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That's not AI-type stuff, that's ecology. We had numerous talks with UO devs at Nevrax back when Ryzom was started about it. And the end was that it was a "Turing error" (it was Alan Turing who said something like "when I design a submarine, I don't look at fish biology", and yes, it was his...

They also got a lot of web-based F2P games (Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms, Settlers Online...)

Nah. GW2 has TEN!

I don't know. Minecraft's procedural content did generate a lot of epic-type landscape and challenges, even if they toned it down a bit for consistency's sake (if I say "gargamel", do you know what I'm talking about?). And that's with essentially one person doing it at the time. Thing is...

However, from what they said, XP isn't all you need to progress. I think it goes like that: - To progress from tier 1 to tier 2, you need to spend XP to level each of the 12 of your class abilities to tier 2, which unlocks your tier 2 class. - To progress from tier 2 to tier 3, you need...

It's not about whether the AI is smart or not, it's chiefly about how players do interact with each other, and which roles strengthen which other roles. The AI can be stupid, or smart, and all you need to adjust in practice is the HP and DPS of the mob. You can have an ultra-smart AI, but...

Well, not exactly. The point is, the game can be either: - Very easy: Not require any role whatsoever in a group to be able to kill a given mob (trivial "every ratonga for itself" DPS zerg scenario) - Simple: Require combos of specific roles, not necessarily tank+heal, but one of which is...

They should do it ATITD-style. You can use your login to access your spouse's character. Anytime (unless she/he's logged in already, that is). No divorce allowed.

And WoW found the solution. Hit your "switch to shadow" button, and start melting faces. The question isn't about classes, it's about roles. All Lithose's metaphors of supply lines aside, you can have 6 people soloing the mob together, or a group doing the mob. The difference is that a...

Math is hard, eh? Ok, let's walk you through the formula. XP needed to reach level N = F x 1000 x N^3. XP at end of previous level = F x 1000 x (N-1)^3. So, XP required during the level = F x 1000 x ( N^3 - (N-1)^3). Quick, what's the result? It's F x 1000 x (3xN^2 - 3xN + 1), because the...

It wasn't given by the devs, it was simply figured out by players. Levels weren't hardcoded, they were computed with a very simple formula. Hell levels arose because one dev couldn't do simple math. Max xp for level N required a total of N^3 * 1000 * fudge factor, which started at 1.0 and then...

I remember that, on Sebilis (the french euro server created by Ubisoft to try to expand the market in france), my guild managed to get formed about about 1h after the server went up. We got that ID 0 guild, because the guides and GM hadn't got around to create theirs yet.

Snowball effect, mainly. The main reason you keep playing is because others keep playing; you play because your guildmates still play. As long as the guild keeps a healthy roster so that you always have a raid night, a couple guildies to dungeon run or BG with, it's ok. But when a couple people...

Blizzard is 100% owned by Activision-Blizzard, which itself is no longer majority-owned by Vivendi.

Apple has over 130 billion (yes, billion) $ in cash stored offshore. Think of the debt reduction one could do with those back taxes...

... until November 8th where the Return of the Legion is announced for Q2 2014 during Blizzcon opening. Which analysts estimate will be paid back in about 2 years.

So that everybody looks like everybody else.

Also, they backpedaled, and are now saying this is "multiplayer Elder Scrolls", and are trying to bury the Massively qualifier under a citadel or something. (aka no end-game content whatsoever save doing the other 2 factions quests, and some RvR action)

At this rate, they're going to have negative asian sub numbers to justify the stable EU/NA ones...

Well, since we've got nothing to blame upon TESO these days, we might as well blame it for NCSoft's shortcomings!

One week. One week.

In what way? Do you suffer from the delusion that, somehow, sub money is fully reinvested in some quality content rather than lining up the pockets of the publisher? If so, I'd like to introduce you to this handsome man. Mr Kotick, meet Mr Creed. Mr Creed, meet Mr Kotick. He'll teach you how...

That's Ut we're talking about. By definition, he's never wrong and can't be wrong. And he doesn't agree to disagree either.

Just got spammed by Ubi to get into the "free beta", so I assume it's now open.

Phasing is a vehicle to deliver a single-player story in a multiplayer context. In other words, it's a kludge, a band-aid, to shoehorn things that, according to many, have no place in a MMO (i.e. the conceit that You Are the Awesome Prophesied Savior of the Universe... along with everyone else...

About every major multinational company these days operates on the same system. A stack of off-shore companies holding "IP rights" that your real company has to pay at exorbitant rates, which happen to just match the amount of profit you made. In a world where the majority of the stockholder...

With ONE major difference that changed everything. Every class could solo and level at relatively close to the same rate, from 1 to max. (there's of course a few differences, such as the major use of questing as a mechanism of levelling and directing players to content, but the above is...

No. It's because of risk management. Today, WoW has become the"To save the cat"of MMO space: a type of game that appears to work (10 million subs can't be wrong), and thus, must be faithfully copied to minimize risk. Up to 2005 (coincidence?) when that book came around, you had all kind of...

You may need to play a beta (or demo) to have a VALID opinion, but you will have an opinion without the beta. And that opinion will, for most people, determine whether or not they're going to give it a chance. At the moment, it's "sunday morning cartoons WoW", with a lot of opportunities to...

Well, early this year, Smedley seemed very confident we'd (I quote): "get (our) hands on an actual release version ... ? and I don?t mean a beta". So, no, the pre-alpha was when he said that in january, and alpha was Q2 when they tweeted being able to play it, and beta will start after Fan...

Befallen was a hell. Early in 99, a friend of mine did the "oops, I dropped thru the well" and then went with a few passerby trying to recover his corpse. After dying 4 or 5 times, he asked for help in guild, and that's when things got wrong. It turns out that the Bard "locate corpse" would...

I think it was a quote from one of the devs/CM. Although they might have not referred to heroics in general but more about server/world-first racing guilds; I'm not sure.

The current model is, in ilvl: LFR (25) -> Flex (10 to 25) -> Normal (10/25) -> Heroic (10/25) A lot of us expect that the Return of the Legion (or whatever it ends being called) expansion will collapse that to LFR -> Flex -> Heroic 25 (since the immense majority of heroics are done in 25...

It's all in the context. "Go to the forest next door, kill young red bears until you find an ass and bring it back" is a task. "Go to Innoruuk's bedroom in Plane of Hate, and bring me his paperknife" is a quest.

Well, the WoW devs tried desperately to call their NPC ennemies creeps, if I remember right. Instead of mobs. They couldn't make it stick. Oh, and shards is UO-parlance. It's the excuse UO devs invented to justify the existence of multiple servers: each was supposed to be a "shard" of the Gem...

No, tutorial missions are like other missions: one area of the zone that is normally empty is filled with the mission props (gates, asteroids, outposts, whatever), and you get a bookmark thru the mission log to warp there. But it's certainly not instanced: if someone scans the system, they can...

No one wants Progressquest either. A mob shouldn't be challenging because you lack the DPS rotation to kill it. It should be challenging because a tactical error during the fight means bad things happen (the mob escapes; reinforcements come; you get rooted and nuked because you didn't...

And you'd win, since Brad stated, as early as 2000 or 2001 that they thought people would do it that way. Of course, without instancing, the problem of crawling was that once you had more than 3 groups in a given dungeon, the odds of finding a named alive when you came around its room started...

No one advocates Progressquest. What we're saying is: if there's no real decision involved in hitting a button during combat (to the point you hit it by reflex or you program a macro to hit it), then that button shouldn't be there. Adding an ability that is used as soon as it comes off cooldown...

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.