[MUD-Dev] Online Games Fighting Terrorism

Vincent Archer archer at frmug.org
Wed Dec 11 00:34:49 CET 2002


According to Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com:

> waiting. You should see the lengths people in Europe go to in
> order to pick them up within reasonable time (it gets old waiting
> 1-2 months for an expansion pack when these games are about
> competition).

The latest expansion from EQ made this even worse.

The newest expansion features a new gimmick (well, new for EQ, that
is): character flags. When a character performs a specific quest, it
gets a flag which is used to open up other quests, or areas of the
game.

Enter the specific nature of the expansion. It's a semi-linear
expansion: there are basically 4 tiers of 4 zones each, and an
end-game zone.

Here lies the catch: you have access to all the 4 zones of the first
tier, but need to get "flagged" to access the others. And, in most
cases, you need to defeat a boss of the zone to get that flag.

Here lies the urgency of getting the expansion ASAP: if you get the
expansion one month or two late, guess what? Your guild has already
fought the boss two or three times flagging every guild member
except you for access to the 2nd tier. So you get told "when we have
time, we'll get a raid for your flag". Meanwhile, they're hunting in
a zone you don't have access to, and possibly raid the boss there,
getting flags for the 3rd tier... all the while you're stuck behind.

And good luck trying to attend another guild's raid to get the
flag. Given the competition for "spawns" and all kind of high end
content, no guild is going to flag "competitors".

So you slip behind the bulk of the guild, and further and further
behind.  Get the expansion 3 months after everyone, say goodbye to
your guild.

TBH, this year's expansion release in Europe was delayed chiefly by
the launch of the localized EQ at the same time.

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)

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