Massively

The MMO genre is more than World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online. Here's what's going on in the rest of the world.

Ankama Games launches new Dofus Heroic Server; includes permadeath
As of September 23rd, there's a new server dedicated to Ankama Games' Dofus. Called the Heroic Server, its most notable feature is permanent death for all characters. Once dead, the player's opponent is allowed to take the character's items, and the deceased becomes interred in the Cemetery of Heroes, a worldwide ranking that can be consulted via a dedicated website. To offset the permadeath penalty, all skill and professions leveling will be much easier, allowing players to rise in rank much more quickly. To the brave and the bold: the Heroic Server calls!

Atlantica Online begins open beta; offers prizes
For their open beta launch, Atlantica Online's NDOORS is offering players of its Free Leagues -- the PvP system -- a variety of prizes, including a Nintendo Wii, an iPod Nano, or $10,000 in cash. Interestingly, these prizes become available only once the player population hits certain landmarks: 5,000; 10,000; 20,000; and 30,000. "NDOORS created something unique in the MMO world when we designed the deep turn-based, strategic world of Atlantica Online. So we decided we needed something just as original for our open beta," said Peter Kang, CEO, NDOORS Interactive. "This is going to be unlike anything anyone has seen before."

Welcome to the First Impressions: Conquer Online! Brought to you by 91.com, purveyors of Eudemons Online and other Asian MMOs. Featuring a non-3D, fixed isometric viewpoint, the graphics seem at first to be a little dated, and there are a few oddities that might irritate players who are used to World of Warcraft and that style of MMO. But there is some charm to be seen in CO, and these in-game screenshots will display them to you.

Check out the Gallery for our First Impressions of Conquer Online -- don't forget that the images can be seen in two resolutions, low and high. Depending on your screen settings, you will want to choose the one best optimized for your monitor.

The MMO genre is more than World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online. Here's what's going on in the rest of the world.

Secret of the Solstice gets new patch with new content
Outspark's Secret of the Solstice, the free-to-play fantasy MMO, has updated its client with a new patch. Available for both new players and veterans alike is a brand-new zone featuring new quests and a lush jungle landscape. Furthering the overarching storyline is a new initiative to pursue GM Alastor across the Emperonie Plateau and the Aserphel, Cretino, and Turmeit deserts. Finally, players can now view all of an NPC's available quests at the same time and choose which mission to undertake. Download the new patch at the SotS website.

New Warlock class available to Grand Chase players
KOG and Ntreev, publisher of Grand Chase, the side-scrolling fantasy brawler, has announced an update to the character class known as Arme. Arme, in addition to her Mage and Combat Alchemist jobs, now has access to a third: Warlock. The abilities of the Warlock job include summoning the spirits of earth, wind, fire, and water, to produce spectacular effects and fight with greater power than ever before. Before deciding if you want to switch jobs to the Warlock class, make sure to check up on the job's requirements on the Grand Chase website.

Continuing the subject of mechanics: Voting by action gives agency back to the players. The key here is that all votes shouldn't be equal. Votes should equal the level of participation, not the level of power. What this means is that a Level One character in your game, if they really care about it, and are willing to spend 60 to 70 hours on this massive storyline, they should be able to influence it. Why? Because if they care, they're your mavens. They're your people who are going out and telling everybody else, bringing them into the storyline choice.

"Solvable problems do not drive Story. Choosing that Weapon A and Armor Set B to help you kill Monster C; that's not a choice. That's a problem."

An Unsharded world should offer players massive choice events -- "Grandscaping". These events should affect everyone. If you feel left out of the story, that's not fun. Everyone should be able to influence the outcome. No redos, no retcons.

From the development side of things, you need to understand what things are going to cost, in terms of money, time, and player experience. Make the outcomes as easy to anticipate as possible. Players are happy with just a bit of text in patch notes explaining a small change. Don't think that every massive change has to be a grand event.

Learn from ARGs. Simple entry points are the key. Make announcements in your patch notes, have a herald in your town square. The more people you can get involved, the more dynamic the community becomes. Once they're in, you can make the interactions as complicated as you want. Don't worry that you're designing something that seems too complex; someone knows the answer, and someone will share that answer. There's a fine line between things that are interesting mental games for us, and things that are interesting to the player, but if you can engage the community, you can do whatever you want and somebody will figure it out.

How to patch when the events have been resolved? Players are okay with waiting a month for a patch. What to do when the players do something that no one could have predicted? "Panic overnight, then lots of text." Put in a live-action NPC, someone who's there to provide in-character explanations of what's happened. That helps immersion. The stories that are important are the stories that the players tell to their friends about their experiences in the game.

Player politics: Allow player-created stories to affect canon. Guild v Guild battles, for example. By creating fiction around the results of player-led battles, you give your users a personal stake in the game, a way to feel involved. The strongest type of community will grow out of this.

Finally, create conflict. Conflict is exciting. Create reasons for players to choose sides. World of Warcraft makes players take sides immediately with character creation. This all by itself helps with setting and the beginnings of heroism. Later, once the status quo has been established, create common enemies. Find a way for opposing sides to band together against a common threat. This can be used to create even stronger community bonds, and changes the story dynamic for the better, making the world that much richer.

We'd like to thank James Portnow for the panel, and thanks for reading!

At the Austin Game Developers Conference, we sat down to a one-man panel held by James Portnow, of Divide by Zero Games. His topic was "The Secret to Storytelling in a Massively Multiplayer Environment", and it was well worth our time.

James' main point was to collect the various servers, or shards, into one continuous world, and how that would affect the idea of composing an overarching storyline. We've compiled a breakdown of James' panel here, condensing his hour-long talk into what we think are his most salient points. Remember, most of these statements are not actual quotes unless specifically pulled out as such. Read on to learn more about "The Secret to Storytelling in a Massively Multiplayer Environment".

Welcome to the first installment of Indievelopment, where we give some love to the often-overlooked field of independent MMO development. For our inaugural post, we'll take a look at Star Wars Combine, a free MMO based in the Star Wars universe. Played entirely through your browser, SWC is available to Windows, Mac, and Linux users.

We spoke with Sorel Kaar, PR Director for Star Wars Combine about this intriguing title, its history and development, and what new players might expect to experience when trying this game out. Read on for the full interview, with in-game screenshots.

Have you been contacted byLucasArts, and if you have, what was their reaction?
Sim Master was in fact contacted by the legal department of LucasArts due to potential copyright issues. The details of this situation would take a long time to explain, but in short the issue is that all Star Wars-related material is legally the property of George Lucas. Luckily Mr. Lucas appreciates and allows fan-based nonprofit projects that promote the Star Wars image to exist, as you can see all over the Internet. Clarification had to be made in direct contact with LucasArts that Star Wars Combine is a non-profit project, which was the main reason that it was allowed continued existence by the legal department. Possibility was also mentioned to grant a free Star Wars license to the Combine; however this was never finalized. Currently the game operates in a state of uncertainty of some sort in this aspect. However, this is not preventing our development team and our players from enjoying playing and developing the game. Until any such finalized resolutions are made, we are still confident that due to the non-profit nature [of SWC] no change of mind should follow from the legal department.

What's the monthly cost to run SWC?
Roughly the total cost involving operation of servers, domains, and other services would total to about $6,000 per year, which is covered by individual donations of our membership base.

Can you give an overview, or summary of how the game is played? How much of a time investment should the beginner player expect to make?
Game runs in delayed real time. That basically means that the universe in which your character lives does not pause when you leave the game. It also means that actions like walking, flying, and similar take time to complete. Initially new players tend to get a bit discouraged by this fact. However, once you get to know of the game more, you realize that it's actually a bonus, as this way the game can be enjoyed by both people with a lot of free time and the ones with limitations. If you have only a couple of minutes per day or even per week you can have a successful in-game career just as much as people who can devote hours. When it comes down to it everything depends on your style of play and interaction with other players that help you achieve your personal goals. Some of our players are highly active at a given time and then disappear for weeks. Upon their return a lot of them pick up where they left off without any serious set-backs. That way the game adapts to your life, as it should be, and not the other way around. We often find ourselves advising our employees (speaking from in-game faction perspective) that real life is more important if they have obligations like school or work projects in the upcoming weeks.

Are players expected to roleplay, or be in character all the time, or can the game be enjoyed without taking on a persona?
The game can be what the player wants it to be. Some are oriented heavily into roleplay and hardly do any in-game participation while others loathe roleplay and focus on in-game actions only. The most dedicated are always the ones that are hybrids between the two types, but overall you meet just about all sorts.

Do any of the canonical characters appear in the game, and if so, who controls their actions? When in the history does this game take place?
Combine is not following canon events in any way. In Star Wars history the game started during the war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance. However, from that point on the players were given full freedom to develop and progress as they saw fit, and like I mentioned, we moved far away from canon storyline. You see powerful groups and coalitions that have little or nothing to do with the Star Wars known from books or movies. Due to this fact you would not meet any canonical characters either anywhere in the game.

Does the game include the Expanded Universe?
The game includes the whole galaxy with some minor deviations compared to canon galaxy. From core systems to the outer rim, players can visit several sectors out of which each contains several systems, and each system contains several planets and other bodies like moons. Overall, the galaxy is vast, and offers a varied number of groups to join or professions to undertake.

Since this is a volunteer effort, what skills do you require of someone who wants to participate in working on the game?
Required skills to join the development team of the game vary and depend on the team. Sometimes specific technical knowledge is required, where in other cases simply the will to participate and some free time and good will is all that is needed.

We'd like to thank Soren for his time and answers! If you are aware of an independent MMO that the world should know about, send us a link via our tip line!

An interesting fact: the vast majority of women in MMOs were brought by a friend. They were not interested in a game before their friend explained it to them, how it works, and what value it had.

Concerning how learning is conducted in fighting games: "Secret moves and hidden moves are perfect rewards for explorative learners, and a complete barrier for modeling or imitative learners." The story is related of a girl who learned to play a fighting game so she could challenge her boyfriend for his birthday. He proceeded to wipe the floor with her using moves she'd never seen before. "How'd you learn to do that?" "You just button mash until you figure it out." Fighting games seem to favor explorative learning.

We tend to pack an awful lot of information into our controls. Stuff we're not going to need until later in the game. We need to design our tutorials to use Modeling Learning as well as Explorative models. Players are not likely to stay in an MMO if they're forced to learn in ways that are not natural to them.

"Secret moves and hidden moves are perfect rewards for explorative learners, and a complete barrier for modeling or imitative learners."

Sheri then took questions from the audience:

Q: If you're an Explorative learner, do you just have to sit through text built for Modeling Learners?
A: Once the basics are understood, Modeling Learners do tend to become more Explorative Learners. They do become a little more risk-taking.

Q: Should tutorials be videos?
A: They don't have to be. It helps, but if there's another way to show what happens, like a character that tags along to help you, that's okay too.

Q: Do you think people are self-aware of their own learning styles? Can people choose their own learning styles?
A: No, people are not aware in general. A lot of people say "Hey, that's me" when hearing about different styles. One way to design tutorials for both types of learners is to have the tutorial text/display for Modeling Learners, and add a "skip this" button for Explorative Learners.

Q: How do you implement Modeling Learning tutorials without breaking the "Fourth Wall"?
A: Some breaking is unavoidable.

Q: Is there a point where game play is simple enough for Explorative Learning to be acceptable for everybody?
A: Once the basics are understood, etc. So, yes.

Q: Are there games that provide Thottbot-like help for learners?
A: No, and I wish there were, because if you make players go outside your game to learn about the game, you're giving them the opportunity to not come back.

Q: When is Explorative Learning a good way to learn?
A: There's no real "bad" way to design learning, as long as you understand that by restricting learning to one mode means that you lose the other type learners.

Q: Is there even such a thing as an Explorative tutorial?
A: Many MMOs do have something like this, where newbies get a safe environment to explore and make their mistakes. Moving out from the center it gets harder and harder.

Q: Is there value in saying "Go explore, you can't die!"
A: No amount of exploration is comfortable if you're not an Explorative Learner.

Q: Do women have a tendency toward casual games because they already know how to play them?
A: Yes, the simplicity of the casual game makes those games attractive.

Q: Have tutorials gotten better or worse over time?
A: The biggest problem is that we assume our players play a lot of other MMOs. You have to understand how to attract other players to grow the market.

Thank you to Sheri Graner Ray for the great panel!

We spent a little time at the Austin Game Developers Conference this year and walked away with our heads full of game-related knowledge. Not least of this came from a panel held by Sheri Graner Ray, the computer game industry's leading expert on the subject of gender and computer games.

She began by dividing learning styles into types, and explaining how closely gender relates to the different styles. She then went on to discuss how important it is for game tutorials to include the different styles of learning at the risk of losing potential players. We've compiled a breakdown of Sheri's panel here, condensing her hour-long talk into what we think are her most salient points. Remember, most of these statements are not actual quotes unless specifically pulled out as such. Read on to learn more about "The Importance of Learning Style and Gender in MMOs".

The MMO genre is more than World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online. Here's what's going on in the rest of the world.

World of Kung Fu opens screenshot contest
From September 15th to the 30th, VestGame Entertainment has partnered with zownder.com to create the first World of Kung Fu screenshot contest. "This contest really gives us the chance to showcase the awesome graphics and spectacular artwork that forms such an integral part of the game", says David Clarke, World of Kung Fu's North American Producer. The Grand Prize includes a permanent Xuan Wu mount and over a hundred rare items such as high level Forging Vouchers, Advanced Craftsman Charms, Sky Pearls, and much more. For more information, visit either founder's website.

Gaia Online brings Snoop Dogg and the Incredible Hulk to the virtual mall
Each month, residents of the virtual world Gaia Online have a chance to vote for their favorite real-world celebrities as part of the Celebrity Snare section of the website. As an example, the latest items to have been made available are Snoop Dogg's hairstyle, and the Hulk's torn-up purple pants. "Gaia Online is truly an extension of our users' real life interests and passions and Celebrity Snare is just another way we're enabling Gaians to customize their online persona and express themselves to the community," said Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia Online. "The same way fans hang a poster on their bedroom wall or wear a t-shirt with their favorite band on it, we're enabling our users to establish a connection with the celebrities they admire." Further celebrities to go virtual will include Elvis Presley, Justin Timberlake, Tila Tequila, Paris Hilton, Raven Symone and Marvel's She-Hulk.