crowd control

Crowd control (CC) is always a highly discussed topic in MMORPGs. Crowd control means that certain classes or roles have the opportunity to hinder enemies in their actions to get a strategic advantage over them for a limited amount of time. It is usually annoying for the affected, but simultaneously an opportunity to change the outcome of a fight. It thus increases the fun for all involved players, because it makes overall combat more spicy for all involved players... if done right.

I'd suggest the following approach: give all classes CC according to their role to allow every player to perform according to / consistent with their role.

Thus, we 1st have to determine what exactly the different roles' job is. In MMORPGs, we usually differentiate between Tanks, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Healers. The later can be distinguished in ranged healers and melee healers which should greatly affect their overall playstyle.

Tanks are heavily armored melee fighters. Their main purpose is to protect allies by soaking up and/or reducing overall damage. This can be accomplished by two means: single target protection and general protection. Single target protection is achieved by selecting an ally that is in need of protection (e.g. she is taking a heavy blow from enemies) and then performing actions that reduce the damage dealt to her by transfering it to the tank. General protection means giving enemies incentives to focus their attacks on the tank (of which the tank then mitigates a considerable amount through high armor / avoidance). Thus, concerning crowd control, a tank should be able to generally annoy enemies to turn their hatred towards him. How do you generally annoy enemies? 1St, they have to be annoyed, not taken out of combat. They have to actually be able to turn their hatred towards the tank. Consequently, a tank should slow down enemies, reduce damage afflicted to allies, block ranged attacks, and reduce overall enemy stats. This would lead to the following crowd control abilities:

• PBAE and/or cone snare („Come to me!“)
  
• PBAE and/or cone damage reduction to other targets than the tank („Hit me!“)
• interception of ranged attacks („I'm your target!“)
• interception of melee attackers („Stay with me!“)
• damage transfer from a single ally to the tank („I'll take that punch!“)

Melee DPS classes are medium-armored melee fighters. Their main purpose is to inflict high damage to single targets in a short amount of time, close combat. They have to be very agile and able to close distances to enemy targets. When they are close to their target, they also have to be able to stay close to that target until their task is accomplished. For crowd control, that would lead to the following abilities:

• anti-CC abilities to stay agile (desnare, break root) („You'll pay for that!“)
  
• sprint to close distance gaps („Here I come!“)
• short-time knockdowns, stuns („Hold still while I punch you!“)
• interrupts („Don't do that, my turn!“)

Ranged DPS classes are fragile ranged damage dealers. Their role is to inflict high damage to multiple targets from a distance. While performing attacks, they usually have to stay in their current position. Due to their very low armor and fragility, they should try to stay away from enemies and continuously readjust their range. To stay away from threats, they have to be able to readjust the correct distance to them. If they fail to do that, they will die. Thus, the crowd control abilities should be as follows:

• short-time single target root („Stay away from me!“)
  
• short-time single target snare („Slow down there, let me finish that!“)

Healers are different. Their job is to keep allies alive by all means. Because of that ability, they are often the primary target for all enemies. If they are given direct crowd control abilities that put enemies out of combat, they would be too strong since they would have two means to greatly reduce damage: through healing allies and through taking enemies out of combat action. Thus, their crowd control abilities should be focussed on self-protection and recovery. To keep that consistent with their role, we should differentiate between melee healers and ranged healers here.

For ranged healers, the general class mechanics for ranged DPS apply: they need to stay away from enemies to fulfill their job. Concerning crowd control, they would then need the following:

• pushbacks („Back to where you came from!“)
  
• quick recovery from knockdowns, stuns, silence, and interrupts („Let me do my job!“)
• emergency self-heals / self-protection („I'm not done yet!“)

Melee healers are designed for healing in the thick of things. They should not have to flee to stay effective. In general, they need a base mitigation that is similar to the base (!) mitigation of tanks. Similar to them, they need to be able to take a punch or two. This is because they are subject to several kinds of attacks at the same time: ranged and melee DPS focus damage, enemy tank annoyance, general ranged DPS AE damage. In comparison to melee DPS classes, they cannot be as mobile as them since they need to stay in range to many allies to get their heals through. Thus, they need a wide range of self-protection (because, again, direct crowd control would be too overpowered):

• high mitigation / armor („I can take a few!“)
• short-term damage immunity („Not now! Go to that other guy (tank)!“)
• quick recovery from knockdowns, stuns, silence, and interrupts („Let me do my job!“)
• high interruption resistance („That doesn't disturb me.“)
• emergency self-heals / self-protection („I'm not done yet!“)

Why collision detection is NOT enough...

... and why you, imho, ALSO need (rudimentary) line of sight.

let's talk about the tactical purpose of melee characters. They basically build a front line that

• constructs a mobile wall for enemy players
• lures the enemys attention to them
• enables wounded players to back up a little bit to (get) heal(ed)

the later two are only possible when, in addition to collision detection, a line of sight mechanism is implemented.

by collision, you only hinder enemy movement and thus melee characters. to provide opportunities for retreat, you also need to encumber ranged characters. that's what line of sight would be for then: if there's an obstacle b/w the ranged damage dealer / source and the target, the effectiveness of ranged damage sources should be reduced according to the degree of encumbrance. e.g. if a melee character / obstacle is very close to (quite far away from) a ranged damage dealer, his/her damage and/or chance to hit is significantly (slightly) decreased. to simplify, this may only be applied to player-controlled enemy (non-friendly) players.

implementation of line of sight AND collision detection would, imho, open up lots of interesting and highly enjoyable opportunities concerning tactics and overall gameplay:

• searching for weak spots in the enemy lines
  
• setting up traps or "feints"
• flanked attacks and other maneuvers (to break through to the injured / ranged etc.)
• give incentives for melee players to move the front line closer to the enemy artillery :)
• provide a more realistic feel of combat
• etc.

line of sight would only apply to ranged attacks, since melee are already hindered in several ways:

• they have to be within melee / weapon range
  
• they have to overcome additional defense (parry, block) at frontal attacks
• they need to find a way to attack from the side / from behind to unleash their fury... ;)
• ... while, simultaneously, trying to avoid turning their back / side to enemy players

also posted on the WarhammerAlliance forums.

WoW Burning Crusade

You shouldn't talk badly about something unless you have a certain knowledge about it, right? Thus, I played World of Warcraft again for a while. In the end, I quit for the same reasons as some time ago – just with 10 levels more than before. Here's the story to it.

The plan was to level up a character for already existing battleground twinks (see previous post) to be able to farm the required ressources and get easy access to gold (daily quests) and ressources (especially dust, essences and shards for enchanting). I leveled up my melee shaman, Wûtz. And I was eager to get to know the new Burning Crusade content.

Well, I liked the design of the new dungeon bosses. After a few times however, you know the fights and strategies – and if at all, you only go there again to get a specific item. I liked the daily quests, but not due to their design but rather because it was a nice place to find alliance players to gank err... fight against. I liked the introduction of a token-based loot-table: you get tokens for killing bosses and may exchange them for ph4t l00t at a vendor. However for my playstyle there were actually only very few items I really needed: a totem, a trinket, and a cloak. For all other equipment slots, better gear could be obtained elsewhere and in a more fun way (which is PvP). The token system is a positive side effect to regular dungeon crawls. Concerning dungeon crawls: there is a heroic mode for every BC instance, where all mobs are lv70 and deal more damage / have more hp and sometimes even one or two other spells. Which sadly leads to the consequence that you need a certain group setup with a lot of crowd control to finish an instance in heroic mode. If you can't CC like me, you'll sometimes have a hard time to find a group...

Each new dungeon is linked to a specific fraction. The concept: continue killing monsters within the fraction's dungeons to get access to cool items and crafting recipes – or even to get acces to the heroic mode instances. In short: I haven't used a single item accessible through the fraction vendors and farming reputation for recipes or head/shoulder enchants very quickly gets annoying. Especially when you'd like to push your crafting skill but HAVE to farm fraction X to gain access to new recipes. After skill-level 350ish or so, you can only skill up by finding random world drop recipes (unlikely) or buy them in the auction house (expensive) or grind reputation (annoying over time). New fraction content: failed.

PvP introduced another battleground, Eye of the Storm, and the Arenas. Eye of the Storm is a mixture of the Warsong Gulch and the Arathi Basin. Basic strategy: capture three of four towers to get a regular point income, then go get the flag. Not a lot of difference to the other battlegrounds: mostly zerg-fests with uncooperative players – unless you brought a few friends with you.

The rather interesting BC addition I was eager to get to know was the Arena system. And that's where the hamster wheel begins again. When you found a team, your initial rating is 1500. If you want to get above that number, all team members need a minimum amount of resilience which can be found on PvP items. If you get into an arena with almost no resilience on, you are cannon fodder and in a clear competitive disadvantage to PvP-equipped players. You wanna get above 1500? Go farm the PvP arena season 1 set and the vindicator items which can be bought for honor points at PvP vendors. That hamsterwheel restarts at a rating of 1750. You wanna get above 1750? Get you ass kicked between 1650 to 1750 for 1-2 months to get your season (max) set, then try again. Oh and don't forget to farm gold in between to be able to afford the blue gems to socket your items with. Oh and don't even try to get above 1750 as a melee shaman in a 2on2 or 3on3 team – you'll spend most of your time within arenas watching you die without being able to do anything at all due to continuous crowd control. New PvP content: failed.

What made me quit playing WoW? Realizing I'd have to get my ass kicked for roughly two months to be competitive in PvP Arena again. And realizing I'd need to either farm 2,000 gold for my epic flight mount by grinding or or by completing quests to get the gold reward. No, thank you.

A new wave of Warhammer Online beta keys for Europe is approaching...

Why WoW is utterly broken

Yes. I admit it: I started playing WoW again. I was convinced by Tzirrit – the plan sounded too reasonable: escape the WoW grindmill by leveling our chars to level 29 or 39. Outfit them with some nice low level instance and other equipment and enjoy the accessibility and coolness of WoW in the Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin PvP battlegrounds – while waiting for the release or beta test of Warhammer Online or Pirates of the Burning Sea.

My subscription will end in a few weeks. We both underestimated the stupidity of people. Our chars are now in the early 20s, the frustration hit at lv19 while trying out the 10-19 Warsong Gulch. My char was somewhat nice equipped, with some loot from Ragefire Chasm and the Wailing Caverns. With some more planning, there could also have been items from Shadowfang Keep, but well, we were planning for the lv29 or lv39 battlegrounds anyways. Warsong Gulch 10-19 was just for fun, but the fun quickly vanished like a rogue using sneak.

We 1st started with a warrior / paladin duo on the PvE shard Baelgun, but the server and PvP server cluster quickly made us change the server: the waiting line for lv10 WSG was 1-2 hours, and it didn't get any better at lv 20ish. Thus, we switched to the Blackmoore PvP server. And that was were the frustration really hit me: It turned out we were not the only ones with the idea to enjoy some low level PvP. Every (!) level range (10-19, 20-29, 30-39,...) PvP battleground is full of imba-twinks. Expect them to wear the best available equipment (blues or even world drop epics) for the concerning range, with the most powerful enchantments (+100 health, Zul-Gurub-Enchant, fiery weapon, crusader,...) with the worth of several 100 gold. Here's what happens when you encounter one of those: klick.

If you don't invest several hundred gold in your low level character, expect that you will have an item-based (not skill-based!) competitive disadvantage of several hundred or even thousand health/mana and quite a lot of DPS. Here are two profiles of those twinks: Imba-Rogue Âo, or Imba-Rogue Grimlitz. Same thing for higher levels.

Well, I don't have those 500g. And I will also not contact one of those Asdfjklm-Chars spamming the capital city chats to exchange virtual money for real money. Even if I get very good equipment for the desired level range, I'll still won't have all those enchantments and rare world drop items and have several hundred health and several XXish DPS less than the main-char-financed twinks. I might still get some skill-based killing blows, but still get killed a lot due to crusader crits or just because that +20 stamina enchantment ate all of my burst damage.

I knew that WoW = money/time >>> skill. I had hoped this was not the case for everything /quit WoW, /uninstall.

About a button...

„So here is a bothersome question.

In order of importance for a button on the screen how do you rate...

The design of the button
The position of the button on the screen
The action that button will do
Feedback that the button is available
Feedback that the button has been activated
Feedback on cooldown (assume it has a cooldown)

It's been bothering me for a while.“ - P. Barnett, creative director of EAMythic.

Not very bothersome imho. They are all equally and utterly important. Let me explain why, from an MMO design standpoint of view.

The design of the button
Very important for players that are new to the game and thus tremendously important for the game. They have not yet figured out how the controls are working. They still need to learn when to use which ability to play efficiently,... The design of the button is the safe anchor: it tells them by art design what the ability generally does („Hm, a sword with guts on it – it's probably a close-combat damage ability!“). After a while, they'll have learned the buttons use and the action which is activated by it – and will mostly only use it's visual design to rearrange their individual keybinding-defined hotbar.

The position of the button on the screen
Again, very important for players that are new to the game and thus tremendously important for the game. If they can't klick on it as fast as other buttons, they will probably use it less often because they think it is not important. In general, you have to differentiate between standard attacks (e.g. fireball) and situational attacks (e.g. a counter-attack after parrying). The standard attacks should be arranged close together, due to tradition and 'WoW standard' preferably at the bottom of the screen. Situational attacks should pop up close to the character model when available to give feedback of „You did X, now do something cool out of it!“ and to provide easy attainable and instant gratification. Later in the game, they won't care too much about the (standard attack) button positions anymore since they'll mostly be using their keyboard for activation.

The action that button will do
The available actions define your character. They provide meaningful choices and reward correct decisions in a way that can decide between victory or defeat. Every single action should have a significant impact on the situation that causes its activation. Utterly important.

Feedback that the button is available
The player will require standard attacks to be accessible at all times and that situational attack buttons pop up and textually & visually notify the player as soon as they are available. If that's not the case, it's bad feedback design. A design flaw that should immediately be taken care of. Tu sum up: it's more than important – it's a gameplay requirement.

Feedback that the button has been activated
There are two kinds of feedback: the button feedback (e.g. it greys out until the cooldown is finished) and the screen feedback (e.g. a special attack animation that is being performed by the character). A button has to react immediately upon activation. Everything else will confuse the player, cause unintentioned double-activation and thus frustration due to unwillingly performed actions. Again: more than important – it's a gameplay requirement.

Feedback on cooldown (assume it has a cooldown)
Another gameplay requirement, this time for the opportunity to strategically plan in advance. Which ability do I want to activate next? Are there cooldown-related dependancies („When I slow him now I could fire my ranged ability a second time to finish him off.“)?

sneak preview: PotBS

Pirates of the Burning Sea preview - sounds awesome.

However, I don't see where the acclaimed 'next generation' is. It rather sounds like a thoughtful combination of many nice and interesting game / MMO features. In a good way. Even though the game was delayed several times, now being five years in development.

That's probably the advantage of boing funded by multi-millionaires, not being dependant on a solely profit-oriented new economy investor.

thoughts on Tabula Rasa

Well, the NDA on Tabula Rasa is lifted. So... what is TR? TR is a sci-fi based MMO-shooter. The setting: an alien race, the Bane, almost extinguished mankind - and several other races on other planets. The humans main allies are the somewhat shamanistic Eloh who teach the survivors the use of logos, some sort of language which letters (logos) you can find spread around the different planets. Futuristic human and Bane (an alien race that almost terminated humanity and several other planets / races, the main enemy) structures, weapons, dropships etc.

With the combination of firearms and logo abilities, you fight the Bane, the animals corrupted by the Bane, and other enemies in mostly medium-sized quest-driven (instanced) zones and small very story-driven instances.

Your main source of damage are your firearms. There are three basic weapons (pistols, rifles, shotguns) and one specific firearm per career tree option (however, most of those career tree weapons use way to much ammo to be efficient). You have to target your enemy FPS style. However, it's not completely FPS-style, you rather get a bonus on your hit chance and I think also damage when you correctly aim at your target. The upside: it's different. The downside: it's kinda hard to control what you are shooting at because the interface displays all health/armor bars of the direction you are looking at.

Additionally, you can use logo abilities that you can learn and improve by spending training points. Speaking of character advancement: all players start with the same class. At lv5, you can choose b/w soldier (damage-oriented) or specialist (support-oriented). There are other career choices at lv15 and lv30. Each lv-up, you get 2 training points for skills and 3 attribute points. Increasing a skill by one rank costs previous rank +1 training points. So to skill up to rank 5, you have to spend 1+2+3+4+5=15 of 100 available training points. That means you can max out not more than six abilities of which two or three are passive and not active-use.

The problem (currently?) is: there are some skills that are way superior compared to other choices, e.g. 'firearms' greatly increases damage of all three basic weapons (pistols, shotguns, rifles) vs. an armor type that increases your run speed by up to 5%. So differentiation b/w characters actually starts at lv15 or so, from lv1-14 they somewhat all feel the same because of certain "must-have" skills (lv5 firearms, lv3 tools for medi-kits + rez / lv3-5 rage, lv3-5 lightning --> 15+6+6=30 of 100 training points are somewhat pre-defined).

Due to the lack of character difference in early levels, there are also no different roles or something like 'control of the enemy'. When you group, there are (almost) no synergies, instead of one player it's several players shooting at (many) health bars. That enhances egoistic behavior, plus you can just overrun enemies with your combined firepower without the use of any tactical planning. So you basically see a lot of comparably large bars. Quite confusing. Because of that, it's also quite hard to control or focus or assist mobs / enemies, instead of "I control the situation" you rather have the impression of shooting at bars until there are none to shoot at any more.

Only at lv15, the basic archetypes / roles start to flesh out: commandos = heavily armored brutes, rangers = stealthed damage dealers, sappers = use of mechanical and explosive support, biotechnichian = healer. I playtested a biotechnichian and it was pretty senseless: the most effective tool for healing were still the armor repair and heal discs I already acquired as a specialist. At lv30, those archetypes flesh out even more - I hope in a better and more unique way... However, you don't get the impression of making meaningful choices in the early levels which makes it quite hard to delve into the TR world in the beginning due to the lack of personification / identification b/w the player and the character.

The crafting also doesn't contribute to character individualization: you can loot crafting recipes to enhance your weapons / armor, craft colors to customize your character appearance or tools like medikits and ammunition. However, as soon as you use one of those recipes, it's gone forever - you don't learn it, you have to find a new one to craft it again. Not very achiever-friendly and rather tedious. Plus, the weapon enhancements are quite costly and it's way easier to find new and better weapons then improve your current one for tons of credits / gold.

In short: there are some new and nice elements / ideas (FPS style fighting, logo language, career choices), but they could have executed them a lot better / more appealing. Destination Games has one more month to fix those issues. If they don't, I'd guess TR aka Destination Games will have the destination of being Sigil'ed: famous person + crappy game design = epic failure.

Collecting tester feedback

While scanning through the Tabula Rasa closed beta test forums today, I kinda noticed that approx. 97% of player feedback is absolutely useless.

Beta test means: the key elements are implemented in the game and the testers are now asked to provide feedback about those elements, find bugs, and come up with suggestions and ideas of how those key elements should be combined to make the game fun and appealing. This process is iterative, meaning the developers continuously add more features like more races, more classes, secondary features, and improved key features. However, the key features are not and just cannot be subject to change since they define the core gameplay aspects of the game. Or, to say it frankly: devs will probably ignore (maybe even cry about) suggestions that would cause shipment delay of several months to implement. Really, they are just not interested in things that would require implementation or even extinction of the key elements that are already in the game because all those key elements are connected in many different ways. Well, I think you got the point. The question is: how to get qualitative and valuable tester feedback?

There's even one more challenge to keep in mind: only a very very small part of the beta testers participates in official testing-related feedback mechanisms (e.g. beta forums) at all.

Many games seem to use basic empiric and mandatory evaluations to collect feedback, e.g. whenever you complete a quest or level up, you have to answer a few questions like „did you like that quest?“ or „do you think your current equipment if ok for your level?“. This method may provide general gameplay happiness feedback, but won't really help in collecting broad qualitative feedback about the different key elements of the game.

Preselection of beta testers? Nigh impossible if you have 50k+ beta signups. And the applicants might've just copied well-written texts from somewhere else. Game exterior feedback collection? Only a small percentage of beta testers will even use it. So basically you need ingame-collected qualitative feedback. How do you get that? Well, I'd say by making your QA employees secretly interview the beta testers ingame. Tell them to found guilds and continuously form groups and then chat / talk to them about the game – within the game / current build without ever revealing their actual position within the company. [This of course would only work for multiplayer games.]

MMOGs = social

Surprise, surprise...

75% have met new friends in MMOs.
50% of them have met those friends in person.
40% preferred discussing sensitive issues with VL-friends.
10% have developed physical relationships.

The last one's ratio is a lot better than any online partnership website.

"Please help me - I'm a geek?!" Nah, sorry. I think I'm fine.

G|C Leipzig 2007

There was the Leipzig Games Convention several days ago. I attended it. 
There was a WAR beta key contest / lottery. I won a key and I am eagerly waiting for it being send to me.
--> check out my GC coverage on my GuildCafe blog

 

Barnett Interview

Epic interview. No marketing-based interview where it's all about telling what great product you'll be delivering to the people. Nothing but a game designer enthusiastically talking about what he is doing. 

Speaking about WAR... Freakin' aweseome movie!

character customization in WAR

Q: Why is this a smart move?

Lance Robertson: We are going to have a lot of changeable faces, for certain races like the Greenskins. There is really going to be a lot of variety.

What we really want to concentrate on though for the customization of your character in general is more your silhouette so to speak. I’ve got spikes on my shoulders or I have trophies hanging off of my body that shows pretty much how much of a badass I am. Our artists call it the 20 Foot Rule. We really want to make it so that the guy from 20 feet away is obviously different from the other guy in terms of their race, career, and how high a rank they are.

A: 1st of all, it saves workload. Make ONE model, not 3,000 different customization combinations where you have to check at each one of them if the animations are alright, if some equipment causes certain illustration errors etc., so basically a lot less required QA and manpower ressources.

2nd, it provides time for dynamic character customization: you can't only read in your tome of knowledge, what badass you are, you can also determine it by just looking at yourself. You become a walking trophy collection, bragging about your achievements and heartily inviting enemy players to give a damn about (trying to kill) you.

And 3rd... Well c'mon, who cares wether your nose is 2 inches long or what your exact skin color is when you are covered in full armor and helmet anyway?

just a short WoW rant #4

Comment on this picture: "Seriously: What must Rob Pardo think when he sees an image like this?"



I know what he thinks: "Paying customers. Yay!"

"Get a life!"

what can you do in real life? you can stick to the rules. you can live according to the overall conditioning principles of society (don't steal, don't scare old people,...). you can experience things within the vicinity that you already know or may have experienced in another way at a similar place. you can meet people that mostly try to get along, but not people that stick to their own individual and interesting personality.
well ok... you might also journey to another country on the other side of the world, or join an interesting community that fits to your needs. but let's be honest: the later two are rather a rarity than a common occasion.

what can you do in virtual life? you can go kill a dragon - or virtual people you don't like. you can make your own rules. you can do things you could never accomplish alone in the real world, like crafting a nice peace of armor or brew a potion that makes you stronger (forget about spinache!). you can meet fellows and achieve something together in a collaborative struggle.

the next time people tell you to "get a life", tell them to try out YOURS. ;)

WTB Gold?

"We never believed in the ancient prophecies... like fools we clung to our old hatreds, and fought as we had for generations. Until the day the sky rained gnomes."

It is raining gnomes. Everywhere! This is just impressive, hilarious, very creative and perfectly executed concerning synchronisation. My earnest respect for that! 

How do they do this? A player who used to play on a private server assumes the following:

They use a program that hooks into the World of Warcraft client and modifies the memory address that handles player location. They then alter their location to be at specific point and drop from the sky.

Anyway: "Our gnomes will blot out the sun!" *rofl*

WAR vs. AoC

If you say "Lets go smack my bitch up!" in Warhammer Online, you are going to be banned.

If you say "Lets go smack my bitch up!" in Age of Conan, you are probably going to a tavern.

E-penis++

Playing virtual god anyone? ;-) 

Lad: You play World of Warcraft?
Randy: Well, I have a level 65, but I've never been to MC as I'm not in a raid guild.
Me: I've pugged it a few times. I have three 70s, a 60 and a 20-something.
Lad: I have two 70s. Hey, I think it's really great that people of all ages play WoW.
Me: Well, we have been playing this kind of game for a while...
(Randy glances at me with an "are you going to do it?" look).
Me: What was World of Warcraft based on? What game did the developers look at and think, "we can do that, only better"?
Lad: Er, was it called EverQuest?
Me: That's right. Do you know what EverQuest was based on?
Lad: No, but I think there was some guy at IU who gave a talk...
Me: EverQuest was based on DikuMUD, which was a textual world developed at the Datalogisk Institut Kobenhavns Universitet in Denmark. DikuMUD was based on AberMUD, written at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. AberMUD was based on MUD, written at the University of Essex in England. MUD wasn't based on anything. I co-wrote it.
Lad: You wrote it?
Me: The first graphical virtual world was Habitat, written in 1985 by — who wrote Habitat, Randy?
Randy: Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar.
Me: We've been writing and playing these games since before you were born.

Designers don't like farmers

I told you so. :-)

Having worked with designers, I know they hate farmers more than a lot of players do, because the farmers are finding and exploiting design weaknesses in products they've worked on for years. Some people would say, "Hey, tough luck. If your design is weak, it's your own fault."

Source

Btw: interesting Escapist issue this time.

/who Warhammer Online?

www.bullseye-games.com?

Some of you might have noticed that this blog may now also be reached via www.Bullseye-Games.com.

What's this all about? See, I have been thinking about working in the computer games industry since err... well since a very long time, maybe even since I played a computer game ('Mission Elevator' on an Amstrad Schneider CPC) for the 1st time, 12 years ago.

But over the years, I learned that the working conditions in the computer game industry are not very well – crunchtime 12 hour work shifts for several months short before launch, financial and contentual dependancy on your publisher (if you have one) or a run only millimeters away from the financial abyss (if you're an independent game developer).

Thus, when I started college, I joined the students radio to work as a journalist to look for other career options. I worked together with fellow students that kept praising the content of private radios, that generic 'the best hits from the 80s, 90s and today!', those constantly grinning moderator-entertainers who like themselves more then their listeners... So I applied for an internship at the WDR, the largest public radio station in Germany, hoping to find journalistic quality and an overall vision of how to spread information. Actually, I did. But I also found very discouraging bureaucratic structures, very slowly working windmills, hierarchy pyramids, and very few space for personal development and personal contribution...

So what IS Bullseye Games? It's back to the roots. It's a project, an idea, that buzzes through my head since my internship at the WDR, which has been two years ago. It's the understanding that if I really want to work in a company that fits my personal expectations and needs... Well then I probably have to found it by myself.

I know it is risky, that there will be downsides like long working hours and a huge responsibility. But from my 'leadership experience' (editor-in-chief at the students radio for a year, founder and leader of a non-guilded 'World of Warcraft' raid), I think I also got the impression of the advantages: a lot of personal freedom, advancement and independency. And the opportunity to change and greatly contribute to a self-made community. I hope this dream, this idea of 'Bullseye Games', will come true some day.