[MUD-Dev] UI Design in MMOs

[Mike Rozak]

Paolo Piselli wrote:

> I highly disagree.  The intro movie included with WoW establishes:

>  - The high-level geography of the continents
>  - What the major races that inhabit the world are
>  - What their natural environments are like
>  - That these races are in conflict
>  -  Some information about what side each race is on
>  - Examples of the various classes available for play

Maybe you got a different intro movie than I did... I suppose the
video did cover the topics you're saying, but it wasn't long enough
to convey much relevent information. I suspect there are better ways
to spend the same amount of money (or less) and convey more
information in an equally entertaining form.

The best "movie" I've had so far in WoW is when my PC was flown from
the druid homeland back to the mintaur homeland. That gave me a good
idea about how large WoW was and what kind of variety it has. If
they had included a fly-through and a bit more, I would have had a
better sense of WoW.

For not much money, WoW could include a fly-through with heuristics
that look for real-life battles between characters, or cities where
characters congregate. The flythrough would just have to focus in on
those areas for a 15-30 seconds before flying off someplace else
interesting. It might have goals that require it to view every race,
every class in combat, and at various levels. It might also show off
3 or 4 zones. The camera could then wander around giving an example
of play. Commentary could chime in depending what races, classes, or
activities were shown. It would provide the info that you point out,
and would play differently every time a player watched the "intro
video".

The only problem with such a flythrough "intro video" is it might
become a tool for spying on the enemy...

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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