WOW?

[SilentThief]

So I got this new(-er) desktop computer, and started the free 10 day trial of WOW. I think that it is a visually appealing game, and of course the multiplayer is nice (had some kid beat my 2nd level warlock with his 1st level warrior and then he said I suck... I think he'd'a thought twice about that if he knew I'm 6ft 4in ans 220 lbs, but I digress)

The problem that I have with WOW (other than the $15.00 price tag for standard monthly fee to play), is that it is the same kind of mindless quests that infest the RPG genre: Go to place X and bring back item Y or kill creature(s) Z. I must admit that it is entertaining enough (not enuff to spare the $15.00 when I'm crunched for money, so once the trials done, I'm done), and perhaps the quests are more involved later on; but the genre in genreal has quests that are cliche.

I'm hoping to get a more involved kind of quest scenario, similar to what I remember from the Villains Handbook TSR product. They have a bunch of examples/ideas for more involved gameplay and one I like is the idea of "every action has a consequence", like you kill a marauding bear, and its overly protective and blind to its evil Ranger protector comes looking for revenge, or you clear out a thieves guild (for fun and profit) and there is a power vacuum where any number of other groups (dopplegangers, other thieves, vampires, evil wizards who were in war with guild, ect) step in to fill the void. Heck, they may be strongly committed to dealing with the players who could do what they themselves could not, and may use ambush/betrayal techniques to do so.

Currently, I'm in a slow down of mod productivity due to trying to think outside of the box on quests and design.
I only hope that my mods hold up to not being the same kinds of over-done quests as I complain about

ST

[manikus]

Higher level quests are just harder. A buddy of mine is really into WoW and like a year ago when they started to see membership fall-off, they made everything a lot easier so that people could get to higher levels faster.

On the other hand, he really likes it. He likes playing with his guild-mates. I'm sure there is a certain camaraderie that occurs that goes way beyond the scope of the game.

I can't wait for DC 2.0 when it's all multi-player.

Actually, I just found a (free) multi-player game called ForgottenWorld that is the old AOL Neverwinter Nights. That's right, Goldbox gaming online, multi-player style with Player versus Player areas.

I haven't done much yet, since I've been kind of slammed at school. But, this weekend I'm going to get playing. I'll let everybody know how it is.

http://www.forgottenworld.com

[Uatu]

Hmm - looks interesting (wish they had screenshots/FAQ/etc. on the site, though). Tell us how it goes!

[manikus]

If you look in the forum, I think it's at the top in the welcome section, there are some links to Youtube videos of gameplay.

[Uatu]

Doh! Oh, really?

[manikus]

Yup. Someone just capped their gameplay and put music to it.

Maybe we should do this with some DC play - I bet there are tons of people on Youtube that have never heard of us.

[SilentThief]

According to someone on the yahoo group, you can record your playing of DC...

ST

[manikus]

Originally Posted by SilentThief According to someone on the yahoo group, you can record your playing of DC... ST

That would be according to Paul and me.

It works great, but is only viewable during playback in DC.

[Uatu]

Hmm - someone should do it! Would be a good way to advertise DC, as it were.

[manikus]

I've played a little bit in FW now. They have two servers, 'Live' and 'Test'.

The Live server is pretty much just like the old NWN game but starting off in a different city. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's a different world, as they've changed the names of the attributes, presumably to avoid any issues with WotC. What can I say, it was kind of nostalgic, but the graphics are worse than FRUA.

I quickly hopped over to the Test server, moctly b/c I read a post about new graphics. It's definitely higher res, and could use the touch of some of us here. What was truly impressive is that they've updated the code so that instead of there being three wall distances, there are (I think) seven! THey're also doing something different with backdrops that allows them to have followable paths - it may be the trick for DC (which takes a lot of work), or it might be a new way of handling the backdrops.

This isn't an Open Source project and you can't download it and work on it yourself. But, magic works and they've got a functioning combat AI. I think they have even added spells not in FRUA (which has everything from the old NWN plus some).

I'm going to play some more and then make contact in their forums. The program is written in C# using the .Net 2.0 framework, so if I can get the code, I should be able to figure stuff out a little bit as C# is like hald-way in-between C++ and VB.

Edited to add:
I've played some more and looked around a bit and it seems that they are a company, not just a group of friends. i don't know if I'll offer to help until I find out what kind of 'company' they are.