Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Category: MMO Design (Page 6 of 36)

Illinois Lawmaker Throws Snit Fit Over Cancelling FFXI Account

August 5, 2008 /

Ever spend a couple hours trying to cancel some sort of service, and say to yourself, “There oughta be a law”? Well, if you’re a politician, you can do something about it.

The Illinois House and Senate have just passed a new bill requiring subscription-based Internet gaming service providers online on how to cancel. Apparently this all came about after one alderman had a tough time canceling his son’s Final Fantasy XI account and took it up with the House. The full text of HB4178 can be read here, but it’s not made clear if virtual worlds are included in “games.” My guess would probably be yes, though.

How To Lie With Graphs

July 29, 2008 /

Now, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t played Conan since I discovered my female barbarian was nerfed by her own damage animations.  That being said, I find articles like this one a little obfuscating.  Oh noes!  Funcom is down to half its value!  Sky!  Falling!

Looking at the longer view, we see that Funcom is… exactly where they were before they launched Conan. Which is to say, the launch of Conan probably overinflated their value.

Also note that in both graphs, the graph starts at 15, instead of 0.  The net result is that a casual graph reader would think they lost 80% of their value from their peak, when instead they’re down half.

Should Funcom be doing better?  Probably.  But it’s not nearly as gloomy as the original article suggests.

Down Goes Illidan

July 28, 2008 /

Last night, my guild finally managed to take down Illidan Stormrage, the end boss of the Black Temple.  It was an enormous amount of work to get there.  I think I joined the guild about this time last year, and back then we were taking babysteps into Serpentshrine Cavern, struggling with Lurker.

According to WoWJutsu, 5.18% of all U.S. raiding guilds have gotten down Illidan, which amounts to roughly 4000 of ‘em.  (That being said, with our fresh kill, we rank in the low 2000s).  Split the difference, and assume that each guild has about 35 raiding members (probably low), and you’d guess that about 100K people have popped Illidan.  A small fraternity, but actually not as small as I expected. Continue reading

Meanwhile, In “What If” Land…

June 30, 2008 /

What if World of Warcraft had been a free-to-play ad-based game?

Interestingly, Pardo commented on this subject: “When were first going to make World of Warcraft, we wanted to make it free and advertising supported.”

However, the Blizzard exec noted: “We didn’t want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn’t support us.”

MMOs on the Decline

June 22, 2008 /

Over at Elder Game, Eric wrote an excellent post on the decline of MMO populations.

To which I’ll add three quick points.

  • When the best part of your game (raiding in WoW, sieging in Shadowbane) can’t be played on some servers because you can’t get a team together, this should be terrifying people.  This is, in my experience, when the cascade starts.
  • When players realize that they are playing a “massively multiplayer” game, and they are isolated and alone, the irony is inescapable.
  • Blizzard, please merge my server with another.  We need more healers on our server, stat.

Original comments thread is here.

Patch Time

June 22, 2008 /

Conan is currently on quite an insane patch cycle – twice, sometimes three times a week.  Which can be seen a couple of ways – either they’re really devoted to the game and really want it to work, or the game is a broken pile of hooey that needs to fix Assassins now or player X is quitting and taking his whole guild with him.  As it was in MMO patchdom, so it ever shall be.

Some people on various boards have commented that Conan’s patch cycle, as insane as it is, is vastly superior to WoW’s current model, which is roughly ‘do a patch every 2 months, and then follow it up with a really little patch that fixes all the things we broke and can’t wait 2 months to fix’.  To which I can only counter with two quick and dirty points. Continue reading

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