Posts tagged elder-game 
When crafting community, little goes a long way
Yes, that looks like a typo in the subject line and it ought to be "a little goes a long way." It isn't. Little itself goes a long way in making a community, as discussed in this recent post by Eric Heimburg. Speaking from his experiences both on Asheron's Call 2 as a producer and Aion as a player, ...
Developer communication as it affects games
Developer chats aren't only important when it comes to what players know about the game -- they're also important in how the players approach the game. That's one of the more interesting conclusions to be taken away from Elder Game's latest discussion regarding the interactions between developers ...
The hardcore language (filter) of Champions Online
While many folks we know really don't care too much about chat filters one way or the other, the rather overzealous chat filter in Champions Online seems to be causing some problems for players - and NPCs! Eric Heimburg over at Elder Game ran into some NPCs having their rather harmless (read: ...
Balance not what it's cracked up to be
One of the truly sacrosanct beliefs in the greater MMO community (which includes both developers and players) is that achieving balance between classes is a necessary ingredient for a successful game. Even though the relative power of classes is liable to swing wildly depending on the latest patches ...
Cascading population drops the true MMO killer
One of the most depressing situations in any MMO is coming to terms with the fact that you feel isolated and alone, even in the midst of your massively multiplayer world. According to Eric Heimburg of Elder Game, this phenomena happens not because of any specific reason like a bad patch or lack of ...
The challenges of early-stage MMO development
Brian "Psychochild" Green has up a post to his personal site discussing some of the steps massively multiplayer games take on their way to market. His article was based partially on a post to Elder Game we discussed here on the site early this week. Brian notes that the earlier post took the right ...
You know you work for a company destined for failure when...
In a recent blog post, Elder Game's Eric Heimburg takes a sardonic look at some of the more heavily worn bumps on the road that is MMO development. Without naming any names, Heimburg suggests developers conduct an intervention if their company meets a certain number of the criteria, lest their game ...
Experience modifiers are good, no bad, wait good, no definitely bad
When we reported early last month that the Destination Games team was looking to give a serious buff to Tabula Rasa's experience modifier system, it was then largely regarded as something to be happy about. Too many players were suffering from the attrition of climbing from tier 3 at level 30 to ...
Behind the scenes of MMO game development
You may or may not be familiar with the "ghostly wolf" debacle that occurred in the World of Warcraft recently. It involved a pet wolf that would not have been able to be tamed by Hunters without some clever usage of game mechanics and some costly preparation. Blizzard confirmed that they would not ...
Former STO designer: Star Trek might be "hardest MMO IP ever"
Star Trek Online is one of the most anticipated MMOs on the horizon, but it's no secret that Perpetual Entertainment has had a rough couple of months. There's an ever-present air of uncertainty around STO's future. Most of that uncertainty stems from Perpetual's legal and financial troubles, but one ...
