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World of Camelot

Submitted by Abalieno on January 26, 2005 - 22:41.

- You will now get progress update messages (displayed on the center of the screen) as you complete parts of your task in Instanced Kill Task dungeons (for example, as you kill 1 of the 6 necessary mobs that you need to kill, or when you complete your task entirely).

- Moving your mouse over the top of icons on your quickbar or your active spell effects will now show a tooltip containing information about the effect and a reuse/duration timer.

- Mouse Pan: Setting this to a mouse button allows you to pan around with a single click. Previously you had to hold down Mouselook and the Camera Pan Toggle key.

Blatantly copying good design elements isn't something I consider bad, really. It's good that Mythic is reacting to this.

The point is still the same, though: we really needed World of Warcraft to realize those obvious interface issues and design elements?

The trend is set.

From an interview, story or whatever:

Larian: Okay, so you do have plans. Is "Strategic Planning" something that you all sit down and do here at Mythic? ?

Matt Firor: As for detailed changes and plans, no. Things just change too rapidly in the MMORPG market, and you just can't predict them. We do have a general direction we want to steer in though, but these are all modified by new technology, other company's games, and community demands.

This "interview" is being debated on CorpNews as misleading (or something).

I don't know... It seems quite correct to me. Or not?

Filed in: The Cesspit | DAoC

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You keep citing these sorts of things as if WoW created them...

Raph (not verified) on January 27, 2005 - 07:54.

In several of the cases you mention here and in the previous article, they already existed in one game or another. I'd say that yes, competition makes people look for things that they can take, but let's also realize that in many cases (most, actually), these are innovations that have been around for a while.

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WoW is like a coffee when you are about to fall asleep

Innsmouth on January 27, 2005 - 21:44.

Well, if you look the link I pasted above (about the trend) you find:

Come on, Mythic. You really needed two years to realize this?
Or the mmorpg genre needed Blizzard's awesome designers to come up with a mark for quest-givers NPCs? Woot, innovation! Revolution!

My point of view isn't really different from yours. The point is that what happens is silly. Those tweaks for the interface are *blatantly* ripped off from World of Warcraft. Even if they are not an "intellectual property" of Blizzard.

Come on, it's not a case that Mythic is implementing all these nice elements *right now*. What I wrote was somewhat sarcastic exactly because those tiny (but with their own relevance) elements aren't coming from wonderful ideas that noone had till now.

So, there's the ambition and the passion to invent and experiment or it's just about running behind the game that set the "new standard"?

What Mythic is implementing now has been suggested by the players too many times in the past. Is really nothing new. WoW becomes just a game where the devs have directly addressed those important points that were brought up as problems in these years.

Instead of dodging those issues (that you correctly call "bad habits") they concretely considered and solved them.

WoW is simply the game that DAoC and EQ should have been *long ago*, instead of radicating themselves on their own positions and refusing to address the problems as they were noticed and analyzed. Instead they produced swamps and sit in the middle.

Now Blizzard stole the pie. Under the eyes of everyone. They deserve the success they have now exactly because everyone else just remained there staring with an dull expression.

Why must be the "danger" to lead a progress?

For me this genre has really just an aspect as its stongest trait: the fact that you can observe, adapt and evolve. It's an ongoing reasearch and creation. The problems that you find along the path are the most important resource.

This is exactly what's *not* happening.

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