[MUD-Dev2] [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 21 February 2007, Michael Sellers wrote:
>I think that many MMOG devs today are stuck in a backward-looking mode
though.
	I think that many are so unaware of the past that they couldn't
look backwards if they tried.

>We live in a post-WoW, post-Myspace world.
>That's it.  DIKU and LambdaMOO are about as relevant as Whigs and arrow
>collars.
	I wouldn't go that far. It's more like we're the movie industry in
the 1930s: everyone wanted talkies and the silents were no longer relevant
to the movie-going public. The point is, of course, that many of the ground
rules for movie-making were made in the silent era, so the educated director
DID pay attention to the old even if the public only wanted the new. Even
today's directors-in-training will study the techniques of silent
movie-makers.
	Virtual world designers have a lot to learn from the textual
worlds of the past (and indeed the present). It's astonishing that players
think the occasional mild detail in the implementation of the world or its
NPCs are the cutting edge ("did you see that? the wolf ate the frog!").
They deserve more than that. Furthermore, if designers looked at what has
already been done instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, they may get it.

>The sooner we all snap out of the 1980s and realize that the
>better off we'll be.
	I fear we have to snap into the 1980s before we can snap out of
it. However virtual worlds develop in the future, they're going to have
to go through the level of nuanced complexity that textual worlds had,
and only when they get to the other side will we be able to reap the
dividends. When we get there, WoW will be as irrelevant as M59 and MUD.
I hope I'm around to see it.
	Right now, though, the past still matters because we can still learn
from it.

		Richard