Be the game of his/her dreams!

Posted On Friday, April 11th, 2008 By Jay

I read an article over at Wolfshead Online. Go ahead and read that then come back.
One can’t ignore the key points in that article when it comes to WoW. WoW is a niche MMO. Its primary market is everyone! How is that possible. Simple. This game isn’t for just one set of customers(hardcore, casual, pvp, raid) its for each and every one of them. This stance is definitely commendable. Financially it is the most successful, it is the bar with which to judge all future projects. But who cares?
The MMO community, and more specifically is gamer base, is used to niche games. We’ve just never seen this niche. This market, the mass market has never been targeted. Take the following 4 mmos(there are 100s, these are examples I’m familiar with that you the reader may not know about) City of Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online, Maple Story and Everquest. Each of these was a niche product. Each dev house internally(this can never be verified) that sometimes and with some gamers, this game might not be for you.
Risen from Alleria made this statement. Continue Reading

Starcraft AI – A Case Study

Posted On Friday, April 11th, 2008 By Jay

I’m a big fan of the balancing of Starcraft. The asymetrical warfare. The absolute efficiency and synergy of each races units was amazing.
Shamus Young Stacraft Study
Starcraft historically is the best RTS ever made. Something that always nibbled at the back of my mind was the lack of assymetry in WoW. Vanilla wow had an attempt at assymetry with the Shaman/Paladin classes but forsake that route and gave both classes to either side with its first expansion. The purposeful choice on the part of Blizzard to equalize both sides has merit from a business stand point. Attract the most amount of customers and alienate non of them.

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