Threshold RPG has received a lot of press and publicity lately. Keep an eye on the Threshold RPG press page . Go beyond the fold for some of the more recent additions:

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Check out this review of Threshold RPG that was recently published!

 Threshold RPG: Text-Based MMORPG Review

These are definitely must read articles.

First, two articles about Tabula Rasa:

History, Timeline and Post Mortem of Tabula Rasa

The End of Tabula Rasa - Server Shutdown Event

Second, a very entertaining list of some great WOW Videos:

Best World of Warcraft Videos on YouTube: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Finally, a review of a unique, free browser based MMO:

Renaissance Kingdoms - One of the Best Browser Based MMOs Online? 

Check them out, give them a read, and report back!

You think you are reading the Muckbeast game design blog right now, but you aren’t! The one you really want to be reading is now hosted elsewhere. I am posting these periodic reminders for the few people who might be receiving new post updates via RSS or some other method and need to switch over their bookmarks and/or subscriptions

I like to believe my thoughts on game design are interesting and worthwhile, but I’m not sure if they measure up to the quality of the design below (as always, click to be sent to the new and improved Muckbeast):

Netbooks are the new hot product in the computer hardware industry. Over 14 million of them sold in 2008, and they are the fastest growing product in computer hardware. They tend to be cheap, they are ultra-portable, and they cannot run high end games. Does this mean they are not a viable gaming platform? Heck no. What it means is MUDs and web based games have ANOTHER platform ripe for customer aquisition. The quest is whether MUDs will fail yet again to jump on such an opportunity. The web game companies out there are pretty shrewd, so I have no doubt they will seize the day.

If you are unfamiliar with Netbooks, then I recommend you read an article I wrote recently that gives you some of the basics: Netbooks vs. Laptops. That article does not go into the potential effects on the gaming industry, however. That’s what this blog post is for.

What Opportunities Do Netbooks Open Up for Gaming?

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I imagine some of you have read a few of the articles from the last year or so where writers try to draw comparisons between raid leading in a game like WoW, and management in the business world. I seem to recall the Wall Street Journal even wrote about it. I must admit, every time I read an article like that it strikes me as a pile of BS. The ONLY place I have ever heard this tripe is in a few scattered articles that could easily have been bought and paid for by Vivendi. I have never read anything of the sort in a respectable business publication (WSJ is respectable, but as a daily it can freely include random garbage articles).

Why Are They Perpetrating This Fraud?

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EDIT: I promise this is the LAST POST ABOUT THE WIKIPEDIA incident for a while. The next post will be much different!

This is the last part, and for a while I hope the last time I’ll blog or post on this issue. There are role playing games that need my developer attention, and I loathe having my real work interrupted by this sort of thing. In this last section, I will focus on the bigger question that has arisen from the whole sordid mess:

What should fans and developers of MUDs/MMOs do now?

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The article (and discussion) continues. For the full story, with all the details, read my article here: Wikipedia’s War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG .

So, what is wrong with Wikipedia and how can it be fixed?

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This is an abbreviated version of the story designed to get some discussion going. For the full story, with all the details, read my article here: Wikipedia’s War on Gaming History and Threshold RPG .

1) Wikipedia is full of people gunning for an administrator promotion. In the current climate, the easiest path is getting articles deleted and getting players banned. These acts somehow show you understand what is best for Wikipedia.

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Achivements are the new hot feature in MMOs. I’m not sure who had them first, or who does them best, but there is no doubt they are popular as heck. In every game that has them, people seem to really get into collecting them. Even when there is no in-game benefit, just piling them on seems to be really popular.

For those of you unfamiliar with this feature, here is basically how Achivements systems work. There is some system in game that tracks the achivements - either a list of badges (like City of Heroes), a journal (like Warhammer Online), or just an achivement interface (WoW). There are generally categories (quest related, kill related, exploration related, etc.). Whenever you kill X number of a certain mob, or find a specific location, or meet a specific NPC, or perform a task a certain number of times, you get an Achivement unlock. Unlocking achivements can even trigger additional achivements (”You’ve unlocked 100 Achivements!”). These build up over time, and generally provide you with things like fluff titles or perhaps access to specific gear vendors or powers. The tangible benefits are nice, but do not appear to be completely necessary. People will hunt them down even if there are no specific rewards.

MMO Achivement Systems: What I Think.

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If you follow MMOs, you will frequently read complaints that the majority of MMOs are fantasy based. There are many reasons for this, the largest being the simple fact that gamers just like the setting. The historical connection to Dungeons and Dragons also cannot be ignored.

The MMO industry is definitely very healthy right now - even beyond the huge success of World of Warcraft. Both Age of Conan and Warhammer Online surpassed 800,000 subscribers within the first month of their release. This is pretty amazing when you consider it was just a few years ago that 100,000 subscribers was the number that defined an MMO as a “hit.”

But those games were both fantasy. On the flip side, Tabula Rasa recently announced that it will close its servers in February of 2009. The epic fail of Star Wars: Galaxies is widely known. After all, SWG was supposed to be the game of WoW-like proportions that dominated the MMO market. City of Heroes is hanging on to a thread at about 120,000 subscribers - down from a peak of near 200,000 when the City of Villains expansion came out.

And what do we have over the horizon? Darkfall is scheduled for release in early 2009, but it is a smaller budget game and fantasy. Primordiax is scheduled for release in 2009, but it is also fantasy and is made by a small developer (full disclosure: that small developer would be my company, Frogdice). There are two possible super hero games for 2009 - Champions Online and Marvel Universe Online. Bioware announced their Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic MMO, but I would be shocked if that game comes out before 2010. And even if it does, the Star Wars genre is only borderline sci-fi. With the force, jedi, light sabers, rancors, and fantasy elements, Star Wars is at best a fantasy/sci-fi hybrid.

So a few questions for you all:

1. Are we going to see a non-fantasy MMO that can break the new “big market success” barrier of 500,000 subscribers?
2. If so, which one do you think it will be?
3. If not, why not?
4. What will be required for a non-fantasy MMO to attain fantasy-MMO type success?

I have always felt that my customers at Threshold were exceptional people. For over a decade, I have found them to be intelligent, creative, interesting, and for the most part successful people. I never doubted these conclusions, but I do so love being proved right.    A research group headed by Dmitri Williams (and sponsored by the National Science Foundation) was given unprecedented, anonymous access to almost every bit of data SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) had about its customers. SOE gave them “full data logs generated and collected by the world Everquest II.” This amounted to many terabytes of data that they hosted and analyzed on supercomuters at NCSA . They have begun releasing some of their findings , and they are impressive though not surprising. Inspired by Raph Koster ’s list of his favorite findings, here is mine:

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I absolutely despise the MMORPG acronym. It is virtually unpronounceable. It is too long. Perhaps worst of all, it does a poor job describing what a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game really is, or what is most distinctive about it. I started a discussion recently on a game developer mailing list in which I sought a replacement for MMORPG. My favorite response suggested POW for Persistent Online World (thanks, “cruise“). In this article I will break down the flaws (as I perceive them) in the term “MMORPG”, and then I will explain why POW - Persistent Online World - should supplant it.

Breaking Down the atrocity that is “MMORPG”

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A very disturbing trend in the MUD, MMORPG, Virtual World marketplace is the steady dumbing down of gameplay that doesn’t show signs of stopping. With each new generation of games, they get easier and easier and are more about pure time investment than skill.

Meaningless Death, Excessive Quest driven advancement, Rapid Advancement Speed, and Hyper Specialization are all areas where the dumbing down of online games has really gotten out of control. I’ll talk about each of those things in this article.

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A small game developer (Cliff Harris of Positech Games) recently made a serious effort to talk to pirates and find out why they steal games (and specifically, why they steal his games). A full recounting of his findings can be read right here.

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I am really glad to see another developer actually trying to look at piracy in a calm, rational manner. I am getting pretty fed up with PC developers and PC Media (I’m lookin’ at you, PC Gamer) crying over and over that piracy is killing PC Gaming.

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It is a commonly held belief that usage drops for MUDs, MMOs, Online Games, and Virtual Worlds in summer time. The reasons are somewhat obvious - people want to go outside, college kids go home and have less internet access, younger people take on summer jobs, families go on vacation, etc. With all of those things taking up people’s free time, they just don’t login to their favorite MUD, MMO, or Virtual World as often. I think all of these reasons are real and significant. In over 12 years of running online MUDs/MMOs/Virtual Worlds commercially, I have noticed drops in usage over the summer.

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But what about the ancillary effects of this phenomenon? Other than simple usage drops, how does this affect the gameplay on MUDs, MMOs, and other online games? I have been reading more gaming blogs than usual lately, and one of the more interesting negative effects of summer appears to be GUILD HOPPING.

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The Illinois House and Senate have passed a law requiring that online games give users a clear, safe way to cancel their subscriptions. The impetus for this bill was an Illinois alderman that had a tough time canceling his son’s Final Fantasy XI account. Full text of the bill can be read here, but the main crux of the bill is:

An Internet gaming service rovider must give a consumer who is an Illinois resident the following: (1) a secure method at the Internet gaming service provider’s web site that the consumer may use to cancel the service, which method shall not require the consumer to make a telephone call or send U.S. Postal Service mail to effectuate the cancellation; and (2) instructions that the consumer may follow to cancel the service at the Internet gaming service provider’s web site.

(Warning: Prepare for Rant)

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