Buying sparkle ponies and levels

Ahhh! What happened!? Will this give me cancer!?

I wrote a comment on Tesh's blog which warrants it's own post

Apparently warhammer are letting you buy levels now, if you want. I think, much like going on a long journey on foot is an accomplishment (yet just involves grinding footsteps), so to are levels an accomplishment and this is a way of buying an accomplishment. But to me - it doesn't seem that big a deal of an accomplishment so it doesn't seem that much of an issue to me.

For the people complaining, it'd be interesting to find out if there is any level of accomplishment they wouldn't care about losing? Like, a really minute accomplishment? Or like someone with a nut allergy, does any tiny bit of accomplishment taken away from them cause massive swelling?


And on the matter of sparkle ponies, it's a kind of interesting (in how it's twisted) situation of supply and demand.. Prior to selling the sparkly horses, there was no supply of that commodity. That increased demand (yes, for an, as yet, unmade product). People wanted mounts. They could not buy them. All demand, no supply. But as it's supplied now, so does demand taper off.

The perverse thing here is that throughout history supply has been controlled by environment - how much food you can grow depended on the weather. Now, how many sparkly ponies you can supply depends on how many you want to release. It instead becomes a corporate game of psychological manipulation of the feeling of demand.

Secret blizzard transmission intercepted

A blizzard presentation to shareholders somewhere in a secret location...

Blizz dev: "Things have been going great and weve got this great new idea for an expansion! We just need three or four million for development, and it'll make us even more money - and given how we make millions each month, we were thinking..."

Shareholder, in a faintly german nazi voice: "...you vew thinkink..."

Blizz dev: "Could we have a few million to make this amazing new game world area...it's bound to be a profitable as every subscriber will buy one for around one hundred dollars a unit and..."

Shareholder: "...we have heard of somethink else you haft made..."

Blizz dev: "..."

Shareholder: "Something called a....sparkle pony?" *the shareholder withdraws thier long filter cigarette, acrid smoke spewing from their lips, and slowly taps the burning ember into a rotten ashtray*

Blizz dev: "Ah yes, but, but we have this new game world idea..."

Shareholder: "Be tellink me...how much did this sparkle pony be costink to develop?"

Blizz dev: "...around five hundred..."

Shareholder: "Five hundred thousand?"

Blizz dev: "*cough*...no, five hundred dollars...and actually...alot of that was the pizza we ordered...."

Shareholder: "So you are tellink me you want four million dollars to make around a hundred per subscriber?"

Blizz dev: "Yes, it's a great opportunity and.."

Shareholder: "When with the mere pittance of five hundred dollars, we could make twenty five dollars from millions of subscribers?"

Blizz dev: "Yes, I know it sounds good, but the game world..."

Shareholder: "I am thinking...I am thinking, yes, you will begin work on a...new sparkle pony. Perhaps a star pony this time, yes? Perhaps one around the theme of...death?"

Blizz dev: "But my lord, I really must protest, we could...gah! gah! *Blizz dev starts clutching at his throat and slowly rises into the air, until his feet leave the ground, he face red as he chokes. Eventually he falls to the ground...dead!*

Shareholder: "You, the other one, your in command now. I want that rebel base found and I want this death star pony deployed now!"

Newly appointed blizz dev: "Yes, lord Vivendi" *bows and hurries away*

*Duh duh duh der da der der da durrrrrrr*

~~~~
Kind of an addition to this.

Guild Wars 2: One step forward...now how about the other foot as well?

Care Bear Stare!

Some press release on guild wars 2 over here at mmocrunch

Taking a quote from it

Johanson spots another flaw in the basic quest design used in traditional MMO’s, “what the quest text tells you is happening in a quest is not actually what is happening in the world.” Johanson mentions that often times the events you are supposed to alter, say slaying a group of goblins that are attacking someone’s farmstead, actually don’t effect the game environment. By slaying your 20 goblins you are supposed to kill, you won’t actually save the farmer’s home, those same goblins will simply respawn, ready for the next adventurer to take the quest, thus, in the game world, perpetually putting the farmstead in danger. Johanson says that this is an unacceptable form of questing. With the new Dynamic Events System, if you don’t stop those 20 goblins, they will destroy the farmer’s house, or oppositely, if you defeat them, they will be gone and the farm will truly be saved.

However, look into this further information and you find things are actually cyclical

I wrote the following comment at mmocrunch and thought it'd make a good post here, starting with quotes from the press releases:

“if you don’t stop those 20 goblins, they will destroy the farmer’s house, or oppositely, if you defeat them, they will be gone and the farm will truly be saved.”

“These events change the world when they occur, but it isn’t a change that lasts forever in the persistent world”

So the farm is saved for twenty minutes, or half an hour, or something?

And their example of Skritt? It makes it sound like you have to go through Skritt, somehow, to get to the ending. Like it’s B in A, B, C and D, where D is the game end. In other words, the bigger picture is linear, no matter how many ways you can approach Skritt.

That said, even with that critique, they still seem to be taking a giant stride ahead of other mmorpgs!

And the non subscription plan seals it for me – I’ll buy it. But I really think this is just a giant stride ahead. In the end, that farm is still put back into danger.

If they could procedurally generate new farms, or have player built ones somehow, and after being saved X number of times that particular version of a farm is permanently saved, that’d be taking the next big step.

The step to actual world persistancy.

But beyond dismantling their missuse of the word 'persistancy', it sounds fun in itself and buying it will help fund actual development of mmo's into something new. Unlike a certain company who, from the millions they make each month after expenses, developed a...sparkle pony. And needed $25 from millions of customers to recoup the massive R&D involved, of course. The guild wars team seem slightly more ambitious than that...bless 'em!