Azaroth

This post started out as a personal exercise/design intro, and I’m not exactly sure what it ended up being. Stick with me though, it does eventually end up going somewhere. I think.

These days, when you peruse the feature sets of AAA MMOs, you can *almost* understand why they cost so much money to build. They’re feature rich in many very expensive ways. However, they usually tend to spend their battle chest in the direction of their subgenre. Almost exclusively, this is the achievement-based direction. Which makes all kinds of sense of course, since you play to your market. And with big budgets, you pick the biggest markets to play to.

Back in the day, there wasn’t really the extreme segregation of playstyles that you see today. One might say that was a good thing. Obviously many did not, but I’m not so sure that they aren’t somewhat overlooking the benefits of a melting pot. For instance, Ultima Online was not only designed to be a melting pot of all different types of people and playstyles, but it had the advantage of being “first”. It was the first MMO to reach mass appeal (depending on what you consider mass appeal, but I’m not sure this is entirely arguable unless you’re a huge fan of Gemstone IV or Meridian 59, etc). As such, unlike today where everyone can pick and choose through a bevy of online offerings to find the one that fits their specific playstyle almost exactly, everyone was thrust into one magical, diverse world full of different people with differenet playstyles and very different goals. Most people break this down to be as simple as “PK vs. Non-PK”, but that is, of course, a drastic oversimplification. Since that’s the most visible rift, it does get keyed in on.

Which is fine, but it’s also just another reason why it’s up to the developer to engineer a diverse world, if that happens to be the goal. Some would argue that players don’t need to be shown what they like, but should be treated like adults and given the right to choose what they like. That’s fine, I don’t entirely disagree. But that’s also what leads to niche play. World-y games are a niche/subgenre in themselves, and, ultimately, people will choose them based on what they are and what type of experience they provide just like any other MMO niche.

It’s a funny situation that we haven’t already seen more games like UO, but I suppose that developers feel they can include tidbits of playstyles in a mainly Diku package, and that’ll be enough to satisfy everyone. Or maybe the numbers of non-achievers are so small that they don’t need to be taken seriously these days. World of Warcraft, in all of its achiever-centric glory, may actually be the closest we see to a behemoth melting pot for a long time. While they’ve included PvP, crafting, and… little else, these things have also been twisted and contorted into nothing more than another achievement grind by the Blizzard developers. Though their PvP+ servers thrive, which is somewhat surprising to me (through sheer force of numbers, peer pressure, basic player type ratios?). With all of that in mind, I honestly expected WoW to look a lot more like EQ than it actually does. And it does.

But that’s the future. Big budgets will go toward the same type of MMOs that they have been since EQ came out, lesser-funded developers will continue to delve into the niche worlds. The same as always. Some say this isn’t the future, because the popularity of “choice” and niche games is growing - and nobody can compete with WoW. I wonder why not, though. Are the profits they’ve experienced not incentive enough?

As the years pass and WoW becomes more dated, I’m fairly certain someone will roll out another behemoth to raise the bar even higher - or at least take the crown away. Let’s face it, these cries of “we can go no higher! budgets have peaked, subscriptions have peaked, nobody can POSSIBLY dethrone the king!” were heard back when everyone was playing EQ, too. History often repeats itself.

But regardless of my rants in that direction, niches ARE gaining in popularity. Especially very tight niches. Children’s games, puzzle games, purely social games especially. But none of these truly encompasses what MMOs are about, in my eyes. Aren’t they (respectfully) more tastefully labeled and looked at simply as “online games”? Is there a niche for “everyone else” that isn’t interested in either extreme, but a more well rounded experience similar to what they experienced in the late ’90s with Ultima Online (am I just a UO fanboy)?

Yeah, probably. Although I’m going to go out on a limb and presume that you’ve guessed that I’m going to say that by now.

While UO was what it was, and a lot of people enjoyed it and even look back fondly on it, my experiences (including the “classic free shard” scene) have taught me several things about the nostalgia people feel for Ultima Online. First, the good news of course - and that is, these people aren’t operating on full-on, unadulterated nostalgia with little reason behind it. UO really was a unique experience, mostly in the early days of the game. That people pine to repeat that experience actually holds some logic beyond nostalgia. There aren’t any games that provide a sandbox gameplay and a social experience on par.

For instance, if EA/Mythic were to implement a classic server (although I can’t currently speak for the community like I once could, I certainly haven’t been the least bit involved for the last two years), the chances are that it’d attract a wide variety of players (as I’ve said, in what numbers I’m not TOTALLY sure - which is beside the point for now). This wide net effect is much unlike the current, and usual, crop of free servers. They tend to attract, as is the current trend and the inevitability when you provide copious amounts of choices for play, a very niche audience.

For example, many free servers have followed and mimiced IPY. Most of them end up with the very same 300-400 players online, somewhat because there are also 5,000 other free servers of every possible texture and flavour, and people have decided on what it exactly is that they like by now.

But then that 300 turns iinto 200, then 100, then 50, and then the shard either closes or becomes neglected, and the players move on. This all tends to happen within the space of six months, give or take. Beyond being EA’s biggest fear in regard to putting up a classic UO server (and I guarantee you that it’s been observed with some interest), what does this ultimately say?

Ultimately, it says that classic UO never had as many features as people gave it credit for. While it has what it has, and you inevitably get the crafters and socialites on a good classic server (thank God), the fact of the matter is that a LARGE majority of players end up breaking the experience down into a race to macro their skills to the max level (made ever easier by the unaddressed scourge that are 3rd party scripting programs), getting a house, getting resources together, and then participating in a no-holds-barred PvP fest. What other avenues of play there are have been ‘done to death’, and simply didn’t age well with the advent of extreme powergaming.

But in turn, this play style drives off every other type of player. Those being driven away are interested in the setting and the ruleset, but not what it’s being used to create (which is a heaving, twitching, spasming mess).

Once this happens, the shard closes.

Once the shard closes, someone gets the bright idea to put up another one.

Once they do, the remnants of the last shard filter over.

Inevitably, what’s being filtered, through each incarnation and shard closing/opening, is the same thing that’s being actively filtered while the shards are open:

The “other” players.

What’s being filtered IS Ultima Online. Due to many factors, what’s left behind is an increasingly large concentration of purely PvP players. In a free, PvP+, full loot environment… this problem only propagates itself. Before long, the lesser PvPers become the equivalent of the “other players”. They are dominated by the experienced, determined, and, often, the cheaters. Basically, those with the time and desire to become “the best” at this particular flavour of player versus player combat. Before long, through a very natural process, what you’re left with is an online RPG version of Quake. Complete with the auto-headshot programs.

This is, in a way, what was troubling Origin when they implemented the Trammel facet and UO:R. Of course the more visible problem was subscriptions and what would become of them, but the problems are the same thing when you’re charging for your game (which most free shards don’t do - although some find creative ways to make profit).

The UO:Renaissance expansion in 2000 had its heart in the right place. The direction behind it was on target in relation to addressing the perceived problems, I’d personally argue that the design and execution were not. What was being addressed, was, of course, the PvP situation for which Ultima Online was already notorious. The PvP-restricted Trammel facet provided a retreat altogether from the problem. The rock/paper/scissors simplified PvP combat design provided a more equal, less elitist footing for the players who, in the facet left behind, would become the sheep amongst the wolves. Or the skinny guy in prison. Whichever you like. But I don’t believe the designers fully considered the impact of their plans. I’m not sure they thought far enough ahead. The UO:Renaissance expansion was a knee-jerk reaction to a set of problems that sacrificed the future to address the problems of the present.

But why?

Well, the players can’t be at fault. They’re simply playing with the ruleset they’re given (those artificially playing outside of it are always another matter, but that’s -almost- a different topic). And ultimately, the developer assumes (rightfully) that if the design allows for one player to take advantage of another, especially in a forceful manner, a certain amount of the population will simply do so. Although this assumption is somewhat rash when you happen to be applying it in a blatantly reactionary way. It’s imperative to keep sight of what makes your game unique when reacting to the problems of the day. At least to a world like Ultima Online. I’m not sure it’d be as damaging to inflict artificial limitations and sweeping changes to a game like EQ, where artificial limitations are the nature of the beast and everyone is just there to work around them as well as possible to succeed in spending their hard-earned DKP on phat lootz.

However, the “thing” causing the problem is the same thing that allowed UO to grow into such a legend, such a unique experience, and such a unique world: The designer.

Players are just playing with what they’re given. With the increase in choice of game styles, avenues for niche play, those that have been most neglected flock to the game that offers the best experience. It sort of makes me wonder why there isn’t a revolution of crafters pining for better days. But I suppose they make due with the scraps they’re thrown these days, and, of course, a world full of crafters doesn’t work that well. They’re dependant on being somewhat of a minority. Not that a world full of PvPers works well, but a killer can always kill another killer. I’m sure there are some smaller niche worlds where crafters are content crafting for other crafters (ATITD?), but that’d take a unique design. Certainly, a base UO setting wouldn’t work like that.

It does, of course, work as a setting for a big war supplemented by “minigames” of crafting, housing, pve farming (yes purely farming, since I doubt too many people playing UO like that haven’t ever been to the depths of Deceit before) and such. And on unofficial servers that haven’t rigidly directed gameplay in a fashion seen suitable by its developers, it has somewhat.

What needs to be given to people is almost as simple as “more”. The design is that good, that it can be used as a base to build off of ten years later. But we’ve seen where the flaws lie. Especially when you provide massive choice for online gaming, and segregate populations. As a design, classic UO might even succeed today if EA put up a server of that ruleset.

The success would depend on the audience, of course. UO was always what the players made of it, in every aspect. When we were kids, we were entirely happy to pretend we were Marvel (don’t sue?) super heroes, running around playfighting. As soon as we got older, and there were more choices of what to do with our recess time, the population became segregated. Some kids played soccer, some kids played baseball, some kids played tag, and some kids hung out in the far corner of the yard smoking cigarettes because they were too cool for any of that. Friendship circles were formed.

The point is that, now that we’ve gotten a little older and there are many different choices as to what to do with our recess time, it just doesn’t cut it to play with our imaginations anymore. And while UO had a FANTASTIC base to provide us fertile ground for imagination play, there are too many focused experiences out there now for that. People are naturally gravitating toward those focused experiences, and finding friendship circles of likeminded players - creating a more and more unbridgeable gap between the segregated playerbases.

But in the end, I think we all still know that playing with our imagination was fun. There just needs to be some structure too. It needs to be more of a contructive experience. In short, UO is a fantastic base for moving forward, as well. But as it is, as it was, it’s simply not designed in a way that is able to withstand the extreme passage of time and evolution in direction of MMOs and MMO players. This goes beyond the feature set, although the design itself, the general direction, is solid.

So what’s the answer? Well, I think I’ve already basically broadly outlined the answer - but the answer, like the problem, lies within the designer.

That is, however, the other 99% of this post that I’m not willing to share with the world. If you would like to read more, you can subscribe to my private newsletter. It costs a lot of money.

There. You dirty spammers.

214 spam comments in 24 hours is just too many.

The jealously and homerism of Canadian fans and media.

On any messageboard in the hockey universe, you can see people slamming Crosby. He’s a diver, he’s a whiner, the refs are biased for him, he fakes everything, etc. We all know the score.

It drives me nuts, personally. I certainly can’t get into an argument with every jealous moron on every message board, though. Even more frustrating is the fact that I could, if I wanted to. Mostly because these people generally have no idea what they’re talking about. They seem to be spewing the same uniformed, rehashed opinions that have been circling since two months into Crosby’s NHL career.

So obviously these people aren’t experts on the subject. It’s obvious they haven’t been watching the games. Since that’s the case, and these people aren’t exactly analyzing Pens games every night and forming opinions on their own, where does the steady stream of overwhelming bullshit come from?

What’s the root of the problem?

In the end, it breaks down to a media propagated meme that stems back to their overexposure of Sidney back in the Summer and Fall of ‘05. The media coverage (at least in Canada, I wouldn’t know much about the US coverage) was absolutely over the top in the first couple months of Crosby’s career, to the point where it became sickening.

But that was their doing. They wanted a story so bad, they wanted to milk that story so bad, for so long, just for all of the viewership that they could get - that they turned people off. Suddenly it became vogue to BASH Crosby in the media, and talk up Ovechkin (since that was the other option). Even when Crosby was playing much better. Even though Ovechkin has as many flaws as anyone.

But he isn’t called on those flaws. Ever.

When was the last time someone in the media, and by extension someone rergurgitating something they’ve heard on a messageboard, talked about Ovechkin being BENCHED for his lazy defensive play? How many times has Crosby been mentioned as a “complete” player, as compared to Ovechkin - who plays ONLY in the offensive zone, and does little more than shoot and (sometimes) hit? How often is Crosby labeled soft, despite every fact in the world pointing to the complete opposite conclusion - while Ovechkin is labeled “much more physical”.

I ACTUALLY listened to announcers say that Crosby “doesn’t like to go into the corners” a couple of games back. These people not only sew the seeds of bullshit for fans with no real knowledge to regurgitate, but they themselves have no ******* idea what they’re talking about.

This game even, listened to Senators announcers go on for fifteen minutes about what a diver Crosby was. Saying that nobody is allowed to shoot the puck on the Penguins powerplay until Crosby touches it. On and on. I won’t even go on about their other comments about the Penguins in general, because as much as that IS applicable since the Penguins are synonomous with Crosby in every way in regard to hate and jealousy because Crosby IS the Penguins in a sense.

But they’re just like all Canadian media. From Don Cherry to the lowly broadcasters on late night third rate Sportsnet highlight packages, they all have a hardon for hating Crosby.

They’ve created this monster, and they continue to feed it because it’s what the majority of viewers want to sink their teeth into - they themselves also being jealous of Crosby, they themselves also hating to see Crosby burn their team.

Quite frankly, it’s sickening - and it’ll become moreso the second Canadian media and fans jump directly on the Crosby bandwagon at and after the 2010 Olympics, or to a lesser extent, even pending a long playoff run for the Penguins this year.

While tonight, listening to the Senators announcers was particularly sickening at times - it’s nothing new. Especially not here in Canada. Where Sidney is from. Yet the Kid gets all of the hate while Ovechkin gets all of the credit (especially credit for things that aren’t true - like constant claims that he’s a “complete player”) - because Ovechkin is the media-twisted “underdog”, he’s actually received the real hype while “he’s NOT getting any hype, CROSBY gets all the hype” was being drummed into the ears of impressionable, knowledge-lacking fans. Or, at least last season when he was competing with Crosby… not a WHOLE lot to hype him about this year, since he does little more than shoot the puck 10 times a game. But the meme persists.

When does all of this end? When does Crosby start getting the general respect the way that Gretzky and Lemieux did, after being jealousy hated on earlier in their careers?

I sure hope it takes something less than Olympic bandwagon-jumping, and it comes sort of more organically through people actually watching games and becoming informed about the subjects they speak on (often very loudly).

But I’ll tell you what. I’ll always smirk with disgust whenever anyone from Don Cherry on down to a random Senators poster on a messageboard rambles on with love about Crosby after these early years of self-propagating, ignorant denigration. Quite frankly, anyone jumping on the 87 bandwagon at this point or after can die in a horseless carriage conflagration for all I care.

This is taken from a posting of mine on a sports message board tonight after the hockey game. I know most people who read this site won’t actually be interested in this type of thing, but I figure this is easier than writing something NEW. :D

During a writeup on a MMO Rountable that he moderated at the GDC last week, Damion mentioned several non-traditional settings that came up. That is, settings that have nothing to do with swords, magic, dragons and unicorns.

While I’m not interested in discussing the pros and cons of traditional fantasy versus, say, a post-apocalyptic setting of some kind (for the record, I think most futuristic settings are terrible ideas for MMOs - sort of like I think the traditional fantasy setting is inferior for a single player game… it’s a simple matter of wanting a wide variety of players to live in your world for months and years versus trying to attract more hardcore, non-social gamers to spend two weeks being interested in your game - and how those particular settings work in regard to either of those aims), one of the mentioned settings was Highlander.

Why is this interesting?

Well, I’m not a Highlander nerd. I can’t remember the last time I watched the entire length of one of the movies. So that’s not it. Although, admittedly, I’ve almost definitely spent more time watching the mid-90s TV show than I have watching the movies. Adrian Paul is just THAT dreamy. Plus it makes me want to fucking kill people with swords.

But moving on.

I found the suggestion of a Highlander MMO setting more interesting than, say, Cyberpunk or insert_dark_futuristic_setting_here MAINLY because I’m not sure that I’ve seen it suggested before.

Yeah, everyone suggests Neuromancer/Cyberpunk. There are a million “Anime” MMOs already (you just have to speak Korean…). Hell, a Firefly MMO is in the works. And I mean no offense to Browncoats, but shit. Can you say 15k subs?

Because when a huge, international name like Star Wars gets thrown around and you max out at 250k, we learn a few things:

1) Not every fan of a particular IP is going to pick up a copy of your game because it has R2D2 on the box. Stop dreaming. Yeah, I remember the massive numbers predictions before SWG launched. I think SWG had a fine design, I’m not on a gripe about the game whatsoever.

So,

2) How in the jeezly fuck do you expect to transfer people of all walks of life from an ages-old, massive IP to a very specific type of computer game?

Obviously that was a lot harder than most people expected it to be.

So how do you figure transferring people from a “cult” IP that’s barely known to most people beyond squinting their eyes and asking “… wasn’t that a show that got cancelled years back?” is going to work out?

You’ll get your hardcore Firefly fans playing a Firefly MMO. Of course. But you’d better not make any wild predictions as to your final account holdings. As such, you’d better not design too ambitiously, because turning a profit will be a magic trick of balancing budget versus expected revenue. Which furthers hurts you, because your game is not simply incapable of wowing anyone OUTSIDE of the hardcore Firefly fan circle.

So what is the ultimate lesson? Is it that you can’t expect to use existing IP to boost sales of a MMO?

No, absolutely not. Ultima Online broke barriers. World of Warcraft smashed preconceived notions of how big the market for MMO games could possibly be.

The lesson is that taking hugely popular non-computer game IP may not cause a fanbase transfer. Especially not if you’re creating numbers based purely on wishful thinking.

But there are exceptions to this, as anything. Ever hear of The Sims Online? Probably not. And that’s no offense to its developers, either.

I remember the massive number predictions before The Sims Online launched. Numbers don’t even translate from single player social computer game > online multiplayer social computer game.

Why? Well, in the case of The Sims, I’m betting that a lot of its players were more interested in dinking around with their own character leisurely for 30 minutes whenever they wanted than they were in dealing with real assholes online, and paying a monthly fee for it. In fact, I bet a lot of people barely saw the difference between the title they had to buy to get online and the title they already had at home. Not to mention that the new box said that they have to pay EVERY MONTH.

So there’s another reason why typical fantasy settings work well. You can transfer from existing computer game fanbases, it seems, with some success.

But StarCraft Online was a douched notion, as far as I’ve heard. Is this as simple as the fact that Blizzard may not want to compete with itself, or is this because a StarCraft setting, for the simple reason that it’s futuristic and the even simpler reason that it’s NOT fantasy, wouldn’t meet numbers expectations? Do YOU honestly think that StarCraft Online would, given the exact same amount of content and polish, compete on the same level as WoW?

I don’t.

There’s a big fanbase for StarCraft. It’s existing computer game IP. It’s recent. The company even knows how to do a MMO.

But how many off-center MMO demographics are going to be drawn to the lure of the Zerg? How many 60 year old grandmothers are going to be interested in playing the all-mighty Protoss (Protoss ftw) with their 12 year old granddaughters?

Yeah see, I’m guessing not many. I’ll take a huge leap and guess that rolling up a little dwarf paladin and running around goldshire is a little more attractive to these people. And guess what - there’s a lot of them. This isn’t 1997 anymore. A successful game can’t be based largely on attracting fourteen year old boys.

And that’s a good thing. Because you can actually HAVE half of the WoW servers using a PvP+ ruleset without complete fucking chaos. The mix in demographics offsets what I like to call the “faggot factor”. Named thusly when I completed my time with IPY. IPY was a game based on those early days of heavy faggot factor. In fact, IPY was populated almost entirely by fourteen year old boys that were SO attracted to the style of gameplay that allowed them to act up, that they came back and played IPY like it was a job when they were 22, becoming so engrossed that I think I got a threat on my life once a week.

So now that we have SOMETHING akin to parity among the major demographics, can something like Highlanders Online be attempted?

Well, maybe not as a blatantly open-PvP game. Which one might expect, given the setting. See, rulesets still attract certain types of players. WoW, for all of it’s all-encompassing blackhole like suckage of MMO players, DOES mainly appeal to the Achiever crowd. By sheer volume of all types of players, one might fail to notice.

A better example is going to be something like Darkfall when it comes out. Putting aside the vaporware/not vaporware argument or the cries of “it’s been seven years, they have no idea what they’re doing, it’s going to be buggy as hell” for a moment - it’s clear to anyone who has ever looked into Darkfall even slightly that they’re buttering their bread on the PvP side. Which I suppose would be the side that’s slightly burned, because it was more hardcore and got closer to the coils.

But even with the current equality of the demographics we have going in MMOs today, you still have to be very careful what you wish for. IPY was a good example. Darkfall will be a better one.

“Hardcore” PvP players feel somewhat starved, and as much as minority as they may seem (and are), they WILL all flock en masse to the people providing the most PvP-oriented ruleset.

So there you go. Great idea for a built-in, automatic fanbase.

Right?

Well, if you believe that, etc about bridges and whatnot.

Aside from that, there are also quite a lot of examples of how you attract other specific playstyle oriented players to a game. There are especially a lot of smaller, casual, social games out there that cater to the opposite spectrum of people that Darkfall will, or IPY did (for the most part).

So let’s get back to the point, just for a moment. As much as the idea of a Highlander based MMO is intriguing, you may not want to make it as hardcore PvP oriented as some may expect it to be. In fact, you may not have to. In fact, you may not want to for actual gameplay issues that are beyond the problems PvP players bring to the table.

Obviously, “permadeath” would be a near necessity in the setting. Another immortal chops ya’ block, you die. Lightning and fire ensue. Etc.

But this may, at least for the most part, rule out random, thoughtless PvP. People will fear the deaths of their OWN characters. It’d be almost like if EVERYONE playing UO in ‘99 had statloss. But even more extreme.

They would, mostly, think of the health and safety of their own characters. First and foremost. Except, as always and under any ruleset, when in a large group of patrolling gankers.

Highlander may uniquely solve this problem without much imagination from the developers.

Most battles in the setting take place purely one on one. This is good. I love one on one, honourable PvP in a game. Especially a MMO. I can’t despise 20v1 combat any more than I do. And even group vs. group has many, many flaws to it. From WoW’s battlegrounds to random guild warfare in UO, but I’ll digress for once in my fucking life. I think I’ll write on that topic some time, but I won’t. So we’ll leave it at that. It sucks (but only for certain reasons, and sometimes it rocks). That’s my official review.

But because there IS a (albeit rather slipshod at times) code of honour in the Highlander universe between immortals, what you’ve got is an easy, “lore”-justified reason to end ganking. Now you’ve got a reason to yes, base a game around PvP to a large extent, but also include a duel system of a sort. Not exactly being a “PK switch”, but more of a “PvP Lock” like I proposed on the IPY messageboards at one time. To, of course, only be shot down furiously… the lesson being don’t ever fuck with a “classic” ruleset, even if it’s the only ruleset you have on your servers and has MAJOR flaws in need of fixing. Which I don’t disagree with, totally. IPY was what it was, and should have died like it did. It gave people what it advertised, and died for the same reasons that the original UO was changed. C’est la vie. The damn thing was classic right down to the players, the atmosphere, the problems, and the death.

Digressing again (ADD rarely helps with writing, apparently), the PvP Lock would more or less lock a single attacking player into combat with their chosen opponent. While PvP would be free, it would also have rules of conduct, to a small extent. This doesn’t prevent group warfare. It just prevents auto-targetting, mass nuke dumps, 6v1s, etc.

This also obviously wouldn’t apply when it came to monsters or NPCs. Yes, I’m sure monsters could exist. Although much questing would be focused around both “real world” storylines as well as slaying the all-powerful (but NPC) immortal.

And speaking of NPCs, the game would also have to be largely NPC driven. In fact, I think, in a way that hasn’t really been seen so far. The amount of NPC related content that coders would have to push out would be phenominal, because, as an immortal, I think you’re living in a world - able to come and go into and from different aspects of society as you please. Regular humans (NPCs) would need to provide a living, breathing world for the players (Immortals) to exist in. The game can’t simply be about 1v1 immoral r0×0ring, and it CERTAINLY can’t be about raiding Molten Core with 39 of your closest immortal buddies for leet gear.

Your world would HAVE to be populated largely by normal human beings, that perform normal human being tasks and can be interacted with on MANY different levels. You have to be able to recruit people to go on a Crusade with you, you have to be able to work your way into the King’s service, you have to be able to ruthlessly climb the ranks to become a high ranking commander in the army, you have to be able to walk into a town and watch people scrubbing pots.

You have to be able to interact with NPCs of various sorts and professions in many different ways, with many different outcomes. And, in fact, the world itself needs to be so large that Immortals aren’t gathered 100 strong in Ironforge constantly, with the odd NPC walking past. You’d really need to flip-flop the balance between PCs and NPCs, in a way.

So would it make a better single player game? Possibly.

Would it make a better LMMORPG (that is, a LESS massive multiplayer online roleplaying game) of, say, 100 people to a server?

Maybe.

But not if you have the capability to make the world massive enough to nearly allow every player his own little corner. Not that you’d want nobody to run into each other, or you’d want people to be loners. But the world needs to be large enough that you aren’t ALWAYS around 25 other immortals.

That in itself I think is a necessity that makes the creation of a Highlander setting MMO difficult. The addition of massive amounts of heavy-interaction NPCs playing the roles of regular humans makes it worse.

And it IS necessary to have all aspects of society run by NPCs and all regular humans NPCs, because you can’t EXPECT people to NOT want to play an immortal in Highlander online. You also can’t force people into a non-Immortal role. “When you open your account, it will randomly be flagged Immortal or Human. Enjoy.” or some other such nonsense would be completely unacceptable to a paying customer logging into a Highlander MMO.

So you’ve got an idea that’s truly interesting, can be expanded upon to solve some gameplay-related problems with ease, and even provide a fantastic PvP setting with the NECESSITY of an updated UO-style world. I don’t even think it’d be desirable or even possible to create the setting in a Achiever-style based MMO, which is something like EQ or WoW. Much unlike a Transformers setting, which almost demands it.

It all sounds fantastic to a guy like me, which is really why I wanted to publicly think on the idea here for a moment. But you run into many fundamental problems as well. Chiefly being how do you provide the world of humans without reducing them to the state that NPCs are currently in MMOs? NOBODY wants to play the humans - and they shouldn’t have to.

But I think a game like this would fail without an interesting non-Immortal world for the Immortals to live in. Especially since the world would have to be pretty large (being another huge development and budget strain). Not only can you not have 5 towns populated mainly by Immortals LFG Molten Core, but you can’t have a huge, huge world with a million roaming, mindless NPCs. There has to be a lot of coding time behind each one, some more than others.

The very point of the game, as I envision it (and I think it’d be a hell of a game), would be undercut by any type of large budget restriction. Which comes back to the same problem Firefly has. You have to budget for your audience. If you spend large amounts of money on a game based around IP that will have limited transfer from it’s current fanbase (and/or already has a limited fanbase), you run the distinct risk of spending more than you could ever possibly make.

On the other hand, if you had about $150 million to blow, it’d be a grand social experiment. Maybe the government would like to set it up and monitor what people act like in a world surrounded by lessers who they consider insignificant.

Oh wait. That already goes on outside.

Oh well. What would YOU do with Immortality?

…

Yeah, I’m working on a slogan already in hopes of that massive government grant.

Penguins get a new arena deal, and beat the Sabres tonight in a shootout.

It was an amazing game. Looking forward to seeing many more of them played in Pittsburgh.

I can post this kind of crap if I like.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07064/767020-61.stm

Famously, the Penguins have been trying to get a new arena for ten years from their local and state politicians, who gave one to both their baseball and football teams. Talks have been ongoing after a whole bunch of squaw-fucking, but after the slots license was lost to the Politician buddy system, “shit got real”.

Now it’s gone farther. The Penguins are “aggressively seeking relocation”. And honestly, Penguins fans wonder why. I happen to post on a Penguins board, and I’d say the large majority of the fans there are flipping and blaming ownership.

Now, I don’t see a lot of Pittsburgh TV. Just what I get on Centre Ice during the games, and the internet media I read from the city. But even I’ve seen a staggering about of spin from the local politicians involved, in a very obviously concocted manner for their own PR. Obviously Mario doesn’t know the right people, hasn’t scratched enough politician back in his life. Because if he had, it wouldn’t come down to this. It didn’t for the Pirates. It didn’t for the Steelers. It didn’t for the fucking random dude from Detroit that wanted the city’s slots license.

The Penguins want a deal that they’re able to get SEVERAL other cities to give them. Hell, they’ve been offered free $300 million dollar arenas. That are already built. They could move in tomorrow, rent free, if they so chose.

But it’s their fault because the politicians are breaking their balls over the deal, asking them to pay several million dollars every year toward the arena, sharing profit, paying for a parking garage, etc?

The fact is that they’ve been playing in the NHL’s oldest, most broken down arena for some time now. They lose money because they’re not able to offer the suites, seats, and amenities that other teams are. But they should be alright with that, they should struggle to talk to politicians for ten years, and THEY should be blamed when they’re fucked around for ten years and beyond, even when they’re being offered free facilities and $175 million buyout deals because they’re the team in the NHL with undisputedly the brightest future and the greatest collection of young stars that the league has seen since the Oilers of the 80s?

Are you truly a fan if you only support a team because it HAPPENS to be in your town, or if you turn on anyone and everyone from the team because they’re being banged in the butt by politicians playing games, if you literally threaten to burn down the house of the man who has kept their team in their town, repeatedly, even though he’s had to purchase it after it was losing so much money that its ownership had declared bankruptcy, and CONTINUE to take losses waiting on the city and state’s politicians to get off their asses and make a fair deal?

Damion tells us about his recent Burning Crusade experiences, about replacing his dagger from Scarlet Monestary with a green BC quest reward something akin to an uberweapon you’d find inside of AQ40 pre-expansion.

He goes on to explain why it’s probably necessary to even everyone up, but then asks - what will we do with all of this old content?

I’ve seen people asking this since BC was announced. No doubt Blizzard will come up with something lame like reducing the maximum allowed players inside these instances and beefing up the rewards a little after a while.

But Jeff Freeman poo-poos the silly notion of expansions, instead preferring the release of new games much more often. As good as the idea sounds on paper, I’m not sure how simple it’d be to move everyone over. Even if it was REALLY simple to move over. Inevitably, some of your population just wouldn’t. Some would want to play the old game TOO. Of the latter, you’d have people paying for two boxes, two subscriptions (barring some kind of all-access pass, or discount), splitting their time between two iterations of, essentially, the same game. Of the former type of people who DIDN’T move over, I’m sure they’d be rather disillusioned both with the abandonment of “their game”, and with the fact that there really aren’t many people playing “their game” anymore. And that’d be The Company’s fault.

Myself, I haven’t played WoW since well before the expansion. I think I may have logged in a couple of times, but as of right now my account is inactive. I’ve even deactivated the monthly fee. I’m disinterested enough to know that I probably don’t need the option of logging in right now if it’s going to cost me money.

But what is it that I’m disinterested in?

I like that they’re evening everyone up. Sort of. I think it’s most certainly done in a cheesy, broken way. But it’s the thought that counts. Sort of.

I like the release of new instances that have less of a manpower requirement. I’d really rather do a five man than deal with thirty-nine jackasses soundboarding in ventrilo. But mainly, I just can’t dedicate the time necessary to keep up with those thirty nine people, and all of the other people like them.

At first glance, this is what Blizzard seemed to have been trying to fix. Evening up the gear, eveyone starts fresh, more focus on 5 man, 10 man, 20 man content. No more 40 man dungeons.

Except the fact that they’ve been dedicated to implementing reputation/faction-gain based dungeon rewards since ZG. If you’ve never grinded faction for gear, it takes a LONG FUCKING TIME. They did it with ZG, they did it with AQ 20 and AQ 40, and they did it with Naxxramas. If I’d read nothing about, I’d assume they’d be doing it with their BC instances too. But I have read something about it, a long while ago, and I’m fairly certain they are.

See, they’ve gotten so caught up in pandering to and satiating the powergamer crowd (and I’ll admit, it’s very hard not to - they do tend to be the loudest) that even their solution was essentially nothing more than an illusion that introduced a LONGER grind.

I have no problem casually romping into Stratholme to get some gear. Even “pro mode” challenges like “UD45″ were a lot of fun. It took teamwork. It took skill. It took experience, timing, and concentration. Best of all, it took fourty-five minutes.

In the end, this is what I can’t deal with. Yeah - when I was fourteen, I spent nearly an entire summer smacking mountains with my miner on UO. I was gonna GM blacksmithing. I never did. I dont’ know if that speaks to my lack of focus or my lack of patience (or maybe the fact that I had some kind of life back then, still, almost).

But what I do know is that I can’t do that shit any more. I really can’t spend three months accomplishing something in your game. I’m sorry. And if you want to cater to the kids who CAN, you’re really going to piss the rest of us off - and those kids are going to reach the peak of your reward mountain anyway.

That’s why I can’t stand the general Diku design, that’s why I can’t GM a smith in UO, and that’s why I haven’t logged into BC. Evening me up just to send me along with a pat on the head into new and improved grindfest v2.0 isn’t fooling me.

Is the answer to limit expansions to X and refocus on new games more often? Maybe. If done right, the plan has its advantages. I just don’t think it’ll work out as well as one might initially plan.

Expansions are great. They keep things new, they refocus the powergamers, they keep that money flowing without the necessity to spend another $50m making a whole new game. Because really, the old content is still good. It’s still there. A lot of people haven’t experienced it yet.

Maybe you want to add a new type of server to your list, though. Most games already rock PvP and PvE ruleset servers. WoW adds RP, and even RP-PvP. That’s really nice of them. How about “Classic”?

Shouldn’t that be a requirement of releasing each expansion? Or at least… once in a while?

Personally I’m a big fan of WoW in those days that I could casually run through the five or ten man instances to get gear that was a little bit better, and totally cool looking. But when you ask me to grind rep - no matter how many people I need to take with me - my answer is just going to be no. I don’t need to be enticed, evened up, or even tricked. The answer is just no. I couldn’t believe how many people were participating in Blizzard’s PvP system before the expansion pack. It boggled my mind.

And as long as there’s “something more to go on to” beyond the classic servers - that being, the regular servers - you’re not losing customers. I can play away casually on WoW circa 2005 or whatever, enjoying the fact that nobody in tier 5 is going to stroll along and smack down my entire group of friends without any effort. Then, if I would like to, I can go back and play a regular server if I suddenly have a change of heart, get desperately tired of the casual game and need more, hit the content wall and need to go through really badly, etc.

It’s the same thing with UO. Might people get tired with the old content? Sure, they might. But in that context, the percentage of those who quit when they get bored to those who move onto a regular server might be XX percent. But it’s a hell of a lot better than zero percent if you don’t put the server up. And there will be those that don’t get bored of the more casual game. Some people really dont’ want to be threatened to grind for items lest they compete with the people who do. Of course, there IS a way of implementing achievement or advancement based gameplay without giving the power to lord over “the mortals”. But that’s a post for another day. In fact, it’s two. Someone remind me.