Well, now what?

Tmac47_sl said:

Gotcha.



Start a queue for bg's or events? Since there are no instances what would you queue for?



Ah. So, like Alterac Valley?

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Queue to log into the server, the whole concept is to have small servers to create smaller communities. If you read the concept again, I mentioned AV.

A game built on the concept that the best and most cost effective content is often provided by players and the community that is created around it. For a game to succeed long term, you must create an environment that people become personally attached to and driven to participate in. DraeganMMO will be a PVP focused game where players will choose among multiple factions and compete in an open environment for gear and killpoints. Gear and killpoints will be directly correlated into two different scores. These scores will be listed on leaderboards and constantly updated to provide the player with motivation to achieve a better level of play.

In order to promote community, game servers will be artificially capped at low population levels per faction in order to promote familiarity among usual players. DraeganMMO will also utilize web-based and smartphone technology to help facilitate communication with players in game and offline at all times.

By providing a "playground" for players to compete in, the focus of the game becomes scoring points and interacting with other players and not eagerly awaiting the next content patch to grind through. Imagine it's 2004/2005 again and you're playing in Alterac Valley again with two to three times more people in a map that is twenty to thirty times the size that is persistent and never ends.

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qwerty_sl said:

Haha you must be mad to step out from the shadows of your lame negs and retard rickshaw. It's cute you stick up for your boyfriend though. And I don't care if he bans me or not, I take shots at him because he takes shots at other people, and he is a dumbass for making a forum moderated by a bunch of dicks. And he criticizes other peoples posts and yet writes a gigantic design document and expects people to take it seriously even though he said, "User generated content is a horrible idea, in every way." I hope Neverwinter is a success just so I can rub that in his face.

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You're very tiring, especially your attempts to troll me with your quoting.

In any case, I specifically mentioned that a game like NWN is a design that would actually work.

Draegan_sl said:

User generated content is a horrible idea, in every way.
You have zero quality assurance.
You have no control over the design and implementation of your "world".
You have to create infrastructure and staff just to monitor and/or approve of user generated content.
You have to create the tools and assets to allow users to create content.
You want to be able to sell content to your playerbase but you have to justify that it's better than user generated content.
Infrastructure, back end shit etc.

Sure it's probably a cool idea if you're hosting your own EMU or Neverwinternights server type of deal. It's pretty great if you're doing it on a very small scale with limited people for your own enjoyment. But not with a large scale commerical product.

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Anyway, you're my own little social experiment, so continue acting like silly boy.

played EQ from about three months prior to Kunark being released through a few weeks into SoL, quit after all the AA nonsense. closest thing I can recall to the immersion I felt in EQ would have to be Skyrim. simple UI, no "!" when questing, actually felt compelled to explore the world and wanted to swim allllll the way out to that island in the middle of the ocean just in case there might be something awesome out there. i remember one night I was just fucking around and exploring through the woods, found a little path leading up to a cliff, as I got closer the music started to get a little louder and as soon as I was at the top of this waterfall the music was in full crescendo looking over the world with the sun setting in the background. i don't think i've felt that immersion in any game i've played to date, coolest shit ever. with skyrim, i made it a point not to look anything up online, maybe three puzzles or so because I was too high to figure them out. f5 saves made it easier I suppose, but if there was a big XP loss + corpse run on the line, I can promise you I would have planned half my battles better than I did.

in terms of AI, smartest i've seen to date, simple shit really. NPC's actually return to their homes when it's time for bed! so if I was on an assassination quest and wasn't able to take down said person during the daytime due to them being around guards or what not, I could go find their home, break in and wait till they got in to knock them off. ranged mobs wouldn't just stand there if I was unloading on them with arrows, they would move out of line of sight. it's really a bunch of little things that add up to truly bring you into the world and make you feel apart of it.

give me the sandbox of UO, the community / EC hanging out bullshitting / jboots, pegasus cloak, epic quests rarity of EQ and the immersion and attention to detail of Skyrim and I can promise you $15 fuck even $25 a month for years to come. why is this not possible? why can the devs see this shit and break away from the mold of the current bullshit that's out there today?

My guess would be that for "you" that combination of games and ideas would work. In order to make the game world feel something resembling real, the day/night schedule would have to be enlongated. What if, as a player, you are never physically home when the only good time to assassinate the npc is right? In skyrim you can sleep; in EQ/WoW/whatever you have to wait. Other point: Skyrim has a map, which is apparently anathema to sandboxes/games in general if you believe the crazy folk. Yeah it is a map you have to fill out, but then so is basically every map in every game ever, which gets the panties of the "purists" in a bunch.

Don't get me wrong, while I may reference EQ negatively in many, many ways, it actually managed to pull off the day/night deal much better than most modern games. Kithicor forest being the absolute best example of this. Incorporating that into a better game shouldn't be and isn't very difficult. But the rest of the advanced AI stuff from Skyrim? Works great when you can fast forward. Not so much in a persistent world. I mean seriously, can you imagine sitting around town during the AM hours waiting for stores to open to sell shit so you can go back to playing the game? I don't like my DMV lines to be emulated in games, and that is what happens generally when you let too much realism in.

rezz, i think you're incapable of abstract thought. stop posting.

Wow... That was a huge ass post by qwerty and he still managed to avoid giving a single reason why EQ would work today or how any of it's game system would deal with the problems that lead to the implementations of modern games.

there's no way to know if a game like eq would work today

supertouch_sl said:

there's no way to know if a game like eq would work today

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I think looking at the way the eq progression servers unfolded would give some insight into the type of gaming experience that would emerge in an old school style mmo released in today's market.

I mean seriously, can you imagine sitting around town during the AM hours waiting for stores to open to sell shit so you can go back to playing the game? I don't like my DMV lines to be emulated in games, and that is what happens generally when you let too much realism in.

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see, in my book at least this is the problem with the whole genre today. if you don't have the patience to wait 30-45 minutes for the shop to open, you shouldn't be playing my game. there's no need to rush in my game, you can't go into it with a "fuck i have to wait for the shop to open, i should be getting XPs as fast as possible, i need max lvl". it's more of a "ahh fuck the store is closed, well i'm a few leathers short of my new tunic I need to make, let's go hunt some shit while I wait for it to open" mentality.

you could solve this problem / add incentive to kick ass in RvR / PvP whathaveyou by having a perma NPC in your guilds castle that you'll always be able to sell to. again, it all boils down to immersion. in my opinion, we need to steer away from the "want it now", "buy it in the AH" gamers that have seriously put a big hurt in the type of game we all are looking for.

I enjoyed Skyrim very much, its a great exploration game. I dont think Skyrim as it is would work in the MMO frame, because it is really build around the immersion of being in Skyrim, your choices mattering, etc. Respawn and dozens or more of other players just dont work with it.

That said, I wish MMOs would at least take more care with the environment they create for their games. Traps in dungeons, weather outdoors, creatures with different behaviour or activity cycles ( wolves in packs, xenomorphs bursting through hidden panels, etc), factions more like EQ with advantages and disadvantages instead of the WoW model of grinding to unlock only advantages.

bofa_sl said:

see, in my book at least this is the problem with the whole genre today. if you don't have the patience to wait 30-45 minutes for the shop to open, you shouldn't be playing my game. there's no need to rush in my game, you can't go into it with a "fuck i have to wait for the shop to open, i should be getting XPs as fast as possible, i need max lvl". it's more of a "ahh fuck the store is closed, well i'm a few leathers short of my new tunic I need to make, let's go hunt some shit while I wait for it to open" mentality.

you could solve this problem / add incentive to kick ass in RvR / PvP whathaveyou by having a perma NPC in your guilds castle that you'll always be able to sell to. again, it all boils down to immersion. in my opinion, we need to steer away from the "want it now", "buy it in the AH" gamers that have seriously put a big hurt in the type of game we all are looking for.

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I was just pointing out that, again, the timezone deal with spawns/ingame time of that nature really puts the ball in another court than player skill. I am 100% OK with the normal vendors being open during business hours and having the random "Frank the Whoremaster" being open when they aren't so that there is always someone to sell to. That is a-ok in my book. I am just pointing out things I see wrong with ideas. And not wrong in the "you are not right" sense, but wrong in the "the market won't accept this shit" type of way.

The one thing that was apparently lost on the qwertys/supertouches of pre-ignore status was basically that I want a game that is both punishing and rewarding. The problem arises from the fact that the gaming market as a whole has moved to a time in/time out type exchange. 10 hours of play should equal 10 hours of growth. The ideas of yesteryear were more along the lines of pressing a button on a slot machine and hoping your 10 hours were worth 10 hours of growth. Wiping and spending the day/days recovering the loss meant you put in 10 hours to make up for the 10 hours you put in. That shit right there? Doesn't sit well with people who pay for a service. We can call it all sorts of funny things, but having your time be worth something only at the whims of fate/dickbags who don't know how to handle a Jugg camp isn't really player interaction. It is a loss of progression/growth/experience in favor of the -other- group feeling realism. That shit happens in real life far more often than most of us would want. It is basic human nature to want a "game" that doesn't emulate the shitty parts of life. So in that regard, while -I- may want a brutally hard game that requires both finesse and patience as partners to good social skills to progress, the gaming public (the people whom developers make games for) want nothing of the sort. And that is where it all breaks down. Thus, I argue mechanics because there has to be a way to appease both Timmy the retard and Frank the Tank. Looking at EQ as the posterboy for victory, however, is not the right direction.

re: Tmac

I am pretty sure Draegen meant that at release the server would be considered "full" when it has reached a predetermined cap so that other servers can fill up before it opens up again to reach another cap and continue the cycle. His idea is to promote balance among servers via a login trigger. 1000 people on "Furor Loves Anal" server? Stop people from joining that server so that "Tigole Beats Children" hits 1k people (or 750 or whatever) before allowing more people to join "Furor Loves Anal" This way you sort of avoid the overpopulated Malganis/Archimonde/Solusek Ro type hilarity where they -need- to create a splinter server.

I will completely agree with you, Tolan. But at the same time, you have to look at the market as a whole. 200k (maybe) players for Eve. 500k+ (even I think this is bullshit) numbers for Swtor. The favorite for gaming ideas is basically WoW+. Do shit to the level of WoW, then add your tweest. Expect profit.

I disagree with this model, but it is what the reality of the market is. EQ is WoW-.

Tolan_sl said:

I can't tell what you're implying with that statement.

In any case, I don't think it's a fair comparison. The progression servers were an attempt to re-release an old game played by veterans, who knew the ins and outs of everything, with access to a decade-old online encyclopedia in the rare case that they needed more info. The progression servers were trivial before they were powered on.

No one has released a true EQ successor. EQ2 was just a "parallel world" of Norrath with horribly different game mechanics and questionable artwork. Even the last dozen (or more) EQ expansions were a completely different animal. The market has not "moved on". The product has. The original market was never given a proper second chance. It's now stuck in Velious-nostalgia mode and the "new market" doesn't know what it's missing.

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The speed with which information can be collected, formatted, and disseminated these days is one factor affecting any game with the "old school style" set up. There would only be a short window of a few months (or maybe a few weeks depending on the size of the game) until everything is figured out and documented.

The insights I was referring to is how players would organize themselves to accomplish content and the types of non-classic tools they would utilize (such as wiki's or automated play tools). Players wouldn't play the game in the manner people nostalgically remember and the same problems that lead to our current generation of mmo's would manifest themselves again.

You are right it's not meant to be a straight up comparison of exactly how a new mmo would turn out when released. It was meant to provide an example of how current gamers react in a classic mmo environment like EQ1

Ukerric_sl said:

A well known rule: peak connected is 5 to 10 times players.

If your server has 100 max online at a time, it's 1k players per server tops. You cannot have one server per 10k player, you'll need to provision at least one server per 1k players. Otherwise... well, you're going to have 1k players per server anyway. With the 9k other leaving the game since they never get to play, and they're always in a queue.

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I was just throwing number out there.

Tmac47_sl said:

Errr, I must be missing something. You want to force people into a queue anytime they want to play the game? People hate queues...

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So don't make a character on a full server. Nothing is different from the current paradigm. Just everything is on a smaller scale.