There’s a raid in Final Fantasy XI that is intended to take 18 hours to defeat. It’s called Absolute Virtue. This is, at best, a very ill-informed design flaw, but I believe it to actually cross the line into being truly unethical and outright dangerous. If that wasn’t enough, there is also a more difficult raid involving the Pandemonium Warden that takes even longer. Continue Reading »

I’ve talked before about recapturing the magic in games and trying to replicate it from a design standpoint, but recently I’ve decided to relive some old games. I picked up all of the Thief and Fallout games, both of which occupy places in my top three or so games of all time. But, I already know that I won’t enjoy them nearly as much as I did before. Continue Reading »

Paul Barnett discouraged developers from playing WoW? The thought is that playing other games, especially market leaders like World of Warcraft, can corrupt a designer into copying them to some degree. I agree that the game is a work of flawed genius, but I don’t really agree with not playing other massively multiplayer games for your own purity. Continue Reading »

In response to a very short-winded post over at Broken Toys, I decided to dig up a post I made before I was a game developer, way back when Nerfbat wasn’t really a blog. You can see the article in its original form on Archive.org, but I’ll go ahead and copy it here below the fold because at some point that will no longer exist. Some of you surely aren’t familiar with the ultimate piece of vaporware, Dawn, so this won’t even be amusing to you. Sorry. Continue Reading »

I really want to make a questionnaire that determines how much of a griefer you are. Or, put another way, how sociable you are. This would be a series of questions about what you would do in a particular situation, probably in the context of a PvE server then a PvP server. An example question follows after the break. Continue Reading »

Richard Bartle is irrelevant, but many of his opinions are not. That’s right, I’m getting involved in the storm that began with an interview on Massively and continued everywhere else on the interwebs. The fact is, whether Bartle is a senile old man with no true understanding of what it takes to make a modern MMO (or to play one), or if he’s the elder deity of all that is MMOs, some of what he says is quite insightful. Continue Reading »

There are a couple of pretty rockin’ posts over at LagORama that are basically rants about changing things in MMOs from both the player and developer perspective. Both resonated with me, because both apply to me at all times. Check out An Open Letter to MMORPG Developers and An Open Letter to MMORPG Players. I agree with both. Does that make me a paradox?

Where is the great Player-versus-Player MMORPG? It doesn’t exist… yet. There have been a few attempts at integrating PvP into a massively multiplayer game from the ground-up, and it hasn’t quite worked out just yet, at least not for an avatar-based fantasy or sci-fi game. No true PvP game has gone mainstream since MMOs hit the big time. Continue Reading »

You might think that, as a game developer, I’m all for anything that can help against piracy. Piracy is bad, and can even cause companies to shut down when it runs rampant. But, how far is too far? Well, I think we’ve found out how far is too far. Now when I go purchase a game at the local video game store, I don’t even own it. Continue Reading »

Crave has an article up entitled The 30 dumbest videogame titles ever. I’ve renamed it to something more appropriate, because these are perhaps the 30 awesomest videogame titles ever. Gems like Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals, Ninja Hamster, and Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender. Seriously, those are kickass titles for games. If you don’t like them, you are probably over 50 or have a permanent chip on your shoulder. Check ‘em out.