So over on Google Buzz, Tobold found a nice bit of blogging over at louisgray.com. Basically, we’ve now got a set of  faux FTC Disclosure Icons that’ll allow bloggers to express their material relationship with a company without the need for long-winded text.

Just slap on an icon and you’re good to go!

If you’re wondering who drew these wonderful icons, you can thank Jeannine Schafer for the whole lot of them.

And no, I did not have sexual relations with anyone mentioned in this blog post.

So, Pitrelli won the blog war. Mostly because I couldn’t stop crying at night, thinking about how much it hurt me deep in my heart. So I decided to look for something that represented the entire timeline of our exceedingly short blog war, and found this video. Note: the white guy crying would be “me” while the Indian looking guy would be “Pitrelli.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iON5tExtkHw]

My attention was recently directed towards a post on Kill That Cheerleader, accusing me of being paid by various companies in compensation for my writing about them to various degrees. I’d like to take the time to address this now, as I’m quite perturbed by these statements Pitrelli has put forth.

For the record, I am not being paid by any company to talk about their product. While the offer to accept a paid sponsorship would be tempting should such an offer come to me, I’d much rather prefer getting promotional codes that I can give away instead of keep as that would promote people to try the games they are too afraid to try.

Speaking of games that people are unwilling to try, I do not see Pitrelli attempting to play Everquest 2 to judge it on its own merits. There’s a free trial out there for uninformed fellows like himself to test the game, so that he can see that the game isn’t a “poor man’s WoW” but rather as a game that stands on its own two feet.

Next, let us go on to the Cryptic matter. I personally do not have any qualms with Cryptic as a game company, but I did take offense to the fact that their games have a tendency to lack content. Contrary to what Pitrelli will have you believe, I do not applaud Cryptic for making Champions Online: Revelation free, but simply accept it as the natural outcome of a bad public relations decision that needed to be rectified.

Next, the hugs. There is nothing wrong with hugging. Perhaps, if Pitrelli’s mother had hugged him more as a child, he would not be so maladjusted towards the world.

Finally, let me respond to a comment posted by Kaldeem on Pitrelli’s post. As I am a working student, I have to apportion my funding correctly. This means waiting for bargains to show up whenever possible, and capitalizing on them. I am lucky enough to have a family that supports me in my endeavor for further education, and doubtless you do too, but is it really too much to ask for some understanding on your part? I play games that appeal to me, and move on when I either can’t play that game any more due to monetary constraints or the arrival of a new game.

In addition, since this is predominantly a gaming blog, I have to scramble to find stuff that I can talk about when possible. I accept that not every post will be as thought-provoking as you would like, but then again, not every post can be a masterwork of epic proportions.

Finally, please note that comment moderation will be on for this post only if you are a first-time commenter. While I would like to avoid trolling, I do respect a reader’s need to vent, and will try to respond appropriately as the situation demands it. Please refer to my blog rules for additional information regarding my policies.

Dear Tigole,

Some time ago, you wrote about requiring my assistance as regards creating a more difficult Blizzard game, which you are now branding as Rise of the Leet King. I have come up with some worthwhile suggestions you might use for this endeavor, though I must warn you that these are not original. Instead, I would suggest that, to make a difficult yet financially successful RPG, you would take the most intriguing parts of different RPGs and incorporate them into your worldview.

My first suggestion would be, as you wrote, to “entice” people to level in groups (as in Final Fantasy XI) so as to make the opening months of your RPG more “friendly,” in the social interaction sense of the term. This opening salvo would be supported by the creation of monsters that required  at least groups of three of equal level to the monster to kill, as well as the use of a Group EXP + buff that ups experience gain by 1% when in a group of three or more and scales to the number of players (up to 5%).

As a corollary to this, I would also suggest that you implement a slower leveling curve during the beginning of the game’s life cycle so as to keep people from eating through your content too quickly. Do not make it as bad as Aion’s later levels, but make it intolerable enough to force people to group (or multi-box) to speed up leveling. This has the added bonus of giving you more time to create new content.

To make the game dynamics even more interesting, do not create a PVE world and introduce friendly fire into the game mechanics to force people to coordinate better or die trying. Create a moderately annoying penalty for death, such as EXP debt from EQ2, only make the debt 1/3 of a level large per death so as to make people still want to group together even if they aren’t good at it. If your developers can create it, ensure that there is integrated voice chat on release so that the screams of the dead and dying can be heard on YouTube.

To offset friendly fire, do not give anyone AOE abilities as an inborn skill, but as a result of completing an almost unbearably long quest chain (like WoW’s attunement quests before). Anyone who doesn’t have the (potentially overpowered) AOE ability but still hits a teammate can then be called either a newb or a griefer, and create a completely new system of elitism and player killing within the game sphere that will entice researchers to use up grant money to study the social dynamics of your game, allowing for added revenue and buzz for  RotLK.

My next suggestion would be for you to introduce the idea of lifetime achievements. Much like WoW’s achievement system, the lifetime achievement system would actually refer to things that your character has done which have become obsolete due to upgrades to the game or player choice. For instance, a player who has crafted his way to the maximum level of a tradeskill can earn a lifetime achievement award after either changing his tradeskill for a new one (and thus, losing all his progress but retaining a status title) or introducing a new tier into the game with an expansion pack. This allows players to maintain a semblance of a connection to his character, while inspiring him to grind through the tradeskill tiers of a different trade by buying stuff through the auction house.

In relation to this, I would also request that use the business principles outlined by Gevlon on his blog to create a harsher trading environment on the auction house. Better yet, it may be to your benefit to hire Gevlon full-time as a consultant on all things business related for RotLK, which can include the creation of an auction system AS WELL AS a stock market that determines the value of in-game currency and vendor trash every two weeks based on the flux of items within the auction system and trade NPCs.

Next, as a concession to people who may want to do something other than questing and becoming powerful, introduce player villages into the game world. Have the depth of housing in EQ2 with the instanced villages of LOTRO and you’d have yourself a very good time sink. Allow people to also be able to own non-instanced guild housing, such as castles, which can be stormed by other guilds at their leisure.

Lastly, in an attempt to create an ever-changing landscape for your game, it may also be good to incorporate a stunning idea implemented in Archlord: the literal rise of a Leet King, who will have the ability to make changes to the game system for good or ill. This Leet King will have the power to alter the strength of all monsters (and their accompanying loot tables) to make them all stronger or weaker server-wide, introduce weather effects in certain lands that will spawn different creatures (and their accompanying loot tables), alter the prices of commodities in the stock market and auction house to a certain tangible yet miniscule degree, and temporarily disable non-Leet King storming related or battleground-related PVP across the whole server. The Leet King system can be introduced in a content patch six months after the game has launched, with chances to storm the Leet King castle available two weeks after a new Leet King has been crowned.

The very first Leet King will be played by a developer and can only be accessed after storming his castle, which will have a multi-wing scope similar to Naxxramas. Only after all the wings have been cleared can one head to the throne room where the Leet King sits. As there can only be one Leet King (or queen), however, this poses an interesting question: how do you choose the Leet King?

The answer is simple: the new Leet King will be the player who strikes the final blow against the previous Leet King. While this may be unfair for most people, especially healers, I think this will be well-received by players looking for a sense of ultimate power. You can make allowances for backstabbing your friends or guildmatesthrough the Leet King system by forcing people to fight each other once the previous Leet King is down to 4% health (turn him invulnerable for three minutes as part of a Kingly power influx, lore-wise), but honestly, forcing people to make a choice in their guild as to who would be Leet King would make for interesting stories on the magazine you’ll eventually publish for this game.

In any event, these are only suggestions for you to make a compelling, difficult, yet potentially financially successful MMORPG. I wish you the best of luck with these endeavors, and hope that Rise of Leet King becomes the new standard for harcore PVPers and raiders alike.

-Tobold

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Hi folks,

This is Victor Stillwater, coming to you live from the future. Present Victor is currently indisposed as he was/is writing a paper on the possible effects of dividing by zero and was/is thus stuck in the fabric of space-time between parallel universes. For that reason, instead of the brand-spanking new computer I was supposed to use in December 11, 2010, I am instead using our reliable gaming computer from 2009, which is a dedicated Windows XP machine.

ANYWAY…

I just wanted to update folks on what’s been happening to me, Future Victor, in the year so since the time-space warping or possible reality distortion of Present Victor.  It’s been a pretty exciting year for gamers, what with the many great releases and other life-altering events that occurred since… well, I’m not even sure if there is a “since,” given that I may be from an alternate future reality. Who knows, really?

Anyway, after resubscribing to Lord of the Rings Online, I spent a good couple of months just enjoying the content, trying to get myself to 65. Apparently, Present Victor’s gamble paid off, and there was a Christmastime discount on subscriptions and Mirkwood, so I got to enjoy Mirkwood for a little while.

I also learned to juggle multiple games. I’m not a multi-tasker but for some reason, when February rolled around, and White Knight Chronicles came out for the PS3, I knew I had to learn how to adapt to multiple awesome releases, especially since Final Fantasy XIII would come out four weeks later.  I did manage to finish White Knight Chronicles and skirmish my heart out in LOTRO, just in time for Final Fantasy XIII’s release, and I can safely say, Final Fantasy XIII’s storyline is just as good, if not better than Final Fantasy VII’s, thanks to the inclusion of Day One DLC for Final Fantasy XIII: Sephiroth.

Of course, I had to take a change in subs as I was extremely curious about Final Fantasy XIV, which came out a week ago in Future Victor time. It’s still got some of the nagging issues of requiring some miniscule amount of grinding, but crafters will rejoice, as it manages to enhance the crafting system found in EVE Online and Fallen Earth by allowing people to queue up items to be created through an online application that can be accessed through internet-capable phones.  Best of all, in Final Fantasy XIV, you don’t even need to store items in your inventory to create them! Just log out near a bank and you can craft using anything you have in your inventory AND in your bank vault.

Sadly, I, Future Victor, never got to play Fallen Earth again. Connection issues still remained.

In any event, folks who’d want to try blogging from the future may best be served by writing a paper on the possible effects of dividing by zero and see where it goes from there. There’s a lot of game space out there in 2010, and there’s bound to be a gem or two that I’ve missed, and a couple of dead MMOs that I’ve not discussed for fear of destroying the barrier that surrounds the parallel universes.

Cheers,

The Future Victor Stillwater, who’s reportedly just as awesome as the present one, albeit slightly slimmer.