[MUD-Dev2] [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience

[Vincent Archer]

According to Tess Snider:
> On 2/15/07, Mike Rozak <Mike at mxac.com.au> wrote:
> >12:00 PM - Get home with the vanguard install disks.
> >(After doing a 2 hour round-trip to the game store.
> >I live in the outback! I also picked up groceries
> >and ate lunch while I was in town, otherwise I
> >would have started the clock at 10:00 AM.)
>
> It's 2007.  Everything should be downloadable.  No
> more excuses.

Marketing raises again its ugly head. If you offer direct download, say
goodbye to store markets.

> >- Vanguard then spends 10-15 minutes rescanning the 17
> >gigabytes of files that it just installed in order to
> >see which of them was out of date.
>
> Ooh, sloppy.  Should only do that on a repair.  Maybe they waited
> until the last minute to write their patcher?

Actually, that one is a standard from SOE. There's no difference between
patching and repairing. The system has a list of "current stat of those
files", and will download any that differs. They've been using that
scheme since 1999.

> >- Vanguard asks me to log in again.
>
> This is something I hate about WoW, actually.  Why do I have to keep
> logging in over and over again when I'm patching?  If you've got more
> than one patch to install, it gets completely insane.  And the EULA
> and the ToS!  Over and over and over.

See above. That's a design decision, actually. If you have a system that
patches and repairs (SOE), you download  exactly what you need, and no
more. Even after six months of break from the game. Downside: you spend
more time before starting to play to validate your game assets.

The differential patch school, which was exemplified by UO, and to which
a lot of people subscribe has the client send its version, and receive a
message "please download patch X-to-Y". It works fine... as long as the
production creates combo patches that combine X-to-Y-to-Z. But that's
cumbersome, so they usually prefer to do that once a year or so. 
At least UO's patcher downloaded all the patches in sequence and applied
them without restarting. 

> if they have an older video card).  *I* prefer to run in desktop
> resolution, because I'm usually either A.) on an LCD that has exactly
> one native resolution, or B.) on an HDTV where I need it to use my
> custom resolution to prevent overscan.  However, many gamers adjust
> resolution based on performance for a given game.

I prefer to run on a window, and resize the window. Notably on a MMO,
where you will probably have IM popups, refer to the web for the irksome
questions about where Mankirk's wife is located, and the like...