Changes in MMO's

[Nalates]

Massively is running a series on redefining MMO's and what seems to make workable games. Consideration is given to the direction MMO's are going.

City of Heroes, EVE Online and World of Warcraft are looked at for how they have added fan created content.

Contrary to what our common sense was telling us to expect, much of the new content was on par with the quality of professional development. It wasn't long until players were almost dominating the mission scene, producing work that was arguably better than some of the game designer's attempts.
...
The level of quality is maintained by including a robust rating and reporting system. Inappropriate missions, such as those with swearing or racist text, are reported by users and removed from the system. A robust rating and search system allows players to find the best player-made missions but more importantly to hide the poorer ones in a place where no soul dares tread. It's an elegant system that is performing extremely well but it hasn't been without its downfalls.

A recent policy change banned the sale of add-ons for cash and the use of donate links or advertisements in them. Many of the game's most popular UI developers have to spend a considerable amount of time updating their modifications with each game patch and relied on the income from sales, donations or advertisements to compensate them for that time. To some, UI development simply isn't worth their time unless there's money involved. With the high quality of some of the add-ons the community has come up with, that stance may well be justified.

If there's one thing MMO players do well, it's building communities. Even the smallest common factor or shared experience will cause ad-hoc coalitions of players to form around them. The evidence is all around us in the sprawl of forums and wikis that can be found online dedicated to any topic you can think of. This is the primary drive behind using players to develop portions of a game. Give the players a feature that inspires discussion, competition or interaction and you can be sure that a self-sustaining community will coagulate around it. In situations where sharing information and researching are key, people demonstrate a remarkable ability to self-organise, find ways to collaborate and disseminate that information. In all three of the examples presented in pages 1 and 2, the commonality of developing part of a game they love pulled players together into rich, cohesive communities.

Obviously there are many facets of a game that influence the quality and quantity of fans created content.

Redefining MMOs: Player developers!

[Nalates]

Its the time of year for predictions. After two years in SL I still can't predict what the Linden Lab people will do. But... there are those that work in the VW business and one of my favorite writers has just written her predictions. I know they will affect the Uru fans in SL and the OSGrids.

Predictions for Second Life in 2010 By: Gwyneth Llewelyn.

It is looking like the various grids are getting closer to joining a standard that will allow avatars to travel from grid to grid with all their stuff. The changes to graphics and clothes will be interesting. If Blue Mars does nothing else, they will have pushed SL to make several upgrades.

I'm not quite sure how clothes work in ABM/MOUL and eventually MOOU. In SL they are a decal on the AV. For puffy sleeves they distort the AV mesh. The same with flared cuff pants. In Blue Mars clothes are an added mesh that attach to/over the AV. The big difference that makes is in male sports coats. They are painted on and the only way to make the male waist look right is to manually change the AV shape. In Blue Mars the coat is not dependent on the AV shape. So, a sports coat can look right... How are clothes done in MOUL?

[Mac_Fife]

How are clothes done in MOUL?

I don't know the answer to that, but one thing I am aware of is that the avatar animations are relatively "fixed". By that I mean that certain bulky items of clothing may result in certain movement animations doing something that "cuts through" the clothing item in a relatively unrealistic manner (think about climbing a ladder in a crinoline skirt for an extreme example).

[Nalates]

Gee Mac-Fife... what good are you? TEASING... thanks.

I remember the maintainer suite. It behaves something like SL clothes made from attachments. But it also behaves like Blue Mars clothes, meshes over the avatar. BM's mesh clothes animate with the av so the cut-through is not a problem. I have never played with the MOUL av in Blender... or tried to make clothes... I'll have to see if there is anything in the GoW posts and wiki.

/me goes to closet looking for her maintainer's suit.

[Mac_Fife]

Thinking about it now (my earlier post was made early on Ne'er Day morning ), that might not have been a very good example of the possible problem I was thinking about. It's probably more relevant to body shape. I used to complain (slightly) that the MOUL body shape "Build" slider didn't go far enough to the right to be realistic for me . However, if it allowed you to go to Zandi proportions, then something like the ladder climbing animation might need the arms more outstretched, the /crossarms emote might put the arms partly inside the body, etc. So a similar issue might arise with some bulky clothing.

But, no, it's not much of a help

[T_S_Kimball]

Pfft.

Been following SL for almost six years Nalates, and I still can't accurately predict what LL tends to do. I'll say the same for its internal forum community; If I realized what would happen with the start of the ResMod experiment, I'd have dropped out. *sigh*

Since you mention Eve, I figured I'd poke my head out though.

Been playing Eve since last July or so, its definitely different. Darker than even SL, and despite my original 'never will participate in PvP' attitude, I find it refreshing at times to participate in that kinda stuff. I am having some problems with the 'cost' of things though. Many there do not see things tied between the in-game currency and RL money, even though (through the PLEX item) that tie exists.

For me, having so much ingrained experience with SL and There.com (the latter shutting down next week), I can easily think of things in terms of US$ once I know the conversion rate. This is becoming a bit of a hindrance to doing certain risky activities, such as using the more expensive ships in PvP. Trying to mitigate that by looking at trading as a profession there.

My main attraction to the game has been the ability to 'walk away' for awhile, so long as you have an adequately long skill in queue. Work's been downright nuts the past 6-9 months, and I've had to drop a lot of things over the winter in order to keep my sanity.

--TSK

[Nalates]

EVE has never come across as 'dark' in others' descriptions of it... I'm curious how you see it as 'dark'?

I'm approaching my 2nd SL rezday (like a birthday for that that don't know SL). The directions that Linden Lab (LL) are going seem predictable. The priorities they assign to fixes and development often make no sense to me. However, the effort to increase retention of new subscribers as a direction for change and prioity makes sense to me. How they are implementing it often seems screwy. But, when they put data with their explanations for priority or a change it usually makes sense to me. The recent elimination of volunteers on the help islands surprised many. It seems counter productive to many. But one of the Linden's providing stats showed a marked failure of the volunteer system. As I recall, the percentage of people continuing to play SL after receiving volunteer help was 1/3 that of those not using volunteer help. From LL's viewpoint that would have to change. It certainly is not what I would have expected the volunteer effort to produce. Without the stats I would have thought LL nuts. I suspect the Greeters performance results are quite different, but I don't know. Still, suspecting that difference I would like to know what the differences are.

Gwyneth Llewelyn works in the virtual world industry and apparently has an NDA with LL. So, with many of her predictions about SL I suspect inside information. Whether that is true... I don't know. Her insights have helped me and seem informed.

I'm assuming by ReModyou mean the 2006 forum moderation issues. I think we have the same problems in the Uru community and we're disusing those in Standards for Discussion and & Debate. I think SL failed to understand the nature of the problems or how to correct them.

In the Uru community there is no leveling or related game features, so being away and how it affects your game play is more a matter of participants memory. There is nothing to press you to spend time in Uru. That may well be a problem for Uru and its survival. But, I think many are like you and see that as a welcome feature of Uru. However, this is one of those 'features' that have different goals, benefits, and values for the game developer and the fan and therefore set them at odds.