There’s been a bit of a meme going around where people share the sixth screenshot from their sixth screenshot subdirectory. Unfortunately, I don’t order screenshots quite like that. Instead, I thought I’d just go through my big old FRAPs folder (which contains the last 5 months or so of screenies from me) and show you my personal favorites. Here you go (with a key after the cut):

Turbine’s been sitting on a dragon’s horde for some time now, and they’ve yet to let us know what they’re working on. If I had my druthers, this is what I’d want them to be putting that money towards:

- A free to play Harry Potter MMO -
We know they have connections to Warner, and we know they’re working on a Free to Play title. Why not have the best of both worlds? This game would be so good just from the spare parts it’s almost hilarious to think about. Every player gets to start off as a new schoolmate at Hogwart’s. Pick your faction (house), and offer differing content to each group. Leveling up isn’t hard numbers, it’s school years! Your avatar changes as you get higher in grades, getting older and getting more clothing options.

Go adventuring in classes, do homework and get graded on your performance (ultimate single-player element) and then collaborate with classmates on projects (grouping). Even go head to head in sports and wizards duels (PvP). Microtransaction elements include clothing, brooms, etc. etc.

Built-in audience, easily understandable mechanics, and if you do the ‘look’ right could be playable on just about anything. Must-do, must-do.

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I’ve written before about the frustrations players have finding and following content in MMOs. Specifically I think it’d be helpful to have guides or aides that specifically connect players with level-appropriate content. In my discussion of ‘the Personal NPC’, I brush against the problem that players face when they return to a character after an extended absence. Back in the day Brent dropped all of his quests when we left World of Warcraft so that he could come back fresh, and I’ve been reflecting on that ‘coming back fresh’ element. More on that in a sec.

In some ways I think the bewilderment of a returning player is almost equal to the transition from a new player to a veteran. In games like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars there isn’t a lot in the way of a problem there. Point A to Point B, no problem. What about a game like EverQuest 2, though? Or Dungeons and Dragons Online? If you’ve never tried to make your way through that content without a signpost, you’ll know: it’s hard. My thought is that there are ways to solve the issues of contextless gaming and confusing leveling paths. Ways that involve cool instanced visitor centers! Read on.

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You may have already read Darren’s short post on the Monday night group’s decision to jump from DDO to Lord of the Rings Online. From his post:

“Is DDO a bad game because we left? No…it isn’t. I think this is just a case of some of the more glaring flaws of the game just being amplified by our specific group dynamic. Yes, it is said that DDO is great for a static group of players…just not for this specific static group of players.”

He nailed it there; basically we screwed ourselves by not really planning our group makeup ahead of time and not having a full group. More on our DDO experiences and our plans for LotRO below.

Update: If you’re reading this and play LotRO, feel free to give advice! One of the best parts of talking about my adventures via MMOG Nation has been the helpful comments from folks like Kendricke. Chip in!

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Someone on the last post suggested I plug my DDOcast apperance last week, which I … totally should have done.

This week’s show features Ask the Devs #6 along with an interview with Michael Zenke from Massively.com.  Lessah talks about leet speek on ”Know Your Role”, Rowanheal has some thoughts on recent stuff on ”Girl Gamers” and Steiner-Davion looks at Gianthold collectibles on ”Definitive Collectibles.”  There’s also a sketch about the Stormreach Mayoral Election – Goodblade’s Downfall!

I know I barely went into it here, but one of my weekly pleasures is now at an end. The Monday night World of Warcraft group I shared with Brent, Brendan, Darren, and Adam is no more. Instead, we’re doing something just a bit new and different. Very different, at least, but not in actuality all that new. We’re going to be playing Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online.

I have to say – I’m really pumped about this. Since jumping into the MV gig fulltime, I’ve really had the chance to compare and contrast the offerings from different developers. Most MMO companies are really strong when it comes to new content. Blizzard gets a lot of props for the work they do, and rightly so, but for my money the king of patch content is actually Turbine. Their work in Lord of the Rings Online is nothing short of phenomenal. These guys have, no joke, released something like two or three entire expansions-worth of content since LOTRO launched last year. Each one is seperated out into “Books”, chapters in the game’s ongoing story that have the players dogging in the heels of the Fellowship proper. The most recent patch, Book 13, added a fantastic snow zone and a mind-boggling amount of content.

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Last week Cameron got to talking about Dungeons and Dragons Online, and it made me a little misty-eyed.

DDO … is all about the dungeon crawl with friends. It can be summed up as follows: kill monsters, disarm traps, break stuff, and loot chests … I find the combat in DDO much more satisfying than in NWN2. It also captures the “adventure with your friends” aspects of D&D much more convincingly than NWN does, in my opinion. It mimics the tabletop version much better in this respect. My biggest complaint about DDO so far is that the fun is directly proportional to how many people you can get playing in your group. Solo play is alright, but gets old fast (and only certain classes can do it well). Duoing is lots of fun, but you’re still pretty limited depending on the classes. Either monsters will be tough or traps will be tough. Once you get up to 3-4 people it starts getting really fun because you have such a wide variety of skills to draw on and can tackle the hard mission setting … As always, and especially in DDO, grouping with your friends is far more fun than grouping with strangers. I still intend to do a full write-up of my impressions on it eventually and detail what I like and don’t, but I want to play out the trial first, at least.

Y’see, lo these many months ago, the party of adventurers that have now taken their characters all the way to just-shy-of-level-40 in EverQuest 2 were going to tackle Xendrick in Turbine’s DDO. We made characters, and Katie and I logged in to begin our first night of adventuring with Brian. I was going to do Cleric, Katie was going to be our Fighter, and Brian was slated to be a Wizard.

We never even made it to the tutorial rooms on the docks.

Brian’s computer kept crashing, over, and over, and over again. We were really looking forward to DDO, because the idea behind the MMOG-play in the first place was that it would partially take the place of the weekly D&D game we’d been playing with Brian for quite some time.  But the DDO client just refused to work on Brian’s system. He’s a system administrator for a living, so when I tell you that he troubleshot the crap out of his system, I mean it. Cards were reseated, drivers reinstalled, FAQs consulted, support systems referenced … but still Eberron refused to play well with Brian’s machine.

He never did get it working, and our interest in playing together before the idea died led us to Norrath. Katie and Brian got EQ2 core installs on the cheap, Brian’s friend John joined us, and off we went.

Brian and Katie accuse me of having MMOADD, and it’s posts like Cameron’s that make that thing in my head go off. As much fun as I’ve had in EQ2, a part of me really wishes we’d been able to give Turbine’s under-appreciated D&D title a proper go. I still wish those folks a lot of success. Here’s hoping they’ve found their niche.

All the same: Sorry we never got to be friends, Turbine. I think it would have been cool.