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

[John Buehler]

Damion Schubert writes:

> See, I've always disagreed with this definition of 'depth' in a world's
> design.  UO had, in my opinion, a shallow crafting system (compared to,
> say, ATITD), a shallow combat system (compared to, well, anyone), and
> very shallow world content (esp. compared to EQ).  They did a whole bunch
> of things, but did none of them very deeply.  Grand Theft Auto is totally
> in the same camp.  These are examples of BROAD games to me.
>
> By comparison, take a look at the list of raid content that kicks off in
> Burning Crusade - that effectively STARTS with the players getting level
70.
>
> http://images.slashdot.org/articles/07/02/bcraids.jpg

Something to consider here is the notion of "axis of experience".  If that
axis lies "horizontally", then you get "breadth".  If that axis lies
vertically, you get "depth".  What happens when it lies in the third axis?
Or along some other dimension?  Depth, breadth and other words tend to drag
in their usefulness after a while.

Specific to World of Warcraft, there's a lot of raid content there.  There's
also a lot of graphics.  For someone interested in graphics, World of
Warcraft has immense "depth", because that's an entertaining axis of
experience.  I enjoy the graphics, but not that much.  I enjoyed the raids
the first time because it was something new to experience.  But I quickly
found out - as with all raid systems - that you "stand here", "do this" and
"wait" on command.  If you don't, the raid wipes.  Let's just say that's not
my preferred axis of experience.

What you call "breadth" is "depth" to me because it is better aligned with
my preferred axis of experience.  As you infer later in your post (nothing
quotable), the interaction of a bunch of systems with some reasonable detail
built into them can produce some really horrendous results.  One bug, and it
turns into a nightmare.  But until that bug gets discovered and exploited,
all those systems interacting and mixing produces a lot of stuff for the
appropriately-aligned brain to be entertained by.

JB