Users’ views June 21, 2010

The users’ views and opinions are one of the most important factor in a successful project, especially in software and games development. I’m a big MMORPG fan and have been playing them since I was 15 (yes I know, I’m a total geek). A successful MMORPG not only needs to be fun, unique and exciting, but it also needs to meet the users’ needs. This is the same for software too.

One very common issue is mis-interruption or thinking too far ahead when it isn’t needed. The users want something pretty simple that might only take a few hours to a days to completely. The developers would develop something amazing and clever but it that took months and months to completely. By then the users are not longer interested and in the case of a game they would have quit and forgotten about it.

I like to play free MMORPGs where they have cash shop for players to buy in game enhancements with real cash. Many of these types of MMORPGs generally take a long time to release small bug fixes and a even longer time to release anything new. It’s also common that the new features aren’t really want the players want. I feel that most MMORPG companies don’t listen to players. It seems that all they can think about is how to learn money so they just release more items to the cash shop rather than to the game.

Earning money is really important but without players where will the money come from. It’s so important to earn money but also keep the players happy. If players are happy they will stay loyal to be game and will spend money on it. It just annoys me so much when game companies do that. They don’t bother doing anything about the game till they’ve earn enough money or sometimes don’t even bother at all because they are earning enough.

I do have the habit of playing MMORPGs when they’re first released. That is actually a pretty bad move because a free MMORPG generally don’t become good and stable for at least 6 months.

I’m currently playing Priston Tales 2 and wow it’s bad! So many bugs and issues that needs addressing. They have claimed that they will be releasing a big patch with loads of changes soon. I’m not so sure that changes are a good thing, they should stick with addressing current issues and what players really want. Sometimes the changes can make it worse. Well I’ll find out soon enough, when the patch is released.

Giveaway & MMORPG May 14, 2010

I’m doing a giveaway at Essencious Jewels. This time it is for a single medium heart necklace. You can find out all the information here. You have till the end of the month to enter. This time it isn’t a contest, just a simple raffle style giveaway. Make sure you check it out and don’t miss out on this :)

Priston Tales 2 is going live tonight. I’m so excited to play. I’m such a MMORPG geek. I love love love MMORPGs and play them all the time.

I have been playing mmos since I was 14 (back in 2003) and I have been playing them pretty often since then. I cut down a lot since last summer when I started looking for a full time job. Since I started this full time job, I haven’t really hard the time to hardcore any mmorpgs. I remember I use to hardcore these so much back at university. I spent at least 6-8 hrs playing some mmo a day and I still had the time to party twice/three times a week and study (just about). I don’t think I could do that again tho because I didn’t sleep much back then. Guess I’ve grown old haha.

Anyways really really looking forward to playing Priston Tales 2 (I played the first Priston Tales back in 2003) so I really really hope this one will be good :D

Any mmorpg lovers want to join me?

Aion Open Beta: First Impression September 15, 2009

Aion has been a game that I’ve taken noticed off since the release of Guild Wars. I sort of gave up on Aion after a while as it kept been delayed.

Then one day I was on Ventrilo with my friends and they went “we pre-purchased Aion” so I thought I might as well play Aion since most of my friends are going to play. It’ll be great to be able to play together. I pre-purchased the game but didn’t get a chance to try out open beta till Saturday/Sunday.

I was a little disappointed with the scenary graphic really. People made it out to be totally amazing and like never seen before graphic. To me it felt normal and graphic wasn’t that super duper amazing. Don’t get me wrong though, the graphic is really good and definately better than most. I just wasn’t as amazed by it as others were.

I only managed to play the game for a few hours to level 10 so didn’t really get to try out many of the features of the game. From 1-10 it was all questing so wasn’t anything new as many games now are questing base, though there were some nice cut screens for main story like quest which most games don’t have. I wasn’t too impressed by the questing system and I felt that other games like Ether Saga Online and Cabal Online had a slightly better questing features in their system. What I think would be a great improvement to the questing system is showing a list of available quest that the player haven’t already obtained or completed. Like Cabal Online and Ether Saga Online, there were a list of available quest somewhere in your quest window.

Aion allows you to locate quest monsters, items and NPC however you can only locate one at a time. It should allow you to locate more than one and indicate by different colours. Players can then located all the quest monsters, items and NPC in one go and see them all on the world map and mini map. It will make life easier when trying to complete serveral quests.

Overall I thought the game was ok, I didn’t really play enough to tell right now. I really liked the animations of the skills, I’m really looking forward to seeing high level skills as I bet they’re really cool looking. I pre-purchased the game so I’ll be able to play in 6 days time. I’m really looking forward to playing it properly.

I should also mention that the character creation is cool, you can completely customise your character. My friend thought I’ll be totally amazed by that, well I wasn’t really because Perfect World has a similar character creation. I wasn’t really suprised that Aion would have a completely customisable character creation as I’m pretty sure that this is starting to become a very common feature in most games with human like characters (non-cartoon/non-anime like). This one is slightly better than Perfect World‘s character creation because it has many really nice pre-set faces and body shapes that you can use to modify.

I didn’t manage to take many screenshots, but here’s two that I took.

Aion cut screen about the player's future
Cut screen about the player’s future
flight path in Aion
Flight path

YouTube Twitter Facebook Feed