Based on this CNet article on power-levelling services, I’d say there may be more full-time power-leveller employees in the world than there are MMO developer employees. Fascinating.
We also now know that the average market value of a WoW level is $8, and that an hour of WoW play is worth less than 75 cents. (note, levels for Burning Crusade are worth $24 right now, and an hour of play is worth only 62 cents).
SOE has released a whitepaper covering how the Station Exchange service has gone. Lots and lots of good detailed info in here. Edit: there’s an interview and summary on Gamasutra, along with a link to the full whitepaper in .doc format.
But those are just the fun stats. The really interesting stuff is in the analysis.
Read More “SOE whitepaper on Station Exchange”
This is a blast from the past: a 1998 thread on MUD-Dev that I clicked to randomly that is ostensibly about room descriptions, but goes on to discuss simulation versus stagecraft, worlds that impose worldviews as opposed to games which let the player decide how to see things, whether players come to the world understanding the need for empathy for other players, and a whole hsot of other topics. Many of the proposed technical approaches make most of today’s MMORPGs look simplistic (check out the design for berserking that’s buried in there…). Lots to mine here for inspiration, and a clear sign that our ideas vastly outstripped our ability to implement.
There’s also some truly hilarious analysis of the current state of the market (“Diablo’s mostly done now…” “Wonder how EverQuest will do?” and so on)…
OK, now I need to actually do work instead of reading old threads. 🙂
Int posted in the comment threads here mentioning that he has imported the entire MUD-Dev archive into a PHPBB forum. This means that now you can read the discussion in threaded format, sorted by date. This is awesome! Thanks for your contribution to the community, Int! It’s available at http://muddev.wishes.net.
Here’s my speaking schedule at GDC:
Descriptions:
