mmogs

WoW’s easy-mode is what makes the new LFG system win.

January 12, 2010

In a reply to SynCaine over at Hardcore Casual, commenter Mig borrows from Palahniuk’s Fight Club by acutely noting how World of Warcraft’s (WoW’s) glorified new looking-for-group (LFG) system does little more than create “single-serving friends.” The lack of difficulty in most instance encounters, combined with the ease of being able to quickly enter such [...]

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NPC party members are a good idea.

December 5, 2009

Lots of folk are annoyed at Bioware’s revelation of “companion characters” in the upcoming Star Wars MMORPG, whereby “companion characters” are NPC group-members that can stand-in when groups can’t find other players to fill certain roles, such as healers and tanks. Keen was one of the first to vocalize his aggression: Why don’t you just [...]

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Real-time strategy to become more social, complex?

December 4, 2009

Electronic Arts (EA) is already preparing the Command & Conquer (C&C) franchise for the future vehicle for software proliferation: digital distribution. Kotaku, meanwhile, says that some fans are skeptical: News of the transition was sending fears of a Facebook-ized, watered-down C&C among some series fans. And yet C&C always was watered down, offering little more [...]

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The Cataclysm cometh. Or, has it been gradually coming all along?

September 30, 2009

There’s a special place in Hell for those who destroy good lore. Sure, some lore tweaks are necessary now again just to keep a back-story consistent, and fluff moving in the right direction. Yet some designers, like George Lucas, take things too far when they butcher Star Wars by introducing midichlorians and other such nonsense. [...]

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Creating a player-based vendor system.

June 30, 2009

While wrong about Aion’s lack of an auction house, Tobold raised an interesting point concerning player-run shops in MMOGs. Namely, that in games where players can “set up” shops, the marketplace becomes unnavigable, because there are simply too many vendors to go through in order to find gear that one wants. That’s in great part [...]

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Casual vs. hardcore defined by convenience of play?

April 17, 2009

Casual versus hardcore gaming is a relatively new discussion among gamers, ousting such classic favorites as “Which platform is better?” That’s because as games grow in complexity, and as game libraries continue to expand, the options available to gamers climb accordingly. As humans, we’re inextricably drawn to differentiating ourselves from one another, and what better [...]

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