Exactly!!!!!

freespeech

73mike

Syndicated Terence

1) Enough with the fucking acronyms and colonized titles.

2) The more options for control customization, the better.

Strangelove

citykids

Don't use the NWN Aurora engine and take nearly all your content from the still active NWN modding community and claim that you made an MMO yourself. It's shameless that there's no credit given to the people whose work was used in this project on the project's site.

What exactly was the grant money spent on? The game was made by Bioware, much of the scripting was taken from other sources and no custom art was used.

fluffyamoeba

Get a Full-Time Staff
"I love my students, but they just don't have the schedule to do this. I have a very able lead designer and an excellent lead artist, but they had to pause for midterms. You need a core group of 60-hour-a-week people."

This guy is at a uni, and he isn't using grad students? What? Or did he mean that his students had to take time off to grade the midterm? Maybe the grant wasn't big enough for grad students (damn overhead!). When I hear "60-hour-a-week people", I pretty much think, "grad students?", but that's not what I think when I hear "Full-Time Staff".

shimage

Admonisher

Murmaider

Karlott

Additionally, you can't use Shakespearian literature as a base for an MMO. The subject matter alone doesn't allow for it to be a fun game! If you're trying to make some realistic medieval economy/war game, that's one thing, but to base it all around some of the most complex and eloquent writing there is... Uhg...

People who seek out MMOs are essentially looking for an enjoyable, instantly gratifying experience.
People who are looking for Shakespeare and education are not looking for an MMO.

ChrowX

Oh, and a side note, I'd kill for a Macbeth game that was similar to Assassin's Creed.

dry-roasted-peanuts

They just have no talent, imo.

ssh83

panfriedcharlie

panfriedcharlie

As soon as they implemented that realistic crafting system, they should have had a game tester test it. Not once, but a hundred times - to see if it was fun from the first time up until the last.

They should have had a game tester talk to NPCs over and over again. They would have immediately found how boring it was immediately.

And the worst thing that they should have done was PLAY VIDEO GAMES. Look for what works in other games. Imitate it. Improve on it. WoW isn't giant heaps of innovation. They took every good idea out there and packaged it. And it works.

Cpryd001

beautifulvandal

Scope the project correctly, create an efficient schedule and allow your team members to have an outside life other than game development and you'll be surprised what can be accomplished.

Immutablyme

It seems there are three or four "big" MMO projects being developed here in Bloomington.

tajesmahoney

It is not that I dont like Shakespeare, just that games should be more fun and less literature.

Reading and gaming are very different things. I love reading,
but I do it to relax, to work my mind, to imagine... I play games for fun and action; like most of us.

KroKan

Pombar

Granted, stopping for mid terms or whatever will be tough on game development. That's entirely reasonable, but expecting 60 hours a week from start to finish as necessary to create a good game in the academic setting does not really make sense when I've seen some of the TAs for my Comp Sci classes make pretty good games without spending that much time a week on them.

deviantCharles

Tadashi

Nawara_Ven

That was a pretty short week when I was a graduate student.

phicaluk

4 - Don't make a MMO.
5 - Don't make a MMO.
6 - Don't make a MMO.
And the most important:
7 - Don't make a MMO.

Hope this get the message trough internet.

Tei

"Is this an AK I see before me?
Its handle toward my hand..."

phicaluk

Who the hell said a browser MMO is easy to do? If you compare it to a client-based MMO, yes, but not regular games.

Tadashi

BunnyJump

Gorman

icepick314

Nymeria

Also, betting on something like this when the game industry is with out any doubt, turning into casual gaming hybrids more and more every day...

Research dude... research.

Krumm

1. Don't try to make a working economy in a non MMO. Everybody has tried, nobody has succeeded. It's pretty much impossible.

2. Don't be over ambitious (guess these guys came to the same conclusion).

3. Make it deep and intricate enough to satisfy hardcore gamers, but accessible for a wide audience (this is why it's hard to make games).

We don't have much programming/modding experience between us, even if we do have about 40 years of gaming experience, but we found these rules out pretty quick.

gamadaya

GMC

Ona side note, Shakespeare may have been a great playwrite, but nobody actually wants to read his scripts, in the same way that very few people today would go and buy a transcript of a muscial, or even the latest blockbuster, for reading pleasure.

Marmotta

Thats the single best advice. Everywhere I see people that start with a MMORPG or a Total Conversion. And FAIL.

Most programmers sould start with a Tetris clone. And most moddelers, with a "walk simulator" or a race game, or maybe a RTS game. Nothing complex that takes ages to finish and is never released.

Tei

I still think that games should stay games. At least if you want to appeal to a broad audience. Economics are pretty complex in detail. And the more complex your feature, the more time you have to put in it.

marlblank

would be fun to import a level 70 frost mage onto that game and see how there level 14 lute playing and tier 3 sonnet writing fairs up muhahahaha

EmeraldCockroach

This is exactly why people think the gaming audience is vapid, short witted, and lowbrow. Why can't there be a game about Shakespeare or one of his works. Shakespeare plays often involved gratuitous amounts of sex, scandal, violence, and comedy, all while being incredibly written by the hand of a true master. They had everything that would keep the common man embroiled in their plots, all while maintaining a level of literary prowess that keeps them fresh and relevant 400 years later.

Why should we expect less from our games?

PATSCRU

The reason why most designers don't do that level of realism is that most designers don't understand to that level of realism. Realism, in itself, is fun - it's ineptly melded mechanics to achieve that realism that slows it down.

To some extent, I'd say that the MMO model isn't the one to aspire to. WoW has that locked down so well, unless you're wiling to be a copy, I'm not sure that it's worth the effort to show your face.

And yes, I'm drastically unhappy this game isn't flying.

Slatz_Grobnik

Tip 7 : the intarwebz is a cruel world.

Cham

cybereality

KroKan

Although the rest of the concept sounds pretty cool.

Callidux

A_Zombie