Response to "In Your Own World"

I just have to say I'm pretty damn disappointed. IMHO this article was insulting for several reasons.

1. Players should be willing to invest time in creating NPCs but event GMs can make NPCs at will but still only appear in game maybe once a week, if that.

2. FC originally claimed AO would be superior to other mmorpgs because they would have a dedicated event staff. These guys must get about 4 hours of pay a month.

3. I could understand some of these rules if events were actually taking place in game with more then just 3 NPCs run by the event staff. Instead of setting these kind of rules, maybe encourage or give an officail ok to people who ask to play out these story characters in game.

4. Although there might be a few people who could benifit from the advice in this article, most of it is pretty lame. RPers have been putting events together in other games for years, and had more tools at their disposal then the "superior" AO. Sorry but there's not one thing about AO that is improved over other games in the story/event department. In fact seems to me they've read Origins manual for events/story:

Have most of the story take place outside of the game on neat webpages (AO used video instead of audio, I guess a slight improvement).

Make sure players' actions have no impact on the world or the story. Especaily PvP, make sure its totaly meaningless.

Encourage players to make their own events. Saves alot of money! Of course the players will be limited by time, lack of monsters in their events, unique items and the extras that make events meaningful, but remember you saved alot of money!

If you do actually run an event, make sure that you try to keep it to as few as possible. Only the very few deserve to be involved with actual events. For the rest, just spawn a bunch of monsters somewhere, they'll love it until the server crashes!

End rant.

Hopefully the story and events will improve. The current terrorist plot seems to have potential. However, starting this senario then going on vacation was a bad idea imho.

Bombing? What bombing?

Sorry, my attention span doesn't go beyond 14 days.

Fortunately, Funcom has found some grade A customers that have an infinite attention span, and will be enthralled by the development of recent events if they are 30 minutes or 30 days old!

Hurray for incompetience!

Quote:

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Originally posted by CaptFallout
Bombing? What bombing?

Sorry, my attention span doesn't go beyond 14 days.

<snippet deleted>

Hurray for incompetience!

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I love that last line Capt... lol. Anyway, aside from that, you're right, even I've lost my train of thought about the bombing. They seriously dropped the ball on that one. I can understand that FC wanted to do a cliff-hanger, but cliff-hangers are only workable when there's good pace of action leading up to it.

A word to FC, cliff-hangers *DO NOT* work online. Just look at any past episodic game released. Origin's little online foray of Wing Commander Prophecy comes to mind... or even more recently the "game" Majestic. Spreading out a story across such a long time is difficult, if not impossible. It destroys the pace of it.

The only reason why TV serials could manage to do that somewhat successfully is because each 1hr/2hr episode is a self-contained mini-story by itself. That is, something happens, the characters work to resolve that specific problem, and they reach some sort of *conclusion* for that specific problem, before the cliff-hanger problem appears. And when the next episode appears, they resolve the cliff-hanger.

So far in AO, we've only been given build-up for the over-arching story. The lack of any conflict / resolution makes the current story somewhat dull. I know there are new "dungeons" added almost with every story release. I understand that they serve as a plot device for the overall story, but com'on, they're so loosely tied to the current story, that even Snarf's chicken taco recepies seem closer to the main plotline.

If you can't afford the time and resources to tie it to the videos, at least do so on your news page. We're lucky sometimes to even get that. Instead, we just keep getting *Clan A attacks 2HO*...


Sigh, well, I'm gonna catch my breath and end this rant. I do hope you listen to this at least FC even if you don't respond.


Tap

Remember people that there is an event TEAM at *cough* work *cough* here, so it is not just incompetence,
it's MASSIVE INCOMPETENCE.

Team member 1: Well what do you guys want to do for the next event, I’ve got a progress review coming up so we’d better do something.
Team member 2: Oh, Oh. Pick me. Oh, Oh. I got it.
Team member 1: Ok what you got for us Team member 2.
Team member 2: Think attack. Think city.
Team member 3: I see where you are going with this. How about we hold a meeting and announce that the recent leet fighting has enraged the leet community and they will attack a city. Oh yea , and let’s do something new. Let’s have them attack Rome this time.
Team member 2: I was going to say that. You steal all my ideas.
Team member 1: That just might work. Now I’m thinking about getting a large screen TV soon, so to be on the safe side let’s release a statement saying that all player events must be lame. I don’t want to look bad.

OMG I am agreeing with CaptFallout. The dark times are truly upon us.