Top Ten reasons not to play Wograld right now

Most people go about promoting their games, saying how great they are, only to be disappointed by bugs and poor game play, as well as bad "programmer art" I on the other hand, will beg and plead with you do not go to the cvs, download wograld, try to compile and run it, and worse yet, try to actually play it. I will give you ten reasons that even though the code is right there, you should not touch it, compile it, run it, or even look at it.

10. Its only been tested on Linux... trying it on the windows system like enough said.

9. You have to follow the admin install directions, if you are the sort of person who is reading this and doing it anyway, even though I said not to , you are not a person who follows directions, so you are not going to do well with getting it set up so it works.

8. Missing artwork. There is only one character class and race that shows artwork in game, otherwise you will be playing an invisible character.

7. Same poor game play as crossfire, only with some missing artwork, so you won't even know what killed you half the time. If you want crossfire, just go play it, but why would you considering how awful it really is.

6. No permanent server set up, how fun is it really going to be playing with yourself...

5. You have to play as root or it won't save your character, or you have to change the permissions on some folders.

4. Did I mention the bad game play, lets go into detail, one hit killed as a newbie sorcerer with a swinging door. Should sorcerers really be that frail? No freaking way!

3.Level system, and experience loss when you die, you lose stats too, so you can get worse than a newb fast.

2. You don't have to die to lose stats and experience, fighting certain monsters will also do this.

1. Ta Da, the number one reason not to play Wograld right now... The user interface is really bad. You won't be able to figure it out. It is ugly, has buttons that do nothing, and no way to know what macros you have easily.

Housing in single and multi-player rpgs

One of the topics that I think needs to be addressed in a lot of rpgs is this idea of housing. Usually in single player rpgs, you play this adventurer character, who completes quests and stays at various inns in the world, never really having a house of his or her own, or a place to call home. Often, early in the game of the single player rpg, the main character or characters gets sucked out of their own world, kicked out of the town or has their home town destroyed early on. This makes the characters into adventurers of some sort. Even if in the story, the characters have a home, they end up so far away from it trying to solve a problem that has somehow effected their homeland to the degree that they need to leave it to try to solve the problem.

One of the things you can do, however in some single player rpgs, notabley in the Ultima series, is establish a sort of home base if you will. This is a place where the character or party of characters can drop off extra items they have acquired, and they will not decay or be taken away from the characters. The characters can return there later to pick up items they find out they need. Perhaps you should not have picked up those twenty rusty swords in the goblin den, espeacialy considering you only have four party members who each have magic swords, but that little girls hair ribbon that you thought had no use, may be a key plot item you need in order to defeat the evil dragon king. The problem is those torn cushions back in the warlock tower next to the water fall that were used for summoning the demon, later do not have any plot value, but you picked them up anyway, thinking they might be important, but it turns out you don't need them. Therefore, it does turn out having a storage spot comes in handy, when you have so many quest items like that and you are not sure what you need anymore.

Multi player games tend to more often option to offer a sort of home-base, so the characters do not have to live our of their backpacks. But in multi-player games, this is not the only, or even the main reason for housing. A big part of housing in multi-player involves inviting your friends over to show them all the cool stuff you collected on your adventures. It also offers a place to train your characters, hold in game events, meet up before that big dungeon trip, or any number of other reasons players can think of for characters to socialize.

These are, of course, in addition to the home base sort of feeling that housing gives to the characters in single player mode. I still remember my time playing serpents isle. There was a house on serpents isle where I ended up leaving extra goblin loot. Their was a chest in the house, and in the basement a naga kept spawning. Even though it had been abandoned and no one was living there for quite some time, I found myself trying to decorate it and make a home for myself out of the place. Another place I espeacily liked, espeacialy in Ultima Nine was Lord Britishes castle. He really knew how to make the avatar feel at home there. In Ultima Nine, I ended up storing all my loot in that one room of the castle. Unfortunately, it got rather cluttered, but that did not prevent the Avatar from falling asleep on the bed and waking up refreshed in the morning, (or night, sometimes the avatar kept some really strange hours)

Crossfire, the original engine that Wograld is currently based on, does have player housing, a feature I feel is a must for a fully imersive rpg. However it needs some great improvements. Given the poor user interface for the game, it is still hard to figure out exactly what needs to be improved, but once that is fixed, features will need to be added, modified (and yes even removed) from the game.

Skill based rpgs vs Class based rpgs

I was discussing last night with our wograld project unix guru last night. She says that she prefers class based rpgs to skill based rpgs. She thinks it is preferable to have classes in games such as mage, cleric, warrior, rogue etc, I on the other hand, prefer skill set based games, where every character can chose different skill sets to make their own templates. The reason I prefer skill sets is that I hate in multi player waiting around to see that you have certain types of characters in order for your party to work such as healer, or tank, or worse yet, a mage or warlock to transport your characters from place to place. I believe that there are certain skills every character should have, rather than to speacilize to much. The skills I believe are essential are healing, and transportation in most games.

She mostly plays single player games such as never winter nights, where you have a party of adventurer to cover the skills you don't have or you simply play the game a certain way based on the class you have, rather than worrying about other players and what skills they have. This maybe biased her against skill based systems, but she believes that applies to real life as well, and that people should speacilize like in doing certain chores around the house. But then I point out, what if someone gets too sick to do the chores anymore. Then the other person doesn't know what to do and the whole places gets messy, the dishes don't get washed or the bills don't get paid. This is why I believe that there are certain things everyone must know regardless of their skills.