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Sherwood Dungeon

June 24th, 2007 (Visited 13178 times) Tags:

I’ve mentioned it before, and of course Gene hangs out here on the blog from time to time. But now that Adobe has put up a case study of Sherwood Dungeon, it seems like a good chance to remind everyone that this browser-based Shockwave MMO has quietly amassed 1.3 million unique players a month, with 4000 PCU. It’s ad-supported, I believe. Oh yeah — and despite stuff like physics systems, mocapped anims, and so on, this is a small enough shop that Gene’s email is posted on the website.

As it happens, my daughter got hooked on Adventure Quest (featured there at MaidMarian.com as well) while I was away at the Virtual Goods Summit. Within minutes of my walking in the front door, she told me that she wanted to spend $20 on microtransactions for something. I told her no.

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26 Responses to “Sherwood Dungeon”

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reBang weblog wrote on November 30th, 2007 at 2:00 am:

Yeah. I know. It seems a bit dated now. But the number of 3D games currently available is notable. The developer community seems plenty dedicated. There are also some impressive multiplayer games out there using Shockwave (after amention on Raph Koster’s blog, I played with one earlier this year: Sherwood Dungeon). I’m unsure what Adobe has planned for Director. I am, however, aware they announced a new release tentatively slated for late this year (and it

wrote on June 8th, 2008 at 11:58 pm:

is working on an article for which �three browser-based game-developers are being interviewed electronically and have been asked to respond to the interviewer�s questions in essay format. One of the interviewees,�the notorious Gene Endrody, addressed the unique demographics of web-based MMOs and I would like to share a few exceptionally relevant quotes and hope that I don�t get sued by IGN for stealing (potential) content or something

External News wrote on June 25th, 2007 at 11:13 am:

[...] Sherwood Dungeon [...]

Build your own online game business - An Interview with Gene Endrody, Creator of Sherwood Dungeon and Maidmarian.com - PlayNoEvil Game Security, Game Cheating, Gold Farming and RMT News & Analysis wrote on June 25th, 2007 at 11:51 am:

[...] was a great pleasure reading an interview with Gene Endrody at Hanford Lemoore’s blog (courtesy of Raph Koster). He runs a successful business (with his wife and some modest outside help) using three servers [...]

sherwood dungeon: Web Search Results from Answers.com wrote on July 9th, 2007 at 5:42 pm:

[...] deep dungeon filled with monsters and treasure [...]

Today's Bombthrowing Comes From A Veteran Grenadier | Broken Toys wrote on July 19th, 2007 at 5:54 pm:

[...] easy to duplicate, it would have been done already. Alternatively, even though Sherwood Dungeon has 1.3 million unique players per month, it’s questionable if it fits in the same category as other persistent worlds (but, [...]

Sherwood dungeon - Web - WebCrawler wrote on October 21st, 2007 at 1:16 pm:

[...] collins… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzDTvNN7aw [Found on Google, Yahoo! Search] 9. Raph’s Website " Sherwood Dungeon Raph Koster’s personal website: MMOs, gaming, writing, art, music, books. … Gene Endrody, [...]

Reader Comments

csven said on June 24th, 2007 at 9:37 am:
Perfect timing. I just stumbled onto something relative to print-on-demand (ala Lulu) and was just tying that thought into the Scion advergame… and, of course, looking for ways these things might apply to fab-on-demand.

This will be worth taking some time to investigate.

Gracias.
Patrick said on June 24th, 2007 at 12:01 pm:
I encountered Adventure Quest about a year ago, it was my first experience with Micro-transaction based games. Learning is fun.
TheAmazin said on June 24th, 2007 at 1:30 pm:
Sherwood Dungeon oh man. I tried it for about an hour, couldn’t gain XP, couldn’t loot monsters, and NOT ONE PERSON WOULD HELP ME. I also couldn’t find any Help, FAQ, forums, or GM assistance anywhere in the game or on the site. Good idea, shitty execution.
Hanford said on June 24th, 2007 at 1:40 pm:
I’ve been a fan of Sherwood Dungeon for a long time. Gene disproves a lot of the myths associated with MMO development, and I love how he goes about it. I did an extensive interview with Gene about the specifics of making Sherwood Dungeon, and I posted it on my blog, if anyone’s interested:

How one man made an MMO: an interview with Gene Endrody
csven said on June 24th, 2007 at 3:13 pm:
Thanks for posting the link, Hanford.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on June 24th, 2007 at 3:59 pm:
Interesting that Sherwood Dungeon can stay afloat on advertising alone.
Does that mean that one get paid for views, not only click-throughs? I assume that few game-players actually will click if the game is exciting?

(I don’t know much about Internet-advertising
Gene Endrody said on June 24th, 2007 at 5:30 pm:
TheAmazin, I’m a bit of at a loss on your comments. The start page includes instructions. These instructions are duplicated in a link on the login page of the game. The Castle Guard (the first NPC you see in the game by the bridge) gives a full FAQ with more instructions. Every monster you kill or quest completed gives XP. Monsters drop items when they are defeated on all the islands and the dungeon is full of chests with items in them. If anything, it’s way too easy to get loot and advance in XP Levels in the game. You’re right, I don’t have a forum. That’s because the company is just my wife and I and there are some realities involved when running an operation this small. I’ve been relying on numerous forums set up by guilds and players. All in due time.

By the way, I’ve actually never met anyone from Adventure Quest, although what they do is pretty cool. They advertise through networks that we also work with (Google, CPM Star) so we’ve accidently fallen into a symbiotic relationship.
Andrew Wooldridge said on June 24th, 2007 at 9:55 pm:
If she enjoys AdventureQuest you might also look at Runescape, but the game that has finally got me to open my wallet was DragonFable – from the same folk who do AdventureQuest…
TheAmazin said on June 25th, 2007 at 9:26 am:
Gene-
I read the instructions, I talked to the guard. I’ll break it down. I tried killing monsters in the very first starting area (level 0?), and couldn’t get any loot or xp after I killed them. So I picked up the first quest from Maid Marian outside the dungeon, to kill 4 poison widows. I went into the dungeon, killed about a dozen poison widows. Except my quest log said I still had 4 remaining. There was no loot on any of them, and they didn’t “die”, their name/health bar just disappeared and they would just stand there. I reloaded the browser/game several times, tried different names and character models. I could loot the chests in the dungeon, no monsters. I just got exasperated when I couldn’t find anything OTHER than the basic, basic instructions, like a troubleshooting FAQ or forums or tech support or anything.

I guess it is kind of unfair to blame the game. What really irritated me was that NOBODY would help me even a little bit. Not one person would even respond to me.
Allen Sligar said on June 25th, 2007 at 9:38 am:
Awesome stats for Sherwood. Maid Marion makes some addicting online browser based stuff, glad they got some attention from Adobe
Gene Endrody said on June 25th, 2007 at 4:19 pm:
I’ll let you in on what the devil I was thinking with the creation of Sherwood Dungeon. It was a hobby that turned into a business only after it passed my day job in terms of paying the rent. This was, however, founded on a belief that free, thinly monetized web based virtual worlds and MMOs will eventually become the rule rather than the exception. Right now web based play is perceived as a quirky niche in the industry, but as the capacity of the web grows to deliver more immersive experiences, the click and play concept seems too appealing not to get legs. I knew I didn’t want to do work for hire and most small game developers in other channels were doing exactly that. Web games offered the potential to retain IP and by leveraging their viral nature I could effectively create a distribution channel out of thin air. An MMO hadn’t been done with Shockwave before, at least not in 3D, (there’s Habbo) so I really didn’t have any expectations when I started and made many mistakes. That’s why I keep calling it an experiment. I’m the first to admit that Sherwood has a ways to go; unfulfilled potential that will hopefully come over time.

“Gene disproves a lot of the myths associated with MMO development.” That’s a little strong. You should see how many “myths” I proved were right – the hard way.
Nekro-Draco said on June 25th, 2007 at 4:47 pm:
I really have to say, Sherwood Dungeon is vastly great, Like Gene said, It’s really easy to get Experience points, which makes it easy to level up, and Poon people in the court yard. Just everything is fun about that game, the PvP (Player Vs Player) System, the way the Level cap is INFINITE, and particulery the way our maste—-I mean Gene, takes everything from players into consideration, if you read the Dev Diaries, you will see he takes suggestion.

Oh, Mr. Amazin…I understand who you feel about the way you couldnt do alot of things, sure, Some players either ignore other people who think they are noobs, they just judge people on which weapon they have and if they have a sheild and if they get killed easily in PvP, now some people are like that, and I will say that I have encountered alot of people like that on Sherwood, but, I have also talked with very freindly players, infact when I started off, some high level helped me alot, and helped me get on my way and become “Teh 1337 pooner” lol.

And of course all your others game are good to, Gene, Especially Tank ball, now I prefer the original better, just because when you ramp on a rock a certain way you go 10 miles high…and also you wont have to worry about some guy sneaking up on you and shoving some Star power ups down yer pants. I do wonder though about the glitches, for example…sometimes on moon base, and the other games, the server will just re-serve or re-connect itself into a different chat room. I’ve also noticed that in the original Tank ball that one time I couldnt even connect to the Multi-player server.

As for AQ (Adventure Quest) I’ve been playing that game for a long time, probably about since it first started with “LORE ALPHA” The first version that was, kinda scares me, LOL.

It’d be fun to see you, Gene, Be a partner with Artix Enteratinment, or atleast have an add of yours on The Adventure Quest site, or AE’s newer game Dragonfable. Though I don’t think 2-D flash and 3-D Shockwave goes together…it’d result in a Shockwave,heh.

~Your Daily geek who writes long Reviews and what not, and trys not to be a suck up around Gene, (I find it hard though) Nekro-Draco.
guyal said on June 25th, 2007 at 6:17 pm:
Seeing as how <chasm type=”sar”>positive</chasm> Raph was about virtual goods at VGSummit on Friday, I was absolutely shocked to see:

“Within minutes of my walking in the front door, she told me that she wanted to spend $20 on microtransactions for something. I told her no.”
Raph said on June 25th, 2007 at 6:22 pm:

Guyal, if you recall, I ended by listing a whole bunch of pitfalls with virtual goods, too. But yeah, I did definitely see the irony!
guyal said on June 26th, 2007 at 12:23 am:
I got the impression you’d done some homework on virtual goods, particularly with the mini-lecture on choice of forum clauses and adhesion contracts. And it would have been fair to the assembled and starry-eyed (myself included) horde to have a panel consisting of IP lawyers and academics and a VC or two on the topic of “Which one of businesses attending today is most likely to have a full row of teeth knocked out by an IP class action?” (my answer – the one that was conspicuously absent – Linden).

The standard defense is the EULA, but we’ll dealing with a lot of first impression issues for the judiciary, so we probably shouldn’t consider VG EULAs to be a done deal. The less precedent there is, the more the judges need to figure it out on their own, which means they’re not on average automatically going to say, “This corporation’s legal team’s EULA is going to rule.”

But the day (and it was generally a fine one at that IMHO) was crafted more as a coming out part for VG, so gadflying was not in the spotlight.
JuJutsu said on June 26th, 2007 at 6:07 am:
After reading TheAmazin’s first set of comments I tried out Sherwood for the first time yesterday. I didn’t have any problems with instructions or with talking to other players. Pretty much everyone I ran into was also a n00b though…. /shrug.
TheAmazin said on June 26th, 2007 at 8:20 am:
Yeah I tried again, my character still seems to be bugged. Can’t loot, can’t gain xp. Not sure what the problem is, I tried it for about 5 more minutes and I think I’m giving up.
Nekro-Draco said on June 27th, 2007 at 5:07 pm:
just go to the dungeon and after every monster you kill click on the helmet Icon to see how much XP ya have.
Nekro-Dragon said on July 10th, 2007 at 11:04 am:
Well gosh, I’d like to look at your file, there is an operation to trade files and what not, But…I myself kinda forget, plus it’s not wise to say the intructions, could be used to cheat.

Oh, and Gene, you’ll want to take care of the bug where you get banned at lvl 45 and come back at lvl 8500, that happend to a frend of mine.
Nekro-Dragon said on July 10th, 2007 at 11:07 am:
ooohhhh, and Make user accounts for love of some god of Sherwood Make user accounts, and have people insert their IP in the account process so the Servers will reconize it and keep the levels.

I dun like re-starting after every comp crash. And I forget what the file name if of my Sherwood thing now.

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