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Gaming blog Imaginary Cogs focuses on MMO operations and server technology
There's a fair number of people out there blogging about their preferred massively multiplayer online games as well as the industry itself, and more all the time it seems. One area that isn't covered very often, however, is MMO operations, largely because it's something many bloggers have little direct experience with. However Bryant Durrell from Imaginary Cogs certainly does. In the month since Durrell first started writing Imaginary Cogs he's offered up an industry insider's perspective on topics ranging from server technology to the ops that keep our games running, tapping his past work experience with Vivox and Turbine. Durrell's blog is a peek behind the curtain into how massively multiplayer online games operate. If you've ever been curious about the tech that powers massively multiplayer online games and how it's used, you might want to check out Imaginary Cogs. [Via Zen of Design]
Age of Conan: mostly armless
Damion Schubert, a long-time game developer, runs a personal website called Zen of Design, where he tackles any number of issues in MMO design. Sometimes, though, he just throws out random bits of goodness like this Age of Conan experience: Tonight in Age of Conan, someone jumped me while i was doing something else, then proceeded to perform a fatality on me. It was one I hadn't seen before, and it involved him chopping off my arms, then chopping off my head. Which is cool and all, but after I respawned, I didn't have any arms. It was a purely visual bug - I could still fight and quest and whatnot. Still, I spent the next hour trying to find out which animations looked goofiest with stubs cut off at the elbow (dancing is good, stealth is better). Unfortunately, it was only an error on my screen, which meant that me screaming 'It's only a flesh wound!' in town probably made little sense to those who passed by.Given how new Age of Conan is, bugs and glitches like this are likely to keep turning up. Has anything similar, or funnier, happened to you in Age of Conan?
Using permadeath as a character reset
Damion over at Zen of Design combined (or saw his readers combine) two things that are rarely done in MMOs, and draw a lot of attention when they are done. Recently, permadeath has been brought up a few times (and implemented a few as well), and other games (most notably Shadowbane) have reset all character information in the game. And Damion asked if the two ideas complemented each other-- could permadeath make sure that, as with a character reset, everyone who gets too powerful is brought back to zero?It would only work, however, if lower characters could somehow stop someone who was too powerful, and as Damion notes, permadeath usually lets people accumulate power, not lose it. If one character is able to gain enough power to break the game and you combine that with a permadeath system, then any deaths he or she causes bring everybody else back to zero. And the balance to keep the lower characters powerful enough to stop the higher character and yet not overpowered is so precarious that, as Damion says, it usually ruins the game.But we are falling yet again into Damion's stages-- permadeath, it seems, just doesn't work unless you build your game around it, and then it can't necessarily be called permadeath anymore. The very fact of gaming means that, in a social game, to build a character worth playing, death, it seems, cannot stand in your way.
The Digital Continuum: Evolving past fantasy Pt.1
Over the past couple of weeks the MMO blogosphere has once again been discussing the ever-pertinent question of "Why fantasy?" in regards to the MMO and its heritage; MUDs and tabletop gaming. The subject has been covered quite well from many different points of view and opinions, none of which are inherently wrong and all of which are worth a read if the subject interests you in any way.The reasons are especially well covered in a round-table that Damion Schubert posted to Zen of Design earlier this year. Many of these reasons that materialized from the round table appear quite valid, yet I don't see eye-to-eye with these concepts. In my opinion, several of them seem arbitrary and some could be applied in opposition of fantasy. In fact, the more I read on the subject of "Why fantasy?" the more I think, "All the more reason to evolve beyond fantasy."I'm going to address the well summed-up list posted by Damion Schubert piece by piece, as it lays out the most compelling evidence for why fantasy continues to reign supreme. So if you find yourself lost on what I'm talking about, feel free to refer to the original article in question. Now, we'll take a look into this list and see just how much of it really holds up against an argument for something other than fantasy.
Damion Schubert (sort of) defends the raid mechanic
Allow me to state the obvious; raiding is an integral part of WoW's design. A lot of people think that's a bad thing. They'll say raiding is only for the elite hardcore, and that it alienates everyone else. Here's a shocker; Damion Schubert -- a renown MMO designer whose games have historically been pretty much the opposite of raider-friendly -- is not one of those naysayers.He recently updated his blog with a strong defense of Blizzard's decision to emphasize raiding. You should read it for yourself, but the gist of it is that there are more raiders than you think, that players of a PvE game want a PvE endgame (as opposed to a PvP one like the Battlegrounds), and that because raids are re-playable content, Blizzard gets more bang for its development buck.His ultimate point, though, is that Blizzard focuses on raiding content because that's what players want. But I wonder if a lot of those players, especially the more casual types, would want something different if they were aware of other options. And Schubert suggested that there are alternatives. What are they, and do you want them, or are you perfectly happy with working your way up to Black Temple?
Damion Schubert seeks a different kind of grind
MMO developers and publishers try to provide game-play that keeps you coming back again and again so you won't stop their money flow by canceling your subscription. The easiest way for them to do this is to make their games an addictive grind. You feel compelled to level up. You can't help yourself.Just because something's addictive, though, doesn't mean it's fun. But is there another way? Damion Schubert (of Meridian 59 and Ultima Online fame, and one of a certain blogger's personal heroes) posed that question on his Zen of Design blog. MMOs must be centered around highly repeatable activities, Schubert said. Combat, for example, works well because developers can put in a lot of changeable variables to make the experience different every time. On the other hand, he uses puzzle/mystery games like Myst as examples of games not based on a repeatable activity. Once a puzzle is solved, it's solved, and that's the end of it. So, if not that, then what? What other games have mechanics that can be used as a model for MMO game-play that sticks?That discussion is going on right now at Zen of Design.
Making fun be worth it
Zen of Design has a great post up about how MMO game mechanics should "incentivize fun" in the gameplay. The main example Damion uses is the "daily quests" recently introduced to World of Warcraft-- Blizzard originally gave all players a goal of 5000g for their epic mounts, but then realized that they hadn't given players enough ways to earn that money-- most people were left grinding random spots to make the cash. So they then created "daily quests"-- daily timer quests that were repetitive and easy that gave lots of money. Play the game for x number of minutes every day, get all the cash you need.But as Damion says, the daily quests serve a purpose, but they aren't actually fun. Lots of players see them as a job, and the fact that they are repetitive (in a bad way-- he says a game like Civilization actually makes repeating gameplay interesting) makes them a necessity rather than an incentive to play the game.Now, the good news is that in the latest patch, Blizzard is working to fix this-- they've introduced daily quests that ask players to play fundamental parts of the game, and so there are now crafting daily quests, as well as battleground and instance quests. But these are fixes after the fact-- the way to really incentivize fun is to watch what players themselves want to do during development, and then reward that. Halo isn't an MMO, technically, but Bungie noticed that players were dying strange deaths in game, and then actually changed the game to reward players for their activities. Same deal with MMOs-- find out what players want to do in your game, and then give them rewards for doing just that.
