Balancing - Front Page Post

[Nighthawk]

Discuss here.

http://wtfman.com/

[Brules]

Wall of text that will make no difference to any game dev....

I enjoyed the Roger Wilco reference lol....

[jonorsi]

Who all is writing for the front page now?

On a related note, what does one have to do to write for the front page? Is there any room for a young, philosophical Latin major who writes uninformed critiques on games he barely plays?

[Brules]

I hope not...

[Epsilon]

" I think even the most avid non pvper when given a glaring advantage of gear etc will capitalize on a situation in which killing another player can give them reward at very little risk" (Balancing).

This is something I see in every game I play.

"Imagine you are a baseball player and there are 50 choices of bat. Some are good for hitting long balls, others are better for bunting, but upon starting your career you must choose one bat and stick with it, or lose all of your stats as a player when switching to another bat" (Balancing).

This is how I feel at the beginning of every new MMO and the reason why I fall out and quit. I cannot devote the time time change classes, and I end up disappointed in my initial choices.

[Nighthawk]

Originally Posted by jonorsi

Who all is writing for the front page now?

I'm the only remaining person who has access to the server to post anything. Obviously, without any hesitation at all I would gladly give said access back to Grey or Ron (and probably Joe), but everyone else that has ever posted is long gone.

Originally Posted by jonorsi

On a related note, what does one have to do to write for the front page? Is there any room for a young, philosophical Latin major who writes uninformed critiques on games he barely plays?

Doubtful. That guy sent me a one-off article that I thought was at least good enough to share. As far as bringing other people on to post, it probably won't happen since I've tried that several times before and it's never worked out.

[jonorsi]

I always seem to come back to here wondering if some new life has been breathed into this site, and it was quite the surprise to see a new post. I think that's how it is for most people who used to come here from the UO days until now. There's a lot of nostalgia and cred for anything attached to WTFMAN, would be a shame to let that go to waste.

[Nighthawk]

Originally Posted by jonorsi

There's a lot of nostalgia and cred for anything attached to WTFMAN, would be a shame to let that go to waste.

I agree, but the problem is that most MMOs suck nowadays. There's nothing that really grabs your attention like the old UO/AC days. I mean, I can remember distinct battles and even actual wars that lasted for weeks in those old games. Nowadays, it's just about trying to lure you onto the treadmill of boring and unoriginal activities in pursuit of item x or level y.

The glory days of MMOs have passed and it sucks to see it proven out so thoroughly.

[jonorsi]

Originally Posted by Nighthawk

I agree, but the problem is that most MMOs suck nowadays. There's nothing that really grabs your attention like the old UO/AC days. I mean, I can remember distinct battles and even actual wars that lasted for weeks in those old games. Nowadays, it's just about trying to lure you onto the treadmill of boring and unoriginal activities in pursuit of item x or level y.

The glory days of MMOs have passed and it sucks to see it proven out so thoroughly.

The more I think about it, it seems to me that games are just too overproduced. Whenever I hear about a new MMO coming out and take a look at the endless descriptions of 'features' it has, I've already lost interest. You're told about every last detail, everything you can do, all the dungeons, lands, items, et cetera. Too much information, not enough mystery. I watched my cousin play UO back in '97 or '98 for hours and thought to myself there wasn't anything he couldn't do because I knew absolutely nothing about the game. "OH MY GOD, YOU CAN MAKE A CAPE?!... AND WEAR IT?!" Pretty much everything was mind blowing. Games completely destroy any element of the unknown now-a-days under the assumption that more is better. It's funny how not knowing every last detail, item, feature of a game makes it seem like their are an infinite more than there actually are.

[[GoD]Silk]

Excellent Post. My guild has been dead for years yet we still keep our page up and old members keep donating $ to maintain the site as we have our entire UO history and funny stories and screenshots that a lot of the UO Great Lakes community uses as a timeline. Old uo pages are like shrines and I hope 20 years from now our pages are still up showing how it was back in the MMO prime time.