Foton truthsays again, talking about the ever-increasing gap between the high-end raiders and the rest of us schlubs.

That creaking sound you hear? That’s the ever widening gap between those who have been raiding for-fucking-ever and those that haven’t. We still have the wherewithall to suit up a green raider and have him join us the next night, but guilds a few steps down the food chain do not.

It pains me to think we’ll miss out on quality raiders because some day that gap will be too wide. That’s how it is and that’s how it’s always been.

I am very precisely in the situation he now describes. Not overly enamoured with the first character I have leveled to 60, I’m now moving my Mage alt (who has been about 40 for almost 8 months) into the end-game area. It’s not unlike the experience I had moving from Illinois to Wisconsin when I was 10.

Read on for reflections on the past and thoughts on jumping the gap.

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Some days, I just love Terra Nova to Death. Ed Castronova has some info from Ludium I about the possibility that there is ‘girl stuff’ that can be done in MMOGs. Teppy (bless em’) has gone ahead and included them in ATITD III.

“The Marriage Game” is now known as The Test of Marriage. One change  from the way it was presented at Ludium I is that your score is the sum of  your progress and your mate’s progress *or* the number of marriages that  you (”Casanova”) have been in. This made it a lot more palatable to our  players, without changing the optimal play strategy. It will be  interesting to see the distribution of “Casanovas” vs. “good spouses”, and  to see if there is some correlation with player gender. 

Not only do I think these are great ideas, this Marriage game should be in every single MMOG, from EQ to WoW. The duo/couple is probably the most common RL and in-game group, and having some sort of formal recognition of that connection would be freaking sweet. Don’t forget to allow same-gender unions!

Damion has a few words of commentary about the player-created content that is being introduced to Horizons.

Using a public copy of the game database, players and writers alike can use existing characters, enemies, and items to add or change their own quests. Tulga’s staff will evaluate these quests for quality before bringing the customized quests into the live game. These customized fan quests should certainly add a homespun dungeonmaster feel to the thousands of Tulga-crafted quests already in the game.

There’s no word on when this is going to be released, and Horizons has competition from the Ryzom Ring expansion Nevrax has planned for later this year. My inclination is that these are going to be interesting for those of us who like novelty in the genre, but it’s not going to do what the companies making the games are aiming for.

Both Ryzom and Horizons are (let’s face it) not blockbuster games. If the goal here is to to try and attract more players, I don’t have high hopes they’ll meet with success. On the other hand, if they’re aiming to differentiate themselves from WoW by going for a new and different niche, they may just have something interesting. Here’s hoping there will be trails available for the curious.

I just don’t understand this at all. Curt Schilling will now be a bad guy in EQ2. Initially it’s for a charity event. Go take a whack at him, and every time he dies SOE donates money to a fund. Odd, but fine, right? This is the part I’m confused about:

“After the three-day baseball series, Curt’s character will remain within the game as a high-powered enemy that characters will have to face later in the game.”

Jigga-whaaa? Why? Are we going to be facing a baseball-bat wielding boss at the bottom of Blackburrow now? A baseball-tossing guard for Lady Vox? Very strange.

Update 05/28: I guess this is what I get for not updating the site more often. Scott Hartsman emailed to fill out the story on the Schilling mob:

There’s the charity event NPC on the one hand, that uses this new model that we made to resemble Curt.  It’s a pretty good model. Later, the model gets a new name, purpose, location, and story (from existing EQ2 lore), and becomes part of some new content that’s going in with the new Betrayal quest a couple weeks later. The charity event is transitory, but the Betrayal content is permanent.  Seemed like a good way to get the most out of the work that went into it.

Make sense?

Indeed. Repurposing the model makes a good deal of sense … especially if, like me, you wouldn’t be able to pick Curt Schilling out of a lineup at a police station. :) Thanks, Mr. Hartsman.

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All this week, Kill Ten Rats has had posts about games that do things right. They’ve had commentary on the good elements of Eve Online, ATITD, and Puzzle Pirates.

I’ll toss out some game elements I really like from the games that I have played:

• Housing in EQ2 and SWG - Consistently, whether it’s a hardcore raider or a foofy RPer, I’ve yet to meet a MMOG player who didn’t like the idea of character housing. The idea of having a place to hang your hat is really appealing, and both EQ2 and SWG do a great job with their systems.
• Class System in FFXI - Being able to try out different class roles with the same character is wonderful. I (as with many MMOG players) get attached to my main character, and I’d love to be able to experience new things with him. Deleting him and rerolling is not the ideal.
• Puzzles and Traps in DDO - The best thing in that game, in my opinion. Real-time interaction with traps and puzzles made for some actually quite enjoyable moments.

I’m not all that nice, though. Here are some things I have yet to really see nailed:

• Combat - My favorite combat system is probably WoW’s, and I still don’t like it that much. The idea of MXO’s combat is terrific, but the implimentation sucks. I was really looking forward to the crazy customizability of Tabula Rasa’s combat, and then they changed the game design. Considering as much combat as I’ve done in MMOGs, you’d think I would have a better time doing it. Learn from console games! Fresh experiences on the lowest level leads to fun further up the food chain.
• Crafting - I love Puzzle Pirates‘ system, about 50%, and I love SWG’s system about 50%. If those systems had the sex and made babies, I would be in luuuuuuve.
• NPC Interaction - Please see Oblivion and Mass Effect for what you should be aiming at, developers. Eye contact, please! Also: if you have to voicecast every role make sure they don’t sound bored at talking to my awesome self, okay?

One of the very first things I ever wrote about Massively Multiplayer games concerned the lack of accountability players have in-game. Trolls and PKers move from character to character, account to account, making full use of the anonymity of the internet in the rare case that they are brought to task for their actions.

The topic was raised in the comments as it relates to the grouping post I made yesterday. Darniaq mentions the Ebay system, and Alan suggests that something slightly more complicated might be in order. I wholeheartedly agree.

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Made some updates to sidebar links, rephrased my /about phrase, tweaked the About page, and generally tidied up a little.