Since this weekend and the coming week has been/will be a bit busy, this latest post from me is something I’ve previously written, but it was sort of hidden away on a different site. I’ve reposted it here for your reading pleasure. There are basically 3 types of endgame elements most modern MMOs have available: [...]
24Aug09
Effective Beta Testing
I’ve participated in a number of alpha/beta tests for various games over the past few years, both open and closed in nature. Though I don’t think I could pick out one particular test that I found the most productive or most enjoyable, there are some elements that I can definitely identify as being conducive to [...]
20Aug09
Guild Wars 2 Trailer Released
I don’t really intend this blog to be a “gaming news” blog, nor do I expect to usually blatantly advertise a particular game like this – but I’m so completely looking forward to Guild Wars 2 (and there’s been so little information about it for such a long time) that with the release of the [...]
19Aug09
Online Co-Op? Where Is It?
Two things that seem to be becoming common in games are (1) online play, and (2) co-op, though the latter seems to show up more on console games than PC titles. What surprises me though is the apparent dearth of games which combine the two – what’s the last non-MMO-and/or-RPG game you heard of that had more [...]
18Aug09
When Will We See REAL Crafting?
Crafting in MMORPGs has always seemed lackluster to me. Even though it varies in exact nature from game to game, it can almost always be summed up as the following: Look up recipe. Get ingredients for said recipe. Press button. Receive finished product. While this process has its benefits (it’s straightforward, for starters), it doesn’t [...]
17Aug09
The UI is a Tool
I witnessed an interesting conversation tonight in the regional chat of one of the MMORPGs I currently play. Most of the conversation was centered around one particular individual and those responding to him, regarding the matter of unit frames. (For those of you not familiar with the term, “unit frames” are the portions of an [...]
Games have to be the ultimate user-driven application: they don’t actually provide any useful service beyond what the player perceives (well, unless you’re in the RMT industry). You’d think that because of this, games would have some of the most well-designed user interfaces out there – but it seems like a lot of the time, [...]
