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Author Archives: Sandra
WoW Donut Has The Wrong Jelly
Cameron Sorden on Random Battle asked a very good question recently in his post How Raiding Hurts WoW More Than It Helps: So why does Blizzard make a community with a majority of non-raiding players raid, given all the problems … Continue reading
Posted in Design
13 Comments
Getting the Most Out of a Test Server
Zubon from Kill Ten Rats recently posted about why he doesn’t use the test server. His points, valid or not, are pretty common-place: I’ve heard similar complaints from other players over a broad swath of games. And that’s unfortunate, because … Continue reading
Posted in Production
5 Comments
Zen of Design: Misusing Bartle
Damion Schubert, an old-timer in the MMO development world, posted an excellent discussion of some common ways that designers misuse Richard Bartle’s taxonomy of MUD players over at his blog Zen of Design. Now I’ve expressed my opinion of the … Continue reading
Shipping Experience
I keep an eye on the help wanted ads for MMO development teams — among other things, it’s a handy way to see who’s doing what, often before they officially announce. And sometimes it’s pretty amusing to read about who … Continue reading
Posted in Production
1 Comment
Are MMO Bloggers Hardcore?
Random Battle is a blog about MMOs and game development written by an editor from Ten Ton Hammer, a network of MMO community sites. So it’s a good source for keeping an eye on the MMO community meta-community, if you … Continue reading
Posted in Community
6 Comments
MMO Theory Everywhere
They say that artists see inspiration everywhere. Now I’m not going to get into the “games as art” debate today, but I have noticed that I tend to see the world through my own MMO-colored glasses. For example, I have … Continue reading
Posted in Design
6 Comments
MMO Live: How Big is Your Team?
MMO games are notorious for their enormous development teams. We hear stories of 80-person teams, 100-person teams, 150-person teams. But setting aside the wisdom of those numbers, what happens to a development team after launch? Most shrink to some extent, … Continue reading
Posted in Production
2 Comments
What Does An MMO Producer Do?
It’s both a running joke and a truism in the MMO industry that no one quite knows what a producer does. Not only is the job description very flexible depending on the needs of the project, but each company has … Continue reading
Posted in Production
5 Comments
Oversimplifying Your Audience: A Real-Life Example
I wanted to introduce the importance of understanding your audience early so I could talk about the many ways in which we consistently fail to do this simple thing, but I didn’t expect to be handed such a clear and … Continue reading
Selling Knowledge: Guides as Revenue
Recently, in my other life as a rabid consumer of MMO-related fansites and blogs, I’ve begun to notice the prevelance of ads for paid fan-written strategy guides. But I didn’t think much about the depths of this topic — or … Continue reading