Pet Dyes

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not good at blogging.

Quite out of the blue the developers wanted to survey people on pet dyes. This was apparently part of the Stygian Abyss expansion, yet did not come out during open beta even though it was implemented. We were also informed that closed beta testers had been polled on this potentially explosive content addition, yet not a single one posted about it once the NDA was lifted.

There was not any magic behind it, it was straight pet dying. Same as you could with a dye tub on test center except the number of colors were restricted. You were shown a Dragon, Giant Beetle and Llama to base your judgment on. Besides Trammel, the most repeated put down I think there is for UO is the bright colors. It is often mentioned in discussions I see in various forums.

I was opposed to this. Having a dozen different color Dragons is going to just look terrible. Then there are the ~80 other creatures in the game you will get to dye. I can imagine a Harrower with 9 different color Greater Dragons on it and it is just horrid.

Apparently I was not alone in this assessment. A seemingly crushing amount of people were opposed to this. Yet the developers claimed that only 40% were opposed. Do you really want to tick off 40% of your player base over something that is just pet dyes? I think the other 60% will get along just fine without pink Dragons.

I posted earlier today that the developers should consider shelving this addition. It was detracting focus from the expansion which is just over a week away. Do they really want to tie such a blemish to their first expansion in literally 3 years? A little while later it was announced that they were doing just that. They are also going to consider doing more than just adding dye tubs for pets.

Promoting Stygian Abyss

I updated the Wikipedia page on the Stygian Abyss expansion. While it could be considered poor form to make Wikipedia articles on your own products, I think it would be a good idea for companies to fill out pages with the general information if it isn't already there. It is free advertising after all. And where do people usually go when they want to learn about something? Oh yeah, the Wikipedia page on your program which listed the publisher and a link to your home page. =/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online:_Stygian_Abyss

Makin' A Game

Wow, one whole month without a post.

For a very long time I have had many, many ideas on games I would like to make. Well I am finally going to do it. The other night I had new revelations on how to deal with certain problems. For example the game I am going to be making is a MMO and the single biggest issue was how to prevent new players from being utterly crushed by existing ones without adding in arbitrary restrictions, such as anyone level 50 can only attack down to level 40.

I have half a dozen solid ideas which throw off normal MMO conventions. These ideas I have not seen anywhere in the market I am targeting. In fact the entire game premise is something I've not seen done yet.

Of course I won't be able to make this game on my own. Well I could, but it would take much too long. I am going to have to hire some people and form a real company. No idea what to call it yet.

The initial team is only going to consist of 3-5 people. Of course there is myself who will be doing a lot of the design and programming. I'll need to find a writer, server architect, and up to two other programmers. Later on I expect to bring on someone to do interface design, graphic design and customer relations. I'm not exactly sure how to go about finding these people yet. With the economy the way it is I'm sure there are tons out there who would be interested in doing something like this.

I'm sure over the coming weeks I'll have a lot more to post on this..........if I get to it.

Online Distribution

Blizzard may be patching every day but I am certainly not posting that quickly.

Recently there was an uproar in the UO community about how Stygian Abyss is going to be distributed online online. In other words, it will not be sold in retail stores. Some UO players feel this hurts the game due to a lack of shelf presence. What they do not realize is that the video game business is at a point now where having a box on the shelf no longer equals game success.

This has been further reinforced this week by Sony's and Microsoft's commitments to online publishing. Sony has gone so far as to have no physical media at all in their latest handheld, the PSP-GO. Until very recently Eve Online was online distributed via online sales. They were growing subscriptions the entire time, up to around 400,000 now I think.

The industry has evolved, just as nearly everything does. Anyone heard of a thing called newspapers? They are in big trouble because most people get their news through the internet. It is faster, cheaper and more convenient. Just as downloading a video game can be.

Whether the Stygian Abyss expansion is a success depends on the content. Unless they decide to release a Nintendo Wii version, which then a box on the shelf would make a difference.

Blizzard Publishing Every Day

I stumbled across a link to some WOW publish notes. It appears that Blizzard is now pushing out fixes virtually every day. And it isn't just one or two critical things needing fixing, it can be a dozen of fixes. They must feel very confident about their publishing process to be able to do it every day. Well with a game that has 12 million people playing, I guess you need to ramp up publishing to that speed.

On the subject of Blizzard, it appears they are over the "we have how many subscribers?" shock and are getting down to business. They were making so much profit per year but were not working on anything. Now they have Starcraft II, Diablo III and a secret MMO project all in the works. Plus with all that money coming in they have an unlimited amount of time to polish their games. These titles will probably be the most refined in the history of video games. Starcraft II likely would have been released up to a year or more ago from a publisher such as EA who likes to rush things out the door (Warhammer Online). As long as World of Warcraft keeps going, in four or five years Blizzard could be a one studio game producing powerhouse. Their no longer restricted in terms of time and money with a gravy train such as WOW under their belt. But who knows how long that will last.

Plus what is up with taking 18 months for an expansion? They should be able to knock that down to a yearly release. As time goes on players are going to get more and more bored. With no news on an expansion yet it doesn't sound like they'll have one ready. Who knows, maybe it will be a big surprise.

I need to post something

I am so bad at this. I need to try and post more often.

So what should I post about? I guess I should comment about Darkfall. The game is in an obvious downward spiral. The shop to purchase the game has finally been opened for several days, perhaps permanently. I don't play the game so I have no idea what the population situation is, but with the developers sticking with a one server implementation, it appears they have exhausted their backlog of players iching to play. That certainly does not bode well if the amount of people quitting is as estimated.

Darkfall promised a lot and has utterly failed in almost every field a MMO can possible fail in. Poor user interface, bad lag and disconnections, a multiple of hacks, unending amounts of exploits, substandard graphics, no community management, a website with the latest announcements about beta, no marketing, unfun PvM, sparse PvP, unbalanced mechanics favoring huge numbers and alliances, etc. It just goes on and on.

Darkfall is in such bad shape that quite possibly it could end up shutting down by the end of the year. Aside from some current die-hard players, no one has any faith in the future of the game. People who cite potential are only fooling themselves. Everything has potential. UO has potential. Shadowbane had potential. Potential is only worth something if it can be utilized, which Aventurine has demonstrated an inability to access. They can't even update the main website for the game after 3 months of release. Darkfall is likely to go down as the worse MMO in history unless by some miracle the game can be salvaged.

Suspended from Darkfall's Forum

I've been meaning to write something about Darkfall for a while. Well today a review came out that gave the game a 2 out of 10. That is pretty bad. Anyway, I post on the Darkfall forum asking if this is the first review of Darkfall and get suspended for it. Here is what I recieved:

Dear JC the Builder,

You have received an infraction at Darkfall Forums.

Reason: THREE - You may not excessively communicate the same idea, phrase, or create spam within the community; you may not create any thread or post for the sole purpose of causing unrest in the community; you may not cause any sort of disturbance within a thread with the intent of ruining it; and you may not make one line posts such as IBTL, IBTB, BUMP, etc. Moderators are at their full discretion to enforce the spirit of this rule.
-------
Please refrain from trolling, thank you.
-------

This infraction is worth 10 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

Original Post:
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?p=3345212

Quote:

Can someone link to another review of Darkfall? I am having trouble finding any. Does this mean the first official review of Darkfall by a gaming website gave it a 2 out of 10? That is not good.

All the best,
Darkfall Forums

That was almost immediately after I posted it. Aventurine appears to be in full damage control mode. Their developer Tasos wrote a rebuttal almost as long as the review itself. He claims that the reviewer spent almost no time in the game. No play session lasted more then a few minutes. Eurogamer replied saying the reviewer spent around 9 hours. I'm sure more details will come out soon.

Someone replied to my post saying there is one on MMORPG.com. But there isn't, the closest is an opinion piece. No review with a score. After almost a full page of responses later, no one has replied to that person and stated this. The vast majority of replies are just remarks dispariging the reviewer and investigative posts of his MySpace or other reviews. I think this event shows the current Darkfall community in its true light. And that light isn't very bright at all.

More on a New UO Client

Continuing on with what I posted yesterday, I know there would be a couple issues trying to graft a 3d engine on the current UO world. A real one, not the one we saw with 3rd Dawn. Perhaps more than just a few problems too........

But I don't see anything that would outright prohibit it. The world might need a bit of changing so it isn't full of flat forests with trees laid out in unusually symmetric patterns. Perhaps the 1st person would only be available inside dungeons and buildings. I see this type of upgrade as the easier of two paths to restart the game. The other being a huge effort to bring 1997 isometric graphics to 2009, not 2001 which Kingdom Reborn tried to do. Even then, if that was the only upgrade performed the developers would need to combine it will a huge amount of game play enhancements in the all realms: PvM, PvP, sailing, housing, crafting, etc. Every single system would need a new and involved feature.

For UO to reverse its decline, you need something compelling to draw the attention of every MMO player out there. There needs to be something enticing them to at least give UO another 14 day trial. It all needs to go in simultaneously so when you login you see lots of other people playing with you.

The Stygian Abyss has the potential to do this. That is quite a big if there though, considering we have little idea of what is going on. At the moment it sounds like an average UO expansion. New dungeon(s), a couple new skills, a new system to revive crafting, etc. That is not going to cut it by a long shot. It might help maintain the status quo, but it is unlikely to turn subscriptions around.

As far as expansions go, the last two sucked. The most recent Mondain's Legacy was billed as a return to the game's "roots". Virtually everything about it failed. Recipes are nothing more than an one time annoyance, crafting quests in Heartwood are all "make x and have a 0.01% chance of getting a good drop", and the whole elf thing was just a marketing ploy to begin with. It didn't really "expand" the game at all. The same thing with Samurai Empire. New lands and two new skills which had a pitiful amount of abilities. It is no wonder players have lost interest in UO over the past 6 years. The game has gotten absolutely stagnate in terms of content additions.

If you go look back at the patch notes from 1999, 2000, and 2001 it appears they are doing stuff every single month. Not only that, but there was already so much stuff to do that you didn't hang off of every publish. It just added to your list or fixed stuff. In the past 2 years the majority of publishes have been to either fix/launch the Kingdom Reborn client or event related. The problem with events is they are short term.

I think I got a little off track in this post. I'll just end it here and try again another time.

UO Client Trailers

Here is a trailer for a new UO client I have thought up. If I had the patience, time and knowledge on how to do this, I think it would look really great. But I have none of those so you will just have to pull out your imagination and work with me.

So there is an ancient looking book which opens up to the first page. It shows a screenshot of a player sitting in a small house. There is a chair and a table. Maybe an empty bookcase. There is also a date, 1997, at the heading of the page. The page then turns to 1998. A few decorative items are added to the house. Perhaps some furniture introduced with The Second Age expansion. Do you see the theme?

As this is going on there is a narrator explaining what is going on. He is saying something like "For over a decade, Ultima Online has been growing and expanding....." I've not put a lot of thought into what the narrator says. So just know that it is there. Use your imagination and put words in his mouth. He won't mind.

So the pages keep turning. 1999, 2000. Maybe the leaves on the trees outside die showing that the changover to Trammel. As the years go on, two or three items are added to the house showing the growth of the game. When you arrive in 2008 it is filled with stuff. Then the announcer says something like "a lot has changed, but none more so than what is to come". The page turns once more to 2009.

You are greeted with a much larger image. It looks pretty much the same though. But something is different. The graphics are sharper and more clear. The page notes that the resolution is in 1280x720. The screen then zooms in on various parts to showcase the new high definition graphics. It looks exactly the same as the 2D client except much better. It is on par with what you see in Blizzard's Starcraft II and Diablo III screenshots. There is a fireplace going showcasing the new lightning effects.

The screen zooms back out to standard view. Now players would probably be very happy with this. It looks like an isometric game released in 2009. But then the narrator brings out the big twist! He rotates the camera angle. "For the first time you can now see all angles of the game world". You get to see the back of a house for the first time. There is full rotation, 360 degrees. This is it, the big new improvement for the client. The new hook to draw people in. You can zoom and rotate the camera. It looks spectacular. Everything UO players have been waiting for 10 years.

The screen begins to fade. But the narrator tells it to stop. He's not done yet. You have to see the best part. The screen snaps back to standard view. It starts to zoom in you think. But it is not the same this time. It goes over the shoulder of the avatar. Could it be? Yes it is! First person view. You are now staring at the desk, where you were writing. You look up at a painting on the wall. It is so big. It then switches to 3rd person over the shoulder view and whips around. You see a closeup of the avatar's face. It has an actual expression. Then the door opens behind into a bright light. The narrator says something like, "take your first step into the new world". End trailer.

First things first, I think up until the rotatable camera part could be applied to the upcoming Stygian Abyss client. A trailer similar to that would be absolutely killer as long as the client is solid.

As for the rest, you are probably wondering how that can all be done. It has been stated that camera rotation would be impossible for UO. It is as the client is being designed. For some reason the developers wanted to stick with sprites. Unfortunately that means you are limited to one field of view. I believe that switching to polygon models would have been possible. There may have been a tiny reduction in art quality, but what you would gain (camera rotation and 1st/3rd person perspectives) would make up for it. Plus all the graphics are being redone in high definition polygon models. So the walls of the house, the desk, the chair, the avatar, etc are all polygons. I would really like to see some comparisons of UO creatures done in polygons to see how much of a difference there would be.

The reason Kingdom Reborn was shunned was because it changed the look of the game. In my dreamt-up client you will be virtually unable to notice a difference in "classic" mode. You have the exact same perspective and all the art is the same, except in higher quality. You can take advantage of 1st person or rotating the camera if you wish. Or you could turn off those features and play UO the same way you did back in 1997.

If Mythic is serious about having UO have a place in the MMO marketplace they need to one of two things. Either bring the client up to Diablo III and Starcraft II art quality or add a 1st/3rd person perspective. Kingdom Reborn was a failure from the very start because it was no where near close to that.

One more trailer idea I had was for the new 1st person perspective. It opens with you traveling through an iconic UO dungeon such as the entrance of Deciet or maybe adventuring into the Wrong Troll room. The narrator is talking to you saying things like "Doesn't this place seem familiar? Have you been here before?" Chances are that person has if they played an MMO other than World of Warcraft. The trailer just ends with a shot of the UO symbol. Something like that would drive interest in UO to something unseen in a decade.

Youtube Revenue Solutions

I read about how Google was losing a ton of money on Youtube. Just a few ideas I had on how they could try and stop that.

Implement Buffering - When you click to load a Youtube video, it currently loads the whole thing. If you visit a page that has it set to auto-play and you won't want to watch, you click pause. But the entire video still loads. That is a ton of bandwidth wasted. Sometimes you also begin to watch a movie and decide it isn't worth watching the entire way through. Youtube should implement buffering such as Hulu and some of the Asian video providers do. It only loads a certain amount and then stops. The bandwidth and subsequent cost savings could be huge. The developers could even add a feature to the menu bar where you can load the entire video if you wish, but buffering is on by default.

Video Subscriptions - This may not be a huge money maker, but I'm sure there are at least a few people out there who would like to sell their videos to people. Youtube could have a program where they manage all that for you. All you handle is making the videos and driving the subscribers. Youtube handles the rest from payments to video access.

HD Embedding - Do you run a website and want to host videos on it? Well Youtube could stream HD content right to your website without a watermark. You just pay either per view or for bandwidth. Currently HD embedding is possible on external websites, but is not an official supported feature.

Advertising Over Time - At the moment the advertisements that appear beside videos stay there no longer how long you are watching. On a non-video website you are always switching pages and thus viewing an array of ads. Youtube could swap out banner ads every minute or so to increase the amount shown.

I had two or three more ideas but unfortunately appear to have forgotten them when I thinking about it last week. My own fault I suppose for taking so long to write this post.

Raising the Lower Reagent Cost

So I'm doing a Lord Oaks champion spawn last night with our guild. It gets to second second stage. I start summoning Earth Elementals to deal with the wisps. There isn't much going on so I start thinking about the act of summoning an Earth Elemental and how it is funny to create something out of nothing (because I have 100% Lower Reagent Cost, it takes not reagents to cast any Magery spells). I jump to thinking that it might be an idea to change Lower Reagent Cost to be less effective on higher level Magery spells.

You see, ever since LRC (the abbreviation for Lower Reagent Cost) was introduced 6 years ago with the Age of Shadows expansions, it has been a disease on the game. When the people who designed item properties did so, they expected that it would be impossible for players to get 100% of anything. They even let you get as higher Lower Mana Cost as you want. If a cap was never introduced, we could be casting spells using no mana today!

So getting 100% LRC was probably thought to be virtually impossible. And if you did manage it you would be sacrificing other properties in the process. But here we are today where neither has proven true. Virtually every magic caster runs around with 100% LRC and every other important property.

Over time a few developers have expressed opinions that LRC needs to be dealt with. Reagent use was supposed to be a key balancing factor in casting magic spells. It prevented players from fighting indefinitely and more importantly acted as a gold sink due to only being able to acquire reagents from NPC vendors. But, of course, players have gotten so used to running around with no worries that any time it is brought up there is a huge backlash.

Well back to my idea. What if higher level spells required reagents? For example you need 2 reagents to cast an 8th circle Magery spell. None of the 8th circle spells are vital. You can still use your full array of healing and attacking abilities even if you run out of reagents. You just can't resurrect other players, summon elementals or cast Earthquake. All of which are very powerful spells and should require physical items to pull off. This system can also be applied to 7th circle, requiring 2 reagents or 1 reagent. Then 6th circle would be 1 reagent. For example. If you try to cast Resurrection under this system it would randomly select 2 reagents you must have and use.

I haven't seen this type of solution proposed for balancing LRC before. It could also be expanded to high skill Necromancy spells. I think this proposal could be sold to the general player base if it was thoroughly explained how the removal of reagents has negatively impacted the game.

Sound is so Complicated

Special Note: This isn't very interesting. I wouldn't read this post unless you are wondering how to create a setup where you can record sound from a specific game without voice chat being included from Teamspeak/Ventrilo.

I've been working for a couple weeks to get the sound settings on my computer to a place where I can do what I want, which is basically record game sound without voice chat. Yesterday I finally got it down.

Before this all got started I had to have my regular headset and then used some iPod earbuds to listen to both computers at the same time. Main computer ran UO, laptop ran Ventrilo. It was not ideal at all. For one, the headphones were pressing against the ear buds and causing ear aches which were annoying. I also had to reach for the laptop keyboard every time I wanted to talk in voice chat.

To begin I tried various means to route the sound from my main computer to a laptop and then to my headset. I bought a cable to plug into the headphone socket and pipe all sound to the microphone socket. But that wouldn't work because then all my UO sound is going to broadcast in voice chat. So I bought a splitter to bypass connecting to the laptop. But when I had both computer on there was terrible static. I've been informed it has to do with the different groundings and I could have purchased a device to eliminate that. So the setup could have worked but I'm glad it didn't.

So then I look into methods of streaming sound over my network. I am able to use VLC to stream a movie, but can't find any method to do just computer sound. Plus there is a terrible delay which I'm sure there is a way to correct with some buffering options. But I can't buffer game actions so everything would be out of sync.

Then I read about more methods and decide to look into purchasing a sound card. Currently I was using the motherboard sound jacks. I hop on to Newegg and see the selection. I notice some Audigy cards and suddenly remember I have a computer with a sound card in it. The computer is about 8 years old so I didn't think the card would be compatible. I thought my computer (Dell Vostro 200) only had PCI-Express slots. Which was pretty silly of me because I bought a PCI wireless adapter and installed it when I bought the thing. Anyway, I rip out (literally, it was jammed in there) the sound card from the old computer, which turned out to be an Audigy 2 Platinum or something, and installed it into my current one. Their still updating drivers for it. When I downloaded it the last update was March 9.

Finally it looks like I'm getting somewhere. So I setup Ventrilo to use the sound card and Ultima Online ends using the motherboard jacks. Here I run into another problem, how do I listen to both at the same time? Then I remember the splitter and give it a second try. At the time I thought the static was from the laptop, because I do get a little bit normally. There was none. Hurray!

So now I can record videos with all game sounds while excluding voice chat. In addition the sound card makes me sound a lot clearer. I'll also probably see a boost in audio quality for newer games. UO shows no noticeable difference from either on-board or from the dedicated sound card, as I would expect from a 14 year old game.

Faction Rankings Analyzer

I've got the idea now to make a web application which would harvest and display all types of interesting statistics related to UO factions. Plus I would be able to eliminate all of the ridiculous point amounts some Asian players have run up. Then we would be able to see the real stats once again, plus so much more like which faction has the most players and graphs on how member counts fluctuate.

I'm probably going to get on this very soon because each day that goes by is another day of statistics lost.

Making Videos & Drafting Posts

I've never been a screenshot person. I've played UO so long but have hardly any. What I am discovering though is videos are more my forte.

Some people have probably seen my channels on Veoh and Youtube. In the past year I've created and uploaded about 50 UO related videos. There are about 3 dozen more sitting on my hard drive which I have to get to some time.

I find it a lot of fun making them. At the same time I learn a lot about video (and now audio) editing. Plus, this creates a record of things I do along with big fights. The other day I noticed that my videos on Youtube have been viewed over 27,000 times. Combine that with Veoh and that is a lot of hits. (I don't know the total because Veoh does not list that anywhere)

Very recently I decided to start doing narrated videos. My first being a historical tour of the Tower I placed when Trammel opened up.

JC's Tower Tour [Part 1]
JC's Tower Tour [Part 2]

Originally I was using Veoh mostly due to the quality of the video. But now Youtube offers HD consistently and does not have many of Veoh's drawbacks (annoying advertisements, annoying related videos taking up the whole page, annoying removal of nice features for me to use).

Another narrated video I plan on making soon is one where I explore the history of UO houses I've owned/used. There is a lot of interesting stories there to tell.

Finally, there are a couple blog posts currently in draft form. One in particular I hope to get posted soon is about a design for a 7th Champion Spawn type. This is an idea I've been kicking around since they first introduced the whole system.

iPhone for Gaming

I see a lot of people commenting how the iPhone is held back from having great games because it is touch screen only. Why doesn't a company make an add-on which will give you a D-pad and a couple buttons. If they manage the cost of $10 or maybe even $20, then developers could just say you need this addon to play the game. Problem solved.

Equipment Models

My thoughts on Tabula Rasa will have to wait as I wish to write about something else at the moment: equipment.

In any massively multiplayer online game that I know of, there is equipment. While it is just one part of the overall game, so many other parts depend on or influence it. From loot drops to crafting to trade to player progression, etc. Lets look at different ways equipment is implemented.

In World of Warcraft (from what I read on wowwiki), equipment does not break. Even when its durability reaches 0 it just goes into a state where it provides not benefits. Your items stay with you always when you die. The only time you upgrade is when you find something better.

In Eve Online your equipment is your ship and modules. It never wears out with use. You can freely swap out anything you want. If you die you drop it all. The ship is destroyed along with half your modules. The other half drop to your corpse. You are constantly acquiring new ships and modules to replenish.

In Ultima Online's past your equipment wore out with use. You could get equipment repaired but the maximum effectiveness dropped a little. Eventually you must replace everything. If you died then you lost it (unless you managed to loot it back). You had to constantly be acquiring new equipment to keep your current level.

In Ultima Online today there are significant changes. Your equipment still wears out but you can cheaply boost it's life span indefinitely. Equipment also lasts much, much longer between repairs. Item insurance (fixed at 600 gold per item) means you get to keep all your items for relatively little cost. Thus the only thing you go after is better equipment or powder to keep up your current set.

World of Warcraft's equipment model depends on new pieces to be constantly introduced to the game in order to keep things interesting. New items are usually very difficult to obtain at first. Later on the difficulty is toned down and in turn the equipment becomes more common. Eventually giving way to new and better stuff. One example of this is the tiered armor sets introduced each season. They are even numbered so you know which are the latest and greatest. Currently up to number 8.


World of Warcraft's model is to consistantly introduced new equipment and obsolete older pieces.

Eve Online's equipment model depends of players dying and needing new items. New equipment is introduced into the game, but it usually serves a specific purpose and does not replace currently usefulness. While there are new "tiers" (referred to as Tech II, and recently Tech III) , they are much more expensive than base items. And as mentioned earlier, when you die you lose it all. Thus, no equipment is made obsolete because cheap models and ships are useful in their own situations.

Eve Online's model is to periodically introduce new equipment which expands into completely new areas or add slightly more powerful modules which are more signficatly more costly than originals.

Ultima Online's equipment model was tied most closely with real life. As was what Richard Garriott intended which his design. Players acquired items, used them, wore them out or lost them and got new equipment. The level of your equipment depended on how much you were willing to work/pay for. Game expansions added brand new equipment which was different from what was already available. Never replacing it.

Ultima Online's original model was to add new types of equipment, but no enhancements on the originals.

Now on to today's model. From the Age of Shadows expansion onward, equipment was modified to be fully repairable akin to the World of Warcraft model. This however was stated to be a bug in the code which unfortunately was not fixed for a long time. The introduction of Item Insurance made it so player's no longer had to worry about item loss on death. Now the constant progression of always going after the latest and greatest equipment began. Many items are now considered trash, and as such are never looted from creature corpses. Most player crafted equipment also past the point where it was no longer used by anyone. Expansions since (Samurai Empire and Mondain's Legacy) added new equipment once again. But a lot went unused by players due to it being below current equipment types in usefulness. For example some new weapons such as the Compsite Bow and Bokuto have replaced the normal Bow and Halberd.

Ultima Online's current model is to add either better equipment which replaces current items or equipment which is ignored for various reasons.

The current UO model is very broken.

What is so Difficult About Making a Good Post?

I participated in the final hours of the Tabula Rasa universe and am currently working on getting a video uploaded of it. Unfortunately I didn't realize I had it set to my usual UO setting of 800x600 recording area instead of full screen. So you get a really good shot of the chat window (which as you can imagine is going crazy the whole time) and about 1/3 of the game area. It is too bad that it turned out this way because I collected a lot of great footage including a run through of the Earth level with all the monsters just standing there because the server was lagged out. Well if I had to pick a small area of the screen to get the chat window would have been it.

There (might) be a post on my thoughts about this tomorrow.

Also when I went to uninstall the game it was quite a hassle. First there wasn't any uninstall utility in the root folder. So I went to Add/Removed programs and tried to locate it there. It wasn't under "T" for Tabula Rasa. It wasn't under "N" for NCSoft's Tabulas Rasa. It wasn't under PlayNC (which is the launching utility for NCSoft games). Can you guess where it was? Yes, it was under "Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa". Arn't we all glad UO isn't named "Richard Garriott's Ultima Online".

What is so Difficult About Making a Good Game?

What is the thing game programmers always say. That they want to make fun and successful games. Something like that. You know, when they apply for their job or write down their life goals. But then they get hired and are told what to do. They do it even though they know it won't be fun or successful. But they have to, because their manager/director/king told them to.

It is just so amazing to me how many games have the potential to be good but are run into the ground. Say for instance Warhammer Online. The game is billed around never ending war. Big PVP battles and never ending fights. That sort of stuff. It sounds like loads of fun!

The director who made the game probably hopped in a couple scenarios and had fun. It is fun.................the first couple times. Which is all he played. And it could continue to be fun..................if there are people queuing up to take part. But is quickly degrade into a grind for experience which they don't see. And the director doesn't realize that people are not having fun because they see good numbers of participants. But if you go to any forum or solicit player feedback, he would hear how unfun his game is.

Warhammer Online has 2 aspects of PVP, Scenarios and Realm vs Realm. Scenarios are downright boring after a while. They rely on too many variables (class types, people queuing up, server population balance, group cohesion) and thus can be considered not fun. When I played some rounds we could not even leave the starting area. We were trapped like new players in a guard zone. Except we had much less freedom. So Scenarios are not a reliable source of PVP.

Then there is RvR combat. You run around taking battlefield objectives and keeps. If no one shows up to defend you just kill monsters. No PVP at all. That can happen a lot. If you do see some defense, it is just a huge choke hold fight. You are trying to break down a door to get inside. Then another door. Then run up some stairs. There is never a big open battle or chance for large engagement. The sides are usually very lopsided.

What is my point here? The point is there is no solid PVP experience in Warhammer Online. They launched with this and have not done anything to correct it. Instead of trying to move the game in a new direction they tweak it. But it never becomes more fun, just more standardized. The people who quit are not going to return because suddenly the Keep Lord does not bug out and kill himself. Or you can no longer use a certain buff on door hit points.

Warhammer, as do every game, needs to have some consistent fun that keeps you wanting to play.

The Toilet Clashes with the Drapes

Two in a row. Could it be?

What should have been a rather simple and innocent decoration contest has turned into a new source of player complaints and controversy. One winner is now requesting that the UO developers pick another design instead of his own. I don't see how it can get much worse than that.

The main point of contention that I can see is some of the winning designs go a bit further than adding some new shrubs and window dressings. We haven't seen every winner yet (mainly because for some inexplicable reason the winning designs were not posted with the results) but two include a moongate. The winner who is requesting his design be pulled had the moongate along with a stable, archery range, arcane circle, forge, and tailoring amenities. About the only thing missing was an ankh for tithing chilvary.

This contest was obviously a response to how the community team for Asian shards decorate their banks every so often. I have gone and seen those designs and they were nothing like this. They did not repurpose the bank into a replica of Luna. They added some tables, chairs, flowers and maybe a little dock. If it is Christmas they put up some trees and snow. That sort of thing.

The fault here I would place on the person who designed the contest rules. It should have been more strict as to what you can do. After some time a note was added telling participants that multi-story banks would not be allowed. I would really like to see some of those designs. There was probably one that added at least 2, perhaps even 3 new floors. It would have been taller than Lord British's Castle.

There should have been a bullet point that stated you could only add decorations. No additional functions such as moongates or teleporters or forges. There should have even been one encouraging people to keep it light and not stick an item over every tile of the banking area. Perhaps even be a rule where they had the freedom to make alterations on the submitted design.

We'll have to sit back and see where this goes. I would expect a statement about the entire contest situation no later than Tuesday, otherwise the bickering is only going to get worse as more designs are released by the winners.

Taking the Game out of the Game

Getting back into a posting flow is turning out to be quite difficult for me. You may or may not have noticed this.

Yesterday it was announced on the Stratics U Hall that the rewards at Event Moderator events were being modified. Many avid MMO players would call this a nerf. They would be 100% right.

In the past few weeks there have been complaints on Stratics about the rewards being given out. I didn't say a lot. I am actually thinking about going back and counting how many there were. It has been posted that one of the EM staff said that Stratics complaints were the main reasoning behind the reward distribution change. Since the announcement there have been at least 200 replies commenting on it. It would be interesting to see how many are for and against this change.

The change itself is as follows. No longer are Event Moderators allowed to give a limited amount of an item they choose. Now they have to give the same item out to everyone. The "winners" of the event get a slightly better item with their name and date attached. Isn't that just grand?

Of course it isn't. Let me relate to you all a past event I had the pleasure of participating in. We had to find these Orge Lords who stole some grapes. They were scattered throughout the land. After defeating them we looted the grapes, of which I can say there were certainly not enough for everyone to have. You had the chance to turn in those grapes and get a bottle of Delucia wine. That was the event. If that event ran today either the grapes would not be lootable or the Event Moderator would have to offer them to everyone. But then why would we go retrieve them if there were plenty left over? It kills the entire story of the event.

These changes in the name of fairness are the same as how there is a push in education/sports to make everyone feel the same. No keeping score are that football game! Everyone gets a gold star on their report, even if the paper only has their name on it! No one is going to have their feelings hurt or might be encouraged to try harder next time.

When those Orge Lords invade Trinsic, no need to slay them. Just come back at the end and get your free shiny items with your name on them.

Disbanded Brothers

I know I said I was going to start posting again on the new year. I guess this is just another shining example of how web blogs can be so sporadically updated.

In recent days there has been a lot of talk in the "MMO World" about how a certain alliance of guilds in Eve Online, consisting of thousands of people, was disbanded by a turncoat. I used to play a bit of Eve Online (did I already mention this? I am too lazy to check), so I know a thing or two about the game. There are huge areas of the game you can actually fight to control. That is why you need mega-alliances, to defend your space.

When the alliance was disbanded, control of that space was instantly lost. This might not be a big deal as long as you are not currently taking part in a huge war in which the enemy has been ruthlessly destroying you. Opps, it was. So now there is a huge rush into the enemies former strong hold, burning down down and stealing their assets.

While what happened was completely within the confines of the game and not exploiting a bug, I still think there is something not right here. Eve Online is and always has had an extremely high level of player espionage taking place. The game is even setup to encourage it. But to design the game in such a way that someone can pull something like this off is rather soul crushing to the people who spent years and years building it. There obviously should have been some mechanics in place which do not allow someone to instantly kick guilds out of an alliance and take it all to themselves unless you are the head person in charge (which this person was not).

There is so much interesting stuff lately to muse about.