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What are you talking about? The point of PvP is competing with other players, thus the namePlayer versus Player.

What do you mean, they would crash? You mean they would crash to five million instead of ten million? I don"t dispute that. That still means that there"s an audience of five million willing to play a good PvE game, which is a huge market.

Can you cite some kind of evidence for this alleged boredom? I played from launch for the first year and did not hear people suddenly complaining about being "bored." I think you are conflating max-cutting-edge hardcore players with the majority, because neither I nor almost any of my friends...

Oh, you mean like how it was on launch? Remind me how many people bought it and rolled characters (on PvE servers, even) in the first eight months, before any PvP-related content existed in the game besides dueling and opt-in world PvP. A million? Two million? PvP was the red-headed stepchild...

Is this really true? Every recent MMORPG (past two years?) I"ve looked at has had a closed beta, then an open beta you can sign up for, then an open beta weekend everyone can play, then another one. I don"t know about test servers, but I know EQ2 has one, Eve has one. Although I suspect that...

How many console games sell over ten million copies? Not many.

Do you guys really think that having an established IP makes a big difference? It seems to me that there is a huge amount of word of mouth in the MMO community, and the better games rise to the top. There are certainly a zillion "big IP" games that enjoyed fairly little success due to being...

I don"t understand. How could you make that argument? In WoW, you know quite a lot without the threat meter (more than you know about your opponent"s cards in poker!) You see about how much damage you"re doing, you have experience fighting with your tank so you know vaguely how much threat he...

I strongly disagree. In many games of all sorts, limited information adds a layer of skill and decision-making to the game that isn"t present otherwise. You could say the same thing about poker; your opponent"s cards aren"t visible unless you cheat. However, your opponents" cards are a hugely...

Well, calling people idiots isn"t expressing an opinion, it"s expressing an insult. I thought you were talking about expressing opinions regarding design and company development processes. Regarding tight competition, I believe that. God knows there are a ton more people who think they want...

This seems like an extremely silly blanket statement, unless you specify a company. Surely you don"t think that every game development shop is some faceless, regimented corporate monolith? (Disclaimer: I know nothing about the gaming industry but something about the software industry. The...

OK, I stand corrected. As a programmer and a powergamer I appreciate the entertainment that can be had from clever scripting and coordination. I just meant that your game is too slow ifyou yourselfcan manage multiple characters at once in combat. If you"re writing a script or using broadcasted...

Guild Wars already did it; but what"s the difference between a group with NPCs and soloing?

Powerlevelling is one thing, but if you can actually do content on your main with two characters at once and be at all effective, there"s something wrong with your game.

Here"s what I think: Everyone playing MMOs enjoys grouping and socializing to some degree, and in some fashion. That"s the only draw to playing one instead of a single-player game, and it"s a big one, since people play MMOs even though they are technically limited in a lot of other regards as...

I thought WoW nailed instancing, and I thought the server community was good. Caveat - I played from release for a year and a half on a high-population, alliance/horde balanced PvP server. I think the great deal of soloable content pre-70 illustrates that 90% of people prefer to solo 90% of...

This is a good point regarding EVE. If you are good at making money in EVE (i.e. a good trader, industrialist, or scammer - the three most lucrative things by far) you will within a matter of months or a year find yourself able to legally buy with ISK whatever character you can dream of, so...

Probably you are right that using multiple classes simultaneously with associated penalties in a class-based system is very hard to balance without making either the hybrids or pure classes crappy. I think Guild Wars has done the best job so far at this, but it doesn"t have classes per se, just...

Well, there"s a million and one good gameplay/RP ways to restrict that. Maybe opposing schools of spells don"t work together well (Fury) or maybe your character has an allocation of magical power that he has to spend to empower different lines of spells (Guild Wars attributes). Maybe you can"t...

Well, first off, I"m not a roleplayer at all and I don"t care much about immersion, so I might have some bias here. But I"m not sure I see why your character shouldn"t be able to switch classes. Suppose player A makes one character, Adolf, an archer, and plays it for a year. He becomes a level...

I like EVE"s system, I like FFXI"s system, I like Guild Wars"s system. What they all have in common is that with one character, one persona, I can do everything in the game, given enough time and/or effort. I"m not a huge roleplayer, but I get attached to a character and it really puts me off...

You better make it an option. I like to use my computer often with sound off, and even if it"s on I"m frequently talking on vent and listening to music; I don"t want to have to rely on audio for any very important information besides easy-to-hear sound effects.

Right on! I started playing EVE a year or two ago because I was unable to do anything satisfying in WoW without committing myself to 20 hours a week raiding. I really like being able to play an hour or two a day and feel like at least in one aspect I"m "advancing" nearly as fast as anyone...

He"s thinking of what happened with EVE when they made the Chinese server, where they were able to train skills to anchor large deathstar POS structures before anyone could train the skills necessary to destroy said structures, and so people were able to take space and nobody was able to...

I don"t understand how a cell phone interface would give unemployed powergamers or college kids a bigger advantage. Those guys can already sit at their computer 12 hours a day and adjust their prices. It seems to me like it"s the opposite; now interested gamers who have a job can check their...

Well, I don"t really get your side of this cell phone argument. If MMORPGs were ever a "fair playing field" in any sense they stopped being fair when anyone could buy characters and gold on ebay and pay for multiple accounts and better hardware. I don"t think there are enough people playing MMOs...

If they"re using their cell phone to play, they are "in the game." Why does not using a keyboard and mouse stop it from being an MMO? How on earth can you say that using a PC is an "equalizer" when some people are running at 5 FPS, some people are running at 30 FPS, some people are using a G15...

See, I don"t quite see how you reconcile those two statements, still. Here"s a hierarchy of "less obvious" to "more obvious" notifications. Where do you think the line should be drawn and you should say "nope, you can"t customize the UI to show it likethis?" 1) There is no UI notification...

I agree with this, but what is the practical difference between having visible, obvious, and perhaps customizable debuff notifications - and having something go "ding! you have a debuff!" in the middle of your screen? The fight is equally easy or difficult either way. (And if it"s not, then...

Wait, what"s going on here? "YOU ARE THE BOMB" is just a more user-friendly way of displaying a magic effect which isalready displayedin the default UI. A player can look at the sidebar and see, with 100% reliability, whether they are the bomb or not, because the little debuff icon appears...

The problem is, any information that is important enough that it affects the user"s experience in a significant way - like aggro mechanics, mob loot tables and locations - will be found empirically if your game becomes popular. WoW doesn"t make aggro mechanics or mob loot tables available...

I think you should give as much freedom as you can for players to choose how they want information presented to themselves. Changing functionality, bad; changing form, good, imo. I know that me and many others have had a lot of fun in WoW just making mods and tinkering with our interface...

That sounds really nice from a simple gameplay perspective, but I wonder if it would drive roleplayers nuts.

Grinding for gold to get necessary repairs/mounts/useful items that you are expected to obtain.

Are you kidding? Is this a university or a community college? I don"t have any friends with professors that will take citations from Wikipedia.

This post is serious business!

Why is shit like this not moderated off the forums?

There are effective classes in the sense that when you are flying a ship, you are playing a fairly well-defined "role" that you need to switch ships/fitting to change. For example, when I"m in an interceptor, I adopt the role of a fast tackling ship and scout; my navigation and fitting and...

*cough*EVE*cough*