Recent content by Abalieno_foh

The opposite can be demonstrated. A lot of MMOs have lost a significant number of subscribers after WoW"s release.

Not as an assumption. It"s a mistake to consider that as an open market. 1- It WAS a mistake thinking that this market didn"t exist before WoW. 2- It is a mistake NOW to believe that this market is independent from WoW. BOTH are mistakes. What people think change with the wind. You...

Wrong and largely diffused assumption. WoW has exploded, not the MMO market. You want WoW players for your own MMO? Good luck. The market today is HARDER than how it was three years ago. All the recently released MMO pretty much failed. Vanguard won"t be different. The idea that WoW...

Do you divinate crystal balls as well?

Yes, I caught it For the missions I guess you have to target the gate represented by the ">>" and activate it. Usually missions only give you bookmarks to those gates. Then you follow the gates one after the other till you arrive where the mission actually is.

Of course, but that"s like saying nothing. On my site I went more in detail, but the point is that the rest is subordinate to those two main points. Oh, sure, let"s disagree because I think you are completely wrong Success, in particular when you involve a mass market, is a cascading...

At all. Let"s be honest. WoW has an unexpected player retention but this is due to two main reasons: 1- WoW is "king of the hill", and that fact alone builds retention and influx of new players. And this fact won"t change till WoW won"t have a serious competitor (and it won"t happen...

It"s off-topic and a deeper discussion, but I was referring to the fact that the more the game grows, the more the gap between new and veteran players increase, leading to an aging community that slowly loses the growth coming from the influx on new players. It gets increasingly niche. This...

Your assumption was correct. But it was only one part of the whole point. You can innovate even through UI design, for example (the "healer problem" is one of those who BEGS to be addressed). In the same way content and MMO development in general can be more than opening "x" new zones...

No, I"m just saying that scripting quests, creating spawn points and loot lists is just a very little part of "game design". Game design is a discipline that goes far beyond that tiny classification and competence. Designing an UI is game design as well. You can have ALL the experience in the...

And populating a zone, implementing the quests and creating loot lists is a very, very, very narrow point of view on what game design is and its scope and meaning. Even the fact that THERE IS a zone, that the zone is populated by quests and there areloot listsis already not a proven truth...

Actually I was describing a process from the point of view of an established company with an established game. I mean, it"s not like you hire designers for six months, then get their design doc and fire them all because they completed their job and now things pass in the hands of the tech...

More than different people who take care of that, I think that should be just different phases of a process. This is often done even in other disciplines distant from game development (like TV shows). You start from pure brainstorming, where even the more savage ideas are thrown together, and...

I have two years and half of things written and about 1500 lengthy posts about game design discussions, analysis and ideas waiting to be evaluated (I"m not really serious, but you asked, heh)

The problem with middleware is that it has both advantages and disadvantages. In EVERY case. Often it isn"t a choice as it"s just about trying to do something or give up, so the argument isn"t simple. But it is true that middleware also creates a dependence. If you build your own stuff...