While technically interesting, I found these portions to be less useful. Where I disagree with Chris is the overall approach to building interactive storytelling. Given experiences with simulation and user creation, it seems to me that you might be more able to create "interactive storytelling" by expanding something like Grand Theft Auto to allow a wider array of choices. Alternately, users could be recruited (a la The Diamond Age) to create a truly interactive experience without having to build believable AIs. I also think that place and display is an important component and that a truly interactive story would be better in a 3D environment that as text. However, I hope that Chris continues to push the boundaries of interactive storytelling. Much like the relationship between MUDs and modern online games, text-based interactive stories can explore design spaces and conduct experiments that aren't happening in mainstream games, which is very good for all games!

So the "game mechanics" question above correlates highly (r = .46) with the aggregate of these statements: In other words, people who enjoy learning about the game mechanics are largely also your typical Achievers. So the real question seems to be whether Explorers are really a sort of Achievers. Then the question is whether current MMORPGs have driven away all the real Explorers, or whether game designs always embed exploration within the context of achievement and make it difficult to tease these two motivations apart. Or is it the case that all Achievers are inherently Explorers. After all, no one else is as interested in whether dual-wielding outperforms two-handed weapons. And isn't that what it means to understand the underlying rules, and moving from the specifics to the general? But if Achievers are usually "Analyst"-style Explorers (the min-maxers), then ... who are the real Explorers? Does it make sense to have a separate Explorer type if it overlaps so much with Achievers?

What are statements that Explorers would agree with those Achievers would never agree with? What sets Explorers apart? [Another Aside: Bartle doesn't advocate strict "Types" as others pointed out in the other thread, but the Type model assumes a primary motivation. I prefer a Scores model where every player has a score for every motivation and where having a high score in one motivation doesn't mean you also can't score high in another motivation (which Bartle's Test [not created by Bartle] assumes). This would allow more interesting combinational outcomes - so a guild leader is someone who scores high on Socializing and Achieving, a min-maxer is someone who scores high on Achieving and Exploring.

GameSpy gives a brief review of 16 (16!) major new virtual worlds scheduled for release in the next 12 months or so. This adds to a market already loaded with big-hit recent releases Sims Online (currently re-vamping itself impressively) and Star Wars: Galaxies (clearly a high-quality offering). Meanwhile, new social worlds like Second Life and There crowd their way forward, old veterans Ultima Online and EverQuest hold on to their users, and Asian games continue to expand rapidly. Is the growth rate of user interest fast enough to make all of these games winners? No! User interest can't possibly grow that fast. It would defy economic reason. Surely a crash looms. Of course, if user demand doesn't rise quickly enough, we know that this crash won't be like other crashes. Worlds won't shut down. Once the development costs are sunk, it doesn't take many subscribers to keep the lights on. Rather, the main effects would be.

The good news is that Mythic has put themselves out in front of the problem right away to face it head on, in a very transparent way. The first thing they have done is make it very easy to report the spammers. They have also built into the game’s mailbox mechanic a waiting period between sending mail to players of 20 seconds. This helps prevent the kind of mass mailings that Age of Conan still suffers from. When bans do come down, players have been receiving pop up boxes that have become somewhat comedic letting the players know certain players or sometimes entire guilds have been banned. I actually read a thread today where some people were actually complaining that the ban pop ups where just as annoying as the spammers, an argument which may get amplified over time. It was also pointed out to me today that Mythic has a counter on the War Herald site showing the number of bans handed out so far. It’s good to see that the devs of all MMO’s are fighting back.

Mythic seems to be leading the charge right now, so we will see how steadfast they remain as their game grows in popularity. Money is so easy to get in Warhammer right now, and other than buying a mount, I don’t see the demand for gold to be high enough to justify paying for it. I hope fellow WAR players will realize this and make it unprofitable for them to spam us in game. One final note, a part of Mark Jacobs blog did jump out at me and raise an eyebrow that makes me question some of the other devs out there…“I’ve been offered “a piece of the action” both personally and corporately in the past if I will either turn a blind eye or help them in their actions. This would have netted me and/or Mythic a very, very tidy sum, far more than we would see from box sales. My answer was and always will remain the same: So on the one side we have old content that isn't used any more.

And on the other side we have Blizzard not achieving their promised one expansion per year rhythm, because creating new content takes so much time. So I propose to solve both problems, and do something that every ecologist loves: Recycling. In practice this would me a new expansion, called something like "The Shattering of Azeroth", to come out in a year, in time for the holiday sales 2009. Besides the expected introduction of new hero classes, and raising the level cap to 90, the expansion would change the starting level of World of Warcraft to 55. So not only new hero classes, but newly created characters of any class would start at level 55. Any existing characters of level lower than 55 would see their level increased to 55. This would liberate huge parts of the world, all the zones previously used to get from level 1 to 55.

All the old mobs, and quests, and quest hub villages, would disappear, but the basic geography would remain, maybe with some modifications to zone connections. So now all these old zones and dungeons could be populated with new quest hubs, new quests, new mobs, spanning all the range from level 55 to 90. I think veterans would enjoy revisiting old dungeons with new mobs and bosses. And for new players they wouldn't be any different from a completely new dungeon. For the devs it would take only half the time to repopulate the old dungeons and zones with new mobs and quests than it would take to create a new continent from scratch. And we would elegantly get rid of the depressing sight of deserted zones. Of course clever people will realize that a game having only levels 55 to 90 isn't any different from a game having only level 1 to 34.

But it is exactly this shortening of the level span that would be the big advantage of "The Shattering of Azeroth": The less levels there are in a game, the likelier it is to find somebody of the same level to play with. Instead of doing a rush job on new players to get them ever faster to the level where the rest of the players hang out, they would start at the same level as veterans doing hero classes. And while in WotLK 5 Death Knights make a lousy group, in the new expansion there could be functioning level 55 groups between hero classes and regular classes, because they all start at the same level. The Shattering of Azeroth would remove a lot of content from World of Warcraft. But would that really be such a big loss? Isn't it better to reuse a zone like Westfall and the Deadmines instead of leaving it as a near-empty playground for a few solo players?

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