Massively Speaking Episode 98

When I listened to that episode, I had this reccuring thought I had several times before. There's so many MMOs out there already, that it is easy to have missed the one which already does the thing everybody thinks to be unique and new in the currently hyped one.

When Shawn started complaining about how stupid it is to find a Sword in the loot of beetles or oak hearts, I had to smile, I always had the same feeling about this strange and clueless design in most MMOs. But then, about two years ago, I came across Ryzom. Ryzom has its flaws (and I don't play it any longer and so I am not fanboying it), but it deserves this mention at least. If you kill a mob in Ryzom it will always only drop crafting material (stings, claws, shells etc). The better the mob the more sophisticated the attributes of the material. And equipment only comes from player crafters, so you have to kill mobs (especially bosses) just to get your armor and weapons. I liked that part very much (btw. if you're on the lookout for a decent crafting system, you should really give Ryzom a chance).

Second thing when I thought "yeah, has been done" was the discussion about casual gamers and having a fair payment scheme for them (based on payment scheme decisions for APB). From my personal experience, I may mention the idea behind yet another french-made game: Dofus. The way they do this: it is subscription based, but subs are only 4€ a month if you pay for a year. That's so cheap it makes the subscription a micro transaction. So I am subbed to it and still play it as a casual game since paying this amount doesn't hurt that much. And you get all the fun since you're not excluded from things only available in an item shop - there's none.

Keep up your good work - I enjoy massively speaking a lot, it is unique in its way and very informative.

little perspective on the fallen earth key giveaways, you generally don't give away free units in large quantities if you're able to sell units. which leads me to believe they aren't selling many units. i'm sure Icarus is hoping many of those players will become subscribers, but really how sticky is that game? sentiment on the steam forums is not very positive.

suggestion: put a time notation (mm:ss) beside each of the topics in the future so we can skip forward to the topic that interests us.

itunes is all goofy with your podcast - TV Squad?!?!

All episodes are gone!

Ugh. Some AOL sites are moving things around. I'll get to the bottom of this! But don't worry, we're not leaving or turning into a TV podcast :)