A week or so ago, Justin penned another entry in his long-running City of Heroes historical pieces, and down in the comments, a reader named Sleepy built on a throwaway line in the piece to make what I thought was an excellent point.
“Those should be required questions for anyone interviewing for a job as an mmo developer: What are your views on: NGE, Trammel, RealID, Monoclegate, etc. Blank looks get shown the door. It might cut down on history repeating itself with such depressing regularity.”
I don’t like being a history snob; I don’t think you need to memorize trivia, like why Trammel was named trammel, which dev penned the Real ID retraction, how much monocles cost in EVE Online, and which day the NGE happened. But I have to agree with Sleepy that these examples are among the biggest mistakes to afflict our genre, and I do think that serious upper-level devs need to understand them to not repeat them (even if they didn’t live through them).
What other gaming history examples do you think all MMORPG designers should know? What major blunders in MMORPG history should future devs study?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
