Comments on: Answering Tom Chick: Five Easy Pieces And One Snide One

By: GnomeDepot.Net » Grinding Levels

GnomeDepot.Net » Grinding Levels — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:41:25 +0000

[...] on the bandwagon. Scott Jennings over on Broken Toys tried to explain to both of them that first, MMO <> WoW, and secondly, while most MMO’s are fantasy based, they’re not developed in Fantasy [...]

By: Jederus

Jederus — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:31:49 +0000

Hot damn that was a well-written and excellent response. I couldn’t believe what I was reading when I saw Chick’s original article and realized he was making the uber-non-gamer-noober mistake of MMO==WoW (I mean, every screencap a WoW image… does anyone even check this stuff?)
On a related note, visually he should have used a header image with 5 players in it instead of one with 6 players given the fact that he used the very diggable ‘5 Controversial Things to Say and Get Traffic to my Post’ format.

Anyway, thanks for the rebuttal. Well said.

By: EpicSquirt

EpicSquirt — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:59:05 +0000

@Ramification Excellent.

By: Ramification

Ramification — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:14:20 +0000

As for static worlds, ever since Everquest I had been wondering why MMOGs market themselves as persistant world as if it is any sort of an advantage (yes, I get it that it means your stats are saved).
The world is indeed persistent – it persists in staying the same, forever…how dull!
I want a dynamic world, one such as Derek Smart used to describe in his very early “shopping for publisher” documents that he was releasing around for the original BC3k when all he had was a poorly looking and barely even functional alpha.
One whereas the world governs itself, always changes, the AI do their own things, push for their own agendas and conquest.
Things operate on a computer-generated-content script kind of model.
Economics changes, empires rise and fall. Wars erupt and decline.
Whether the players play – and influence, or whether everyone go to party with their friends in a club, the world always is in motion and ever changing.
You log off today, and login tomorrow to find that gas is now x500 more expensive and that the Solarian empire is now part of the E.V.C who’re now in a war with their yesterday’s allies and brothers from the Occamorian Alliance, oh, and there’s a new blackhole sucking all traffic coming from Vellus so there’s a real high demand for supplies, but the new roundtrip is longer and dangerous, which may explain why the Pinkbeard Pirates are now recruiting.
P.S.
Your homeworld was blown by an unknown force, taking away your entire fleet and family.
But hey, you just won the galactic lottery!
And lookie here, a stray cat/dog seems to want you to adopt it.

By: Ramification

Ramification — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:06:30 +0000

“Problem four: Why is there a line to kill Sauron?”

Why indeed?
I’m no designer, I would like to be, but I doubt I have any skill beyond over-grown imagination; yet still, it strikes me as weird situation to be queried about.

Games are meant to be fun, right? A form of entertainment.
The way they attempted to achieve it to date been by striking a balance, or tipping onto one category altogether, between simulation (mimicing real life, physics&otherwise eco systems) and arcadization (fast paced action, following the KISS principle).

So, I ask myself, how would it look if we had an army composed of thousands of players trying to topple Sauron as their main quest objective?
Well, naturally, they’d just fight their way through, then the most powerful heroes will rush forward, as the others hold back the lines to create a clearing, and strike at Sauron, or fall on the way one by one trying until one does manage to make it through (at least, this is the way those kind of epic stories go).

Just what exactly is preventing this from happening in a game environment? (the consequences of what to do next after Sauron goes down and the quest finished is a different debate)
Hmm…nothing that I can think of, really…

Certainly, many players will wish to be the one champion who manages it off…but “reality” (of the game) will prevent it from being that easy and will take care of it to render so only very few of the original group actually manages to make it through.
Shouldn’t be /that/ hard to design, right?

By: Channel Massive » Blog Archive » Episode 77 - The Number of the Other Beast

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:28:29 +0000

[...] Scott Jennings Thinks He’s Has A Solution [...]

By: Linking In » How to mend a broken MMO

Linking In » How to mend a broken MMO — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:33:26 +0000

[...] ranging from subscriptions fees to too static worlds, to problems with grouping. Answering Chick, Scott Jennings rebutted at Broken Toys that Chick generalizes problems which are mostly specific to WoW: “Tom Chick’s core problem: [...]

By: Broken Toys » Fixing MMOs Is Hard

Broken Toys » Fixing MMOs Is Hard — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:21:07 +0000

[...] Tom Chick: MMOs are broken! Fix! The Narrator: No, you mean WoW is broken. [...]

By: Robin Kestrel

Robin Kestrel — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:27:03 +0000

@Viz Not to minimize the complexity of such a system, but I think your comments are hyberbole. I also think the “it can’t be done” mindset will persist right up until the second that somebody does it, and that day will come sooner than you think. Bring on the revolution!

By: Viz

Viz — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:44:28 +0000

@Robin Kestrel

*sigh*

It’s not JUST a matter of writing new tools or it would’ve been done. What you propose is no more and no less than automation of content generation that currently has to be done by hand. If anyone were actually able to do this with the level of sophistication and realism necessary to produce a “virtual world” with the depth to maintain a large player population, it would be a change akin to the Industrial Revolution. Additionally, we’d be much better served using that system to simulate real-world economies and eliminate poverty instead.