Game Design
« Previous EntriesPassage
Sunday, November 30th, 2008I read about Jason Rohrer’s game Passage in the latest issue of Esquire and headed over to his site to check it out. The premise is like lots of other arcade games: move around the map and collect as much treasure as you can in five minutes. However, Passage is actually a metaphor for life [...]
Understand Your Customer
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008The recent announcement that Tabula Rasa is shutting down has me thinking about the success rates of mainstream MMOGs. Why do certain MMOGs fail where others succeed? I don’t think it’s as simple as “the market is saturated” or “no one can compete against WoW.” If anything, those statements just show a lack of imagination [...]
Questing: A Boring Journey
Monday, September 29th, 2008During a brief, 45-minute Warhammer session this evening, I had a moment of internal debate over whether I should even keep playing. I was bored of PQ’s and the same old kill and gather quests were really bumming me out. Eventually, my game froze and I turned my computer off. Instead of rebooting like I [...]
So It Begins Again
Sunday, September 21st, 2008Even though I’m not playing Warhammer Online right now, I’m definitely intending to go pick it up eventually. I’m focused on getting my WoW mage to 70 for Wrath, but once I do that I’ll go buy it and give the full retail version a go so I’m not just basing my knowledge on beta, [...]
Race and Faction: The Final Frontiers
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008I was reading Silentstephi’s World of Warcraft rant about being stuck with her dwarf priest this morning, and I totally sympathize. She had picked a dwarf not because of their pleasing aesthetics, but because at the time it was the only realistic option for raiding due to the Fear Ward ability (once only available to [...]
Lich King Release Date and Low-Level Content
Monday, September 15th, 2008Today’s official announcement revealed that the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion will be hitting stores on November 13th, 2008. Soon, many people will be coming back to the game for the first time in months (or even years, if they didn’t like the Burning Crusade expansion), and a lot has changed [...]
PvE to PvP Character Transfers Enabled for WoW
Thursday, September 11th, 2008Brilliant. I’m going to take this opportunity to get the hell out of dodge and get off my PvP server until 80 on both my mage and my shaman, and then move back to group with my friends.
This has been a long time coming and sorely needed. The artificial PvP/PvE barrier has basically forced me to level [...]
World of Warcraft is Tuckering Blizz Out?
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008Excuse me a moment while I play the world’s tiniest violin for the developers of the mega-successful World of Warcraft. Michael Zenke at Massively just pointed me to this interview with Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce where he laments that the “voracious appetite” of their playerbase is stretching their wee 130-person team out just a little [...]
Pets, Pets, and More Pets
Monday, September 1st, 2008You could argue that the coolest feature of World of Warcraft’s Hunter class is the fact that they get to select an animal companion from almost any monster in the entire game. Pet classes have always been popular and powerful in MMOGs for the simple reason that two entities are usually better at killing both [...]
MMOG Pricing and You
Monday, September 1st, 2008Freeman links Jennings and speaks truth.
In case you hadn’t noticed, companies are increasingly “double dipping” (as I believe Tipa called it) with their monetization models. In other words, you pay a subscription fee to play the game and then get charged on top of it for other stuff. Sony is notorious for this, although at [...]