MMO – Page 4 – Ciaran Laval

August 14, 2014

Virtual Worlds Should Pay Heed To The Rise Of The Orcs

Earlier this year Mitch Wagner had an article published in Information Week about High Fidelity : Second Life Founder Pursues Second Chance. The article talked of how Second Life had not reached mainstream appeal and pondered whether High Fidelity can. Mitch wasn’t convinced because of the time investment, but he did acknowledge that Second Life got a lot right. However for the real reason Second Life hasn’t reached mass appeal we need to go to the comments on the article and consider the issue of Orcs :

Second Life would have fared better if it had appealed to MMORPG fans, the primary proven market for such activities. Philip Rosedale, you need orcs.

This comment misses the point of Second Life somewhat and yet in doing so, highlights one of the issues for Second Life and any other virtual world. People see Second Life as a singular place, it’s not, but the architecture of the platform can make it appear so, which brings us to another comment on Orcs :

I think the Orcs comment is spot on. It’s one thing to fix the technological elements, but Second Life never appealed to me because it was so open and amorphous. Part of the fun of an immersive experience is having an objective and a set of limitations to work within (or against). An open world where you can do anything sounds great, but then you run up against the limits of your own imagination.

This comment hits the nail firmly on the head. Second Life needs to deliver experiences as well as offering open creativity, people want something to do. This also goes back to the points Mitch made about time investment, people want to pop into a virtual world, experience something and logout. They don’t want to build, they want to be guided. The problem here isn’t Second Life itself, it’s the way people view Second Life as .. well, Second Life. I’ve said something along these lines before, but for Second Life to reach mainstream appeal it requires people to stop talking about Second Life. This may sound somewhat odd but my point is that Second Life should be viewed as the technology. The experiences the places people visit, the places people learn at, the places people role-play, they should be at the forefront of the major discussion, Second Life should be consigned to the geeky conversation about technology.

Now of course virtual worlds offer a sandbox experience and the concept is absolutely brilliant. Virtual worlds such as Second Life, Kitely, Inworldz, OpenSim etc. offer authors, creators, designers the opportunity to build their very own stage and bring their own visions to life. This really is a fantastic opportunity for people who want to get creative, to do so. However there are many many people who want to be guided through an experience, they want to teleport right in to the end product. Virtual worlds do indeed offer great potential but to some, a blank canvas is very difficult to grapple with.

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August 5, 2014

Lady Anshe’s Empire Expands To The Territory Of Lord British

Shroud Of The Avatar Forsaken Virtues is the forthcoming selective Multiplayer game from Lord British (AKA Richard Garriott), creator and designer of the legendary Ultima series of games. Shroud Of The Avatar is not a sequel to the Ultima games, quite possibly due to the fact that Electronic Arts and not Lord British own the trademark to Ultima.

Shroud Of The Avatar is a new form of MMO, where you can take the multi out of the equation if you wish, as the FAQ explains :

Shroud of the Avatar is a new form of multiplayer online role playing game we are calling a Selective Multiplayer Game. This will allow players to choose how they want to play. Play options will include solo offline, solo online, friends only online, or open multiplayer online. For players who play in the default open multiplayer, Shroud of the Avatar will feel very much like a traditional MMO. However, Shroud of the Avatar also includes a full solo player story crafted by Richard Garriott and Tracy Hickman, best known for his best selling Dragon Lance series of books.

Player housing in MMO’s is a growing area and Shroud Of The Avatar is going to offer plenty of options in this area. There will be a variety of sized lots avaialble, rows, villages, cities, towns, keeps and castles. So how do you get these lots, again we turn to the FAQ :

There are three ways to purchase a Lot Deed. Backers at Citizen level and above receive Lot Deed with their pledge. Players can also purchase a Lot Deed in the game through earned in game currency. Finally players can purchase Village size Lot Deeds from the Add-On store.

We can see from the add-on store that land can be somewhat costly, $1050 for a City Lot being the higher end of the spectrum. There’s also a monthly tax that has to be paid with inworld game currency. However players can buy and sell lots to each other.

Ah virtual land sales, whose really going to want to do that? Enter Lady Anshe.

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July 25, 2014

Buy Your SysAdmin A Beer, Even If It’s Virtual

The first rule of SysAdmin club is that nobody talks about SysAdmin club. The second rule of SysAdmin club is “How can I perform this boring bulk task with a script?” Today, the last Friday in July is the fourteenth Systems Administrator Appreciation Day. Generally people outside of SysAdmin groups aren’t aware this day exists, indeed plenty of people inside SysAdmin groups aren’t aware this day exists.

xkcd have a comic explaining the devotion to duty that goes into being a SysAdmin :

A comic should be here — Devotion To Duty

SysAdmins are the people who make it possible to login to your systems, be it at work, Second Life, Kitely, Inworldz, OpenSim, World Of Warcraft yadda yadda yadda. They help you recover that data you didn’t backup, they help you connect to the wireless network despite the instructions on how to do so being on the wall above their head.

They ask you “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” and really mean it as a helpful suggestion and have scorn poured upon them for doing so. No really, it’s a good tip, trust me I’m a Sys… umm blogger.

Plenty of SysAdmins you don’t see very often, they are mysterious, they may well spend most of their time in what is known as “The Server Room“, a place that is air conditioned to an absurd level to stop the servers from overheating, it’s cold in there and often dark, but these are the sort of conditions in which a SysAdmin can thrive. When you see them at an office function you ask someone else who they are, and the other person reveals their name, a name you’ve heard of, a name you’ve cursed, the name of the person who put a limit on your mailbox and refused to even consider raising said limit until you’d deleted those funny cat videos.

SysAdmins can in many cases be easy to spot, they are usually the people with their heads in their hands after yet another wonderful idea from senior management undid all the good work they carried out after the last wonderful idea from senior management.

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June 24, 2014

Second Life Can Still Thrive With The Birth Of Linden Lab’s New World

Back in March 2009 Tateru Nino wrote an article for Massively : Give Us More Worlds Linden Lab. The general point of the article was that Second Life should not be the only virtual world Linden Lab managed. Tateru’s idea was that there could be multiple grids running on Second Life technology and that each world could have different characteristics. However Tateru also wrote :

One-size-fits-all doesn’t just doesn’t work in the mass-market. Otherwise there’d only be one kind of iPod. What the Lab really needs is a number of differentiated ‘world’-products, each offering something a little different.

In October 2011, I wrote a blog on a very similar theme : Multiple Linden Lab Grids For More Virtual Worlds. I also talked of Second Life technology being used for multiple use cases and that Second Life did not need to be the only club in town :

This isn’t to say I feel the main grid should close, the main grid is where it’s currently all at and Linden Lab should nurture and cherish what they have, develop it and make that product an appealing product to current and new users who want that level of freedom and creativity, it remains a wonderful idea. However in terms of wider appeal and getting others interested in their own controlled spaces, Linden Lab could well consider making Second Life the technology the option for those who seek it, rather than Second Life being the only product in town on their servers.

Now Tateru and myself were largely talking about multiple grids using Second Life technology, rather than virtual worlds running on completely unrelated technology. However with news of Linden Lab’s new virtual world plans making the news, I really don’t see why Second Life and the new world can’t exist at the same time. They will simply offer different options and appeal to different people. Obviously both worlds will also appeal to people who want to engage with both worlds but this is no different to how things are now with people who engage with one or more of Second Life, Kitely, Inworldz and Opensim. People are also keeping an eye on High Fidelity.

I’m a bit bemused at the reaction in some quarters to Linden Lab’s announcement on the new virtual world. People are talking of how problematic it will be to migrate. They are talking of how they should be compensated for their Second Life land. They are talking of how higher sales tax fees and lower land tax fees will hinder rather than help content creators. The reason I’m bemused about this is because Linden Lab have not announced that Second Life is closing and that people will have to move to their new world, indeed, as Inara Pey reported, they’ve said :

Does this mean we’re giving up on Second Life? Absolutely not. It is thanks to the Second Life community that our virtual world today is without question the best there is, and after 11 years we certainly have no intention of abandoning our users nor the virtual world they continually fill with their astounding creativity. Second Life has many years ahead of it, and in addition to improvements and new developments specifically for Second Life, we think that much of the work we do for the next generation project will also be beneficial for Second Life.

Now I can understand people being cautious about the future of Second Life, especially those who own a lot of land, but I can’t understand some of the outrage at this point in time. I would have a different point of view if Linden Lab were telling people they must migrate, but that is not the case.

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June 21, 2014

Bagman Linden On Why The Virtual World Market Is Ripe For Bigger And Better

It’s a comparison I’ve made many times before, Second Life and World Of Warcraft both sit proudly at the top of their respective classes. Despite technologically superior newcomers arriving, they have both fought them off, they both contain the social ingredient that has allowed them to thrive and enjoy greater longevity than many believed they could. I made the following point in a post at SLUniverse regarding the hurdles a new venture faces :

Second Life has a lot of similarities to World Of Warcraft, right place, right time, and they bagged those interested and despite falling numbers continue to have more than enough to make other ventures jealous beyond belief, despite others offering more modern options.

Along came Bagman Linden, AKA Jeff Petersen, Vice President of Engineering at Linden Lab who on his arrival at Linden Lab introduced himself via a blog post :

For me, the challenges and the opportunities at the Lab are a perfect fit for my background. I come to the Lab with over 20 years of experience as a game developer and engineering lead, primarily in the MMO area. Prior to joining Linden Lab, I spent 10 years working for Sony Online Entertainment doing MMO RPG development (with a focus on the networking, servers, and core technologies), along with PS3 and PSP development. Some of the titles that I worked on include: Everquest, Everquest II, Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Untold Legends PS3, Field Commander PSP, FreeRealms, and CloneWars Adventures.

Bagman disagreed slightly with my comparison of Second Life and World of Warcraft, Bagman feels that virtual worlds haven’t reached the World of Warcraft stage and that Second Life is more akin to Everquest, as he explained in a reply :

It’s interesting that you compare Second Life to World of Warcraft, as I have made similar comparisons myself, but come to different conclusions.

Before I joined Linden Lab a little over 3 years ago, I was at Sony Online Entertainment for over 10 years. I was part of the EverQuest development team for years, and at the time, EverQuest was the biggest MMO RPG on the market by far, and with the revenue it was generating, it was the envy of the industry.

For years EverQuest had similar user engagement and revenue to what Second Life has. I remember well at the time the common belief at Sony and in the rest of the industry was that EverQuest was a smashing success and people would be thrilled to match it.

Then Blizzard came along and created World of Warcraft, a product that was ultimately over 30 times more successful than EverQuest. We can speculate why that is, but I personally believe it came down to the quality and polish of their product. Fundamentally, the game was very similar.

The comparison that resonates with me is between Second Life and EverQuest. Both are similarly aging products with similarly sized user bases. Both at the top of their market segment. Both had countless people trying to bump them off with little success. We know how the story ends with EverQuest.

I believe the virtual worlds market is ripe for their own ‘World of Warcraft’ to come along and show us just how much bigger this market could be. And I don’t think you need to leave behind anything (concept wise) that made Second Life successful in order to see that growth. But you do need to raise the bar, and that is exactly what we intend to do.

Interesting stuff. I haven’t played Everquest, but I can see where Bagman is coming from here. He’s basically making the point that the virtual world market is ready for something really big to catch people and that what’s happened before is impressive, but possibly way below potential.

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