Gamebreaker's This Week in MMO: John Madden edition

I may try this out later, but I am at work atm, so... ;P

Also this quote caught my eye : "...and why women don't like voiceover."

Now, commenting without watching/hearing, my insta-.02 cents gut feeling was, "Really? After all this time? I shoulda known." But, lemme explain that.

Back in the cob-webbed past of Model-T Fords, Shakespeare and his copyright woes and cockroaches the size of family sofas, there was the MUD, but especially the MUCK and various other forms of online games that involved text chat/reading (even online chat rooms involving RPG). Now, a many (quite a bit) of women played these and one of the neat things they offered was to open up your creativity moreso than modern-graphic-styled MMOs. It's sorta the difference from reading a book versus viewing a movie based on the book. Your mind's eye can fill in the details and process things more completely at your own pace.

I have a feeling this comment is along the same lines, but more to "Radio vs. TV"...but sorta a switcheroo. Without voiceovers, you are free to make characters sound however you prefer in your head. Maybe a particular NPC is gruff, but with voiceover, you are stuck with the actor's voice and you may not agree with it.

In these regards, even though I don't disregard males (heck, I am artistic at heart), women tend to be more inclined to do this. I've noted that women tend to read more fiction novels and visualize some of the less tangible qualities moreso than males. (Again, this is not all males, but I used to run into more women online in MUCKs than I do currently in online graphic MMOs).

So...just a comment on that one line. About creativity and the human mind and how sometimes daydreaming or limits on certain things enhances personal creativity moreso than a set image/sound.

I'm looking forward to the large scale Lotro battles. Also interested to see how Turbine will interpret the battles, since they're using the book as their canon. :)

I also haven't read the books. x]

I used to like the show, but I got tired of their viewpoints on cash shops and world pvp. Gary is pretty much down for pay to win and they are all about open world pvp. It is pretty much the exact opposite for me. The show is great, but I just can't tolerate those two things they constantly bring up. So, if you are ok with buying power or ganking people, this might be the show for you. =/

Brilliant title.

If Star Wars: The Old Republic is the last sub game around then the whole MMO industry needs to admit their design philosophy is broken.

Subscription based MMOs are like any other service that people pay for monthly. You want to use you local gym, you pay the monthly dues. You sure as heck aren't going to use everything in the gym.

The same goes for the game, you are never going to use everything in the game, but you sure as heck don't want to be slapped with a lock out while you're playing because you haven't dropped cash.

This nonsense of pay-to-win, paying to skip content… This is ignorance:

Dear Developers,

The people who are paying to skip content DON'T LIKE YOUR GAMEPLAY. They’re not giving you cash because they’re your friend. Why in the world are you price gouging them to SKIP gameplay instead of tweaking your gameplay experience so people don't feel the need to pay in order to skip it. If there's not enough gameplay to keep players interested in the game, artificially lengthening it is not the answer.

There's also a reason for paying a subscription. The player that pays the subscription has made a stance about supporting the game.

People who are allowed to get something for free with nothing tying them to the game other than an email address are not invested in the game and if they become disgruntled during the gameplay then they have no reason to not become disruptive. That further impacts those who ARE paying for your game.



Planetside 2:

They're missing something completely about when Planetside supported hundreds people at once. The lag during from those fights was ATROCIOUS.

It would be like a wall of lag was sweeping across the battlefield and the players would just become cannon fodder, unable to react to the fight going on around them. Trying to fight in a tower with 20+ tossers trying to jam through the door was not what I would a call the highlight of the massive fights.

Having tons of people in a battle is not epic unless there's some direction. Games like Planetside, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online... Any large PvP fights I experienced worked much better regardless of size when the players were getting direction from someone. Even if the person didn't know what the heck they were doing issuing the command.

Large Scale Battles in MMOs:

If you get a ton of people together, magic does not automatically happen. Those big epic fights you saw in movies? They have commanders telling the soldiers to do what to do, and the soldiers do it.

That's what makes it epic. If you have a ton of individuals in a large scale battle then you just have aggravation. The initial rush is exciting but it rapidly disintegrates as you hope for the battle to gain some direction.

Developers seem to be really good at making the environments for players to play in. However, when it comes to grouping them together so their various classes/specialties can complement each other, giving them proper information about their group mates, telling them about the objectives in a timely manner, having incentives to nudge players towards completing a goal... Yeah they're completely lacking at this to the point that it's embarrassing.

I certainly hope developers don’t expect the player to do these things at the drop of a dime when they’re thrown into an arena with a bunch of random people. If that’s the case, then it will be a long time coming before any headway is made in this area.


Mortal Online, Darkfall, EVE Online:

Sandbox MMOs =/= Do what you want. It should mean that you do what you want, but there are actual has its hard and fast rules about stuff you can't do. That's why pre-Trammel UO is always a better example than what any of these games did because UO did have hard and fast rules to cut down on anarchy.

If they want to make a no rules sandbox experience, don't call it a game. A game has hard and fast rules that govern it. Just like you don't let the prisoners run the jailhouse, you don't let the players run world anyway they please or you'll be sabotaging your own game and ensuring that the numbers stay low.

the best thing about twimmo is that one person who almost never has any personal opinions, and just uses an annoying voice to basically either agree with the question, or say the opposite.

and the fact that half of recent shows have been about LOL and stuff like that. really, that's what everyone should be focusing when it comes to MMOs?

the show used to be awesome...started doing down hill after pokket came on. now i actually prefer the republic more than twimmo just because it's larry, gary and some other person or whatever. don't like star wars, never have, but still the show is much better.

I don't know a single gamer, other than Pokket now, that feels "ripped off" by paying a subscription. And I've been playing MMOs since 1997.

If spending roughly $2/day, and missing a day or three of that makes you feel "ripped off", then maybe you need to re-evaluate your job situation and your hobbies.

Big picture I don't care if they let those like her pay for every little bit via MT (Armor 1, Armor 2, Weapon 3, access to area A, B and C, etc.) as long as they give me the option to pay a single monthly subscription and have access to it all.

If I miss a day or two of gaming...it won't break me and I'll be able to sleep at night. :)

Used to like the show but lately it has started to turned into "we all agree and the world is cool,MOBA are like MMO,Cash shops are the future,yaddi,yadda.

Honestly they haven't had a real debate since a few episodes.Let's say one for subs game and the other for cash shops.I really wish they bring back the girl from EvE who put Pokket back in her place several times in the last episode or the one before.

Fortunately The Republic (even if I'm not going to play SWTOR) is still a good show with Larry and Darth Hater.

Was it it me or they kept shooting down Hillary's opinion?

Thank you Larry for the derp face :p

This is a recurring topic on the show, and I know a couple of them have itunes on, listen to tv/movies or whatever as they play. I do the same thing.

Gamebreaker TV is the bomb and Rubi is sooooo hot!!!! Oh my lord.

Larry you're awesome! The Republic is my first show in GBTV(although it was host by Jay back to old day lolz)

anyway, i hope Gary or whoever will host a new MOBA/LoL show, i honesty do not want any LoL in TWIMMO, if they are gonna talk about Moba, please talk about Bloodline Champion, HoN and other Moba as well, don't just focus on LoL! it's sicken me.

and any TWIMMO episode with Shawn = winning.