by Wolfshead on February 4, 2010
The success of a virtual world is dependent on the ability of the developers to convincingly immerse the player in their world. Without a daily emphasis and reverence for mechanics, art and design that contribute to immersion, the virtual world you are trying to create for your subscribers is in danger of collapse.
Immersion is essentially about belief. In their hearts and minds, players truly need to believe and perceive that your virtual world is real. Real enough for them to invest thousands of hours of their time and dollars and even more importantly invest their emotions in your world.
In recent years the reigning king of MMOs the World of Warcraft has become much less immersive. As time has progressed, this venerable MMO has become decidedly more about the game than the world. Why have they seemingly cast it aside immersion in favor of introducing features and gimmicks that detract from that most noble of all virtual world constructs?
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by Wolfshead on December 28, 2009
In an of age of contrived, vapid music it’s refreshing to hear an up and coming artist that has her own unique voice amidst the parade of clones that clog the airwaves. One such artist is Alexandra Stewart. She has a sound that is all her own that exudes authenticity and originality.
Her first self-released indie recording is titled Stop for a Minute. Alexandra showcases her strong songwriting abilities here with an incredibly catchy yet sensitive tune. Her voice is warm, sultry and genuine and really defies categorization.
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by Wolfshead on December 15, 2009
Lately my faith in the MMO media and sadly the media in general has been waning due to the problem of advocacy journalism. Otherwise known in gamerspeak as fanboyism.Very rarely do gaming magazines and websites ever bother to ask tough questions. Even more rarely do they ask follow up questions lest they lose their precious access to devs and all expense paid junkets out to Blizzard headquarters in Irvine California.
So it is with surprise that via an article in WoW.com, we learned that during an interview with the German fan site WorldofWar that a member of the gaming press actually asked Blizzard WoW Game Director Tom Chilton a tough question. Unfortunately that question produced an answer that Ebenzer Scrooge of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol would have been proud of.
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by Wolfshead on November 23, 2009
There’s an interesting piece about Wikipedia from the Wall Street Journal Online. It seems that Wikipedia volunteers are leaving faster than new volunteers are joining. Could it be that this unaccountable and self-appointed repository of public knowledge is on the verge of imploding?
In an article that I penned earlier this year I exposed some of the corrupt policies that reward volunteers that delete articles in order to increase their standing with the organization. A venerable MUD called Threshold was adversely affected by the shenanigans of these Wikipedia deletion happy scoundrels and almost had its Wikipedia entry deleted if it were not for the public outcry that ensued.
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by Wolfshead on November 20, 2009
What if J.R.R. Tolkien had named his classic fantasy trilogy How Frodo Destroyed the One Ring at Mount Doom? Thankfully he had the good sense and propriety not to do so as it would have been foolish to have revealed the climax of the story within the title of the book.
Part of the reward for the reader who invests their time in a work of fiction, is the gradual revelation of the story. The same paradigm should apply to MMOs and virtual worlds that are story based. As the player delves deeper into the world they are rewarded by experiencing more of the story. I’m not a big fan of story based MMO’s but if you are going to create one, then at least do it correctly.
Why then is Blizzard so eager to destroy this classic relationship of author, story and reader by routinely previewing the future in the World of Warcraft?
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by Wolfshead on November 17, 2009
Virtual worlds are ultimately about creating, administering and experiencing a system of governance. Every day millions of players enter virtual worlds and are subject to rules and policies laid down by game designers. Not only do designers have the same power as politicians in the real world, they act as tin-pot gods that can control the color of the sky and even alter natural laws of physics within their virtual worlds.
More importantly MMO designers are virtual social engineers. They dictate how economies will ultimately behave by setting drop rates and prices for goods. They also control mobility via the level system. They create the incentives, conditions and mechanics that influence what content players will experience in the game world. They can control how players will act and react by rewarding certain behaviors and punishing others.
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by Wolfshead on October 29, 2009
In an age when just about everyone has a blog, it’s rare to find a well-written new MMO design blog that causes you to pause, think, discover and learn. One such site that has recently come to my attention and meets this criterion is That’s a Terrible Idea. Authored by Evizaer and Motstandet, it’s a delightful repository of thoughtful essays on MMO game design. It’s not just about what’s wrong with MMOs today, it also offers solutions.
I’m impressed by the in-depth analysis of many nuts and bolts MMO mechanics such as balancing, skill advancement and more. If you are wanting breezy, light fare that has come to characterize the average gaming blog out there then in my best Jedi impersonation: this is not the blog you are looking for.
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by Wolfshead on October 27, 2009
Like many PC users and avid gamers, last week I purchased and installed Windows 7. This new operating system from Microsoft was supposed to have fixed many of the stability problems encountered with Vista.
Within minutes of upgrading my Vista 64-bit version of Windows to Windows 7, I started losing my connection to the Internet approximately 30-60 minutes. For no apparent reason, my computer which was attached to the Internet via a D-Link Gamerlounge router would drop it’s connection while the other computer running Windows XP hooked up to the very same router enjoyed uninterrupted Internet service.
I would get the following message when I hovered over the Internet/Network: the default gateway is not available. Each time I would right click on the connection icon and select the “Troubleshoot Options” it would eventually repair the problem and reconnect to the Internet.
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by Wolfshead on October 14, 2009
I used to work for a big video game studio that specialized in making licensed hand-held games which were primarily directed towards kids and teens. We’d have regular company meetings and during one such meeting one of our top designers who was a Warcraft RTS fanatic (he played feverishly during his lunch and even after work) defiantly stood up and asked this emperor has no clothes type of question:
Why can’t we be like Blizzard?
The CEO of our company was slightly taken aback. He replied that he thought the strength of our company was in sticking to the current formula of making games that tie into various movie releases and that there was no possible way we could ever be like Blizzard. End of discussion.
Needless to say many of us in the audience were disappointed as we ambled back to our beige industrial cubicles.
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by Wolfshead on October 8, 2009
Last week in the wee hours of a starlit Azeroth morning the Dark Iron Dwarves attacked the Brewfest revelry outside of Ironforge. Since there were only a few half-awake adventurers slinging mugs of ale at the endless waves of preordained interlopers, all of the precious brew was eventually stolen and we were defeated.
A similar thing happened last year during a visit from the fiendish Headless Horseman during Hallow’s End; not enough people showed up in Goldshire to put out the fires and all was lost.
In both cases the players who were there performed their tasks perfectly but were defeated. Why? It was because the developers failed to scale the encounter to the number of people that were engaged in the event. The players who participated were doomed from the outset because not enough of their fellow players showed up.
Instead of giving players a chance to demonstrate skill and bravery the designers at Blizzard took the easy way out and turned the event into an crude numbers game. So what is Blizzard’s magic scripting formula for such an event?
Enough people = success
Not enough people = failure
Surely the most successful MMO company in history can do better than this? Is is not patently unfair to penalize players who play a MMO in off-peak times with primitive scripting that doesn’t take into account the number of players involved in the event?
The solution is simple: it’s time to start scaling encounters in MMOs.
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