Wonderland

Free Realms ... the interview

Massively has a short interview up with Free Realms' Creative Director, Laralyn McWilliams. Sounds like the new Sony MMO has cracked at least one of the critical traditional-problems-of-MMOs:

When the game was in beta, there was one server which quickly evolved into 2 servers at launch. Now the server count is at 6. Are there more servers scheduled to come out soon?

We actually have a lot of servers ready in our data center just waiting for us to flip the switch and turn them on. One of the greatest things about Free Realms is that you can take your character to any server, any time. So even as the server load increases, you can still play with your friends wherever you want on any server you want. It really is only a matter of 10-15 minutes for us to set up another server. So we'll continue to do that as the population increases.

Ding! That's a whammy, right there.

I keep thinking Free Realms is Disney - it really feels (and looks) Disney - but it's old SOE in action. I think they might do quite well with this one...

Age of Conan explained

Okay, so I've been hearing quite a bit about AoC: it's got depth, it burns the heck out of your graphics card, it's more "realistic" than most MMOs. Graphic. Meaty.

I was wondering what this meant, and then me ole buddy (and Quake pal and SWG pal) Jadell sent me some screenies of his avatar.

Oh I SEE.

You can play NAKED.

It's all so clear now! ;o)

(Thanks Jadell!)

Age of Conan

Brian C's favourite upcoming title, I think, this. I must say, when I heard there was going to be a Conan MMO, I did groan. Loincloths? Leather bikinis? Arnie accents? Hoi.

But wait. There's some proper horse riding going on in there, in an environment that's looking pretty bloody good.

They used horse mo-cap too!

Avatars are interesting: there seems to be a ton of customisation options - and they're super realistic, like Star Wars Galaxies (although not as handsome). The demo here shows only male characters though, and the single woman in it is a damsel in distress needing rescuing. Ho hum. Where's Red Sonja, eh?!

Overall, this one looks like it'll appeal to Conan fans, Gladiator fans and anyone who wants their epic a little more realistic (but only a little) than WoW. Presumably the lore is going to be way better too, although I'm not sure how important that actually is to the overall success of a game - after all, WoW's lore is frankly diabolical.

I wouldn't mind a gallop about that land, though. Hoo, it looks good.

100+ youth-oriented virtual worlds

According to the Virtual Worlds Management Report, as reported by Virtual Worlds News, there are over 100 youth-oriented virtual worlds already live or in development.

Based on a comprehensive research available through Virtual Worlds News, we've found that there are now over 100 virtual worlds operating or in development with a focus on the youth market (18-and-under).

It's worth noting that, at the younger level, the lines between virtual worlds, games, and social networking blur heavily. If nothing else, it's a fascinating trend at how users are merging their activities into one immersive space.

And here's the list.

MapleStory: 71m members

O RLY? Yes, 71+ million members (worldwide), according to Gamasutra's interview with that dewy-cheeked Min Kim fellow. Amazing. Although no detail on how many actives. Raph wouldn't like that.

Some interesting little tidbits in this interview, like:

It almost seems like, with the wedding system, you could offer the wedding systems from other cultures at a premium, or something like that, so you can have an exotic wedding.

MK: Let me step back for a bit. In terms of localization, I think one huge part of it is the events. I keep saying this, but our business is a service business, not a product business, so one huge part of running multiplayer on the games is that you're running the service three, five, or seven years, and a big part of that is running events. And that's tied to holidays.

Social games are very much about social events - replacing some real-world events, presumably. And why not? It hailed today, for instance. Sod going outside.

There's more too:

I think one of the critical things is going to be how easy it is to add money to your account.

MK: I was just going to say that. You read my mind. Yeah, that's the biggest thing, even for us in North America. We didn't really take off until we got the cards into Target and Best Buy and 7-Eleven.

Over 50 percent of our player base doesn't have access to plastic, between 13 and 17. They just couldn't pay, so we'd effectively lose more than half our business. So that payment side is, I think, one of the biggest battles that people will fight.

The interview assumes a lot of reader knowledge of Maple Story itself, plus the microtransactions environment, and the Korean gaming scene - and doesn't really grill Min Kim on the numbers, which is a pity. 71 mill is a major claim.

Finding love in an MMO: a howto

Jurie sends in a pointer to MMO Couples, a site dedicated to dating and romance in massively multiplayer universes. The focus is on WoW (of course), and it's written by a young Dutch lady who met her Austrian Night Elf online... and moved to Vienna to live with him. She offers up a how-to on handling your online crushings of the romantic kind:

If you have a crush on someone in your MMOG and it looks like it is mutual, you might come to a point that you very much like to meet each other in the real world. In the three years that I have been playing, I have met people who took that step but ended up being disappointed or even hurt. In the end, you can never know if the online chemistry is also there when you meet face to face.

There are ways to decrease that chance. Here are a few tips that I think will help you prepare for meeting the person behind the char.

(Thanks Jurie!)

Disney's Pixie Hollow and Clickables

Pixie Hollow is Disney's latest virtual world for kids, based on their fairies and the fairy-builder they discussed at ETech 07. Virtual World News says,

Disney's fairy-themed world, Pixie Hollow, comes with a line of physical toys called Clickables. Bracelets and jewelry boxes allow users to trade virtual goods and add online friends by coming together in the real world.

.. for safety reasons, according to the Disney spokesperson, who points out that swapping toys in real life means less of a risk of swapping data with strangers. Fascinating paragraph pulled out by VWN on how the Disney machine went about brainstorming such a thing:

We knew that online worlds were going to be a big deal and so we got about 50 of our smartest people together from different divisions and of different job types - marketing people, technology people, designers, even finance people and lawyers - and we had a big brainstorm. [...] We came up with probably a few hundred ideas but narrowed it down to 75 really good ones from the two days. Then we narrowed it down to our top 10 and top 5 and in there was the nugget of the Clickables concept. Then we decided that this was such an important area that we would create a dedicated team around it, called our Toymorrow team that would be a little swat team focused on technology in the toy space.

"Toymorrow". Very clever. The Clickables themselves sound pretty novel, too:

...a new technology called Clickables that we are launching in connection to our new Disney Fairies virtual world. It's a way for kids to take their online world experience into the real world. The core of it is a magical bracelet. By simply clicking their [real] bracelets together, girls become friends in the online environment. And it's safer too because if you had to physically click with your friend that means they were in physical proximity to you, you saw them, and you know who they are.

That is indeed pretty magical - and requires the purchase of plenty of realworld objects. Ka-ching. What about boy fairies, though? There's a missed opportunity..

Horde needlecraft pattern (and the eternal WoW question)

For posterity, this. Many people will have experienced similar, I think. My current UK guild is a bunch of real-life friends, many of whom are new(ish) to WoW (and loving it). A guildie recently wrote:

So, an idle question:
When you hit lvl 70, do you keep earning XP?

Another guildie continued:

.. and, do you keep doing quests? what do you do after 70?

To which (four level-70s) Jonathan replied:

You don't earn any more XP, no, but the XP you would earn from completing quests gets turned into extra gold instead. You'll have a bunch of solo quests to keep doing when you hit 70, for which you get more money and sometimes better equipment as quest rewards. Further progression comes from doing instances to get better equipment which then lets you do harder instances to get better equipment which lets you do raids (instances for more than 5 people, typically 10 or 25) to get better equipment which lets you do harder raids to get better equipment which lets you ..

And there goes your life.

A guildie replied:

When you put it like that it sounds so.....futile....

Another guildie responds:

You see this is the point I lose the will to live...why are we playing this again?

Which led to:

Cos it releases crack from a keyboard while you play as a reward.

He responded:

Finger ingested rock...that's it, I forgot

At which point, I said,

I feel like framing this thread.

...and Kim replied:

And now you can frame it. In Needlepoint.

And she was right:

She made this! And there's a how-to there as well...

Anyone any good at needlepoint?

US sniffing about for terrorists in MMOs

So yes, technically there is a possibility that some so-called terror groups might've decided to use Second Life, or WoW, or similar, to meet'n'greet.

Why they'd want to is another question. Data isn't usually encrypted; servers are most often held in the US.

But I spose the US govt has to keep spending that 67c in the tax dollar on "defense" somehow! This mightn't lead anywhere sensible though. What next, checking Club Penguin? Where does it end?

Guppylife: "an MMO for girls"

Sande had a video link up to an interview with the CEO of Guppyworks, creators of Guppylife, an MMO "for girls" - but the vid's been taken down for some reason. I'm curious though: details are slim but, it's Danish, it has AI, and is about cuddling critters, by the looks of it.

GuppyLife is an MMO for girls. The overall purpose of the game is to take care of the small furry inhabitants of the world, the guppies. A guppy is a small life loving creature with an innocence of a child and a thrill for fun and adventure. Guppies are quite intelligent. With a little guidance they learn to sing, dance, and most importantly be nice to both friends and strangers. Without guidance however, they will pickup bad habits or get sad and depressed.

Heh, bring on the Evil Guppies!

The environment design's pretty fantastic though, eh?

No news of any release date, as far as I can see.