community I find myself in. I am 80% of the way to the level cap and feel far less jaded with MxO and with MMOs in general when compared with other people I know.

I am a monogamous gamer - I play one game to the exclusion of all others - and I keep playing while that game remains "fun" (and what a horribly subjective term that is!). Thanks for the blog post, you've helped me pin down a piece of my own thinking with more clarity here!

If you've been watching the DataNodeOne forums, you might have seen that the (well loved) Syntax player "Catzi" is in the process of launching a radio station.

The DataNodeOne announcement of Catzi radio has status updates. It looks like Thursday evenings the Vixens faction will be hosting a show according to a thread on their site.

/radio play http://Catzi.serverroom.us:6770

I love <3 MxO ... been playing for a couple of years now and still enjoying things immensely. My in-game faction is humming along and getting along well. In other words, I don't quite fit your question. That said ... I cant wait for the new "Stargate Worlds" game. Of all the games I've seen, that's the only MMO that I can imagine will pull me away from MxO. Scary huh?

Taking the Matrix Online (MxO) as an example, its possible to avoid the gate camping problem quite easily. In MxO, travelling via the hardline network (they look like phone booths) resets your PvP flag. You arrive and unless you flag yourself, you're safe.

On the "Vector-Hostile" server, every player level 16 and higher is PvP flagged by default, so the newer folks (lvl 1-15) dont automatically get slaughtered the moment they emerge from a hardline.

There's no eliminating the Zerg though. Sometimes griefers roam in packs and wait at hardlines. People have learned though: jack into the Matrix in remote locations if you're a mid-level player.

So, my guess is that SGW will adopt a set of fairly basic rules to keep the PvP / camping to a minimum. They mentioned battlegrounds as one. Of course, if you choose to play on the PvP FFA server, all bets are off!!

There's a forum over at the main Stargate Worlds website which is constantly humming with rumour and speculation, with a few pointed questions being asked of the devs. With that as back-story to this chat I found some of the answers to be particularly significant - some of the bigger community based questions that have been floating around the Stargate Worlds forums have now been answered.

I can understand how the chat might seem a little "bland" without knowing the angst that a few of the fans are feeling though!

For my part I was extremely pleased with their answers and with the gems of information that they gave out to us. I was expecting them to travel a much more boring, "well trodden path" with it.

Shameless self-promotion here, but I'll be trying to sum up the backstory and this chat in my "Gate Buzz" podcast this week if you're interested in hearing.

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Originally posted by LostMK
What is your current MMO

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I'm currently playing "The Matrix Online" and loving it. I'm the webmaster for one of the in-game guilds (or, "factions" as they call them) so moving off to anything else will be a mammoth task. If Stargate Worlds turns out to be 1/2 as good as I am hoping, I dont think I'll look back as I move.

And to answer your question, "gate buzz" is the name of my blog & podcast.

I cant wait. I've always described myself as a "monogamous gamer" - I play one thing to death and take up something new only when it stands out as a clear improvement over the last game. I can already tell that Stargate Worlds will be the game to draw me away from my present MMO of choice. The buzz has begun and it's still a year away!

I will do my best to attend the IRC discussion, and (if no-one objects) I'll post a chat transcript on Gate Buzz as a news story for the folks who arent able to make the live chat. I'll let y'all know when it's up if you want to link it.