writing about tech

Though this review is generally positive, I found this paragraph entertaining: is is supposed to be a complaint, I imagine, but for me it’s part of why the game is so GOOD:

Unfortunately, Divinity: Original Sin doesn’t make this system clear to players at either the macro or the micro level. Normal RPG behavior suggests that if players receive a quest—without a giant skull icon or other “high-level” warning—then they should be capable of completing that quest immediately. Instead, I spent hours trying to win fights slightly above my level to realize that this wasn’t normal or even expected yet.

Good. That’s exactly the kind of game I (and many others) want to play – don’t mistake your own personal frustrations with the game as design flaws. It’s also the kind of game we were promised, so I’m not sure why anyone would be surprised. Sometimes you’ll get completely curb-stomped, but that’s exactly how it should be – that’s the “polite” way the game is telling you go somewhere else for awhile. We’ve become too use to games holding our hands and telling us explicitly what we can and can’t do and where we can’t and can’t go; I’ve longed for a game that says “go where you want and do what you want, but you might end up making some stupid decisions.” If you think Divinity is bad, apparently you’ve never played an old Ultima game – having a quest log is a luxury compared to amazing games like Ultima 7.

Philip Kollar of Polygon has a great little piece up about how MMOs are better when they don’t emulate World of Warcraft:

I understand why so many massively multiplayer projects stick to World of Warcraft‘s tried-and-true formula. When something is that massive of a hit, the gravitational pull of being like it isn’t going to wear thin, even a decade later.

It’s not just greed; many of the lead designers on current and upcoming MMOs either worked at Blizzard previously or played a ton of Warcraft and want to recapture the magic they felt. The game has had an impact on the world of MMO design that’s impossible to overstate.

I played MMOs back during the Ultima Online beta, but gradually found myself pushed away from the genre as it took more and more after the “theme park” MMOs like Everquest and World of Warcraft and less and less after the sandbox MMOs like UO and, later, Star Wars Galaxies. UO andSWG were both incredibly flawed in many ways, but remained compelling because of the freedom they granted to their playerbases. The more freedom they both took away – in, I presume, an attempt to be more like WoW – the less enjoyable they became. The only “theme park” MMO I legitimately enjoyed was City of Heroes.

I dabbled in Warhammer Online and Age of Conan because some friends played them, and Star Trek Online because I wanted to make big ships shoot each other, but for me nothing’s recaptured the magic of UO and (to a lesser extent) SWG. It seems like that type of MMO is dead – most likely because making an MMO is incredibly expensive and, understandably, developers are less likely to go with the “risky” option. Making a “theme park” MMO, with your own minor spin on things, is the “safe” route.