Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with mmo

Griefer article?

monju_bosatsu — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:38:59 -0800

Some time last year I read an article—a first person account, I believe—of a griefer in a pre-WoW mmo, possibly UO or EQ2. The griefer described his discovery that a low-level character could drag a train of mobs across the world and through the main town, killing everybody in its path. The griefer, however, playing a low-level character, could not be killed by the higher-level players. Apparently his tactics resulted in major changes to the game-playing mechanics and rules. My normally proficient Google-fu has failed me on this one. Does anybody know what article I am talking about?

Balance in MMO Economies?

SpecialK — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:48:33 -0800

Game Design: In an MMO, how do you build an economy that will 'balance' itself? Obviously, having solid inputs and outputs are one thing, and balancing those inputs with the demand for the item, but what other things need to be taken into account? I can't seem to find anything that's *written* on economy design in an MMO game, but I know that it's always been a big issue and has caused the downfall of a few -- E&B to name one. So as I start to experiment with code in this genere, I'd like to try to get this right the first time. ;)

I suppose this is true for any artificial economy, and I don't know much about the microeconomics that are necessary to write all the business logic.

LFG in Eve, Mefi Style

heresiarch — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 07:52:39 -0800

I'm looking for an Eve-Online corporation to join, and I'm wondering if any Mefites might have suggestions of corporations that would be a good fit. I'm a relatively casual player. I played for a month a few years ago, and am getting back into it now that there's a Mac client. I'm savvy about MMOs in general, but not looking to grind NPC rats all the time. I really enjoy the social side of player organized events, and I love the breadth of control players have over the economy, stations, long term conflicts, and manufacturing. I love to try different things. I've got about a million SP at this point, most of it in learning and spaceship command, with a smattering in the other skills I need to get things done. Historically I flew a Caracal, but I lost it a while ago and have been shifting gears to trading and manufacturing with a bit of mining, which seems to be a better fit with my play style. (I'm not averse to combat, just don't really have the SP to kill much more than 0.4/0.5 rats.)

Ultimately, access to 0.0 would be nice — but certainly not required. I'm nowhere near comfortable to venture out there just yet.

Really, I just want a community of people I can hang out with, depend on to group up for various kinds of operations, socialize with, and learn from. I'd like them to be laid back, nice, articulate and helpful people. Really, I want a community like Mefi in Eve.

Is anyone aware of a corp that would be a good fit? Is there a corp with a bunch of Mefi members I could link up with? Is anyone in a corp that's recruiting for people like me?

Thanks!

I've crawled the recruiting boards, but they seem too... formulaic. I don't really trust them to represent their own corps style accurately. Plus, I can't claim I'm going to be a super star member who organizes everything and has tons of money, which seems to be who they're looking for.

the sadness of Second Life

cloudscratcher — Thu, 31 May 2007 08:37:53 -0800

The sadness of Second Life, if you know any examples. Bad things that have happened in there, stats about why people leave, anecdotes about what's wrong with it, etc. I'm not suggesting that it's only bad, it's just that it's easy to find a lot talking about why it's AWESOME. I'm looking for counterexamples, is all. There was a post over a year ago asking what's good about it, but a lot's happened since... for example Warren Ellis' "Shipwrecked And Abandoned" post. I'm looking for anything qualitative, quantitative, anecdotal, or whatever you've got.

(Again, none of this is to say that SL is only bad or start a debate over it. It's just to get some concrete examples of what goes wrong.)

Casual player looking for WoW guild recommendations

cyrusdogstar — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:00:50 -0800

Can anyone recommend a World of Warcraft guild that meets my specifications? Follow the bolds for the abridged version :)

First off, I know there's a MeFi guild in existence--used to run its earlier incarnation--but right now it seems like it's moved Horde-side and I'm looking for an Alliance guild. Plus the MeFi guild never stays very large and I'd like there to be people on most of the time - I miss EarBucket and the rest a lot, but it kinda stinks when half the time you're alone in guildchat.

I'm with a good group of people right now, but on a very young server (Vashj) and recently came to the realization that the auction house is piss-poor, and it's making it hard to level since my gear is lagging at 10+ levels behind my own. So I'm thinking of rerolling on a medium (or high) population server where there are plenty of things to buy on the AH.

Making matters worse is that I don't raid and most guilds are all about the endgame - I'm hoping for a group of people more interested in leveling, PvPing, playing alts, and just having fun than in phat lewt. Not that raiding is a bad thing, but I just don't see the point of being in a guild where <5 % of the population is below level 60. and this should go without saying, but there's millions of medium/large guilds medium/high pop servers which aren't all about raiding...but they don't all have b>cool, laid back, intelligent people. Since most MeFites fit this description, I'm hoping some of you have found similar groups of people to hang out with.

If possible I prefer RP or RP-PVP servers, since it usually means about 5% less idiocy from the pubbies, but that's definitely not a requirement at this point. Ditto for my timezone - EST is nice but not necessary.

And I could just suck it up and try to deal with the situation on my current server - for example, I could run lots of instances to get gear drops - but for now let's assume I don't want to.

How to do on-the-fly MMO for chorus practice?

baylink — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:28:12 -0800

Is there a multi-track audio format suitable for chorus practice? That and I've recently joined a chorus, and in my continuing (and usually futile) attempts to leverage technology to make my life easier (since I don't read music that well), I'm wondering if there's a standardized way that you could assemble 5 independent synchronized audio tracks (likely mp3 format) -- accompaniment, and the 4 individual vocal tracks -- in such a fashion that the practicing singer could play it back and either punch out the three voices they don't sing (for learning your part) or punch out the voice they *do* sing (for practice).

I realize that this could be done with something like Multiquence or Cakewalk, but that would entail shipping something like a zip file around with all the tracks in it, which I'd like to avoid, not to mention requiring special playback software (it'd be nice if these files could be played back with J Random Player -- even if that player had to be Quicktime).

Any suggestions?

In a related story, I'd also like to carry my sheet music (and maybe these audio tracks) around on an eBook reader of some flavor; anyone got any experience with those -- particularly as they relate to sheet music?

What's a grognard to do?

jammer — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:31:52 -0800

Help me find collaborative hex-mapping software. I'm looking for a way that a group of people playing a web-based MMO with hex movement can work together on mapping play areas.

The best thing I've found so far is gametable, but it seems a bit crude, and I'd prefer something more wikilike -- or at least something with an online editor, so we don't have to pass map files around.

Does anyone know of anything that might be useful here?

Post-MMO Energy Crisis

Raze2k — Wed, 24 May 2006 13:46:24 -0800

After several years of a healthy diet, exercise and a loving relationship, I got hooked to an MMO and let all three go down the crapper over the course of about a year and a half. On Monday I finally quit and now I'm trying to recover (as silly as that might sound). One aspect of this is trying to get back into a healthy routine. I've always been an ectomorph so it was only after several years of dedication that I managed to bulk up a bit and get comfortable with the way I looked and felt. I mention this because playing the MMO didn't result in me putting on weight; rather, I essentially lost 30-40 pounds of muscle. I'd like to get back to eating healthy and exercising but I find that I'm at a huge loss for energy to do anything. My sleep schedule has been fairly regular for a few months now so I think this has more to do with a poor diet and lack of exercise. What do you recommend to help put me on the fast track back to feeling energetic and motivated?

Second Bore

cellphone — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 14:23:37 -0800

I'm trying to figure out what the appeal of Second Life is. This mostly goes out to anyone who actually plays/uses/whatevers it and enjoys it.

I recently signed up again after using it for a week about six months ago, and am trying to find something I like about it. The idea is interesting to me, but I can't seem to get into any portion of it. What's the appeal?

I can see where if I decided to make textures and objects and "sell" them I could make a couple of bucks a week or something, but beyond that I can't see myself enjoying anything enough to justify the cost of the "money" needed to do anything interesting.

Is it really just an amazing waste of time?