Tag: sandbox

MMORPGs have a rags-to-riches problem. It’s one found in the roots of the pen-and-paper games that inspired the MUDs before them. Life for characters in these games is a progression ladder. They start as young, skilless, penniless adventurers, over and over. They’re told to climb that ladder to improve their skills and fortunes and fame. Get experience. Level up. Practice….

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is going to be a terrible game, and I hope it gets made. I’ve heard this same phrase echoed around the Massively virtual offices a lot over the past week. I’ve uttered it myself, even though I’ve also taken to calling the game’s lead Brad “Designed Downtime” McQuaid because he’s touted that exact term as…

Last Sunday, I partied with colleagues Eliot and Matt in Allods Online, which refused to cooperate with our simple desire to group. We were complaining over Skype about petty annoyances like not being able to team up on the newbie island and having to roll off for dropped quest items when in Allods’ defense I argued how much better it…

Massively’s Mike Foster coined this lovely phrase last week. “EVE Online offers me many opportunities to engage [a] sense of curiosity and my love for ‘horizon gaming,’ which is my term for playing just to see what comes next,” he wrote. Not for gear. Not for levels. Not for ganks. Not for socializing or achievements or a fat gold purse….

When Tiny Speck announced that it was closing its weird and beautiful browser MMO, Glitch, studio founder Stuart Butterfield famously blamed it at least in part on the game’s lack of guidance — there just wasn’t enough hand-holding. “A lot of people were just like, ‘I don’t know what the f*** I’m supposed to do,’” he lamented. “Some people took…

I want to go home again, and I’m not alone. When Ultima Online launched in 1997, its housing system was both wonderful and terrible, like much of the rest of the game. If your keys were stolen or lost, your house was compromised forever. Homes didn’t decay if abandoned, so they took up space and prevented others from placing, and…

When I look over some of my past Daily Grind posts on Massively, I notice a recurring theme: I’m apparently subconsciously interested in the ways people try to influence the design of the games they play. I’ve asked about the efficacy of exit surveys, the dangers of player representatives, what sort of sub fee we’d pony up for an awesome…

Ultima Online wasn’t the greatest game of all time, and it’s not even my favorite, but because it was first, and because it’s so old, it’s had a long period of time to make mistakes and learn from them (or not). And because it’s a sandbox, it’s made those mistakes across a broad spectrum of MMO design, rather than being…

But then I took an arrow in the knee. In fact, it was Star Wars Galaxies that urged me to rise above dabbling in thees and thous and transformed me into a smart-ass, quick-thinking pirate queen. I never broke character in spatial chat. Every toon had an elaborate backstory. My guild founded a roleplaying metropolis. I stayed up until the…

Most of the reviews I’ve read of Glitch have been relentlessly trendy, evoking poetry, trying to find deep meaning in a Flash game that involves tickling pigs and drinking cocktails and wise-cracking with magic rocks. Beau even called the game hipsterish, but honestly, I don’t see it. It’s a cute game. It’s a crafting sandbox. It’s what FarmVille would be…