archeage

Monday 20 February, 2012 at 12:29 am / 0 comment

The sunny village of Seeblick

Seeblick is a prosperous and rapidly expanding village, only a few minutes walk North from the major hub of Green Dog and adjacent to Rearden. This quaint village is prominently positioned only 15 minutes from a fully developed beach community and still features all the amenities one would want without needing to head to the coast.

Saturday 18 February, 2012 at 2:12 pm / 0 comment

SIMS plus MMO equals WURM Online

It's no surprise that I, too, am a big fan of WURM Online, along with other Massively staffers. It was hard not to sound like a true geek and fanboy, when I livestreamed an interview with WURM creator Rolf Jansson, or when I gushed about it on last week's Massively Speaking podcast. Lately, I've been trying to solidify and condense why I like this charming and different MMO into an elevator-pitch to tell friends and players who are curious about the game. It is a different animal in the MMO kingdom and can be a bit hard to explain to veteran and new players alike.

I might not be spot-on, but I've recently decided that WURM evokes similar feelings to SIMS. SIMS had this uniquely-attractive quality, but from the outside it just looked like people watched characters slowly walk around and interact; No goals, no levels, no plans. The characters just lived, but something about SIMS made it extremely popular. I think it's that same SIMS-feeling, combined with more detailed control over the characters, that sums up what WURM is like, to me.

Thursday 16 February, 2012 at 10:29 pm / 0 comment

Building a better action MMO by starting with crafting and economy

I think that all MMO player-types would benefit from an MMO that was designed, from the ground up, around a hardy crafting system and in conjunction with a flexible, player-controlled economy. I don't think most of today's auction houses are player-controlled. At least, players have so little control that auction houses aren't very playable as a game feature. I see them largely serving the purpose of the NPC vendor in a single-player RPG. Prices may fluctuate a little, but not much. Prices on items quickly stabilize and that's what players want. They want predictable and a playable economy allows for unpredictability. Currently, prices quickly stabilize and we want to know what the price is supposed to be for any given item, so we can plan that around upgrading our characters to actually play the game. I would change it back to a very unpredictable, EVE-like economy and add a crafting system. I think this could lead to a better gaming experience for PvE, raiding and PvP alike.

Thursday 16 February, 2012 at 12:32 am / 0 comment

Not-so-intense scrutiny of questing

I know questing in MMOs has its share of debates, but I've always liked questing. Without trivializing the work that already goes into quest-design, I don't think any major complaints associated with quests in MMOs today originate from any notion that quests outright suck. I think it's that no ones trying to improve the quests.

For all the complaints that may arise over improving questing, game design doesn't seem to be intensely focused on making a better quest. Right now, it's about finding other things to do besides quests. Even in an MMO like Lord of the Rings Online, where I think questing is given a little extra tender loving care out of a deeper respect to the story, the quests are largely what they've always been: kill ten whatchamacallits, fetch a whatchamacallit or help an NPC get to whatchamacallit.

Saturday 04 February, 2012 at 10:18 am / 0 comment

Yet another new Blog template

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Monday 09 January, 2012 at 8:00 am / 0 comment