cheered..but worried

[drugarth]

I think this game could be it, the game we mmorpgers have been waiting for...but i'm worried....
I know i will get flamed for this but i get a sort of "hobby" feeling about this game. I do think it's great that people make their dreams come true and more importantly that creators of these games should be dedicated RPGérs/gamers/fanatasy lovers, iow hobbiests :-) (as a matter of fact of what i've read the current people or ideal for this).
But i'm afraid that taking a look at the scope of the task that 4 people (without big $$$ from big companies to support them) just aren't enough. This game seems to improve on almost every "big company" game in lots of areas. And i hope they can be true to their words (if even half what is suggested here comes true i'll be happy).
But can 1 artist really design an entire world and put it on the screen (iow do the 3-d moddeling/programming etc.)?? and can 1 or 2 programmers really get this world to work?? (I know from experience that when staring at a long piece of script/coding for a while ye tend to read over yer own mistakes). Looking at al the aspects of this game i think a whole lot of coding is needed.
And then these same people also have to be concerned with marketing/publishing/distributing/accounting/hardware/playtesting (with us as a helpling hand i hope :-) and once the game runs also maintaining/bug fixing/improving/expanding etc. etc.
I know i'm sounding like a pessimist (but really i'm cheering for these guys just as hard as the next guy). So maybe ye guys/girls can put some of my doubts to rest, and show me how wrong i am :-) i really hope ye do.

in the mean while..keep up the work guys..and when the game launches and i'm proven wrong ye can all take a swing at me for being such a pessimist today :-)

[vilk]

Take a look at the screenshots section, particularly at the latest ones. If those don't alleviate at least some of your fears, I don't know what will; those few screenshots are the result of a small, dedicated team of individuals that have, so far, come through on all their promises. Yes, it looks that good. Yes, it runs great, but, as beta0 testers can tell you, it has the normal gauntlet of debugging through which to run.

I have seen absolutely nothing from Rich, Rolfe, et al, that would indicate anything but complete devotion to the project. And even if someone just up and quit, fist fights would break out on the boards as people would clamor to try to fill that position.

[BelDragos]

There is a huge support base amongst the posters on the boards that are willing to help.

I really don't see any reason for you to get flamed for asking a valid question.

[Lordosis]

I have a better question: Why does it cost upwards of $8 million to create an MMORPG? People accept that it costs that much only because that's what all the big (and therefore intelligent and always correct) companies say it costs. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there's plenty of fat that could be trimmed off of any team spending that much money on development.

As for the size of the team... I don't want to sound too arrogant here, but I've seen the work most programmers put out, and I would rather have one of me than 10 of them. We're all set as far as programmers go. We're just a little bit short when it comes to artists, but that's only because our artists work part time. When it gets down to crunch time and we need mass art, we'll bring them on full time.

There's another MMORPG in development, supposedly about as far along as we are, that claims to have 50+ people working on it. I don't understand how that's possible or necessary. They'll need 100 times more customers than us to make the same salaries from what I know of their budget. And imagine all the extra problems that arise when you increase the customer base by two orders of magnitude (customer service issues, bandwidth, etc).

I'm not gonna sit here and rag on other dev teams, though. There's room in the market for all the MMORPGs in development as far as I'm concerned, and I hope they all suceed. I'm just saying there's more than one way to go about writing a game. There's the old fashoined, and well accepted, way of finding a publisher/parent company with a fat wallet. Then there's our way (although we're not the only ones using this strategy). Our way requires doing more actual work and less speding of money on extravagantly overpriced booths at E3 (with top quality booth babes of course, they're not free ya know).

/em steps off his soapbox.

[Jouk]

*Thinks back fondly of the days when games like Akalabeth were made in the garage and EA's Wasteland team had less than ten members...*

*Sigh*

[Geoffrey]

It is a valid point however. Let's assume that all the coding and AI work and network planning etc. is all taken care of.

You still have a world to create. Which means planning geography, planting trees, seeding wandering mobs, etc. You have to create cities, including creating NPCs that hopefully are more interactive than what we are used to in MMORPGs today.

If you've got a world of any size at all, you've got lots of work creating the surfaces and the textures to cover them for an entire world.

There's probably nothing in and of itself that is beyond the dev team here. But there's an awful lot of "grunt work" to be done that will be very time consuming, unless you have some shortcuts (like using a computer to randomly generate terrain). Even so, it's awfully hard for just four people to produce a world this big.

Here's hoping you succeed! :)

[Lordosis]

Aye, there's no denying that it is a LOT of work. Our terrain textures are, in fact, generated in software based on rules the world designer lays out (we call them "ecosystems"). Little tools like that allow one person to do what appears to be an immense amount of work. Now if I could just find a tool that generates an MMOPRG... :)

[Binzaf]

all i got to say, like your thinking Rich. Quality sounds like a rule for you, not a goal. :) *claps*

[BelDragos]

Just check out the screen shots if you want a glimpse of the quality.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

From everything I have heard from BHT over the last year, they are dedicated to quality first. Their people who have played all the big MMORPG's and decided like the rest of that all were lacking and decided to do something about it, create their own and show everyone it doesn't take a tons of money to make. Even with all the bugs we're finding in beta, its still fun to see the world and the quality of graphics is great. Just don't let us rush you too much, even though I would like Arcanity to be done tomorrow(sigh).

[vilk]

If you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to me, Kymeri, containing exactly $3,000.00, I'll talk to the Arcanity faerie and see what she can do.

Of course, the Arcanity faerie is the guy who hangs outside the office building drinking whiskey and making drunken boasts regarding some supposed great skill in C and a language he calls "Bourbon++".

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

(sigh) Alas, I do not have $3000 dollars to spare or I would send myself to California myself to make sure Rich, Rolfe and the boys had no distractions and were faithfully chained to their comps where they belong.

Ready for a change of diet yet Rich? Are you getting tired of the Dr. Pepper and HoHo's yet?

[Lordosis]

Even more than the change of diet, I could use a change of underwear, I've been chained to this desk for months!! :eek: I thought you forgot about me and left me here for dead.

[Jeff Walters]

I know this has probably been asked before, but what tools do you use to make the landscape, 3D objects, etc?

[Thirty]

BTW. im in Anarchy Online beta (ok, its actually called retail, but nobodys fooled), and one of the chief problems (besides optimization and memory leaks) is making servers that work. THye are the second MMORPG that has thried that 10,000+ on one world thing (the first being WWIIOnline), neither has had all that much success. Their method seems to be to have one area on one or more seperate servers, I think, rather than distribute the load over the servers. At least thats what it looks like, when you cant get into this one city for 12 hours from the zone right next door.
Im guessing that the current crop of MMORPGs (UO, AC, EQ) use one seperate peice of hardware for one shard, or at most only a few, hence being able to hold maybe 1800 on one shard before it gets very laggy. This works, but only by allowiing only so many in one shard, and not allowing everyone to be together on one world.
I hear WWIIOnline will finally be able to fit 10,000 on one world, maybe, but AO is having problems, some areas (mostly cities) dumping you out, lagging, or not allowing you in if there are too many people there. They had an open beta, which didnt go so well, since it still had problems before they went live, and it may not have been big enough since it depended on enough people being able to download a 600 megabyte file from overloaded severs in Europe that usually didnt have resume download capabilities.
Anyway, you may need to have an openbeta big enough and long enough so that LOTS of people (hopefully as many as you actually want in retail players) are able to stress those servers and connections enough to actually simulate actual retail play. AO's openbeta was cut short by their retail shipement deadline, as well as the problems of actually getting the software. You may also want to test out the account server (secured, AOs was unsecured for a bit after the game went live), patch server, sign in server etc, all problems AO has had, and I believe WWII as well. Personally, since it is the nature of all MMORPGs to have patches, Id like to see many small patches distributed over time (EQ style) than big patches say once a month (AC style). This would mean seperate code changes bugs wouldnt get mixed in with other changes bugs, making it easier to fix, and it would greatly reduce load on servers. Also, if like WWII 60MB patch) and AO (several adding up to say 12-15 MB) you need to patch the CD retail version even when it is first put in, you should have as many separate mirrors as possible, with some at least having patches broken into may smaller zipped peices for the narrowband types. Later on in retail, as new players come in after say 6 months or longer of live play, you will definatly want this, as the online patcher could take too long for many people to get it, and it tends to clog bandwidth needed by actual current players, causing disconnects and lag.
I just dont want this thing to have as many problems as WWIIOnline and AO are having server wise.

Oh, and for you betatesters out there, this is a MMORPG. The first word is massive, that means massive code for both the client and servers, massive amounts of different hardware combos for those clients to have problems with, massive amounts of data going back and forth from those servers and clients trying to crowd past all that other data from/to/and between servers etc. Result, a massive amount of things that can go wrong. Thats why you may need a strong consitution to put up with it in beta. Thats also why it may be a good idea to have a final openbeta that is big enough and long enough to actually cram as many of those different hardwares full of Arcanity and have em try and play to actually catch the problems before retail unlike say AO and WWII where many of these problems (mostly server and memery leak ones) are still around.
Oh, and developers, I suggest you make a form for all betatesters to fill out with the info you need on their client side hardware and software. Basic stuff like make and model of their CPU and videocard at least, more detailed stuff like driver versions, OS versions, even more detailed like what they may have thats overclocked, maybe even real detailed like what version of nvcore.vxd they have. basically, any detail of their system you might need to find a client side problem (including its connection). This could be by filling out a form on the website which can be automatically included with submitted bug reports. That way, when it crashes or something, you at least can see if there is one type of system that Anarchy doesnt yet agree with. AO beta also had something that saved the crash report, that might also be a good idea. Its also a good idea to make a form with what sort of info you want in the bug report, AOs was a little sparse in that regard.

[Kintoun]

Simple and short... Good thing Arcanity's not aiming as high or near 10,000 players.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

OK, Ok, I'll unchain you for just alittle bit, your office is beginning to smell a bit ripe. I'll even get some of my followers in here to clean up abit. Don't even think of trying to sneak out for a look at the sun, I'm having you guarded. It would just upset you anyway. Shower, change the undies and back to work. I'll switch out the Dr. Pepper and HoHo's (although they're my favorite) and give ya Snowballs and Water Joe (caffinated water, shhh what will they come up with next).

[Nadger]

if arcanity makes it all the way, and is a success, it will be a MAJOR lesson to all other game dev companies, and could quite possibly change the gaming industry

[BelDragos]

And we were in on it from the begining!!!

[Dilvish]

Well I am a little biased, since I am on a team that has been in development on a similar game. Since I am friends with Rolfe and Rich I will not insult them by placeing a crosslink to our site :)

Anyway, there is something that happens to game makers when the money people get involved. The budgets bloat, the pace of work slows down and the creativity gets stifled. Large budget companies do have an edge in the sheer amount of modelling their staffs can produce, but throwing money at a MMORPG has little effect on gameplay and design.

People are hungry for new and better worlds, and that is not just the power gamers, but the new crop of gamers that are discovering the rich possibilities these new worlds can provide.

With UO2 cancelled, Horizens and AC2 far, far out, that leaves Shadowbane and Dark ages of Camelot as the closest "new" crop of MMORPG's. Shadowbane looks to have a very tight market focus. DaoC I think will do very well, and in fact I am looking forward to visiting their world when it goes live.

But I think that games with real depth will be from small innovative companies that are not afraid to try new things. Its amazing to me that the genre is in its infancy and yet it already seems that there is a "rut" which concentrates on combat at the expense of the more social aspects of the game. I think there is a misconception that the market are Quake Arena converts, instead of 30-40 year old men and women looking for new things.

Its true that "massive" inplies a number of things, but one of the issues with the larger companies is that they are still selling thier games through retail channels. That means they have to make a deadline, ready or not. And it also means they have to handle...all at once....all the people who buy the game off the shelf! So there is no staggered rollout feasible. You have to start out with all the bandwidth and hardware to support a larger number of people than have ever before in the worlds. There is a reason why the beta tests for these games are not of the size to rival full customer loads... the cost of maintaining all those "free" players for months is extremely high, so high in fact that even companies with deep pockets don't do it.

So that brings us to the little guys, the small development teams with bright talented people. Rich is completely right...sometimes big money does not mean the best and brightest. And lets not forget that Turbine and Verant were nobodies when they started building their games. Turbine in particular was a small bunch of people that basically worked themselves into virtual bankruptcy building Asheron's Call. Smart tools and automation can make a world of difference in being efficient with the resources you have. But small game makers also have several advantages over the big companies. They can go online with as many servers and as much bandwidth they can afford and take only the number of customers they can support with that hardware... then ramp up their customers as money comes in. No so with the big guys for reasons I have listed above. Another advantage is that the small companies can be more innovative, designing worlds which may be too risky for the bigger companies to try.

Anyway... enough ranting from me!

David Yazel

[Geoffrey]

All the reasons that you post, Dilvish, make keeping an eye on the small, fan-based games worthwhile. There are a lot of innovative people out there.

Sometimes the small developers do make it to the big time. Look at Funcom-8 years ago they had nothing. Yet, despite all the problems they are having, Anarchy-Online has made it to retail, and will continue going for the foreseeable future.

However, for every prospective MMORPG that makes it, there are far more Hero's Journeys, Dawns, et. al. One thing that is hard to deny is that games with the deep pockets of a Sony or a Microsoft behind them are far more likely to see the light of day (and sometimes, not even that is enough, witness UO2)

I do think that over the next ten years, tools will evolve which will allow MMORPGs to become much easier to develop. Ideally, it will become similar to developing a text MUD. Ideally the hardware and network connections of the future will evolve to the point where running a small MORPG will be fairly inexpensive. Then, only the largest and best maintained worlds will be run for profit. Hopefully there will be many others that are run not-for-profit or even as a hobby, as many text MUDs are today.

We aren't quite to that point yet. Creating worlds, even for a small userbase, is extremely expensive, both in development costs and maintenance. So, even as we cheer the devs on, it is appropriate to keep a healthy skepticism.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Dilvish and Geoffrey, you state exactly why I have been following this game for almost a year. I want a totally immersive game, not just combat and quests. I want the trades, the social aspect of growing town, society influencs, the uncertainy that if I travel I might be waylaid. All these things attract me to Arcanity.

[Talka]

No offense to anyone or anything, but the reason I'm here is that in a small MMORPG with a small amount of people, there can actually be some role-playing, great events (Rich and Rolfe, if there are no good events, I will lock you in a cellar and forget about you... hehe...), and most importantly, a community.

The thing that people find attractive to MMORPGs is having their own 'character' and advancing him, and showing him off. That' pretty much one of the most basic reasons we're here. We're the small percentage (hopefully it will get bigger later) that thinks that role-playing is a very nice way to 'advance' your character.

A game I play, Nexus, tried to make the game that was perect for me. On their websites, it says the game has these -

A friendly community - It was friendly until Nexon ran out of game managers, hired a guy 'Kismet,' and ruined all aspects of role-playing, thus shattering any hope of a "friendly community."

Anime emotions - Ummm... emotions are good.. they don't have to be Anime though..

Asian mythic world- Umm... any world will do nicely..

Weekly events - At first this was great. A few months later it was good, and the events came monthly. A year later it was OK... the events were very infrequent. Now, 3 years after it started, there are no more weekly events, but recycled events that come once every 6 months.

Evolving game-play - This is good. Its the only game I've seen that effectivly makes mages fun. It doesn't take 'time' to cast spells, you just do it. Its VERY difficult. To stay in a group, you have to paralyze in entire room full of creatures in 3 seconds, vex or venom them in 5, and ASV (Cast Armor, Sanc, and Valor on your group) your group. It was more fun then any MMORPG there is currently.

User interface - It was good, not important though.

If a cmpany can do those things (Minus the asian mythic world ;) ) it will be fine.

Quickly, here's a link to a Nexus fansite. It links to the events. Read these events. These are the type of events I'm talking about.

http://www.tswolf.com/photo/reports/index.shtml

Look threough the list, some are events. These events are the most fun ever.



Looks like I got a little off topic.

Oops.

--Talka

[Lordosis]

Nice to see you on our boards, Dilvish. We see eye to eye on so much of the business side of MMORPGs. We're going in completely different direction with the code, though :)

I think the main thing to remember is that the big companies (or the small companies with big money backing them) have completely different goals than the independent studios. The big guys are considered a failure if they don't get 100,000 customers. So that is their main goal: to get as many players as possible as soon as possible. The main goal of independent studios (well, I can only speak for us and Dilvish's team) is to make the best game possible within a reasonable amount of time. That's a fundamental philisophical difference that I think will be obvious in the end products when all these games are released.

[Wasp]

Ahh...a great read, thanks Dilvish and Rich.

[Thirty]

speaking of a good read, here a link to a new artical for a mag by the developer of some early MUDs, UO, and now Star Wars thingi
http://www.cgonline.com/features/010718-i1-f1.html

Interesting, possibly usefull.

[Bruxail]

Dilvish, I guess I am one of those misconceptions. I am 42, played games for a long time, have been a programmer a long time, and constantly look for games that offer new ideas and have a little meaning.

Some games are exciting at first, but fall into a rut of hack and slash to get the best items in the game. Bah. I need more than that. I want my character to have meaning and purpose. To me, the only thing that keeps other games alive is the lack of other good ones on the market. There are other reasons, I imagine, but I'll leave it at that.

Anyway, a lot of people I meet in online games are young, sure. However, there are many my age or older that are looking for the game to offer them something as well. The problem is that the games have to offer much diversity to accomodate the h-n-s people and the ones who want to be merchants, adventurers, trade skills people, etc. Furthermore, they need to offer this without the hassle of being killed by others every 5 seconds.

Just some thoughts of mine which may not express the opinions of others.

[Indigo]

I agree with Bruxial lets shoot for good instead of massive:) I am very sure there are a load of frusterated roleplayers out there looking for a game. I cant tell you how many times I hear an eq/uo/ac player tell me they only stay cause there is nothing else. They want to roleplay.. I know personally Im sick of massive multiplayer ooc worlds where the topic of the day is whatever the loudest individual spouts..What will make this game special is Roleplaying and the ability to write yourself into the history of the world. If there is anyone that can pull this off its the folks at Brick House. At least they have got the right idea from the start:) Anyone else hear that Eq is opening up manditory rp servers? The market is there and if the world works right most of the good rping wont be from the npc:) I have been gaming for a long time.. and have yet to find an online that even comes close to sitting in your living room with friends, staying up all night, and running an adventure.
Fingers crossed.. this is the one:)

[haerik]

IMO BHT has the key to success in mind. Given the skills of the Dev team and their ability to create a world most of us have only envisioned, the unnecessary bloating of the company or selling out for short-term money at the expense of creative control would compromise the future of the game and possibly be an early death knell.

I am amazed and impressed by the progress thus far and I will admit a little nervous that a quality content rich game could actually come to market to take me where AC UO and EQ could not.

Keep up the good work guys and if you need some new boxers Rich I could mail you a fresh package...

Noone should go for months w/out putting on a fresh pair :D .

[BelDragos]

One of the things this game has going for it is the level of community that has developed during the past few months between members. We have stuck around giving our ideas to Brickhouse and they listened to us.

There is not a better way to build a base of loyal players!!!

Role-Players generally tend to be better than average in intelligence and we can see through the other companies' attempts to create barely adequite systems. That is why we stayed with BHT.

Rich and Rolfe have been up front with us from day one.

[Thirty]

You just hafta watch that you're prepared for what the players do. I've heard UO was designed to be one kind of game, and quickly turned into another when players overran the carefully constructed ecology and just generally behaved different than the devs had expected. You might carefully construct a world only to have a hord of power players come in and kill everything (even the roleplayers) and end up with an empty world.
You just hafta be prepared for whatever the players do, and dont ever expect that they will be self policing or anything. Giving them tools to do so will help a little, but maybe not as much as expected, since the policemen may end up being the crooks.
Iv heard UO was designed for roleplaying, but ended up being called "a grand social experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong".

And some of the players gain power and get farthur than enyone would expect. Its happened in every game I believe, in AC I think the players are still a bit ahead of the devs.