Free Fickle Friday Freenshots

Because I wanted to add some self-made screenies of Ryzom, I'm putting this post forward a few days.

Maybe Geek'll do an Aion themed SSS to compensate.

*hint* *hint* *nudge* *nudge*

---

For those interested, the lay down on how to make skills of your own.

I was surprised by how lush the environment is, and how well the graphics withstood time.

Important Foraging lessons

Finally a trainer who understands me :-)


Back to vanguard for more screenies.

I know, I know. These are merely Level 13 mounts, nothing to write home about.
The lighting's nice though :-)

Hop aboard!


We have liftoff!

More LotRO Warden awesomeness

LotRO Sunsets are nice, only odd how the sun seems to go down in every angle of the compass, at the same time.

The water is awesome. Not AoC Awesome, but with double the FPS.
Best viewed in game though. Stills don't do it justice.

Damn! TIme to log and go to work...

Quad Core Hardcore

The other day, Phè said something which I should quote, about more than one form of hardcoreness, some of which she can relate to and some of which she can't at all.

Since you mentioned it one or twice i want to start with saying something about Hardcore vs Casual. I think there are two separate hardcore vs casual definitions. One is the MUD world hardcore where you need to know/remember stuff and where NPCs don't have yellow exclamation points above their head. I am pretty hardcore in that sense of the term.

But the way I think of hardcore is the kind that spends hours planning a raid, that demands all team members to have gear X and teamspeak, and that demands they spent 4 nights a week behind their PC. In that sense I am the ultimate casual.

The first hardcore vs casual divide is dieing out. 85% of MMO players have grown up with the exclamation point. And our entire culture evolves in consuming more and more. So it doesn't make sense to cater for that type of hardcore in any game, eventhough I would like it.

The second kind of hardcore is still very valid. This is the one that will bring players together. If the game doesn't cater for this the game will fail. I think AOC proves that. Although the majority of players might be casual/solo players, these hardcore players are the ones that make or break a game, I think.

This got me thinking about how many kinds of hardcore there really are. Probably a lot.
To many people it's kind of a positive term, a title, sometimes even an elitist one. It separates the men from the boys so to speak. A phrase likely uttered by a 14-18 year old self-styled hardcore player no doubt. People like to dub themselves hardcore, because it sounds tough I guess. Maybe a lot of MMO players need that little bit of self-esteem?
The result is that the term 'hardcore' when applied to playstyles or gameplay styles is about as vague as when it's applied to music. As I learned to my dismay when I agreed to some 'hardcore' music and was "treated" to some horrible house variant rather than rather loud guitar/distortion sounds. There was a common denominator in the loudness though.
The common denominator amongst MMO harcore seems to be that hardly any hardcore player fully qualifies according to his or her own definition.

Let's look at some different Gaming Cores.
Let's start with the one that Phè ascribes to herself.
There's the Hardcore of Old Skool, more MUD like gameplay and players vs the Cookiecutter quality of Second Generation MMO pollish. (is it pollish or polish?) Let's call this Old Skool Hardcore in order to differentiate from the others.

Old Skool Hardcore:
The Old Skool hardcore player will typically react unfavourably to anything that's handed to them on a silver platter. Where silver platter may be something only they percieve as such. Take the often alluded to yellow exclamation mark over people's heads. The Old Skool player prefers to run around an area accosting each and every NPC in sight until one of them tries to get rid of them by sending them off to gather something dumb like 20 left-side front-paws of the local wolves, which were about to hit the die-back phase of their symbiotic relation with the local rabbits anyway.
I'm making fun of Old Skoolers now, but I actually sympathize with them a lot. Sometimes even count myself more on their side than on the average current day MMO player's side. The thing is, the short period between MUD's and Second/Next Gen MMO's with pollish and floating exclamation marks was as much a product of bad or no design as of intent. To stay with the exlamation marks, in MUD's you'd step into a room, type in inspect (or more likely you'd have scripted your client to do so at every entry of a new* room, no-one today spends as much time on taking away the drudge work as those Old Skool players did) and you'd read in the description that "an empoverished looking elderly gentleman seeks your attention" after which you'd either ignore him completely, toss him a coin for karma, or talk to him and get a quest or more likely some information leading to an undiscovered dungeon or some such. BTW, most Quests in MUD's came from bulletin boards in market squares and such though. Big columns with Wanted posters and the like. You never had to search for them really.

The obvious text-to-3D graphics translation for this type of phenomenon, an NPC trying to get your attention, would be to animate the NPC and have him hail you like a newspaper vendor or charity-contribution hawker when you come within a certain radius. Makes sense right? To me too, but not to the designers of the Old Skool MMO's. For some reason, either because they liked it that way or because it was too much work to do the obvious, they introduced the static NPC's who'd stand around aimlessly staring into the distance until you talked to them, at which point they'd prompt you to go upset the carefully balanced symbiotic relationship between predator and prey in the vicinity.
Of course Second Generation MMO's introduced the Exclamation Mark as a clutch on that bad design rather than implement the more sensible animated NPC's who'd hail you when you get near them. By now the exclamation mark is so ingrained that even those 2.5 gen MMO's that have some NPC's react to you feel obligated to do so.

This is to illustrate how a lot of Old Skool elements can be 'hardcore' either by design, or by mistake. For designers it's hard to keep the former while taking out the latter. Especially as no two Old Skool Hardcore fans will agree on what is what really. A nice point in case the UI mod debate concerning Vanguard that Phè and I occasionally get back to. While I fully agree that the mod's inclusion of details on every harvestable node, Quest giving NPC et al is diminishing the game, I don't see it that much different from having to consult web-pages to even find the NPC giving a quest in Anarchy Online which requires you to correctly inerpret faulty naming-schemes in-game. Where does the "hardcore acceptable" conveniences of out-game information end and casual cookie cutter comfort begin? It's different from person to person.

The result is that only the extremes can argue their side with any kind of veracity. Which tends to help polarize the debate. Fanatic extremists tend not to be the best of ambassadors. Despite that, if the debate is purely Old Skool vs Next Gen, the debate tends to be palatable. I'll forego more examples here as that'll make this sound even more like I'm trying to win an argument with Phè, which I'm not. We have long since decided to agree to disagree on that issue and this isn't about who's right. There's probably even a few area's where I'm secretly more Old Skool than Phè.
But it's the dichotomy between 'Old Skool Hardcore by design' and 'hardcore due to lack of design' that keeps me from identifying myself with this form of Hardcore as the latter is to me like a sore tooth asking to be picked at.

Time Based Hardcore:
Then there's the 6-hours-a-night Hardcore vs 30 minutes in which to get insta-grativication Casualness. Let's call this Time Based hardcore. This is a frequent form of the perpetual Hardcore vs Casual debate. The Hardcore players who spend 6 hours per night minimum in the game complaining how everything is being dumbed down so as the people who have jobs and lifes but still would like to play online a bit can actually enjoy their 30 minutes and 'achieve' something.
This debate always annoys me because inefitably one side will paint the other in the most extreme light in order to ridicule them. As a result I don't think I've seen a single productive discussion about this, ever. The 30 minute Casual player probably doesn't even exist. The 6 Hour one however does. Sadly enough. When I'm completely honest I'll have to admit I am that player sometimes. As a result of my weird schedule I often have the time and nothing else to do either. I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as a casual player playing hardcore hours. But when I dub myself casual, this is more in opposition of another kind of Hardcore, which I'll get to next.
Time-based hardcoreness is silly to me. Espacially when this type of Hardcore Player feels himself somehow superior. Most MMO's (Age of Conan excluded) have enough variety of content to serve both the Time-based hardcore player and the casual one. Most progression game content is made to fit chunks of 30, 45, 60 and 90 minutes. With some 2 to 3 hour grouped content as well.

The one interesting debate that can spring from this is RMT in MMO's not set up for it.
As I've said before, that's mostly an argument between those who have time and those who have money. If the latter can pay the former for the fruits of their time, there really isn't a need for a fight. Of course, current Next Generation MMO's aren't up to this yet. Maybe Bartle's idea to get the different types of players back into cooperative mode rather than segregations does have its merits.

Achievement Hardcore:
But lets go to the next form of Harcore, the one I alluded to being in opposition to.
That's the Hardcore of having the best gear, having slain the biggest baddy in the raidiest raid hardcore of the achievers. Let's call this Achievement Hardcore.
According to the simplified Bartle's Test I rate ESAK, with 11% for Acheivement, probably because some questions have only Achievement or Killer point awarding answers.
When a game says "easy to learn, hard to master", I should take that as a sign I'll not be playing it that long. I'm an Explorer and as I pointed out in my Cycles of Gameplay article, that applies to the learning curve to. In this sense I'm a fan of the old skool games as they tend to have a longer and steeper learning curve.
Achievement Hardcore is something I don't share, but I do 'get' to some extend.
As it's satisfying to excel at a sport, whether individual or team-based, physical or cerebral, so can it be satisfying to excel at a game. Most likely Raiding. Though I can't abide the repetiviness of that treadmill. At least when an Hardcore Achiever is saying he's better than Casuals players, he may have a point. In addition, they inspire the rest of us, spur us on. Achiever Hardcore Players are the ones who have all the cool armor that it takes effort (or money) to achieve. In that form they can be a positive force in MMO's. They play a part by holding out the carrot to the other softer cored players on the progression treadmill.


Explorer Hardcore:
Finally there's what I'll dub Explorer Hardcore, of the been there done that, opened up 100% of the map before it got you a title variety. Those who take pride in having visited every nook and cranny of the game-world. Who have seen all the rare spawns spawn and drops drop. To be honest this player type tends to thrown in with either or both of the previous definitions.
But in my admittedly biased opinion these are the most benign hardcore players, filling the Wiki's and Walkthroughs and (Starter) Guides on fansites across the Interwebz, which are then used by Hardcore and Casual players alike to reduce the risk factor and optimise their effort/reward in their gaming.

Did I miss a type of hardcore? Or maybe there's one you identify with and I misrepresented you? Please let me know.


*new room: a room which you haven't previously visited and/or which has an altered state (i.e. an NPC now has a flag to give you a quest)

So bad it might be good?

Caveat: I didn't have audio on this so...


But going by the visuals this might be so bad it overshoots badness and lands into ultra-camp goodness.

Me me me, meme 3: This time by Phe

First MMO Played?
Dark Age of Camelot.

First Character Class/Role Played?
I can't remember what the really first one was, but he lasted only a few days. After that I created some sort of healer, and learned very quickly that I hate being a healer. I can remember I had really a few sleepless nights over it. I quickly switched to a warden and that was my first real character.

First MMO Subscribed For More Than A Consecutive Year?
Anarchy Online. And I am over 4 years on City of Heroes now.

First MMO You Fell In Love With?
Dark Age of Camelot. But COH+GameAmp made it a permanent bond.

First Guild You Really Felt Attached To?
Celestial Bodies. It was the guild that made me love COH.

First Character/Game You Leveled To End Cap?
Phedre Delaunay in City of Heroes made it to 50. Two years later I managed to get a villain (in City of Villains) to 50 as well. And that is it.

First “Wow” Moment In A MMO?
During my first week in Anarchy Online I had not figured out the whompah yet, so I thought I could simply run to Old Athen. Half way through I got hit by a greenish rain/sand storm, and shortly after that a dinosaur stepped out of the storm. It was amazing!

First MMO You Burned Out On?
Probably Vanguard. The games prior to that I stopped playing because something new came around. Vanguard I really stopped playing without having something new.

First MMO You Followed Avidly Prior To Launch?
This is all GameAmp's fault. It started with Dark and Light, which tanked. Than Vanguard, which is a great game, but I got myself overhyped. And I also spend a lot of time chasing Gods and Heroes which never even made it to release. Now I know better and not follow anything avidly anymore.

First Time You Felt Truly Noobish In A MMO?
When I got the first tell from another player, and I had no idea how to reply.

First MMO You Went Alt-Crazy In?
City of Heroes. It is just impossible not to do that in that game.

Who's next?

Paragon Studios does it again

'It' being finding another way to rehash already existing content and art assets with minimal effort and some dodgy storytelling.



I love City of Heroes /City of VIllains, don't get me wrong. But...

I have to hand it to them, Paragon Studios are masters at rehashing content & assets and having their players work for them or failing that running after the carrot of rare dropping enhancement sets. The only true 'new' content that they created themselves, after Mythic Studio's hemorrhaged City of Villains, was some bland year-and-a-half-too-late Troy / 300 bandwagon jump thing. And now comes this announced expansion:

City of Heroes goes Rogue.
For the official announcement, go here.
Meaning with this "expansion" Heroes will be able to go slumming on the Rogue Isles and the Villains can clean up their act and visit Paragon City, only they can't do mayhem missions then, only goody two-shoes heroics. So what their incentive will be is anyone's guess.

I know that being able to visit the "other side" is one of the most requested features on the player forums, the other being taking down the blue forceshields which show the ends of the instanced "zones". I guess the visiting option was the least unfeasible of the two. But to me asking to be able to visit the Rogue Isles with your Hero means you're bored playing the same old, same old on your hero. But don't you feel the same with your Villain? How long is slumming on the Rogue isles doing the same old same old Rogue missions only with your Hero going to stay interesting?

Keep in mind the separate powersets have already beld over into each other. So all this is going to give you is the your brightly coloured hero running around using not-so-different-anymore powersets in the same old, same old missions. Since costume pieces have always been shared between villains & Rogues this actually adds nothing. Issue 14's Mission Architect system was way more revigorating, innovative and worthy of an actual Expansion in than this lowering of the virtual iron curtain.

Heck, pooring the Architect stuff (the making of missions) into an expansion mold might have kept out some of the crud makers and farming mission builders/users. Not to mention an expansion's budget might have included the means to have an actually working moderation system and maybe even a comparative voting system. I.e. the one system known to work when you're trying to get that 2% of User Created Content that's not crap.

They really, really need to add more than just "visiting rights" in this expansion to make it interesting (read, have them keep subscribers in the face of fresh air Champions Online).
But then again, I might be totally mistaken. They do mention something about "Alternate Reality", but that sounds more like segregation of those with- and those without Going Rogue.

Rock paper Shotgun have a more hopeful article regarding the announcement

HeroEngine or AwesomeEngine?

As you may know, I've been a long time admirer of the HeroEngine and Simultronics efforts at creating decent middleware which can potentiall cut the development cycle of MMO's in half, and that I'd really like to have their Hero's Journey see the light of day soon. That Bioware is using the HeroEngine for their upcoming MMO Star Wars the Old Republic is a mjor contributor to me having hopes that it may succeed and maybe break the mold.
Today I stumbled onto this interview with David Whatley, the President and CEO of Simutronics. Some excerpts:

on MUD's...

The quests, and experiences, all of these things were under control of the GameMasters. And they could provide real-time interaction with the players, through events, festivals, just appearing in the game under some guise whether it’s a creature that they’re role-playing or as a god-like being, the GameMaster could manifest themselves as anything.
And they could do these events and build the game and do all this stuff, and do it continually, so that games like GemStone and Dragon Realms, the amount of content in them is just staggering when you go in there.
We wanted to take that same concept and apply it to the graphical MMOs; the World of Warcrafts, the EverQuests. They have tools, and they have great tools, but they lack the ability to rapidly develop and apply those same tools that exist in the development process to the live environment. That’s what I wanted to do, and that’s why we created HeroEngine.

Ohhhhh.... Someone agrees with my idea on what's good to take from MUD's rather than why Richard Bartle wants us to go back to MUD's only graphical.

Well, we’ve worked really hard in our Hero’s Journey design to create a method for developing unique storylines that are personalized to your character. One of the ways we do that is first we have quests that feature elaborate branching story lines, so there are always decisions to be made.
Do I go left? Do I go right? Do I give the item, do I not give the item? That kind of thing, rather than just following what you’re told to do. And whether you do something, or don’t something, or one of three or five different choices, they’re all valid. Or as I like to say, failure is an option.

Doesn't that sound an awful lot like actually having to read the Quest dialogue again or you might up doing something you don'w really want to if you just hit 1,1,1,1 then glance at your 3rd-Party Quest Tracker Extender?

They are things that are recorded on your character that have influence later quests. One good example of that is the “nemesis quest token.” What happens is in some point of your life you’re going to come across a boss creature, and you’ll start fighting it, and there will be some randomness about it but it will decide that guy is your nemesis.
From this point on, you’re gonna be seeing him over and over again. And what’ll happen is later on there’ll be a quest that says “Insert Nemesis Here, if he has Nemesis Token” and what’ll happen is he’ll show up in that quest, and every time he’s more powerful than he was the last time, and he’ll be calling you out and stuff like that, and he’ll always make this grand escape right before you kill him.
Then, somewhere near the end of the end game you’ll get an opportunity to take him down or not in the final confrontation. That’s just one example of the things we do with the quest tokens.

That sounds familiar, except it's not The Main Selling Point Of Our Remake Game this time, but just one of many things they do with the concept.

Read the whole article here.

End of the day

The first day in Perth was somewhat cloudy. But after that all days had pure blue skies. Late afternoon a few clouds would show up and hover around the horizon for some stunning sunsets. I am certain they just did it to show off.

Let's start at the beginning

I'm back, and I am very busy pretending I don't have any jet lag. So while I am still awake I thought I better make a quick post with some pictures from down-under.


This is not the first thing I have seen on my vacation, so it is not the beginning in that sense, but it is one of the last remaining places in the world that has living stromatolites. They are basically just a bunch of rocks. But three and a half billion years ago they were the first living organisms on the planet. At that time the atmosphere had only 2% oxygen. But these nifty organisms took over the planet and increased the atmosphere's oxygen levels to 20% which allowed the development of life as we know it. Of course as gratitude for doing this they got eaten by the creatures that couldn't have lived without them. Thanks to the low tide, salty water, and remote location this piece of earth history remained. Quite amazing actually.


Now you are probably thinking this could be anywhere. So I guess I better add one more picture to clear that up. This one should do the trick :)

Why I prefer GIMP over Photoshop

Geekz0r man, I respect you for using PhotoShop. I never knew the dangers you faced
This my friends is one of many reasons why the ability to review Open Source is important:


Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART

Ok, it's an oldie, but it's good!

Sunday Screenshot Showoff, the LoTRO edition

This Sunday's Screenshot Showoff will be completely dedicated to LotRO.
Because:

1. I forgot to make screenshots of other games this week.
2. LoTRO is very, very screenshotable, even though some Alt's weren't being co-operative.
3. You could be submitting your own games' screenshots if you'd rather see something else but you're not.
   Drop me a line at tnanog[at]gmail.com and I'll set you up. :-)

I wonder what could be on Gandalf's mind?

Some kick-ass / stab-chest spear wielding animations

Just 'pinning' this Weathertop Postcard to your wall :-)
I just love those volumetric clouds.


Night skies offer some familiar looking constellations.
(you'll need to click the image for bigger version)


First time in a party. It was hectic.
Especially with everyone but me anticipating the scripted events.

Anyone fancy a skinny dip?

TTA: 7 Days
(Time to ALT )

Gah! I thought that only happened to real life people...
Note 'Ered Luin' (Blue mountain) in the back looking rather un-blueish

TTUI: 8 Days
(Time To UI mod)

But can you blame me? Compare the readability on these.
Left side is the original UI.
I also greatly enjoy the less in-the-way hotbars.

Dragonage bloodier than Conan's Age?

Just watch this trailer (ignore the soundtrack, it's been Tubified):



That looks distinctly bloody.
Ok, no blood spattering the 'camera' but otherwise it looks like they certainly got some inspiration from Funcom.

It's a bit weird though. This isn't exactly saying "spiritual successor to baldur's Gate" anymore.
Is this the legacy of the shift of focus from a PC only to a PC-then-Console to a PC and Console simultaneous release?
I'm still looking forward to this game. Trying very hard not to get my hopes up to a level where disappointment is inevitable. So hoping it'll be more diverse than everything that came after Neverwinter Nights. From Knights of the Old Republic on to Mass Effect, everything Bioware's been a rather repetitive and somewhat naieve Light / Dark side, Open Palm / Closed Fist or Paragon / Renegade mish mash. Dragonage promises a return to a bit more nitty gritty, more variable morality. This trailer however seems to be aimed straight at testosterone crazed 14-year old Console violence fans who 'need' to be Bad Ass in every game.

AoC - is a radical shift in gameplay experience such a good idea a year down the line?

FC are currently testing the up coming patch for AoC, patch 1.05 promises alot of things, how much you are going to like those promises depends on your current definition of fun versus Funcoms future definition of what your fun should be.

AoC's stat system has always been vague (I would say deliberately so, those stats do nothing much worth worrying about), 1.05 sets out to address that, it also sets out to meet players demands for more meaningful itemisation. I guess when a player base is used to working towards gear that makes a big difference in other games then AoC's little to none approach seems kinda pointless, personally I'd be happy if the gear itself didnt matter except to suit your own personal aesthetic taste but what could be added to it made the difference to suit your play style and working build, AoC's limited gem system wont support that kind of specialisation although that too is getting a new face lift in 1.05.

As is their way, FC have opened up the whole kaboodle for you to go play over on their test servers, in the absence of a fully staffed QA team then I guess it's the next best thing, or is it?

Having this kind of public testing on such a radical shift in game mechanics brings with it a whole host of other problems, questions arise as to who the devs are listening to in those public test forums, should they even be listening? In the absence of any real dev involvement and Q&A on the test forums it turns into one flame fest after another as one player base rejoices in a nerfing of one class then bemoans the unfair nerfing of their class and the cycle starts again. There are thankfully a few players whose approach towards testing these new changes is mature and to the point providing solid, factual experience along with cold hard numbers. The l2p brigade and the 'if this comes I rage quit' brigade still provide the most memorable moments of forum drama but on the whole i find the reading there to be just simply depressing...

Fun is subjective, but if you've found your niche of fun with your class in a playstyle that suits you then all power to you. Since the last major class overhaul of June 2008 most people have found that fun and have been revelling in it ever since, sure class balance is skewed but isnt it always? It's part and parcel of any MMO's evolvement, balance always needs to be tweaked on an on-going basis as FotM builds take too much control or ways of playing not envisaged by the devs are discovered by an enthusiastic player base, it's all part of the growth.

Tweaks, nerfs, whatever you want to call them are a welcome sign that the game is still growing but a full blown rewriting of your classes purpose in the game is a little harder to deal with and a much more dangerous route to take, come 1.05 alot of players are not going to be happy about their new role, their enjoyment of their class either needs to take a radical rethink or simply dumped for something new, the latter I think has already been taken into account by FC's recent announcement of a free, one time, create a lvl 50 character option, it's dressed up as coming as part of the birthday celebrations but personally I think its damage control to account for all those players who just won't like what their class has become when 1.05 hits live. I'm gonna be more cynical here but I see that causing even more balance problems as everyone quickly latches on to what the new FotM in AoC is and creates a lvl 50 accordingly.

FC's whole balance thrust is for 'group PvP' and what each class contributes in that environment. I know FC has a grand vision of sieges and guild battles but seriously after a year I would have thought it might be time to take stock of what the player base actually is rather than stick so rigidly to their original vision and risk alienating vast swathes of their current player base, on the one hand devs shouldn't always listen to the players but in the same breath sometimes they really should. It maybe that FC manages to contain the damage a little by taking steps to ensure its current PvE and solo PvP players manage to have a class that is in some way viable to that players notion of fun, it will be a fairly steep learning curve for most though if current trends on the test version are anything to go by.

Personally it depresses me, the only enjoyment I currently get out of AoC (having exhausted the content on leveling 3 lvl 80's) is the team play of raiding, only then because the people in my guild are such great fun to be with. There are signs of further content coming for end game players, commons fills that last little level gap for those just getting towards 80 and weve been told that House of Crom is built and just needs populating with quests and raid content. I might suprise myself and find a new playstyle I like with one of my radically changed classes but without any new content I won't be tempted to try.

This week in Blogging:

Trying something new.
A quick summary overview of the more interesting blogs I read (and probably shared) over the week.

Well, my prediction that a US/Western Beta of Huxley would come after Duke Nukem Forever was finished has come true, though not quite in the spirit I meant it :-)
In the same week that Shacknews reports the closure of 3DRealms and the cancellation of Duke Nukem Forever, Rock paper Shotgun (who incidentally might be the last people in the western hemisphere still periodically checking the Huxley site) report that a Beta application has appeared on the US Huxley site. The page isn't loading properly for me at work so, let me know if you can confirm and if you got in.

For your weekly drama fix, check out the Darkfall / Eurogamer scandal about which everybody has something to say. (yes, every word links to a different blog entry)

However, do not try the third Fallout 3 DLC even though it is the only one worth its cost so far. At least don't try it on the PC just yet. the download is broken. Luckily if you already bought it, you'll be able to get it at some point in the future, eventually.

Something which, besides me, only Apoletta is likely to get excited about: The planned HBO pilot for a "A Game of Thrones" (longer than mini) series is becoming increasingly more solid. Even though George R R Martin isn't my favorite Fantasy Author, I'm pleased it's not R.A.Salvatore's Drizz't stuff getting the TV treatment. HBO did a semi-decent job with Rome (as a History nut I can't be pleased fully) so there's hope they do so again with this one.

If the continuing Darkfall fiasco isn't enough drama for you, Richard Garriott was forced out of NC Soft, not the International Spacestation which is where he spent crucial time for his latest flopped Tabula Rasa, and now he's suing.

In closing, check out the column to the right of this post for the new segment called "Active Conversations", which shows the 5 latest comments so you can more easily find which topics generate comments and follow ups, and hopefully join in yourself!

Beloved colleague

During the shift handover after colleague A from the previous shift already left before doing a proper handover.

Colleague #1 : Oh well, we know his heart is in the right place.
Colleague #2: I'll remember that.
Colleague #3: Also remember to stab upwards or your knife might bounce on his ribs.
Colleague #2: I'll remember that too.

The downside to working shifts is you're always cleaning up the mess the shift before you made of things. Especially annoying when all they had to do was one check and somehow manage to screw that up, each and every time.

Why China should maybe re-annex Taiwan...

Seriously, there should not be so much pink in a single TV show, ever.

Sunday Screenshot Showoff, on Sunday even

Drakensang: He has another name, but I call him Mr Tanky.

Drakensang: We have to cross what???

Drakensang: As corny as that armor looks, you're all but obligated to wear it.
Even as a caster. That was the point where Drakensang started to loose some of its appeal.

Septerra Core installed and working.
I spent 2 hours getting it isntalled on my old pc because my Kaspersky AV was placing a 'click me' window outside the single desktop. Normally I dual head, and Kaspersky doesn't take into account that you might go from 2 to 1 desktops. Not a biggy to fix, it just takes a while and a lot of frustration before you realize what's going on.

LotRO: Soothing atmosphere outside Tom Bombabill's home.
Very well done.

LotRO: Look! I have freckles.

LotRO: Hmmmm, maybe I should look into acquiring a mount?

Bad Timing: Mom pwns me with solitaire

You may recall me singing GOG.com's praises as far back as last October when I got into their first closed then open beta's.

Since then they've gone live and been pretty successfull, especially with Bethesda's Fallout 3 bashing anti-fans who needed to actually have played the original games in order to be able to properly bash Bethesda's remake of the IP. Regardless, the Fallout franchise has become their flagship title.

Their catalogue keeps expanding monthly and some true classics have made it to the platform.
I'm still missing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Alien Crossfire dammit! That was the pinacle of the Civilization franchise if you ask me and I would dearly love to replace my completely illegal Bit Torrent of the game with a completely legit digital download guaranteed to work on XP version through GOG.com. Here's hoping they convince Sid of the veracity of their scheme.
I do legally own the game as well btw, but the original discs won't properly install on XP or Vista. Dunno why the cracked version does. Apparently Sid thought he should do it on his own though and as a physical product to boot. To be honest, I'd rather have paid $9,99 through GOG.com for a digital download than £4.83 plus the same ammount in shipping cost.
Also missing is the XCOM: UFO Defense franchise, but luckily that made it unto Steam instead.

Another goldie that is worth the $9,99 on average is Spellforce, an RTS/RPG combination that for me was more fun than Warcraft 1 through 3 together. Sadly Spellforce 2 isn't on their yet, but that one is only a few years old and most of GOG.com's catelogue is ten to fifteen years old.
Also on sale for $5,99 is Ishar 1+2 together. While I actually have some vague yet fond memories of that game, I'd not be willing to lay down even $5,- for that today. It's worth checking out the screenshots though for a chuckle at bad interface design where getting in semi-good character portraits overrode a decent viewscreen. A common problem with those old style first-person view party RPGs. Something that's almost an oxymoron these days.

And today I just happened to click an advertisement for GOG.com in one of the blogs I follow, to run into an old guilty pleasure of mine. Septerra Core: Legacy of the creator.
Guilty not because it's a game that's bad but which I secretly liked, but guilty because it's one of the few games that I pirated and never acquired legally. I'm weird in that I think that any form of entertainment that I actually like & appreciate for x amount of time, I should pay the price for it.
X differs from games to music to movies btw.
I really liked this isometric view, fully voiced over, FF-like RPG game back in '01 when I got it from a friend but never found it in the shops and after a while I forgot about it, even what it was titled. It had a really cool mixture of post-apocalyptic, steam-punk and mythologic elements and a long linear story.

This is the true value of GOG.com, the "Oh I remember that now! I used to love that!" nostalgia. Even if you only play with the game(s) for a few days or a week or so, it's worth it in my book. More so than all these Old PC to DS conversions. That smacks of exploitation to me. saving money by rehashing old Content for a new platform. This is serving nostalgia. The prices are low and yet they (the folks behind GOG.com) add value by enabling these games to run stable on XP and Vista.

You do have to be smart about these games though. They won't look great on a 22" 16:10 aspect ratio LCD monitor at 1680x1050 or 1900x1200. They won't even look good. Personally I have some trouble playing them in windowed mode as well. Oftentimes that's just a bit too small for me. You'd wish there was a x2 magnification like you have with video files. Something the Youtube generation is slowly forgetting. So I play these oldies on my old Dell Altitude 500 laptop which just won't die. It's battery is the shits, the original HD has died on me and there's a slight scratch/smear on the 14" screen, but other than that it just keeps performing. It's also perfect for the GOG.com catalogue.

After Monday Night I've got another 4 day "weekend" coming followed by two nothing-to-do morning shifts during the 'real weekend'. Ideal time to get into nostalgia mode right?
Yeah...
Except, this Monday I'm lending my mom my laptop so she can play Solitaire on it to recuperate/rest while on holiday with her best friend.
Dammit. I'd give her my brand new I7 to play Solitaire on if that'd give her a moment's pleasure.
Guess I'll have to wait or see if it'll be bearable if i hook up my old PC to my 107 cm LCD tv and play the game on the couch.

critiqueing Bartle's Keynote Address

After having placed myself firmly in one corner yesterday, I'll be coming at it from a completely different angle today. I'll be taking shots at the arguments Bartle's ideas in his Presentation (or what we can glean of it from the slides anyway) and try to debunk them. I'll still be agreeing with his overall conclusion, but pointing out some of the blind spots he has in the thinking that led him there.

Apples aren't Oranges!
Let's start with his "make games like the initial MUD" chorus. Richard really wants people to stop making games it sometimes seems and make a more gamey Second Life, as that nearly ammounts to what he wants.
There are some substantial differences between the MUD's of the eighties and the MMO's of the naughties. Let's start with the bleeding obvious and move on into the abstract shall we?

1. MMO's are graphical, sometimes visually stunning things whereas MUD's were text adventures played over anything but userfriendly networks.
2. The MUD audience consisted by and large of College people. Students, teachers and people who were there but probably shouldn't be. They could be numbered in the tens of thousands a couple of hundred thousand maybe at their peak, never millions though.
   
3. MUDs catered to this specific audience and this audience became MUD authors themselves in time.

To start with point three, it keeps amazing me how Bartle is so opposed to User Created Content. Even though this was a big part of what made MUDs big. Maybe it has something to do with the differences between the MUD audience and todays Interweb/MMORPG audience?
I mean, Bartle has repeatedly been attacked by representatives of the type of mind that generates the 99% of crap you find in Web 2.0, so he may have become predisposed to it due to them.

Who were these mudders anyway?
I personally only caught the tail end of the MUD phenomena when it was being 'destroyed' by graphical games like Ultima Online and EverQuest. While at college I saw the occasional mudder (a pejorative term in the general populace's mouth btw). They'd be sitting all day at a terminal or PC with terminal emulator software on them, not go to classes e.t.c. They were ostracized and for the most part were to much caught up in their own little world of text to notice.
On the other hand, if you needed help setting up a route to a host or a telnet connection, you needen't look further than the closest mudder for advice and assistance.

Let's get ballsy and make a statement: MUD's by and large were played by people of above average intelligence and a desire to 'live' in a different world, a fantasy one. These traits allowed them to create a Magic Circle using nothing but a terminal and the amber glowing text (or green or white if you were stuck with hercules) within which they could be anything they wanted and thereby escape the dreariness of their lives. In short, they had a lot in common with the D&D and other P&P RPG crowd. Not surprisingly that latter group also centeres around college kids of above average intelligence and 'social acceptance issues'. The 12 to 14 Million people playing MMO's today (US/EU marketspace) have almost nothing in common with these people, except that maybe one in twenty of the current day MMO players is the type who would have played MUDs (if they had the tech skills and the net access) or P&P RPGs (if they were a bit more sociable and less tech-savvy) back in the day.

Butt naked through 20 feet of snow is for pansies
MUD's demanded a lot more from their players. More time. Doing everything from moving between rooms to combat and checking your inventory took typing out full commands and reading a lot of text. Former Mudders tend to be really fast typers and very appreciatiev of auto-completion elements in any application. More creativity. You had to translate textual descriptions into your own mental vista's rather than simply take them in from the screen.
You had to describe your character in the available space rather than pick eye- and hair- colors from a colorpicker and adjust your boobslider. You had to memorize and mentally visualize the route from room 314 in the Dark Forest to room 456,231 in Grand Capital and back. You had to have a basic understanding of network protocols to even get in the game and some understanding of how programming worked in order to advance in the game.

So far have I mentioned any skill that's required of a current day MMO player? You think someone who thinks latency issues can be solved by 'port forwarding' would have been able to connect to a MUD? Or someone who wil reinstall World of Warcraft because of an error slipped into a configuration file? The whole Hardcore vs Casual debate becomes silly when you look at what divides the old skool MUD player from the current day MMO player. Only a subset of those who call themselves 'hardcore' today have what it takes to have played MUDs, fewer even would have actually enjoyed it.

Consumer Rights
MMO Players are consumers, MUD Players used to be participants. When playing the MUD would become boring, you had one way to go, and that was to become a Builder. getting (limited) admin rights on a MUD allowing you to expand upon the world, introduce new challenges for your fellow players, run 'life' events much like a Dungeon Master or Storyteller would in a P&P RPG. Can you imagine today's MMO crowd having even limited admin rights in an MMO?
The word Nightmare comes to mind. Maybe that's why Bartle is so adverse to User Created Content? because he's to stuck in old design patterns himself as much as developers who base their games too much around catering to his original archetypes?

So really, making a MUD-like game today would mean ignoring what more than 85% of your potential market is about and be a show of bad understanding of your potential market in general. Well, Richard Bartle is a game designer, not a marketeer. Is that an excuse to suggest more market-savvy designers and developers make his kind of game? Not really.
The MMO made like the original MUDs has already been made by the way, it was called Ultima Online and has a place of pride in history. Yet again I feel that over half the current market would not enjoy UO even if it'd get a current-day engine to run on. Except this time, we are talkign Hardcore/Casual divide. I also feel that the people saying "I don't want to have to go find my fun" have their rights to.

Heck, one day I'm the one, the next day I'm the other. Whymsical like Alice. A lot of the time the more hardcore or sandboxy playstyle has its appeal to me. But on other days I have the luxury of an actual life and the choice between 'being in the virtual world' and going to look for some fun there, or go and pick some fun to do in the Real Wolrd. Have some friends over, watch a funny show or movie or read a book. Some days I want to make/find my fun, some days I want to consume. It'd probably be 'better' for me if I spent the want to make/find my fun days in a more productive manner. Studying/horsing around with some piece of tech or software or another hobby producing actually useful skills. But that's something for Yet Another Post :-)

Don't flog a horse because it died on you once.
This doesn't mean I've stopped seeing merit in his idea to have games start out as the guided tour then branch out towards a more sand-box like environment with lots of ways to have User Generated Content. The 'wanted' posters on Auction Houses is a very simple yet very good example. User Created Content should have its place to though. But only if the actual goal really is empowering your playerbase, not geting Free Content. You can't.
You always pay for it some way. Either through setting up quality selection systems of quality (It takes money and time to get that right, though in the end this will save you money). Or you'll have to get paid moderators in. Or you pay for it by people leaving because your game's in-game experience is deteriorating into the kind of manure you find on 'moderated' Official Forums. You may guess I'm in favor of a well designed semmi-automative quality selection process. I'll be very interested in how CoX will evolve this. So far the seem to be going with the third option and pray not too much NSFW/ERP content is presented to minors.

The User Created Content is more likely (provided there's decent Quality Control) to keep the casual/consumer-like Dorothy happy than sandbox-like User Generated elements, as well as give the Wendy population something to do. Sorry, to me Wendy is way more a homebuilder than a Socializer, probably because I'm basing her upon the 'original Wendy' not the Porn Comic version. I'm sure that Wendy is a lot more ahm, open, than the original one that I'm familiar with. Still, I can see Wendy as a homebuilder merge with the image of a Guild Leader as well, so Bartle's not completely off his rocker either.

We all played with poo sometime.
But he is when he completely ignores the tons of fun Users are having while creating crappy content. I have a box with old P&P RPG memoribilia. Character Sheets with backgrounds, maps of churches and villages and other scenario documentation from my hey days as a Roleplayer. Most of them make me wince now. But then I remember the fun I and my friends had with them at the time. Maybe it's an occupational hazard for a professional game designer/developer to whom this is work, to not realize how much fun it can be to flex your creativity, even if it's really not that good. Most of our scenario's weren't all that good. Most were crap actually. But we had tons of awesomeness in terms of the fun we had with them. Some of my best memories to date are of completely messed up scenario's where the players went completely rampant.

Start out with the guided tour, branch out to User Generated AND Created Content Options. Give your players choice. No one's really 100% Alice or Dorothy or Wendy. More like we're 40|30|30 or 20|50|30 or some such. Maybe if Bartle had designed his Bartle Test to have a 100% total scale rather than 1-100 per Type we wouldn't have had the problem of games catering to one or the other type? You still need to deal with global chat though. I distinctly remember Vanguard's greatest post-launch issue, the community tearing itself apart over whether the death penalty was harsh enough and other hardcore/vs casual "debates".

Bartle's GDC keynote address and Tobold's Hubris

Let me start with a quick summation of who Richard Bartle is.
His wikipedia entry will give you the basics. His personal blog and the many times his personal observations have been linked in my Shared Items can give you a better idea of the man behind the name.
In short, he is the co-writer of MUD, the first ever MUD that is. He stood as midwife and proud father both at the cradle of what we know now today as the MMO genre. True, true. MUD's were text-based, that's why they were more complex and wealthier in both design, execution and often experience. All the major MMO's of today, including and perhaps especially WOW, would not exist without MUDs in much the same way todays Airbusses would not be flying without the pioneering of the early aviators. With that distinction that Airbusses are a lot farther away from their humble roots on an imaginary evolution tree than MMORPG's are.

Richard Bartle also did research into Player types and devised a archetypal reference model, the simplified version of which has become popular canon and rudimentary design-for targets of industry developers around the world. You cans till take the Bartle test today at Gamerdna if you so wish. A lot of that was done in the late seventies and eighties. Yes! that long ago, and somehow it's all still valid. Or is it? The developers of todays games seem to think so and that's the habit that Bartle is trying to break them off.
These days Richard Bartle is a part-time Professor, overseeing Game Design courses, part time author of Game Design book(s) and Part-time Game Design Consultant and key-note speaker at many Game Designer conventions. He also Blogs, shoots his mouth off with controversial statements (like the "I've already played WAR, it was called WOW") which then naturally get quoted out of contest.

A lot of people don't get him. Mostyl because they don't know his work or what it really means.
For example Tobold, who's normally a quite intelligent and conscientious blogger read by- and lauded for his work by thousands, including both players and developers/designers, completely misses the purpose of Bartle's keynote address and uses the 'already played' remark (which he misinterpreted that time too) to be flippant about it. The thing about being flippant is, you should only do this when you're right. Not when it only serves to prove the point of the person you're trying to ridicule.

Tobold seems to think Richard's entire purpose with the presentation was to reclassify his player-types without good purpose.

The explorer turns into Alice in Wonderland, who goes wherever fortune and fancy might take her. The achiever turns into Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, who follows the yellow brick road. And the socializer turns into Wendy from Peter Pan, who makes up her own stories. The killer is dropped, because there were only these three girls in the child pornography graphic novel Lost Girls, and world literature is curiously void of children stories having small girls killing her peers.

Now, would Richard simply wish to drop the Killer type while later alluding to Eve Online as a game 'that got it right' or did he have another purpose with his speech? It's not Killer being dropped because there were only these three girls, it's Tobold completely missing the point because he's still smarting about the 'already played' comment. Maybe he should have recalled that history bore Richard Bartle out on that one as well.

Well, he's not alone in taking a Powerpoint Presentation as is without benefit of the actual verbal address accompanying it and making the wrong conclusions. Some great examples can be found in Scott Jennings' blog. Scott does get Bartle btw. He of course has the benefit of having heard Richard speak before and knows how he sets up his presentations. Read his blog entry for a good read which alas points out most of what I wanted to put in this post myself. So do it after reading mine ok?

The first thing you have to understand about the presentation is that Richard wasn't there to provide answers, something which Forum and Blogreaders tend to expect from people in suits with Powerpoint presentations. Richard however is aiming to get developers to think for themselves, not to blithely follow his aging models. That's why he's introducing the three girls as new archetypes. To get people to think about designing games in a new way, to spark discussion and growth. And no, not discussion about his personal grooming, which judging by his personal blog are above par even while at leisure or on holiday.
Naturally Richard does have his own faults, blindspots and flaws of reasoning. For isntance I don't agree with his scoffing attitude to User Created Content. But that's why he's trying to get developers (note that players weren't his target audience as GDC is a developers convention) to think rather than give them his own answers on a silver platter. You see, Richard's a pretty smart guy and wants YOU to think rather than take his word for it. Oddly enough that is what most people seem to have against him, even though it couldn't be further from his intent.

So on to his address, and be advised that I too am only interpreting what I got from his slides, not his speech itself. I do think that I 'get bartle' a lot better than Tobold.
bartle first comes with three new archetypes for players. Dorothy who likes to follow the yellow brick road to a destination, Alice who wanders around the world as she sees fit and Wendy who tries to build a home, for her friends. Tobold may be forgiven for thinking Bartle was getting rid of the Killer type if all he read was those first two slides.

The main thrust of his presentation is about Content, how expensive it is to make and how the industry has been collectively floundering in an attempt to find a solution for it. He heckles (prematurely in my opinion) User Created Content. I do agree with his analysis on Professed reason (We are empowering our players) and Actual Reason (They will make stuff for us for FREE). He also points out that the Raiding End Game as used by games like WOW isn't the solution either. If Raiding were such a Good game, why bother with the Level game? Answer, it's essentially the same game.
Richard's Golden Apple is User Generated Content. He shows examples of how Eve's political map will change on a days notice because of what players are doing on their own. Richard is a great fan of freedom, sand-box gameplay, or Virtual Worlds over the Guided Tours of more Gamey Games. But, he doesn't try to exclude people who prefer the latter. What he proposes is that developers stop producing games that have X amount of things to do for Explorers, for Achievers, Socializers and Killers but instead try to make an experience that appeals to all of them, but accoridng to the archetypes of the sandbox-loving Alice, the Guided-tour loving Dorothy and the worldshaper Wendy. An Impact PvP fan would be a Wendy btw, Mr Killer-got-dropped Tobold.

It all boils down to the main suggestionMake a virtual world that starts out as a Guided Tour but gradually becomes more and more Sandboxy with User generated Content.

Alice worlds are newbie-unfriendly but provide the depth and freedom that oldbies
crave
• Dorothy worlds are very newbiefriendly but oldbies, who don’t want their hands held, feel disenchanted
• So: start off as a dorothy world and switch to alice for the elder game
• These 20-year-old philosophical differences no longer need to persist

Now, personally I see room for User Created Content as well. that's why I see Wendy as much as a builder as a Socializer. Sure, 99% of it is crap. People who like making that crap are enjoying themselves. That is still part of the purpose of games is it not?
It would give the Wendy's who aren't into Impact PvP like Eve's something to do that could benefit the Dorothies and the Alices alike. The Alices will be testing the produce of the Wendies and taking great delight in cracking down on the crud. The Dorothies will enjoy doing the 1% that is good. I happen to agree with Raph Koster that over 10 years of dealing with User Created Crud Content on the Internet (eg. Blogs for instance) have given us the technology and the theory to filter that.

So start out with a more constricting game for learning purposes, and branch out towards more and more freestyle gameplay.
It sounds obvious in a way doesn't it? That's why it gets people's hackles up. They don't like having the bleedin' obvious which they didn't see right in front of them pointed out to them by a snotty Brit. Richard actually cushioned that blow as much as he could by pointing out that people tend to not see this due to being to inured in archetypical playerstyle concepts that he helped create, when they were useful. Because developers think to much in terms of serving the Achiever, the Explorer and the Socializer, they are not properly serving the needs of serving Alice, Dorothy and Wendy. Yes, this does make Tobold's scoffingly mistaking the three new types for the four old ones minus one all the more poignant.

I don't agree 100% with Bartle, but I give the man enough credit to take in the whole 9or as much of it as he shares with us) of his idea's before slamming him about a detail. I respect his opinions based upon his authoritas as an industry dinosaur. I respectfully agree to disagree with him on those few points where I do, rather than add to the Interwebz white-noise flamefests which are part of that 99% of user Created Crap that he feels has no place in games and I think we can cope with where it doesn't outright add to the enjoyment of players.

Me me me, meme 2: A Fractured Affair

First MMO Played?
The 4th Coming - kinda like Diablo, kinda like UO, in any case, there were people online all playing in the same world at once (Methinks it was before the term "MMO" existed). Getting ganked by a player 5 million levels over you used to be part of daily life. *sigh* the good ol' days...

First Character Class/Role Played?
Yes. I dunno. Warrior?

First MMO Subscribed For More Than A Consecutive Year?
This is still on my To Do list.

First MMO You Fell In Love With?
Lineage 2

First Guild You Really Felt Attached To?
Gameamp Guides (is that the one in Guild Wars?) - I still have screenshots of that guild day we had somewhere around here...

First Character/Game You Leveled To End Cap?
Guild Wars doesn't count. Level 20...psh... WoW to level 60 (less than 24 hours before they raised the cap to 70 in Burning Crusade) and then to 70.

First “Wow” Moment In A MMO?
Probably the environments, detail, and "polishedness" (new word FTW) in Lineage 2.

First MMO You Burned Out On?
Guild Wars. Ugh...level 20 again? You know it's time to move on when you know every remote corner of the map as if you've lived there for all your life.

First MMO You Followed Avidly Prior To Launch?
Vanguard, no The Chronicles of Spellborn..no... Vanguard, no... TCos...no... uh..
In any case, I was in the beta for both of them...at the same time... :)

First Time You Felt Truly Noobish In A MMO?
That time they called me a noob and and I didn't know what they were talking about.

First MMO You Went Alt-Crazy In?
City of Heroes. Wait, what? Why is the word crazy next to alt? I'm not crazy. I don't have a problem with altitis! I represent...err...resent, yeah, that's it...I resent that!

Now you!

Me me me, meme

Spotted at A Ding World

First MMO Played?
Anarchy Online

First Character Class/Role Played?
Adventurer

First MMO Subscribed For More Than A Consecutive Year?
Anarchy Online, which was by mistake actually. I didn't notice the $5,- a month I was paying after I quit playing :-(

First MMO You Fell In Love With?
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I now understand why women sometimes stay with abusive husbands.

First Guild You Really Felt Attached To?
Gameamp Guides. It's hard not to feel attached to a Guild once you founded it.

First Character/Game You Leveled To End Cap?
Guild Wars. Don't think I ever reached Level Cap in any of the other MMO's I played.

First “Wow” Moment In A MMO?
Dunno. The biggest was first time flying on a Griffin in Vanguard.

First MMO You Burned Out On?
Guild Wars. But that wasn't really a Burn Out, more of a moving on thing. Vanguard is the first MMO i really felt a need to get away from.

First MMO You Followed Avidly Prior To Launch?
None really. I spent time tracking Age of Conan and Warhammer Online in a futile attempt to blow some life back into Gameamp. Other than that i tend to 'keep an eye' on up and comming MMO's. Never been one for avidly setting my self up for disappointment.

First Time You Felt Truly Noobish In A MMO?
This happens too many times a day for me to remember the first time :-)

First MMO You Went Alt-Crazy In?
Guild Wars! No, City of Heroes. Wait I went a bit crazy in Anarchy Online too. I probably was Alt-Crazy prior to playing MMO's.

Now you!

And suddenly you remember what being a monarchy means

The driver of this car was attemtping to hit the 'bus' with our royal family.The car plowed through fencing and a crowd, killing 4 and injuring atleast 13 others only to plow into a statue (called the needle).

Not sure what to think of this beyond the obvious sadness about- and sympathy for the fatalities involved.
Mainly I'm wondering why would anyone do this? I can halfway understand trying to kill a US president, or our Prime Minister, but the Royal family is mainly a PR machine that doesn't have to pay taxes.

Very human reactions by the Royal Family

The kid in the car is a 38 year old autochtone (indigenous) Dutch citizen and already has two confirmed deaths on his conscience. Possibly 4. Now confirmed
The driver is also heavily injured and going through surgery.

Coverage on CNN is small, but there.

Gameplay Cycles in MMO's

Besides player-types, the Exploration, Socializing, Achievement and Killing concepts can also be used to identify cycles, or phases if you will, of gameplay in an MMO.

The Joy of Learning:
This is the first cycle, the first love, the heady days of something new and shiny. Hopefully unspoiled by such things as bugs, server crashes, client instability and downright not working features. Raph Koster feels that the Joy of Learning is a major aspect of all gameplay, and I tend to agree with him. It's not just that the popping the cherry for the first time is a more unique experience than the nth time you do the same instance, it's the uncharted territory effect.

First there's learning how to play the game mechanics. With current major trends, copy-catting WOW, trying to be different from WOW, trying to entise the huge FPS market into paying monthly fees or RMT, this can be short and sour or long and frustrating. You don't want to spend too much time on working out the initial game mechanics but you don't want to leave people floundering. Sometimes a game hits this exactly right, as Warhammer Online has done in my opinion.

Next is learning your class / archetype / whatever. Of course this overlaps, but you generally spend a long time learning your class, often artificially paced by the developers through tiers. Each tier has to bring something new to your class as well as give you #2 of some skills, #3 and #4 of others, or hide this through name changes or minute differences. Mastering your class ultimately becomes part of another cycle, for me at least.

Alting can substantially increase the cycle's length and or start a new one. That's the replay value of alts 9of a different class), provided that the last element to this cycle is of enough depth.

The last element of this cycle, and the one most responsible to extending its mean time is exploring the world and sampling its contents, meeting interesting people and killing most of them. Not surprisingly, I associate this cycle with the Explorer Trait of Richard Barttle's MUD player archetypes.

For me, this Gameplay Cycle generally lasts somewhere in between one (crud game) and four (awesome!) months and since I'm primarily an Explorer type myself, it's the heaiest.

The Ties that Bind:
Ideally, during the exploratory phase of your game-time you also explored the possibility of making new friends, connecting with-, sharing with, laughing with fellow travelers on the journey. You create ties with people, set down roots and establish a reputation and place in the world for yourself and others. This often leads to becoming part of a larger community, most commonly in the shape of a Guild, fansite or, if you're sado-masochistic, Official Forums.

Socializing is important as it ties you to people which, besides being a good thing in tiself extends your enjoyment of the game I believe, long after the newness shininess of the game has been worn off. This cycle really helps going from new and shiny sensation to a comforatable feeling like that of wearing a well worn boot that can result in a truly lasting time with the game. Of course, the drawback is that you often feel obligated to keep playing a game that holds little appeal for you anymore because your friends all still play. Some overcome this by means of multi-game Guilds, but more often than not, relations come and go with the games you play, a small percentage seem to endure and stick with you cross-games. Those you could classify as friends rather than playmates (disambiguation: No off color pun intended)

On a personal note, this is a cycle and aspect of my Player type (I'm a Socializer Secondary) I've left somewhat undernourished of late. I had a great run with Guild Wars, Guild Wars @ Gameamp and Gameamp in general. In EverQuest II I was part of a small but tight knit Clan and my time Vanguard saw of Guild Drama than I've seen in a long time or care to see much of in future. Since then, the almost 2 years since most of which I spent in a 5-team shift cycle, I've not done much in the socializing sphere/cycle.
We had some fun in AoC with the Ampian Forerunners but I for one just couldn't find the energy to make anything of it and my shifting day/night cycle makes it hard to establish persistent connections.

But I've been making the miscalculation of thinking that my Shift Cycle lends itself more to playing US servers. Out of each 10 days, on 2 of these my play-time is firmly US-like, another 2 are either off-time or EU timezone only, and 6 are both EU (late) and US (early) time. So Eu times really are better/just as good I guess.

Replay value of this aspect differs. It's more an extender than a rehasher I think. After a Guild crashes and burns, most of us don't feel up for another bout of Guild Drama. Or not immediately. Still, there's a lot of fun involved in starting up a new Guild, creating a mythos, a pathos and structure. But that sounds an awful lot like Exploration again doesn't it? I really don't see any replay value in friendship either. Again it's something to hold on to. Unless you see rekindling acquinatances as replay, then there is much value to be had.

The Socializing Cycle generally starts while Exploring is still in full swang, so counting from when that aspect starts to have diminishing returns I estimate that the social gaming keeps me interested for an additional 3 to 6 months. Potentially longer, but it hasn't happened yet. Not within a single game anyway. Counting Gameamp and gaming friendships, it's more like 3-5 years and going.

Bigger must be Better:
The next cycle of gameplay, for me is Achievement.
I don't often go for this cycle as I'm like 110% Explorer, 80% Socializer, 10% Achiever and -0,4% Killer but I remember doing this in Guild Wars.
For me Achievement can be one or two things.

- Grinding: Keep killing those monsters until you collect enough tokens of some kind to buy Stuff. Where Stuff in Guild Wars was esthetically pleasing but statistically equal armor. In CoX you grind to either find or pay for those rare purple Enhancements. In most games you can grind for statistically better Stuff. I prefer doing it for fluff, and could wish that that was the only reason for anyone to grind and waste time. When more time means you become 'better' that just adds to the hardcore - casual divide. Statistical rewards mean everyone who wants to stay competitive has to stay on the ball. Sometimes it's not even about competitiveness but just plain peer pressure. Sigh, you'd think we left the playground behind.
Once again, not an Achievement player, so this is all a bit beyond me. Not only that, but i suffer from a conceit that I think my own personal player skills make up for 2-8% statistical difference.

- Raiding: Really a more complex form of grinding with similar dead-end rewards. No-one except some self deluding sods really think Raiding in itself is a good game mechanic. If it were, why aren't there any Raiding from the start games? You don't really need every minute of that long grind to max level to learn your class as you still need to learn to Raid next.

Both gear-based grinding and raiding are really a different take on the levelling game. That it's your gear that starts levelling rather than your character makes no difference. Actually it does, it makes it a clutch, much like "Alternate Advancement", lauded as a Must Have by many, really is just a bandaid on to rigid a class system.

I'd much rather see different things, like

- Long term commitments to in-game assets: Vanguard almost did this. They had you do a huge grind, as a guild, in order to get a Guild Hall built. It involved all the spheres, adventurers would be gathering resources for the crafters who had to crank out tons of materials for the construction and Diplomats had to do hundreds upon hundreds of parleys to get enough Information to acquire a Writ. it combined elemetns of Social and Achievement gameplay and as long as not too many Guild Halls were erected yet, there was a sense of discovery as well.
However, once it was all done and the building was finally up, there was nothing. Upkeep had to be paid and the resident (former) Sims(2) player would badger the crafters into getting him/her furniture to place around. But there really was no continuing effort required. No wonder many Guilds burned out shortly after. Especially the overworked Diplomats (never a big section of players, but near equal effort required) were left to their own devices. They could go on to grind for Fluff/Stat diplomatic sets. PvE Armour slightly reworked into Diplomatic gear and a note saying "You Must Find This Cool".

Age of Conan does it a bit better since your Guild Hall can be attacked, damaged and even destroyed. But that involves the Killing Cycle.

Achievement play tends to get into its own as the 'Endgame', it's no wonder that you can identify Achievement players when they rush through the carefully, lovingly handcrafted content of a recently launched game in under three weeks then complain there is no end-game, only to have their Rant Post on the Official Forums Troll-Banged because he didn't read the launch memo that raiding content would be in Real Soon Now...
Ok, that's not fair to all Achievement Players. I know for a fact that our resident Geek is an Achievement player and he's not like that. He couldn't get through a game in anything under 6 weeks ;-)
Personally I find little in the End Game or Acheivement play to find playable, let alone replayable.
But to many it's what keeps them going on and on and on following after that Tier 23 Carrot.

The King is Dead, Long Live Me!
The Killing Cycle, or gameplay.
Boy am I out of my comfort zone now.
To me this would be a last ditch effort to try and keep playing a game I've long since left.
For some it's the main ingredient though. To each their own. While I can see the glory in surviving being ganked by someone, I can't see the pleasure of ganking myself. It's really not a Cycle at all is it?

Maybe Richard Bartle was correct with his GDC Keynote Address and these 4 leftovers of his original 8 archetypes are outdated. His newfangled three player types, named Alice, Dorothy and Wendy are more apt. Though I must say that I recognize a bit of all three girls in myself. And I also think the more practically profound statement of his address was not this, but how going from Exploring & Socializing gameplay for the levelling and then switch to Achievement or Killing Play for the End Game is the wrong way to do things, is. The profounder statement that is. I should phrase that better, but that's for the next post. The presentation of his address really has me thinking. This post was just a pre-amble to the next one which'll go in more detail about Barttle's speech, just to get your mind set for my further rambling. :-)