Se7en Tidbits: “I Miss Lloyd” or “Unrealistic Expectations”

Here are a few tidbits that caught my attention for one reason or another this week:

• “Why did I stop playing LOTRO? I can tell you exactly why . In fact I have written about it several times. I stopped playing because I ran out of content.” – Keen, MMO Regret: LOTRO, Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog.

• “Games, though, tend to be very bad at generating the feeling of loss in players.  I can only think of one game that made me feel like I, the player, had lost something… in Planetfall, the delightful robot companion Floyd sacrifices himself to help the player.  It’s been years now since I played Planetfall but I still remember how devastated I was when that happened.” Fool’s Age, Emotions in Games, part 2: Sorrow, Fool’s Age. [Bronte: I can think of one recent example: SPOILER WARNING –> in Dragon Age, when Duncan dies in the battle at Ostagar <– SPOILER WARNING. That was quite a profound sense of loss, even though I haven’t read the prequel books.]

• “If MMO really is a genre by itself, then the barriers that define games are going to start dropping and we’ll be seeing vast varieties of them going massive, multiplayer and online.” – Gordon, What is “MMO”, We Fly Spitfires.

• “Alec: And are you sacrificing a calf to Hecate every 28 minutes? Jim: I’m all outta calves.” – First Steps With Dragon Age, Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

• “We think it’s a good if not bold concept, especially considering players only have to download 1gig of data before the game will dynamically stream the rest as they play.” – Kyle Horner, Warhammer Online’s endless trial now available, Massively.

• “Every developer has to build a game that will compete with that number, even as they tell us in interviews that they are most assuredly not trying to be the next WoW Killer. And the reason they have to do that is because of us. We expect too much from our Triple-A MMOs.” – Anjin, Random Shots: Asking Too Much, Bullet Points.

• “Maybe their next great business model will be holding our hand while we cross the street and helping us to pee.” – Syp, GameStop: The Six Degrees of Cluelessness, Bio Break. [Bronte: One can dream Syp. One can dream.]