Category: MMO Design (Page 34 of 36)

Breadth vs Depth in MMOs

December 10, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Jeff ‘Dundee’ Freeman and Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green are having a discussion about breadth vs depth in game design. Brian gets the ball rolling.

Broad content is content that is spread out and is measured in raw numbers. For example, large continents are broad content, because you have to spend time traveling around in the area to see it all. More races, more areas, more items, more monsters, anything that can be measured by counting.

Deep content is content that is concentrated and tends to be a bit more abstract. Puzzles, secrets, emergent behavior, anything that can’t just be measured by numbers.

The Noob

December 8, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Someone mailed me this webcomic weeks ago. Shoulda looked sooner. The first 30 in particular are pretty damning to the newbie experience in every MMO.

‘Shadowbane: Throne of Oblivion’ Launches

December 7, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Sorry I haven’t been more chatty today, but it’s launch day at Wolfpack. The Throne of Oblivion goes live today, and it provides exciting extensions to the promise of Shadowbane. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed with the timing, because the game really does add some functionality to Shadowbane which makes it a whole new game. Continue reading

Death Creates the Grind

November 29, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Dundee has a pretty good summation of how death penalties are getting lighter with time, and why. (Damion notes: this link is now dead).

Thought I’d throw out one additional thought: Your death penalties create the grind. Continue reading

WoW’s Impressive Trajectory

November 26, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Earlier this week, I pointed out how hard it is to get a congealed community to scatter. Blizzard has found a novel approach to the problem.

Link courtesy of N3rfed, who like many, is astonished by WoW’s announcement of having 200K accounts and 88 servers after two days. And I must admit, that’s a hell of a trajectory. I note that a lot of people that I didn’t think played MMOs are picking the title up. The game has the potential to be a true phenomenon.

Should we be surprised? How many RTS titles were there? And by how much did Starcraft crush them all?

Still, whether they’ll reach 1M will depend a lot on how sticky the game is, and how well they support the service. Given their team spent Thanksgiving putting up 46 new servers, it would seem they have clue.

The Perils of Alphabetical Server Names

November 24, 2004 / Damion Schubert

According to who you ask, Worlds of Warcraft is either having a launch smooth as a baby’s butt, or a clusterfuck of imaginable proportions. Can you guess which server is complaining the most? Continue reading

Let’s Do Launch!

November 18, 2004 / Damion Schubert

WoW’s launch day approaches and EQ’s has passed. There’s endless debate about both products, and a lot of talk about how ready the two projects are, and how those launch days reflect their companies. I don’t buy it. Both are first-class studios with talent I respect greatly. Both will ship products that are quality, but will have launch issues. Saying there will be launch issues is kind of like saying that there will be a new car smell when you buy a car. The question is not whether there are issues, but how a team reacts to those issues.

All that being said, I thought I’d lift the hood and show what’s going on – from a developer’s viewpoint. I personally advocate that any design team for an MMO write a design doc for their launch day, because launch day has a set of concerns that are unusual.Here are some lessons I would impart about product launches, having been present for launches of both Meridian and Shadowbane.
Continue reading

A Step Back in Time…

November 15, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Once upon a time, kiddies, games used to scold you for cursing. You spoiled brats with your GTA: San Andreas.

Note to all wanna-be game designers: the day you fill out your project’s profanity filter IS in fact the most fun you’ll have during the development of your game.

Gotta Keep Em Seperated

November 15, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Game Girl Advance wants to know why online worlds are segregated into smaller servers – i.e. why are you forced to choose whether to play Virtue or Justice when playing City of Heroes. This is, of course, one of those ideas that just keeps bubbling up, and keeps disappearing again. Many games have promised it, only to back away later. Surely, if 1500 people in a world is exciting, then 150,000 people is deliriously exciting, right? If we’re selling social gameplay, shouldn’t there be as few barriers as possible?

Welcome to the Club! Now get back to work.

November 13, 2004 / Damion Schubert

I’d like to welcome Blizzard to the fraternity of studios that have actually managed to get an MMO all the way to ship. Congratulations. I… uh… hope you weren’t planning on spending Thanksgiving with your families. Or, for that matter, Christmas