Randomness in games part II

Guess what: random numbers on computers aren't random. They are generated by algorithms and math tells us that formulas are not random. Proper random number generators also take CPU time - which is negligible unless you need thousands of random numbers per second - as it is in most online games (with combat drawing most random numbers).

The problem with programming is that lazy ones simply use the supplied rand() function supplied by their compiler. But compiler writers rarely spend a lot of time creating great random number generators.

What does random mean anyway. From our viewpoint it means that I get various results for a given action. I read feedback by the game and see some randomness to create variances in the game.

Imagine I would lose due to random numbers 3 times in a row. "That sucks" is the first reaction. But can it be? Sure it can, a random number generator theoretically could create numbers which lets you lose 10 times in a row. Not great, and bad for the game - so we try to prevent it.

Yes, I will now explain how we can make sure this doesn't happen, basically making random less random.
We need to make sure that there is no win or loss streak in the numbers, so we need to distribute them evenly. We also need to make sure that its random, not sorted.

We simply take a table (let's say 10.000 entries) and we fill the table with numbers from 0-99, sequentially until the table is full. Now we start to randomly exchange numbers until the table is totally jumbled and "random". Still streaks can appear so we analyze the table for those and remove them, we make sure there is a rough even distribution of random numbers for every sample we take.

Sounds confusing? Check these links out for some table references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Random_Digits_with_100,000_Normal_Deviates
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1418.html

So these tables guarantee that I get true random numbers but no winning streaks or losing streaks - AND they are much faster for the game as I simply take one number after the other.
AND they can be persistent as I simply save the index (the current random number I took) for each player - so the player doesn't see a repetitive behavior in the game.
So now you know how World of Warcraft generates their randomness. As I knew how they work I could even play with their randomness and increase the likelihood of epic drops. See my 7 year old blog entry which explains this:
http://teut.blogspot.de/2006/11/my-t1-item-xyz-doesnt-drop.html

Important: Never use these tables for gambling sites like Poker, otherwise some bright MIT students will forecast your 'random' numbers and loot your savings! (it really happened to Poker sites years ago).

So now you know how to generate the numbers - but how do we use randomness? If a game is truly random its actually very boring as random feedback doesn't create a good game.

But this is part of on of my next blog entries - coming soon.

Randomness in games

Random numbers play a large role in any computer game. They are key to many game mechanics to introduce variety in feedback.

Some games however take it too far and randomize too much. If you play many rogue likes then you are used to this randomness of loot and dungeon layouts: these games randomize the dungeon floors and all loot.

The dungeon layout works in this case as its part of the global feedback: you enter a dungeon which leads to hell and if you die you have to start from scratch. Would the dungeon be identical every time you start over then you would be bored real quick. To prevent this the dungeon layout is random.

This doesn't work for all games however. People love to talk about exploration and their findings. So in World of Warcraft there are hundreds if not thousands of sites listing the maps and loot tables of the dungeons.

Lesson: if multiple of these sites exist then there is a demand. If there is a demand then the overall mechanic works nicely.

Note: you won't find any of these sites about Diablo with the exception of items.

But regarding items in Diablo here is the thing: if you look for epic items it doesn't matter which boss monsters you kill. The drip chance is random, the item in question is random. So you simply farm any monsters you find and sell your stuff in the auction house - the rewarding gold you spend on items - guess where - in the auction house. Basically the auction house becomes an item shop supplied by random drops of players.

This undermines the exploration, the reward to have killed a specific monster and finally your favorite epic drops. Worse: if the player realizes that all drops are random then the content you supply doesn't matter anymore - as items can be found anywhere. You could theoretically limit your game to one zone and boss - of course I over simplify.

Generally randomness should not give only random rewards. Randomness should introduce variety to feedback, not generate random feedback.

Next up: how to use random generators effectively in games.

What bothers me in most computer games

Yesterday I answered an interview of the magazine Spiegel about Eve Online and one of the questions was "What do find so fascinating about Eve?"

When I answered I realized what the single thing is what bothers me on most games to date: they tell me what to do and how to do it. The freedom is so limited that you feel like a game on rails. Worst invention of the industry in this regard: QTE. Yes I mean you Call of Duty.

The one single player game I played recently for longer was Dishonored. I could pick up my mission when I wanted, still could roam around my base afterwards and went to the boat which dropped me in the mission area. Even there I could approach my goal as I wanted, there was no timer, path or QTE telling me how to do it. I love that game.

In MMO's its similar: World of Warcraft has a path of success. You level up, then you do your attunement quests (old times), then you did 5 man heroics until you get bored and finally you raid and progress until you beat the end boss of the current expansion and have the ultimate gear ... until the next expansion made it worthless. What a waste of time? What a way to be masochistic?

In Eve Online you are a pilot of a space ship. So there. Thats it. What do you do? Well what do you WANT to do? Simply do it. Pirate? Diplomat? Spy? Trader? Logistics? Flying missions? Troll? Scammer? Being part of large scale war? Explore the universe for alien artifacts?

And here is the problem why those "sandbox" games aren't as big as World of Warcraft: in order to enjoy the scope for the game you have to know what you want, you need to motivate yourself. And exactly here most players fail: they want to be entertained but not work for it. They are lazy.

And game developers are lazy too. Because producing a game on rails is easier than creating a sandbox. Otherwise we would see more of them as they are very successful even as single player games.

Mobile is not worth it (NOT!)

I will remind Bobby about this in 5 years when he regets this:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-05-09-activisions-kotick-brushes-aside-the-mobile-market

Cheers

WoW dies (NOT!)

Here, 8.3 million subscribers only. Wtf, its dead Jim!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418730,00.asp

No its not. Even with 5m, heck even with 2m subscribers its an awesome business case. And even in 5 years, no 10 years we still can play WoW. Wanna bet?


Simply because until today no successful MMO has been shut down. You still can play Ultima Online or even Tibia if you want, both like 15 years old?

WoW dies! Really! Help!

Ok. I lied. WoW is not dead. Recent reports from Activision financial states subs are down to 9 million, that was the number WoW reached in 2007.

Read again.

2007.

That was 5 years ago.

So why should WoW suddenly die. They got more subs than any other subscription competitors combined. They lost more subscribers than most competitors ever had lifetimes. And its normal. Pre expansion WoW always declines a bit. Wait until Pandas invade WoW and you see them all back "checking out the Kung Fu Pandas".

WoW is now old but still rocking. I don't see WoW vanishing for the next 5 years minimum. Reason is simple: most successful MMO's are still around. Even Ultima Online is still there and rocking on its scale. So don#t worry, WoW is a stable environment where you can invest your time.

Even if Guildwars2 had to stop digital sales as their servers became too full. Threatening WoW takes much more than a good game these days.

Busy playing Guildwars 2

I am busy playing this wonderful Guildwars 2. Its great, it is one of the most beautiful worlds I have the honor to explore. For experienced online MMO players I recomend reading this:

http://www.destructoid.com/your-guide-to-guild-wars-2-232724.phtml

as it explains the differences between your usual copy&paste WoW clone and GW2. I might post more screens soon, but I usually spam my facebook friends with them.

So be patient with me until I update my blog - when I have time between Guildwars and Work.

"World of Warcraft is officially Casual!"

I am quoting the headline from a friend of mine who droppt this in a chat. And he is right. Considering that you can level from 70 to 80 in days very easily plus you can enter instances/dungeons in normal mode 5 levels before the level requirements and having no difficulties helps the casual player reaching goals he would never be able to earlier.

At level 80 random groups for Naxxramas, the 10 man instance, were running Naxx successfully days after the expansion has been released. Even for the heroic version of Naxx, the first 25 raid you might enter, are being run with success.

Now 2 german players solo'ed Loatheb, a boss in Naxx, in heroic mode! Thats how easy it has become.

The elite guilds hate it, casual players love it as the difficulty is ok for them. Two things start to happen: the elite guilds miss the challenge and casuals are raiding like the pro's have been before. Fun fun fun, but Blizzard has a problem. The pro guilds were the heros of WoW and casuals saw them as their role model. Of course they complained that they never can raid like they do, but still they liked that there is somethign after their level cap to reach, unlikely, but it is there.

Now everyone can raid and the feeling "there is somethign beyond" is missing. That might lead to the problem that pro guilds stop playing or waiting for the next expansion as there isn't an alternative for raiding outside WoW right now (neither WoW nor Lord of the Rings do it "right"). My personal opinion is that Blizzard needs to offer an elite content patch real soon otherwise they are going to loose the role models of the masses.

Check this: the majority of the playerbase never saw the inside of Sratholme before Burning Crusade came out, less than 5% of the players at that time never saw Naxx from the inside. Less than 5% of the playerbase before Wrath of the Lich king saw sunwell from the inside.

Yes, its the right move Blizzard to make things more casual and more fun for everyone, but do not forget what principle (among others) made WoW big: Elite content for the core players.

How Game Interface Comforts can destroy MMO's

Community is about communication, that’s obvious right? Richard Bartle in his book "Designing Online Worlds" clearly defines the stages of communities and one of them stands out: community of interest. The members share a common interest and hook up together.

In a MMO it is important that players get connected real soon as they meet people and start friendships. This will be the major reason why they stick to the game later on. If you fail designing your game to support this people will leave with less resistance compared to players who already met friends.

Now lets see what starting players communicate most: questions either about the game mechanics or the game content. The first is quickly resolved when they learned the game and its functions, the second however never stops unless they played through the game's content.

Players ask where a mob is, how a quest is being solved or simply if people want to help them for particular content. Other players will gladly help or players with the same quests team up as they share the same interest. And quickly bonds are forged and friends are met. To design your game to enhance meeting people is key to build up a strong bonded community so people won't leave the game behind easily.

Now game designers think in game mechanics, not in community mechanics. That’s the first mistake they do and unfortunately the negative feedback is coming very late to correct it.

Wrong game mechanics get immediate feedback and correction is mostly easy. Community building mistakes are much harder to read and to analyze.

 

Lets look at an example. Warhammer Online (WAR) has the tome of knowledge and an intelligent map. Both will tell you where to go for each quest and what to do exactly. In fact the map marks the areas of quests you accepted and also tells you which quest to finish in that region. That eliminates most of the community connecting questions people will ask. That is the number one reason why the chat is so silent in WAR besides the chat interface design.

The consequence: people will not find online friends as easily as in other games. In other words the user interface comforts is limiting the community growth of the game.

Note that World of Warcraft does not support any kind of that feature but there are add ons who do that. But their use is entirely optional and you need to install an Add On to make it work, a major obstacle for starting players. As soon as those players have advanced knowledge they are fit to use it, but at that point they met enough people online to have connected and stay.

So listen designers: carefully consider your game design what it does to community growth and stickiness, not only in term of game mechanics.

Monopolism: Little Changes - Great Effect

Sometimes little changes in WoW go unnoticed until they hit the crowds. There is no uproar or even bad comments about this small little change: disenchanting items of a certain level now need a certain skill level to do so. So you need skill 225 to disenchant epics.

Whats the deal? First many players had disenchant twinks. They sent all their greens and blues they don't need and aren't soulbound to him to be disenchanted, selling the essences. You only need skill one to do so, in fact you can skill all the way up to 75 by simply disenchanting stuff.

Many power gamers with tons of epic armor sets in their bank are sometimes reskilling an easy to learn skill like herbalism or mining for disenchanting. They clean up their bank, sell the nexus or essences, and reskill to the original. Expensive? Worth it.

Now thats history with the new patch coming in.

What does it mean for gameplay: you need a good enchanter with you on raids, otherwise you loose considerable money for BOP items you don't need. For big raids never a problem, but for random raids? You trust ONE enchanter to keep all the essences and distribute them afterwards? Not me. I can see some bad stories coming up here.

The major point however is this one: the enchanter now controls a monopole. Let me explain: Blacksmiths need ore. So they skill mining and supply themselves, or can buy the supplies from another miner or the auction house, easy.

An Alchemist need herbalism to find the herbs he needs for potions, or someone else does it.

What about Enchanters. They have both in ONE skill. They are the ONLY ones who can make their raw material with the same skill they do the echantments.

This means basically that essences will get VERY expensive as they are the only ones to create them, and control who gets them.

The price will skyrocket. Most essences in the auction house are from disenchant twinks or random raids who sell their essences from their runs. This will be reduced considerably as not all random runs have Enchanters with them. In fact not very many do enchantment anymore as the skill doesn't earn enough money as herbalism or alchemy does. So essences will get rare, prices will skyrocket.

The current price drop in nexus crystals for example is temporary. Its fueled by the Burning Crusade expansion as new enchants are intoduced who no longer need nexus crystals. But see this: when those are being used and supply are short level 60's will need nexus again, and prices will stablize, but at a much higher price than before.

All this could be prevented or made "fair". Let the Enchanter disenchant in the trade window. Of course BLizard never implemented this as it will be abused to its extreme. Thats the primary reason Blizard doesn't allow it. Let me give Blizard a suggestion, free, I won't charge for it :)

Let enchanters create power orbs which have x charges. They can sell those to other players. Orbs have the power to disenchant one item per charge. Orbs can be made with various levels for the item levels in question.

Simple. Effectice, prevents the abuse Blizard fears. But destroys the market value of enchanters.

I made my choice. I am skilling my enchanter now. I want to be part of the monopole. Lets make money with the system ^^

My T1 Item XYZ doesn't drop!

(replace XYZ with any item you are waiting for)

Sereral MC or BWL runs moan about drop rates of certain items. Many classes wait for their T2 legs to drop at Ragnaros or the Priests for their epic quests, or the hunters for theirs. It depends on raid and is totally different for each which items or set items they are waiting for.

Common in these raids are the fixed raidleaders and loot masters, ie. they are usually the same person.

I will leave theory behind this on the side because it would be too technical and boring, but fact is that changing the raidleader and lootmaster BEFORE ANYONE enters the instance will change the loot composition. It has been tested and proven by some guilds. You can't predict loot this way, thats not possible, but you can increase the random factor.

So if you are in one of those raids where certain items never drop simply do this:
Load the person you want to be the loot list initiator (lets call him LLi) first, give him lead and he should give himself the loot master. Give the raidleader an (a) to allow him loading the rest of the raid.

Stay with the loot master until the first boss kill. After that he can give back the lead and loot master to the real raidleader.

Change this person as often as possible. Remember which person seems to drop the best loots and retest. Let him be that LLi for three runs and see if thats consistent.

You don't believe this? Let me give you some examples.

We only have seen the hunter epic quest item (the leaf) in Major Domus chest for a long time. Priests were pretty demoralized by this. So we changed the LLi and the priest epic quest got back to its normal 50/50 chance and all our priests now got their nice epic staff now.

The hunters never ever saw their T1 helmet drop, only ONCE in over 20 MC runs. We changed to another LLi and we got lucky: he pulled out the hunter T1 helmet from Garr. Everytime this one person is the LLi we get a high chance for hunter items (and some other classes, but the rareness of the hunter items was obvious).

We have one mage as LLi. Everytime he is raidlead and loot master we get a much higher percentage on random T1 drops than any run before. We usually found none, one or two. When he is the LLi we find 5-8 on every run. Our guild bank is pretty rich now because it allows us to sell those excess items as most classes now got their non bound T1 items full.

Before you dish this article as "can't be true" please try it yourself. As I said its IMPORTANT that the LLi is loaded first and enters, if possible, the instance first. If you are interested in details why this is happening let me know and I can post an article about the theory behind this.

Burning Crusade - Bad Design?

As mentioned earlier I play Burning Crusade (BC), the expansion of World of Warcraft, since alpha. I play it with mixed feelings, not only because I have to do it all over again when it launches (all my data will be erased), but because I feel it has design flaws.

An expansion should expand the universe it needs to tie into the existing world. It needs to expand on concepts which where successful in the first one. Currently when I play BC I have the feeling of playing 2 games in one, separated, not even joined.

It starts with the fact that you have to enter BC through a Dark Portal. You are being teleported to it. It continues on the world map: while the two contents where visible on the map and a click apart the new one appears as a separate entitiy outside of the old continents.

And my feeling of separation continues with the details. Let me give one example. If you need resources for your skill (enchanting as an example) you need resources found by disenchanting stuff of the level of the enchantment. No biggy here. In BC you do the same, but if you skill over 300 the "old" reagents you needed are forgotten. You expect you might use the high reagents like nexus crystals for at least some enchantments, but you don't. Its like a cut. Over the skill of 300 you need new ones ONLY found in BC.

What about the guilds who saved their valuable nexus for their enchantments they desparately need to beat the instances? They are now placed like in the middle of nowhere. The effects are already being felt in the old world: nexus prices dropped from like 25g+ down to 15g in the past 2 weeks. They won't be needed anymore as the new enchants are of course better.

Lets take a look at mining. You mine ore and smelt them to metal bars. Many skills need those rare metals to build fantastic weapons and armor. So I expected that the most sought after bars "Elementium bar" will be used for some high end items in BC.

But no. You don't need them at all. You only need rare metals found - you guessed it - in BC exclusively. In case you don't know: to smelt elementium bars you have to gather 10 arkane crystals (another item whic BC doesn't need at all) and smelt the elementium ore -which you can only find as an epic drop inside the Black Wing Lair. On top of that you only learn to smelt elementium by mind controlling a gnome inside BWL. My raid guild collected a lot of these to prepare to build the super powerful weapons.

The whole design of the dependencies was awesome in WoW. If you wear such a sword of power you are a hero. You worked for it, a raid guild worked very hard for it.

When BC comes the awesome weapon becomes a worthless toothpick. Your elementium ore becomes worthless, already dropping in price form 500g down to 120g, and no one wants it.

Why did Blizzard do this? Why at least could some rare materials not being used for BC items? Elementium Ore/Bars, nexus and arcane crystals, all worthless soon? The wealth we worked for so hard is now beaten to death by BC. Is that fair? No it isn't.

Of course there are exceptions, and VERY bad ones too. Dreamfoil is the most expensive herb you can find. It is needed by raid guilds for all sorts of potions they need to beat MC, BWL, AQ40 and Naxx. Replacing it by a new one would make sense right?

No, they did break their rule. Some of the high end potions need dreamfoil still, like the Super Healing Potion. Why did they do this just to dreamfoil and not to the other materials I mentioned?

Ask the designers. I don't know, but somehow they want to create a two class community: the ones with BC and the ones without. The separation will be so intense that people might be forced to buy BC just because otherwise WoW wouldn't be a complete game.

From experience of other expansions of MMOG's (like the original Everquest) Blizzard doesn't need to worry about selling the expansion to their customer base: over 80% will buy it anyway, thats the number each MMOG showed when launching expansions. Hell, there is Guildwars, a game only based around making money with expansions as they don't even charge a monthly fee.

What does this mean for us? Throw out your valuable stuff, sell now. Empty your raid guild bank and sell that crap, it will be worthless 3 month after BC shipped. Who needs a +15 resist enchant (needing 2-3 nexus crystals) anyways if there is a better one someone from BC can do to your item?

Of course there might be another behaviour coming in: as the high end material becomes cheap more players can actually afford those enchants or weapons, armor whatever. We will see.

I personally don't like the separation they put into those new skills. In case you want to check your skill and what material it needs check http://www.thottbot.com, click beta and look up your trade skill on the left. Not all recipes has been found yet, but the glimpse you get will tell you what items will loose value, and which don't.

I wished Blizzard would have tied in everything we worked for so hard into BC in a much better way. Why not leaving Elementium (as an example) in there? For a level 70 guild its easy to beat BWL, so farming it there would be easy and fun. My bet is that BWL will be an empty haunted place soon. Bliz can turn off the BWL servers and no one would notice.

Now they simply cut the world in half. Forget what you needed in WoW, you need all new stuff and we will live in the new Outlands for a long time, as only there you will find what you need to enchant, tailor, cook or whatever you do while waiting for the PvP to tick in.

Jewelcrafting - Moneymaker for everyone?

I am in the beta. I admit it. I enjoy discovering new things although I have to repeat that experience again when BC officially ships.

Jewelcrafting is the big hype on the beta servers as everyone wants to try out the new ability. I won't reskill simply because enough of my raid will do so and can provide me with the wonderful things Jewelcrafting is going to do for us. Jewelcrafters will make good money offering their services.

One misunderstanding which doesn't quite have been cleared: you can socked your items YOURSELF as long as you have access to the jewels. Resocket them will destroy the jewel and you need a new one. In the beta there is a NPC which sells basic jewels but my guess is that he will disappear for the BC launch. He is there simply to test out the socketable items.

As jewelcrafters need a lot of basic resources the prices of these items will skyrocket for a while. Imagine: 12.000 accounts average per server will create demand for at least 1000 jewelcrafters out there. So if you need 100+ copper bars to skill the first few points thats 100.000 bars right there per server. They need a lot more basic resources to skill even further. Funny things like gems and perls, even Troll flasks will be needed.

I am buying my auction house empty of those things if the price is right and stockpile them. I am not ashamed that I will make considerable money with my knowledge I gained through participation in the beta. You can do so as well. Simply browse the recipes posted on the many sites like http://thottbot.com or http://bcspy.bc.funpic.de. Browsing http://wowinsider.com also helps.

So login and buy those things even if you consider NOT skilling jewelcrafting.

Metal bars will be in hot demand for a long time. Not only for jewelcrafting. Armor Smiths or Weaponsmiths can create items now which are far superior to the old ones. And they need tons of stuff for those. Good news for miners.

In other words: its good to read all those sites with news about the beta to anticipate the demands of the new recipes and make business with them. All perfectly legel to finance your new flying mount you are going to need at level 70.

Gaming Theory

or why computer games like we know them die

Gaming theory is old, pretty old. Older than Pong. It discusses reasons why we play, and how we play. What use do games have for us anyways? If you go back in time games where educational to teach kids the tools for survival in the real world.

If you watch small cats play they actually train fighting for the life when they have grown up. The same gameplay existed for human kind when we still lived in caves or huts.
Of course games evolved since then, but the basic principle never changed: two or more humans play with or against each other under certain rules.
Since humankind existed those rules never changed ... until recently (counting the timespawn I call it recently): the computer games arrived.

Lets talk about pong: two players sat together, threw in a quarter (0.25 Dollars for you foreigners) and played against each other in front of one machine. That machine had one screen and two sticks to steer a paddle in order to hit the ball into the other players area. This game didn't violate the game theory rules.

It changed when games came along where you could play alone. Space Invaders for example let you shoot aliens out of the sky and you alone sat in front of the machine and had fun ... sort of.
They became big, very big. Some arcade machines tried to squeeze 4 or more people in front of one screen (remember Gauntlet?) with good success. Larger arcades later could network four to eight of those machines together and fit up to 16 people into one game.

The computer games however never could do this. It has only one keyboard and one mouse if you forget the "old" times where you could connect 2 joysticks on one PC. They became never popular however.

So the PC became big in single player games. For years. Forgotten was the fun how much more a human being can add to a game. Until ... the internet arrived.

The internet connected each PC of the world to one huge network. Multiplayer games appeared and became popular. First and foremost shooters (so called FPS, for First Person Shooter) like Counterstrike, Doom, Quake and the recent Battlefield series.
But shooters usually are the first genre to go into new territories as they are the most simple game mechanic you can put into a game (destroy everything).

Then MMOG's arrived with Ultima Online (see www.owo.com) being one of the first successful ones. But was it the first? Actually no. But thats a point for a later topic. Ultima online had over 250.000 people playing at its peak of success.
Everquest came and doubled the number, being the first (western) MMOG to beat the 500.000 mark of active players. Lineage from Korea beat it hands down with over 2 Million online players. Two million, thats 2.000.000. Thats nothing compared to the success of World of Warcraft (or WoW): over 7 (seven!) million people playing it.

But is it the largest MMOG of the world? No. Financially yes, maybe, but let me tell you: in China there is a MMOG with 25 million subscribers. Woah. Thats more than the population of small countries. But hey, it only runs on mobile phones. No joke, and it costs only $1 per month. Still it boasts the largest number of subscribers.

Will this be the end of success? The CEO of Blizzard thinks so, he said the market is saturated, no room for more MMOG's. Boy how wrong he will be. In 5 years time we will have the first MMOG to beat the 50 million mark. I bet. And it wont be the only one. We are still in the stone age to discover what to do right and wrong with MMOG's. There will be far more exciting possibilities in the future what we can do in those virtual worlds.

What does MMOG mean for the game theory? Well the old style of games is back. Play with and against each other. The ultimate form of games what we do since the stone age.
If you consider the length of time where games came from the single player games are just a blimp on the time line. And they will stay a blimb, nothing more. In fact from my point of view (and many others in the industry) single player games like we know them will be a niche market in five to ten years.

Why? Well first and foremost all electronic devices in 10 years time will be online. Your PC is already, otherwise you can't read this. Your mobile phone certainly is. Your TV will be soon, your next gen Video Game will be (Xbox 360, Wii, PS3). In 10 years all devices will be online as soon as you turn them on.

So when games appear they can by default connect to a huge community out there ... and connect you. It is the deep game "lust" we have when playing with humans.
IF you play World of Warcraft you will see that the players actually are the reason you continue playing, not necessarily the game itself. Thats why so many very old MMOG's are still alive. With old graphics, game content everyone knows and old game mechanics those games still survive, some with 200.000 players online. They survive because of the human beings playing in those worlds.

It is key to understand that we want to play with people. Its so much more than a computer with Artificial Intelligence can give. In fact its so much more than people who play online games for a longer time stop playing offline games. Very rarely they buy a high end hit game and play it ... for a couple of hours until they miss the human factor and go back online.
Good bye single player games. We grew up with you, we will miss you, but we will have so much more in the future.

Burning Crusade BETA

Heute kam die email das ich in die Beta kann. Und ich darf drüber schreiben, da kein NDA mehr notwendig ist. Da die Beta startet zerschlägt dies die Gerüchte das BC gar nicht mehr kommt dieses Jahr - ergo ist der 27. November wahrscheinlicher geworden.

Ich werde vor allem über Jäger schreiben und meine Erfahrungen mit den neuen Talenten. Falls Ihr spezifische Fragen habt einfach kommentieren und ich suche nach Antworten :)

2 GB download ist recht heftig, vor allem muss man WoW installiert haben um das zum Laufen zu bringen. Nur habe ich mein Rechner gewechselt und einfach das WoW Verzeichnis rüberkopiert. Also das ist schlecht wenn das so bleibt in der Endversion, da wohl viele - statt sich den Patch Marathon anzutun - die WoW Version einfach archiviert haben.

Man kann zwar das Original installieren, und dann die gepatchte drüber kopieren - das geht auch, aber eine Lösung stellt das wohl nicht dar für die Kunden.

Mehr zur Beta in Kürze.

The Lost Music of WoW

Many players who start WoW turn off the music at some point. The reasons are manyfold. The music disturbs the audio feedback you need for failed spells, parry etc. and if you quest in one area for a long time the music simply gets repetitive.

However even when you reach level 60 you never turn it back on ... and miss a lot of good music and athmosphere. I turned it back on and visited areas where I have been without music and to my astonishment it is pretty good. In fact when I fly the music actually makes sightseeing even more exciting as it changes for every area I fly over. I pretty much prefer the music over the orc or horde areas which are pretty different from the tunes you hear when flying over alliance territories.

The music also adapts to combat and instances. Fighting a Boss is thrilling with the added tunes, believe me.

Try it out and let me know what you think of the lost art of WoW music.

Berühmt sein in WoW

Irgendwie musss man schon was Besonderes oder Verrücktes machen um berühmt zu werden in WoW. Hauptsächlich passiert das durch das Internet. Irgendwer postet was auf seine Webseite oder sogar in YouTube und bahm, alle wissen davon. Beispiele gibts ja genug wie den Imbadin, ein Paladin der soviel Damage raushaut das man es ihm bis heute nicht glaubt.

Heute stolperte ich über jemand neues. Dem war WoW langweilig und er brauchte eine Herausforderung. Seine Idee: Nackt spielen. Nicht wirklich, also im Spiel meine ich: Ohne Rüstung. Wie weit er kam? Er ist level 60 geworden .... aber lest selbst (englisch): http://ntproject.blogspot.com/