Category: MMO Design (Page 4 of 36)

I’ve long wanted to write this article, which is excellent, but Jeff Kaplan wrote it, and he has the position of authority on the matter, being the lead content designer on WoW. Interesting quote:

I’m as guilty of this as anyone else. We’re so fortunate and privileged to work in a medium that is not only an art, but a revolutionary interactive form of entertainment. It’s unfortunate to see so many games try to be what they’re not, including our game at times. Of course we should embrace the concept of story… art, literature, film, song, they’ve all embraced story as well. But they all tell it in their own unique way.

I feel like we need to deliver our story in a way that is uniquely video game. We need to engage our audience by letting them be the hero or the villain or the victim. [Art, film, literature], they’re tools. But we need to engage our players in sort of an inspiring experience, and the sooner we accept that we are not Shakespeare, Scorsese, Tolstoy or the Beatles, the better off we are.

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There’s been a ghost ship sighting.

Tabula Rasa’s final event is tonight.

We request that all military personnel begin fortifying defenses at every AFS base in preparation for a massive Bane assault. If enemy troop movements are as large as we fear, and the Neph are truly prepared to lead all out war against us, this may be our last stand. Penumbra has been informed of the situation and is standing by on the use of their last resort weapon. We can not afford to be complacent or uncertain, but if it is truly our destiny to be destroyed, we are taking them all with us.

Put shorter, Tabula Rasa is shutting down with an event designed to be the end of Humanity. You gotta give them style points.

Original comments thread is here.

My wife pointed me to this cool feature: Warhammer is doing in-game statues of their top players in the capital cities, creating a sort of visual leaderboards.

Cool, but perhaps not entirely original: I coded the same thing into a “Hall of Heroes” in Meridian 59 a decade ago. I know of many text MUDs that had a similar feature before us, but I -believe- we were the first graphical game to do so.

The “Hall of Heroes” had one of the most marvelous easter eggs ever, if I do say so myself. If you used our ‘/unstuck’ ability in the room, you would be teleported to a copy of the Hall of Heroes, where all the statues were replaced with statues of the Dev Team. I remember coding this in the time between handing in my two weeks notice at 3DO, and actually leaving. It was deeply satisfying, especially since most of the statues were of people who had already left.

This map of Eve space is interesting for what’s not in it: namely a Corporation called Band of Brothers (BoB). BoB was previously one of the biggest Corps in the game, controlling the majority of what is now shown as unclaimed space. Stories here and here. Continue reading