I've heard this bandied about plenty of times, in threads such as this one from Waterthread.org, how the narrative can mean life or death to a players sense of immersion in a game. How much are the developers expected to to move teh storyline along for players, and how much needs to come from the players themselves?

The reason narrative/lore is so important in a MMOG is because of the persistance of the world, and a need to give the players a reason to actually want to exist there. Quake is fun and all, but I certainly wouldn't want to live there.

Devs do many things to provide the players with a reason to play, ranging from monthly updates as part of an overarching story (AC1, AC2) to extremely involved backstory and lore (EQ, SB, DAoC). But these methods mostly all involve interaction between the game and the player only. What about interactions between players themselves? How do you encourage that as part of the games narrative, and is there even a reason to do so?

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*mutter*

*mutter more*

note to self, make sure to correct tags when posting this on site.

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The problem with player driven narrative is that it usually involves player-vs-player (PvP) interaction to make it meaningful. What good is it for guild A to be enemies with guild B if they cannot do anything with their eminity? PvP narrative is never static. Players change, guilds come and go, and the game changes all affect how people interact in and out of game. (cont'd)

Oops, time to go home early!

Even the mundane can be beautiful.

Driving in to work this morning, I got to see some of Nature's own special beauty.

If you didn't already know, the Chicagoland area received a late April Fool's Day joke this past weekend. On Sunday night, it started snowing and by Monday morning, we had a nice sloppy 4" inches of wet snow on the ground. Then Monday and early Tuesday were misty, damp days hovering right around freezing. Ah! Spring in Chicagoland!

All that dampness and rain coated the trees in a layer of ice, and froze the snow into a hard shell covering my already green grass. Except for the date, it felt (to me at least), more like a late fall day instead of spring.

This morning though was beautiful. I drive east on my way to work in the mornings, and today the clouds are gone and the sky is a clear, delicate shade of blue. The sun is shining and the trees! Oh man, the trees looked like they were made out of crystal. Lining the road, with the sun shining from behind them, it was like the tips of the branches were made of white fire. A willow tree, just starting to bud, looked like gems were stung along it's branches.

It's only the coating of ice left over from the snow, but still... Seeing that this morning made me wish I carried a camera with me, even a little disposible one, to try to capture what I say, however imperfectly I saved it.

But as an exercise of memory, today is supposed to be in the 40s, with the sun shining brightly, so the transcient beauty will no doubt be lost before my drive home. Drops of water were already falling from the branches, proving how fleeting life is.

"I'm going to beat on your monkey skull until it rings like a Chinese gong!"

Quote from some movie. No idea what one, I heard it on the radio station I listen to in the car. I just thought it was funny as hell, and the quote has been floating around inside my head for the last few days.

Things I want to write about

A mini review of SB for my site. For the 1 person that reads it other than myself.

Finish my story that I keep telling myself to write. I procrastinate - badly.

"Game narrative" in MMOGs (partly culled from waterthread) and how message board interaction influences this, particularly in a FFA or PvP environment. Gods, that sentence sounds like something for a thesis or term paper.

Wondering if I dared to install DW on my work laptop (if it can even handle running the program) and updating my site a bit more regularly while at "work."

Completing the guild history I started for my guild's site, so that we can finally get that posted, and sending the updates to our CoC and Joining pages to get those corrected.

I think I really have got to write something about dealing with the help desk here at this client... tier 1 are utter morons, tier 2 couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a wet paperbag.

Sketching out a new skin layout for the guild site. I've learned so much more since I did that last October (sheesh, it's been that long already?!), and I'd like to try a few other techniques.