Something to consider, though it'll probably start a fight =( Options

[Pandra]

Moveies last 2-3 hours now? The last time we went to a movie (Over the Hedge) I think it lastest just under an hour and 45.... Dear lord I have my kids attention span >.< *cries*

5 accounts = my account, my son's account, my daughter's account and 2 accounts for my husband. I laugh your concept of college kids having surplus money. No one throws around surplus money like an obessessed parent.

But yah, I seem to find my way into a group of working parents in most games simply because we don't have that time and thus we're pretty much forced to skip stuff ie. we're missing out on part of the fun. That sort of thing builds alot of resentment.

[Radiostorm]

Theatrical movies peak 2-2.5 hours fairly often taking into account trailers and advertisements. Kids movies, not so much, because kids have crappy attention spans. But I was stuck in the theater for almost 3 hours when I saw Miami Vice and Snakes on a Plane recently. I won't even get into the bladder endurance test that was the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Anyhow, I can understand how World of Warcraft can come off as a bit exclusive. Their target demographic, while robust in size, is a tad specific in tastes. Casual players, such as the busy parent (you) or the comitted academic (me) tend to get weeded out.

Regardless, I think there's a lot of things to learn from World of Warcraft that we shouldn't ignore on account of residual resentment.

[Pandra]

I woun't deny that there things to be learned from WoW. I mean it's popular for a reason and Blizzard is making fat bucks from it. But there is always room for improvement. I'm not sure why the gaming industry so often sets it's target demographic for the teenage-college age crowd when there's a much stabler demographic with a deeper pockets just above them.

I know several people who've said they'd be willing to pay more a month for a game if it provied them with better customer service and in game GM support, live content.. ect. All that stuff that teens want and expect to be free 'cause their 'paying' $13.95 a month for the game already... or whatever. But you'd have to tailor your game to appeal to that demograhic. You might have a smaller customer base as a result, but Jerky's already said he doesn't mind being a nitch game.

[Radiostorm]

I agree that the post-college demographic is lot more stable. However, even with the giant expansion of the video game audience in the past few years older gamers are still comparatively few and far between. They aren't a demographic a large company can really bank on.

In that regard, I think catering to a niche demographic is a smart move for Project Wish. We need stability and lack the resources to compete in the raid game arena, currently dominated by World of Warcraft.

[Dwilf]

Given that we are to have one large, seamless world where any one (major)quest can only be done once, thus players' actions count. I don't see raids and instances having a place here. Two groups can't both kill Sinister Bob and his Grizzly Goblins in their own private instances and we still claim to have a SINGLE dynamic, impactable world.

There should be no question about PW being a niche game. RP orientated live content, that was what made Wish stand out from the more succesful MMOs.

[zicyo]

I just keep preaching for the choir here but...I recently read an article on Gamasutra you probably already read (Rethink the MMO, Neil Sorens, http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070326/sorens_01.shtml) and it discuss some of the stuff this thread mentions and found in other threads in the forum.

I am a bit curious on the focus of the project right know, I glanced through Pandras blog the other day and it got me a little worried about not putting in lots of resource to make lore and such. Or has I misinterpreted the situation? Perhaps there are more than meet the eye?

Like Sorens write in the article these types of games often focus on numbercrunching, leveling and looting. Perhaps its because there often are engineers or people whos cup of tea are stats and numbers that have the ability to really create a game of this type? I dont know, but I really agree with Sorens when he writes "It is much easier to balance a fun but unbalanced game" than the other way around.

And most of our games settings resides on inspiration from good stories written by Tolkien, Clarke and Asimov (and more).

I think that if Project Wish delivers a world with freedom to for example chop down trees (as Mole write in the req) and it is done beautifully with a zillion shader effects, dreamers like I would pay an embarrassingly high monthly fee just to be able to play as "Common Woodcutter" day out and day in. And I wont care a second about what level I am or if it is the "Axe of Extreme Cutting 2000" I have in my hands. I just want to see the wood give way and hear the crack from the breaking log with the crescendo of leafs exploding to the ground. And of course some birds escaping from their newly destroyed home (Ill gladly take evil points for evicting harmless creatures if thats required). Im that easy to satisy.

And I reckon Im not the only fool out there, or am I?

Just some thoughts on your splendid work!

[Pandra]

The problem is that previous story team leads didn't feel the need for a large team, I guess because they didn't fully understand how much writting acctually has to be done. When I joined there were five people on the team and everyone was like "that's plenty." Now I have done item, room, and character discriptions for MUDs before but I've never tackled anything like PW. So when I was told, this is enough, we don't have much to do right now, I belived my team lead....

Then I started digging around and found out how much more a MMORPG needs in terms of lore, story, research, discriptions for the other artists to work off of... so much in fact that it seems liek a really impossible thing for five people to pull off, exspecially when all the work is from volunteer hobbiests, most of whom have jobs, school and lives. That's an awful lot to expect someone to commite the same amount of time to a hobby that they would a job. While I expect the quality of what we produce to be better as people are doing what they like, I don't expect to ever see week deadlines when most people on the team can only spend 1-2 hours a day working on the project. In my eyes the only real way to see significant progress is going to be opening up the story team and getting more writters.

That's a point I've been struggling to get across for a while. Right we're somewhat stalled as it's getting into end of the school/college term and alot of our staff has some heavy homework to do, which understandably comes first.

[zicyo]

Then I would like to be bold and ask if you are interested in ideas about world creation and lore and stuff, and where I put them. I would rather send them or post them so just the dev-team can read. Not that they are secret or copyright or whatever, I just feel that discussions of lore often contains precious bits that the player want to discover by themself (atleast I do). Not read in advance in a forum and than experience a year or two later. That doesn't hold for all lore, but I am not the person to judge what others enjoy to experience.

Well thats my opinion.

What do you think Pandra, are you interested?

And if you like what I write I'd love to get assignments from you, being research or what is needed to take one more step towards creating the most wonderful experience ever.

[Pandra]

You can alway PM me through the forums with something you'd like to contribute but don't want to post publically.

If you'd like to join the story team, you can PM me with a request for that as well and I'll have Jerky set up an interview for you.

[zicyo]

You can alway PM me through the forums with something you'd like to contribute but don't want to post publically.

If you'd like to join the story team, you can PM me with a request for that as well and I'll have Jerky set up an interview for you.

To save you some time and trouble I will first send you some stuff this weekend, then you can decide if you want to go through the trouble with an interview. I think its better if I hang around a while first so the expectations don't get to high and I dont deliver (or get tired of it, not likely though :-)

What do you think?

[Pandra]

Sounds like a plan to me.