To continue with null*''s thoughts on AC...
I bought AC when it first came out (I had been playing UO since the beggining) I hated it. A few months ago, I decided to give it another try... I still hate it.

Why? Well, first off, the landscape is huge, which is a good thing, BUT... there''s nothing there. This huge continent has 2 to 3 thousand players in it and about 8 cities... between the cities is beren landscape. You can run for hours from Holtsburg to Cragstone and see noone else or nothing else, save the monsters that you end up running from or die at their hands.

Then there is the people. Much of the problem with these types of games is that once a few players reach high levels, they think they are elite or something... jeez! C''mon, wheres the community in that? Social interaction in an online game is not race based (as in RL) but level based... and that sucks.

Game balance is esentially non-existant and buying anything of use cost so much money that there is no way to make enough money to buy what you need. If you design a game, you need to make the economy of the game easy for new players entering 8-16 months after the start. The simplest way is to take object inflation into account when creating new characters. I know that this is hard to do because of the possible abuse of the system, but ... it needs to be done.

Some new games that I am looking for:
Horizions: This game looks like it''s going to rock!
and of course our own MPOW (yup, we''ve created a new acronym, Massive, Persistent On-Line World) Ages of Azzuria. No dedicated site yet, but stay tuned.



Dave "Dak Lozar"Loeser

oh, I thought MPOW was Malasian Prisoner of War.

shut up
CAN I GET A WOO WOO!

Interesting comments.

I am happy to report that my concept is NOT about running around the countryside killing and looting. It is about interaction, cooperation, backstabbing, publicity and secrecy, competition, thinking and devious schemes.

I do not want to give away the concept, but I can tell you that it is a million miles away from the ideas of the games mentioned above.

There''s an MMORPG in development called majik3d. Their website used to be www.majik3d.org, but it doesn''t seem to be working for me now. They really had some nice ideas IMO.


"""" "'Nazrix is cool' -- Nazrix" --Darkmage --Godfree"-Nazrix" -- runemaster --and now dwarfsoft" -- dwarfsoft --pouya" -- Nazrix

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Make all the classes equal, and have an OK Help File and FAQ before even releasing the Alpha. Also, in peristant state worlds, you need persistant rules. Make rules that go for everyone. If they feel bad, they''ll let you know.. stick to the rules. I quit Everquest because of their stupid patches and unbalanced classes. Make the classes unique and balanced. And unless you have a new Solaris computer with a $30,000 T1 connection, you should probably think about the multiplayer. Anything less that a T1 will get sh*t speed and you''ll be lagging when you are trying to get into your inventory screen.
(well, I exagerated, but you will need some money to get a good, satisfing online multiplayer game going). Personally, my computer would be at it''s knees trying to transfer 500 fight packets, 100 AI packets, etc, on my 400 MHZ computer''s 56K connection. Another note- don''t try to host your multiplayer files on any geocities account or anything- it won''t work. (BELIEVE PHIL ;-) )

I''m making my own online game, you can see my post above.. Help is wanted.. not that I need it ;-) HINT HINT