February 2007
- [Design] Personal virtual worlds Lachek Butalek
- [Design] Personal virtual worlds Mike Rozak
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Nick Koranda
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Raph Koster
- [ALL PLEASE READ - FROM MODERATOR] Nick Koranda
- [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons and animals Mike Rozak
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- stock market mechanisms in muds John Buehler
- stock market mechanisms in muds Acius
- stock market mechanisms in muds Daniel James
- stock market mechanisms in muds Matt Chatterley
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- stock market mechanisms in muds Chapman, Greg
- Imaginary Realities mirror Richard Tew
- Imaginary Realities mirror Michael Hartman
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Peter Harkins
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Phillip Lenhardt
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? John Bertoglio
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Jeremy Noetzelman
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Alex Arnon
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Squid
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Ghilardi Filippo
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Darryl Woodford
- stock market mechanisms in muds Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? John Bertoglio
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Mike Rozak
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Michael Sellers
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Caliban Darklock
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] John Buehler
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Michael Sellers
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Jeffrey Kesselman
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Caliban Darklock
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [wasPersonalvirtual worlds] Dave Scheffer
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Jeffrey Kesselman
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Ghilardi Filippo
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Mike Rozak
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial userexperience Michael Sellers
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Tess Snider
On 2/15/07, Mike Rozak <Mike@mxac.com.au> wrote:
> 12:00 PM - Get home with the vanguard install disks. (After doing a 2 hour round-trip to
> the game store. I live in the outback! I also picked up groceries and ate lunch while I was
> in town, otherwise I would have started the clock at 10:00 AM.)
It's 2007. Everything should be downloadable. No more excuses.
> - I'm then asked AGAIN what language to use. I select English, again.
Because, you know, you might speak Warumungu, or something.
> - By the way, I search vanguard's online troubleshooting FAQ and see no mention about
> setup problems. I search for "install" and "setup" and find nothing related to my
> experience. Could I be the only one with these problems?
Heh, who knows. My Vista upgrade was so hair-raising, it drove the
other witness to vow he was switching to all Mac.
> - Right away, I'm asked if I want the $29.95 station pass to play all SOE's games. I say
> no. I'm then asked if I want to Spend $0.99 on some random feature. I click no. In the
> next dialog, I'm told that I'll be able to trial those features for free for a month, even though
> I clicked no in the previous one. This sort of marketing strikes me as really bizarre.
10 records for 99 cents! Cancel at any time!
Way to make your players think of you as a bunch of polyester-suit
wearing scumbags!
> - I'm asked for CC details, etc. Setup asks for my state, despite the fact that I select
> "Australia" as my country... Australia has states too, but the US states are still shown in
> the combo box... (And by the way, Windows knows I'm in Australia, so why doesn't
> Vanguard use that info to default to "Australia".)
Ah, good old down-home American myopia!
> - Vanguard then spends 10-15 minutes rescanning the 17 gigabytes of files that it just
> installed in order to see which of them was out of date.
Ooh, sloppy. Should only do that on a repair. Maybe they waited
until the last minute to write their patcher?
> - Apparently, 500 MB(?) of them were. (A mere month after the golden masters were
> made.)
If the client had been downloadable, like it should have been, you
wouldn't have to patch, because they'd (presumably) have the latest
client available to you. On the other hand, two DVDs worth of
information could take a while. Still, you could've started it the
night before, and you wouldn't have had to nursemaid it for hours.
> - For some reason, an hour and a half in, the download decides that someone pressed
> cancelled, which they didn't, and then decides to hang.
It was the parrot. He's on to you man. Bad install means more play!
> - Vanguard asks me to log in again.
This is something I hate about WoW, actually. Why do I have to keep
logging in over and over again when I'm patching? If you've got more
than one patch to install, it gets completely insane. And the EULA
and the ToS! Over and over and over.
> - I re-run vanguard, re-logon, and get to a page where I can "Create a character" or
> "change my settings". I have no characters, of course, so why would I want to do
> anything except create a character?
Because you have to change your settings. :P
> - I go to change my settings since vanguard has decided to set my resolution to
> 1280x1024 DESPITE the fact that I have a widescreen monitor. (How many people would
> notice the the aspect-ratio mismatch? Most would notice it subliminally and think that
> vanguard's graphics suck.) Widescreen monitors are NOT uncommon. It would only have
> taken a developer 10 minutes of coding to check the pre-existing monitor resolution
> (CM_SCREENX and CM_SCREENY) and use that! (Many other games have done this to
> me too, and I have no idea why no-one in the test team picks up on this.)
Widescreens are getting pretty ubiquitous. Though, I think most games
don't bother to scan your desktop resolution, because people don't
always want to run in the same resolution as their desktop (especially
if they have an older video card). *I* prefer to run in desktop
resolution, because I'm usually either A.) on an LCD that has exactly
one native resolution, or B.) on an HDTV where I need it to use my
custom resolution to prevent overscan. However, many gamers adjust
resolution based on performance for a given game.
That said, I agree that it would be nice for it to autodetect if
you're in a wide screen resolution, and at least attempt to give you a
proper aspect ratio, going in -- even if it's not your favorite
resolution.
> - Furthermore, assuming that the video had been properly set up, I should have been
> asked to create a character right away. There's no point in asking questions when there's
> only one answer.
I like being able to fix up my options right away, so I don't have to
watch any introductory material with ugly settings.
> - I am then thrown into a race/class selection page that is lacking documentation and
> would be fairly confusing to anyone who hadn't played a MMORPG before.
Oh, now this is a major pet peeve of mine. Let people know the
consequences of their decisions, for heaven's sake.
> - My first quest does NOT involve killing rats! Yay! Instead, it involves PICKING CLUMPS
> OF GRASS! I'm excited now. (Sarcasm.) Compare this to Oblivion where you escape
> from prison by following the Emperor, and then watch him die.
At least if you were in ATitD, you could dry the grass, and make
bricks, or something...
Tess
- stock market mechanisms in muds Matt Chatterley
- stock market mechanisms in muds Peter Keeler
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- [MUD-Dev2] Michael Sellers
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Jeffrey Kesselman
- Mailing List Alternatives (was Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives) Morgan Ramsay
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Lachek Butalek
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] cruise
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] cruise
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Sean Howard
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants cruise
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dave Scheffer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Phillip Lenhardt
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Vincent Archer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Hartman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Vincent Archer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Hartman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Matt Chatterley
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Phillip Lenhardt
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Lachek Butalek
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Daniel James
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Phillip Lenhardt
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- Re:[Humor] MMORPG Cliches (was " A rant against MMORPG installs and initialuserexperience") Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Jon Leonard
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Vincent Archer
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system Michael Sellers
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system cruise
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Michael Sellers
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Lachek Butalek
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Raph Koster
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant for Vanguard DANIEL Harman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant for Vanguard Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry (Was: A rant for Vanguard) Nick Koranda
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Morgan Ramsay
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Adam Martin
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Christopher Allen
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster