Hey MMO developers, have you ever wondered why players are driven away from your games? Two bloggers took a stab at a list of features repulse them personally when they encounter them in-game.
“Oh man, the pain… the cringe that shoots through my body whenever MMO devs talk about adding more jumping puzzles to their game as if that was somehow a great thing,” MMO Gypsy posted. “Jumping puzzles will make me swear off a title quicker than tankinis — if I want to jump around like an obsessed monkey I am gonna play platformers, thank you!”
“Asian MMOs like TERAÂ and Aion like you to hear your characters use their abilities,” Gaming SF added. “Such games make group gameplay somewhat annoying over time. How many times do I need to hear ‘YAAAARRRRGGGH!’ in one dungeon?”
Hawtpants of the Old Republic: Welcome to Dumpsville. Population: Me.
When MMOs introduce the ability to romance NPC characters, the consequences and fallout can be far more personal than any one developer might anticipate. Take Njessi, for example, who did not react well to being dumped by SWTOR’s Lana.
“After [Lana broke off the relationship], poor dumped Njessie gets the option to kiss Lana. After getting dumped for a bulls**t reason? I think not. Sith hold grudges. Because we’re Sith. Duh.”
Gaming Conversations: Relating to my Marvel Heroes
How does an MMO studio that’s handling one of the hottest and most wide-ranging IPs right now appeal to the die-hard comic book set as well as the much more casual movie-goer? Braxwolf ponders this as he plays Marvel Heroes.
“It’s probably a tough balance for Gazillion to strike, trying to appease both the die-hard comic book fans and the relative naive moviegoers like myself. They did a really nice thing with Rocket Raccoon where they designed the original Rocket to look/sound more like the comic book incarnation, but later offered an ‘enhanced’ costume that looks and sounds much more like the movie version.”
Stropp’s World: Gentrification in Albion Online
It’s not a topic that you’d expect to be associated with MMOs, but Albion’s recent announcement of an auction-based land rental system has Stropp thinking that this is digital gentrification in action. And that’s not good.
“Albion land will end up being unaffordable for many players, and many smaller guilds,” he writes. “Big hardcore guilds can generate wealth a lot more efficiently that smaller casual guilds or players. It won’t be long until all the land is run by big guilds and their members. And once the guild owns the land, someone else then has to bid twice as much as their highest bid to win the lease.”
Gamers Decrypted: Why do we troll?
Have you ever wondered why some players seem to live to troll? What makes a normal-ish person turn into a raging internet jerk? Well, Noctua draws upon a published paper to come up with an explanation about online trolls.
The idea is that the anonymity and dis inhibition we experience online can trigger us to become more honest with one an other,” Noctua says. “One could see both of these seemingly opposing types of behaviours as a way for us to explore our own personality in a safe environment where consequences for our actions are minimal. Through acting out on the ‘disinhibition’ we experience we attempt to better understand and develop ourselves.”
Tyrannodorkus: The life of the MMO
MMOs are dying — not so, says Tyrannodorkus. He posted an essay that takes the opposite approach of those predicting the end of online gaming by saying that these games are here to stay and that the genre is “a safe bet.”
“The MMO genre is all encompassing, so it confuses me why people think it’s failing,” Tyrannodorkus writes. “Just about everything and the kitchen sink is in an MMO from other genres, plus some stuff that isn’t. If this genre fails, it’s because no one likes games anymore. But the essence of this post is not about death, but life — as a wise god of thunder once put it.”
Grimores of Supremacy: Looking for rubbish
World of Warcraft’s looking-for-raid might be pretty popular, but it’s also introduced a mess of problems that irk Ikralla to no end, including training up a population to approach raids in the wrong way.
Ikralla spells it out: “LFR can be awful. Half your group AFK’s and auto-attacks. People are either abusive to one another (the amount of horrific slurs I’ve seen thrown at people is disgusting) or silent, which pretty much defeats the object of a game that’s supposed to have a social element to it. I mean, you’re in a group with up to 24 other people and nobody is talking? That’s not healthy.”
Every day there are tons of terrific, insightful, and unusual articles posted across the MMO gaming blogosphere — and every day, Justin reads as many as he can. Global Chat is a sampling of noteworthy essays, rants, and guides from the past few weeks of MMO discourse.
