More than 50% of Age of Conan subscribers are on PvP servers, as noted by Funcom themselves. If WoW Census is accurate, more than 40% of World of Warcraft subscribers are on PvP servers. And yet, Player-versus-Player is sometimes neglected even in modern MMOs. What’s with the stigma? Continue Reading »

Finish your game before launch. If the launch date can’t be pushed back, remove the unfinished portion of the game and get it done right. For example, if the last 20-30 level chunk of your game has (basically) no quests, and quests were previously the method to gain levels, change the level cap to end when the quests end. If the content can’t fill out as many levels as the mechanics, you pretty much have to go with the weakest link and temporarily lower the level cap.

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 »

The Harsher the penalties for incivility, the more civil the community will be. That’s a little observation I’ve made while playing MafiaMatrix (a free multiplayer web game), and it’s probably the most civil online game I’ve ever played (though, admittedly, it can also be the most frightening). Why? You are punished for incivility. Harshly. Continue Reading »

If a decision can logically be altered, let the player change their decision. Certain aspects of a character are essentially set in stone in most fiction, such as race choice; these aspects don’t need to be changeable. But, anything that makes sense to change (and is technologically feasible) like talent or achievement choices should be alterable by the player later in the game. Other examples are hair style choices, faction selections (depending on their importance in a game), and where their home recall point is.

Too many options are too many. A lot of us experienced players love having options. We like to choose our skills, increase our stats manually, and micromanage every little detail of our character and play because it’s part of the fun for us. For most people, that isn’t the case. Even for the people like me, there’s a point that there are just too many options, and I become gun-shy about making bad choices. Too much of anything is simply too much, and if you want an accessible game, avoid giving players too many options.

A “required feature” for your game’s genre may not be required for your game. Sometimes new features appear in almost every new game of the same genre. Mounts, for example, seem to be required as a baseline feature for a traditional MMO. Are they? Of course not. Not all burgers need cheese to be delicious, and not all MMO games need mounts to be great. An example in the FPS genre is BioShock — it doesn’t have all of the features of an FPS (or any other genre), but it’s still an amazing game. Never include a feature in a game because you think it’s a core feature to the genre; always include a feature in a game because it’s a core feature of your game.

As I get older — and I know I’m not very old yet — my personal preferences, as well as my gaming capabilities, have changed. I have less time to play games now that I’m married, and even if I had the time, I’d be less likely to spend the endless hours playing them that I used to. It can be tempting to hope that games will adapt with me, or that my favorite MMO will adapt with me; unfortunately, it’s not the games that need to adapt, it’s me. Continue Reading »

Play your game. It sounds natural, but it isn’t always easy. Play your game like a player does, not just on your GM account, because the lack of power makes it a whole different ballgame. You need to at least understand the perspective that players have, which is hard to achieve when you know all the numbers — all the intricacies of the game — but lack the insight about how players really play. I know it’s hard to play your game that way when you made it (and to find the time to do so), but it’s a skill that you have to nurture. And, your employer better let you play while you’re at work, or they don’t know what’s good for them.

Perception is reality. When it comes to game balance, what really counts is how it feels while playing the game, not what the numbers tell you. It may be perfectly mechanically balanced–you have all the numbers, you’ve made all the calculations, and it is balanced. But, if that’s not how it feels when you’re playing the game, it isn’t balanced and needs to be changed. This is one of many reasons that it’s 100% vital that you play your game as a player does (a lesson unto itself).