[MUD-Dev] LTM article

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: J Todd Coleman [mailto:coleman at wolfpackstudios.com]
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Trump" <trump at vividvideo.com>
 
>>   I'm not going to demand royalties for you using my idea,
>>   because I'm sure there were 100s of people who thought of it
>>   before I did.  The lines between Strategy and RPG game are
>>   already blurred by games like Birthright and Heros of Might and
>>   Magic.  Making a MMORPG with strategy elements is not
>>   innovation, it is evolution.  Shadowbane is only the first to
>>   announce this AND have a serious chance to making it to market.
 
> Wow, you're actually giving us more props than I did -- I never
> claimed to invent the concept, have the idea first, or anything
> other than "we chose it as a niche."
 
> My main question, though, was "Why PvP?"

I think the answer to that is fairly obvious. People wishing to
create new MMORPGs realise that the games that have been out for
some time have a massive headstart in content (Everquest is 3 times
the size it was on release now and theres more coming). PvP is seen
as a way of providing 'deep' entertainment through process rather
than expensive hand made content with limited replayability.

> If I were to announce a game today, I'd probably concentrate my
> feature set on another area entire; something that everyone else
> is overlooking.  Yet almost all of the games coming out in the
> next few years have included PvP as an integral part of their
> overall game vision (AO, DaoC, SB, SW:G, Atriarch, Darkfall,
> Jumpgate, Eve.. and a boat load of others.)

The human to human aspect of PvP makes it more attractive than
almost any other feature I can imagine. Advanced bread baking
tradeskills are surely less compelling to the majority of people?

Of course one has to hope that the recent focus on pvp is to allow
the developers time to implement the hand made content they didn't
have time for originally. Its apparent that this is what Funcom is
trying to do with AO, and the game is definitely improving although
some of the fundamental shifts to the rules that they are making
whilst bedding it down, are causing an awful lot of people to
re-roll their characters or just quit. In fact if it demonstrates
anything, the most important thing is to get the balance pretty
close to correct before release as adjusting it after months of play
just pisses off the playerbase. Of course PvP is central to a games
balance if you allow it, so it makes even more sense to make it a
focus from the get-go.
 
> The rant was using Codemasters as an example -- primarily because
> they just put out a press release claiming to "introduce the
> concept" of PvP and empire building.  I just happen to disagree
> with this claim, for pretty much the same reasons you listed,
> above. :)

The only thing about your comments on Codemasters, whilst I don't
think much of them, is that they have owned 'The Realm' for a very
long time (during which time they undeniably tried to flog this dead
horse well after it had stopped twitching), and this does just sound
like an update of that.

Anyway I'm looking forward to SB, at least your appearance on LTM
prompted me to go and read your FAQs properly, and it sounds great.

Dan
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