design-decisions
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Leaderboard: What's the worst MMO design decision of all time?
Naoki Yoshida has spoken, and it seems as if Final Fantasy XIV players can take or leave the title's exorbitantly expensive free company housing. The fan outcry surrounding this particular brouhaha has been considerable, so much so that I'm reminded of other game company gaffes that elicited howls of protest from all corners of a particular fandom. While it's a bit of a stretch to compare FFXIV's housing debacle to the likes of, say, the NGE, it's not a stretch to ask which MMO design decision tops your list as the worst of all time. Vote after the cut! Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively's Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o' judgment -- and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!
The Mog Log: FFXIV lessons from Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XIV is in the final push to launch now, with phase 4 right around the corner and early access shortly after that. This is good news for me, since it means I can get back to actually playing the game that I write about every week after nearly a year. And, you know, the game is pretty awesome, so that's a bright point as well. It also means that the future isn't what it used to be. The relaunch has been The Future for a very long time, but now the relaunch is The Almost Right This Second, and The Future consists of patches and expansions and new classes and the like. All good things, all welcome, and all things that could take a few lessons from Final Fantasy XI. I've said before that Final Fantasy XIV was designed to fix some problems from Final Fantasy XI that it never was going to have, but that's not what I'm talking about. Instead of talking about preventing players from leveling consistently or hunting the possibility of RMT with McCarthy-level vigilance, let's look at some simple lessons to internalize in the future.
Choose My Adventure: Ballad of a teenage Zorai
Last week, the unthinkable happened. Or at least the unprecedented. Yes, after a dozen or so columns under my belt for Choose My Adventure, one of the "joke" choices finally won a poll. Either everyone thought that the paradise city was actually a thing in Ryzom or the impassioned pleas in the comments the week before had done the trick. For those of you under the misapprehension that this was, in fact, an actual thing, I apologize for the not particularly elaborate act of deception. My question to myself, at this point, was what I actually had to do at this point. Did this mean that I had to search through every city in the game to find a paradise, only to discover at the end that paradise had metaphorically been at home the whole time? Was I already in the paradise city, judging by the fact that some people would call the jungle a virtual paradise? The girls were pretty, the grass was green, and by almost any metric you cared to use, Corlede was as close to home as she was getting. But no, I knew what I had to do. Something I had known since I started playing. I went home.
Earthrise interview explains Masthead Studios approach to sandbox design
Bulgarian game developer Masthead Studios has been putting a lot of effort into spreading the word about their upcoming post-apocalytic MMO Earthrise. Massively had a chance to sit down with Masthead Studios CEO Atanas Atanasov at GDC 2009 for a preview of Earthrise which gave us a taste of what to expect from the title, but we're always on the lookout for more info about the game. We've come across a short interview at QJ.NET with Atanasov that might be worth a read if you're excited about the dystopian MMO. He discusses some of the major game design decisions Masthead Studios made with Earthrise in respect to character progression (both online and offline) as well as departing from a few of the tried-and-true systems found in other MMOs on the market. Have a look at the Earthrise interview over at QJ.NET for more on the sandbox elements of this first release from Masthead Studios.
Star Trek Online producer blog explains early choices made in development
One of the massively multiplayer online titles eagerly awaited by sci-fi fans is Star Trek Online, currently in development at Cryptic Studios. Star Trek Online's executive producer Craig Zinkievich has written a dev blog for MMORPG.com titled "Focusing the Experience." Zinkievich discusses that initial excitement the Cryptic Studios team had when they obtained the license to create Star Trek Online, and the process of deciding what the IP's MMO universe should encompass. This was no small task. The Star Trek universe spans decades across multiple television incarnations and film, so the challenge wasn't so much about what to include, but what not to include while making sure that the setting is fleshed out. The developers asked themselves how they could make the MMO universe of Star Trek Online a place where there's more to being part of the setting than energizing transporters all day. And how to incorporate the roles of characters seen in Star Trek television and film into the MMO?
