Category Archives: Design

I don’t have anything against auctions. But in an MMO, an Auction House is shorthand for “everybody sells everything for the lowest price the market will bear.” This is not always good game design. Guild Wars 2 just got its … Continue reading →

Okay, let’s talk about something completely unimportant for a while. This is the tiniest little detail, and it doesn’t make or break the game in any way. But I found it interesting, so maybe you will too. Let’s talk about … Continue reading →

I’ve been surprised by the number of people who don’t realize this little bit of MMO trickery: most houses in MMOs are Disneyland fantasy houses, tiny models that couldn’t possibly have an interior. I’m working on one of the villages … Continue reading →

[Note to pre-alpha testers: a new version is now live! Among other things, Psychology and Art History skills now have content. Probably the biggest improvement is that monsters can now path-find to reach you instead of running into trees and … Continue reading →

I’ve talked about death penalties before — let me bring back an infographic from one of those blog posts. This correlates an MMO’s death penalty with other aspects of the MMO. My death penalty is lenient. My game is first … Continue reading →

[I'm still working on bugs, polish, and a bit more content for the next playable pre-alpha. I just got the camera controls fixed! I also added sliders and settings so people can tweak the camera behavior. Next up: redoing the … Continue reading →

A couple weeks back I talked about how you can pick two combat roles at once in my MMO, and switch them out in town. A comment from David Grundy: Interesting on the role switching. But, why only “whenever they’re in … Continue reading →

[I'm not working on the game this week, instead I'm doubling up on my other work so I can spend a full week on the game next week. But I've had one little anecdote bubbling around in my head. Indulge me, … Continue reading →

My plans for NPCs have been refined a bit. At first, what I envisioned sounds similar to the “Storybricks system” recently announced by Namaste. I’ve abandoned that, now, though, because it’s too convoluted given my time/resource constraints. But there’s a … Continue reading →