Posts Tagged ‘king’

User Generated MMOs… When?

4 April 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

There is a lot to be said for user generated content these days. It has basically become the king of the internet, actually. People generally like to create their own stuff, and see their ideas come to life (as long as it’s not too hard to achieve). So why are MMOs still so reluctant to give us the same freedom that websites like MySpace or Facebook have, or games like Unreal Tournament and Oblivion allow?

One of the main ideas behind the MMORPG is to have a persistent world. A world where players can interact with other players and the world will generally react back to them as well, typically through quest lines. For example, if you kill x boss you will then restore y king back to power, or some such nonsense like that. The world will progress through you. An interesting concept, but one not without its own flaws.  One of the flaws being that this does not allow for any sort of user generated content. My character can complete quests on behalf of NPCs, however he can’t make his own quest. He can live through the pre-set storyline, but he can’t forge his own story. An interesting problem…

Of course, that’s not to say nobody has tried. Today you can log onto Second Life and proceed to make all sorts of things (as illustrated by the castle above). However, Second Life also doesn’t really have a story line. You can make things but they really have no affect on the world because Second Life isn’t really a world, not in the same sense that WoW is. Another example is the Saga of Ryzom, while it doesn’t exist anymore, the game once provided a content update that allowed for users to create their own stories and scenarios. Unfortunately, I never took the time to test it out, but it is definitely something that sounded interesting.

MMORPGs are much like the internet was 10 years ago. The provide a function, and are generally liked by a good deal of people. However, they aren’t mainstream yet. The World of Warcraft is a huge game, but it could be bigger. As people slowly move toward more and more user generated content websites they are going to start looking for that same functionality within other parts of their lives, including MMORPGs. While it may sound like a challenge now, it’s gotta happen eventually. Nothing escapes consumer apathy. If you give people the tools to make their own toys, you’ll be much more popular because of it.

Bring on the user-generated MMORPGs.

LOTRO: Book 12 is Upon Us

12 February 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Getting back into LOTRO about 2 weeks ago, I’ve been looking torwards to the next bid game update, Book 12. Aside from the usual bug fixes, new quests and character balancing, Book 12 actually has some things worth talking about. First up is the new outfit system. While not adding anything to the actual game play, I’m actually pretty excited about this. One of my big pet peeves in MMORPGs is that characters look way too similar, there are usually never enough options to make you feel as though your character is unique. With this new system in place they have added hundreds if not thousands of different outfit combos that you can now use to make you character distinct. While these new outfits provide absolutely no bonuses to your characters stats, they do make you look sexy :)

Second and more importantly Trubine has added a new area, The Delving of Fror, in the PvP zone of Ettenmoors. In an attempt to make PvP worth playing they have introduced “soul stones” which are dropped by mobs within this dwelling. These stones can be traded to item vendors for a number of armor, weapon and jewelry sets as well as consumables and crafting recipes. Creeps can also use these stones to purchase new corruptions, new skills, new traits, special sessions and new environmental mod.

Now the really interesting part is that in order to take control of the Delving of Fror, all other zones within Ettenmoors must be taken over. This now gives PvP players a reason to attack these other zones other then to get valor tokens, which are worthless. Another small but cool feature is that if your in the Delving of Fror when one of the zones is lost, the main doors shut close, trapping you withing the zone while mobs begin to flood in. In cases like this you need to either map out or use a special skill to flee before the enemy gets you.

I’ve been pretty harsh on LOTRO in the past, but it looks like there getting on the right track. Some more work on PvP and they might have a decent game on their hands.