That’s the number of people on the Internet.
Put another way, only 1.1% of the world’s net users have encountered Night Elfs dancing on their mailbox.
Category: MMO Design (Page 5 of 36)
There’s been a lot of talk about Tabula Rasa lately, including its oncoming demise. TR’s launch and subsequent failure would be an afterthought, if Richard wasn’t involved – hell, MOST game projects fail or are cancelled, and to the team’s credit, TR actually did get out the door — more than the vast majority of games in this industry. Still, the history is there, and worth discussing.
The two most interesting posts on the subject should be required reading: Scott’s view from another project in the same building, andAdam’s view from across the pond. Both are required reading, as is Eric’s take here. Continue reading
It turns out he just needed a trip to space to clear his head: Richard Garriott voices his interest in jumping back into the fray:
“After 25 years at Origin, the last thing I wanted to make was yet another medieval fantasy game. Now, after a very interesting break, I’m keen to get back into the fray and work on a new game,” He said to BBC: “Probably medieval fantasy and probably online; there’s something very powerful about getting people together,”
I have no idea if the MUD Threshold RPG is any good. I do know that its founder, Michael Hartman, is one of the most dedicated and prolific posters of MUD-Dev – where, I note, him and I used to get into some knockdown, dragout fights. I note its PLAYERS do – but people are predisposed to consider things they like noteworthy. But is his MUD particularly noteworthy? Beats me. I have no idea where the line is. They apparently consider every Alpha Flight villain and bad metal band I listened to in the 80s to be relevant enough, but not CarnageMUD. Go figure.
So what to make of the Wikipedia kerfuffel that Raph, Scott and Richard have posted about? Bored to death, really. I mean, it’s not like people haven’t been arguing about this for years. Continue reading
To return the favor, I’ll just say that judging from the line around Gamestop last night, I think Lich King might sell a few copies.
While at GDC, I heard a lot of people who were pitching free games that, well, aren’t. Most of them are free trials of games that hope to monetize quickly. You are only a free game if your evangelists say you are.
Free play games depend on evangelism of the players (usually kids without access to credit cards), in order to build larger and larger audiences. Free play games work by shovelling in as many customers as is humanly possible, and often get any cash at all from a very small percentage of them (I’ve heard percentages in the 1-3% range for some games). But they work because a kid says to his friend, “Yeah you can play for free!” — even if, at a certain point, the player hits a roadblock he has to pay to surpass. Continue reading
At ADGC yesterday, today and tomorrow. Preparing for AGDC and some hard time at work is what I choose my relative lack of posting on.
Here’s a writeup of my talk. And another. And a third. Slides can be found here.
Overall, I think it went pretty well, especially considering there was danger of Ike knocking out my power before the talk was completely done. As it is, Ike didn’t slow things down at all. Sunday’s release of Rock Band II, now that’s another story
This is all we were talking about at work today:
Our new Recruit-A-Friend program has added features that reward you even more for bringing your friends into Azeroth™. Recruit-A-Friend and earn:
- An exclusive ZHEVRA in-game mount* when your friend pays for 60 days of subscription time.
- 30 Days of FREE** WoW gametime when your friend pays for 30 days of subscription time.
- You and your friend will earn triple the experience when grouped together.
- For every two levels of experience your friend earns, they can grant one level of experience to any one ofyour characters of lower level.
- You and your friend will have the ability to summon each other from any point in the world.
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