Summer plods along, although you wouldn't know it by the weather here - it's been a miserable couple of weeks with only one day of glorious sun nestled amongst the relentless waves of rain. The only upside of the horrendous weather has been guilt free gaming, I suppose! Now, on with the links:

  • Zubon recently pointed out a discrepancy between dealing damage in single player games and doing the same in MMOs:

    One thing I really enjoy in Team Fortress 2 is playing a Pyro. When you light someone up, they really are on fire, and it covers the entire character model. They yell for help, announcing that they are on fire. If there is water on the map, they may go diving off the edge. If you get a kill, the body will smolder on the ground. Nothing messes up an enemy charge like lighting up a few people, who instinctively go looking for health in a way that simple bullets cannot cause.

    Contrast this with your MMO. What happens when you hit an enemy with an elemental effect? Most of the time, it seems, you can have an animation during the casting time and for a second or so later. You can have someone on fire from a half-dozen sources, and they just have a string of debuff/DoT icons. Stacking DoTs is still a good thing, but is a far cry from the panicked shouts of ogres.

    I must admit - I love lighting enemies up in Half Life 2 - the screams make it so worthwhile.
  • MMORPG recently ran an excellent interview with J. Todd Coleman, executive director of Wizard 101. Even if you're not a player of the game, the article contains some fantastic insight.
  • Via Raph Koster comes this breakdown of the types of customers that games should try to cater to when designing their payment schemes:

    When you design your game, pick three or four revenue streams and build them into your game. Here are some categories of users that you may want keep covered.

    - People who don’t want to pay: Advertising is a good option to keep around. A few hundred bucks is still money in the bank.
    - People who are interested in more of the same: Once you’ve established the value of your game, some players want more. Give them more levels, more puzzles, more enemies in exchange for cash.
    - People who are interested in status or identity improvements: Some people see games as means of expression and identity. Give them items that let them express themselves or customize their experience.
    - People who have limited time: Some people live busy lives and want to consume your game when they desire and how they desire. Cheat codes, experience multipliers and other systems that bypass the typical progression all help satisfying this customer need.

    Although the article focuses on Flash-based games, this advice is applicable to any F2P MMO.
  • For those of you interested in the psychology of MMOs, I recommend checking out a couple of recent posts: MMORPGs - Acknowledging Our Existence, and Loyola University professor drives City of Heroes/Villains players crazy, all for sociology. Good stuff. (Bonus: Here's a follow up from Broken Toys on the second article.)
  • Of the two major MMO releases coming this year Syp is much more excited for Champions Online than he is for Aion. Personally I'll probably take a pass on both; I dislike the superhero genre, and I don't want another guided tour right now.
  • As a former raider, Ravious makes me cry inside a little bit:

    Take a normal raid. Players are combined to create an amoebus output of DPS while simultaneously mitigating and repairing inputted damage. There are some tentacles that do more damage than others. Some tentacles are better at keeping the invaders busy until attention can be drawn to said invaders. Some tentacles merely run around putting band-aids on other tentacles. Yet, all in all there are no heroes.