For the Ultima Online fans (Looking at your Tombstone)
- Thread starter LateX'Dog
- Start date
Very interesting if you like people talking about MMO design.
It's sad but inevitable to hear, however, that every single decision affecting the game is made according to whether it will generate more revenue. It highlights how MMOs cannot be labours of love. Even issues like hacking boiled down to "how will hackers affect our sales".
One thing I also picked up on (mostly from the bald guy) was how much of a priority it was to target the lowest common denominator and keep even the ADHD crowd playing the game.
"he got killed almost right away and never played again"
To me this screams for a response such as "boo hoo, you haven't lost anything since you just started". In fact this happened to me in EQ when I started playing. To them it says "lost sale". Despite the fact that the player was clearly lacking in patience.
"People find a directed experience more fun."
It's not hard to criticise WoW for being too directed, but they also mentioned EQ as being a directed experience. Having never played UO, I can't really compare them, but I thought EQ gave me a pretty open-ended experience compared to something modern like WoW.
"UO was the experimentation phase"
This is perhaps the most disappointing thing to hear. It tells me that future MMOs are going to be based on today's established formula. That what we're going to see is endless rehashes and WoW clones, as "experimentation" is so fraught with danger that they no longer want to go anywhere new.
It's sad but inevitable to hear, however, that every single decision affecting the game is made according to whether it will generate more revenue. It highlights how MMOs cannot be labours of love. Even issues like hacking boiled down to "how will hackers affect our sales".
One thing I also picked up on (mostly from the bald guy) was how much of a priority it was to target the lowest common denominator and keep even the ADHD crowd playing the game.
"he got killed almost right away and never played again"
To me this screams for a response such as "boo hoo, you haven't lost anything since you just started". In fact this happened to me in EQ when I started playing. To them it says "lost sale". Despite the fact that the player was clearly lacking in patience.
"People find a directed experience more fun."
It's not hard to criticise WoW for being too directed, but they also mentioned EQ as being a directed experience. Having never played UO, I can't really compare them, but I thought EQ gave me a pretty open-ended experience compared to something modern like WoW.
"UO was the experimentation phase"
This is perhaps the most disappointing thing to hear. It tells me that future MMOs are going to be based on today's established formula. That what we're going to see is endless rehashes and WoW clones, as "experimentation" is so fraught with danger that they no longer want to go anywhere new.
You have to wonder if we will ever be able to break this trend.
MMOs are basically too large and complex to be open-source, with too much requirement for expensive hardware and fast broadband tubes.
I see Tyrant (the bald guy on the left) hasnt changed much over the years in his attitudes. Didnt agree with several things he said in the video, just as I didnt agree with him over a decade ago 
Vogel was an odd one, spent the whole video talking about how wonderful the freedom and choice and ability to do whatever you want was in UO, then at the end bigs up his current employers MMO which doesnt appear to have any of the freedom, choice and ability to do whatever you want that he had just spent the previous 40min saying was so brilliant
Interesting video though and interesting to see that there still seems to be some tension between Vogel and Tyrant even after all this time. Markee Dragon too, guy made a fortune through his virtual item sales, bet he is a millionaire now from all those.
Vogel was an odd one, spent the whole video talking about how wonderful the freedom and choice and ability to do whatever you want was in UO, then at the end bigs up his current employers MMO which doesnt appear to have any of the freedom, choice and ability to do whatever you want that he had just spent the previous 40min saying was so brilliant
Interesting video though and interesting to see that there still seems to be some tension between Vogel and Tyrant even after all this time. Markee Dragon too, guy made a fortune through his virtual item sales, bet he is a millionaire now from all those.