Dave Moss

I think the question you have to ask then, if you're saying there are no good sci-fi MMOs (though the players of EVE and Tabula Rasa may beg to differ)... Are Sci-Fi MMO's just harder to make? Or are they harder to make good? The studios who made some of the flopped Sci-Fi MMOs aren't necessarily new to the industry, they just dropped a few balls in their games.

Do those sorts of small faults stand out in a Sci-Fi game, more than they would in a fantasy MMO?

I would kill a thousand thousand baby ducks to get a Steampunk MMO

Oh absolutely, I guess I meant more the players changing the experience than the developers throwing in whatever they like.

Thanks to my 4 days on, 4 days off work schedule, I play quite a bit on my stretch of days off.

not having fun is serious business!

I touched on something similar to this a while back on my column as well.

http://www.massively.com/2007/11/07/building-a-better-mmoustrap-can-you-teach-old-content-new-tric/

I think that bringing back old content is something that can be done both smartly and without losing the original feel for the areas.

I know a lot of people are burnt out after two years of motlen core runs and never want to go back, but there are a few people (like myself) who loved the old content. I'd love to see a re-tooling of MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx for smaller groups so that I can take friends new to the game into the zones and show them how great they were.

I think the trick is that some of the boss encounters required a larger number of people for crowd control or tanking (Sulfuron, Four Horsemen, et al) and they would need to be retuned for say a 10 or 25 man group without losing the bulk of the encounters fun and difficulty.

I know that Blizz is already working on doing a 25-man Naxx for Wrath of the Lich King, and I would love to see them continue the trend for other content.

Fixed that line break, thanks for the heads up.

And yeah, I think having a lot of NPCs running around cheering or fearing you would be great. It was one aspect of the old Xbox game Fable I loved, that depending upon your deeds you got the feeling of being a hero or a villain as you went about your daily life.

I'm a smolderthorn'er myself, though back for the AQ opening I was still playing on Ice Crown. I know there are still a few people on that server trying to keep world PvP alive, but it's certainly nothing like what it was at TBC launch.

Perhaps it's just the player base I talk to and play with, but a lot of the people miss battling for Kazzak against other guilds. The build up to the AQ gates, or even the (far less epic) lead up to Naxxramas.

I think the majority of the issue with WoW world events has more to do with how little they affect the world, and how some people complain about 'welfare epics', like with the recent Halloween rings.

Just looking at WotLK with the siege engines, destructible buildings, and a few other things, it seems that they are bringing some more things back into the world.

Though it was never an official 'world event' I can even say that the old South Shore vs. Tarren Mill, or Blackrock Mountain raid wars were some of the most fun things. Far more exciting than any BG or Arena match.

World events mean different things to different people, and if it's not your cup of tea, all the power to you. I just know the folks I play with miss being able to do things in the wild world other than questing and the occasional gank/camp-off.

Yeah, I certainly would love to see them redo a lot of the old content. Even some of the lower level stuff, I don't know how many times I've heard people say they would love a level 70 Heroic version of the low level Deadmines instance.