Richard Garriot Argues Against Stagnant MMOG Design 175
The creator of Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa and well-known designer Richard Garriot spoke at the Develop Conference in Brighton, England on the subjects of stagnating MMOG design and the NCSoft deal with Sony. His commentary on Massive game design is fairly direct: "If you look at the vast majority of MMOs that has come out since Ultima Online and Everquest, you can look at the features and they are almost exactly the same. Even though the graphics have got better and the interface is much slicker, fundamentally the gameplay is unchanged. Worse yet, there are many things that have become standard that I look at and even though they are powerful enough to encourage the behavior of people obsessed with playing these games, I don't think they are the right way of building the future."
Some are differant (Score:1)
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This is the main problem which crops up when people say that the genre is stale and needs new ideas and so forth - the game which contains those ideas still needs to be satisfying t
Re:Some are differant (Score:4, Insightful)
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It all seems like the same formula we've been seeing for the last 10 years.
Fantasy/Medieval Based? Check.
Orcs, Humans and Elves? Check.
Two Factions at war with each other? Check.
Grinding? Check.
What I'd like to see is something really o
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The best comparison I can make is that it's Elite, but with real people running the galaxy, and you can't argue with that.
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The best comparison I can make is that it's Elite, but with real people running^W ruining the galaxy, and you can't argue with that.
There, fixed it for you.
Okay.... (Score:2)
I realize that this was an article that someone wrote based on this other guy talking, but there didn't seem to be much in the way of actual suggestions, just the observation that many MMO's have a lot of very similar qualities. Which, by the way, is true of just about every game genre that's ever existed.
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I'm not saying that everything that comes out of his mouth is gold -- but I am saying that to the extent that experience and success bring authority within a field, Garriot is most certainly an authority with regard to innovation and evolution in game design -- so making snide comments ("Hey awesome...") isn't necessarily
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I dunno. Ultima Online was rather broundbreaking in what it was trying to accomplish. Yes. A great deal of that was due to Ralph Koster (who made the original Star Wars Galaxy because Sony butchered it), but in general the concept had some lofty goals.
Wheras EQ, AC, and WoW have gone for the same technique for the Diku muds concept of "Kill things to earn loot and XP to kill bigger things to get even more loot and XP to kill even
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Victims of their own success (Score:1)
Re:Victims of their own success (Score:4, Informative)
When I read "You throw the rock through the nearby window, which shatters into hundreds of razor sharp pieces. The shards fly into the store, catching the many shoppers by surprise. Panic breaks out amongst them.", In my mind I can picture all of that happening without very little effort. But for a game developer to create a scene like that in a game, they'd have to do an incredible amount of work if they wanted it to look good. Things like physics to have the glass shatter realistically. Some sort of AI(or at least scripting) to have the people react appropriately. Not to mention wrapping it all up in some pretty graphics with high-rez textures on detailed and well animated models.
All the computing power in the world isn't going to make designing photo-realistic gameplay anywhere near as easy as it is to do it text based (that's not to say that good text based games are a piece of cake though).
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Wow that pile of crap looks photo realistic.... but its still just a pile of crap.
There are other things you can do to improve the graphics without moving an inch towards photorealism. Don't make each frame more realistic, make each frame more detailed.
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But still, once you put images on the screen, it shuts off the images in the player's mind. Reading a book is a way different experience than watching a movie, even if they're telling the exact same story.
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But - in your example - using text merely simplifies the depiction of the action. In your example - text isn't being used to te
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As for games which make good use of text-base
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Hence Nethack [nethack.org]. The most complex, most detailed, intricate, and damned hard RPG ever written. But oh, it's so worth it when you finally ascend. Nethack is my desert island video game. Assuming the desert island has electricity, I guess.
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That said, Nethack has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is about RPG MUDs, not single-player dungeon diggers.
Grinding bad? (Score:2, Interesting)
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I agree that grinding doesn't have to be the only way, it's just the easiest way, and easily understandable to any MMO gamer out there.
So what? I mean, you kind of come off as defending adding grinding to a game "because it's what people know." That's just claiming MMO's don't need innovation.
I'm sorry, I've played a lot of MMO's over the years and I am sick to death of mindless grinding. Bring on the innovation, make games fun again. For those that love grinding, you can play the games that are out there.
Let me also just say this. Whatever Blizzard developer came up with mote grinding ought to be taken out back and tarred and feathe
Yes, grinding is bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, to SOME extent grinding is necessary (not counting PvP which Guild Wars has down damned near perfectly) but when you start talking about hundreds of hours just to REACH the end game (let alone take part in end game activiti
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More elements of simulation needed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The challenge is making a game where everyone can "start a merchant empire, overthrow a king, or build a village". It's easy to do in single player games, but far more difficult when you've got millions of players. Here [getafirstlife.com] is the only one that comes close and the graphics are far better than Tabula Rasa. But even in that one, players complain that the outcomes are heavily influenced by the starting conditions.
You can't please everyone.
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One thing is the point of view. You can look at how the larger guilds do things - build guild towns, share major raiding areas, declare a hierarchy within both their own guild and amongst others, etc. You could easily compare this to merchant empires, kings and villages, but for some reason, people choose to not look at it that way unless the game tells you that's how to look at it.
MMORPG Disc [ign.com]
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Everyone can try to start an empire, but you have to fight the current empires for land.
If a bunch of people have a village somewhere, you have to kill everyone in it and burn it to the ground to start your own village there.
You want to start a merchant empire? Then you have to compete with the other 56739 persons who are currently trying the same thing on your server.
You're a basket weaver and need a shop to sell your baskets? Find a suitable place thats up for rent.
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but thats just my opinion.
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but thats just my opinion.
And maybe less accusations of a corrupt developer.
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Re:More elements of simulation needed (Score:5, Informative)
As for being player directed...sure. But its player directed the way the real world is. A few are at the top calling the shots, and the VAST majority work for them, or work for someone who works for them, or are otherwise relatively irrelevant pawns in the game, who have about as much impact on the direction the game takes as they have on the direction the real world takes.
Now don't get me wrong, its entirely -possible- to control a trade empire. Its just utterly unlikely of ever becoming a reality. If 250,000 people log in each day dreaming of controlling a galaxy spanning empire... well, 249,500 of them will never reach their goal. The nature of the power consolidation that is represented by an empire is such that it is controlled by a small number of people. And to be one of the lucky few you have to essentially out-compete nearly everyone else who wants that same empire.
I guess if all you really want is to be a cog in someone elses wheel you'll likely reach that goal in Eve.
And, that, is eve at its hypothetical best... Eve, in my opinion, has been tainted by the devs/gm's who also PLAY. Even when they aren't outright cheating to give their corporations an edge, its pretty much a given that they'll have an information advantage. (Is it merely a coincidence that a corporation/alliance the devs are known to be involved with has been a dominant force in the game?) I don't mind devs playing a pve mmog, but when the game developers are also a competing to win against their own subscribers it sets the stage for scandals... which Eve has seen plenty of.
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The problem is only 1 person per server can overthrow any particular king. So scripting a plot even like that for 2 dozen people requiring 2 or 3 people to script is not cost effective. Buildign a merchant empire (EVE) or a village (EQ2, UO) have been done.
Every server would develop differently. Developers wouldn't write static content, but would instead script dynamic content that would draw from the pres
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So what if only one guy can overthrow the king? In a system like I describe, someone else could then overthrow the PC who overthrew the king. Or an NPC could. Not everyone will ever get a chance to play out all the quests. Yo
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So what if only one guy can overthrow the king? In a system like I describe, someone else could then overthrow the PC who overthrew the king. Or an NPC could. Not everyone will ever get a chance to play out all the quests. Yo
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You see, I've been thinking about the best way to have certain scripted elements interact with the simulation and the NPC AI. You know that the AI in Oblivion had to be t
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Then watch, when you need to shape events using your game masters (Who are some
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he would need say somebody with Ice/Water magic)
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MMORPGs need more interactive elements and less static content. I would love to see a game where you could start a merchant empire, overthrow a king, or build a village, as well as delving in dungeons and hacking monsters.
So would I. So would a lot of people. The problem is that when you try to do these things, they don't scale well. To he who has the most time to spend online in a game goes the spoils. There is no way in hell an adult with a job will ever be able to compete with a high school kid or a college student who isn't bothering to attend classes. Even if you were able to limit the game to professionals with jobs, some people have good weeks and some people have bad weeks. Who wants to see a hard-won empire lost be
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That, or Animal Crossing: Wild World. Once you've shaken the fruit off all the trees, watered the flowers, dug up the fossils, and talked to your furry neighbors, you're pretty much done for the day. Or is AC too Tamagotchi for you?
Haven't played it. You need to be a full-time kid to keep up with all the games and systems out there. :) But that's exactly the sort of thing that could bubble over into broader appeal with the right presentation. Most geeks had been playing shooters for years but it wasn't until Goldeneye and Halo that the average gamer (i.e. playing on consoles, not computers) got a proper introduction to them. Myst was the kind of game that typically did not appeal to hardcore gamers as much as it appealed to non-gamer
Not just MMOs (Score:2)
Slightly change the wording and you pretty much sum up what's wrong with society nowadays. Stagnation is a problem across the globe. When was the last revolution we had? The seventies? Berlin wall? Maybe i'm being cynical.
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2) The Berlin wall thing was non-violent.
3) If you'd take a look at the (3rd) world, you'd see TONNES of revolutions regularly. You don't hear about them because they are poorly reported on and even then only briefly (flavour of the week syndrome).
4) You don't need revolutions for progress.
5) Progress IS happening at a startling rate, if you care to open your eyes.
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Civilized societies tend to become uncivilized. Power naturally tends to become more centralized over time, and since power corrupts civilization gets corrupted too. This is why Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." He meant every 20 years or so. Looking at the state of the union, we're far overdue.
well.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Not really. The grind is much less than before and experienced players know a number of techniques to make it fairly efficient. Compared to any other game, daoc PvE is practically a joke now. Organized groups can probably achieve RvR-ready toons in a few weeks with only 2 to 3 hours invested per a night. On classic server people can grow level 50s in under 10
UO=innovative and no one has gotten it right since (Score:4, Interesting)
For example: WoW is a terrible GRIND when you compare it to a game like UO, which had a much more robust setting to play in. Uo had crafting, gathering, hunting, quests, treasure hunting, boating in the seas, dungeons, role playing, houses, player cities and PVP (and that's just from 1996 to 2000 when I played) Those were all *MAJOR* aspects of the game. In WOW, the only major aspects are: PVP and Gear Grinding.
BOOORRRINNNGGG
Games like UO were designed to be open ended and non-linear, unlike WoW (which I played for 2 years, BTW). The UO developers might not have thought players would create an innovative city (such as Oasis on the Sonoma server) or build Fish Tanks in their towers using scraps of cloth left over from crafting and the fish you could catch from the sea... but due to the open ended design of the game, you COULD do creative things like this -- ALL over the place in UO.
That's what he is saying and I agree with him.
Re:UO=innovative and no one has gotten it right si (Score:4, Interesting)
I played UO for years and years, it still has a fond place in my heart. But you're complaining about an excess of grinding in WoW, and then lauding UO for its gathering and crafting systems? They were nothing but a grind, and even less engaging in general due to the extremely repetitive nature of the activity and general lack of threat (barring random PvP encounters if you chose to do it in Felucca, obviously). Similarly - hunting and treasure hunting form two of the primary quest archetypes of WoW also (and are, I would argue, better developed in the latter setting). "Dungeons" are much better developed in WoW (although the instancing does somewhat detract from the fun of that, from a certain point of view) and are the main setting of the gear grind in WoW.
In terms of actual game mechanics, I would suggest that WoW beats UO hands down - many of the concepts you laud in UO are not only present in WoW, but are refined and improved on. What's different is primarily the arrangement of the world, and the adjacent mechanics which aren't strictly related to "gameplay". WoW is very clearly a path from A to B, where A is level 1 and B is a pimped out level 70. You can take small diversions along the path (crafting, RP, etc), but basically they are all fitted in to support your primary profession of bashing creatures' faces in. UO, on the other hand, had a much broader scope: there was no fundamental need to go kill beasts of any sort (indeed, it was often not that profitable to do so) and you could build a skillset completely independent of your ability to smash faces and still have a complete, meaningful character. Coupled with the additional mechanics for interacting with the world (which rarely affected actual mechanics), you have a recipe for a much more broader, more realistic feeling world than that offered by the rather linear pathway in WoW and similar MMOs.
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I guess you didnt have uo assist and a macroing program.
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reality proves you wrong (Score:2)
Since most MMORPGers play WoW I would say the most people perfer the WoW style.
QED
OU was horrible. The gathering was painful, the ganking was completely out of control. Most people want to play the game and not have to worry about getting jumped. Who would of thunk it?
I am sure people who enjoy PVP would want to have there PvP interrupted by unexpec
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To each his own. You favor linear, I favor non-linear.
Your assumption that my post indicates I favour linear gameplay indicates you missed my point somewhat, as in general I fully agree with you - I probably played UO for two or three times as long as as I did WoW, and still wait impatiently for a more developed successor. My observation was that almost all the things you list (everything barring boating and housing) as being part of UO's "variety" are not only present in WoW, but better executed. The key point is what you said here:
I feel WOW did not have as much due to WOW's linear nature.
That's the key difference
Re:UO=innovative and no one has gotten it right si (Score:2)
WoW has all of those with the exception of housing (thus player cities) and boating. While I wo
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Re:UO=innovative and no one has gotten it right si (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you say the same in WoW? Is there any reason for a high level player to go to a low level crafter? Or how about low level players helping on high level quests?
This is grind. Players feel the need to do monotonous dull tasks to level up because doing the riskier task will kill them and halt their progression, or slow it down(exp penalty). In UO the only reason to grind was if your impatient, or a powergamer. There was never a need for it. In WoW, it's gameplay design. This is what Garriot is angry about. Grind is now considered to be a gameplay aspect that players "expect", and grind isn't fun.
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I hope that clears up what I meant.
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Not active treasure hunting that requires a dedication of skills (cartography, mining) as in UO, but numerous quests that equate to treasure hunting: finding pieces of maps, gathering and putting together clues or unraveling a mystery by performing certain steps. I would like to see something akin to the UO treasure hunting system introduced to WoW, but I do not feel it's absence detracts from WoW at all.
simple, really (Score:2)
Whoever comes up with a design concept that eliminates the constant grinding has a winner on his hands. Grinding is what:
* Makes only freaks with nothing else to do reach the top levels/weapons/armours/etc
* Put off lots and lots of casual players who play to get away from work and stupid job
* Makes the whole thing so boring and repetitive
Find something to replace grinding as the core gameplay componen
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Allowing player-created content is all well and good, but it's not something you can rely on if you intend to collect a monthly fee. Most people won't pay a monthly fee if they're expected to do all the work.
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Very likely, autogenerated, random content is the only way to do this, so instead of writing quests you'd write quest generators. Stuff like that. Plus player interaction. SL is too far to be a game, but in almost all MMORPGs, the world is just too static. Why can't the players build a village, or a city? In AO, you can rent a flat. Why not have the cities expand if they are filled? Why c
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I dunno, plot?
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The critical part is funding, and then the prodigous task of implementation.
I can come up with a design concept that keeps people playing for years on end while breaking from the MMO grind:
Starcraft
Counter-strike
Consider the massive popularity of the two games, and the relatively small amount of updates placed on these games. If converted into an MMO format while keeping the core gameplay with the added bonus of consistent update content, then these games could be even more popu
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I don't think EVE's the answer. If anything, it is a first, cautious step into the right direction.
Original? Do you forget Anarcy Online? (Score:2)
Tabula Rising isn't groundbreaking. It's another stab with small variations of games that have already been done. Whether or not it gets done better remains to be seen.
Vanguard and SOE (Score:2)
"Many things"? (Score:2)
The article mentions one. That's it.
I would have thought that "many" qualifies as at least 3 or 4.
Pirates of the Burning Sea (Score:2)
No Joke! (Score:2)
The genre *is* changing (Score:2)
Horizons, while still a grind, was an example of the latter, changing the focus of the game from "improve self" to "improve world".
For an example of an MMO that's definitely not built on the EQ design, check out Empire of Sports [empireofsports.com]. Disclaimer: I work there. Lots of neat ideas in the game, focused on (duh) sports, physiology, metabolism, etc.
The industry
Instance Combat (Score:2)
Disclaimer: I am not a regular MMORPG gamer, and have not seriously played one since the Planetside days.
IMHO the big problem with MMOGs is grinding. That being said I don't think getting rid of levels or skill advancements is necessarily a good idea.
There needs to be a move towards regarding grinding as a specialization, as opposed to a generic level-up. I think Planetside had this down, and to this day I still regard it as the best MMOG I've ever played. It's too bad the expansion fuxed it and its lac
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As you play, you then start making yourself more versitile and effective. I went the sniper rout
Well THERE'S your problem (Score:2)
I have greatly admired Richard since I started playing Ultima IV in the early 80's. The Ultima series was hands-down the best RPG ever IMO. If I could pry myself away from WoW, I'd go back and play every one of them again. I highly respect his vision of games and the ideals he tries to incorporate into them. I especially admire how he and his team put the players' experience before everything else.
That said I think he is too much an
All Hail Lord British (Score:2)
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Re:Very perceptive Richard (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I get it... this is the obligatory Richard-Garriot-Sucks thread. I would think it would be further down. My bad.
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Oh, I get it... this is the obligatory Richard-Garriot-Sucks thread. I would think it would be further down. My bad.
I don't really care one way or the other about Garriot. He's made some games that a lot of people liked. So have a lot of others. It's one thing to say that everyone is getting it wrong (although by WoW's numbers you wouldn't think they're terribly off the mark), it's quite another to build a game that people like better. I know he's working on a game that he thinks is different and better, but again, so have many others. Until he releases the game to wild success, we won't know if he's right or wrong
Re:Very perceptive Richard (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Very perceptive Richard (Score:5, Informative)
Also, he left Origin in 2000 and ostensibly started conceptualizing Tabula Rasa shortly thereafter.
That's a 3D Realms-style dry spell, punctuated with his occassional 'massmogs are niche/stagnant/whatever' articles.
Granted, TR will almost certainly hit shelves before DNF, but 3DRealms already had a Vaporware Lifetime Achievement award after 7 years. Surely he's due some 'pipe down until you ship' sentiment.
The other sticking point is that anyone who's followed the genre for more than a couple years knows the popular games are stagnating to a degree. And anyone who has any appreciable knowledge of the genre knows they've been stuck for more than 10 years -- all the most popular games are still pretty much derivatives of Diku, itself not a very big step away from D&D. One would more accurately say that massmogs have been largely stagnant since the first bastard child of Gygax and Bartle.
And yet the subtle change between EQ's level grind and WoW's level grind had a much larger practical impact on Diku play than the 'moral choices' seen thus far in Tabula Rasa. Granted, TR's still beta, but the system itself looks like a more slight update to faction mechanics than WoW's update to quest mechanics. So calling everyone onto the carpet while your own contribution is still minor compared to theirs, is ill-advised.
However, I do grant Garriott any and all respect for whatever role he had in UO releasing as a Koster-land. Even if he merely hired the guy who actually had good ideas, that's worth some points. Unfortunately, TR's less ambitious design does make it look like he only green-lit such a bold design because he didn't know any different.
Also, the bonus points one gets for 'leaving a comfy job' are significantly diminished when you're already fabulously wealthy.
I think the rule is: first personal castle takes half and extraplanetary property takes the other half.
Any subsequent castles or russian rovers make him a valid target of scorn if he ever doesn't have his own company.
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Yes
Games aren't really stagnating, your just bored with them. There is a difference.
Re:Very perceptive Richard (Score:4, Insightful)
No-one said they weren't fun, just that the design is stagnant.
In general, you do have a great point: Why should anyway care that some crotchety bastards think the genre is stagnant, when more people than ever are paying $15/mo to play a Diku?
It's similar to the old:
If five hundred thousand people are happily playing EQ, why would you think anything's wrong with the design?
The answer to that, of course, is nine million people happily playing WoW.
When design stagnates, it doesn't mean no-one's having fun. It just means that if the next game is the same, it can't grow the market.
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You can level the sa
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I don't think the FPS MMO market is ever going to be a smashing success, because you can only shoot so many bad guys and have so many weapons before it gets old.
Anarcy Online in its current form is a better game than TR. It was a better game back when it was first released. The biggest problem with AO is the fact that so many losers think it is cool to create a female toon, strip down to nothing
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If *that* is the biggest AO problem, I need to take a new look at it. Last time I played it, the biggest problem was that the lame interface and lag made it an unplayable mess, plus animation that made characters look like marionettes without joints. This on a hardware that ran WoW and Lord of the Rings Online without
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Oh, wait, Meridian 59... I mean, The Realm Online. I mean, Neverwinter Nights...
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Truly a British icon
Actually, he did die once:
http://www.aschulze.net/ultima/stories9/beta.htm [aschulze.net]
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Replying to your categories:
Improving Combat
I think the technical problem can be dealt with, either by clever programming or by brute force. Eventually, we WILL all have gigabit pipes into our houses.
But even if you leave it as mostly hack'n'slash, there are other things you can do beyond Warcraft. I play Nexus TK, and I did play a Warcraft trial for 10 days, but the combat was just too slow and simplistic. And I can say "simplistic" despite that Nexus is a 2D game played on a grid -- meaning that whil