Well it's been a fantastically long time since I wrote my last blog post. I don't advertise or even link my blog with any others. TBH (to be honest) I am not really into that whole "Internet" circle. Even my facebook account only has people included that have requested being my friend. I don't send them out, because frankly I don't really use it.
Nonetheless, I read an interesting article on www.mmorpg.com today titled, The Adventures of Jeannie . It is basically a mmorpg journalist (?) who felt that the new MMO STO (Star Trek Online)'s tutorial section is very bad and if he didn't have previous MMO experience he would have been quite lost. He took this a step further to test this issue with WoW (World of Warcraft) and a person who has never played an MMO before. Was WoW's success due to having a great tutorial and starting area and hand-holding a complete noob to MMO knowledge? Do they have the Holy Grail of starter areas? I thought it was an really interesting read and I really liked how he wrote and presented the article.
I am a great lover of MMOs, but I also interested in the human psyche and human behavior. It's rare to get into the mind and be able to observe people in a world...be it in the natural world or a virtual one. This is not to say that I am a big fan of the Big Brother tv show. Hell, I have never watched that show or have any desire too, but it and the others like it are very popular. Watching people is interesting.
How does this all apply to MMOs? Well, like I stated above the article, "The Adventures of Jeannie" reminded me of a time when I helped design and DM/GM (Dungeon/Game Master) for one of the most successful PvP servers in NeverWinter Nights 1. The server was later named to Badlands and was designed and programmed by Leaf Stone; however, many of the ideas and the reason the server got off to such a great start was because of my input and creative design into the world/game. This isn't to blow off my own horn, but to be truthful in the fact. After I stopped playing NWN, Leaf Stone even built a monument (Condotierri) of me in the starter area to honor my contribution to his world. And I only know about it, cause he told me about it when we spoke on MSN months later.
Anyways, it remembers me of the first days of entering his world and...well completely changing it for the better. I only loosely knew him before since we all used to play on the #1 NWN PvP server back then DeX (www.dungeoneternal.com). It was a good server, but the problem was the module wasn't getting worked on as it should have been. Basically the server had 3 main factions/guilds the good (Order), the bad (Legion), and the neutral (Sole). They were long standing guilds in the game, and they even had special castles and "abilities" for their members. Now other guilds came and went, but never really were that big or had influence on the server to merit the Dev's attention...this all changed when the guild Fallen Angels (FA) was created. Some of the Legion PvPers broke off from Legion and with it took some other really good PvPers, and also recruited some from the other guilds and formed this great PvP guild called The Fallen Angels (FA). We were relatively short lived (a month or two?); however, we absolutely ruled the server like no other guild before it, to the point that there were server wide messages if even like 2 or 3 of us logged into the server (the player base had about 50-60 active players on at a time). We dominated the server so bad that the oldest rivalries of Order vs Legion put off their differences if FA was there. This also extended to Sole (who took the "neutral" stance, but were more Order friendly than Legion). So it was the 3 major long standing guilds with KS (kill on sight) to any FA members. We held our own.
However, the problem FA faced was we didn't have any of the membership privileges that the other members of those 3 guilds had. We were fustrated and the Devs didn't do anything about it. They didn't encourage other guilds to thrive in their world and we looked elsewhere. This is when pre-Badlands came in. Leaf Stone was an ex-Legion member and decided to create his own server (he might have been in FA too, but regardless left pretty much around the time of the formation of FA). He contacted some of his old Legion friends who were now in FA (i.e. Jeet, etc), and a few of us decided to check out his server. Back then the server was just starting out, unnamed, and it was basically just the 3-4 of us. Leaf Stone, Jeet, a few other FA members, and myself.
The world was brand new, and even though it looked nice and had some nice things (i.e. the same customized modifications for armor and weapons as DeX), it really lacked playability. It was utterly atrocious. For example, initially you started out in this sort of desert oasis with a few buildings. One of the buildings was the main one which had all the shops inside it. It was a fucking hassle to enter the building run around the narrow passage ways (sometimes waiting for others to pass by) to get to these stores. I immediately started to message Leaf Stone about my concerns, and even if I never met the guy before, he took my advice to heart. Over the next few days we worked together on improving the server world. For instance, upon my suggestion to move all the stores to an outside market, and out of that horrible mess of a building he did so. That made it more accessible and easier for people to find weapons and armor. I mean let's face it. When someone initially enters a D&D type world, they want to pick up their weapon, put on their armor and kill things. The easier that transaction is for them, the easier and sooner you will get them hooked into your world.
Since I knew how to build my character into an uber monster (remember I played on DeX for probably over a year), I ran through his world and found many bugs and issues. I killed "boss" monsters he created, which he planned for a party to kill. Leaf Stone was really cool and accepting of my suggestions and we became pretty good friends. He gave me DM access (I was the first DM) to his server (I ran under the name DM Python), and we started to go through his amazing world that he designed and worked out the kinks. One of the things that we did initially when the server population was bare was the thing that reminded me of that article that I linked above.
As a DM in the game you could be invisible so players in the game couldn't see you. Everytime a new player joined the server (he/she being the only player on the server at that time), we would follow that person invisible and see what he or she would do. We would see how easily they would find the armor and weapon smith. Where that person would go to find the mobs he/she needed to hunt, and how he did it. Working through this model we basically perfected the first 10 levels of gameplay. This is not to boost, but we made it really good. We even put guild territory control (my idea!), and the server quickly became equal or on par with DeX as the #1 PvP NWN server...which eventually was named Badlands.
It just goes to show that if companies would put in the time to fucking QA!!! (i.e. test) their game properly, they would do so much better than how the current MMO game market is doing right now. I mean it only took 2 of us to make a game/module one of the best in it's genre...it's just fustrating.
Anyways, I think I might write up some of my thoughts and experiences of the past MMOs I have played...and...just perhaps I will also give out some of my innovative ideas...but who knows...
Cheers.
