Clan Bored has 10 days of dust on it. What happened to all the reporters? With the recent chaos storm, you'd think they'd have something to say...

I visited Alchera last night. Got about 10 ranks, and 20 coins with my little newbie. My respect for those who play Clan Lord without speaking English has increased dramatically. I also discovered that the Babelfish does a pretty crappy job with German. And no, I'm not saying who my character is. It's not Worf, I'll tell you that much. I used the name that I almost used for Worf when I first made him. A lot of times, I wish I had used a different name. I know "Worf" is a stupid name, that was the point. It was meant as an ironic name, making fun of Delta Tao's blatent thievery. The problem with picking an ironic name for yourself, though, is you have to live with it forever and ever and...

Being a complete newbie and not really being able to go anywhere, I didn't get to see much of the lands in Alchera. That was fine, though, since even just travelling around in town was a learning experience. Unfortunately, there was never more than 15 or so people in the lands, and at one point, there were 7. The low population was a gentle reminder about a fundemental aspect of Clan Lord: without other people, it's dull as hell. And it's especially dull when you are hunting rats. I did get to see a bit of Alchera's mage skills in action, and that was interesting. And the few people who I did spend time with both spoke english, and were quite helpful.

Being a newbie in Clan Lord is a pretty awful experience on two counts. Not only do you have to learn everything about the game, from how you interact with the world, to the social norms of the other players, you also suck. I would love to see the statistics of people who sign up for Clan Lord who terminate their accounts within 3 months. I suspect we have a pretty good initial churn rate. A true newbie experience (coming to the game without any foreknowledge) in Clan Lord has got to be a whole bucketload of unfun. This validates a lot of the design principles of Pneutopia, where players come out of the gates with the ability to do things on par with other players, and the only real challenge they face is learning what those abilities do, and when to use them, which still is a lot to learn. But, in Pneutpioa, you can shuffle up your skills and abilities on a fairly regular basis (as well as your avatar), something you cannot do in Clan Lord (or all the other stat based MMORPGs). I think this is superior to the triple threat of (a) learning how to play the game, (b) discovering you suck more than 99% of the current players and (c) knowing you will probably always have less ability than the players who came before you.
posted 10:24 AM | link |