Who remembers the short lived "be a monster" feature?

[stormlord]

If I remember right, I logged on all of one time.

Not sure why I left or what I did.

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Nytewind TP [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The one fun time I remember is when you were able to spawn as an orc in GFay. People would die over and over to spawn as an orc then everyone would rush the baby wood elves.

I bet that had something to do with why they shut it down.

Still, it seems that it had potential, just not enough developer interest.

I think they did this partly as a preparation for monster missions.

But monster missions were a lot more linear. Not nearly as interesting, but easier to control and safer. And remember that 'interesting' does not always mean fun. Non-linear can be a good thing and a bad thing. Fun or boring or terrible.

The non-linear nature is what ultimately killed it, I think. It's hard to design a non-linear game. Maybe you have to make the game with less strict rewarding mechanisms otherwise players inevitably fall on their face and get hurt. And if the content is designed for particular circumstances, non-linear 'events' can throw it off and break the balance. So content can't be strict either. It has to be fluid and possibly changing, depending on what's going on around it.

It boils down to control. If something is too non-linear, players might not feel in control; vulnerable. It's fun to dish it out to NPCreatures and even cheat them, but what if they do that to us? Not always fun or predictable, is it?

In other words, non-linear games aren't made to make us have fun. They just ARE. There's no one there to guarantee protection from the wild or from the thieves. It requires a special player to 'enjoy' this kind of game.

So I don't ever see non-linear games being particularly commercially successful. Not until the vast majority of gamers aren't playing to have fun, but rather to experience the ups and downs of a world that doesn't care about you.

By ups and downs, I mean times when it feels like a game and times when it feels like torture. Maybe if you don't get enough torture in real life then you seek it in a game. But most people just want to get away from RL to have fun. It could be that some people seek out torture for other reasons. Maybe they want to understand the meaning of life? Or maybe they're addicted to the pain that accompanies loss. People get stuck on all sorts of things, it's impossible to know.

I admit right here that I like non-linear games. I think I like them because I'm trying to understand RL. What is it? Why are things? What is pain? Using computers to understand it is safer, anyway. RL is a dangerous place.

[Ravenlof]

Originally Posted by rockhopper [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Project M

i remembe this being a GM event on live. Me and a friend got to be snakes and wolfs and try killl low lvls

[Ennoia]

Was definitely an interesting time for the game...way better than that stupid Monster Mission BS.

[mimixownzall]

Originally Posted by Ravenlof [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

i remembe this being a GM event on live. Me and a friend got to be snakes and wolfs and try killl low lvls

I'm not sure if I would classify it as a GM event, but they did make it available on live for a short time. You could log into Sullon Zek and have the option of being some random mob. I know the max level was a level 20 mob, but I can't remember if it was limited to certain zones or not. I remember logging in and being a spider in Oasis. I saw several other obvious players and we formed up and mobbed some unsuspecting players. I decided that i wanted to be an orc priest. After multiple logins i finally was one. I got all my spells in order and buffed up to wreck some shit when a high level came by and one-shotted me =(

Bastard.

[sacrilegium]

I remember this being a feature on the Test server. I was "a bat" once and I managed to communicate to two low level elves that I was a player, then I helped them kill things.

[CHusk2]

I remember there being a TON of people playing as monsters when that came out. The bitch about it was that as a monster, you could run faster than players, which is cool except for the fact that you could be a monster in places like Blackburrow and South Karana and seriously fuck people. A good example would be running over to someone who had just finished fighting something and just wailing on them & running away.

Blackburrow was a shitty place there for a little while.

[bakkily]

ive heard about it happening, i use to play at the time when they would do this, but wasnt on at the time then, but yea, theres a article some where talking about brad mcquad talking with the gm staff of several servers going ahead and doing this monster thing, i havnt seen a gm event happen for a few months, last i think one happend was in lake of ill omen with some worm thing at 4am in the morning, back in june i think, and lil bit before then something in qeynos hills

would be funny as hell, and fun as well, for instance firegiants took over all of sol b, and escaped making there way to freeport, hordes of them destroying everything in there path, but dunno to me sounds like fun if we saw more of these things happen, and of course guilds are going to fight over them, maybe when the pvp server opens up, should be a event that happens over here, a day of pvp on the blubie server, when red99 comes out, like mass battles all over norrath

[Anger]

Project M was awesome. Great idea on the part of Verant/Sony for once.

Wonder what it would take to get that here? Although I'd rather the devs focus on VP/The Hole/Epics personally.

But it would be cool!