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Pathfinder Online developer blog outlines the path of production

Eliot Lefebvre — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:30:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, Previews, News items, Sandbox, Crafting

Everything comes from somewhere. That's one of the axioms underpinning Pathfinder Online -- almost every single object that players see will have been produced by a player. In the most recent development blog, the process for gathering and producing items is outlined, and it bears all of the detailed hallmarks of the game's other systems. This isn't a game in which players grab a pickaxe and swing at the nearest rock face for ore; instead, you construct a camp and start up an entire mining operation.

The game has a basic three-tiered structure to its non-combat operation, starting with harvesting the resource, moving on to processing and refining the items in question, and finishing with crafting a usable item. And as an outgrowth of the game's open systems, these elements work in multiple directions. Starting a camp to harvest resources, for example, can generate a lot of commotion and attract hostile monsters, necessitating that players deal with the fallout or find someone else willing to do so. No one can accuse the designers of making crafting activities a secondary goal with this degree of detail involved.

Pathfinder Online developer blog outlines the path of production originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GDC 2012: A peek behind SWTOR's project management curtain

Jef Reahard — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:45:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, Events, real-world, Game mechanics, MMO industry, News items, Massively Event Coverage, Star Wars: The Old Republic

GDC is often described as the most cerebral of the various gaming conventions. E3 has its big reveals and booth babes, PAX has its fan-friendly hands-on sessions and general geekery. GDC, though, is mainly by developers and for developers, and last night's BioWare panel was a good case in point.

The session ran for well over an hour (not counting a brief Q&A at the end), and it focused largely on the daunting management tasks inherent in a project like Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Continue reading GDC 2012: A peek behind SWTOR's project management curtain

GDC 2012: A peek behind SWTOR's project management curtain originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WildStar Wednesday talks about the game's narrative design

Eliot Lefebvre — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, Culture, Previews, News items, WildStar

Unless you were at PAX Prime last year, about all you've seen of WildStar in action has been the game's cinematic trailer. While it didn't give much of an idea of how the game played, said video certainly had a lot of style. According to the latest WildStar Wednesday community blog post, that style was a big part of the game's narrative design, which is seen as one of the main points of development -- making a game that feels large, engrossing, and epic.

As lead designer Chad Moore explains it, the narrative design team is responsible for outlining the world of Nexus, which was in part created to serve as a perfect locus for a variety of different adventures. While this design team isn't particularly concerned with mechanics, it is concerned with ensuring that every part of the game has the same degree of personality as the first cinematic trailer. If you're one of the many people anticipating the game heavily, take a look behind the scenes to see how it produces its feel.

WildStar Wednesday talks about the game's narrative design originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GDC Online 2011: Riot Games' Travis S. George talks game production

Matt Daniel — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Interviews, MMO industry, News items

Gamasutra has its hands on a new interview with Riot Games' lead producer Travis S. George, straight from GDC Online 2011. In the interview, George goes into the finer points of game production and outlines five habits into which producers can find themselves falling if they aren't careful. These habits are things like writing down tasks and documentation or resolving all conflicts; in sum, they're all things that sound harmless, or even benevolent.

George warns that the true danger comes when the five habits are combined, like some kind of bizarro-game-production-Captain-Planet. It's a truly interesting piece for anyone interested in game production or design, and let's be honest: There are worse people to learn from than the lead producer of Riot Games. For the full technical details, click on over to the full article.

GDC Online 2011: Riot Games' Travis S. George talks game production originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Undead Labs moving right along with Class3

Jef Reahard — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Horror, Video, MMO industry, New titles, News items, Consoles

The end of September marked a graduation of sorts for members of the Undead Labs development team. The company's untitled maiden voyage has officially crossed the threshold from pre-production to in production, and a blog post on the firm's web site celebrates the milestone with something of a rah-rah speech from founder Jeff Strain.

"I'm blown away by how far we've come in such a short amount of time. Our task now as we move headlong into the production phase is to take this fun little gem and turn it into something we're proud to show the world," Strain wrote.

The gem he's referring to is currently known only by its Class3 codename. We do know that it's about zombies and that it's only for consoles. Aside from that, the title is shrouded in a fair bit of mystery. Strain's post also features a time-lapse video that shows off the game's CryEngine 3-powered time-of-day effects, and you can check that out after the cut.

Continue reading Undead Labs moving right along with Class3

Undead Labs moving right along with Class3 originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Mog Log: World of Craft-craft

Eliot Lefebvre — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 12:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Classes, Game mechanics, Professions, Opinion, Consoles, Final Fantasy XIV, The Mog Log

Crafting is optional in Final Fantasy XIV, but that word doesn't mean what it usually means in games. You don't have to take any local levequests or take part in crafting to level up, but you'll find yourself far more constrained and advancing your physical level far more slowly if you ignore the crafting side of things. It should be obvious, really -- combining local and regional guildleves gives you plenty of content, but just doing one or the other might leave you feeling a bit spare, and a full half of the classes are crafting classes to begin with.

Of course, the problem quickly turns from "should I bother crafting" to "where do I start?" And that's not even touching on issues of inventory, crafts that work well with others, and which crafts support which classes. So this week, I'm going to take a look at crafting as I've seen it thus far and offer some tips on keeping yourself balanced and sane. Or at least minimizing the enraged outburst when you botch the synthesis at 99%.

Continue reading The Mog Log: World of Craft-craft

The Mog Log: World of Craft-craft originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 16 Oct 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Evolved: Research: Five top tips, page 2

Brendan Drain — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

Continue reading EVE Evolved: Research: Five top tips, page 2

EVE Evolved: Research: Five top tips, page 2 originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Evolved: Research: Five top tips

Brendan Drain — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Economy, Guides, Crafting, Professions, Making money, Tips and tricks, PvE, Opinion, EVE Evolved

In the past three weeks, I've covered the ins and outs of research in EVE Online, from Tech 1 blueprints and the Tech 2 invention system to Tech 3 and reverse engineering. In my nearly six years of playing EVE, I've delved into every traditional profession and picked up some valuable tips and insights on each one. Having been involved in every aspect of the Tech 1, 2 and 3 industries, I've built up a fairly complete picture of how the research portion of any industry interacts with its production lines. In this final part to the EVE Evolved guide to research, I give five top tips that I consider invaluable for anyone getting into research and industry.

#5 - Chasing profit:
To keep your profit margins high in any business, you'll need to adjust your choice of products frequently to keep up with what's recently profitable. The most important tool you'll ever have in any industry is a spreadsheet or application to calculate build costs for you. By updating the prices on your spreadsheet regularly, you can quickly spot which items are profitable to build and stay ahead of the curve. This is important because in some areas, like the market for Tech 2 modules, it can take as little as a week for an item to go from high profit to making a loss. In EVE's highly competitive markets, it's the most agile players able to stay on top of market trends who make the most ISK. There are several freely available applications and websites that can help with practically every industry but I've always found it useful to make my own spreadsheets.

Skip past the cut for four other invaluable tips on reverse engineering chances, invention profit margins, predicting trends and more.

Continue reading EVE Evolved: Research: Five top tips

EVE Evolved: Research: Five top tips originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Games Day '09: All about Warhammer Online's live events with Mark Davis pt. 2

Seraphina Brennan — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Culture, Events, in-game, Game mechanics, Warhammer Online, Massively Interviews, Massively Event Coverage

How long does it take to put together your average live event?

We usually take about three to six weeks for brainstorming and conception. Then there's the approval process, where I send the ideas to my boss, who sends them to "The Hickman," who sends them upstairs, who sends that to Games Workshop to make sure we're staying true to their concepts. Plus we have to coordinate with all of the other departments, like RvR, the items team, and Combat and Careers.

Then the production side takes another three weeks to maybe seven weeks on top of that. We'll be planning and producing the event usually the version before the live event is scheduled to take place, otherwise it would never be done in time. Then after that we'll have the playtesting and the QA sessions to make sure the bugs are worked out, and that takes another week to two weeks.

So, in short, you're looking at three months of work from inception to the final event.

And these aren't available on the test server, right?

Well... they're not suppose to be available on the test server. They're suppose to be hidden.. *smiles* But we have little breaks where the live events show up on the test server for a couple seconds.

"Just the sheer joy these events provide players should be reason enough for another developer [to make them.]"

It amazes me because in that short period of time when the live event is available, somebody will screenshot all of the objectives for all of the quests and then have that up on the internet before we can get the live event down. We try our best, but it always seems to slip out for a matter of seconds.

We want to be secretive and we want players to have a sense of discovery with our live events, plus they really can't be tested publically in such a short window. Live events focus on the whole world, and getting testing and feedback done is not all that useful to us.

What's your favorite part about the most recent live event?

From a developer's perspective, it was the opening cinematic to the RvR public quests. We did a custom cinematic with an airship flying in and exploding which results in the start of the RvR PQs. That was surely my favorite part, it was glorious!

From a player's perspective, it was the RvR that occured because of the live event. We created a center point for RvR in the event in Thunder Mountain. There were a number of different tasks that centered on this one area and that area was a hot spot for RvR the whole week. From the warcamp landing to the hot spot, the travel time was only about 3 minutes, but people in my warband would be killing others the entire way there. Thunder Mountain was locked most of the time when I was fighting in this event, but the RvR was just hot all the time. Whenever I was looking for a fight, I just went to Thunder Mountain because I knew it would be there.

We had warbands coming in and attempting to camp the area, but they could only hold it for a small amount of time before another warband came in to unseat them. It was a lot of fun.

Many other developers don't bother with live events. Plus when they give out exclusive items, they always seem to show up later and become unexclusive. So what would you say to another developer who was thinking of doing these exclusive live events?

Just look at the metrics. For our game we get more gameplay, more people in the game, and a lot of positive feedback. These events are only a limited time, so players come in and play and the realize all of the possiblities our game has to offer in that limited time. Just the sheer joy these events provide players should be reason enough for another developer.

"Live events gets to take all of that great stuff and put it all together into this nice package of fun."

We even see all of this in the cold metrics. Look server population the day of the event and the day after the event, and the event population will be higher.

Every game has its niche. For Warhammer, it's the RvR, the public quests, the living guilds, the city sieges. You hear us harp on this stuff over and over, because it's what we do. Live events gets to take all of that great stuff and put it all together into this nice package of fun. We bring to the front what we do the best through our live events.

We've got events planned for the rest of the year. We just put up the Northern Watch weekend event, and it was immensely successful. There was only a title offered as the reward, and it was easily one of the most successful events we've done.

Any sneak peeks you can give us as to what's coming?

Ah... well I can't really say anything because we need to go through all of that long approval process first, but the live event in the summer is going to be doing something that I don't think any MMO has done before. Ever. It's that level of magnitude for that event. We're going to challenge what people have come to expect out of our live events, I will say that much.

Ha ha, sweet! Ok then, let's end it out. Order or Destruction?

Order all the way. Engineer, baby! I feel like the combat and careers guys made that class for me. You blow stuff up, you shoot people, you have explosions! What could be better?

The sands of the Tomb Kings are coming as the final release in the Call to Arms live expansion, the Land of the Dead approaches! Massively has your back with coverage from Mythic Entertainment at Games Day '09, so get your WAAGGGHHH ready for RvR mayhem as Massively re-arms for WAR!

Games Day '09: All about Warhammer Online's live events with Mark Davis pt. 2 originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 13 May 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GDC09: Interview with The Secret World's creator, Ragnar Tørnquist

Seraphina Brennan — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:30:00 EST

Filed under: At a glance, Fantasy, Horror, MMO industry, New titles, The Secret World, Consoles, Massively Interviews

With our unveiling of The Secret World, we were also able to have some time to ourselves with Ragnar Tørnquist, the creator of Dreamfall and, of course, The Secret World. While our look at the videos and basic fact sheets were interesting, we wanted to get to the heart of the matter. What should lure us into this dark, fantastic world? What had Funcom learned since the launch of Anarchy Online and Age of Conan? And how many times can we have one man say the words, "I can't talk about that?"

We put Ragnar to the test in our interview, and his responses were certainly enlightening. Interested? Join us as we brave The Secret World with the creator himself.

Continue reading GDC09: Interview with The Secret World's creator, Ragnar Tørnquist

GDC09: Interview with The Secret World's creator, Ragnar Tørnquist originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Online developer explains how to build Tech III strategic cruisers

James Egan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, Crafting, Making money

For many players of massively multiplayer online titles, the crafting side of these games is especially appealing. Quite a number of EVE Online's players are drawn to the crafting side of this particular sci-fi MMO, and those in large corporations and alliances have learned how their collective efforts can allow them to produce vast quantities of items and reap equally vast sums of ISK.

EVE's crafting system is also very much the backbone of the game. Almost every ship and module used by players in the game was created by another player. Those who are into the combat aspects of the game are reliant upon the producers to supply their tools of destruction, and that destruction in turn creates demand (and fuels profits) for EVE's industrialists. It's an interesting bit of symbiosis (despite that animosity towards those on the other side of the fence) that keeps New Eden thriving.

Continue reading EVE Online developer explains how to build Tech III strategic cruisers

EVE Online developer explains how to build Tech III strategic cruisers originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Making/Money: Economic Equilibrium is MIA

Alexis Kassan — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Economy, Academic, Making/Money

When I first started playing MMOs I was in college. I'd bounced from major to major but ultimately settled on Economics (from a starting point of Medieval and Renaissance Studies - how'd that happen?). Like other economists in games like EverQuest and Ultima Online, I was thrilled to find a lively economy and interested to apply classical economic models in the study of it. The most basic of these models is the typical supply and demand curve.

Any economic model starts with price and quantity. The higher the price, the more suppliers want to sell but the less consumers want to buy. As the price decreases, more consumers are interested in purchasing, but fewer suppliers are able to produce profitably. In theory, there is a magical level in the middle where supply and demand meet. That is equilibrium (see graph).

What I have since found, which is furiously debated by other economists in the field, is that the typical supply and demand curves do not fit well with the economies of most MMORPGs these days. Depending on the game, add-ons used, and availability of additional market data, there may be sort of invisible caps to the price, and thereby the quantities, of goods traded. Furthermore, auction house fees and vendor sales act much in the same way as taxes or subsidies in real world economies.

Continue reading Making/Money: Economic Equilibrium is MIA

Making/Money: Economic Equilibrium is MIA originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW's Wrath of the Lich King box art leaked

Matt Warner — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Betas, MMO industry, Rumors

What is with all these World of Warcraft leaks? If you knew where to look everything you wanted to know about WotlK was already exposed before Blizzard Entertainment's World Wide Invitational extravaganza. For shame, not even the WotlK box art is safe from prying eyes and camera phones. WoW Insider already exposed the box art for the Collector's Edition, and the same source has also obtained snaps of the basic box art.

Is it the real deal or a mocked-up forge? The WotlK box layout has many exact elements used on The Burning Crusade box. The placement for the Blizzard logo and ESRB rating line up exactly, and the font used to spell 'expansion set' is identical to its cardboard predecessor. In another photo that lends to its authenticity is a printer's mark. The box also notes that you need The Burning Crusade to play Wrath of the Lich King which means no free TBC bundles.

Hopefully, it won't be long until those boxes are stuffed with the goods and shipped to retail where we can pick them up because what comes on the inside of the box is what matters. Unless you're one of those weirdoes that save game boxes and treasures them for eternity. If you are feeling lucky skip the box altogether and try your hand at the WotlK beta-lottery.

WoW's Wrath of the Lich King box art leaked originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Making/Money: My value chains are broken

Alexis Kassan — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:30:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Economy, Crafting, Professions, Making/Money

There's a person out there who claims that all they need to know about business can be learned from World of Warcraft. A fine sentiment, to be sure, but I take issue with its accuracy. Today we are discussing the first of their eleven business topics: value chains - and why they don't work.

In brief, value chain analysis states that for any good requiring multiple stages of production (meaning you don't just rip it out of your backyard and eat it), value is added at each level of refinement. Therefore the price should increase along its path to becoming a finalized product.

Continue reading Making/Money: My value chains are broken

Making/Money: My value chains are broken originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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