Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Kuro]

Enh, the board has gotten a lot more casual-friendly since 2004 (as long as you avoid anything involving the word "arena"), and it's not like he made a seperate thread for it.

The only people reading this are the people who are interested in stuff his crew is doing anyway, and it certainly falls within the bounds of that.

*shrug*

Neat little service, for helping new players in a pre-existing game with an aging populace. I'd be loathe to see it in a new game though. New games need *something* to jog community, and asking questions/getting help from the more knowledgable members of the community is an important part of it.

[Ngruk]

Not sure some of you are getting what it does. If you sign up for the service you are sent a newsletter, you don't have to go looking for it.

The test bed is a very different animal for sure. This product has been in the 'field' for a few years, but the player base as a whole is far past getting the best possible use out of the product.

This product in no way shapes the way you create content, to answer a worry or concern stated above, but rather is another way to allow players to actually know and experience the massive amount of content created.

The point about 'doing it in game' with the quoted gnoll example is pretty much what a quest text box looks like right? We all know how many people truly read all that right?

It's an out of game 'player guide' and I'd argue that based on Prima and Brady Games sales numbers players don't look down on them, they sell. I view this product as a 'live' up to the minute player guide tailored to your players class, race, tradeskill and faction standings.

If you are spending MILLIONS of dollars to create content you are pissing money down the drain if players don't know or can't find it, to experience it. Yes I agree you need to design to lead them there, but if you are going beyond 1 linear path of progression, offering multiple areas at most if not all tiers/levels of play, players are going to miss some/a lot that first time around. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, no one does we only have personal opinions to go by, but if I can put data in front of you that is character specific and relevant, and opens up options to you that you might not have known and those options enhance your game play experience, cool.

[findar]

people need to look at it like a brady strategy guide that updates itself and is tailored for you. makes a lot more sense then.

the hardcore know where to go already but this is for the people that just wander around lost. it's a good idea and on a fledgling product would be great. also if you look around they do hire people that do writeups, so don't think this isn't community driven.

[Ngruk]

The eventual goal is to have hard core players benefiting from and writing content for stuff like this.

The ONLY possible benefit hardcore players could perceive is getting an edge, and getting an edge in this space with something like this means having information BEFORE everyone else, or at worst, at the same time.

I think if you see the product at work on a lower level character, hell I started a bunch of new characters when I first became a customer and the experience was vastly different than I imagined it would be, you begin to understand the power and the potential.

[Drave]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

If you are spending MILLIONS of dollars to create content you are pissing money down the drain if players don't know or can't find it, to experience it. Yes I agree you need to design to lead them there, but if you are going beyond 1 linear path of progression, offering multiple areas at most if not all tiers/levels of play, players are going to miss some/a lot that first time around. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, no one does we only have personal opinions to go by, but if I can put data in front of you that is character specific and relevant, and opens up options to you that you might not have known and those options enhance your game play experience, cool.

Ok, I can see your point. If you're planning to include this in your new game, this would be a very nice feature indeed. Anything that can enhance the player's interaction with the game off-line (ala Eve's training for example) would rock.

[Ngruk]

Oh ya, that's absolutely 100% of the focus. The last thing you want to have to do is alt-tab out to get information from bookmarked sites if you don't have to.

This may not stop that completely, but what it can provide is off line reading material incredibly relevant to your character, level, trade skill, quests, items, PvP, zones, locations and lots of other information that actually matters to you the specific player, and even more so the specific character you are playing.

[Draegan]

You should target your casual players and completely ignore the hardcore players. It'll save you time and effort for something that most hardcore players will ignore anyway as fluff.

[Ngruk]

I disagree in that you don't ever ignore your players/customers, no matter how hard or soft they are. Every niche of customer brings a very different and unique perspective, all have something to offer.

This hits right at the heart of even game design, you can't be all things to all players but you certainly can find ways to service them, the key is hearing what they say through a lot of the noise.

The service itself has literally thousands of articles in it's database to draw from. These were written by players who proved:

1) They could write
2) They knew the game
3) They knew their class
4) They were interested in helping the WoW community enjoy the WoW experience.

The database is continuing to grow with Wraith content as well as works in progress in other areas. If you are interested in being involved drop me a line. It's not a 6 figure salary for sure, but we pay for content created by the large base of writers we've managed to work with.

[Cybsled]

Even hardcore players can learn from even more hardcore players. If you are getting solid information from the best sources, even if you have just a mere sliver of something new and useful to your typical hardcore guy, they will still see you as a valuable resource. Let's not forget this mentality is the type that's looking for anything as trivial as a .5% increase in average DPS for little to no additional effort needed.

[Drave]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

The eventual goal is to have hard core players... writing content for stuff like this...

If you can honestly support a community (forums/IRC with devs/summits, etc) and provide a way for players to receive recognition for their inputs, I could see this going far.

[Grave]

Check PMs, Curt.

[James]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

The ONLY possible benefit hardcore players could perceive is getting an edge, and getting an edge in this space with something like this means having information BEFORE everyone else, or at worst, at the same time.

I disagree, and frankly find that view point of the 'hardcore' player a bit outdated at best.

Getting information ahead of time in WoW has effectively done nothing for the bleeding edge of raiding guilds for just about its entire life. That's why you can have things like dev interaction on the PTR for testing raid content and have no one complain about it; it's simply a moot point. So what if X guild gets to see encounters sometimes months before anyone else -- rarely, if ever, does X guild end up being the ones to pull out world firsts from their ass.

Anyway, a quick reference guide for game formulas, design concepts, gear progression, character bench marks, and whatever else is a tool that every newbie and hardcore player alike would use. The only tools I have right now are 1000+ page threads on elitistjerks.com and wowhead.com.

[Grave]

James makes a good point there. In my former guild I was constantly having to coach the other Rogues because, while the information was readily available on EJ, they simply didn't want to sift through the threads or bother looking for it. If you can deliver this type of information in a concise format that is delivered to their inbox, you may have something that high-end raiders may actually use.

Rotations, proper gemming for various specs, gear choices and where they drop, consumables, etc. are all things high end raiders would value the newsletter for if it saved them the trouble of looking through EJ threads (though, admittedly, some are very well organized and keep all of the information updated on the original first post).

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

I disagree in that you don't ever ignore your players/customers, no matter how hard or soft they are. Every niche of customer brings a very different and unique perspective, all have something to offer.

This hits right at the heart of even game design, you can't be all things to all players but you certainly can find ways to service them, the key is hearing what they say through a lot of the noise.

The service itself has literally thousands of articles in it's database to draw from. These were written by players who proved:

1) They could write
2) They knew the game
3) They knew their class
4) They were interested in helping the WoW community enjoy the WoW experience.

The database is continuing to grow with Wraith content as well as works in progress in other areas. If you are interested in being involved drop me a line. It's not a 6 figure salary for sure, but we pay for content created by the large base of writers we've managed to work with.

Perhaps I got the wrong impression of the service. If you could provide the spreadsheets, the formulas, the gear progression that you see in places like Maintankadin :: Index along with other strats then I can see this being useful. However I suppose you need to first determine if the target is a person that wants that info, because I think if you dump that type of info on a neophyte you will scare them.

I thought the newsletter was something that showed you how to level and where to go etc. My thought was usually hardcore players know that stuff already and usually outlevel or outpace information like that. Most of the time.

Again perhaps I didn't look into it again, but you're saying you're enabling user generated content? Could be interesting.

[Ngruk]

To those that have emailed or messaged me thanks. I'd like to extend the offer to anyone here that considers themselves 'high end' or 'hard core' WoW players. Most of you commented (not that we didn't already know about the 'usefulness' of the AA (Azeroth Advisor :: World of Warcraft Guide) to a large majority of WoW players.

At the current time you're spot on. It offers little for the long time 70, the ranked arena or t5 to t6 player. That's changing and has been.

We are working to add, daily, content for that very player base as well as our WotLK content.

If you are a writer (by that I mean you can talk WoW in an intelligent manner with no F bombs, which eliminates many!!) and are interested in helping to shape this community service product please drop me a line at cschilling@38studios.com and I'll get back to you. We are making a push to get this content in, and up and running, over the next month.

Thanks!