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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...

Eve-Online may be an interesting model. I"m very skeptical about a new studios being able to produce a huge MMO from the get go and become a major player in this market. But I think it"s possible to build something "focused" and then letting it grow. You start small and focused, then you...

Maybe he is the guy up there who just arrived on this thread? ;p By the way, listening the players doesn"t mean giving them exactly what they asked. What players say should never be ignored, in any case. But it should be interpreted. You should hire someone who has solid ideas and...

People who don"t play the game shouldn"t even be allowed to set their foot in a game design position. Scientific analysis is worth shit. Spreadsheet game balance is worth shit. This is a very basic concept that most good designers know very well. What works on a spreadsheet in many cases...

Eve-Online is giving a good example ofgood communication(alsohere). They address larger topics with dev blogs, they read and talk on the boards, keep the players always informed and the community reps don"t replace dev communication but integrate it. It"s not perfect. But better than what...

So true. Let me quote something old: "The more experienced players are in existing MMOGs, the more they can"t help but think about the whole genre in terms of what they already know." It"s both good and bad, as "influence" isn"t a bad thing on its own. Isn"t the same (and successful) WoW...

Press releaseis out. Guesses were right and both Blackguard and Moorgard are part of GMG, with a few more from SOE and other studios.

I"m waiting ;)

I don"t think so as the problems carried over from rather different games like DAoC, Oblivion and even Civilization 4. All of them had problems with memory management and not so great performance overall, it also looks like SpeedTree makes these problems even more critical. I"m all for...

Let"s hope not. I suffered enough of DAoC and Oblivion"s terrible clients. While it may look pretty, their engines are terribly optimized, have always had memory leaks since the engine was known as Netimmerse and are still carrying over a bunch of problems (hello mouse lag!) and bugs that are...

Without a culture of MMO game design OF COURSE the talent pool is small. Because the pool has NO streams. That"s why there"s the need for new blood. If you keep requiring 10+ shipped, crap titles, of course the pool dries up. It"s a vicious circle.

And this is bringing in new blood how? Problem is that "talent and passion" are really hard to judge. The point is that there"s a difference between saying "we want to make the greatest game ever" and "we want to make the greatest game ever, this is HOW." Many people go with the first, a...

I mean that often we see new dev studios that are just driven by the same names. Nothing new, nothing different. Just a recycle of the same stuff. Nope, I don"t mean the story of the setting on which the game is based. I mean the story behind the dev studio. Blizzard is around from a LONG time...

I doubt they are licencing Moorcock when they got Salvatore He quoted my whole post and commented some parts.

Or maybe it"s about the same old faces hiding behind a new mask, with empty promises, waiting for the first occasion to jump ship again. This industry is highly incestuous and it isn"t a good thing as noone is responsible of anything and people tend to flee as soon as things get problematic...

So we know it"s a fantasy themed game. I don"t care much (at this level) of who writes the lore or who draws the concept art. Who is in charge of game design, instead? Because that"s where the match is going to be played. It"s a game and it needs gaming sensibility. That"s what is relevant...