Multiboxing should not be considered in game design ???

[Dominian]

You can fill your mmo's with tons of good stories,epic areas,good gfx etc etc but if the gameplay fails the game simply falls trought. Who wants to spend years after years on a game that looks good but isnt fun to play?

Blizzard showen us this with Diablo,starcraft and WOW.

Why did AoC fail?

It had everything and damn what a potential it had tobad it simply wasnt fun to play, sure it had bugs but would everyone left if it was FUN to play? nah

[Hor]

I'd like to see more innovative play like Guild Wars, having your own party of AI bots as an option is cool. The game all over though isn't that exciting. That's the problem as stated above, you can't live on features or graphics alone. The game has to have substance, flavor. Look at classic console games, old NES and even Atari games had some of the most laughable graphics, ever. But ... even now some of those games are still playable, some more than just playable. Why? Because they were/are fun!

[Bigfish]

Throwing big names at people doesn't necesarily mean they will produce something good. Just being an MMO doesn't entitle a game to massive fandom, profitability, or quality. More often than not I'm stuck wondering why I should play game X over game Y, and as yet the only game to make me switch has been to WoW from FFXI, due to the ability to solo to the level cap isntead being stuck LFG to get any thing done.

Thus far, I haven't seen anyone really take up the challenge of trying something new. Just the same old tired "we PvP HARDER than that other game!"

[Malekyth]

hahahah i agree with fursphere's first comment this thing is doomed

Erm, that's a very impressively typical response, but you don't really have a clue. I know a few of the guys there, and gather that 38's staffed mostly by hardcore game-obsessed industry veterans, and is fortunate to have tons of funding and a bit of time to figure things out. I've been doing this for about 10 years and in my professional opinion, 38 is in a sweet position to make something awesome. Any developer should be so lucky. They're far from doomed. Pfft.

Multiboxing as we understand it isn't really a practical consideration in game design. Not for the reasons given by the Haters™, but because there's usually so much to do and account for and polish that a feature set directed at a tiny number of players will make it to the chopping block by the first milestone. You'd be surprised at the tons of more important or more widely-appealing features that don't make it into the final build. That we have /follow is pretty much all the multiboxing support we can hope for, sorry.

[Gorthu]

I would just like them to state in the TOS that mult-boxing is a legal form of play and educate their game masters about it.

[Malekyth]

I would just like them to state in the TOS that mult-boxing is a legal form of play and educate their game masters about it.

Yes, please! A lot of them seem to know this, but too many others were not present at that meeting.

[Bollwerk]

Flight!

You were on Bristlebane back in EQ as I recall. Your name is so familiar. Were you in AO or another guild like RoV, CoL, Club Fu?

Remember a Wood Elf bard named Alumriel? (that's me)

Nice to see you around here. =)

[Starbuck_Jones]

Best of luck to this group.
Wasnt Shilling the eq player that like to go in game and let everyone know he was someone famous, do interviews and post on msg boards about it too?

WoW has proven time and time again its not all about the greatest and latest graphics to be successful. It helps. But im betting the average hardware of the 10mil+ people playing wow is not top of the line stuff and wont play these games in an acceptable fassion.

Grabbing a licence doesnt mean success either. Look at SWG, Connan, Warhammer, Matrix, LotR... Even original content doesnt work either. Tabula Rassa and that one game by sigal that SOE bought.

If I was asked to be a part of this group, I would not jump right into a MMO. I would take a book out of Blizzards book. Build a single player game with great multi player capabilities like starcraft, warcraft, diablo. Offer a free online service with pay as you go services, (battlenet) and get your feet wet that way. I think any company that hasnt already broken into the mmo world is doomed to failure period at this point.

Reason is with WoW's success and quality track record. I conclude that one of the major reasons no other game has had any great success is because the quality isnt there. Why pay for another game thats not finished, polished etc when they can play wow, EQ or EVE?

[heffner]

I don't think multiboxing is something any company is going to spend much focus on. There just isn't the player base for it, so why waste money? It makes no business sense. Regardless, everything that makes playing as a group will work in favor of multiboxing [in general].

I am amazed that the FoH forums are so active still. Does FoH as a guild still exist??

Also, I think there is always room for new MMOs [which take years to develop anyway], however timing the release is important (i.e., Vanguard would have been more successful I think if it hadn't released when Burning Crusade did). I imagine many people get tired of playing the same game for years. Look at WoW, I have a feeling that many people are already "done" with the expansion but don't have any alternatives they feel happy with ATM. I don't think many new players would be interested in starting fresh in a 10 year old game like EQ either. Talk about impossible to catch up!

Game developers need to learn why EQ and WoW were so successful and just mimic them and add some new twists. For example, instances are very important to me now. As an ex-EQer I don't think I can live without instancing as implemented in WoW. The whole e-peen image is fairly important too. Back in the day in EQ you would know who accomplished what. I think that excited and drove people to try to meet those accomplishments.

Anyway, the more the merrier IMO.

[puppychow]

Sadly 38 Studios first MMO is allegedly going to be a fantasy MMO. Which is slightly ironic, since Blizzard's next MMO is probably going to be set in the Starcraft universe. Hopefully Bioware blows us all away with their Star Wars MMO. I wouldn't count too much on the stargate MMO, I'm in the beta and its pretty crappy (and rumors constantly abound about the company being this close >< to shutting down, which sucks, since I am totally gay for anything Stargate)