Sierra Kilo

First up, Apple has a music-oriented announcement next week called “The Beat Goes On.” The rumors are that there may be a short, squat, widescreen iPod nano, possibly an iPhone-esque touchscreen iPod, a red iPod Shuffle, the Beatles music collection added to iTunes, and new iPod software with “CoverFlow.” I won’t be giving up my 60GB any time soon, but it would be nice to have a flashier UI. The rumors are that iPods will no longer have hard drives, but instead be flash-based. That would suck because you’d have to pick and choose what you put on your iPod instead of having your entire media library, which is the draw for me.

Next up, I read a little bit on PlayStation 3’s Home software. That’s the one that’s a little like Second Life…an online, 3D world where you can personalize a home, play arcade games, chat, etc. I think it’s a great UI for a networked game console. Menus may be faster to navigate, but it would be a blast to boot your console and be in a 3D world from the get-go. You’d walk to your bookshelf, select a game you want to play, and be switched into that game’s UI. To play co-op with somebody, you’d invite them to your place, sit down on the couch together, and play. You wouldn’t necessarily have to trudge the 5 virtual miles to your buddy’s virtual house, but you could just teleport. It would almost be as easy as menus. Make the 3D world fun by itself, too, like the Metaverse in Snowcrash: Be able to ride skateboards and motorcycles, and customize your appearance. Build in some simple games like racing from points A to B, beach volleyball, laser tag, etc. Just because the console exists as a gateway to other games doesn’t mean the UI has to be centered on that. Allow the player to play a mini-game while the main game is loading instead of looking at a “Loading” screen.

I’ve been loving the KTR content lately. And for those who don’t understand the domain name, in most RPGs, your first quest is usually some variant of “kill ten rats” and in some RPGs, most quests are some variant of “kill [quantity] [creature]”. It’s a brilliant name for a website.

Anyway, Zubon has had a good series of articles going on. He’s been playing Dungeon Runners, which I played last weekend. He’s either advertising the $5/month game or trying to convince himself that it’s worth it For as much as I can/will play, the free model is plenty.

Another good MMO review is over at WorldIV. Tachevert hits a few interesting points of LotRO (and Tuebit chimes in for an interesting look at group combat mechanics in the comments).

[rant]
I really think the MMORPG industry has peaked. WoW was such a success at bringing the masses to the genre that other developers are having a hard time selling new ideas to publishers. Much like the rest of the entertainment industry, you have to sell your idea to the guys who control what the public sees (TV, movies, etc). The problem is that publishers look at the commercial success of WoW and expect nothing less, despite how innovative or unique the idea is. They want to duplicate the success of “Lost” or “Heroes” instead of acquiring a new, unique property like “Firefly” or “Eureka.” This may cater to the lemming majority, but not to the loyal RPG player. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy “Lost” or “Heroes,” but if I had to give them up for more “Firefly,” I’d do it in a second.

What the industry needs is more innovation. I’ve been saying it for a while now. Without the basics (text chat, 3D avatar, automated combat, quests, loot), what do modern MMORPGs offer? Better yet, what do they offer over Dungeon Runners? Dungeon Runners is a stripped-down-to-the-basics MMORPG. It embraces that fact, too. Is setting enough to pay more (in the case of WoW, LotRO, SWG, etc)? Is a customizable interface worth $5 more a month? More of the same old quests with different enemies? Instances? Large-scale raids? What if that’s not your bag? I guess you just don’t play, huh? Right. Wake me up when you have something new.
[/rant]

KTR has more information on the G.I. Joe movie. Unfortunately, the movie is shaping up to be a horrible waste. Maybe Paramount will reconsider the writer/director and look for someone who is actually interested in sticking to the roots.

G.I. Joe was always an international organization, despite the American funding. Several of the characters weren’t even American. The creators of the TV show and the comics took great care not to be specific with locations. The Cobra town of Springfield was a generic American city, just like the town of Springfield in The Simpsons. It was meant to be vague so that everybody could relate to it. Everybody knows a town like Springfield. It could be just down the road.

The way this movie is shaping up, they might as well call it Street Fighter 2. I remember reading somewhere that the live-action Street Fighter movie (with Jean Claud Van Damme) was originally intended to be a live-action G.I. Joe movie, but they changed it because Street Fighter was such a popular arcade game.

Hopefully it won’t be horrible. If they keep to the spirit of the toys/show/comics and get decent actors, I might still see it…

..looks pretty cool. I’m still not sure about RTS on a console, but it was designed for one, so we’ll see.

Ever since I first saw something about Halo (back when it was still for the Mac), I always thought it would be a cool squad-based game. Unfortunately, they haven’t delivered on that. It turned into a one-man-army game with some NPC fodder. Halo Wars is a good step toward showing that there’s much more than just the Master Chief.

I would like to see a mix between a typical RTS (e.g. Command & Conquer, Warcraft) and a typical squad-based strategy game (e.g. Full Spectrum Warrior, Commandos). In typical RTS games, you select a squad of no-name generic infantry and send them to their doom. It would be a nice change if you could assemble a squad yourself, then play the squad. Instead of thinking of the infantry as fodder, give them names and treat them as part of your elite fighting force. They shouldn’t be expendable. After all, you spent 100 tiberium (or 10 gold) just to get one of them! While you’re controlling your hand-selected squad, you may have to micromanage your base. When you do that, the squad falls back to a defensive AI posture and waits for you to resume control. They’d do what they can to stay alive, often retreating. The point being that if an objective is important enough to send 6 men into the fray, it should be important enough for the commander (you) to oversee the mission. Co-operative play would be great with this model. You could run 2+ missions simultaneously. Bits of this idea are reminiscent of the turn-based UFO: Alien Invasion series where you managed a base, but focused on the mission when your men were in the field.

There’s an article at KTR that asks the question: Should thief characters in MMORPGs be allowed to steal?

The answer, quite simply, is YES. By definition, a thief is “one who carries out theft; a robber; a pickpocket.” Without the ability to steal, he is no longer a thief. On the other hand, a rogue is “a scoundrel, rascal or unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person; a mischievous scamp.” While the two have become synonymous as of late, they are not the same. A thief can be a rogue, but a rogue cannot be a thief without the ability to steal.

In real life, thievery is horrible. I had my car broken into and the stereo stolen one time. It made me angry that someone couldn’t apply themselves enough to earn money honestly (by providing a service to others, for example) and buy their own car stereo, they had to take mine.

In a game, however, thievery is thrilling! Two of my fondest gaming memories are of stealing things in the old Faerun.com MUD. The first was a solo heist. There was a temple to the goddess of magic (Mystra) in the northernmost section of the largest city (Waterdeep). That goddess had a large following at the time consisting of several good-aligned high-level mages. One day, while exploring the city, I stealthily followed one of those mages to the temple. She roleplayed some things (praying, etc), then left. I had heard rumblings that there were a few new secret passageways in the game, so I thought I’d search around. Sure enough, there was a trap door in the ceiling. It was a difficult lock, but I had no problem picking it. Once inside, I found an unlocked chest. Inside were several of the game’s most unique and powerful items. First, was “The Tome of Magic”. Not “A Tome of Magic”, but “THE Tome of Magic.” Found in the largest temple of the goddess of magic…you better believe I took that. Next was “A Plate of Human Skin”. Not a dish, but platemail armor made from human skin. I assumed it was magical and confiscated from some evil warrior. I took that, too. After all, I had plenty of evil friends who would pay dearly to own it. The pièce de résistance was “The Cleaver of Mortals”. While I couldn’t use it (thanks to well-coded 2nd Edition AD&D rules), I figured what would go better with the skin armor than a huge cleaver? Well, I donated the Tome to a high-level evil mage that I was allied with. I sold the armor and cleaver to a high-level evil dwarf warrior that I was friends with. The money went into the bank where it drew enough interest to allow me to build Shadow Manor, the largest private home in the largest city in the game (complete with my own secret doors).

My second favorite steal came during the first “Tyr vs. Cyric” war, where the followers of Tyr (the god of justice) battled the followers of Cyric (the god of…just about everything evil). There were several mini-games that helped determine the outcome. First was a pure PvP war: when a follower of one god killed a follower of the other, that team would get a point. You could only be killed once for a point, and once you were killed, you could no longer kill others for points. Next was a sort of capture-the-flag/king-of-the-hill game: there was a golden statuette and the team who held it when time was up won. If you had the statuette, you couldn’t fight, it weighed a ton, so you couldn’t move very fast or very far (without resting), you couldn’t drop it unless you were killed or it was stolen, and you couldn’t log out while holding it. The game lasted several days. In the twilight hours, our side (the evildoers) hatched a nefarious plan. We tracked the statuette to a room in the inn, where it was being guarded by a couple of players as well as guard wolves (notorious for tearing thieves to shreds). It was being held by one of the highest level rangers in the game. The plan was for the mage to cloudkill the inn (to take care of the wolves and as many player guards as possible), pick the lock to the room, and steal the statue in the chaos. I happened to have stolen the room key from the owner a few days before, so the plan went as planned. The ranger survived the gas, I stole the statue, and the mage and I ran to a small, dead-end alley that was only large enough for two people. Since nobody could enter the alley while we were there, we just waited out the timer and won the game for our side.

With stealing, however, should come deterrents. The guard wolves I mentioned were some of the nastiest beasts in the game. Players could purchase them and place them in their rented or owned rooms. They trained them to attack anyone except who was on the “friends” list. A decent thief could handle a single wolf. A great thief could even handle two. But when the rich player bought a pack of wolves, there was hardly any chance of survival. Cloudkill worked wonders, though. Soon, you would see thieves running around with mages robbing people. That is, until it was deemed illegal by the administrators.

Another deterrent was NPC AI. Whenever a failed steal attempt was made, the target would scream for the guards, who would come running. At first, it was possible to evade capture by running away and hiding for a while until the guards cooled off. Later, thanks to the anti-thief administration, a single failed attempt would place you on the ban list and cause guards to attack on sight. When that happened, they took all of your belongings and slaughtered you.

In modern MMORPGs, stealing could be implemented in a way that benefits the thief and causes less irritation to the target. It could be based on a PvP flag, limited to realistic rules (e.g. can’t take armor off your back), or limited to artificial rules (e.g. can only take one item from one person per day). The best implementation should be based on realistic rules, but should be a risky venture for the thief (e.g. guards, jail time, etc). It seems that developers are willing to ignore the thief class in order to please the others. By doing so, they are removing part of the fun from roleplaying and concentrating on combat. You might as well start calling the genre MMOCG: massively multiplayer online combat game.

EA Mythic released the updated UI for Ultima Online today. It’s basically just higher-resolution sprites/textures and a few other tweaks. I played UO for a short while, but was late to the party. I found a world full of NPC vendors and that’s about it. I think the design of the game is/was excellent, but it’s a bit long in the tooth. Does anyone still play UO?

I downloaded and played Dungeon Runners for a few minutes. It’s uncanny how close to the Diablo series it is. It even has the same quirky “don’t move there, I meant attack the guy standing in front of you” feature. What’s cool is that I was able to play for 20 minutes and quit! I completed 2 quests and signed up for 5 more, which I’ll try for later. It doesn’t look like it offers more than just pure hack-and-slash (i.e. no real RPG elements), but it’s a fun (and free!) time waster.

The trailer for the movie “The Nines” looks very interesting. There’s an obvious The Sims reference in there and the whole premise looks like a bit like The Matrix. It’s already on my Netflix list.

Exactly how difficult would it be to make an MMORPG for Windows Mobile? Seeing as how I have yet to get a single player game going on it (thanks to time and knowledge restrictions), I don’t have much room to speculate. Any developers out there have any ideas? Nothing too fancy, just a simple, 2d tile-based game where you can move your character and chat with others.

A quick search on “tmobile data socks” led me here where I found out that I don’t need to use the proxy settings with the T-Mobile Total Internet plan. That would have been nice to know before the trip so I could get email straight to my phone (with attachments). A lot of good it does me now, right? Oh well. I’ll play with it a bit more for another two weeks, then shut it off so I only have it for a month. Now that I know how to get it working, it’ll be available if I ever want to turn it on again.