I'm an experienced MMO developer, best known for my work on Meridian 59. I do consulting and contract work for MMO companies.
You can see my LinkedIn profile at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/psychochild
My main professional blog is at http://www.psychochild.org/.
Previously, I detailed some of the pros and cons of levels. Let's define what the goals of a replacement system are, and take a look at why we want to replace levels.
In my previous post, I discussed the history and design goals of levels. This time around, I'll take a look at the pros and cons of using levels in an online RPG, as well as some systems that work to eliminate some of the problems with levels.
One of the common topics on how to "fix" online games is to get rid of levels. It's easy to say, but hard to do; especially if all you know is levels. Let's take a look at levels, their history, and the design goals they accomplish.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. A few additional thoughts: Bob McIntyre wrote: Y ou still need monsters to be more powerful in areas where you expect super-powerful players. One of the assumptions I made was that you wouldn't necesssarily have super-powerful characters. Gains in power are incremental, focusing on giving ...
Part of which was first depends on what you identify as being the important aspects that influenced other systems. Unfortunately, people tend to focus on size as an all-important attribute. While UO was one of the larger early graphical games, it had a core design that hasn't directly influenced many ...
I think maybe the dirty little secret of MMO development is that developers use leveling as a crutch to spread the content more thinly. It's not exactly a secret, and not quite as dirty as you might think. Content is expensive, so being able to keep people occupied longer without ...
Finally getting around to posting a response. I appreciate the thoughtful responses. However, it seems some people have read some interesting things into the article. This isn't a post whining about acceptance or a public display of self-pity. It's an attempt to inform people about an issue I think is ...
