Also, “Player vs. Player” Trademarked By Scott Kurtz

My god, that had to be a EA thing. Then again, Mythic went after the game Mythica just because of the name. I didn’t like what they did then, And I can’t say i’m thrilled with this now. Maybe it isn’t an EA thing, Still, irks the heck out of me. Indeed. Stupid.

Because RvR is actually a term coined by the designers who wanted to push it, rather than anything that came out of player parlance, it is necessarily more descriptive of one particular game’s design (which is in turn derivative of other games’ designs, but not such that the term “RvR” was previously used to describe it.)

I don’t have any particular love for Mythic or EA, but who here thought Fury’s gameplay was anything at all like DAoC? Because yeah, if you use a term that was pretty much exclusive to only one game for its entire lifespan, you better be prepared to answer some pretty dumb questions from easily-confused (but still strangely experienced) players. Auran should have known better than to use it.

Just please tell me no one’s using the term “shard” as a generic term for “server” anymore. Those were … awkward years.

While we’re getting rid of “shard”, how about we toss out “toon” as well? My buddy, who just started playing MMOs with WoW, keeps asking me how they hell that one started. Never understood how that how myself, I just know it seemed to be coined in my DAoC years.

Force of habit, maybe?

Hey, there, the radar map was UO 1.0 originally

The term “toon” for a character was around long before Toontown Online. I agree with Staryx that it needs to go the way of the dodo.

“Toon” was a common term in EQ, at least in and around Prexus. I’m sure it was around before that as well.

Some folks don’t like it, I don’t care. WoW’s graphics are certainly have cartoony elements at the very least.

I actually agree with Mark Jacobs about the RvR thing.

It seems Fury is going to use Realm Vs Realm intending “Realm” as “Server”. While the term is used for a particular situation where Realm is instead a roleplay faction within the game. It can be confusing because it’s not used properly.

It’s like if someone wanted to change the meaning of PvP or PvE.

Now I would just have written them a letter asking them to use another term. These definitions make sense as long they aren’t limited to one game and describe a form that can be recognized elsewhere. MJ has the right to complain if the meaning is being twisted.

The point is that “Fury” isn’t going to change habits just because they want. It’s no threat for the term and Mythic shouldn’t pretend to own it. It’s silly.

But maybe this Fury guys are just trying to stretch it and MJ didn’t threat them that way, who knows.

I still use Shard when talking about WoW. I could say server, but it’s not a server. It’s a collection of servers making up a world. I could say that whole big thing, but we know how lazy we all are. Realm could work, but again, it’s already been taken to mean Midgard, Albion, or Hibernia. So what’s left? If not shard… what then?

Isn’t there that nomenclature rule on Koster’s site that says people will call things whatever they want to call things, official terminology bedamned?

As for the UI stuff, yeah, it’s kind of hard to be original when displaying a portrait, a mana/health/wierd power bar and a minimap. The fact that all the games chose to constantly use them has worrying implications though – why would someone have a fully detailed map of thier immediate area from a birds eye view (which makes no sense at all for some instances in WoW)? And if games ever choose to “hide the numbers”, will we see these Healthbar UI elements vanish because they’ll serve no purpose, Or will we still see people’s portraits in the top left corner of the screen just out of force of habit?

“While we’re getting rid of “shard”, how about we toss out “toon” as well?”

If only that were possible.

“I like “toon” – it’s way easier to type than “character.””

But through the magic of abbreviation, you can end up with “char”, which is just as short to type as “toon”, but also not completely retarded.

Try reading the Fury backstory, and calling them Realms wouldn’t seem so weird. Actually it seems like the same concept as those Mythic bastards use. A group of people in a single world, split from other groups by common goals, or divided by magical interference. Each group fights to maintain it’s own reality. Why shouldn’t that be called a realm?

No WAR for me. Oh wait, shouldn’t WAR be trademarked by Blizzard. Shouldn’t Mythic get their ass sued for using that acronym in an MMO space?

“Yes because we all want our high-fantasy role-playing games to imitate modern day life as closely as possible.”
Isn’t it the other way around? We’re adding maps to everything with a screen because we want real life to be like our MMOS: easy and predictable

The problem is the lawyers say unless they “aggressively defend” trademarks they lose them. Even though I’m sure Mythic never once tried to trademark “RvR”. Corporate lawyers have become like the mob: nothing but hired thugs to bully everyone into submission. But instead of baseball bats they use lawsuits.

To echo Liet, the absolute earliest I can remember the term “toon” was The Realm, in which it was godawful widespread. I can’t really think of a product before it that it might have popped up in, with the possible exception of INN’s chatrooms.

Blackblade I would not be surprised if everyone outside the legal department knew nothing about it. Legal departments love to create paper it seems, and I’m sure they don’t need to go for approval of anyone outside their own manager for stuff like this – “aggressively” defending copyright from some minor player.

At least, when a company is embarrassed they *say* they didn’t know what the lawyers were doing..

I was performing at Improv Olympic in Chicago when after about 12 years of harassment by the International Olympic Committee they were forced to change their name. So the theater Del Close built that trained so many great comedians from Mike Meyers to Bill Murray now goes by the name of “IO” because, you know, every 4 years people would show up wondering where the pole vault competition was.

I’m sorry, Citizen, that information is above your security clearance. Please report to a Voluntary Termination Center so that your clone can be activated.

The Computer is your Friend!

“These games consistently use them because they *work*.”

This may be true but they’re hardly optimal. It would, for example, make much more sense to place the character portrait with health and mana in the centre bottom of the screen, where the eye more naturally rests.