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Post by nate1980 on May 8, 2008 14:26:48 GMT -8
okay
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Post by Charles on May 8, 2008 14:27:37 GMT -8
No, that won't work. You must delete that character and start over.
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Post by Charles on May 8, 2008 14:28:22 GMT -8
Go towards the stack of three barrels. Unfortunately they are right between the sword and the tree.
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Post by scarecrow on May 8, 2008 14:29:27 GMT -8
You want to go to the barrels to get to port town.
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Post by scarecrow on May 8, 2008 14:29:51 GMT -8
Must learn to type faster...
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Post by nate1980 on May 8, 2008 14:36:04 GMT -8
I just lost connection to the server. I was standing on that island with Dralen. Also, CTRL wasn't working for me to attack. Another thing, I am at 1/100 health. How do I heal?
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Post by Charles on May 8, 2008 14:36:27 GMT -8
There was a problem and the server had to shut down again.
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Post by nate1980 on May 8, 2008 14:36:57 GMT -8
Okay, Port Town it is. How do I get back to the pit?
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Post by Charles on May 8, 2008 14:41:17 GMT -8
Right now the only way to get back to the pit is to die or be teleported there by a god.
Or create yet another new character.
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Post by Charles on May 8, 2008 14:46:06 GMT -8
I just lost connection to the server. I was standing on that island with Dralen. Also, CTRL wasn't working for me to attack. Another thing, I am at 1/100 health. How do I heal? Just log back in. It doesn't matter where you are. One of the gods will find you and help.
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Post by Charles on May 8, 2008 14:47:29 GMT -8
Server crashed again right after Nate got back online. Let's try again.
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Post by nate1980 on May 8, 2008 14:57:44 GMT -8
I just got a Memory Access Violation error and then got booted. Also, how do I unequip a weapon?
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Post by Charles on May 8, 2008 15:48:05 GMT -8
I just got a Memory Access Violation error and then got booted. Also, how do I unequip a weapon? To unequip a weapon you need to click on the backpack icon on the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Then click on the icon of the item and drag it to inventory. I think you click again to release it in inventory.
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Post by nate1980 on May 9, 2008 22:50:02 GMT -8
I got the email today concerning my impressions for this past session and was asked to respond here preferrably. So here goes.
My first impression was that the game seemed really light on the character customization features and it also lacked descriptions for the classes and races available and what to expect by playing them. I was under the impression that there wouldn't be any classes and you could be whatever you want, but I found out differently after playing.
Before creating a character, I couldn't log on due to some technical issues. I thought that those issues shouldn't exist if you are launching the game in any shape or form. I did read how you plan to launch the game and I see nothing wrong with that. However, I think there should be a certain amount of stability before even attempting your ideas for developing the game world.
My next impression was appearance. I thought the graphics looked really outdated. Probably around 10 years old or so. I expected something more, because you need more to draw players to the game. I expected at least free to play asian quality graphics, so the quality of graphics you have now was shocking.
Graphics isn't everything, so I of course proceeded to entering the game. Again, crashing for various reasons shouldn't be a problem if you are inviting people to play your game.
Another hurdle was not knowing anything. All of our characters were of adult age, so we should know what has happened before our character was created. I seen towns, cities, statues and etc. that I've never even heard of. I didn't have any attachment to this world that I would have had if I grew up in it. A backstory would solve this that leads us up to where we are now. I know we are the first people on Earth, but then how did those villages get there and the city, yet I have heard nothing about them?
Another thing I encountered that I didn't fully realize until I got the email is that we will be considered the founders of this game world and we are writing history. That is great, but we at least need to know the ground rules. I had no idea that I needed to pray to the Gods, how to pray, who the Gods are, and even if it is technically possible for the game to mimic the Gods listening to me and answering my prayers. I had no idea that the developers were going to act as the Gods, which isn't a problem, but we still need ground rules.
In conclusion, I don't think the game is ready for even the type of launch you are thinking about. There doesn't need to be some elaborate story or direction in the game, but we at least need ground rules for playing. We are after all humans in real life that exist in a world that has been around for billions of years. We can have great imaginations, but it won't matter when we have no idea how much freedom we have in the game and what the boundaries are. This can be solved by giving us 20+ years of knowledge on how the world works, since we are starting the game as adults. If we started the game as infants, we are already on the right page, since right now we enter the game without any knowledge of what this place or that place is or even how to pick up and equip things.
That's all I have to say at the moment. I hope you can take this constructively for your game. You have some great ideas, but you need to show you are serious about developing the game and making it into a MMORPG if you want to attract players. Players expect a minimum amount of quality when it comes to gameplay and stability. Neither was up to snuff. I know the game is free right now, but even people looking for a free game to play will look elsewhere until you meet the basic neccessities, such as the gameplay and stability being solid.
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Post by Charles on May 10, 2008 1:36:30 GMT -8
Thank you very much for your detailed comments and criticisms. You have been quite helpful.
All the character creation stuff was done by a previous set of programmers for a different project. I am not aware of any restrictions on what different classes of characters can do. The magic helmet you tried on didn't give you the magic armor simply because it has to be programmed for each class, race and gender separately and it has only been done for male human warriors. We'll probably delete that item anyway.
So even though the character creation screen refers to character classes, there is no real difference between them -- except for the clothes -- unless we program it in. We're not planning to put in any differences like that.
As you point out later in your message, all this needs to be explained to players. The main reason it isn't is because we didn't get the write up finished in time for the first session.
You've got that right. We did not expect those problems and we were panicked when they occurred. We are hoping they can be solved before next session.
Yes, we know. We can improve the graphics. It will take some work or some money or both, but it can be done. As you saw, there are a lot of things that need to be improved. The issue for us is which one should we work on first. I think that the lame graphics do not make the game unplayable so they should be a lower priority than several other problems that do pretty much make the game unplayable such as the server crashes you referred to and the fact that there is no backstory or rules for players to read before they start.
Right. Some of that is written, we just need to get it into a proper form and then make it accessible to players. I've been working on that today. I'm thinking that in the readme.txt file included with the software, we'll provide a link to the forum where we'll publish the backstory, rules, etc. Or we may have it so that if you click on the question mark icon for help it will bring up that information or a link to the forum. Or both.
All of that should be done by next week's session.
I was planning on providing a writeup on all that to the players, but it wasn't ready in time. Then I thought it could be explained in-game, but that didn't go as planned either. Sorry.
We will of course provide all of this, probably by next session. We especially need to provide info on how to do basic things like how to pick up and equip things.
I guess it would be more accurate to say that the people who play the game now are partly first players and partly alpha playtesters, not even beta testers.
So it sounds like the main priorities you are guiding us towards are these:
1) Game server stability 2) Backstory, rules and how to play the game 3) Better character customization 4) Better graphics
When you were actually playing the game it sounded like you also wanted there to be more magic available to players. I think that is important and sould be ranked on that list right under backstory. I have twenty or thirty more items I could list that need work. What we need to do is prioritize. Your comments are helping us to do that. Thanks again.
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