Author: Geir Ove Alnes

About roleplay-servers in MMOs

Two articles that popped up on MMORPG.com in recent days both touched on the same subject – roleplay servers in MMOs.

The first one, by Dana Massey, denounce roleplay servers as unenforceable, virtually identical to regular servers and generally a major pain in the ass for those who have to moderate them.

Sanya Weathers wrote a follow-up of sorts, a more interesting (IMO) article concerning the difficulties facing a developer when setting up (and maintaining) roleplay-servers in MMOs.

If you haven’t already, go read both articles, then come back here – I’ll wait.

*hums a tune to himself whilst waiting*

Done? Okay: First off, I’ll say straight out that I think the first article mentioned is too subjective, too extreme and too obviously meant to provoke – roleplayers in particular, I guess. This article doesn’t really give me anything, as I have quite the opposite view when it comes to the continued existence of roleplay-servers. I guess I’m part of the target audience for that specific article!

I find Sanya’s article much more interesting though, as she tries to lay out clearly the problems with roleplay servers from a developers point of view, and ways in which to make those problems less (of a problem). At the end of  Sanya’s article, she lists a number of things which she sees as the minimum required feature-list any MMO-developer should offer for roleplay-specific servers. Having been on multiple sides of that table already, both as a player and as a designer, I started thinking a bit myself, about what features a dedicated roleplay server ought to, well… feature.

Read on for my thoughts on the matter.
Continue reading “About roleplay-servers in MMOs”

Blog maintenance and restaurant criticism

After having just updated to the latest versions of WordPress plus all active plugins for it, I’m experiencing some… funkiness on the admin-side of things. Hopefully it won’t spill out into the actual blog, but with my luck where updates and upgrades are concerned, something bad is almost certain to happen.

Those who wait for pizza have to wait a bloody long time..

Also, I just have to mention this horrible experience a co-worker and I had at Dolly Dimple yesterday. We arrived there at around 8 pm, and the place was all but deserted when it came to other customers. We sat down, peered at the menus, then ordered a best-seller pizza and something to drink. The drinks came, and we drank them while waiting for the food to arrive. Meanwhile, other people had started to show up, though the place could at no point be considered “packed” or even slightly crowded while we were there.

Some amount of time passed. Then, as more time passed and no pizza showed up at our table, we started getting a bit suspicious. Especially considering that the other customers that had arrived after us were getting their food. And finishing it. But we remained calm, collected and patient. At one point we saw something resembling charcoal being taken out of an oven, so we assumed they were just having a hectic day and we’d get the food eventually.

However, sometime after the one-hour mark one of the waitresses comes over and asks whether we’d like something to drink before we go, or maybe some dessert. /facepalm. Actually getting us the main meal first would kinda be a good idea, wouldn’t you think? Turns out they’d forgotten about our order. So they threw some free nacho-chips our way before they went to work on our order. For real this time.

Then, finally, after some more waiting we at last got our pizza. It actually did taste pretty good, and that’s something coming from me who normally doesn’t like pizza all that well… but was it worth 337 NOK ($52,69, split on two people) and nearly 1 1/2 hours of waiting? Not really, no.

About the Laws of Online World Design – Part II

This is the second installment in a series of posts I’ll be making about The Laws of Online World Design, as explained in this introductory post. I will start at the top of the list, and work my way down until I’ve poked and prodded every law in the list, not skipping any unless I really feel like it. In this, Part II of the series, I’ll concentrate on the following law:
Modes of expression

This is the second installment in a series of posts I’ll be making about The Laws of Online World Design, as explained in this introductory post. I will start at the top of the list, and work my way down until I’ve poked and prodded every law in the list, not skipping any unless I really feel like it. In this, Part II of the series, I’ll concentrate on the following law:

  • Modes of expression

Continue reading “About the Laws of Online World Design – Part II”