Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

I really hope you aren"t going to waste too much time on this, I tried it out for 5 minutes and it seems completely useless. Grats on telling me at 70 I should go do Karazhan and heroics, that is information that is very hard to figure out. Especially since the character I tried it out on is in full T5/badge gear with full epic gems, I surely need to run more kara and heroics! Oh nice, basically same advice for my newb level 70 in greens.

Now if it had told me what professions I should get for WOTLK that would best suite my class, what materials I should gather in preparation, what I need to level up cooking from 125-250, how much honor I can realistically get an hour on my realm/battlegroup, what times do people raid on my server, what guilds on my server are at my tier of gear, or anything that is even remotely useful for the next 6 months instead of useless shit that is 2 years old basically, it would have been a nice site. fuck, just tell me what the daily bg/daily/heroic/tower control/halaa/etc on a website so I don"t have to login, more useful than this.

Its also just plain wrong on so many things - for example heroics require HONORED, not revered. Only been in the game that way for six months now.

I"m Level 70, what do you have to teach me?
If you"ve been a top level character for an extended period of time, run every instance and mastered the battlegrounds and arenas, there might not be that much we can teach you. We still think that our advice will help you if you"re rolling a new character, though.

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From the FAQ.

Hehe ya those FAQ things get ya all the time...

Well, with all due respect, is the levelling process ever the problem? The game works well enough that it pushes you from one area to the next (especially now with the increased level rate) that most newbies would never find a need or a want for this kind of information. The trip to 60, 70, 80, or whatever the level cap is that day is at best a temporary, well mapped course that you really don"t see many people complaining about.

Contrast that against the level cap portion of the game where more often than not you"re given absolutely 0 direction on where and how to take your character anywhere. Starting from scratch it requires a balls amount of research to even figure out what kind of gear you want, let alone the gear progression required to bump yourself up to the next tier. It"s a task so overwhelming that I"d wager a good majority of the populace simply doesn"t do it and instead relies on hand me downs like badge gear and welfare epics to get bumped up to the next tier -- a website telling and, more importantly, showing you how to bridge those gaps is something that even an experienced player would find useful. Hell, I know after rerolling my third level 70 warrior from scratch just a few months ago I would have used the living shit out of it. I know my hunter friend that ditched his t5 PvE hunter for a PvP reroll would have used the shit out of it instead of seeing what he thought was a massive amount of work ahead of him and quitting. It took me two damn weeks at 70 to get mostly back to my previous warrior"s gear level, but that was after a truckload of research.

Most people don"t realize that because there is nowhere on the net or in game that specifically tells you where to go or how to get there. THERE is where the niche needs to be filled, imo. A level helper has been done a thousand times before, and, again wth all due respect, probably much better than a newsletter ever will.

Yeah, I"ve recently come back to the game after a very long break. I started from scratch and the game is excellent at pointing you where to go as you level up. Adding to that is the QuestHelper addon that gives you a freaking arrow and points you where to go in order to complete all your quests, and I"m not sure what a newsletter would do for me.

Gnomedolf said:

Yeah, I"ve recently come back to the game after a very long break. I started from scratch and the game is excellent at pointing you where to go as you level up. Adding to that is the QuestHelper addon that gives you a freaking arrow and points you where to go in order to complete all your quests, and I"m not sure what a newsletter would do for me.

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What you"d notice as a sub is that the newsletter is sent "a level ahead" of where you currently are. It tells you what"s in store for your next level, as well as what"s available to you content wise this level.

The other things being worked on are much more player specific. Recognizing that a massive portion of the population is already at 70 and many are geared as well.

The WoW product is the one that validated the patent pending technology we own, the one that has been in testing for a few years now.

WoW isn"t the ultimate target, it can"t be, it"s been around too long, but it"s the one with the best ability to vet and test for use in future products.

When you understand the capabilities of the tech you start to see the unlimited potential of the product, inside and outside the gaming industry.

This was and is a soft launch that for the most part went to existing customers.

Always interested in a broader take on things I dropped the link here to get some feedback. We won"t launch the official re-release for some time but it"s always good to get informative feedback that also spots errors/omissions someone missed.

That being said, it"s a free service which in the end means, well, it"s free. That doesn"t excuse ANY problems with it, but we went this route to get it into the most players hands we could as we continue to perfect the engine and the tech behind it.

I wish you could have seen the original as it stands next to what it is now. The team did a nice job in completely overhauling the look.

I think it"s pretty clever and quite obvious that it won"t be of any benefit to people who already "beat the game" or are rerolling after having done so previously.

Hopefully it"s a technology that remains free and is incorporated to many titles and not just your own.

It"s definitely a really slick service as it stands right now, and major props to your tech and website team for putting together some more amazing shit -- they always seem to come through. And hell, it may even work better on other (your?) games, but the problem with the WoW side of it is just what I said before.

If I was going to use that site, I"d want it to tell me my immediate upgrades, and my next immediate upgrades at least, along with a cohesive theory behind the gear selection and path (re: tanks, avoidance v stamina, etc). If I"m in full greens and quest blues, I"d want to know what craftables I can make, what badge gear I can knock out while working on whatever Heroic drops. I"d want to know what kind of stats I need to hit in order to be able to function in the next tier, and how the gear selection you"ve provided will at least help me get to those goals.

I mean, sure it"s a lot of work, but if it"s free why not get some help from the community on it? I know I personally wouldn"t mind spending some time writing up a thing or two about gear progression for tanks, and I"m sure there"s millions more like me out there.

Let me apologize.

First off you should have been (and you will be in short order) notified that the newsletter you generate for your toon on the site is a GENERIC form of the actual newsletter you"d receive.

The one you get if you sign up for the service is able to, and does, create a much more personalized and focused newsletter tailored to your class, race, TS and many other personal things on your character.

I am sorry that wasn"t stated earlier but it will be made clear very soon.

P.S. Let me also add and thank you for the offer above, we are always looking for good smart players to continue creating content. We are currently working hard on the WotLK updates to be added to the database.

P.S.S. one more thing. The newsletter, up to 69, is a step ahead of you. It tells you, in addition to what your new level is and has, what your next level will have and what you can look forward to as well as what your current level means content wise/TS wise and other stuff.

Pretty awesome idea for new players. I love the idea of getting out of game notifications, personal information, small tips on what to expect and where to go or what to look out for. If you tie this in with other community cities, like forums, armory, database sites etc, it creates a community outside the game.

Nice job. Now you have to figure out a way to make this relevant to old players. Perhaps server news like who just placed first in PVP for the week or day, or raid killing announcements, all sorts of different things you can farm out of the database. Or if you"re still doing a newsletter, maybe include RSS feeds from other approved community sites.

Sorry, but that site is just so full of fail I"m not even sure why you"d want to associate yourself with it. Why didn"t your CTO put his foot down and say "under no fucking way are we associating GMG with an internet site that asks the users to run a executable or install an add-on!!!!!!" Seriously, this is 2008, not 1999, there are some basic rules all Internet sites should follow like fast loading times, browser intercompatibility, and never, ever, ever, ever asking users to run an executable or download stuff.

Go down and talk to your friends at Blizzard one day and ask them what the #1 support issue they have is. Keyloggers and hacked accounts. how much do you want to bet that some moron is going to run your app, get keylogged a few days later by a completely unrelated virus, and whine in blizzard support that your site hacked his account? Is that really the kind of news you want associated with GMG?

Yes, the armory doesn"t provide 100% of what you need, but thats life as a internet developer, you get what you can and make the best of it.

On a more relevent topic hope you guys are thinking through launch server logistics, it would be nice if an MMO launched without having the classic problem of 50 launch servers, and 30 are dying in six months.

I thought this was a pretty neat tool. I"ve got 2 70s and a host of alts, and found this to be fun and useful. Most especially if you aren"t an avid theorycrafter. Also, I didn"t have to run any executables to get the newsletter compiled from the armory.

If you do use their addon, you have the option to upload data manually. From their FAQ:
"Whoa! You mean you"re grabbing my password or you"re a keylogger?

Not at all. The World of Warcraft AddOn system allows us to run our information-gathering plugin only while you play. We can only collect information that Blizzard Entertainment makes available -- like your character"s level, race and location. Our software doesn"t look at your password, log your keystrokes or "hack" your system in any way.

But, since we know that there are legitimate concerns about the gathering of account information, we have a manual upload feature that enables subscribers to avoid the use of our uploader client. Subscribers can install only the addon and then upload the text file containing the character information until they are comfortable with the service"

I"d encourage any casual player to at least try out creating a newsletter based on the armory. The content is cool

Ngruk said:

What you"d notice as a sub is that the newsletter is sent "a level ahead" of where you currently are. It tells you what"s in store for your next level, as well as what"s available to you content wise this level.

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While this system is kind of cool and must have taken some work I cannot help but say it is further down the path that I dread seeing the MMORPG"s go.

I am sure there are people who would disagree with me but I like my MMORPG"s to be immersive as possible, and systems like this only serve to lower the amount of immersion I get from the game. That said the information that this newsletter gives the player "could" be incorperated into the actual gameplay, by way of NPC interaction such as "have ys heard of the gnoll attacks on Thistlewood Haven? They are looking for brave men to help fight back the gnolls, you look like you could be of some help, if you are interested in going to help I can give you this <map>". Or you can have events that give hints about what to do next, such as a quick respawning NPC that when you kill him has a bloodstained letter and says in his dying gasp "Hamletville will still fall!", and thus give you this quest to give the letter to some NPC in Hamletville, thus opening up new quests and whatnot.

WOW in fact already did a decent job of the above, I am not sure how a person could require any more direction in the game, and if a person has to get that direction externally on some website searching their server and character name that really blows that immersion that WOW has worked to create, that ongoing storyline that you stumble upon as you progress in WOW.

I guess the thing that worries me the most is that you are developing a game that I have been looking forward to seeing but if you decide to push towards a system like this newsletter for your own game it worries me that you might see less purpose of building that immersive world with the ongoing storyline and immersive ways that people get moved around in a MMORPG. I mean, even EQ gave people the quests and the hints on what to do next, although not as bluntly as WOW did. Part of the fun of these things though is the exploring and the finding out what to do next. A newsletter that details it out for you before you have even seen the area takes a huge amount of the joy of exploration out of a game, and alot of people see the exploration and discovery of the new content to be one of the most entertaining aspects of this game gener.

Information that players require in the game to figure out what to do next should be in-game and it should be built into the storyline/lore of the world, the quests, ect... Sure it might be more work to build it into the game, but you get alot more of a rewarding and immersive game experience.

I don"t think you used the word "immersive" enough in one post. It was really immersion breaking.

In case you haven"t accepted it yet the genre is moving away from the virtual LARPing on a computer and more towards fun and entertaining for the whole family.

Oh and spronk was once again owned by the FAQ.

Ngruk said:

Let me apologize.

First off you should have been (and you will be in short order) notified that the newsletter you generate for your toon on the site is a GENERIC form of the actual newsletter you"d receive.

The one you get if you sign up for the service is able to, and does, create a much more personalized and focused newsletter tailored to your class, race, TS and many other personal things on your character.

I am sorry that wasn"t stated earlier but it will be made clear very soon.

P.S. Let me also add and thank you for the offer above, we are always looking for good smart players to continue creating content. We are currently working hard on the WotLK updates to be added to the database.

P.S.S. one more thing. The newsletter, up to 69, is a step ahead of you. It tells you, in addition to what your new level is and has, what your next level will have and what you can look forward to as well as what your current level means content wise/TS wise and other stuff.

Click to expand...

I like the concept... (especially for the sub 70 characters) but you should consider the audience that you are trying to communicating to (which I would guess that you already know.)

As an example, if the audience is made up of "min/max hardcore raiders" who parse every aspect, review buffs & debuffs, talents, & specs, gems, etc. (and read EJ boards for more details), then your service should provide new, useful, concise information to the reader, in the "advanced" category (remove the fluff, just present the facts, stats, and numbers).

If you"re gunning for the "average" player audience, then you"ve got a good thing started. You just need to find a better place for feedback and advertising.

2cp.

Enh, the board has gotten a lot more casual-friendly since 2004 (as long as you avoid anything involving the word "arena"), and it"s not like he made a seperate thread for it.

The only people reading this are the people who are interested in stuff his crew is doing anyway, and it certainly falls within the bounds of that.

*shrug*

Neat little service, for helping new players in a pre-existing game with an aging populace. I"d be loathe to see it in a new game though. New games need *something* to jog community, and asking questions/getting help from the more knowledgable members of the community is an important part of it.

Not sure some of you are getting what it does. If you sign up for the service you are sent a newsletter, you don"t have to go looking for it.

The test bed is a very different animal for sure. This product has been in the "field" for a few years, but the player base as a whole is far past getting the best possible use out of the product.

This product in no way shapes the way you create content, to answer a worry or concern stated above, but rather is another way to allow players to actually know and experience the massive amount of content created.

The point about "doing it in game" with the quoted gnoll example is pretty much what a quest text box looks like right? We all know how many people truly read all that right?

It"s an out of game "player guide" and I"d argue that based on Prima and Brady Games sales numbers players don"t look down on them, they sell. I view this product as a "live" up to the minute player guide tailored to your players class, race, tradeskill and faction standings.

If you are spending MILLIONS of dollars to create content you are pissing money down the drain if players don"t know or can"t find it, to experience it. Yes I agree you need to design to lead them there, but if you are going beyond 1 linear path of progression, offering multiple areas at most if not all tiers/levels of play, players are going to miss some/a lot that first time around. Is that a bad thing? I don"t know, no one does we only have personal opinions to go by, but if I can put data in front of you that is character specific and relevant, and opens up options to you that you might not have known and those options enhance your game play experience, cool.

people need to look at it like a brady strategy guide that updates itself and is tailored for you. makes a lot more sense then.

the hardcore know where to go already but this is for the people that just wander around lost. it"s a good idea and on a fledgling product would be great. also if you look around they do hire people that do writeups, so don"t think this isn"t community driven.

The eventual goal is to have hard core players benefiting from and writing content for stuff like this.

The ONLY possible benefit hardcore players could perceive is getting an edge, and getting an edge in this space with something like this means having information BEFORE everyone else, or at worst, at the same time.

I think if you see the product at work on a lower level character, hell I started a bunch of new characters when I first became a customer and the experience was vastly different than I imagined it would be, you begin to understand the power and the potential.

Ngruk said:

If you are spending MILLIONS of dollars to create content you are pissing money down the drain if players don"t know or can"t find it, to experience it. Yes I agree you need to design to lead them there, but if you are going beyond 1 linear path of progression, offering multiple areas at most if not all tiers/levels of play, players are going to miss some/a lot that first time around. Is that a bad thing? I don"t know, no one does we only have personal opinions to go by, but if I can put data in front of you that is character specific and relevant, and opens up options to you that you might not have known and those options enhance your game play experience, cool.

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Ok, I can see your point. If you"re planning to include this in your new game, this would be a very nice feature indeed. Anything that can enhance the player"s interaction with the gameoff-line(ala Eve"s training for example) would rock.