MMO Designer is a blog where I can discuss what goes into designing MMO’s, and look at the decisions that designers make from their perspective and the perspective of the players, i.e. the people who have to live with those decisions.
The idea for this blog came from reading Scott Jenning’s blogs since way back when he was Lum the Mad writing about World War II Online and “taxing his way to victory” as he struggled with horrible flight controls. I’ve also been an avid reader of Keen and Graev’s blog, as they have some excellent insight in the other side of the design equation: the side of the player.
What gives me the right to think I can show you both sides? Well, from the development side, I’ve been working on an MMO for six and a half years now. I was there before it launched and still work on it, making design decisions that impact the players every day. From the player’s perspective I go back all the way to some MUD’s on my Commodore 64, which had a max concurrency of, I think, five people. I eventually got a PC and played Gemstone ][ (still text based). I remember hearing about Meridian 59, thinking it was a horrible name for a fantasy game, and yet playing the crap out of it until EverQuest was released. I once played Ultima Online for nearly two solid weeks over one Christmas, dragging my PC over to my friends house because “Ventrilo” hadn’t been invented yet. I’ve played EQ2, Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars Galaxies (until NGE, but I did try NGE), and of course, World of Warcraft (where I have TWO level 80 Death Knights. That’s a long story unto itself).
So I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say. If you are a Game Designer, I hope to give you some insight into my thinking and methodologies when making big decisions. If you are a player, I hope you gain some insight and knowledge about why MMO Designers make certain decisions that you don’t agree with.
If you have any ideas for topics you’d like me to talk about, I would love to hear it. You can hit me on Twitter on the account , or you can email me at “Topics at MMODesigner dot com”.
