MMORPG Design Idea

One thing that I have always enjoyed about MMORPG's is housing. We started these games with housing in UO, SWG, and various other ones, and then summarily lost this come launch of WoW, and the clones thereafter. With WoW it was only acceptable at release, because they said they planned on potentially releasing an expansion with housing. There was also the catch that the game was extremely sculpted and the potential for playerhousing urban crawl would destroy the feel of the world.

With later MMORPG launches the issue of player housing has been a major topic of debate for potential buyers of the game. Many games before release tout that they may or may not have housing at release, or will launch it at a later date. This is, personally, a problem. One of the best ways you can keep a player coming back is not the quest, level, or exploration aspects, but rather the social parts, such as crafting, housing, and the like. Without this cornerstone of the original MMORPG idea the games are a shadow of what they were before.

This isn't a hit on the many mechanics games like WoW have. On the contrary, I find WoW and the others to be extremely fun, but they always have that X factor, the catalyst that keeps many people hooked for a year or longer missing. I guess, in closing I'm trying to say that for me the X factor is is the Socialbility in the games.

What, dear reader(s) is your X factor in games?

~Xi

Social Systems

What are social systems? To me they are the various tools used to create a thriving community. This could range from the chatbox itself to the crafting system and economy set up of the game. Though there is another part of this system that I feel most newer MMORPGs have ignored these social systems to instead further the leveling and combat systems.

The problem with this, is simply put, that all new MMORPGs have proven that they can make a great combat engine. So why not take a simple design for combat that has been either done before or reworked, such as in Age of Conan, and then create a new bar for the various social systems.

This is generally my focus in MMORPGs since they recieve the least amount of attention in order to draw the lowest common denomenator to recieve the highest subscription numbers. The problem with this mentality is that a "small" subscription base of say 200,000 people at $15/month is still an extremely large amount of income every month for any company. Sure, a company would love to be the blockbuster hit World of Warcraft is with their 10 million subscriber base, but that doesn't mean they got it all right. It just means they got their game in as simple terms as the general populace could understand.

Whatever the end result, I'll always give a game a chance to show its true colors before shelving it.

~Xi

Caught up in WoW

Wrath of the Lich King content and the Death Knight class are both amazing. The new content and zones in WotLK are polished to a freaking HDR bloom. That is all.

~Xi

A Theory of fun

What is fun exactly, how do we define it? Raph Koster wrote a great book about this in a book similarly titled A Theory of Fun in Game Design. He discusses many points which are extremely interesting and thought provoking.Such as how game designers or similarly titled roles in the industry, should be working not only to create the juvenile sci-fi/fantasy stories of young person becomes the hero and attempts to save the world and/or defeat the evil enemy. Instead we should be discussing and exploring different avenues of the human psyche.

My take on what he means is that games are not just for children with their juvenile stories, although they definitely have their place, instead as the industry grows and matures, so should the way games present their ideas and possibly be used as a social commentary for today's social climate. This should bring us very close, and rightly so, to the argument of Video Games as Art. Are they art, or just a children's toy? I feel they can be an art form, but we aren't there yet. We have to be able to break the social stigma that video games have to have story, plot, and be extremely goal oriented in order to be fun. Instead, look at games such as Brain Age, Wii Fit, and the like. These are things that video games should have been doing long ago, but they can also be improved upon dramatically.

Wii fit being my primary example, we can that existing underlying layer and create a potential backbone for something more. For example, now that we know Wii fit can be and is quite popular with the general masses, we can create a launching platform for an electronic personal trainer who can suggest excercises and other video games that can help with weight loss, strength building, or other facets of personal fitness. Things like DDR can have hooks with the Wii architecture which allow the Wii to track who, how long, and how many calories burned while said person played.

I personally don't know if it would be as well recieved, but it could be a very nice feature for people who have personal goals to do it in a more personal and potentially more fun environment. Thats it for today I think.

~Xi

And so it begins....

I suppose I should start with who I am and what this blog is about, if it isn't already obvious. My name is Vinny, also commonly known Xilek in many MMORPG's I've played or currently play. I'm a college student, studying to become a game designer and a game programmer. My personal focus is in design, level design, and idea brainstorming. This blog is sort of an extension of this personal focus, somewhere with which I can archive and post fun ideas I have for games.

I may also post prototypes of the ideas, if and when I get the time, which is rarely. Or more often I may write and critique, rant, and dissect games, game mechanics, and whatnot. This is also essentially a place I will attempt to hone my writing abilities and turn this into some sort of readable form to be enjoyed by an audience.

With that said, I hope to post on this blog at least once a day.

~Xi