MMO Designer is a blog where I can discuss what goes into designing MMO’s, and look at the decisions that designers make from their perspective and the perspective of the players, i.e. the people who have to live with those decisions.
The idea for this blog came from reading Scott Jenning’s blogs since way back when he was Lum the Mad writing about World War II Online and “taxing his way to victory” as he struggled with horrible flight controls. I’ve also been an avid reader of Keen and Graev’s blog, as they have some excellent insight in the other side of the design equation: the side of the player.
What gives me the right to think I can show you both sides? Well, from the development side, I’ve been working on an MMO for six and a half years now. I was there before it launched and still work on it, making design decisions that impact the players every day. From the player’s perspective I go back all the way to some MUD’s on my Commodore 64, which had a max concurrency of, I think, five people. I eventually got a PC and played Gemstone ][ (still text based). I remember hearing about Meridian 59, thinking it was a horrible name for a fantasy game, and yet playing the crap out of it until EverQuest was released. I once played Ultima Online for nearly two solid weeks over one Christmas, dragging my PC over to my friends house because “Ventrilo” hadn’t been invented yet. I’ve played EQ2, Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars Galaxies (until NGE, but I did try NGE), and of course, World of Warcraft (where I have TWO level 80 Death Knights. That’s a long story unto itself).
So I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say. If you are a Game Designer, I hope to give you some insight into my thinking and methodologies when making big decisions. If you are a player, I hope you gain some insight and knowledge about why MMO Designers make certain decisions that you don’t agree with.
If you have any ideas for topics you’d like me to talk about, I would love to hear it. You can hit me on Twitter on the account @MMODesigner, or you can email me at “Topics at MMODesigner dot com”.
This is bound to be an exciting adventure and discussion. I’m sure lots of these topics are already being considered for discussion, but I’d like to hear how you broke into the industry and a bit about iteration from the general “oh that’s an idea we like” to “now that’s something that will actually fit in”.
Good luck on this new venture!
I for one am going to be following this!
I’ve always been interested in the internal workings of the MMO world! o_o I already tweeted my thoughts and question to @MMODesigner and await to read more!
-C.A.
I look forward to keeping up with this — should be an interesting look into the side of games I dont usually get to see.
If possible, Id like to hear a bit about how the players influence designers; how you take suggestions and ideas from players and try to introduce those ideas into the game while keeping the game running smoothly, and also how you deal with suggestions that are just flat-out impossible, but ridiculously popular.
Great start I’m looking forward to seeing posts based on the day to day experience of the games sphere from the coal-face, let alone around one of my favourite games yay.
That said I’ll now have Nightmare before Christmas songs swimming around in my head all day as it’s impossible to read the title of this post without singing it.
4th comment! Woot!
Added to my favorites… one day in a drunken post-work hootenanny, you will reveal the secret of the universe. Mwahahahaha….
Looking forward to it. Following this, the twitter, and linked to it. Should be good to see what you have to say.
I will certainly be following along with this. Considering I’m hoping to get into said industry, I hope to learn a few things from you that will improve if not my marketability, at least my understanding and knowledge of things! Good luck with the site!
I see from your list that you never played City of Heroes. You should try it, it’s a great game!
Wow you out-nerd me. Of course I still have a soft spot in my heart for the New Moon MUD. >.>
Better chance of hearing in depth thought processes than the standard magazine interview.
Anything that starts with a Nightmare Before Christmas reference can’t be all that bad.
Incidentally, your little column of icons in the top right (Which I just didn’t see for ages, which possibly is another problem) has an RSS icon, but it links back to the current page, instead of http://www.mmodesigner.com/?feed=rss2
This should be rather insightful… looking forward to what you plan to share.
Ashes to ashes,
DJ Pheonyx
Definitely interested in this – I love reading about why something was done a certain way. Followed on Twitter and definitely adding this to my feed reader.
I too would like to see some insight on how fans and other mmo’s influence game design. I know WoW has been taking a lot of design clues from the CoX franchise lately to try to shore up it’s player base and get more stickiness for trial accounts.
I’d love to see some insights on balance and how you try to keep both the players happy by having enough power to complete the in game tasks but yet not so over-powered that they steamroll content.
How do you time manage? Obviously you have to have time for research as well as meetings, reading, email, forums, writing documents, etc. How do you fit it all in?
Finally, how do you pass along your vision to the programmers and artists? Do you storyboard, write a document, do pantomines, have innumerable boring meetings, or what?
The one thing I would like, in addition to the balancing of rewards Ura mentioned is about building an in game economy.
Inflation risks, reducing/avoiding mudflation, creating the trickle down from wealthy to those less so (Something City does pretty well IMHO).
If you could start a brand new economy in a game now, how would you even begin to set it up?