[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #285 - 32 msgs

[Jake Song]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Freeman [mailto:skeptack at antisocial.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 7:15 AM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #285 - 32 msgs

> At 03:08 PM 1/22/01 -0800, Jake Song wrote:

>> Could you tell me why do you think Lineage is a terrible MUD?

> Doh!  I knew I was going to step on someone's toes with that line.

> My experience with Lineage is somewhat limited, and though I'm not a
> famous author, I still couldn't help but develop some conclusions
> about it.

> First of all, keep in mind that I don't think ANY of the graphical
> MMOG's are really all that "feature rich" compared to text muds.  In
> a sense, all MMORPG's are "terrible muds".  Difference is, they
> don't have 2.5 million people playing them here.

Number of accounts are over 9 million right now because one person can
make multiple accounts in Internet plazas and we didn't erase unused
accounts. For active players we are guessing under 1 million.  We have
over 130,000 users playing at any time (including Taiwan).  I will
post more exact numbers as I get the information available.

> But Lineage in particular strikes me as "UO, but without the good
> parts".  That everyone looks exactly alike tops the list of
> complaints.  Very little in the way of documentation (at least none
> that I could read).  Frankly bizarre dynamics like
> shouting-makes-you-hungry-until-you-reach-a-certain-level.  I'm not
> a huge fan of classes to begin with, and Lineage offers a whopping
> *three* classes to choose from.  Rolling and re-rolling attributes
> until you get ones you like, etc.  It just seems like a *very*
> stripped-down/crude game system, which is pretty much par for the
> course - you get graphics, but lose some of the game system, and
> that's true with the "Big Three" US MMOGs, too.

We have 4 different chat commands, tell(") for private message, say(')
for players in same screen, shout(!) for approximately 3x3 screen
size, and global chat(&) for all in the world. We restricted shout
with food and global chat with level to avoid spamming.  So shouting
always makes you hungry without relation to level.

There are a few something good in Lineage not in UO :) For example
global chat. In UO you should use another program like IRC to chat
with all ppl in the shard, don't you?

I guess you played Lineage long time ago when there were only 3
classes. Now it has 4 classes. :)

I agree that character stats rolling is boring. There was a debate in
dev team to change rolling system but we decided to leave it as
is. Personally I don't care much about my character's stats, so I
usually accept the reasonable stats in a few rolls. That is more fit
to the term Role Playing, isn't it?  However this system makes users
stay more online which means more money to the company. :)

> Except the graphics you're gaining in exchange for that sacrifice
> don't strike me as being worth it - not with the game system being
> stripped-down THIS much, and the graphics not even offering a
> customizable appearance.

As I started Lineage project, there was not enough resources (human
and financial). It was kinda independant low budgets game :) So we
focused on what we can do better rather than spending time on
others. Early beta testers wanted more monsters to hunt rather than
costumes to wear.

I know that in UO you can customize your appearance. But in my
opinion, it's not enough to differentiate your character from others
in a glance. Details are different but it looks almost same in
overall, isn't it?

> Maybe I didn't play long enough to discover the Great Game lurking
> behind the scenes, though.  The only other person I know that has
> played Lineage didn't play it long either: She spent a long time
> looking for arrows, found them, then someone looted one of her kills
> so she PK'd him, became a murderer and logged out.

I think that's the cultural difference between Korean and American(or
maybe the rest of world?). In above case most male Koreans continue to
play the game until he gets enough power to overcome the situation. It
would be a unique personality of Korean or it would be in general ppl
in richer countries(US, Japan, Europe, etc.)  want to stay in more
controlled, stable situation(or society).

>> I was in Korea until Jun. 2000. A lot of ppl plays social oriented
>> online games or video chat in game rooms.

> That surprises me.  But whadda I know, anyway? :P

Sorry not to tell you earlier :)

Jake
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