Originally posted by Crispin

Alganon released yesterday and is a small indie game that looks very much and feels very much like wow, even more than runes of magic. Great community though.

 

Eve would be my least favorite, I have played it a few months this year and it's like a second game I have on my second monitor that I click on once in a while. It starts out very slow, and running missions is very boring, it takes a while, and only requires you to click a few times, and watch your ship fire, and usually you are so powerful t hat you can just sit in one spot and click fire and your done. I never felt it was useful or very necessary to group in missions because they are so easy and mundane, maybe at lvl 4 missions it could be handy. It's not a bad game at all, but it takes a while to get going, and the first month is better spent only training learning skills, or you will lag behind a lot. The game feels very slow paced and I think it would take too long for us to get into, and a lot of people would fall off. And I don't think the game encourage grouping early on, well mining missions is handy to be grouping, and going to 0.0 space to pvp, but that takes months to prepare for.

 

My experience at least, I could very well be doing it wrong.

I have the same experience with EVE, but that's doing missions alone, it's the most boring thing, but starting as a group and learning to combat between us, for instance, and doing missions together could be a blast. And it's a game to play for years to come.

About the name.. these are anagrams form Adventure, some are funny, like Evader Nut, Evade Turn, Avert Dune, Raven Duet... :

Adventure
A Ventured
Ad Venture
Averted Nu
Evader Tun
Evader Nut
Evade Runt
Evade Turn
Unread Vet
Vaunted Re
Advent Rue
Raved Tune
Tundra Eve
Daunt Ever
Daunt Veer
Dart Venue
Drat Venue
Earn Duvet
Near Duvet
Tavern Due
Raven Duet
Nave Trued
Vane Trued
Avert Dune
Avert Nude
Aver Tuned
Rave Tuned
Vaunt Reed
Vaunt Deer
Tau Nerved
Tau Vender
Vat Enured
Vat Endure

Originally posted by Interesting

In case you have not realized yet.

"Balance" is not the holy grail of design.

Balance is just a concept wich one of the MMORPG Schools of Design Decision can be structured upon, not all of them and it doesnt mean its the best either.

Imo, balance is what you dont want to rely upon, you dont want it as your main goal. You dont want to structure all your design decisions and mechanics to make a "balanced" game. If you do that, you already have heavy weights limiting your game in different aspects.

You want to make a fun and entertaining game. Balance has nothing to do with it.

UO, Saga of Ryzom, Star Wars Galaxies were games which didnt structured their design decisions on "Balance" itself. It doesnt mean balance couldnt be found on those games, its just that it wasnt built upon it. Balance existed sometimes, but more often than not there was no balance. In games where you structure your design decisions on balance you want to have it balanced at all times, from start to finish, everything tight together, removing any randomization, adding linearity, limiting as much player freedom as you can, etc just to keep up to that "balanced structure" and thats come up with huge, I mean huge negative side effects. I could spend 30.000 characters worth of text explaining why Balance is the problem of todays games causing effects everywhere.

Its like designing a track for a cockroach, thats what  a good metaphore for what balance implies. Can you see that?

Do you understand that?

I somehow doubt there are people who understand this.

I hate the concept of "balanced classes". I don't know if it's for the same reasons you do. As I see it, it's an artificial corset and, while it's true you can't have everybody playing the same overpowered class, there should be other ways, that feel more natural or real, to make other classes appealing too, without necesarily being balanced and equal to each other.

A paradigmatic example would be the Jedi class. I'd like an awsome Jedi class, as the lore demands, and to make player also wanting to play bounty hunter, don't make the Jedi class as powerful as a bounty hunter, don't make either the bounty hunter more powerful, add instead other mechanics in the game so the hunting of a Jedi is something some players will want to do, overcoming the fact that they will face a more powerful enemy than themselves. Also make the Jedi class more slow and hard to level for instance.

Originally posted by Goronian

Originally posted by altairzq

Originally posted by Goronian

Originally posted by altairzq

Why on earth are you trying to get your young daughter into gaming?

 

Why not? Kids are never young enough to be exposed to it, not if they can play. Seriously, I've learned my first swearword at age 6, but only got, what it means at age 15. Not a big difference.

With that said, I say drop her unto the normal server. The sooner tshe learns to filter out the asshats, the better.

 

Becasue videogames it's not something that needs an effort to do, it's a pass time with very few benefitsm and anyway she will play videogames if she wants to. Parents are supposed to get their sons and daughters into important fulfilling things, like music, languages, sports, visiting places, etc etc...

 

Music and sports are pass times, as well. And, no offense, but I don't believe parents should force sports/music down their kid's throat. Only a handful of them actually become anything, the rest have broken childhoods/teenage years, few minutes near the spotlight, early retirrment and ridculous pension. At least, that's how it usually works in Russia.

Now, I don't mind kids doing sports/music (and actually would encourage them to learn languages, especially English, if they're not native), but kids and teenagers need to be... Well, kids and teenagers. It's one of the best parts of life and not to experience it fully can lead to serious regrets later on.

 

P.S. Games are probably the youngest form of art. MMOs, if supervised, by an adult, to explain some things, can provide some great lessons in life, the first of which is a good use of "ignore' button.

Wow... who said forcing anything down kid's throats? So if I mention music, it's forcing the kids, but gaming then it's not, it's something done for the best of the kids.

Please.

Also, becoming a star is absolutely not the issue, it's having something that will accompany the kid all his/her life, like knowing to play an instrument, being able to communicate in other languages, being able to practice a sport, and all this at not a professional level obviously.

About videogames, if she likes them, then yes, help her find the best options and supervise. But trying to get her into playing videogames? That's simply nonsense, and irresponsible, chances are more harm will come than good.

Originally posted by Goronian

Originally posted by altairzq

Why on earth are you trying to get your young daughter into gaming?

 

Why not? Kids are never young enough to be exposed to it, not if they can play. Seriously, I've learned my first swearword at age 6, but only got, what it means at age 15. Not a big difference.

With that said, I say drop her unto the normal server. The sooner tshe learns to filter out the asshats, the better.

Becasue videogames it's not something that needs an effort to do, it's a pass time with very few benefitsm and anyway she will play videogames if she wants to. Parents are supposed to get their sons and daughters into important fulfilling things, like music, languages, sports, visiting places, etc etc...

Originally posted by Goronian

Originally posted by altairzq

I find it interesting nobody considered Aion.

Nice work organizing this, Goronian, btw.

 

It doesn't have a trial and, well, the game doesn't really have the "world" feel, as far, as I'm aware.

Thanks. I'm still amazed how well this worked out.

It certainly doesn't, played it for open beta and first month and it's just new generation, totally linear.

Yes nice start for this "adventure"

I find it interesting nobody considered Aion.

Nice work organizing this, Goronian, btw.

Why on earth are you trying to get your young daughter into gaming?

Originally posted by Fearlessbro

Originally posted by Harafnir

The troll is trolling.

A good thing before you want to say how awful something is.... Is not to prove you have been enjoying it for several years.

 

Your an idiot, Read the thread again, see the part where I hate trolls?

I have 4 level 80s and I never enjoyed the game at all.

Then you are not too smart.

Originally posted by Interesting

Most of the players discussing on this forum know much, but much more than most developers.

Anyone could be a developer.

Developers dont become Developers based on merit. They show their merit when their games have success, but most games fail.

They simply end up knowing someone on the industry here, then one thing connects to another, and then voila, they are working on the industry. ive seen it happen many times.

Some of them are just programmers who happen to like to play games.

Some of them are designers that happen to like to play games.

 

If you read the job boards there is nothing there besides "experience on the industry" that might lead to anything indicating how good you would be as a "game designer".

Any idiot can be a game designer, he just needs to be the guy with the money or the guy with the publisher connections.

 

 

And in a certain sense, you can say that PUBLISHERS are taking the place of the actual designers in many opportunities, or limiting their functions.

Really? could you point out the flaws in this early design of a  flagging system, from developers of Mortal Online?

www.mortalonline.com/files/flagging/MO_Flagging.pdf

Any idiot could, right?

I think two of the MMOs with a most interesting future are EVE, with next expansion, and FFXI with the new sequel.

Sombebody mentioned it earlier, and it's important, we should be able to join in the same server, from any part of the world. (europe here).

If we stick together we could make it work in EVE, as a small corp, and I'm sure we can grow steadily. And next expansion looks really cool, with avatars and all. It's a damn serious game to start something really worth it.

And  14 day trial, and first month for just 5$ in Steam.

I'm in, depending on the game. I'm not going to play PoTBS for the life of me... for instance.

I don't have any concern. I expect another dull MMO full of stupid carebear features for the solo console gamers. If I'm wrong I will be very gladly surprised, but I'm 99.999999% sure I'm right. Hope that was right for one chance in a million.

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by falc0n

 I noticed alot of you descriping WoW and EVE as the two games that brought up the whole "themepark" and "sandbox" arguments. Thats just not true, as it was SWG that gave us a taste of what a TRUE sandbox should be then this "themepark" WoW came out 1 year later and over millions joined which caused SWG to convert from sandbox to themeark and it never survived the change. Just thought i'd inform the uninformed.

 

If I come to think of it, I really believe SWG NGE was the true catalyst behind the Sandbox vs Themepark argument, because of alot of very vocal SWG vets who saw their beloved game ruined because many themepark elements were introduced in SWG and many sandbox and socializing elements were removed.

All this because Lucas Arts and Sony Online Entertainment were inspired by WoW, the example of how a Themepark should look like if you were to create one, what they of course failed to understand was that you really can't change the fundamentals of a game like SWG long after release, and they were not able to "replace" the vets with fresh meat as fast as they had hoped.

Personally, I really don't hate themepark MMO's, but I hate that publishers looked at WoW and felt it was the only way to do things, for new mmo's, but also for existing ones. That is also why EVE players tell you to go back to WoW n00b, if you start asking to dumb down the game, or change the fundamentals.

I really believe that the only real breakthrough will be when Blizzard releases their Sci-Fi mmo, and it has alot of socializing and sandbox elements. Everyone and their brother will jump on it ( me included :p ) we can say to all the dumb Publishers " we told you so! " :) The only downside would be that Blizzard would have the complete mmo market cornered.

A man can dream, can't he?

 

It's really the same story with EQ, but SOE started adding Theme Park features from 2002 on, so earllier than SWG.

Originally posted by Scot

Originally posted by Quirhid

I don't murder people!

I hit them with my Sword of Teleportation. Yeah thats right! I hit 'em a couple of times and some energy builds up. There are some red pixels that fly around that tell you how much power the sword has. Finally when there's anough of those red pixels they teleport to the nearest shrine. It's really satisfying - Its like I'm a buss driver or an airline pilot.

Other games have Beam of Rebirth attached to their spaceship. I point my beam on people and they are reborn in an egg. Just like mystical phoenix, free and healthy!

I'm really helping these people!

 

Quality post. :D

 

I can accept we become an individual who resorts to fighting as a solution too quickly, but that is from our modern perspective. Most people in the world are not in a state of war that these games put us in, this is why it seems we are fighting too much.

Loved that post too. And it's a valid point. But, we have to take into account our brain and how it deals with basic emotions. The concept of "this is a videogame, pixels that will spawn, so no harm done" this is a thought and it's elaborated in our neo-cortex, which happens to be just a thin layer in our brain. The rest of it, the emotions go way past that layer, to the deepest and oldest of our brain structures, where any sense of rationality is lost. Down there, our brain doesn't know if we are in a videogame or not. So what do you want to feed your brain? Which happens to be you.

What about EVE? it has a 14 day trial, and also seems you can get a month for just 5$ in steam now, or so I read in the EVE forum.

That seems a bit stretched... at least  from the few ones I can compare. While seems proved that it's true WOW keeps up with new ideas from other new MMOs, they do it in their own way, for the looks of what you posted.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by altairzq

Could you give an example of a feature that was copied by WoW from GW?

I believe someone who has more experience from WoW might be more qualified. I can only give you an example how PvP was in the release of Guild Wars.

 

I cannot recall if vanilla WoW had arena battles at all.

GW on the otherhand had 4v4 arena from the start as well as a sort of ongoing mini tournament where one would go in with team of 8. Then there were 8v8 GvG matches as well. All instanced.

-Arena battles were pretty much just deathmatches with some small variances depending on the map played.

-The tournament or "Hall of Heroes" as it was called then (now I beliece its "Heroes Ascent") had multiple objectives varying from different maps. There were 8v8v8 King of the hill, (8v8)v(8v8) or even (8v8)v(8v8)v(8v8) Deathmatches, 8v8 Capture the flag. As a final battle there was (8v8)v8v(8v8) where the side teams would wipe each other out in a deathmatch and then the map would end in a 3-team king of the hill with the survivor of the last round (the winner of the last HoH).

-I will put GvG as simply as I can: 2 teams of 8 with a base(fortress) of their own with NPCs defending it. Main objective is to kill the Guild Lord(tough NPC) of the other team who sits in the base. There was also a flag stand. If a team would hold the stand for 120 consecutive seconds(2min) the team would get bonus maxhealth & maxmana as well as all their skills would be recharged. There was a respawn in their own base every 2min for the players who died but dying cause penalty to maxhealth & maxmana.

 

These 3 types of PvP were present at release - more came afterwards. WoW released about half a year earlier than GW but GW did have open betaweekends where some of these PvP types where played before WoW's release. I don't know if this is relevant or not but FYI.

 

More than anything we talked with my WoW playing friend about the GvG in GW and the WoWs version where there was a PvP type something like this. I hear it was something like 60v60 with some other secondary objective in the middle between the two bases than a flagstand where one team would get an advatage. Atleast this, I think, was a near direct copy of GW's GvG.

I didn't remember either but seems that yes, Arena was introduced in the BC:

www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/burningcrusade/index.xml#arena

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by altairzq

Originally posted by tro44_1

WoW Vanilla:  MMO target= EQ and EQ2

WoW TBC:  TARGET= Guild Wars

WoW WoTLK: Target= Warhammer and AoC

WoW CAT: target = AION

-------------------

Blizzard always does this thrend. They take ideas from current hype threats, and improve on those ideas, and add them to polished old WoW. This is what makes many of the newer things that these Clones try to branch off into, seem Even more stail, with the Been there, done, that mind set.

 

Sorry for long rant btw

 

Could you say what features? only Achivements come to mind, but I didn't play GW, WAR or AoC so I don't know. And what is from Aion in Cataclysm?

 

I haven't played WoW myself but after having some numerous and lengthy talks with a WoW fan, we both came to a conclusion (he admitted) that a lot of the changes from vanilla WoW in regarding PvP was inspired by Guild Wars. My view has only been reinforced by talking to other people and reading these forums.

Could you give an example of a feature that was copied by WoW from GW?

I agree mass murderer is not accurate, but we could say they turn you into a killing machine, which is pretty sad. I don't want to be a killing machine, specially if I play a knight or a paladin, the sword should be used seldomly.

Aion is shyly making steps toward this direction. I remember in a small camp site, there are two quest givers. One asks you to kill birds that are annoying them. The other one, tells you that killing the birds dosent' seem right and asks you to find a plant to make a sleeping potion to give to the birds.

I know killing in a video game doesn't make you killer. This is not the issue. The issue is, what do you enjoy being in a video game. I certainly don't enjoy being a killer.

I have my ethics when playing an MMO, I try not to fight any person or animal that doesn't attack me first. I know it might sound silly, but feels good.