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Posts Tagged ‘community’

 
 

Places to go

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

It occurs to me that before I can talk meaningfully about any of the initial quest lines in Atma, I should give a bit of background involving the layout of the game’s world. There are seven capitals scattered around the map in which most of Atma’s character interactions take place. Due to the flow of [...]

 

Sandboxing

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

I’ve seen a  lot of discussion lately, regarding the dichotomy between “sandbox” and “theme park” MMORPGs. The conversations boil down to this: nearly all MMOs are like theme parks; they’re carefully constructed experiences that funnel everybody through the game in the same way and ensure that every player is exposed to the same content. It [...]

 

Leave your mark

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Nothing can put a damper on a player’s involvement in an MMO quite so much as the feeling that no matter what they do, the game world will remain in exactly the same condition. I mentioned in a previous post that players are constantly looking for some personal stake in the MMO worlds they explore; [...]

 

Closing time

Monday, September 7th, 2009

One of the most devastating flaws of MMOs as they are typically developed is that they rely on continuous releases of new content to keep their players happy. The cost of producing this new content is typically offset by subscription fees or item sales or what-have-you, and the new content itself takes little effort to [...]

 

The appeal of “things”

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Players are greedy creatures. They want top-notch graphics, they want deeply moving stories, they want a soundtrack that’s entirely orchestrated. They want the games they play to be as realistic as possible, and at the same time will complain if any part of it is too tedious (a word that’s essentially synonymous with “realistic”). It’s [...]