Saturday, July 3rd, 2010, 10pm EDT

The event will take place in the three inns of the main three cities:

Rolling Stone Inn – Askagard
The Skiffing Beetle – Chemer
The Gyrosmith Inn – Troj

Crafters, bring your wares to sell!

Adventurers, bring your coin to buy!

Website for details: http://www.primordiax.com

Wiki for world lore: http://wiki.primordiax.com

Click here to play immediately: http://play.primordiax.com

What was most interesting was the sheer wealth of information that is available to players about OTHER players. History of guilds joined and left, gear, last time logged on, and more. Upon reading this article, I was actually shocked and would not want this much information about my characters available to other characters.

Some of these concerns were first raised when WoW went like with the WoW Armory. Blizzard even mocked it in one of their April Fools web pages. That mocking was out of place though when you look at how the armory has evolved. With the invention of Gearscore (a user addon that creates an actual, exact, numerical score for someone’s gear) it became possible for web sites to farm Armory data and develop minimum gearscores for certain instances or content. This in turn affected player perceptions, who would then run the user add on in game (or when looking up someone’s armory data) to decide if they were willing to team with someone. It even goes further than that – arguments on official forums would often devolve into someone looking up someone else’s guild or gear and using that as evidence they were a know-nothing “n00b.” This is just scratching the surface – I am sure readers here have even more examples of such uses.

It seems to me that MMOs are making more and more information about players and characters available to other players. Does anyone else think this is a bad way to go?

After a month and a half of that, we are ready for anyone and everything to flood the gates. Some basic information about Primordiax:

• Free to play.
• No downloads. No installation. Playable in your browser.
• Virtual World that players can affect in a real and permanent way: living, breathing, evolving ecosystem, a closed and fully player controlled economy, world technology that advances directly through community and player actions and decision making.
• Crafting system as deep and feature rich as traditional RPG combat systems.
• Deep combat system with enormous tactical variety: flanking, positional attacks, combos, group combos, and more.
• Custom artwork available for your character (created by our artists).
• Extremely detailed world lore that is built upon by both players and storyline staff.
• In Character Enforced (ICE) Environment with out of character channels.
• Double blind auction system for resources that serves as the backbone of the economy.
• Detailed skill and ability systems with skill synergies, hundreds of abilities and spells, and an unlimited respec/retraining system.
• Crafting characters actually earn their experience through crafting and selling goods. Support characters earn experience through support activities (healing, buffing, picking locks, etc.) as well as combat.
• Developed by Frogdice, a company with over 15 years of experience developing online role playing games.

Visit our…

Website for details: http://www.primordiax.com

Wiki for world lore: http://wiki.primordiax.com

or…

Click here to play immediately:  http://play.primordiax.com

I can definitely see where he is going with the argument, and I agree to a great extent.

There was a time on MMOs where a guild could be formed for any manner of reasons or purposes. It could be just friends and family. It could be for roleplay or story purposes. It could be for a theme like all-orcs or all-women or who knows what. But nowadays, unless you want to completely divorce yourself from any hope of meaningful “end game” participation, your guild is hugely important.

Whether it is raiding or RvR style PvP, you are almost required to be part of a large, effective, well organized guild with stringent membership requirements and all sorts of policies (DKP or others). All too often, players are faced with a very real and uncomfortable choice between guilding with friends they actually LIKE, or guilding with people who are good enough at the game to successfully partake in the same level of content.

Guilds have become too important. They have lost their purpose and have become a burdensome barrier to fully enjoying the gameplay and content in MMOs.

As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Raiding Sucks (click the picture for an even more disturbing image)

I have written about this topic many times before. The two biggest examples are:

Raiding Provides a False, Deceptive Sense of Real Accomplishment

Fed up! Raiding sucks as a sole form of end game content.

This would be a pretty dull post if all I was doing was encouraging you to go back and read those posts (though I do feel it is worth your while, as they are pretty good, and they provoked good discussions in the past). I bring those up because I am finally starting to see some of the same points being raised by a lot more MMO bloggers than in the past. It would appear I was at the forefront of this point, and I am very gratified to see it finally getting some traction.

I will cite a couple recent blog posts by Tobold, a well known, highly regarded MMO blogger (with a significant focus on WoW): Could you still dance with Heigan?

“What wiped raids in that encounter was the back and forth “dance” you had to perform correctly to avoid the floor erruptions, moving at exactly the right point in time, and neither too short nor too far.
…
And that is exactly what I don’t like about raiding in Wrath of the Lich King. There is no real “progression” from “easier” raid dungeons to “harder” raid dungeons. It is all just the same, various different encounters for which you and your friends have to practice the moves until you all can do them without fail. Places like Naxxramas become obsolete because of the loot they give, not because of a lack of challenge.”

and I don’t think Gearscore is the culprit here:

“The second factor is the nature of Wrath of the Lich King raiding, which I already discussed last week: Whether you play your character well, and even your gear, are not good predictors for the success of a raid encounter. The real difficulty of a WotLK raid encounter is “learning the dance”, practicing a fixed set of moves requiring sub-second reaction times.”

I have been making these points for years. I am glad other people are finally seeing it as well. The reason modern WoW/EQ style raiding is not actually epic or truly fun is because it is not about playing your character well – or even developing your character well. It is about following some rote set of moves designed by uber gamers who mastered the raid in beta before it was even released. You are all just puppets on a stage, following a Youtube script your raid leader downloaded and memorized. That is not fun. That is not epic. That is boring and dull.

2) Tom and Jerry MMO from Turner Interactive. WTF? It will supposedly be released first in India. Are Tom and Jerry super popular over there or something?

3) Study on assumptions gamers make about people based on the looks of their avatar.

Subscription MMOs often run various promotions and events to try and lure people back. Sometimes they are called re-activation weekends. Often these events coincide with other special events like double XP (note this), new content, special events, etc.

A few days ago I received an email from LOTRO trying to convince me to return. Among the amazing incentives were:

1. 5% bonus xp.
2. Free stable master travel.
3. Collect tokens from defeated monsters and trade them in for special rewards.
4. Play your old characters.
5. Play LOTRO for $9.99 a month

Lets break that down a bit. #4 and #5 are kinda stupid to even list there. #4 is freakin’ obvious, and #5 is the same price everyone pays…. yipee. #2 is functionally irrelevant. Even as a lowbie I never even paid attention to stable master travel. #3 is vague, and might be interesting, but most likely the rewards are meh or silly.

So the big lure, and the thing they listed FIRST, is the “whopping” 5% bonus XP.

Who is the idiot marketing buffoon who came up with this idea and rammed it home?

Who in the heck is going to give a crap about 5% bonus XP?

I cannot remember the last time I saw a major MMO have an xp related event that was not 50% or more bonus XP. The common bonus is DOUBLE XP (+100%).

Does anyone know someone at Turbine they can ask about this? Because this has to be one of the most laughable MMO promotions I’ve ever read.

But to make this more than mocking LOTRO’s promotion, let us also discuss the larger issue:

1. How important do you think it is, and how much focus should be put on, luring back former customers at an MMO?
2. What methods do you think are likely to be most effective at doing so?

After many, many years of (too frequently interrupted) development, Primordiax officially launched on Thursday, April 22, 2010. Primordiax is a hybrid text and graphical MUD/MMO with a primary focus on providing a true virtual world experience. While Primordiax does feature some traditional MMO game aspects (combat, loot, gear, etc.), that is just one part of the game. The crafting system is as deep and intricately designed as combat. Mini-games (collecting, fishing, scavenging, and more) and role playing are also enormously significant aspects of the game. Housing, clans, businesses, politics, religion, territory, etc. are all player controlled game elements. The world itself will be continually shaped and transformed by players. For example, players as a whole will consistently “level up the world” to unlock new technologies and features that can potentially affect everyone.

Primordiax is not RP required, but it is In Character Enforced (ICE). This means within the game world, characters must stay in character (IC). We do, however, have clearly separated out of character (OOC) modes of communication. To facilitate this, Primordiax has a very deep recognition system that includes nametags, introductions, dishonest introductions, etc.

I could go on and on about the game’s features, but checking out our website and wiki are your best sources of information. The amount of lore available on the wiki gives you an idea of how seriously we take the virtual world aspects of the game.

http://www.primordiax.com

http://wiki.primordiax.com

You can jump in and play right in your browser: http://play.primordiax.com

Plannned for the next 6 weeks:

1) Double XP Teaser: Friday (March 20) night and all day Saturday (March 21) players earn double experience points.

2) Double XP Weekend: Friday, March 26 through Sunday, March 28 will be double experience points for players as well as some additional special events to make your time online particularly fun and exciting.

3) Guild Contest: There will be a contest that puts all the guilds in competition with each other. This contest will measure a combination of activity along with donations of elemental stones, resources, and coin. This event will start in mid-March and end April 25th.

4) Keliburn the Traveler: Kleiburn will visit at the end of April. Kleiburn will visit the home city of whichever guild wins the guild contest.

5) April will be an Event Extravaganza. The STEA will be hosting at least 15 events during the month of April. Make sure to watch the calendar (http://www.thresholdrpg.com/calendar/) and check it often. King Borgia and Emperor of Thrace will contribute prizes of their own to the STEA coffers which should make things very interesting and exciting.

6) History Contest: The Grand Sable Library wants to expand its history section. Adventurers are invited to submit detailed accounts and analyses of major historical events from the past 200 years. Ability to draw similarities to historical events and modern events is a plus, or the ability to show how society learned from and moved beyond past events. Minimum 1,000 words, Maximum 10,000. (Submissions should be sent via email to threshold@thresholdrpg.com and are due by April 30, 2010. Use the subject THRESHOLD HISTORY CONTEST.)

Whether you are a brand new player or an old timer, the next 6 weeks are a great time to put in some serious Threshold time.

==================================================

ABOUT THRESHOLD RPG:

Threshold RPG has been in continual operation, development, and expansion since 1994. Role Playing is required and players must stay In Character within the game. Out of Character communication takes place on special channels that are separate from the game world. This policy is actively enforced by the administration, which makes Threshold RPG unique among commercial MMORPGs.

Threshold has an extremely strong and devoted community. The number of active players who have been members for 5-10+ years is significant. New players are welcomed and embraced for the new ideas and storylines they bring to the game.

Threshold is free to play and is supported by optional extras and perks people can choose to purchase if they wish. No perks are needed, however, to advance your character to any level.

http://www.thresholdrpg.com ]]> http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/mmos/annual-threshold-rpg-spring-fling-events.html/feed 0 http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/game_design/could-permadeath-work-in-a-commercial-mmorpg.html http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/game_design/could-permadeath-work-in-a-commercial-mmorpg.html#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:51:44 +0000 Muckbeast http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/?p=443 Permadeath was never a tremendously popular feature in MUDs, but it was common enough that it did have a certain following. Some players consider permadeath a vital component of roleplaying, and they feel it adds a significant amount of excitement and tension to a game.

I certainly understand why no commercial MMORPGs have experimented with the concept, but my question is whether it will EVER happen on a commercial MMORPG?

If it does happen, what type of gameplay elements would be required? I would think that to be successful, a permadeath game would have to focus a lot more on the experiences than statistical or gear based character development/advancement. I think for the sake of continuity, such a game would need some sort of achivement or unlocking system where some of the accomplishments of previous characters were either retained in some way or at least recorded in a meaningful manner.

What are your thoughts?