Category: MMO Design (Page 21 of 36)

Someone Set Second Life Up The Bomb

September 11, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Lost amidst all the news from AGC: Slashdot favorite and Wired darling Second Life was hacked last week, resulting in the compromise of customer names and addresses, as well as encrypted passwords and credit card information. Something to, uh, keep in mind if you’ve given them your credit card information.

It’s a PR nightmare – Second Life is forcing everyone to choose new passwords, which means the entire population will know about it, which is undoubtedly going to cause a wave of no-confidence cancellations. It also could end up proving financially disastrous – lawsuits are likely, inevitable if the credit card information ends up decrypted.

Men In Tights Summaries

September 8, 2006 / Damion Schubert

My talk was today. It went well. You can find a writeup on gamespot as well as a writeup on Gamasutra. Also, Raph Koster live-blogged the thing.

This was one of the harder talks I’ve ever had to give. My first draft of this talk read almost like “do exactly what’s been done before”, whereas I wanted the message of the talk to really be “Innovate, but stop innovating in stupid ways”. Put another way, if you’re going to come up with a replacement for a class system, be sure your innovation is actually better than a class system. (But please, come up with something better than a class system!)

I may respond more in depth tomorrow. Been drinking tonight (as I’ve been forced to hold off on the conference partying the previous two nights due to working on the presentation).

Update: Here’s the Terranova thread on my talk, which they’ve somewhat merged with Rob Pardo’s talk from Blizzard. Here’s the Slashdot story. Slides coming tonight – and yes, I know I’m a slacker.

Update 2: Here’s the slides (7 MB due to excessively large art).

Original comments thread is here.

More on Hero Engine

September 1, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Wanna know more about the company building the tech behind what I’m working on? RPG Vault has the interview.

Vivendi’s SEC Filing

August 31, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Here’s an SEC filing for Vivendi, who of course owns Blizzard. I’m a tad busy at work today so I can’t give it the dissection I’d like to, but this number popped out at me:

Over 1,300 Game Masters provide 24×7 customer support in 6 languages directly to players while playing the game.

That’s a whole lot of “I cannot help you with that” – 1 GM per every 5000 paying customers, if my math is correct. That’s a serious commitment to providing and maintaining a high level of quality service.

Classes (plus, If Quoting History, You Should Know It)

August 24, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Thomas Mortensen at MMORPG wrote up an article discussing classes in MMOs. He immediately gets off on a wrong foot.

The MMORPG genre has changed a lot since the early days of Meridian 59 and Ultima Online, but the games still relies on the basic classes introduced back then.

Pssst. Neither UO nor Meridian 59 HAD classes. Both were tankmagalicious. Continue reading

Yet Another Challenges of Licenses…

August 23, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Stargate: SG-1 was cancelled. In true Hollywood fashion, it was done on the eve of the show’s finest hour. The move wasn’t a surprise: the actor’s salaries had been rising for years at the same time that the ratings had been falling. 10 years is a good run for any show, and may be a record for science fiction.

In possibly related news, Dark Horizons reports that two new Stargate movies are in the works. The fun part is this: Continue reading

UO’s New Coat of Paint

August 21, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Looks like the UO team is updating their visuals again. I know the team has long wanted to do so, and it’s gratifying that they’re moving forward. The screenshots are pretty nice – especially when you consider they’re attached to a 9 year old game.

The first question I have, as a player, is what will happen to the pianos and other random furniture pieces that players have created? This bizarre branch of creativity was one of my favorite parts of UO. Continue reading

Validating the Corner Bar Mentality

August 21, 2006 / Damion Schubert

A lot of people have been poking fun at this study, which is if you read it carefully, pretty close to my corner bar theory, only with academic citations.

The researchers, Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams, claim that MMOs function not like solitary dungeon cells, but more like virtual coffee shops or pubs where something called “social bridging” takes place. They even liken playing such games as “Asheron’s Call” and “Lineage” to dropping in at “Cheers,” the fictional TV bar “where everybody knows your name.” “By providing places for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function much like the hangouts of old,” they said.

The Marvel Ghost Ship…

August 15, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Now that I’ve finally seen the rumor somewhere else, I feel okay pointing out that I, too, have heard the rumor that Cryptic of City of Heroes fame is making a Marvel-related online property. Note: this is unsubstantiated from anyone who actually matters.

This is only of note to me because… well… the license has been around. I know that Wolfpack was working on a prototype not long after Shadowbane shipped. The feedback we got was that our demo was awesome, but the deal didn’t happen. Other companies that have been (completely unsubstantiatedly) rumored to be within reach of the prize includes Turbine, Mythic, SOE and, most recently, Sigil. Or put another way, pretty much everyone except Blizzard, who was reportedly ‘a tad busy’. Continue reading

Spend Your Free Time In Prison

August 11, 2006 / Damion Schubert

This is for everyone who claims they want any fiction that isn’t hackneyed men-in-tights fantasy: a prison-based MMO.

Your first day in a crazy, maximum security prison is about to start! Forget swords and wizardry! This new online game is about FUN on the present-time!

The game is played exclusively over the Internet with other real players from all over the world.

Make your way from just a rookie to gang leader or boss, meet new friends and get a life while becoming stronger to gain real respect!

Players unite, collaborate & fight creating their own gangs and ranks within the prison confinements.

Games are, at their core, wish fulfillment. There’s a joke in here about girl prison movies somewhere, but I’m really too lazy to think of it right now.