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
• • [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons and animals cruise
  • • [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons andanimals Mike Rozak
    • • [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons andanimals cruise
      • • [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons andanimals Johnicholas Hines
        • • [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons andanimals Caliban Darklock
• 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 [wasPersonalvirtual worlds] Michael Sellers
      • [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[wasPersonalvirtual worlds] Michael Sellers
  • [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
  • • [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Vincent Archer
• 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
• • Mailing List Alternatives (was Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives) David Johansson
• [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] cruise
            • genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Damion Schubert
            • • genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Lachek Butalek
              • genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] cruise
        • [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 Mike Rozak
                • • [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 John Buehler
                • [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 Raph Koster
                      • [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
                        Richard A. Bartle writes:
                        
                        > On 02 March 2007, John Buehler wrote:
                        
                        > >If gamers get used to markedly increased depth of experience in single
                        > player
                        > >games, they may come to expect it in multiplayer games.
                        > This certainly happened with graphics, and although I don't
                        > expect the
                        > effect to be as pronounced with virtual worlds, it could still make a
                        > difference.
                        > Some differences may remain, though. Few single-player
                        > games allow you
                        > to walk through NPCs, for example, but graphical virtual worlds do because
                        > otherwise you may find yourself unable to get somewhere because a crowd
                        > is blocking you (and if player characters can get in the way, too, then it
                        > becomes even more of a potential problem).
                        
                        Character-character collision detection is certainly solveable:
                        
                        http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/crowd-flows/
                        
                        I very much enjoyed the animations.
                        
                        > >Ultima Online had depth, while EverQuest had 3D. EverQuest won.
                        > UO also had unrestricted PvP, money dupe bugs and a customer service
                        > disaster. If it hadn't, it could perhaps have held on against EQ. 3D would
                        > eventually have won, though. In the Far East, 1 1/2D held on for much
                        > longer, but they're moving to 3D worlds now.
                        
                        EverQuest had its ugly points too, but players stayed. I continue to point
                        the finger at the 3D graphics. They were just so seductive, that we put up
                        with some outrageous uglies. Crafting, grinding, night and storm blindness,
                        camping, etc.
                        
                        > >Lots of the silly inconsistencies in games are probably there
                        > >because addressing them would interfere with the existing vision of
                        > >gameplay. Some is pure sloppiness, of course.
                        > And some is repeating old mistakes.
                        > Let's say you /bow in a graphical virtual world. It generates a bow
                        > animation and a message. What does the message say? Well it ought to say
                        > "You bow."; what it actually says is, in WoW's case, "You bow down
                        > graciously.". Uh? I didn't want to bow down graciously: if I wanted to bow
                        > down graciously I would have typed "/bow down graciously". I just
                        > wanted to
                        > bow. Or maybe I wanted to /bow sarcastically, or /bow awkwardly, or /bow
                        > down in a rather confused manner. Why can't I do any of those things? It
                        > would take someone half a day to implement it. Why do I have my character
                        > taken away from me and made to bow in a fashion I didn't want to bow? We
                        > learned this lesson years ago in textual worlds; why do we get it in
                        > graphical worlds? Did the designers deliberately ignore the precedent, or
                        > were they simply unaware of it?
                        
                        I doubt it was ever on their radar. Players don't complain about the
                        weakness of the emote system. It's a toy aspect of MMORPGs. Players DO
                        scream bloody murder if the numbers on an item are off by a tick.
                        
                        JB
                      • • [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 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 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 Adam Martin
                      • [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 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 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] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Matt Chatterley
• [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
    • • [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem cruise
      • • [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard'sdiplomacysystem 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