Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Tropics

Gonna disagree. I hate the "steampunk" elements in WOW. I would rather see true high fantasy, which is honestly not all that common. EQ was high fantasy until Luclin, then it was freaking space aliens. WOW was never high fantasy, it was based on the Warcraft series of RTS which had some high fantasy elements but was quite far removed in other areas. Then Burning Crusades came out with it's floating islands in the sky, Zangermarsh aliens, and beat EQ to space crap by 2 expansions.

The most tech I want to see in a high fantasy MMORPG is cannons, and even that is pushing it and I would probably keep them isolated to boats.

I want bows to be the pinnacle of ranged combat. I want to attack things that bleed, not robots with flashing lights for a head such as the numerous quests at Fizzlecranks Airstrip which I just did a second time. WOW's mix of high fantasy swords and bows combined with tech that outstrips even todays real world with robots walking around makes no sense and blows my involvment in the world clear out of the water.

I understand what you are saying, but I think you may be overlooking some things.
Many classical "high fantasy" aspects are based on fantastic technology. Gnomes and Dwarves especially. I can understand, no guns. Its almost like a steampunk with medieval area tech for high fantasy though. Dwarven fortresses that would require engineering far beyond anything we have even today for example. Certainly theres a point where it stops being fantasy, and starts being scifi. But some overlap is going to happen from time to time depending on how you look at it.
Whats the major difference between robots, stone golems and blade golems to you?

[James]

Sounds to me like someone never went to Ak'Anon.

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

For his 'immersion' obviously.

Dude, I worked so hard to avoid the use of the "I" word and you just go and throw it out there.

Technically ya Twobit is right, and I admit if cannons exist on boats of course from a pure tech standpoint they can exist on castle walls and on a battle field as well, and I can accept that if I must. The point was that it is a small step from a cannon to a hand cannon, which was invented in around 1300 CE, not too far from the invention of the cannon itself.

As I said cannons are pushing it, I would rather not see them either. Stick to the timeframe of the dark ages in Europe. Stick to a Tolkien type of world and Tolkien levels of tech, that is the high fantasy type of world at it's peak IMO and I know I am not the only one who thinks so.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Tropics

Dude, I worked so hard to avoid the use of the "I" word and you just go and throw it out there.

Technically ya Twobit is right, and I admit if cannons exist on boats of course from a pure tech standpoint they can exist on castle walls and on a battle field as well, and I can accept that if I must. The point was that it is a small step from a cannon to a hand cannon, which was invented in around 1300 CE, not too far from the invention of the cannon itself.

As I said cannons are pushing it, I would rather not see them either. Stick to the timeframe of the dark ages in Europe. Stick to a Tolkien type of world and Tolkien levels of tech, that is the high fantasy type of world at it's peak IMO and I know I am not the only one who thinks so.

Huge difference actually. Force and production mostly. A cannon doesn't need to be super accurate to be effective. But a handheld rifle does. Then there is the question of manufacturing them. Again, easier to make 1 large cannon, then many functioning rifles. Theres a reason cannons were used for centuries before guns became prolific.
Same reason crossbows where not more popular then bows, despite being better in basically every way. (They shot farther, were more accurate, and reloaded faster, but were more expensive and harder to get your hands on. A farmer could have a bow for hunting, and use that in wartime, but couldnt not possibly afford an xbow.)

[Alarion]

Originally Posted by Tropics

As I said cannons are pushing it, I would rather not see them either. Stick to the timeframe of the dark ages in Europe. Stick to a Tolkien type of world and Tolkien levels of tech, that is the high fantasy type of world at it's peak IMO and I know I am not the only one who thinks so.

No you are not the only one. Fantasy in general (elves, dwarves, battle axes and dragons) has been overdone to death. That being said, I don't think I could really get into a futuristic steampunk MMO. But that's me, and I very well may be in the minority.

I personally think I am wanting the same thing you are - pure fantasy without the sci-fi bullshit. But as someone else stated, where do you draw the line? When does something stop being fantasy and become sci-fi?

But when I think about it, I could probably dig a Shadowrun MMO - I would at least give it a try. And yes I realize this basically contradicts my statement above about steampunk MMOs. Shadowrun is probably the only one I would even give a chance.

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by Caliane

Huge difference actually. Force and production mostly. A cannon doesn't need to be super accurate to be effective. But a handheld rifle does.

Hand cannon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I was not talking about rifles.

Same reason crossbows where not more popular then bows, despite being better in basically every way. (They shot farther, were more accurate, and reloaded faster

Reloaded faster? A crossbow relative to a longbow? You might want to rethink that, crossbows in fact took alot longer to reload then a longbow.

A trained longbowman was also vastly more accurate then a crossbow. The benefit of the crossbow was it's ability to pierce plate armor.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Yes yes fantasy blargh blargh blargh. It's just a skin draped over the rest of the game. Removing robots or replacing elves with protoss won't magically make a game better or worse.

What we're sick of isn't fantasy RPG's. What we're sick of is poorly made games with shitty controls, bad character design, ridiculously imbalanced pvp, terrible UI's and so on and so forth.

I wouldn't even bother picking a setting until you get that shit figured out. Orc or space mutant doesn't matter to me if killing them isn't fucking fun.

Also...

Pro tip: If you find yourself really feeling like a pretty elven princess off to reclaim her throne, seek fucking help. Well designed immersion is about not wanting to put the game down because it's so fucking fun, not about making you feel like you're really a unshaven dwarf with a fake Scottish accent.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Oh and for what it's worth, Tolkien era had bombs. In fact they would be quite capable of creating cannons, bombs and other industrial revolution era technology. Half the point of the books is that the good guys choose to not use the power of the enemy (explosives and etc..., i.e. industry) and that every time they have, bad things happen.

[Alarion]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Pro tip: If you find yourself really feeling like a pretty elven princess off to reclaim her throne, seek fucking help. Well designed immersion is about not wanting to put the game down because it's so fucking fun, not about making you feel like you're really a unshaven dwarf with a fake Scottish accent.

Well obviously if you take it that far, then yes - seek help. But the whole point of a Role Playing Game is to Play a Role, right? So there has to be some immersion there, obviously. I mean, sure, if you want total immersion go LARP with the Lightning Bolt nerds. But still, I don't exactly associate immersion with fun - they are not synonyms.

However, immersion is a key ingredient to fun, at least in my view.

At the end of the day though, I 100% agree that the other stuff needs to be locked down first - the mechanics, class/skill design, combat, etc. Without those in place, any game is going to suck.

And why is that most development shops focus more on the dressing than the foundation? Probably because, sad as it is, it's the dressing that sells the game.

[Agraza]

Incendiary substances and related devices have existed for millenia. They're about as common as poison in politics and war. Nearly all the early stuff were oil-based inflammatory weapons, e.g. greek fire, that were used on the siege scale of government vs. government. Gunpowder became understood in the 9th or 10th century AD and in the subsequent 4 centuries became a regular part of the battlefield around the world as the understanding of harvesting, transporting, and refining the necessary components grew.

It seems to me like civilizations in a fantasy world would have even more impetus to develop explosives than a mundane world. Either that or every king is a wizard. What power does a normal person have against mages and the like?

The idea then should be to imagine that if "magic" is a reproducible fact of life in your world, why not make a cannon that uses magic? That goes to the artificers of M:tG and some of the fantasy/tech mix you might see in a Final Fantasy game like handguns that shoot fire, lightning, and cold. You don't have to embrace steampunk, with it's fixation on combustion engines and clockwork mechanisms to level the playing field between those that have magic and those that don't.

Chemical reactions would probably be a somewhat less popular line of study than just re-creating what mages do on a regular basis. Throughout history we have shown a regular aptitude for tapping natural resources rather than creating something new. It's only now that we've nearly exhausted what we can use in the natural world that metallurgy, chemistry, and genetics are exploding to become the status quo.

[Mippo]

For a niche PVP game I'd like to see one with 3 factions, and the ability to change items based on who is winning the war. If you had Good, Neutral, Evil teams then items would have some statistics that were only useful to members of those teams.

As the overall war progress shifts, the itemization changes as well so items might go from 1/1/1 to 1/2 to 0/0/3 if one side completely dominates. Basically, it would create a slightly different version of the mobs / dungeons that are world accessible so that the loot is best for the team in control of the war. The other teams can still get loot / prevent the winning team from getting loot, but the stats would be skewed in favor of the winner.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Alarion

But the whole point of a Role Playing Game is to Play a Role, right?

By that definition every game is an RPG then. Over time RPG has gotten a broader and broader sense anyways. Pretty much everything is action-RPG now, especially MMO's. It's just a matter of how heavy the influence of each is.

Anyways, my point was that the setting of the game only matters if the game itself isn't a piece of shit. If it were the reverse WW2online would be the best game ever because killing Nazi's never gets old.

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Oh and for what it's worth, Tolkien era had bombs. In fact they would be quite capable of creating cannons, bombs and other industrial revolution era technology. Half the point of the books is that the good guys choose to not use the power of the enemy (explosives and etc..., i.e. industry) and that every time they have, bad things happen.

I think magic and science kind of merge in alot of the fantasy world. Alchemy and it's relation to greek powder can easily be used in a fantasy based MMORPG and not blow the immersion out of the water. I agree with you that fun is a large part of keeping people into the world but keeping people wanting to see the next part of that world, that next zone or that next mob because they enjoy the actual storyline of the world and the actual environment is also a huge hook that cannot be ignored.

[Alarion]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

By that definition every game is an RPG then. Over time RPG has gotten a broader and broader sense anyways. Pretty much everything is action-RPG now, especially MMO's. It's just a matter of how heavy the influence of each is.

I can agree with this on a technical view, because technically no matter what game you play, you are "playing a role". A race car driver, a running back, a army general or just overall asshole.

The term for the genre of games that we currently classify as RPGs and MMORPGs probably needs to be changed. You know, something like "play my cookie cutter character the way the devs tell me too game".

[Ukerric]

Originally Posted by Tropics

The most tech I want to see in a high fantasy MMORPG is cannons, and even that is pushing it and I would probably keep them isolated to boats.

Why develop cannons when your mage team can drop the equivalent of a mini-nuke on an opposing fortress? Who needs poison gas when your mages start doing vador chokeholds on the soldiers?