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

[cruise]

Thus spake Adam Martin...
> FWVLIW, I've found Oblivion has displaced a substantial chunk of my
> online play, simply because it was *better* in so many qualitative
> ways. Obviously, after a while, you get bored by the loneliness, but
> when it comes to pure immersion, the experience is often exceptional
> (and often not - the problems with O's design and presentation are
> legion, everything from a poor outdoors 3D engine to iffy decisions
> about the nature and effects of time).

I'm becoming more convinced that the "Massive" section of MMOG's is a 
very bad idea.

Other players have a tendency to lower immersion, as above.

Additionally, in any game where it is possible to measure success, any 
such success is diluted proportionally to the number of players 
involved; either because your chances of "winning" or "completing" 
something become less, or the uniqueness of your achievement is removed.


There is no way to socially interact with the numbers of people on any 
even vaguely popular MMOG, and so the gameworld becomes little more than 
a glorified lobby system for finding a team, or in which you play with 
your friends. Either way, you're rarely interacting socially with more 
than ten or twenty people at a time.

I can't help but think that BioWare's system for NWN, or something like 
it, is the way forward - lots of small, self-contained areas where you 
can play with a limited number of individuals. The game simply provides 
a coherent framework and orginisational system for connecting these 
mini-gameworlds.