by Azaroth | January 11th, 2010
No, not in that “Multiply and be fruitful” way.
I probably couldn’t count all of the times I’ve been asked “How can I help?” in reference to the new IPY project. A lot of the time, these folks aren’t coders and they aren’t artists – they just haven’t dedicated their lives to doing one of those two things, but they still want to help.
That’s great, I think. I truly appreciate the enthusiasm of the community for what we’re doing.
Now that my team is nice and big again – robust and powering along unstoppably much like a hungry ogre in high heels going into what I’m sure will soon become an out-of-control stampede toward victory and rabbit stew, I can start turning my attention on to a few other things while they do my dirty work for me.
Content design is one of the most difficult things about creating an online game. It requires care, creativity, fine motor skills and a LOT of hands to populate a world with interesting little quests. Each quest has to be hand crafted by SOMEONE, right?
With my coders working diligently away on my many whacky game systems, there’s little time for this. Fortunately, turning to the community has a plethora of benefits:
1) It gets them involved.
2) It saves me all KINDS of time.
3) It produces candidates for the ever-so-elusive green robes at launch, which will be nice to have sorted out ahead of time.
4) Finally, it benefits the entire project and every player to enjoy it in the future by filling the world with interesting bits of content.
Try your hand at setting up a RunUO server and getting cozy with the XMLSpawner2 system. Design, execute and test your quests… then submit! I’ll post the very best to be voted on by the community, and those that they deem worthy will go right into the game (some alteration may occur!).
Think you’ve got a great story to lead people through? A fantastic starting quest for new players to enjoy? A really awesome way to liven up a city with lots of interesting NPC folks?
Try your hand at it, and have your work immortalized!
Are you with us?
…
I’m getting sued, aren’t I.
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Nice… now all I’ve gotta do is train myself to not commit seppukku while “training” myself on XMLSpawner2.
Wth is XMLSpawner2 btw, sounds hella leet and hi-tech UO hax.
PS – “Are you with us?”
Only if my quest is… “IT’S IN THE GAME!!!!”
It’s actually a pretty good system.
I’d be interested to sort through what people cook up and take a couple guys on as regular quest designers.
Yes, I agree, Ima let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best quest designs of all time. All time.
Srsly tho, super gravy idea good job nice going sir awesome prize win!
Yaht’s on drugs again.
I’m just sayin… I’m relaxed, I’m excited, I’m eager to see these awesome ideas people come up with, I’m pumped up!!!!
IPY BABY, WOOOOO
They’re good, too.
As well as taking ideas from the players, I say steal quest ideas from OSI. I’m sure we can all remember a quest or two during preuor or even after that we enjoyed. The first one that I always think of is the liche invasion of trinsic which lasted quite a while if I remember right. I don’t recall the story behind it but everyone on Napa Valley was pretty into it.
I assume besides shardwide quests like jaimie mentioned, there will be smaller group and solo quests? I dunno, thats more of what I took from the post, so Im hoping stuff like this goes in.
For example, the one quest on divinity, where you take an npc and guide him from britain to trinny, defending him from monsters that spawn on his set path. Has an ok gold reward, and a small chance for some medium rares.
every other t2a shard out there sucks balls compared to divinity, and divinity is basically dead and pretty terrible in its current state. not a lot to choose from for t2a gameplay atm.
that being said hurry up
It might be a while until we’re done.
I hope you’re all still there when we are. ;)
how long is a while?
can we get a forum going?
This is what happens to the typical person on this forum when you take away IPY, Az -
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html
This must mean IPY is almost done. YAY
@morrison: Hah, I think you missed Az’s comment there a few posts back.
I’d be interested in poking around with this, I always tried running events or in game quests as a Counselor/GM back during the first iteration of IPY but nothing ever that scripted. Quests are fun for some but personally I’m one of those people that thrive on social interaction. Does the current questing system allot for player interaction. For example could a newbie quest have something like “Team with 5 other players”? I’m pretty unfamiliar with any sort of questing systems in RunUO, any literature you can point us to?
it might be a good idea to have poker tables!
really low tables at first.. like 10 gp small blind and 25gp big blind
I’ve always said that realistically it probably won’t be until about april when you start hearing serious details about launch dates. Probably likely still true. The quest that K Fed is talking about on divinity is retarded. no one ever does it, and it didn’t do anytyhing at all to spark interest in the shard or get people to play.
It was just something to do, a way to make gold/silver/semi rares in a different way than grinding a spawn in a dungeon. People do it all the time, including myself. I dont think any type of questing system will be enough to spark interest in a shard, or bring people in.
The main problem with Divinity’s quest is that it was put in as kind of a test, with more promised to follow. Of course, as per usual with Divinity nothing ever happened beyond tha.
i would love to see global events and small quests.
It would be great to see more WoW based quests aswell like “collect 10 zombie heads” would be cool for new players also if it gave a reward of like 5 skill points in a combat skill if your skill points were under a certain amount and a minimal amount of gold and as the quests got harder i.e. “collect 10 dragon dicks” you would get more considerable rewards, low level rares etc.
Personally I never saw much draw in “questing” and in every other MMORPG I viewed it as a necessary grinding labor that was needed to get items and experience. I liked UO a lot because your goals were your own and I think things can be done to accentuate that sandbox mentality that are not rigid or preprogramed quests. Emphasis should be placed on personal sandboxing goals.
For example in UO it was a personal goal of mine to own a rune library. I put it together myself through marking manually and purchasing neat books then used the library as a public draw to my vendor shop.
VDave – In the big meta picture, a linear quest[line] has nothing to do with the overall holistic Nonlinearity of a sandbox MMORPG like UO. And even if quests became a big part of it, you still have the power to decide whether or not to actively participate in something that has a predetermined story, conflict, resolution, and reward for interacting with it.
Quests do not ruin Sandbox, and vice versa.
It’s just something for the grind, it’s something for the lore, it’s something for eating up time, it’s something for developing the character slightly while immersing yourself in the fantasy. Quests aren’t “collect 10 dragon dicks” because you actually like dragon dicks in virtual form and don’t want to turn them in to Frodo the NPC for 1000gp. And if you do like dragon dicks, fine, hoard them and that will make you happy as well.
Fair points yahtzee but I’m not really dealing in absolutes here. You’re right, quests won’t ruin sandboxing in UO. You’d have to do a whole lot of rewiring for that to happen and I dont’ think anyone’s interested in doing that. If quests are fashioned in the manner you speak of, then thats in the spirit of what I’m saying. Giving a goal and allowing the player to determine the means to achieve it. The endgame should have some sort of reward to make the journey purposeful though. Consideration has to be taken to not make these quests more profitable to treadmill though.
I agree about questing being a means to an end… but that’s only the traditional type of WoW questing, which I hardly ever participate in if I’m given the choice.
We could get creative and make quests that are more player driven then that. A large NPC Caravan leaves Britain for Trinsic carrying, say 100k gold. Defend it while it goes and your guild gets the gold… but a global message is put out that a Brinks truck is leaving Britain… thus drawing every PvPer online at the time to that one long path. Now that’d be a fun quest.
There, someone get to scripting.
I would l try my hand at it but I currently have 8 hours of class a day for the next six weeks.
Quests such as the one you mentioned are high risk when done with code. No matter how sound you are a programmer you will invariably make a mistake here or there that could potentially be exploited by players. Even if Az got 10 pro coders, I promise you there will be bugs. A quest like that if gone awry with a server wide impact and that much money at stake could be pretty detrimental.
20 minutes of prep work from the staff could save the coders dozens hours of scripting and make sure this runs as planned.
Im going to give this quest thing a try it will give me something to do.
IMO, The hardest thing about UO is getting started. Meeting others and building those relationships that eventually lead you to your in-game friends/guild/customers/crew/etc is the backbone of any sandbox game. It’s the best part of what this kind of game offers, but if you never get in that clique… if it never happens no matter the effort you put into it then you can’t get anywhere the way the game is designed currently. You’re just a sad loner in a world that requires interaction.
If quests are designed in such a way that they promote that crucial community growth by simply getting players out there and to interact with each other, whether it be by helping each other to achieve the same goals, or causing fights to happen in hotspots, then I am all for them. So long as their primary purpose is getting players out and about, even if it is just to collect 10 dragon dicks, then I see no harm.
I do worry about the rewards though. With all this emphasis on questing, what happens to the crafters? I mean, say you collect the 10 dragon dicks. What then? Is your reward gold and gear? Why have crafters if you can get equivalent or better through quests? If it’s not good enough why the fuck would I bother collecting dragon dicks? Can’t really tell how anything is going to play out though if your ideas on getting people to PvE for skillup scrolls and whatnot is any say on how different this version of UO is going to be from IPY.
I guess what I’m trying to say is… just make sure all of these wacky ideas don’t ruin the old UO. Add them if it makes the game more appealing to newcomers looking to experience that oft-talked about classic UO, but don’t let them interfere.
I would love to see a guild housing system implemented.
This may be long, but here it goes….
I feel a guild system that enables guilds to build special housing (such as guild halls, special vendor buildings, maybe a modified bank, upgrades such as roads, fences, bridges, traps ect.– but still maintain the integrity of the era) but not overboard. Built around the town ideas generated from darkfall. These towns are guard free, all buildings/add-ons are public with certain rooms lockable and observe the decay system, and perhaps even taken from rival guilds. These guild add-ons are costly and rewarded based upon experience points derived from guild activities and resource accumulation (such as how many guilds your at war with, kills against rival guilds, quests accomplished, chaos/order noto, longevity of guild ect.).
A note on housing system – all housing would have a timer delay on the change house lock option. For example, if your killed and your key is looted, that person could access your house and loot it. There would still be an option to change house lock to re-secure, but once you choose that option the keys are not made for interval, say 12 hours. This would enable fights over houses, and increase risk of owning a house. There would be no secure containers or bans!
This system would provide a whole new dynamic to UO, especially guild politics. One thing about UO I loved was the guild elements. This idea could have lasting appeal, especially for vets.
cant suggest too much if you want to play sometime within this year
The best thing you can do is get a good staff. Divinity is a shitload of fuck because of a 2 year history of the worst staff ever on freeshards. It remains so to this day, forums and in game.
kfeds right, also the staff based changed every fucking week, even if some of the staff were any good they were gone in a few weeks and replaced with some other idiot that got gm status because he was friends with another gm.
k fed may be right, but THIS IS NOT DIVINITY. Nobody here cares about Divinity. This is Azaroth’s blog, a topic related to IPY.
Seriously, I know I’m coming across brash, but stfu about Divinity because it’s a total nonfactor except for providing a context to compare and contrast 1.0 and 2.0 against [which we've done numerous times already in more relative threads].
The staffing problem’s going to be inherent in any freeshard.. I mean IPY 1.0 had it’s issues too.
The thing is there’s little you can do about it – it’s an unpaid position. Unless you find guys who have a lot invested in the shard or are dedicated or the complete opposite of douchebags (tough to do on the internet) then you’re going to run into problems.
Just gotta choose the right people.
Spot on. Choosing the right people is half of the battle here.
Even when you’re paying, people have been known to be pretty underhanded. That’s with their job on the line (and future employment once word gets around).
With volunteers? It’s a tricky situation at best.
A lot of people are going to be fairly unimpressed with the hoops I make them jump through and the limited access they’re given. Luckily all of the coders I have going right now have been pretty good about handling those hoops and not taking it personally. It’s just necessary evil at this point, and after what happened with IPY. I’d be ashamed of myself to let those things happen again.
@yaht and Regarding Quests:
Think you missed a bit of what I was saying. Quests are fine, not my cup of tea per say but I do enjoy doing them from time to time. What I’m saying is that questing can quickly get away from you in an MMORPG and its one step closer to a grind. I found that all my best experiences in MMORPG’s were when the game mechanics provided me with tools to set my own goals not point me down a cookie cutter path. Look how popular custom housing is in UO. The simple addition of player NPC vendors opened up a tons of possibilities. A to B quests provide a rather shallow experience. While they can be fun, they’re hardly in the spirit of why I enjoy UO.
Regarding Staffing:
No amount of coding or graphics can make up for a bad staff. They will absolutely ruin the game, no matter how well put together it is. Quaility volunteer labor is hard to come by because the rewards offered by it are practically none except the act of helping. Most staffers fail to put the wellbeing of the community or server above their personal interests. When I stocked my staff at CCNGTA with people I found the most quaility folks were those who understood the community comes first and the other staff are all the friends they need and can trust.
:)
DAve -
I feel where you’re coming from, but my point is simple. Quests do not make an MMORPG linear.
***If a quest is completely optional and does not provide a reward or bonus to the player that gives them a distinct advantage over other players, then the quest in fact makes the game LESS linear as it provides another path for personal development at the discretion of the player.***
NPCs accepting BOD deeds are an example of this. So is the experience of doing a T-Map. These are quests, they just don’t have a yellow ‘!’ above their head and they dont’ give the reward to the player for turning in a pre-req quest item.
Simply providing more optional paths of personal player development and more nonlinear ways to obtain virtual capital are always a good thing for any MMO, sandbox or not.
i know that my post has been disagreed with by everyone but if 6 mil or however many people play wow there must be some fun in the grinding or these shitty little collection quests.
To be quite honest i dont care about anything that doesn’t have to do with pvp it was just a suggestion.
what are your thoughts?
You need to take into account that the PK’s and people who are drawn to MMORPGs for the PvP are the minority. The IPY population is the minority audience to these people. WoW is fashioned and designed to appeal to the largest target demographic. They have the franchise, the monetary means, and sway to reach the mainstream audience of gamers.
Az, from what I gathered with the second iteration of IPY is attempting a more well rounded server and not simply heed to the PvPers wishes. We’re a surly bunch however much like any other demographic on the internet we are prone to complain when things don’t go our way. The problem with UO’s game play paradigm is that there is a LOSER somewhere in the mix. WoW is popular because no matter how you cut it, everyones pretty much a winner the majority of the time.
One of the things I discovered with CCNGTA, a Grand theft auto MMORPG game I did, was that some people flat out like the ease of the grind. I replaced a task in the game that was traditionally drive from one location to the next back and forth, over and over, into a more robust supply and demand system. Everyone hated it because it was change, it was more invovled, and it wasn’t flat out easy money. Killing 100 trolls that pop up in the same spot every 5 minutes is significantly easier then actually hunting down an intelligent animal. Some people, they just want to feel like they’ve won.
I liked the flying hat in Super Mario Wii. I got to basically cheat my way through almost any level. A shake of the controller and I flew over everything. I could get to all of the tough spots and star coins without even thinking about it.
That’s my favourite item.
You know what’d suck?
Playing against other people if everyone started with a flying hat and had it all the time.
IPY 2 is gonna be different. It’ll be cool – but different. A lot of that different will be of no concern to anyone who doesn’t want to engage in it – by design. But regardless, there will be a lot of different things for everyone to deal with. They’re not there because I thought purple was cool and decided to add a million purple cows in minoc. They’re there because I’ve thought about this for years and want to provide a sustainable, living breathing virtual world experience and I think UO is the perfect place to do it. They’re there because UO is lacking a lot of things that make a sustainable world.
MMOs evolve or they die. Classic UO was great, but if you launch it and leave it as it is without changing anything, people will come, have a great time for a little while, and then leave when they get bored. I’m not here to provide a six month long theme park for a bunch of PvPers. I want to build a world that’ll last.
I dont get the point of disagreeing. Its not like anyones asking for quests to be put in to REPLACE anything else. Nobody is asking for quests to BE the new norm. Its just a little something on the side that people can do if they want.
Nobody’s gonna be removing the spawns out of the dungeons, so I dont see the problem at all. Its just something else to keep people who want to do them occupied in game. If you dont like quests, dont do them. Carry on your UO playing how you always have, or however you enjoy it. But for people who want to do them, to break up the monotony or for whatever reason, they will be there.
I just dont see the downside.
http://i49.tinypic.com/19kqr8.jpg
http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13762
something for you to read az.
I think Faust is the entity that i hate most on this earth, please please make ipy a huge success to shut this arrogant fuck up.
Which one is that? I’m sure someone has given me the jist of it already. ;)
But Faust is Faust, right? There’ll be fifty of him once the shard launches… just like last time. That’s just how it is.
Ideally, I shouldn’t even get into discussions about people like that. It just brings them more attention, which is what they’re after. I figure ignoring that kind of crap and focusing on more important things is the route to go.
I’ve been following the production of this shard for some time now. I wasn’t able to play the first time around, due to my head being stuck up hybrids proverbial ass. It seems i missed a great experience and I will not be missing it again. Thankfully you’ve got your plans made and things should come full circle soon enough.
On a side note though, this guy “Faust” is a complete douchebag..”I’m right because i have 10 years experience” is utter nonsense. I for one have played 12 years now and to see a so-called veteran act like that is just so condescending. You are indeed correct about keeping out of his irrational ramblings and pressing forward in your new creation. Hopefully in due time we can put “Faust” in his place and make him shut the fuck up.
On another side note: I hope your plans are going accordingly, and I cannot wait to get in and see things for myself. Good luck.
Angra Mainyu.
http://www.freshtasting.com/
HMU rocks. Love that page.
faust was already here and banned. there is no point arguing with him because he just talks and talks and there is no shutting him up even when he is wrong 90% of the time.
I remember when I started posting on the internet. I was thirteen or so.
I’d argue about anything for hours. Days, even.
When people finally gave up, rolled their eyes, and left the computer to go pay attention to something more important… I’d feel quite good about myself. Triumphant. I won. Didn’t matter whether I was right or not.
So whenever I see someone who argues like that and won’t EVER stop talking no matter what until they get the final word… I just think back to myself when I was thirteen years old.
Is that someone I really need to spend my time arguing with?
http://www.gamertagpics.com/users/w/wa/warhawkBL187/ArguingOnTheInternet-Special%20Olympics.jpg
I hope everyone picked up on the most significant thing on this blog in weeks… Our first peek at some features of IPY 2.0:
purple cows in minoc
Azaroth says
January 25, 2010 at 5:41 pm
“I thought purple was cool and decided to add a million purple cows in minoc”
What do you guys think they drop?
Well they could be “exploding crows”, so maybe they drop explode pots?
As a smelly Canadian and an actual fan of gaylords on skates, I am thinking that your opinion is worth more than mine, Az -
Which is better… NHL 10 or NHL2K10? I played 2K10 for 72 hours straight this weekend, but it seemed waaaay too arcadey. Like the old NHL ’94 for Genesis, like in the movie Swingers. Which is cool, but, I’m lookin for a lil more realism in my sports games lately.
Anyone else interested in Canada or gaylords can respond as well. Thanks. Also Pavel Bure should never have retired he was a monster.
NHL 94 was the peak of video game hockey greatness.
sega’s mario lemieux hockey was the funnest hockey game that I have ever played.
Mainly because I knew a glitch where the goalie could not block the puck from the corner, so I would always win 50+ goals.
http://www.sega-16.com/review_images/527/10.gif
http://www.vizzed.com/vizzedboard/gen/screenshot/Mario%20Lemieux%20Hockey-2.png
*waits patiently* im so bored
lets start an ipy chant
how about an ipy 1.0 test shard?
We already have one of those.
Developers only. :(
welll what the ef. let us pvp >:
lets all imagine were playing ipy and be really descriptive about our actions.
I recall into wrong enterance and run down with my hally mage to the chokehold, i see a red name approaching and buff up with reactive armour cunning and strength pot, i precast harm.
azaroth appears and spawns purple cows
oh shit axel you died to a harpy.
I macro harvesting resources unattended from a boat while duping gold on an alternate account and calling RPers FAGGOTS to their faces… then wonder why the server died 6 months later and BEG Azaroth to make a new one.
That should be pretty accurate for most of the old IPY player base :)