bears posts

Anti-Aliased: Sometimes, it's the little things in (virtual) life

by Seraphina Brennan Feb 26th 2009 at 4:30PM

Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, Opinion, Virtual worlds, Anti-Aliased

After playing so many games, there are moments that stick out in my mind that make me smile. Some of them are these really epic stories about boss battles, or hard fought PvP moments, or personal notes of glory and triumph. Yet others are drastically different. They're calm, touching moments, where the game either really affected me on an emotional level or wowed me with some attention to detail.

In the frantic picture of game design, balancing, art direction, content, and bug squashing of making a highly complex MMO, development teams begin to miss things. Who cares about how a daisy moves when there's serious issues at hand, like item drop rates not working out the way they should be? Yet some development teams do see these little issues and they do take the time to program them in. Not every user may notice them, but some users will, and appreciate them.

This column is dedicated to the little things in our virtual lives. Come with me as we look through some popular and some unpopular MMOs, and highlight some of the things that development teams have done to really hook us into their world.

Tags: anti-aliased, bears, birds, blizzard, bree, bree-land, featured, fish, grizzly-hills, joystiqfeatures, lotro, the-lord-of-the-rings-online, turbine, world-of-warcraft, wow