Originally posted by MadAce

1. Pvp
2. The ability to make unique characters: I don't like it when I grind all the way to the fun stuff and my character was bound to end up like any of the few acceptable builds all along. Want to do some thinking/experimenting/nichefinding on my own. I'm not talking about appearance btw.
3. Player driven conflict: I really dislike it when the devs say "Fight that faction/realm/guild/whatever. Why? Because we said so." I liked Shadowbane because it involved player made cities about which the wars revolved.
4. Casual play: I sadly enough don't have the time to fully commit to a game. Being able to log on for half an hour and still get something done is a big pro.
5. Fun before the endgame
6. Sci-fi: Not a must, but would be nice.
7. Other people: I'd like to notice I'm playing an MMO.
8. Something easy on the good ol' comp: My poor machine can't handle all the new graphics violence of the games of today... At all...

I can suggest one game that fits most of these requirements, but I'm probably going to get bashed for saying it here...

Guild Wars

It fits all of the criteria except 6 and possibly 7.  As the game's title suggests the main PvP attraction is the Guild vs Guild battles, as well as many other pvp types.  The skill system would suit your need for #2, as your character can learn thousands of skills but you can only pick 8 skills to put on your bar before going into a zone or pvp--almost guaranteeing  that your build is unique to your play-style (granted there are the flavor-of-the-month builds in high-end pvp). 

For #3, there again is the gvg; its a ladder based system and there are no towns to build/raid/destroy, but its highly competitive and player driven and includes monthly tournaments for bragging rights and shiny ornaments to your character.  Also for #3, if you get GW: Factions, you have access to Alliance Battles where it does put you into faction v. faction combat, but it is highly infectious as the players will take on roles for the side and sling slurs at the opposing side--also, if your alliance is powerful enough, you can control towns for prestige and a hefty discount at the trader.

As to #4 (and this is the reason I'm probably going to get lampooned) the PvE, and some PvP modes are very causal because the game is purely instanced.  Each combat/adventure zone you go into is your own instance.  That said, however, it also means less grind quests, there are almost no 'kill 10 wombat, and bring me their teeth' style quests, and each quest--even seemingly minor ones--help to advance the story or the game lore.  It may seem like that would be less casual friendly, but he way the story is segmented makes it so you can log off and pick up again with ease.  The instanced gameplay is also why I said it may fail regarding #7; only when you are in towns and outposts will you see other players, otherwise the only other players you will see in pve is your party.  But this does not mean there is a lack of players, as with most MMOs the major number of players will center around the major trade-posts, and many will seek guilds and alliances.

For the fun before end-game, this is accomplished through GW's low level cap.  There are only 20 character levels.  This means that you will reach the level cap long before you hit the end-game; which also means that you will be able to compete in pvp with that character.  And even then there are ways for more instant gratification; you can role a PvP only character that starts at max lvl and stats with access to max weapons and armor--your character just wont be all nice 'n shiny since you will only have the basic armor and weapon skins.

And for compatibility, I don't think there would be any problems since GW was designed to play well at dial-up speeds, and scales very well in terms of graphics.

What I got from this article, is that more MMO companies should be like ArenaNet.  For instance, most people that have been following the Guild Wars franchise have known about GW2 for nearly two and half years (about 4 months before the release of Eye of the North) and yet we know very little about the game.  I know so little, I probably would use only hand to count the significant official info: 1) the game takes place 200 or more years later, 2) there are dragons, 3) there's now  z-axis, 4) PvP will have a persistent area, 5) there are more playable races.  And thats about all I know of significance (sure there's more minor details in-between, but those are subordinate to the other info).  And thats just the view from outside the company; from what I know of the company (from reading the wiki entries, Facebook, etc) the PR is done from within  the development team, so the PR person not only is completely in the know, but is also (as Garrett said: the developers are gamers at heart, and by extrapolation) a gamer.  And this is just for GW2.  As far as I can remember, the PR strategy for the original was also a departure from the modern MMO PR hype train:  instead of hyping particulars of the game, they touted the credentials of the development team that was making the game and also touted their marketing scheme.

I guess what I'm getting at, is that I agree with Garrett's conclusion of the article.  There needs to be some changes with PR strategies (and the methods used by A-net are prime examples of what can be used effectively without creating hype that breaks the game), and Beta players need to be responsible.

Originally posted by Antarious

...

Companies don't enforce community guide lines because of the money they lose.  Someone who worked for Mythic should know all about "we'll investage the player and take appropraite action" really means "have a nice day, but we aren't doing anything about it."

 

So what we need are better tools.... like the abilitty to ignore an entire account.  So that 15,000 level 1 alts on it are automaticly ignored.

 

The ability for that same ignore list to be accessed by all of our characters etc

 

The only bad part of general chat is that new people can't get help... they are either lost in the drool spam or never seen because of the volume of people who have left the channel.

One of the reasons that I continue to play Guild Wars, is because the opposite of this is true.  Once you pay the box price, Arena Net stops earning money from you (sure, they hope that you will buy add-ons for your account, but there is no guarantee) ; so they don't have to worry about losing monthly subs when they kick people for being foul-mouthed bigots.  And, actually, they may even earn more money by kicking said bigot's account--some of these players are stupid enough to buy a second account in a feeble attempt to 'get revenge' for the first account getting banned.

As for the tools that you mentioned, they already exist in GW.  when you ignore a player, it ignores all characters on the account.  Your ignore list (and your friends list) is tied to your account.

So, in general, GW maintains a fairly positive and mature general chat.  New players are frequently able to get reliable help (if you are in a populated district that is), and conversations hover around the range of 18-21y/o maturity level.

To get back to Sanya's main topic, and once again, another great article here Sanya.

Most of the situations you explained there are the norm for the majority of Guild Wars.  (At this point some of you may be thinking that this is shameless plug for GW, but honestly these are my experiences with the game)  When someone makes a stray comment like the 'Nvidia's gay' comment, people in GW are usually quick to respond about how the comment was insensitive, maybe make a joke about it, and then move on. Sure there may be a stray 'Your Mom's Gay' or something similar, but those people are usually put on ignore quickly.  And if people are being rude and abusive after being rebuked in general chat, then they get reported.  Most first offenders get a 2-3 day ban, repeat offenders get longer bans, and the most serious cases have their account revoked and their IP banned (but only after investigation by several devs; and even then, there is an appeals process).

For bugs, since in GW you don't pay a monthly fee, most people don't expect to get rewarded, or have their items restored when a bug is reported.  One might think that this would drive people to report less bugs, but the opposite happened.  Enough bugs were getting reported with high frequency through the support ticket system, that they opened an official wiki with a section for bug reporting, so repeat bug reports wouldn't clog the CS.  But, as an added bonus, even though the devs are not obligated to the players through monthly fee, items lost to bugs (which happens so infrequently, you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning) are usually restored.

As far as CS presence in GW, it happens so often that the CS/devs are not referred to by character name, but by their first names instead (although for some of the devs, this isn't fair since they used their real name as their character name).  Even though most of the Arena Net development team has stopped working on GW in favor of working on GW2, many of the devs spend time in game just to hang out and earn titles like the rest of us lowly players.

Now for the disillusionment.  The 'warm fuzzy internet' portion of GW as described above, is limited only to PvE areas.  Once a player decides to hop out of the PvE line, and set foot into the PvP portions of the game, it becomes a ruthless, gutter mouthed, solo-swagger, "join my guild or we will rape you.” game.  Basically the only way to learn PvP in GW is to make friends with a PvX player in some late-game dungeon, or just stick it out in the Random Arena until someone notices you.  And speaking of the random arena, the maturity level drops from that 18-21y/o level, down to "8y/o read the bathroom stall, and is now repeating only the swear words"

*prepares self to be called a GW fanboi*

Edit: I make it sound like there are a lot of bugs in GW, but there are relatively few nowadays.  The most serious bugs recently are tied to the monthly skill-balance changes.  When the skill balances occur, the changes to the skills sometimes breaks AI behaviour, or makes some areas of PvE unplayable becuase the AI is now godly due to skill changes intended for PvP.

I would like to know what their data was; this list seems partly arbitrary in the ordering.  My particular issue is with their ranking of NCsoft.  The first problem is that the key release listed for 2008 is... Lineage II.  The game is 5 years old, how can it be the key release for 2008?  Don't get me wrong, Lineage is a great series, and Lineage II does earn a fair share of NC's profits... but the raters could have at least picked a game from the year in question (Exteel or GW: Eye of the North) or any other of the NC games that released more recently. Another concern is why it ranked so low compared to other exclusively MMO studios. Sure NCsoft may have had a bit of a rough spot in later half of 2008 while it was restructuring, but with Aion being released (and posting record breaking sales in Korea) one would think that would put it higher on the list.

For the most part (with the exception of the derivative mediocrity point) the article sounds like the development process of Guild Wars. Throw in the derivative mediocrity, and now we're talking about GW2.

Good article, Sanya; I thought it really higlights the major problems with MMO development.

Here's a few I can think of:

Animorphs

Gundam

Fallout

Firefly

Bladerunner

Forgotten Realms

Avatar

And for the final suggestion, ReBoot--yeah, an MMO game about playing a videogame as a personification of the computer.  Players could play as either a virus or a gaurdian, the primary dungeons would be the incomming games, limited pvp would be gaurdians vs viruses, and server realms could be linked together for RvR via "the internet".

This reeks of market manipulation.... Sony Online has lots to earn if this succeeds: their online games wouldn't be penalized where most others would, Playstation Home would become a market singularity (i.e. say goodbye to your Mii's and Live Avatars--as these are 3D avatars able to interact in networked instances).

However, we are lucky there are a number of ways that this suit could fail.  The easiest way is to show prior IP art, and thankfully as many others in this thread have pointed out, it is out there.

The second way is to show concurrent development of technology or IP.  If any company can show that it had technology being developed before the filing date on the original 1996 patent, then it stands a good chance of the court overruling the infringement claim, even if World's patent holds up for some unholy reason.  This means all NC has to do is show that Lineage was being developed before the file date... and it stands to reason that since Lineage was released in 1998, and assuming the original developers followed a 2-3 year production plan as most MMORPGs do, that the technology/idea for the game was at least written down somewhere.   Similarly, Blizzard (when litigation comes against them) only needs to show that Battle.Net (specifically in the case of Diablo) was being developed at a time prior to the patent filing date.  But this would leave newer companies out in the cold where the wolves in World.com's legal team would eat them whole and force massive licensing fees on the good majority of MMOs.

I'm no copyright lawyer, so don't take any of what I said as legal advice. But I do recall a case where a lawsuit was overturned based on concurrent IP development, so there may be precedent to this case that may favor NC.

I'm a US Amazon customer, and I also thought the email was a phishing sceme; so i checked the Amazon site without clicking anything in the email, and sure enough it was listed there too, so its not a phish, just Amazon jumping the gun... again.  Its not the first time they did this an NCsoft product; if I remeber correctly, they also posted a premature released date for Guild Wars: Nightfall (they posted that the game would be released on the preview weekend--not such a big deal because the preview was only two weeks before the actual launch date).  But this is a much larger error, the game hasn't even been put to beta in North Amrica yet.

Today, I recieved an e-mail from Amazon (like the usual you bought this product, now we would like to reccomend... ones) But, this one was a little different... its for Aion collectors edition, even though the official site has no information on the release date. Here is the text of the Amazon email:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Guild Wars Nightfall Collectors Edition or other games in the PC Games > Role-Playing category have also purchased Aion: The Tower of Eternity Collector's Edition . For this reason, you might like to know that Aion: The Tower of Eternity Collector's Edition will be released on October 30, 2008. You can pre-order yours by following the link below.
Aion: The Tower of Eternity Collector's Edition Aion: The Tower of Eternity Collector's Edition
NCsoft
Price: $69.99

Release Date: October 30, 2008

Platform: Windows XP

Pre-order now!

Product Description
Amazon.com Cutting-edge graphics redefine your expectations of online role-playing and reveal a true fantasy world where divine beings wage a war that will determine the future of the world. Your role in this war is pivotal. The fate of the world rests on your shoulders as you and your allies participate in brutal warfare, devise brilliant strategy, and claim power. * For the first time in the MMORPG genre – Aion brings PvP and PvE together. PvPvE manages the complex relationships between races and guilds and also controls the mighty Dragons, a non-player faction and a common enemy to all players. * Take combat to the skies – Flying is not just a means of transportation. Flight is an extension of the combat system ... Read more

I think this information is in error, so I'm contacting NC support to see if they have any information, and possibly have them get in contact with Amazon to correct the release information. I will post an update once they respond.