Broken Toys

“For the most part it is surprising how Scott manages to describe things in a way which are true for many games at once, be it DAoC, SWG, EQ or WoW. It just shows how little variation there is between underlying game principles in the different MMGs. Even the description of human nature revealing itself in things like griefing or guild drama are spot on, and true for many games at once.”

I haven’t read the book, but this sounds like it says as much about Scott’s ability to write as it does about the nature of virtual game environments and what players are likely to do with the freedoms and restrictions afforded them. Either way, the notion that MMOGs aren’t that different in the way players can be expected to behave should be well past the novelty phase by now.

Maybe not. But this might be one more book to club arrogant designers over the head when they talk about how different their game will be.

*clubs Cael*

Yeah, the Order of the Rose-Croix thing was one of life’s surprising coincidences. The Order is a multi-game guild, started out in DAoC on Kay, but now its biggest chapter is in World of Warcraft. As I am member of that very guild in WoW, I was quite surprised to have it named and visible on several screenshots in Scott’s book. I told my guild, so now Scott will have even more people buying his book.

Human nature will never change much, so that part of the book is eternal. But the fact that Scott can write things about tanks, healers, and nukers archetypes and cover 90% (by subscription numbers) of all MMORPGs is kind of revealing. When will somebody develop a game where the tank is protecting the cloth wearer by physically standing between the monster and them, and not by spamming “taunt”?