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

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 28 February 2007, John Buehler wrote:

>1. Professionalism
>This is kindergarden stuff.  Everyone should be learning of the need to
work
>hard, work smart, produce quality and take pride in what was produced.
	I'm sure they do. WoW was polished until it shone. There's a pride
in the craft there. However, the craft is being used to make things which
are not as deep as they were in the past.

>2. Fidelty of the fiction
>I find that depth
>becomes mandatory after the first impressions are taken in.  The absence of
>that depth is a glaring void, like sitting down to a meal only to find that
>the food is plastic.
	Those lessons of depth will have to be re-learned eventually.

>I assume that the reason behind the lack of depth is that it's more
>difficult to do, and that products can be sold and be financially very
>successful without it.
	It is more difficult, but not THAT much more difficult. If you're
going to employ 50 artists to make the world look pretty, then adding
an extra designer and a programmer to make it a richer world doesn't
seem excessive.
	Although not needing to do it because people will play it anyway is
a fair enough position to take, it won't always hold true. I suspect a lot
of the reason we don't see greater depth is because the designers haven't
actually looked at making their worlds deeper. When they do, they may well
end up making mistakes they didn't have to make while reinventing the wheel,
simply because they don't care to believe that any of the olde texte worldes
could conceivably be relevant to today's great new shinies.
	Not all designers will neglect to look at what went earlier, of course,
but plenty will.

>Text MUDs are really the province of true zealots.
	These days, you're largely correct. There are some newbies coming to
the scene, so it's not all doom and gloom (the Internet is large, and
even minority interests can find enough people for a critical mass).
We're not talking hundreds of thousands per textual world, though...

>Graphical games lack the precedent of quality and depth because the first
>ones stood on the novelty of their graphics.  And that trend is continuing
>to this day.
	I'm not so sure about this. Ultima Online had very good depth, for
example.

>They exist by their eye candy.  The voices of those demanding
>depth of experience are drowned out by those who want loot, levels and
>power.  There are millions in the latter camp.  Precious few in the former.
	The thing is, the two aren't mutually incompatible. You can have
loot, levels and power AND depth. Furthermore, the more that people are
exposed to the depth, the more they are likely to appreciate it.

>To break out of this pattern, it's going to take things like inexpensive
>graphics engines that will let every Tom, Dick and Harry Developer take a
>shot at the graphical genre the same way that printf permitted the parents
>of those developers to take a shot at the textual genre.  That's when the
>zealots for depth will be able to step up to the plate and build something
>that will put World of Warcraft to shame.
	Well, it might at least give the developers with megabucks something
they're willing to look at for experimentation and ideas. I doubt a couple
of guys working in a garage could create something that would beat WoW on
volume of content anytime soon.

>In a few years, we may all hear about it and be delighted that what
>will probably become known as "a new genre" has come into being.
	Yes, and then the likes of WoW and EQ will be ignored as irrelevant,
just as text MUDs are now (sigh).

		Richard