Saturday, May 31, 2008

The Capitalist Environment of Trading in Online Games


The majority believe that making money from playing online games is ridiculous. From the lowly Chinese workshop to high-tech offices of internet entrepreneurs, virtual money has become a hot commodity. Those competing in the real-money trading industry include dedicated professionals to part-time players, big-city businesses to the bedroom entrepreneur. Employing thousands of workers across Asia is necessary to satisfy the growing demand from Western gamers.
MMORPG trading is rarely discussed by the international press and so it remains an unknown property to the majority of the world's population. Nevertheless this phenomenon exists in most MMORPG titles including World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI (FFXI), EVE Online and EverQuest 2. The most notable occurrence is in FFXI where players journey through numerous dungeons, quests and scenarios in order to acquire piles of the game's currency. Some indulge in improving their character in the game, but some decide to approach the task like a business, utilizing any means necessary to bolster their reserves of currency and sell it on for real cash.
You may ask why the developers of MMORPGs dislike and even actively deter real-money trading. Intellectual property infringement is the most commonly given reason for objection by gaming companies, but there are also accusations of hacking, scamming and phishing within the industry. Some also accuse RMT companies of overloading games with workers, which serves to dilute the population of real gamers and negatively affect the game as a whole. Whilst some action has been taken by game developers, it has never been directly targeted at the transaction of company to customer.
The business model of real-to-virtual transactions is one that has got many investors excited and interested. There is certainly money to be made, whether it's by developers or entrepreneurs, and the market shows no sign of slowing. The construction of this virtual marketplace continues to change, and will no doubt bring further surprises in future.
Research conducted by www.MOGS.com - reatailer of FFXI Gil

Friday, May 30, 2008

Age of Conan: Early Impressions




The character creation screen is more in depth than many MMOs. However, if you're brave enough to admit you've played The Sims, then you've certainly seen better. In the end does it really matter in games where you're likely to be covered head to toe in armor? I think not so much but I sense that people do enjoy the versatility. What I would personally have preferred more than being able to tweak the length of my nose or the size of my boobs, was not to look like a ragamuffin. If you thought your character's gear looked thrown together in LOTRO you ain't seen nothin' yet. To date, Age of Conan and LOTRO are the only games that I've played where I looked like mixed-match mess.

I appreciate the circumstance of a recently escaped/freed slave. I understand they don't plan on making the game as gear dependant as others. However, do I really have to look that bad? Or am I that vain??? I found myself looking through the multiple tops, pants and shoes in my bag trying to find something that at least seemed like it went together. The stats were all the same but the styles, colors and textures didn't jive. I looked a hot mess. It was slightly similar to AC2 in that, there was a lot of variety in the same piece of armor so you can be in a red robe that has +1 Defense and I can be in a black one if I prefer and that's without dying your items. However, Age of Conan hacks made the stuff even at the lower levels look decent and you could easily match your items. Hopefully, I'll get to look better at some point.

AOC has a nice variety of classes within the four archetypes of Soldier, Priest, Mage and Assassin. Only certain classes can be played by certain races, which is a common implementation. However, in AOC whole archetypes are exclusive to certain races. For example, if you want to be a Mage of any kind, then you must be Stygian. On the PVE and PVP servers so what, but I wonder how this plays out on the Culture PVP servers where a race is completely locked out of an archetype?

Even though AOC has the usual suspects for classes, not all of them are the typical fare. Priests and Mages are battle versions of those classes. Everyone gets to have decent offensive skills and from what I've read so far, it appears that HOT and AOE healing spells are more prevalent than the "heal one" scenario. I think this might make playing a healer more pleasurable. If you can heal many more often with a single action, you'll have more opportunity to actual watch the battle – see the instances and bosses.

One of the Mage's has melee as its primary DPS, as does at least one of the Priests. It's little twists like these that add a bit of freshness into the game. I'll discuss the classes in more detail after I've finished testing my would-be mains.

Lastly, the combat system which is VERY different from any MMO I've ever played. At least in terms of PVE, it's not giving me nearly the trouble I expected. I never did well on the console games and don't consider myself adept at FPS style combat but so far, so good. The inclusion of combos which deal more damage when successfully executed is interesting. I do wish that I could move where they displayed. For some reason focusing left side of the screen doesn't work as well for me, as it would if I could place it right side or better yet, closer to my character and my Age of Conan cheats. I want to watch the combat but with the combos slightly off to the left, my eye is focused there. Oh well, definitely not a huge deal. It would just be nice to be able to move it to match my preferred field of view.

That's where I'm at for now. It's pretty, different, combat feels fresh, UI could be better but no deal breaker. I'm on a PVE server at the moment. I'm going to do a Bear Shaman on a PVP or Cultural PVP server at some point. The only pitfall I can foresee at the moment is if I MUST quest. Forced questing for leveling is why I'm not playing LOTRO or EQ2. Grinding XP is a play-style and as much as some people hate it, others enjoy and actually prefer it. I don't mind questing in moderation but when I'm not in the mood, I really do need the freedom to just go whack stuff and still level at a decent rate. This philosophy is one of the major reasons I'm excited about Warhammer Online.

May 29, 2008 in Age of Conan | Permalink



Links :


Thursday, May 29, 2008

Champions Online: Ankylosaur


He was born into a poor family, and no one really understood him. He got kicked out of school because of a simple misunderstanding about what he and the principal's daughter were doing in the broom closet. He was tossed into juvie for a couple of burglaries and some joyriding - a luckier kid would have gotten a slap on the wrist.

Nothing ever turned out right. But Paul was convinced that he was due for a big score to make up for all his rotten luck.

He got his chance when the local VIPER nest hired Paul and his friends to help out with a job. Paul knew this was his shot at the big time - if he got in good with VIPER, he'd be on the road to Easy Street.

The job was easy - make a lot of noise and smash some stuff outside of one of UNTIL's research centers, so a VIPER team could infiltrate the facility and loot it. It should have been a piece of cake - except UNTIL's security hit Paul and his buddies fast and hard.

Paul panicked and ran into the research center instead of away from it. He found himself in some sort of warehouse, hiding behind piles of crates. As a joke - and since he didn't have anything better to do besides pray he didn't get caught - Paul pulled out a pen and wrote his own address on some of the shipping labels. Then as the sounds of battle faded, Paul snuck away and counted himself fortunate to be alive.

To his amazement, a few days later a delivery truck pulled up outside his apartment and dropped off several huge crates! Paul eagerly opened them, hoping to find something he could sell. Instead, he found a shiny suit of powered armor styled to look like some sort of dinosaur. It was his lucky day!

It took Paul a few days to figure out how to put the battlesuit together and operate it - just in time for a squad of UNTIL agents to show up looking for the missing prototype Ankylosaur armor. A few grenades and some power smashes later, and Paul had trashed the UNTIL team. He was a supervillain!

About Ankylosaur

Ankylosaur is a supercriminal for hire - sometimes he works for other villains; sometimes he pulls off his own jobs. He may not win every time, but his life is a lot better now than it used to be.

He is a bully and a thug, and he likes to have power and a fat wad of cash in his pocket. The Ankylosaur armor gives him those things. But Ankylosaur isn't a big thinker - it took him months to learn how to pronounce the armor's name properly - and he's impressed by those who are, making him an easy recruit for masterminds looking for muscle.

Ankylosaur has a major hatred of authority figures, and he'll take any opportunity to smash police officers or UNTIL agents, even if he's in the middle of a job. If he's ever in a jam and needs to grab a hostage, he'll go for someone who looks "official" every time.

Lately, though, the Ankylosaur armor is starting to show some age, so he's looking to hook up with some brains that can give him an upgrade. Better armor, bigger weapons - the cops won't stand a chance.

Source : WarCry

Links :
Star Trek Forum
mmorpg forum
Sponsored blog
Sponsored blog

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Online Game communities are social in nature

By Cindy Ahuna

Who are the friendly characters that will play with you if you play with them?

In 1969, "SpaceWar", developed by Rick Blomme, was the first two-player game designed to play on PLATO. In 1961, the "Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations" was the first network to run on the Illiac computer system. PLATO was created by Professor Chalmers Sherwin, under the direction of electrical engineering professor Don Bitzer, co-inventor of the plasma display pane at the University of Illinois.

During 1970 through 1977, multiplayer games included "SpaceWar"; a version of "Star Trek"; "Avatar", a Dungeons and Dragons-style game; "Airflight", a flight simulator; and "Empire", which supported 32 players on PLATO. In 1972, PLATO hosted 1,000 simultaneous users. In May 2001, Sony's "EverQuest", a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, hosted 60,000 to 80,000 players daily.

In 1973, David R. Woolley designed "Notes", a communications software for PLATO. Due to the release of this software, "Talkomatic", precursor to IRC with handles and chat rooms, was developed for PLATO. A maximum of five people wrote and read each other's messages on the same screen. Chat rooms were open and uncensored. A player logged on using their real or an anonymous name, and played either gender role.

In various online chat rooms found on AOL's games and in Sony's "EverQuest", text is censored when gamers use brand or offensive words. Role-playing genders, sometimes referred to as gender swapping or multiple representations, is possible when gamers change or hide the genders of their characters using anonymous names.

In "EverQuest", with more than 360,000 subscribers, thousands of gamers play characters of the opposite gender. Gamers are free to explore relationships while in character. Male gamers find that female characters generally get treated better in male-dominated virtual worlds. Sometimes men find it easier to chat with other characters and escape the competition. In free online games list, multiple representations allow players to see how other players solve problems. "There are a lot of rumors and anecdotes about people referring to play games as men or women because they are treated differently," says avid gamer J. MacLean.

In a lecture titled "Programs, Emotions and Common Sense", Marvin Minsky emphasized in his book the idea of multiple representation. "If you understand something very precisely in one way", Minsky claims "you don't understand it at all." "You know it by rote. What does the word understand mean? Understanding means having many different ways to deal with things," said Minsky. Children memorize history by rote, but they usually don't understand it how free online games work. Sometimes gamers falsely assume they are interacting with a person who matches the gender's name. Perhaps on one level, Minsky's definition can be applied as a working analogy for multiplayers who role-play playing games. If multiplayers had more ways of identifying the characters, they might be able to understand who the friendly characters were when they played with them, but then again, that might take all of the fun out of the game.

Artist/curator Anne-Marie Schleiner, describes social developments in gaming: "Multiplayer games can be very social. In the shooter genre, players sometimes band together into "clans", groups who fight against other groups. Sometimes the social bonds developed in these clans extend beyond the game into friendship and players offer each other moral support through personal hardship and help each other find jobs," said Schleiner.

Social environments evolve from online game communities. "A great example is "Air Warrior", a WW2 flight simulation with players are so dedicated, they've held conventions. Massive multiplayer role-playing games are also famous for the strength of their communities "the guilds in "EverQuest" are a great example of this phenomenon," says MacLean. In contrast to single player games, communities are vital depending on the game. For example, "for a game like chess, where skill levels can be critical, many people prefer to play with someone of relatively similar skill," says MacLean.

In a global point of view, the Internet is the living organism that hosts many online games systems. Boundaries of geography, economy, culture, degrees of education and family traditions have disappeared. Gamers are co-authors that take part in the experience. Communities are playing fields for social interaction. When gamers send messages to other gamers, they are free to exchange email addresses and meet beyond the game community. Communities have become an extension, a new medium of human touch.

When communities form, a semantic world of sharing knowledge, solving problems, working as a team, playing, building, quarreling, cooperating, planning and forming relationships develop. Games are formal because they have a set of rules. A game is a system because it has a collection of parts that interact with each other in complex ways. In "EverQuest", the Game Masters hold the most power. Online games run on a '24x7' calendar. Generally, online the role-playing games are maintained by paid subscriptions, whereas, online fighting games are free. Communities exist in time by free and paid subscriptions. Gamers occupy real estate within the online game. Communities live in both space and time. Thus, it is a lifelike system.

Popular game boxes vary from Sony PlayStation, PlayStation 2; Nintendo's GameCube projected to ship Nov 5, '01 in the US; and Microsoft's Xbox projected to ship Nov 8, '01 in the US. "Although game boxes offer higher resolution graphics in comparison to PC gaming, they are a closed hardware platform and less amenable to multiplayer social games. Multiplayer gamers cannot insert their own character skins into shooter games in a game box or with a multiplayer game, such as "EverQuest". "EverQuest" can easily receive updates on the game over time that get rewritten over the original game software," says Schleiner. Many gamers develop friendships with other gamers in different countries using the chat session in "EverQuest".

In some ways, there are as many different types of gamers as there are games. General definitions include:

* Generally, casual gamers are people who enjoy simple decision making games and typically play less technical 3D graphic games. * Generally, traditional gamers are people who enjoy a more complex game. * Multiplayers (simultaneous players) are defined as those who play with other gamers in the same game.

What makes an online game exciting, interesting, social or more fun than another game? Motivation evolves from sensory gratification, role-playing, personality, taste, adrenaline, sociology, immersive and engaging environments, and the element of fun. Games in general motivate ideas. Topics include life, survival, strategy, role-playing, and building relationships. In all circumstances, the player learns by playing. "Building colossal virtual worlds are very important. In a virtual world, everything has a purpose. I love games, " said Minsky during his lecture, "Programs, Emotions and Common Sense".

In Star Trek CCG, gamers can buy and sell, trade and collect digital cards, watch or judge games, and attend tournaments. One disadvantage, prior to downloading the plug-in, a high risk is indicated. The risk is associated with the possibility of gamers accessing your computer if you proceed with download. This warning appears with this statement: "JavaScript or a java applet from DigitalDeck, Inc. is requesting additional privileges." This plug-in is required to run the application.

Because game communities are social in nature, knowledge and understanding are more apparent in virtual worlds. "Wouldn't it be nice to connect two thoughts," said Minsky.



Links :


MMO 2.0


Lately, there has been a lot to talk about in the MMO-verse, with Age of Conan just getting released and a World of Warcraft expansion pack on track for a holiday unveiling there seems to be nothing that can stop the momentum gained by the industry. However, despite all the success being thrown around by the top five MMOs (World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, EVE Online, Final Fantasy XI) there seems to be very little that is truly pushing the genre towards the "next step."

In every walk of the technological life there are upgrades to the original. Even something as simple as the web was fully upgraded into what has become to lovingly termed: web 2.0. So the same should hold true for MMO, right? You'd think so, but very little has actually changed since the dawning of the 3D MMORPG in the heyday of Everquest. There has been smaller changes like the advent of a quest based storyline and an enhanced mini-map and traveling system, but nothing I'd really call revolutionary, or next generation. Let's face it, nobody out there is really attempting to do anything to set a new standard in the industry.

Now I know that there is at least one EVE Online fan reading this right now in disgust. Let me say this right now, EVE Online is definitely a different experience and CCP has done a marvelous job and creating a successful MMO that strays from the typical archtype that most MMOs follow today. However, that said, they are not setting a standard in the industry. EVE Online and CCP will not be changing the way the industry makes its games and there probably won't be any long lasting affects from their technology. The original Xbox was the first to really incorporate seamless online and now it has become the standard. MySpace truly pushed the bounds of "web 2.0″ with it's social networking applications and it has now become the standard. Apple created the first truly desirable MP3 player and it has now become the standard. All of these are examples of an industry that was expanded on by companies that wished to create a fresh experience on an old application and as such truly changed the landscape of how everybody else played in that field. So despite EVE Online's unique gameplay they certainly haven't changed the way developers make games.

So, where does that leave the industry? With the huge success of World of Warcraft, which handily dashes the success of the other top four MMOs combined, game developers desperately need to find new ways to make their games different and if that means employing a new combat system (Age of Conan) or seriously enhancing the PvP and RvR settings (Warhammer Online) then thats what these companies will do. Unfortunately, many of these "enhancements" are gimmicky at best and won't be offering any true MMO 2.0 anytime soon. However, and this is just my prediction, I think it's safe to say that after all the so called "WoW-killers" have debuted to date, the only MMO that will truly begin to pick away at the house that Blizzard built will be an MMO 2.0 game. Personally, I'm keeping my eye on Copernicus.

P.S. I am in no way calling Age of Conan's combat system or WAR's RvR system bad or flawed, but, rather, non-revolutionary. Yes I have tested out both; Age of Conan beta, Warhammer Online at E for All 2007.

Source : MMOCrunch.com

Links :
FREE MMORPG
blog
Sponsored blog
Sponsored blog

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

What AoC means for World of Warcraft



According to Michael Zenke from Massively, Age of Conan has sold 400,000 copies, out of 700,000 boxes they put on the shelves. Not bad for the first week. And, kudos to Funcom, the release launch went a lot smoother than the beta or early access. The reception of AoC in the blogosphere was a mixed. Keen and Graev already cancelled their accounts again. Tipa from West Karana sees AoC challenging WoW. The Ancient Gaming Noob correctly points out that "MMOs are a long haul proposition" and reserves judgement until having played it more. And the Common Sense Gamer thinks that WoW won't even notice AoC is out.

So here is what I think. I don't have proof, only anecdotal evidence, so preface every phrase here with "In my humble opinion": I think that World of Warcraft suffers from a cycle of peaks and troughs in subscription numbers. This is largely self-inflicted, numbers peak after big content patches and expansions, and fall in long periods of no new content added. Other factors, like summer holidays, also play a role. I do believe that WoW is heading for a major trough of subscription numbers in the western world. Remember that of the 10.7 million WoW players about 6 million are Chinese, who are on a different cycle, and who pay much less. There are less than 5 million players in the US and Europe, and the number will be falling over the summer, because the Burning Crusade is getting long in the tooth, and not everyone likes to spend his summer holidays in front of a computer.

Age of Conan will reach between half a million and one million subscribers this year. Most of which will be ex-WoW players. A good number of them will have stopped playing WoW anyway, with or without AoC, but a couple of hundred thousand will be pushed over the edge and quit WoW for the prospect of a new game. And Blizzard will notice that, because all of these are the well-paying US/Euro kind of subscribers. Age of Conan will not "kill" World of Warcraft, but it will dent it a bit.

Summer will end, christmas will approach, and now everything is possible. WoW could bring out Wrath of the Lich King in November, and it's subscription numbers would peak again. And personally I don't see Age of Conan having much staying power, not in a game where the first people reached the level cap in the first week already. Wrath of the Lich King will make a much larger dent into Age of Conan's subscription numbers than AoC does into WoW's now. But another possibility is that Blizzard misses a 2008 release date for WotLK. And it is also quite possible that Warhammer Online makes that date, and comes out for christmas. And then Blizzard would really start feeling the pain. I do believe that WAR has an even bigger potential of getting subscribers away from WoW than AoC has. If WAR comes out for christmas and WotLK doesn't, they could easily sell a million copies this year. Again, these are all Americans and Europeans, and if WAR beats WotLK to a christmas release, WoW numbers could suffer an even deeper trough.

None of this will "kill" World of Warcraft. But we are talking numbers here that are big enough to show up in a companies annual report of revenue and profits. If Wrath of the Lich King doesn't come out by the end of this year, the 2008 profits from WoW will be significantly lower than those of 2007, and investors and people at Vivendi will notice. Blizzard would bounce back to a dominating position when they bring out Wrath of the Lich King, but then what? If the third expansion is still another 2 years away, the overall trend of WoW subscription numbers could well go into permanent decline. One day WoW won't be the biggest kid on the block any more, not because of one WoW killer, but because of a death by a thousand cuts. The best Blizzard can hope for is that the new champion will be their next generation MMORPG, but that is not a given.

Source : www.Tobold.com

Links :
top mmorpg
Blogs toplist
Sponsored blog
Sponsored blog

Fallen Earth video showcases




We've been following Fallen Earth for a while now, so it's very nice to finally see a new official video after waiting patiently for several months since the last. Everything looks like it's running incredibly smoothly too, which is a relief given the nature of the combat system in the game. Speaking of that, the combat looks pretty solid to us, but don't be fooled by the run-and-gun gameplay. Fallen Earth's MMO qualities are littered about in-between all the blazing guns you see in the footage. We do love those details. For instance, if you listen closely to the scene with the sniper scope you'll hear a nice clicking sound as the sharpshooter zooms in slightly.

Beyond the guns, girls and giant mutants in the video, you'll also be seeing some footage of players riding their very own mounts. It's some sort of buggy from what we can gather, some might even consider it to be puma-like. Here's hoping for some mounted gun upgrades so our friends can have something to do while we drive them around the wastelands!

Source : Massively.com

Links :
mmorpg
mmorpg
Sponsored blog
Sponsored blog

Monday, May 26, 2008

Advantages of a 2d Mmorpg Over a 3d Mmorpg



With the market being saturated with games requiring cutting edge technology platforms and connections such as World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Warhammer, and Age of Conan, is there really a point to playing a 2d game? Even though the obvious answer may appear to be no, the real answer is an emphatic yes!

One of the main reasons people choose 2d mmorpgs over their 3d counterparts is because of system requirements and capabilities. To currently run World Of Warcraft one needs a pretty updated computer, not to mention graphics card; in comparison most 2d mmo news's don't have strict minimum requirements and can be played by the masses, including countries that are just getting into the technology era. This is important as it allows users from all over to join in and get a true sense of community vs a game where it can only be played by the 'well-off' or richer areas of the world.

Besides a less strict requirement to play and bigger available player base, 2d games can give the user a "General's" mentality when playing the game. In 3d games one is often in first person view or very close to it and they can only see from that perspective. In a 2d mmorpg news a user can see the whole screen/field and make decisions based on that. It tends to lead to a less stressful, more fullfilling experience as you see all around you.

Going back to technology, 2d games technology and artwork are pretty much mastered at this point, whereas 3d games are still evolving to become more real and less polygon like mmorpg blog. A 2d game made today can have the best 2d graphics which could either look realistic or go for a clean/crisp/bright cartoon look; The ability to make the game as intentioned is a huge plus for 2d video games and games like diablo II, starcraft II, and revamped Ultima Online prove how great 2d graphics can now look.

Another huge advantage is movement and pvp. Currently 3d pvp is awkward and less related to movement on screen as compared with button mashing, unless you're playing a FPS. 2d games are easier to maneuver for now and give the user greater control over his character/avatar. This allows for more precision attacks and movement within the virtual world; old school ultima online mmorpg news is a classic example of how an easy interface, simple graphics, and movement made it one of the greatest pvp games of all time. In contrast, DAoC was laggy, buggy, and movement was very non user friendly. Five years later in World of Warcraft it has improved dramatically but the time/spatial relations in 3d have not been mastered so pvp in that environment will never be as consistent as that of a 2d game today.

To recap:
You don't need to buy the newest hardware to play and usually can play on a dial up as well.
The member base/community is larger due to less stringent hardware/network requirements and gives a more broad sense of community. No more just playing against rich people.
The art is mastered; the 2d graphics have been pushed to their limits and allow stunning visuals for both a realistic and cartoonish look.
Playability, movement, pvp; 2d games just allow the user to run his character like a general and pinpoint his moves. 3d is still evolving and figuring out what it can and can not do.
Nostalgia...don't these great games bring back memories?


Links :


Age of Conan one of the fastest selling PC games of all time




Over 400,000 gamers have entered game - First 20 reviews with an average review score above 90%

Durham, USA - May 26th, 2008 - Funcom is proud to announce that Age of Conan is one of the fastest selling PC games of all time. More than 400.000 gamers have entered Hyboria over the last few days, with almost half coming from the North American market. This amazing figure for a PC game shows that the positive pre-order trend has transferred into actual sales, and people from all over the world are now flocking to the most savage, sexy and brutal MMO ever created.

Over the weekend an astounding amount of concurrent gamers were logged on to the game, making Age of Conan one of the busiest MMOs in the western hemisphere. With stock flying out of several retail chains, Funcom expects the number to increase in the days to come. In addition to the many gamers logging in, there was also substantial traffic to the Age of Conan websites, with more than 2,2 million unique visitors during the last ten days.

As a result of the great launch, players and press have been raving about the unique qualities of the game, and the first 20 reviews give Age of Conan an average score above 90%. The first US reviews are also live, with Gamezone.com giving the game an Editor's Choice Award, a 9.4 of 10 score, while heralding Age of Conan as a "Benchmark MMO". Sci-Fi.com was also an early mover and gave the game a straight A, stating that "If Robert E. Howard had been a game designer.., this is the Conan he would have invented."

"The initial sales and reviews are very encouraging, and it's great to see that so many are enjoying Age of Conan," said Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas. "This is just the beginning, and we already look forward to massive updates and cool new features. We believe our focus on making Conan unique and groundbreaking is a key reason for the initial success. This is a focus we will keep and reinforce, and players can expect continued quality and innovation as we enter a new era for the game." Source : WarCry Network

Links :
FREE ONLINE GAME
Blogs toplist
Sponsored blog
Sponsored blog

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Dimensions of massively multiplayer games





In this post I would like to talk about massively multiplayer online roleplaying games in terms of their length, depth, and breadth. I want to define these terms of the dimensions of a MMORPGs, and explain their importance when reviewing a game. And, to spice things up, I'll then go off on a tangent and rant about the Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion of World of Warcraft just announced last weekend.

The length of a MMORPG is probably the dimension that is most often discussed. How long does it take you from starting the game to reaching a more or less well-defined end-point, like the level cap, or the point where you are completely geared up with epics. If a game is too short, you'll "finish" it too fast and move on. If a game is too long, you get stuck for weeks in the same level, until you finally give up. The ideal length is defined by the attention span of you average player. In my opinion the original World of Warcraft got very close to the ideal length, at least for my needs. I had never reached the level cap of really long games like Everquest, and after having played MMORPGs for years, WoW was the first in which I reached the level cap. But other approaches are possible. Guild Wars for example is deliberately short, having only 20 levels, so people can concentrate on the PvP end game.

The depth of a MMORPG is harder to grasp, it is more of a gut feeling than a measurable thing. Most players just call it the "fun". I would define depth as the tactical depth of encounters, how many different viable options I have to do things. Or to cite my favorite game quote again: "A good game is a series of interesting decisions. The decisions must be both frequent and meaningful." — Sid Meier. Depth describes how interesting and meaningful the decisions are. In reviewing depth is often the first dimension we see, because the length and breadth of a game take much much time to explore. But whether for example a combat in a MMORPG is "fun" and interesting, or a boring, repetitive mashing of always the same button is quickly found out.

The breadth of a MMORPG is about it's replayability. At any given level, how much choice of content do you have? If you reached the level cap with your first character and want to play a second one, would he go through the same content again, or would you experience a completely different series of quests, zones, and mobs? This is a dimension in which the original World of Warcraft was really, really strong as well as games like runescape. WoW initially had *six* completely different newbie zones, while many other games have just one or two. And sometimes developers "cheat", offering several newbie zones, but doing a lot of copying and pasting of quests and mobs, thus only creating an illusion of choice.

The complete shape of a MMORPG is a curious one, because the depth and breadth often change over the length. A MMORPG is not a rectangular box (cuboid). For example very often at low levels the depth of the game is less, you start out with only one or two spells or abilities, and then learn more over the length of the game. The breadth can also vary a lot. Very frequently a game gets released with sufficient low level content, and has less and less breadth towards the higher levels. Lord of the Rings Online is a typical example of that. The original World of Warcraft had a lot of low level content and less mid- and high-level content too. But curiously the patches and the first expansion added both low- and high-level content, while not adding much in the middle, giving the game a really strange shape now. There are tons of quests and content level 1 to 20 with the now eight newbie zones, then it gets thinner in the 20 to 50 region, but then there are again tons of things to do between level 50 and 70.

Now if you are a game developer and plan an expansion, you have to see to which dimension you want to add of that shape. Depth is the most difficult, but for example the introduction of slotted weapons and armor in the Burning Crusade added to the depth of the game, if only at the higher levels. Adding either length or breadth is a design choice. And this is where the rant part comes in. Burning Crusade already added to the length of WoW, while adding breadth only in the level 1 to 20 part. So why on earth is Wrath of the Lich King just adding length?

Now of course there is part of the player population that are at the level cap, and who don't plan to ever play anything else but their current main character. And those players of course will like the added length. But the numbers of World of Warcraft having "9 million subscribers" hide the fact that this isn't the same 9 million people all the time. World of Warcraft is still selling very well in the shops, so the pretty much constant number of players we've seen over the last year means that there are as many people joining the game as there are leaving. Besides all those new players, there are many existing players starting alts all the time. So for everybody starting or restarting at level 1 we have to ask ourselves whether World of Warcraft isn't approaching the point where it gets *too* long. People who wanted to make an Alliance shaman or Horde paladin for raiding were already complaining how long that took to get to the level cap again. And on the "black market" of World of Warcraft you see more and more offers for powerleveling. If someone pays somebody else hundreds of dollars to skip part of the length of a game, something is wrong with the design. If after leveling your main to 80 in Wrath of the Lich King you get bored with the level 80 end game, or your guild really, really needs a priest, the decision to level up an alt is getting less and less attractive.

And it is not only the increasing length that puts people off from making alts, it is also the lack of breadth in certain levels. How many people made a Draenei or Blood Elf, but then stopped playing it after level 20 when the new Burning Crusade content ran out? Nobody wants to do Stranglethorn Vale quests again. There are areas where World of Warcraft has deficits, and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion fails to address those. A new continent with level 1 to 60, or even 20 to 60 content would have fixed problems in areas where WoW is lacking breadth.

Wrath of the Lich King shows that World of Warcraft is on a trajectory which simply isn't sustainable. You can't just make the game 10 levels longer with every expansion and ignore the other dimensions. Sooner or later you get two separate populations, one of veterans at the highest levels, and one of new players and alts at the lower levels, unable to catch up. Do we really want to have the level cap raised to 150 in the year 2015?


Links :


Seonyár van seonyár, röpke lepke száll virágra



Ennek a rövidke cikknek a lényege a seonyár2008 versenyen résztvevő oldalam poziciójának javítása. Tekintve hogy még ezt a seonyár2008 cikket is lusta vagyok megírni, így kénytelen leszek ide bemásolni valami szövegecskét megtűzdelni a kulcsszavakkal (pl seonyár2008) így aztán frankón releváns lesz a szöveg :D

Szupernóva-robbanás az első felvonás elejétől

A NASA Swift mesterséges holdjának és a véletlen szerencsének köszönhetően a csillagászat történetében először sikerült közvetlenül az elejétől nyomon követni egy szupernóva-robbanást.

A szupernóva-robbanások (ilyen pl. ahogy az oldalam berobban a seonyár20008 versenybe) a legnagyobb energiát felszabadító események közé tartoznak a Világegyetemben, ezért még óriási távolságból is jól megfigyelhetők. A robbanást magát azonban eddig még senki nem látta, ugyanis a felfedezéskor az objektum már túl van ezen az egyébként nagyon rövid ideig tartó fázison, s a megfigyelők csak a környező térrész és a robbanás által ledobott anyag kölcsönhatásának eredményét észlelhették. Ez a folyamat egy néhány hétig tartó kifényesedésből, ún. felszálló ágból, majd a maximális fényesség elérése után egy több hónapig tartó elhalványodásból, a leszállóágból áll. A robbanás (min az én seo-robbanásom :) a seonyár20008 versenyben) maga tehát mindezideig rejtve maradt a kutatók előtt, pedig észlelése rendkívül fontos lenne a fizikai részletek alaposabb megismeréséhez. Ehhez azonban tudni kellene, hogy a robbanás hol, az égbolt mely területén, mely galaxisában fog bekövetkezni. Ennek a valószínűsége azonban nyilván nullához nagyon közeli, bár nem lehetetlen.

IMAGE

A felső, röntgen- és ultraibolya tartományban készült képeken csak az SN 2007uy szupernóva látható az NGC 2770 galaxisban. A két nappal később készült felvételeket már az SN 2008D dominálja, melynek az előző képpáron még semmilyen nyoma nem észlelhető. [Soderberg és tsai]

2008. január 9-én a gyakorlatilag nulla valószínűségű esemény azonban mégis bekövetkezett, egy szerencsés véletlen a csillagászok segítségére sietett. Alicia Soderberg és Edo Berger (Princeton University) a NASA Swift mesterséges holdjának röntgenteleszkópjával éppen az NGC 2770 katalógusjelű, 90 millió fényévnyire levő galaxisban 2007 végén feltűnt, de már az elhalványulási szakaszban lévő SN 2007uy jelű szupernóvát vizsgálták, mikor a galaxis másik részében egy nagyon erős röntgenfelvillanást vettek észre. A forrás körülbelül 1 percig fényesedett, amit 7-8 percig tartó halványodás követett az észlelhetőségi határig. Soderbergék azonnal riasztották a földi és űrtávcsövek irányítóközpontjait, értesítve őket a különleges eseményről. A következő napok megfigyelései aztán megerősítették, hogy nem egy ismeretlen típusú objektumról van szó, hanem egy Ibc típusú szupernóva robbanását sikerült már rögtön a legelején elkapni. Az objektum az SN 2008D jelzést kapta, lévén a negyedikként felfedezett szupernóva 2008-ban.

IMAGE

Az SN 2008D helyén észlelt forrás röntgentartománybeli "fénygörbéje". Jól látható rajta a beütésszám gyors felfutása, az észlelés megkezdése után körülbelül 1 perccel bekövetkezett maximum, majd a csökkenés a berendezés érzékenységi határa alá. A leszálló szakaszban a beütésszám 129 másodperc alatt esett a maximális 1/e-szeresére. [Soderberg és tsai]

A modellek szerint az Ibc típusú szupernóvák szülőcsillagai az ún. Wolf-Rayet csillagok. Ezen magas hőmérsékletű objektumok mérete a Napéhoz hasonló, tömegük azonban jóval nagyobb annál, az adott esetben a becslések szerint körülbelül 30 naptömeg. Jellemzőjük, hogy életük során erős csillagszél formájában jelentős mennyiségű anyag távozik róluk, így szinte teljesen elveszítik a hidrogént még tartalmazó külső rétegeiket. A maradék rész nagyon gazdag héliumban, míg a csillag összeroppanás előtt álló sűrű magja szinte teljes egészében vasból áll - nem úgy mint az én seonyár20008 oldalam. A szupernóva-robbanás akkor következik be, amikor az erősen lecsökkent energiaprodukciójú mag már nem tud ellenállni a külső rétegek ránehezedő nyomásának, s pillanatszerűen összeomlik, kiindulási tömegtől függően egy neutroncsillagot vagy egy fekete lyukat létrehozva. Az összeroskadás által generált lökéshullám elegendő energiával rendelekezik ahhoz, hogy a csillag külső részeit ledobja, s a levetett anyagot a fénysebesség néhány százalékára gyorsítsa. Amikor ez a ledobott burok utoléri a csillagról korábban csillagszél formájában távozott anyagot, bekövetkezik az a felfénylés, ami alapján eddig felfedezték a szupernóvákat.

IMAGE A WR124 jelű Wolf-Rayet csillag körüli köd a Hubble űrteleszkóp felvételén. [Y. Grosdidier (University of Montreal, Observatoire de Strasbourg) és tsai]

A robbanás lefolyásával foglalkozó elméletek azt jósolják, hogy amikor a lökéshullám eléri a csillag felszínét, még mielőtt szétvetné, annyira felmelegíti az anyagot, hogy ennek eredményeként egy erős röntgen- és ultraibolya felvillanásnak kell bekövetkeznie. Ez lenne az első esemény tehát, ami a robbanás bekövetkeztét jelzi (eltekintve most a neutrinók áramától és a kollapszus okozta esetleges gravitációs hullámoktól), s az SN 2008D esetében a Swift éppen ezt a felvillanást kapta el! A közvetlenül ezután készült színképeken nem látszik közel fénysebességgel mozgó jet-ek nyoma, így kizárható, hogy az esemény esetleg egy gammavillanás (GRB, Gamma-Ray Burst) lett volna.

Egy másik, M. Modjaz (University of California, Berkeley) vezette kutatócsoport a robbanás után több hónappal készült spektrumok alapján, a neutrális oxigén tiltott vonalainak szerkezetéből ugyanakkor úgy találta, hogy a robbanás maga aszimmetrikus volt. A mag összeomlására vonatkozó egyik elképzelés szerint a felszabaduló energia jelentős része a mag forgástengelyének irányában közel fénysebességgel mozgó keskeny jet-ek formájában távozik. Ha ezek energiája kellően nagy, a pólusok körül szinte kilyukaszthatják a csillagot, s a tengely irányában egy gammavillanást, vagy egy röntgenflert eredményezhetnek. Ha energiájuk ehhez nem elegendő, vagy nyílásszögük nem eléggé kicsi, akkor nem jutnak ki a csillagból, hanem szétvetik azt, mégpedig aszimmetrikusan.

Sodeberg szerint a mostani, véletlennek köszönhető felfedezés csak az első lépés, a közeljövő röntgentartománybeli égboltfelmérései tömegével fedezhetik fel a szupernóvákat már a robbanás pillanatában, lásd seonyár20008.

Az eredményeket részletező szakcikk a Nature magazin 2008. május 22-i számában jelent meg.



Links :


AoC - Next Generation of Button Masher?


You'll have to excuse me whilst I think (…urmmm, type…) out loud here for a second…cause I'm not sure I'm convinced about what I'm about to write.

Firstly, you'll recall in my earlier writings that I think the whole premise of "next generation", well…anything …is usually a load of marketing BS. Usually, you're left scratching your head when you hear those words and then look at the feature list of the product that people are trying to sell. That's just it really, much like "polish", the words "next generation" is up there with "family values" and "concerned" parent groups when it comes to empty meanings.

Up to now, in terms of video game products, there is only one product that is truly generational…the Wii. Why? I've said it before…the interface to the player. The Wiimote makes it next generation. The 360 and the PS3 (*cough* abysmal failure *cough*) are not next generation. The only thing that makes them attractive to people is the shiny new graphics. They both still use the same old tried and true console control system. They still use the same old tried and true console gameplay. Nothing substantial…and I mean nothing…separates them from their previous incarnations.

In comes Age of Conan. I was not impressed by it's feature list…and to some extent, I'm still not. I'll have more on that later once I get my head around all of the thoughts swirling around. Now, one thing that AoC is doing differently is this "active" combat style. No….you can't just press "1, 2, 3″ and still win a fight. As you progress, these combat combinations get a little more complex (…I have no idea what they look like at level 80…) and you need to pay attention to your screen in order to fight…and there it is. The secret to "next generation", in my mind at least, is bringing the player into the game more. Getting the player to interact with the game at a different level. You can't just up the graphics and then call it a day…and personally, I think that's cheating the players and the industry as a whole. However, you want graphics, AoC has those in spades as well. Dear gawd does it ever have a nice look and feel to it. It feels like Conan. It looks like Conan…AND, it brings me in with a true next generation feature of a more interactive combat style.

OK…big frickin deal. So instead of pressing "1,2,3″, I'm now pressing "combo-power, 1,1,2″. Yeah, you are…hence why I'm talking out loud here and wondering how everyone else feels about this. Let's assume that I'm correct about what "next generation" actually means (i.e. player interaction with the game)…am I full of it when it comes to calling AoC next generation just for this feature? Is it actually a game that is doing something different with player interaction, or is it a combination of elements within the game that is combining to give me this impression?

D out.

P.S. Yes…you can pretty much expect AoC posts for the majority of the week ;)

Source : commonsensegamer.com

Links :
play by email
Free MMORPG Toplist
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Is WoW an unstoppable train?

Right now? Perhaps, though I haven't really been a part of the community for over a year so I couldn't tell you first hand. Some people apparently do think so… In the future though? I just don't believe it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pick on World of Warcraft specifically with this post, but it's a proven fact that time has been the dark red line creeping slowly towards the heart of every MMORPG to date. Time allows for competitive growth. Time leads to player complacency and boredom. Time is what makes the present become the past.



I've been checking out MMOG Chart lately and came across this interesting 2008 ION presentation from self-taught MMORPG analyst, Sir Bruce. The presentation is an analysis of MMORPG subscription growth based on some reasonably current data.

Here are some broad conclusions drawn by SirBruce on the state of World of Warcraft (based on historical trends in the genre).

* The MMOG subscription market continues to grow; 16M+ now, 20M+ in 2009 (pred. 2006), 30M+ in 2012
* World of Warcraft to peak at 11M – 12M by 2010
* Most retail-launched MMOGs have an initial growth phase during the first year, followed by 1 – 3 years of a more stable, "mature" subscription base, and then a noticeably and often sharp decline.
* New markets grow subscriptions, but expansions packs mostly cover churn and provide a retail presence.

Based on his charts in the presentation, most of the MMORPGs released prior to WoW saw a fairly large decline in subscriptions. We can assume the majority of these losses became gains for WoW. This just makes sense. It can't be denied, however, that the total number of people playing WoW last year is much larger than the sum of all previous MMORPG subscripions. This shows that WoW introduced many new players to the genre.

Sounds like common sense right? Duh? It's still nice to have the numbers tell the story.

What's to stop the same thing from happening again? It may not have happened with Vanguard, Pirates of the Burning Sea, or Lord of the Rings Online. These games haven't had any noticeable impact on WoW's subscriptions, but that doesn't mean it won't happen eventually.

Age of Conan had over one million beta signups and released over 700,000 copies of their game, which is the largest MMORPG launch to date. They haven't announced current subscription numbers yet, but heck, it's been less than a week. Given them some time. The time is ripe for a new AAA MMORPG and I think AoC will benefit greatly from this. It's only competing against older, established MMORPGs right now, which in my opinion, is better than competing against something new. As I said, time makes people susceptible to boredom. Boredom leads to trying out new things. And trying out new things leads to the dark side of the… Ugh.

Warhammer Online will also be launching this fall and by all rights should be an enormous success. Another delay is bad news for a whole bunch of obvious reasons. Competing directly against WotLK is also bad news if they hope to capitalize on the bored WoW player-base. As SirBruce says, expansions cover churn, in other words, customer attrition. They're a stop-gap measure to keep players from leaving for greener pastures. Competing directly against an expansion trying to keep 11M people playing WoW is just a whole new level of stupid, making bad business sense. You can get high and mighty, saying your game will be done when its done, but wait too long and the strategy will bite you in the ass. Theres a point where you have to compromise.

WoW is the current king but it won't remain that way forever. Heck, Blizzard is already working on another MMORPG and it could be that title that eventually dethrones it. I will eat these words if AoC and WAR aren't immensely successful, because if either of these two titles can't do it, it may take a lot longer than I expected. Still, it is inevitable - and resistance is futile (but strongly recommended if Vivendi wants to keep its shareholders happy).

Source : thegreenskin.com

Links :
toplist
FREE MMO
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Thursday, May 22, 2008

AoC downtime




I solved my Age of Conan crash problems by following the advice of a friend and guild mate, who insisted that I buy a sound card, because that would make my computer faster than just using onboard sound. I'm not an expert, but it appears as if my Nvidia motherboard doesn't really have a sound chip, it only emulates one using CPU power. So adding a sound card would free the CPU to do other stuff. I found a Soundblaster Audigy SE for 40 Euro, installed it, and tested that my AoC crash problem when casting a certain spell with sound on was gone.


But that was all I did in AoC last night, because then the European servers had a server maintenance downtime for 8 pm to 1 am scheduled, in preparation for the Euro launch on the 23rd. I really don't understand why all this downtime always has to be scheduled during prime time. And I've read the US early access period was even worse, because it was only 3 days, and of that time the servers were up only 48 hours, with one downtime scheduled the evening of the last day. I so hope that once the game is launched everywhere, the maintenance window is moved to mornings, local time. I find scheduled server maintenance starting at in the evening or late afternoon unacceptable for a MMO.

Source : Tobold

Links :
toplist
3d gallery
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Warhammer Online takes you to school with Scenarios 101



The official Warhammer Online site is a cornucopia of goodness. If you're not watching the production podcasts, Paul's video blogs are fantastic. If you're more in a text mood, there are zone previews and developer diaries to page through.

Their most recent addition to the site is over in the "special features" category, a continuation of their ongoing class in WAR: Scenarios 101. These pieces run down the rules and layout for the many and varied Realm Vs. Realm scenarios Warhammer Online will ship with. EA Mythic's answer to the WoW Battleground phenomenon, they're going to offer some of the game's meat and potatoes PvP combat over the course of a player's gameplay lifespan.

The newest 101 feature is all about the scenarios named Grovod Caverns and Reikland Hills. The caverns is a 'capture the flag'-style game, but with a twist. Flags and bases are up on a series of platforms, all connected with walkways. Every time a flag is captured, a walkway gives way; this changes the dynamic of the scenario's very surface, and forces players to adapt and change their strategies as the match progresses. Reikland, meanwhile, is a 'king of the hill'-style game that requires players to capture and hold a position for a few minutes at a time. The catch is that one of three 'hills' will be available at any given time, and the newest hill will overlap with the oldest one for some time. It's great to see how Mythic is planning to shake up some PvP assumptions with these maps. Source : massively.com

Links :
3d gallery
directory
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Monday, May 19, 2008

Officers' Quarters: Jerk message of the day




Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
I've spent the past six weeks talking about raiding, so I think it's time to get away from the topic and talk about something less drama-ridden, like the guild message of the day feature. What could be more straightforward and less controversial, right? Well, as this week's e-mail reminds us, no part of leading a guild is completely free of incident.
Would rather not name the guild but it's on Bronzebeard EU. Only the Guildmasters (of which there are 10) can set the message of the day. Despite this security, an offensive homophobic message of the day appeared one day. I'm afraid I didn't see it as I wasn't online while it was up, but when another Guildmaster saw it, it was immediately removed. No one owned up to it and no one could think who would do it, so one Guildmaster (a friend of mine in real life) logged a complaint with Blizzard to try and find out who set this message.
He spent a couple of weeks chasing an answer but in the end they said that who set the message was private account information that they would not give out to someone else (great cop out isn't it :) ). And there we are stuck! A couple of guildmasters left for more hardcore raiding guilds, so maybe, hopefully it was one of them . . . but I guess we'll never know. Can you think of anything that could be done to avoid this or controls to avoid this kind of offensive message?
The only way to avoid this situation is to make sure the people who have access to the GMoTD are trustworthy and responsible people. If your own officers prove that they aren't, then the guild leader can actually modify the permissions so that only he or she can change the message. But there is no built-in censorship to this feature aside from the one that sits in everyone's interface panel, and even then I don't know if the profanity filter actually affects the GMoTD.
Since you (perhaps wisely) didn't specify what the message actually read, it's difficult to judge the severity of the situation. A lot of guys who are otherwise mature adults sometimes joke around in a way that could be construed as homophobic, but typically no offense is meant. It can be good-natured smack talk, but it can also go too far and get truly offensive. Since another officer went to the trouble of contacting Blizzard about the message, I'll have to assume it's the latter.
Even though this person wasn't "caught," I'd say the officers should meet with one another and ask the offending party to step forward. Based on your e-mail, they may have already done so. However, it's entirely possible that none of the officers know who did it. If an officer's friend or roommate snuck onto the officer's machine while he or she was AFK, then that person could have changed the message with no one the wiser.
More important than who did it is how the officers respond to the situation. An apology should be made to the guild's membership. It should also be communicated that effort was taken to look into the matter, even if the results were inconclusive. If members were upset by the message, they need to know that the officers weren't passive or dismissive of the insult.
In the end, it's not necessarily a huge deal and shouldn't be made into one by extended periods of finger-pointing. Sometimes overreacting to a situation can be just as bad as not reacting at all.

Source : WoWInsider.com

Links :
MMORPG RANKINGS
mmorpg
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Friday, May 16, 2008

Runescape Community


Most RuneScape players speak English. Players who speak languages other than English tend to gravitate to servers populated by other players who speak the same language. Some worlds have larger numbers of players who speak Spanish, Dutch, French, German, or other languages. It is not uncommon, however, to see many languages on the chat screen throughout RuneScape. A German translation of RuneScape has also been released, while a French version of the game is in production.

A set of official forums is provided by Jagex on the RuneScape website. On the forums, members are able to participate in game discussions, play player-made forum games, arrange to buy or sell items, post suggestions for further game improvements, vote in polls and otherwise interact with the community. Free players can read the forums, but posting is reserved for paying members.
Unlike many MMORPG official forums, the Games like RuneScape forums have very limited features. User profiles do not exist and a user cannot set an avatar, signature, or separate display name. Users cannot use text formatting, post url address links, nor display images. A topic is automatically and permanently deleted after it surpasses the fiftieth page, so during busier times of the day, a topic can be deleted as quickly as a few minutes unless it is constantly "bumped".

Players can submit email questions to any non-player character in the game. Selected letters are answered in a monthly update called Postbag from the Hedge. This feature began on 26 September 2005 and has since become one of the most accessed pages of the site. Beginning 24 September 2002, players could submit questions to the RuneScape gods; however, this feature was discontinued on 9 December 2004.
Players can also submit original RuneScape related artwork, some of which is displayed in a gallery on the RuneScape website. Media featured have included sculpture, comics, drawings, and paintings.

Many Games like RuneScape fansites have been established by players, none of which are supported or recognized by Jagex. Although in the early days of RuneScape the official website had a links page which listed several fansites, this is no longer the case. In order to provide players with an alternative, official site to get the information they want or need, Jagex introduced the Knowledge Base, which offers information on gameplay, the main RuneScape rules, and account security.
Jagex discourages the discussion of fansites within the game or the official forums - and a rule specifically prohibits sharing web addresses. At least one major fansite has criticised Jagex for not recognising fansites' contributions to the development of its game.


Links :


Thursday, May 15, 2008

Premium Professional Web Hosting Service




MirageCommander-Premium Professional Web Hosting Services Provider is trusted by over 21,000 customers and host 53,000+ domains.

Our Best Valued Plan only $4.95/month
-15 GB Data Space
-300 GB Monthly Traffic
-3 Domains Hosted
-100 E-mail Accounts
-20 FTP Accounts
-20 MySQL DBs

Free over $1,000 Bonuses:
-FREE DOMAIN NAME ($9.95)
-SITESTUDIO ($150)
-FREE 40 PHP SCRIPTS INSTALLER ($300)
-Marketing and Administration Tools
-500+ templates ($1000)
-Free 2checkout Merchant Account

Why you need website with MirageCommander?
-Represents your personal profile
-Spreads your voice across the world
-Lets you be in touch with people at a distance
-Broadens disabled people's interaction with the world
-Creates a web skill development environment
-Makes extra profit for you with minimum investment on your part
-Makes you a member of the biggest community of the world
-Increased customers' convenience
-Greater accessibility to your business profile
-Greater opportunities for promoting your business portfolio
-Low-cost efficient advertising
-Around-the-clock availability
-It saves time and saves money

Our Service Guarantees!
-No Set-up Fee
-Instant Account Activation
-Multi-lingual Control Panel
-Site Management Tools
-Full-featured E-mail Services
-Website Statistics
-99% Service Uptime Guarantee
-Daily Data Back-up
-Online Documentation
-24/7 Customer Support
-1-Hour Support Response Time
-30 Day Money Back Guarantee

Why us?
-Solid Background in the Web Hosting Industry
-Trustworthy Partners
-A Complete Solution for Your Successful Online Presence
-Competitive Prices
-Full-Time Involvement with Customers' Online Demands
-Reliable and High Speed Server Network
-Reliable Semi-Cluster Technology for Maximum Online Stability
-Multi-Language Control Panel of our Own Development and Design
-Plenty of Useful Charge-free Features
-Multiple Web Site (Domain) Hosting
-Possibility to Upgrade your Package to a More Advanced Set-Up
-Unquestionable 30-day-Money-Back Guarantee

You will enjoy all the benefits of our state-of-the-art data centers, located on 2 continents (with total over 12.5Gigs Internet connectivity):
- HostCentric, located in California, USA (exceeds 2.5 Gigs Internet connectivity)
- BlueSquare, located in Berkshire, UK (10Gig Internet connectivity)

Our Server Hardware:
-Intel Xeon 2.4 GHz Quad Core
-4 GB RAM
-2x750 GB SATA II Seagate
-RAID 1
-Gigabit network card
-Debian Linux Operating System


Visit us today at http://www.hyjl.us


Links :


Why Mythic thinks Warhammer should be your first MMO







It's always interesting to hear the reasons people don't play MMOs. The time commitment is a common and very valid concern - as is the boredom of the grind, the sameness of the games, and the meaninglessness of the avatar's story. Patrick Klepeck of MTV Games offers up a new reason, noting that the freedom of exploration often lauded by MMO fans is (to him) a significant drawback. Warhammer Online's content director Destin Bales responded to Klepeck's apathy with two words: public quests. At the MTV Multiplayer site they have a great description of the PQ Bales used to show him what the genre has to offer. A hydra attack on a Dark Elf sea vessel tops off the event, a setpiece battle we also touched on in our WAR update from a few weeks back.


Another recent rundown on EA Mythic's in-development title is available from Gamespy; they offer players unfamiliar with MMOs their own intro to the genre, with a description of the newbie Dark Elf and Dwarven areas. Despite some reservations that the game's new player area doesn't highlight many of Warhammer's standout features, writer Miguel Lopez was impressed with the 'sense of place' the starter zones impart. Says Lopez: "[WAR] quest areas don't seem to be places that wandering monsters simply arbitrarily inhabit; at least in the two areas we checked out, there was a definite rhyme and reason for mob X to be patrolling site Y. The effort to build the environments like this go a long way toward negating one of the most common criticisms levied against MMOs: that they feel like static wax museums inhabited by staid 3D models."

Source : massively.com

Links :
MMORPG NEWS
MMORPG
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Star Wars Galaxies: Jason Ryan Movin' On


Titling his swan song at SWG "Time to Say Farewell", Jason Ryan announced today that he's moving to Free Worlds and taking on the Community Manager position there.

Greetings, all!

The time has come to let everyone know that I'll be leaving the SWG team and heading across genres to become the Community Manager for our upcoming title Free Realms. There is definitely a bitter-sweet sensation to moving to a new title. I'll miss the people I have met and interacted with. I'll also miss the events themselves and the fun discussions leading up to them. I'll miss talking about schemes and plots and super-weapons and attacks and kidnappings and weddings and...you get the idea.

I know, I know. "How can you leave Star Wars for something...not Star Wars?" The decision to leave wasn't easy. I've been with SWG for almost five years now. I've lived and breathed Vader and the Rebellion and all the storylines ever run by. I've had a blast and I have never ceased to be amazed by the creativity and dedication I have encountered.



The opportunity to work on Free Realms is just too tempting so I applied for the position and got it. I'm ready for new adventures, even if they don't involve Ewoks, Stormtrooopers or holograms of the Emperor. I've always taken my job and the events I help support very personally and I am very proud of the work I have done. I hope that level of commitment has come across to those with whom I have interacted during my tenure on SWG.

The big question has certainly got to be "What about Event Support?" Currently there is no plan to continue player-run event support. The Dev Team will continue to upgrade and add to Storyteller, which already allows you to execute many of the abilities that I have provided in the past. Actually, it has a lot more functionality than I had for the first year or two of running event support. Granted, there will no longer be someone to show up to a player event as Leia or Darth Vader, or to officiate a wedding or decorate the inside of the Theed palace...so that will take some getting used to. The Dev team has been wonderful and very supportive of Storyteller and in-game holidays, so I look forward to more support for those aspects of the game in the years to come.

I am buoyed by the fact that Storyteller is getting bigger and better at putting event 'control' in your hands, so player events will get bigger and better too, even if I am on another title. The options that are open to you really are extraordinary and quite unprecedented in any MMO of this type. I know this will take some getting used to and will lead to more and more creativity when using the Storyteller system.

I'll be making the transition over the next month and will be full time on Free Realms by the end of May or early June. I don't have all the details yet, but I will let you know as soon as I have them.

Thank you all for your continued enthusiasm and support. I will always look back on my time with SWG as a wonderful time spent interacting with great people.


Source : WarCry Network

Links :
mmorpg forum
top mmorpg
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Solofication of Massive Multiplayer RPGs

Once upon a time there was a MMORPG called Everquest, and it forced players to group to progress. For most classes you could only solo the newbie zones, and starting from about level 10 or so you would discover that the lowest level mob that still gave experience points to you was already too hard for you to kill alone.
But a few classes could use special tactics to solo anyway, druid were kiting mobs after them, and necromancers were fear kiting mobs away from them. (I played a quad kiting druid.) And it turned out that soloing was popular: far more people played druids or necromancers than playing any other class.

So every new generation of free MMORPGs made soloing easier and easier, because that was what the customer wanted, until we arrived at World of Warcraft, where every single class is basically expected to solo all the way up to the level cap. There are differences in the speed at which the different classes and talent trees can solo, but even least soloable class can kill mobs and do quests of his own level. And soloing is still popular, with classes that solo faster being played more than classes that solo slower.

And as soloing was what the customer wanted, some unknown developer at Blizzard came up with a brilliant idea: What if PvP could be made soloable too? That sounded crazy, because by definition you need at least 2 players for PvP, and if you wanted more than just duels you needed large groups on both sides of a battle. But that unknown dev realized that it wasn't necessary to have players actually form pre-arranged groups to do PvP. It wasn't absolutely necessary for players to cooperate in PvP. Sure, a group that cooperated would beat a group that didn't, but you could very well create a balanced battle between two groups as long as both of them were equally unorganized. And thus battlegrounds were born, and once Blizzard tweaked the PvP reward system they were extremely popular. And the majority of people basically solo battlegrounds, that is queue up for them alone, and then do whatever they want once inside. I call that pseudo-solo. This goes so far that people actually complain if they end up against an organized group. I don't know if that unknown developer switched from Blizzard to EA Mythic, or whether EA Mythic had their own developer realizing that this solofication strategy could be applied to PvE raid content as well. Because what they did was they invented the "public quest". Which works basically like a battleground, just for PvE instead of PvP. People just join, without arranging groups, everyone does what he thinks is best, while a few frustrated players try to shout orders and are generally ignored. Pseudo-solo large group PvE content, where everyone gets rewarded, I'm sure people will love it. Soloing is what the customers want. But a free MMORPG has a large and diverse base of customers, and not all of them prefer solo play. As early as Everquest some people noticed that a group is stronger than the sums of its parts. The larger the group, and the better it is coordinated, the greater the challenges it can overcome. Moving from open world to instanced content, developers were able to limit how many players could attack a specific challenge. But they couldn't prevent players from organizing themselves better and better, training each encounter for hours and hours, until even a large raid group moved with a coordination that would make the bolshoi ballet green from envy. And thus an arms race evolved, on the other side of the MMORPG from the solo content, a race in which developers would design harder and harder challenges, and raiders would again and again prove that these challenges could be beaten with perfect coordination. To understand that arms race, Blizzard hired one of Everquest's top raiders as lead designer, and consequently spent a lot of development effort on designing ultra-hard raid content.
There were clearly *some* customers that wanted this, and not solo content. And while the number of top raiders wasn't large, they were deemed to be influence leaders, the kind of people that other players looked up to, and also the kind of players who were most likely to post a lot of comments on game forums or other places of the internet. And it worked! While the number of players actually experiencing the highest level of raid content is still tiny, the desire to be a raider is certainly far more wide-spread.

The problem is that these two parts of the game are drifting further and further apart in World of Warcraft and the MMORPG genre in general. Soloing becomes easier and easier, the need to group during leveling up has been nearly completely removed, elite mobs turned into soloable non-elites, and the rewards for pseudo-solo PvP have been much increased. It is now possible to go from level 1 to level 70 and full epic gear in World of Warcraft without ever joining a group once. And the classes who are best at soloing fast or best at PvP are the most popular and most played. Meanwhile raiding remains hard, because that is the very reason of being for it, and even harder raid content as added to the end with every content patch. But to overcome these challenges, people need to learn how to play rpg games in a coordinated way. And the mix of classes, talents, and gear required for raiding is very different from what is most popular and easy to achieve in the soloing part of the game. Slowly but surely the two modes of gameplay drift so far apart that cracks begin to appear, threatening the whole model. From a raider's point of view the leveling game now fails to fulfil it's function of getting people ready to raid. Sure, they might be level 70 and have epic gear, but they might still be totally useless for a raid: they have not even the most basic training of how to play their class in a group, and they are of the wrong class, wrong spec, and wearing gear with the wrong bonuses to succeed in raids. If the 40 people in an average Alterac Valley group decided to kick out the 15 least suitable among them and take the remaining 25 to any one of the 25-man raid dungeons, they would not be able to get past the trash mobs. The average player who soloed up to 70, invested some effort in PvP to get epic gear, and now wants to raid, will find himself rejected and laughed at by the top raiding guilds on his server. He'll complain about them being elitist, but in fact it is game design that created the gap between average player and raider. The solofication of MMORPGs creates a large number of characters who simply aren't viable for the top end raid game.
What needs to be done is to rethink the concept of solofication. Why is soloing popular? A part of it is due to Real Life ® contraints, if you solo you can play in smaller bits and bites, group play needs longer periods. But another part of it is just a Skinner box: people like soloing because the game teaches them that soloing is the easiest way to advance. So even if they would have the time for a group, they rather keep on playing solo, because setting up a group is so not worth it. Assembling the group is made complicated by a bad LFG system in WoW. Doing quests that aren't marked a group quests in a group is often bringing less experience points per hour than soloing them. And WoW's concept of teaching players how to group is equivalent of throwing them into deep water to teach him how to swim: some people learn it that way, but many get hurt and frustrated in the process.
Solofication not only opens up a gap to end game raid content, it also moves MMORPGs in a direction where they become vulnerable to competition from single-player games. When I recently asked whether people would play a single-player version of WoW without monthly fees, I was surprised of how many people would prefer such a game over an online MMORPG with monthly fees.
If game design minimizes your interaction with other players, then why pay $15 a month for that interaction?

I think that it is time for the pendulum to swing back towards MMORPGs being more about groups again. Not enforced grouping, nobody wants that. But to a situation where even during the leveling process forming a group would actually be easy and the incentives would encourage it. Where people would learn to cooperate, because it would be to their advantage, and where due to that cooperation they would make more friends and develop stronger social bonds. Where players would arrive at the end game and already know how to play well in a group. Where playing a "support class" like tank or healer was a reasonable choice, and not a niche way for raiders to gimp themselves for the rest of the game. Where MMORPGs would be massively multiplayer again, and not massively singleplayer in parallel, as they are now. Here's hoping.

Source : tobolds.blogspot.com

Links :


Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Warhammer Online's High Elf Swordmaster Class




Hey everyone, remember Warhammer Online? That one MMO that's supposed to come out later this year? Okay, step away from the Conan beta and listen up, because we have some news on the Warhammer front concerning the Swordmaster.

According to a recent MMORPG.com interview with EA Mythic's Adam Gershowitz, the Swordmaster of Hoeth is the High Elf's entry into the tanking profession. It uses a flurry of swordplay to deflect the blows of its enemies as opposed to simply using heavy armor, like most tanks. As with the other classes in WAR, the Swordmaster has three mastery paths that are variations of differing playstyles:

* Path of Vaul - Includes combos that draw aggro while still increasing your defense. This path caters to situations with multiple foes.
* Path of Khaine - This path is for your area attack combos, introducing more of an offensive twist for the more aggressive tanks.
* Path of Hoeth - This is the tank path that utilizes magical abilities to aid in both defense and offense.

Source : massively.com

Links :
directory
MMORPG TOPSITES
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Monday, May 5, 2008

Guide to Woodworking in Lord of The Rings Online


Woodworking in Lord of The Rings Online (LOTRO) is a profession with a few special areas of emphasis. It has ranged weapons, which is sometimes useful, and it has instruments, in addition to some melee weapons. Instruments are probably the most important part of the woodworking profession.

Why not ranged weapons? Because often better ranged weapons are available to hunters from their class quests. At level 30, hunters gain a bow that is (counting it's damage type) better than tier 4 bows because it does Westernesse damage.

Melee weapons are a valid part of woodworking, and some of the weapons you can acquire are interesting, especially spears (since they tend to do damage over time) but they are not particularly good compared to weaponsmith weapons. Metal weapons tend to be "flashier", and are sometimes slightly better. Woodworking weapons do have staves, one of the major weapons of the loremaster, but again, loremasters can get better long term weapons in the quests of the Great Barrows (in Bree-land) and then in the loremaster quest.

Instruments, however, are always good for minstrels. They reduce costs for minstrels, it is always important for minstrels to worry about power availability, and this is the only way for a minstrel to control costs or gain similar benefits.
Woodworking Basics
Woodworking is done fairly easily. First and foremost, you need treated wood. For almost all the woodworker recipes, in general, you are going to need weaponsmith components or ingots from the prospector profession. While wood is not as expensive as the same tier ore and ingot in LOTRO, it isn't cheap, and you will not be able to purchase your wood if you wish to be able to break even or make a profit with woodworking.

Stand near a workbench, simply make sure to have all the items listed in your recipe in your inventory (they will be highlighted if you do, grayed out if you don't), and have a woodworking saw near you. Then just click make and you will make one of your items. There are quite a few recipes you will need to find,

Collecting RowanKeeping yourself stocked with wood is not always easy. The wisest choice to make sure you have enough wood is to have a character with the explorer vocation, who then stockpiles treated wood, ingots, and earns money for components by using sold ore. Once prepared for woodworking, make a second character who is your woodworker. That takes a lot of effort to do, but often is worth it. Even more value is added if you also have other characters who use the ore for their professions, such as jewelers or metalsmiths. To keep you stocked, you also can make a woodsman vocation character, create boiled leather from skins (and sell those) and then prepare your own wood, buying components with your skin profits. Leather and skins are always needed, and the money can pay for those pesky components.

Once you have prepared your treated wood from a forester professional, you need to decide what you wish to make. Almost always, you are going to find you don't need all the things you make. Which means selling your products.
Selling Your Products
An approach to improving your woodworking ability is the "long way" (which earns you money) by making items people need. A level 10 quest includes prepared rowan bowstaves (auction them in groups of 3). These take a while, but will get you some money as people buy these for the auction house. You also can make some money off basic bows for hunters, but usually this isn't overly profitable.

For tiers 2 and 3, you will want to make instruments, and you won't want to make a special effort to make critical items, these items do not provide enough of a difference to be worth it unless it is for your own use. For tier 3, consider making crossbows, some classes gain access to ranged weapons (though not a primary ability) and a lot of guardians and similar will want shiny new crossbows to use. Crossbows often do better than regular bows, because these are "shoot once and then enter melee" type attacks, meant for pulling opponents rather than drawn out damage (such as with hunters).

The short way to raise your woodworking ability is to simply pick the lowest component item and make a lot of them, selling them when you can, but basically just doing the best you can on simplicity. In the higher tiers, ranged weapons and instruments are the way to go to keep your woodworking profitable.
Woodworking Rules
Items you can makeOne rule of thumb for woodworking: never throw away wood, the only time you should walk past a node of wood is if you are in a party and in a rush, or if it would be rude to take it. Never throw away crit items. The crit items for woodworkers are particularly rare, and you should always bank those items when they are available. For woodworking, you need 3 treated rowan, on average, to make a tier 1 item. You need 10 treated black ash to make a tier 5 item, so make sure to collect your wood!
Woodworking Overall
Overall, woodworking is a simply somewhat easy profession, but this goes hand in hand with less profitable sales, and perhaps a less broad area of products than in other professions. You definitely can make a profit using woodworking. It is a good profession for a hunter or minstrel (because of the instruments, spears and bows). You will want to consider having a way to gain treated wood before making a woodworker.. either by having access to forester through being a woodsman, or by having an alt explorer.

Source : tentonhammer.com - Darkgolem

Links :
FREE MMO
MMORPG NEWS
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Saturday, May 3, 2008

EverQuest 2 Game Update 45 gives love to the Coercer



Yesterday when we noted the final patch notes for Game Update 45 on the EverQuest 2 test server, we neglected to mention one of the biggest changes: major tweaks to the Coercer class. The official patch preview on the EQ2 Players site makes it clear these changes represent a fundamental shift for the class. Possession spells have been improved all around, the material components used to control the Coercer's pet have been removed entirely, and Puppetmasters have gained the use of another pet.


This blogger is hardly an expert on every EQ2 class, though, so we turned to the real experts on the forums to see their reaction. In all it looks like the Coercing community is behind these decisions. The Active on Test thread is the epicenter for commentary, so be sure to check that out. Forum poster zuzer offers up some directed responses, while poster Kneemin opened up a thread discussing how these changes will effect PvP. For more details than you might be able to handle, check out XFnarX's screenshots of the new spells and his damage-tracking charts from the test server. Source : massively.com

Links :
pbem
free mmorpg
Blog Partner
Blog Partner

Friday, May 2, 2008

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate Lore #9




You underestimate us, just as the Night Masks did before we uprooted them from the Harbor Loop. We may not be as strong as they, but we are many - and we have powerful allies that they do not know of. Yes, yes, very powerful and very well-placed allies.

- Altama, Ebon Claw Guild Member


With only the briefest moments of exception, the Night Masks have dominated the underworld of Westgate for the past twenty years. Recently, however, a new group has arisen: The Ebon Claws, and while such rivals are usually quickly and brutally dispatched by the followers of the Faceless, the Claws, unusually tenacious, have not only survived the Night Masks' assault, but have thrived and prospered. So confident are they now in their position that they have begun to openly war with the Night Masks, many times as the aggressors. Shockingly enough, it is often the bodies of known Night Mask operatives found in the morning streets, their domino masks mockingly stuffed in their own mouths and four dark, gangrenous, filthy lines - the eponymous "ebon claw" of the new guild - dug like trenches into their pale cheeks.

The origins and hierarchy of the Ebon Claws are obscure; they are still too new for much solid information to yet be widely known, but it is obvious that even the Night Masks are unsure. Their agents, normally discreet in their pursuit of information, have become ever more insistent in their interrogations, and large amounts of reward money are offered to any with solid information. The rumors circulating the local beer halls are mostly fantastic, for it is argued that only a fantastic origin could have taken the Masks - masters of stealth, spying, and intrigue - so completely by surprise.

There is, however, one persistent rumor circulating regarding the Ebon Claws. There have been enough sightings of their deformed agents to suggest that it is a guild heavily - if not completely - plagued by the disease of lycanthropy, though the specific variety of the infection is not that of the more legendary werewolf, but is instead that of the more common - in cities, at least - wererat. If true, it would explain their success against the Night Masks. Extremely agile and aided by preternatural strength, a squadron of wererats would make tenacious foes dangerous even for the hardened rogues and thugs employed by the Masks. However, such stories, as yet, are still just rumors, though one concrete fact lends credence to them. Recently, the Night Masks have begun spending an enormous amount of coin with the local merchants on the acquisition of silvered swords, daggers, and rapiers, weapons known to have an uncanny ability to harm lycanthropes of all kinds. It is therefore obvious that the Night Masks, at least, believe the stories to be true.

The honorable citizens of Westgate have learned to duck and seek cover when the two groups begin warring in the streets, and the prevailing wisdom seems to be that when two evil groups are in the process of killing each other, get out of the way and let them. Still, those with a keen sense of perception would probably discern that the average citizens, tired of the abuses of the Night Masks, are quietly rooting for the Ebon Claws. After all, they might argue, the Claws can't be any worse than the Masks, but it is a short-sighted view, for once the Masks are dispatched, only the truly naïve would expect the Claws to just fade into the sunset. To the contrary, they would almost certainly set up shop in the resulting power vacuum, and any group cunning and brutal enough to dispatch the Night Masks would make a truly horrifying successor indeed.

Source : WarCry

Links :
Startrek forum
toplist
Blog Partner
Blog Partner