I know it's been a long silence. It's certainly not due to lack of things to write about. Actually, I've been dying to write about the events of the past few days. I've been staring at this line on the ground since last Tuesday, but until now I could not bring myself to cross it. I'll try to explain it as I catch up.


Good technology

On a mundane side, the PJB-100 is simply the best personal music device, ever. The software is merely sufficient, and the usability adequate, but even with that tepid assessment, this little box is a miracle for music lovers. It is small and light, and easy to use. It can contain about a 100 hours of music, and play all day (10 hours claims the manufacturer) at a nice robust, subway-conquering volume. Basically, plug it in at night, carry it with you during the day, and it's always ready to play you music you like. I've only managed to shove about 30 hours on it so far, and already I'm listening to songs from my music collection that I long since forgot about, but still really like. I put this little box on shuffle, and like a deck stacked in your favor, it keeps dealing winning hands. Even the headphones that come with it sound great. I thought I'd use my little Sony earbud headphones, which are less dork-like than these large Koss folding headphones, but damn it, the Koss headphones sound so much better.

Sure, there are a few rough edges. Play list management could be a lot better. The shuffle feature tends to hiccup the last 2 second of each song. Downloading CDs is easy, but downloading individual MP3 files is time consuming. The unit is upgradable (and the source code is available too), so it can only get better, really. The biggest drawback, though, is it requires a Windows PC. There's got to be a Mac music lover out there who can code who can look at the PJB source code, and figure out how to make a Mac Jukebox Manager...


EverQuest is EverClean

Verant, the Sony group that runs EverQuest, banned a player for writing a role-playing story that allegedy involved a rape of a child. The story was posted to a message board not run by Verant or Sony. Verant said it was a "copyright issue," associating Verant's intellectual property with material Verant found offensive. Now, I can see them asking the player to remove the story, but banning the player? Sounds pretty facist to me. Somewhat ironic, that Verant finds that story offensive, but has a quest in the game involving the murder of a pregnant woman. EverQuest isn't Disneyland, but those folks at Verant have their standards. Kill the unborn, but don't rape the underage. Glad we all know where they stand. I guess all those torture chambers and heads impaled on spikes portrayed in the game shouldn't give you any ideas. I suppose in EverQuest, the evil that threatens the lands is a cheerful, inoffensive kind of evil.

So next time you think the folks at Delta Tao are wankers, keep some perspective. It could be much, much worse.


The wheels of progress turn slowly

Between playing with my PJB-100 and enjoying various cultural offerings of Manhattan, my various development projects languish neglected. clanlord.net will get some attention soon, since it really just needs a little bit of attention to take it to the next level. Puddleby Express involves code, code and more code, and that wonderful object-oriented insight I got during my last coding push seems like a distant dream. I really need to carve out an hour a day to code, no matter what. Otherwise I lose my mental place.

Some motivational issues are compounded by my over-all diminished interest in Clan Lord. Usually my clanning fires would be relit by a close friend of mine who always a had a tireless passion for the game, and whenever I'd see her, she'd get me involved again. Now when I see her, we briefly commiserate about our mutual lack of inspiration. For some reason, I find her diminished involvement more troublesome than my own. She keeps telling me to get my ass in gear with Pneutopia, so we can have a place to play. Sometimes I think I'm making Pneutopia just for her. I suppose having a muse is a good thing.


The universal MMORPG review

On Old Man Murray's site, I read a hilarious review of Asheron's Call. It was funny on a few levels, one of which is that a lot of the key points applied to Clan Lord. Here are some insightful quotes from that review:

"I started in the major city of Gharu'ndim. The city's name is very appropriate to Asheron's Call's unearthly atmosphere in that you'd have to have a magical mouth to pronounce it. Nothing says 'fantasy!' like the arbitrary placement of an apostrophe...The story really makes no difference. The plot template for all RPG's is the timeless tale of raising a little bar higher by doing something over and over again... The never ending struggle of gaming, real life vs countless hours raising a small bar... Lots of walking and killing... There is not one massively online game that has monster AI that even equals Doom. The bottom line is that these games have no real story, no fighting strategy, no fast action, just lots of walking and repetitive tasks as you try to raise your stats."

All I can say to this, is "Yep."

All of their reviews are extremely funny. So much so, that when I was in a software store, and saw one of the titles they had lambasted, I started to laugh in the store. Really a worthwhile read, though the site is painfully slow.

The point they raise is probably my biggest beef with Clan Lord right now. All the work being done by Delta Tao involves additional mechanics for players to interact with the game world, like "ropes" to climb, or other feature-laden complexity increasing nonsense. We don't need ropes to climb things. We need stories. We need to feel like the things we do make a difference. If Delta Tao should be doing anything, it should be making tools for collaboration for a cadre of story-based GMs to keep things moving and interesting. Tools that allow interesting management of creatures, their spawning, and their behavior. Tools that allow multiple GMs to coordinate their efforts, and to communicate their intentions to each other.

DT's current "stories" simply start and don't go anywhere. Qual? Zonk? Tenbrion? Dal'Noth island? The Darshak? We don't need more "bad guys". Shit, ONE anatagonist that actually had a goal, and purpose, and worked towards it would probably be enough. DT just keeps pumping novelty without structure and direction into the game, and now it's a patchwork quilt of narrative non-sequiters. And I can anticipate the standard response already: "There's a purpose to all of it, but you just don't know what it is." Listen, this isn't frickin' Scooby Doo here. Obscurity isn't a mystery, it's not even entertaining. Sure, a little bit of mysteriousness or subterfuge is good, but when noone has any idea what's going on, there isn't any story going on. It's just a guessing game. Remember, Delta Tao, puzzles do not equal narrative.

The Orga stealing the altar was a good first step, but that fizzled and went nowhere. There's simply no follow up, zero continuity, a complete lack of flow. If Delta Tao added NO new areas, NO new creatures, and simply started to use the environment they made in a creative way, with a focus on narrative and story, I bet player satisfaction would go through the roof. I mean, as it stands right now, if you don't play for two weeks, what do you miss? Nothing. Some invasions, maybe, but those invasions are random or arbitrary any way, so it doesn't matter that you missed them. Have you ever signed on to Clan Lord thinking "I wonder what will happen next?" Of course not. Because it's the same shit every day.

Clan Lord can't stand out because of it's graphics. Clan Lord can't distinguish itself for it's RPG design. Clan Lord can't differentiate in any way other than good stories. That's the only vector of hope, and it's constantly neglected.

The answer isn't in better mystic abilities, or more fighter trainers, or complicated combat, or missle weapons, or new monsters. All these things simply extend the game in a marginal, incremental way, and they do it by adding a cost of game complexity, so in the end, it's probably a wash. The answer is stories: small stories, big stories, short stories, long stories. Stories with good characters, with understandable motivations, that evolve and grow over time, that players can participate and contribute to.

This, to me, is really the only hope of Clan Lord.
posted 4:46 PM | link |