When you are in a game like an MMO playing with your friends, communication is a vital key to your success. MMOs take a couple different approaches to communication, with most relying on keyboard chat interfaces, simple UI’s for talking to your group, the people nearby, or the entire area you are in. While these work well and serve a purpose, better communication can be had with voice.
Man, I almost forgot to write a blog post this week. I’d hate to disappoint my fans and any new readers I picked up from Analog Hole, so I best make sure this is a good one. This week I’m going to discuss the ever-moving target that is the future.
There (hopefully) comes a time in every MMO designer’s life where they get to launch their product. This is a very emotional time, as you have nerves as well as genuine excitement feeding into you. There’s a ton of pressure. Remember the adage (or ad-campaign?) “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
Playing an MMO with your friends is one of the most rewarding experiences you can have in all of gaming. Victories over insurmountable obstacles become shared experiences that you and your buds can chat about while you wait in line to see a movie the next day.
Quitting an MMO can be a big deal. Especially if it was “your” MMO for any length of time. Usually your declaration of quitting is followed by your friends (and complete strangers) asking “Can I have your stuff?”
In part 1 I discussed the various ways of designing how characters get named in an MMO. In this part I will talk a little bit about how your perfect name might not be perfect for the game and you will be forced to change it.
Naming your character in an MMO is a sacred thing. It’s probably the single most personal thing about your character. Especially in an MMO that does not allow for a lot of character avatar customization, where your name is probably the only real differentiation from any one else of your race/class combo. MMO designers should take this seriously, and make sure that you have the player’s interests in mind when you come up with your naming rules.
A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog about Maintenance, which was my term for the “fiddly stuff” you do with your character when you are not fighting or traveling. A couple readers thought the post was going to be about Server Maintenance and what goes on with that. I figure I’d take the opportunity to pull back the curtain and tell you guys what happens during that “server down time” that happens to almost every MMO about once every one to two weeks.
Be prepared, this might not be exciting. Read the rest of this entry »
When I first started working on City of Heroes, the design team could never really grasp the idea that people would want to “solo” a “Massively Multiplayer” game. If you think about it, it does make a certain amount of logic. The name “Multiplayer” is right there in the genre, doesn’t that automatically invalidate the solo playstyle?
Between work and my family vacation, I don’t think I’ll be able to update the site with a blog until July 12th. If you have any ideas for topics you’d like discussed, leave a brief comment in this post.
Have a good one!