Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Azrayne said:

WoW has that to an extent, but it"s very limited, and often feels very out of place in an otherwise high fantasy setting. The gnomish stuff worked at first, but they"ve just kept getting more and more ridiculous and it"s kind of tacky now. Especially once you get into the "dimensional ships" from BC and so forth (which conceptually could have worked, I think, but the way they implemented it into the lore, and aesthetically, was very akward).

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This is why I don"t think the "So, WoW?" replies are justified when talking about FF6/Chrono Trigger type worlds.

I mean, Chrono Trigger is pretty close to it I guess, but the technology just felt more natural in that world for some reason. In WoW it did too, back when they kept it mostly to the Gnomes/Dwarves, but now it"s kind of ridiculous.

And in FF6, technology was commonplace. Magic was the out of the place thing in that world, despite all the monsters and stuff. They actually freaked out the first time they saw Terra cast. I dunno, I think a world like that would be awesome.

Azrayne said:

Not really relevant, but I don"t think Malazan really qualifies as "low fantasy". I only read half a book, but from memory they had gods, powerful wizards and all sorts of strange creatures out the ass.

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That"s the hard fantasy from the "low/hard fantasy." It"s probably not an official description of it, but I meant it as a hybrid between low and high fantasy. The Malazan series definitely uses some aspects from high fantasy like dragons, gods and heavy magic use, but it also has a much harder edge to it and dispenses with the stereotypical elves and other cookie-cutter archetypes.

More than anything I just want to see complexity in a world. Complexity, grit, hard edges, vast amounts of moral gray areas and uniqueness all breath life into a world; life that"s almost completely absent from any MMO ever made.

Pyros said:

Well starcraft doesn"t have elves or orcs, it"s really a very straight SF world with like, space marines as usual, and 2 other major races, one technically advanced on the verge of extinction(ok that sounds like elves, but damn tons of SF settings have those) and the non technologic insectoid race(also very common in SF settings). WAR40K while it does have "orcs and elves" is pretty damn gritty and I really like the universe, what is left of humanity has been pushed into such extremes it"s rather interesting.

What I like about those(at least I believe SC is similar but not sure) is while it"s futuristic stuff, it"s a very dark future, nothing like "oh lookies we got spaceships we own the universe" that"s a bit too common otherwise. It"s also total war, not a political war for economic domination but pure survival war, most races only thrive to survive a bit more after centuries of war, and annihilate the others to do so. Star Wars in that regard, I wasn"t a big fan of, at least what I know of it(so mostly the movies).

Anyway, tons of ways to make something original, or fun, or both. Won"t please everyone, unless you do high fantasy which mostly please everyone, but anything well done could work I guess.

P.S.: I knew I"d get a negative for my wow comment. It was a joke, but if I had a penny everytime someone said wow was a carebear game...

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Yeah I know SC doesn"t have elves and orcs, that was more a reference to 40k. I agree about dark and gritty sci-fi though. I think perhaps 40k is a tad excessive at times, but I like the general atmosphere they create.

That"s the hard fantasy from the "low/hard fantasy." It"s probably not an official description of it, but I meant it as a hybrid between low and high fantasy. The Malazan series definitely uses some aspects from high fantasy like dragons, gods and heavy magic use, but it also has a much harder edge to it and dispenses with the stereotypical elves and other cookie-cutter archetypes.

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Yeah it"s definately not D&D or Feist or Eddings, but it"s closer to them than Martin is, I"d say.

Tropics said:

No gunpowder in my MMORPG please.

I would rather have swords, magic, bows and arrows, dragons, ogres, and other fantasy stuff.

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I wouldn"t mind a change from fantasy and space -- something that hasn"t been done at all is good pulp. I"d like to see an MMO with a world based on Indiana Jones/Mummy/Call of Cthulhu with a dash of prohibition-era bootlegging for the occasional change of pace.

So yes, I would very much like to see guns and gunpowder in an MMO.

Lonin said:

I"d love to see a quality low/hard fantasy game world. I know this has been repeated ad nauseam, but a world akin toA Song of Ice and Fireand/orThe Malazan Book of the Fallenwould be amazing.
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Everytime I read posts like these, I find myself agreeing strongly. Then, after a brief moment, I think why we"ll never have something like that: accessibility.

Face it folks, a big part of the audience would never stomach a world like the malazan one or even less the song of ice and fire one: too violent, brutal and with a very dark atmosphere.
In SoIaF there is not a full chapter without a rape of some sorts, pillaged places, mindless killing, decomposed bodies rotting somewhere and in Malazan is almost the same, at least in certain books.
The biggest difference is how magic, deities and weird creatures are spread all over the world and how heavy the usage of the word "cock" is done.

The accessibility part of current days MMOs is why I have less fun playing them every day that passes.
It should have been a matter of numbers only (10 people vs 40 for example), yet it became a matter of difficulty (some vs none).
Theme-wise it"s the same, you can"t have kids playing a game where NPCs rape left and right, kill just because they can (including killing newborns and defenseless people) and use pretty much only swearwords except in very few cases.
Putting a Song of Ice and Fire in a MMO would ruin it, I"m 100% sure about this, don"t even try to.

On the other hand, Malazan magic was very interesting and with a very broad range of possibilities to build on it, even from a MMO point of view and with a solid foundation in the lore of the books. I"d like something like that in a game.

Age of Conan sold very well, and could have maintained an audience if it was, yknow, fun.

Mature themes and settings are not an issue.

Yeah since when has violence and dark themes been a barrier to making a game popular?

You ever hear of a little series known as Diablo? Just as an example.

Miele said:

Everytime I read posts like these, I find myself agreeing strongly. Then, after a brief moment, I think why we"ll never have something like that: accessibility.

Face it folks, a big part of the audience would never stomach a world like the malazan one or even less the song of ice and fire one: too violent, brutal and with a very dark atmosphere.
In SoIaF there is not a full chapter without a rape of some sorts, pillaged places, mindless killing, decomposed bodies rotting somewhere and in Malazan is almost the same, at least in certain books.
The biggest difference is how magic, deities and weird creatures are spread all over the world and how heavy the usage of the word "cock" is done.

The accessibility part of current days MMOs is why I have less fun playing them every day that passes.
It should have been a matter of numbers only (10 people vs 40 for example), yet it became a matter of difficulty (some vs none).
Theme-wise it"s the same, you can"t have kids playing a game where NPCs rape left and right, kill just because they can (including killing newborns and defenseless people) and use pretty much only swearwords except in very few cases.
Putting a Song of Ice and Fire in a MMO would ruin it, I"m 100% sure about this, don"t even try to.

On the other hand, Malazan magic was very interesting and with a very broad range of possibilities to build on it, even from a MMO point of view and with a solid foundation in the lore of the books. I"d like something like that in a game.

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Stephen Erikson has stated multiple times that the Malazan world was BUILT as a gaming world for a pen & paper RPG (a GURPS system, iirc). That said, I think it would be fairly easy to digitalize it into an MMO. Multiple continents, planes, factions, and races all lend greatly to the ability to have a broad and deep MMO. The magic system would be interesting, and having paths to ascendancy would be incredible for an MMO.

ASOIAF might be pretty easy to get funding to do if one could get the IP rights, since HBO has greenlit at least the pilot for the series. Supposedly the series would run 7 seasons, with a book covered each season. That would mean that if development began today, the MMO might come out by season 2 or so, since I believe that there will be two years or so before ASOIAF begins its run.

I don"t think ASOIAF would make a good MMO. For starters, what makes the series good is the political intrigue, the suspense, the character building, and none of those would really translate well into an MMO. It"d just end up being WoW, except you can run around Kings Landing instead of Stormwind and go see an NPC called Tyrion hanging out in the palace.

I don"t think the world lends itself to the typical MMO design either. You"d have to find some way to completely break out of the healer/dps/cc/tank paradigm, since there"s just no way to make that work in ASOIAF without completely raping the lore. And MMO companies these days don"t seem big on risk taking.

It"d just end up being a niche game for people who just HAVE to be able to play in the ASOIAF setting without much regard for the actual gameplay.

Azrayne said:

I don"t think ASOIAF would make a good MMO. For starters, what makes the series good is the political intrigue, the suspense, the character building, and none of those would really translate well into an MMO. It"d just end up being WoW, except you can run around Kings Landing instead of Stormwind and go see an NPC called Tyrion hanging out in the palace.

I don"t think the world lends itself to the typical MMO design either. You"d have to find some way to completely break out of the healer/dps/cc/tank paradigm, since there"s just no way to make that work in ASOIAF without completely raping the lore. And MMO companies these days don"t seem big on risk taking.

It"d just end up being a niche game for people who just HAVE to be able to play in the ASOIAF setting without much regard for the actual gameplay.

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While I do see your point, this is one of the things that is subject to conceptual differences.

If you limit yourself to thinking of MMO as ONLY typical healer/dps/cc/tank design, then you could miss out on a way to make an innovative game. And, basically, any MMO that follows the healer/dps/cc/tank paradigm will end up being WoW (or EQ) in XX universe. Basically, in this scenario, you are building a world to fit game mechanics.

However, maybe people should start thinking about making game mechanics to fit the world.

For example, just brainstorming here: ASOIAF the MMO would be a faction based game. The "Game of Thrones" would be point, with each faction (House) maneuvering to claim Kingship. Server population would be capped, and maybe a faction balancing system could be implemented, but if you keep the factions all similar enough, you won"t have people unbalancing the game just to be on X faction that has X bonus. All classes would be open to any faction. Make the world very sandboxish, like EVE, and have a feudal system that gives decent rewards be the motivation for conflict. FFA PvP, but with a respect system in place that would reward or punish for kills against opposing factions or allied factions. Have a duel and tourney system that would remove those rewards/punishments. Have a renown system that gives the highest renown player faction controlling actions (like alliances or vendettas). Duel and tourney system would play more into the renown system.

Have an army system to "conquer" territory, and the only way you can do it is if you have X many people of your faction in the same area. Have rumors go out to opposing factions when armies start to gather (when you get X/2 amount of people in the area). Would be an interesting way to promote RvR open-world warfare. Territory would of course grant resources.

I"m sure those ideas sound pretty stupid, but I think you may get the point of what I"m trying to say. MMO means a lot of people playing together, and there are more ways to make that fun than to have the standard tank/dps/healer in X world. That"s just what has worked thus far. It takes risk to innovate, and you may fall on your face, since everyone is used to WoW...but you may succeed and carve yourself out a niche in the MMO universe.

I can see ASOIAF being an rts or single player story driven game but not an MMOG.

Well, honestly, my "So..WOW" comment was more based on the fact that at the point in the conversation, the details of what we"d want weren"t really outlined. I would absolutely love a true Steampunk or Cyberpunk fantasy setting. Arcanum would be an absolutely FANTASTIC world to play in. I honestly wish they"d make a sequel to that game...I loved it so much lol

ASoFaI would make a hell of an RTS/Civ game. Model it after theGame of Thrones Board Game, which is sort of like Risk, only much, much better. As mentioned, I don"t really see ASoFaI fitting into your standard EQ/WoW clone MMO. It is more about politics and armies.

Hope nobody minds if I steer the conversation somewhere else. If you do, ignore my question completely.

Just wondering what everyone"s thoughts are on an aspect of raiding.

In EQ, raiding was very progressive and the level cap wasn"t increased very often (in terms of raid tiers). Essentially it had a lot of gear-checks forcing guilds through the hierarchy linearly. This was useful in that it preserved old content for a few years, but after a while it became incredibly difficult for new blood to climb the ladder or get into the late-game guilds since there was a lack of players remaining in those lower tiers and very few guilds would be willing to outfit a player completely. AA contributed to this too, but leave that out for now.

In WoW, raids are quite the opposite. While there issomeprogression within expansions, there really are very few in terms of gear-checks. The frequent increase of the level caps (frequent in terms of number of raid tiers/gear-checks, not number of expansions or time duration) nullifies old raid content on a regular basis, but allows new players to climb the ladder very easily.

How would you go about this issue? There are a lot of options. You could change the way leveling works, change the way raiding works, or leave them the same and try to balance the two methods, or introduce something else entirely.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:This horse has probably been beaten a thousand times but I didn"t see it in this thread and this seems to be a rather tame and constructive place for discussion, so have at it!

Miele said:

Everytime I read posts like these, I find myself agreeing strongly. Then, after a brief moment, I think why we"ll never have something like that: accessibility.

Face it folks, a big part of the audience would never stomach a world like the malazan one or even less the song of ice and fire one: too violent, brutal and with a very dark atmosphere.
In SoIaF there is not a full chapter without a rape of some sorts, pillaged places, mindless killing, decomposed bodies rotting somewhere and in Malazan is almost the same, at least in certain books.
The biggest difference is how magic, deities and weird creatures are spread all over the world and how heavy the usage of the word "cock" is done.

The accessibility part of current days MMOs is why I have less fun playing them every day that passes.
It should have been a matter of numbers only (10 people vs 40 for example), yet it became a matter of difficulty (some vs none).
Theme-wise it"s the same, you can"t have kids playing a game where NPCs rape left and right, kill just because they can (including killing newborns and defenseless people) and use pretty much only swearwords except in very few cases.
Putting a Song of Ice and Fire in a MMO would ruin it, I"m 100% sure about this, don"t even try to.

On the other hand, Malazan magic was very interesting and with a very broad range of possibilities to build on it, even from a MMO point of view and with a solid foundation in the lore of the books. I"d like something like that in a game.

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When I bring up those two series, I"m really not even thinking of the gruesome aspects of them. On top of that, I"m just using them as examples, not as design docs.* Obviously you can"t have rape and child-killing in a game, but AoC did a decent job of having a "brutal" world that didn"t step over any lines. Of course, a mature MMO will most likely have a significantly lower top cap for subscribers, but it absolutely wouldn"t be a hindrance in making a very good profit.

Like I said before, I"d just like to see some depth in the mechanics. In virtually all current MMOs, if you"re a mage or an enchanter or a priest or whatever, you cast magical spells. Where did those spells come from? What determines how powerful those spells are? Why can some people only use a certain set of spells and other people other sets? Why can"t players combine their powers into making more powerful spells? etc. Obviously these are all easier asked than answered, but I don"t see a reason that they can"t be answered.

The same questions could be asked concerning deities, factions, cities, races, etc. With the rise in popularity of MMORPGs, the MMO has become far more dominant than the RPG. That"s not to say they are easier or worse, it"s just a departure from the roots of the genre. Right now, there"s not really an option that strives to gain back some of the RPG roots, and it"s a shame, as I"m sure there"s a decently large amount of people out there looking for a game like that.

* That being said, a Malazan MMO cut straight from books and Erikson"s DnD game ideas? YES FUCKING PLEASE. Imagine a 6-month long in-game Chain of Dogs event where you can choose to assist the Chain or the Whirlwind armies, amazing shit.

I like keys. I like attunements. I like gear checks. I like the idea of preserving raid content for awhile, but certainly not for several years as EQ did.

TBC raiding was pretty much perfect, except for the discrepancy with Kara being 10-man but needed to progress into the 25s. The expansion as a whole had a real sense of progression. It felt good to farm the raid content you were currently on because you knew it might improve your chances to succeed at the non-farm content. As time went on, they removed attunements, made it easier to get to the bosses you wanted to kill like Kael/Vashj, and then later nerfed boss HP. This resulted in pretty much anyone who wanted to see the content being able to do so. Sunwell was puggable during the months before WotLK. That"s pretty much the perfect way to do it imo, and felt much better than raiding in WotLK.

Then, if you don"t raise the level cap, the last 1-2 raids in the previous expansion can serve as entry-level to the new raid content, remaining fun for those who hadn"t mastered it yet. I see no reason why these players would complain about that as if they need the gear they obviously didn"t see it much anyway, so it"s still sort of "new" content to them.

In a nutshell, I think level cap increases should only come every other expansion or so, and that gear from the last raid of the previous expansion at least should be required to successfully clear the newest raid. Maybe make one or two bosses doable early for the lower geared people, but then put in a Brutallus to slow them down. Further raids beyond the first should have keys/attunements for the first year.

I think Blizzard"s new philosophy of "let everyone clear everything, make hard modes the hardcore thing" is very, very flawed. I actually think casual/lower-end players LIKE not having access to the higher tiers, because it makes them feel like there is something to strive for. They feel like eventually they might reach that higher level of play, whether they ever actually do or not. This is more powerful than it might seem. With things as they are now, casuals and hardcores alike will be blowing through content at a rapid pace, get bored, and eventually quit. I think we"ll see strong evidence of that in the coming months once most people finish Ulduar and realize Icecrown is probably another 6 months away.

Yeah it"ll be very interesting to see where WoW is in a few months. My guess is people are going to plow through Ulduar, and you can talk about achievements and hard mode all you want, but I don"t think that"s enough for a lot of people. I think with Icecrown in the distant future, it"s going to be interesting to see how bored people get.

if I worke at Mythic, I"d be trying to line something big up to get new/returning players to give it another spin around 2 - 3 months after 3.1 comes out.

Azrayne said:

Yeah it"ll be very interesting to see where WoW is in a few months. My guess is people are going to plow through Ulduar, and you can talk about achievements and hard mode all you want, but I don"t think that"s enough for a lot of people. I think with Icecrown in the distant future, it"s going to be interesting to see how bored people get.

if I worke at Mythic, I"d be trying to line something big up to get new/returning players to give it another spin around 2 - 3 months after 3.1 comes out.

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This speculation rolls around every time a new tier is about to be launched, and sub numbers just keep going up.

I"m not saying they"re going to see a radical decrease in population, the marketplace would need a viable alternative for that to happen.

I"m just saying that people are consuming content faster than ever, and Blizzard have said that this trend will continue. With this new model of "everyone can clear everything" it"s a lot easier for a much larger portion of the population to run out of content. In classic, even if johny casual was never going to see C"Thun or step foot in naxx, just knowing there was still a fight he hadn"t beaten, something to strive towards, gives a lot of motivation to work on your character. "Aim for the stars even if you"ll never reach them.." and all that shit. Now people finish a zone and say "oh, that"s it?"

"This speculation rolls around every time a new tier is about to be launched, and sub numbers just keep going up."

Blizzard has the good fortune of existing in an industry where most its competitors are utterly incompetent. Warcraft also seems designed as inoffensively as possible. Players might get bored and take a break, but they seldom seem to get so angry as to quit permanently (as often happened in, say, Everquest).

Danth