Comments on: Aiming at Vanguard

By: covert.c.

covert.c. — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 01:35:02 +0000

Funny you should ask, as I think someone sorta broached this topic in the forums. I'm keen on NWN2, Dark Messiah and Age of Conan...some of them are MMORPGs and some not. If b1alpha isn't into swords and sorcery, dont' hesitate to get into Splinter Cell. I'm a huge fan of the series and intend on picking this up too. And it's got multiplayer.

By: Uno

Uno — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:43:14 +0000

Dont forget b1Alpha it must be Multiplayer.Basicly me n B1 have gotten bored of DoW DarkCrusade. He dont want to play no more sword n sorcery games so he refuses to buy NWN2....a quandary

By: b1alpha

b1alpha — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:53:30 +0000

This is kind of unrelated, but I have a question since you are doing a review of a game I may have perchased, had the review been more positive. If you could recomend a game right now, which one would it be?

By: covert.c.

covert.c. — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 05:23:10 +0000

@Uno : Do you mean the forums login? Unfortunately, that has to stay as-is, lest I spend the rest of my life deleting spam.

@digi :

Wise words, indeed.

The way I see it is that Quake -> Unreal -> HalfLife (and so on) each represent the major inflection points of the FPS genre. The remaining dozens are the clones. These games are proof that refinement and adjustment have their place, without necessitating the need for growing a new foot. And that's basically what I'm saying here. WoW is an inflection point for MMORPGs, much like Merdian59, Ultima Online and EverQuest before it. Great strides, swift polish, surprising.

Innovation is a surprising blend of novelty and competence. Vanguard has these things, yes, but there's little about it that could push it from 'clone' and into 'inflection'. It's painful to witness because it *could have*.

I guess we'll see in '07.

By: digi

digi — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 02:07:05 +0000

You forgot: d) Makin' babies! But seriously, I've never really seen spectacular answers to games that set the bar so damn high. WoW is the Quake of the day. After Quake came out, there were many alternatives based on it's engine and a lot of them had neat updates and features. But really I don't see the same kind of evolution each generation happening that you're pushing for. Is it not typical in the video game world since it's inception that things kind of roll along for a while and then every once-in-a-while a fish grows feet and it's a new day? It's kinda harsh to say but this neurotic itch for perpetual BIGGER BETTER FASTER is real sign of the times. You mention Hockey. Hockey is a game from a previous generation and there's pretty much only a couple of flavours of it - grass and ice. It's been around for a long long time and it's still really fun! I wonder, is it that GenX can't accept what we're given or is it more simply the complexity of they systems we're playing? This aint exactly "put the puck in the net". Or is it? If you want to invent something new, invent something new. But not a new Hockey. These guys are totally rolling on a killer high at the moment and I don't see revolutionary steps for some time.

By: UNO

UNO — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 21:12:26 +0000

Developers are retarded the community must empower itself to create fun games without the aid of huge corporations that design by committee.

You would get more posts if you didnt have such a tedious log in system.

By: covert.c.

covert.c. — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:13:54 +0000

@Nazgum : sorry, I had to free your comment from the evil clutches of Akismet.

Bartle also returns to that point in his excellent book, "Designing Virtual Worlds". He reiterates what you've observed here, that inheriting the features of your predecessors is a given, even if those features are bad.

You rightly make this point about Vanguard. They have to satisfy the cravings of WoW players. I definitely see that, but I also believe that there are smarter things to do than just merely layering complexity atop systems popularized by WoW. The mining example struck me as particularly exemplary of their entire approach. It's ludicrous to have that level of interaction with a harvesting feature - it just doesn't make any sense. If you're going to have a feature that "answers" your predecessor (and keeps ex-patriates happy), change the interaction that makes more "world sense", versus just dumping a fighting mini-game on top of it. It reeks of me-too'ness, in my estimation, and is surprising to think of it coming from Brad McQuaid.

By: covert.c.

covert.c. — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 04:52:48 +0000

@TG : there's been some consensus "out there" that WoW has killed the monolithic MMORPG forever. The lo-fi alternatives may indeed come fast and furious out of that realisation. I'm not sure I fully agree with it, but if there "will never be another WoW" then perhaps we should kill the pervasive shadow that is D&D/Diku as well and move on to more interesting gaming possibilities. Now that I can agree with.

@Uno : WoW is definitely digital cocaine, but it follows a tradition set by its predecessors (EverCrack comes to mind). Academics are all over the Skinner Box analogies that permeate Warcraft (although this could be applied to videogames on the whole). But a blind adherence to formulaic feedback mechanisms based on random rewards is quickly becoming tired. What will it take to wean the developer/publisher community away from this mentality?

By: Uno

Uno — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 03:27:23 +0000

The Genesis of a game can take years and millions of dollars and yet so few strike a ballance between what is good and what is bad, a very simple goal make fun games. So rarely accomplished and why? Is there some corporate tycoon looking to invent a digital cocain that will keep players hooked and paying that monthly fee? Electronic crack is not grinding or fat loots it is enjoyment.

By: Nazgum

Nazgum — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:04:16 +0000

Interesting article. On the point of innovation, an admin at http://warhammeralliance.com posted an old article from Richard Bartle, the creator of the first MUD, discussing MMORPGs and innovation. One of his main points in the article is that moreso than other games MMORPGs seem to embrace poor game mechanics introduced in previous MMORPGs, which too many new players aren't aware they dislike. While reading about upcoming MMORPGs on user forums this becomes very apparent; as an example on the Warhammer Alliance Forums discussing upcoming Warhammer Online, players whose only online MMORPG was World of Warcraft were very against world PVP and very for instanced PVP. Despite battlegrounds being a horrid failure in WoW many still strongly wanted this feature. Why? One of his main arguments for this is that MMORPGs need to attract new players, and players want to relive their first online fantasy world, which to some extent is definately true, and because of that innovation is difficult. Sadly, a feature-for-feature answer to WoW may be what is required for many upcoming MMORPGs such as Vanguard, because for many many players WoW was their first MMORPG and their next will be compared feature-for-feature against it.