Sword Art Online

Even so, I'm sure that in most reasonable MMORPG game mechanics, the Pv P flag fades after a while.

I find it vaguely amusing that the anime changed who was visiting who in the inn. Was there any reason for that?

Oh but Silica's blush felt a bit out-of-place in this series. That style of blushing belongs more in romcoms. (Then again, SAO is turning into a harem anyway...)

(What the heck kind of username is Silica anyway? Okay, perhaps, "one that a 12-year-old geeky girl might choose" is a reasonable answer...)

@Clarste: I agree, I like a lot of the little touches that were put into the game mechanics of the world. So Heathcliff's encyclopaedic knowledge next episode should be interesting.

edited 31st Jul '12 11:04:20 AM by ashnazg

should this really be applied to an MMO where losing your HP means you die IRL

That's just it: SAO is just a "normal" MMO game in every other respect. It is designed as a normal MMO and even the GM's didn't know about the trap it would become. (They lost their access/abilities and were also caught in the death game.) So the only difference is the perma-death that the creator inserted at launch.

edited 31st Jul '12 5:57:59 PM by Belian

And, y'know. The unprecedented VR simulation and nigh-unimagniable scope, although I supposed that by 2030 that might seem commonplace.

Well, it's supposedly the first VR MMO so at least that part isn't commonplace.

Hence the " 'normal.' " I was more addressing the basic gameplay mechanics than the setting/technology.

edited 31st Jul '12 9:44:03 PM by Belian

I did rather get the impression that SAO is pretty much a "normal" MMO in most gameplay aspects, with perhaps slightly higher-than-usual safeguards for player safety (particularly in non-combat zones). In any case, statements here and there through the novels suggest that the orange/red flag does fade over time.

How does it have higher than usual safety? It has FFA Pv P in everywhere but towns.

Preview for next episode is out.

http://www.swordart-online.net/story/index05.html

It looks like murder case is going to be longer than one episode, and they added stuff that was only alluded to in the LN ^^. Which means even LN readers will be going in partially blind, for the first half anyway.

That's pretty normal, I think. I'm saying that the developers thought of everything to preserve player safety within towns, based on the infodump next episode.

In almost all of the MMOs I've played, PvP and PvM were always clearly segregated. Otherwise, you'd have a griefers and pilejumpers galore.

"PvM" ? I only know of PvP, sPvP, WvW(vW), and PvE.

[P = Player, s = structured, W = World (a Guild Wars 2 thing), and E = Environment)

I've played many MMOs where certain areas were PvP by default, and those games always had pure PvP servers where that area was expanded to cover the whole map.

We could just make the assumption that said PvP servers became more popular prior to the story of SAO.

I hope to god we get to heathcliff and it isnt about lizbet

Just going by my experiences in Worldof Warcraft there's nothing stopping you from engaging in Pv P behaviour on dedicated PvE servers and certain areas are Pv P, even within a PvE area (Wintergrasp in Northrend and smaller areas within Terrokar, Hellfire Peninsula, Nagrand and Zangermarsh) as well as world events that trigger Pv P flags like desecrating the fires of the opposing side during Midsummer Fire Festival.

So even if SAO is meant to be primarily PvE, it could still allow Pv P stuff. Especially if it was meant to be just an initial release.

The thing is World Of Warcraft has the players divided in two factions, SAO is more of everyone for itself or by groups such as partys and guilds, so it doesn't stop any player from attacking another player.

I think WoW is more of an exception than the rule. And even then, there are certain PvM places where you can farm and grind safely, away from the reach of pkers.

Bah. PvE sounds stupid. I don't even know why people started using it over PvM when the term was already pretty much established.

edited 1st Aug '12 7:46:22 PM by Thrombin

Factions are actually pretty common in MMOs nowadays. Not in every game, but they aren't unexpected. Particularly if the focus is on PvP since it creates automatic "teams."

And a faction system shows up in ALO later in the series. I wish they had spent more time on that instead of the silly "rescue Asuna" plotline.

My point is less of faction wars and more about people having relatively safe space set aside for them to PvM without having to worry about FFA pking. If it's not a geography thing, it's usually a server segregation. Of course, I'm not talking about MMOs where the major objective is just to fight other players either.

edited 1st Aug '12 7:59:20 PM by Thrombin

Hearing you say PvM all the time is sort of weird. I acknowledge that it makes more sense ("Environment"? I'm fighting the environment?), but it lacks the catchy rhyming that both PvP and PvE have.

As for segregation of the two... yeah, SAO lacks that. Which is why it's a dangerous FFA Pv P game. Even ignoring the death game part, I probably wouldn't want to play a game with so few anti-ganking measures.

Edit: World Of Warcraft does have that, in that you can't be ganked in dungeons, so it's not an exception either.

edited 1st Aug '12 9:26:46 PM by Clarste

Anyway, the next episode should be great. Based on the preview, they're slowing down the pacing compared to episodes 2 and 3, focusing on the main characters, and best of all introducing a form of Locked Room Mystery involving game mechanics. Which is hilarious. That should happen more often.

edited 1st Aug '12 9:44:25 PM by Clarste

Hmph. I played MUDs before MMOs became bigass and popular! Fie on all you casuals and your newfangled vernacular! Go twiddle with your grass and dirt and rocks while my hero goes off on a quest to defend the townsfolk from actual monsters!

PvE sounds like infant-directed speech for going to the loo. But in retrospect, I think Player versus Computer or Player versus AI would have been a more accurate term than Player versus Monsters.

Playing a ganking-friendly MMO can be loads of fun. You just have to change your mindset and playstyle a little. Obviously, that's under the assumption that ganking someone doesn't actually kill them IRL. Interestingly, I've never thought that SAO was a ganker's paradise because it was a universally vilified activity and so few people did it. Thinking back about the actual game mechanics, it was actually a lot more dangerous than I thought, since I never really absorbed the fact that 90% of SAO was essentially The Wilderness.

edited 2nd Aug '12 1:12:28 AM by Thrombin

Yeah, but there is an extreme consequence if you are caught. That teleport crystal that Kirito had takes people to a prison on the first floor. If I remember correctly, that prison is just about impossible to get out of, let alone escape.

In other words, if you are caught your character can be imprisoned forever.

Well, that's just what the players are doing to each other. It's not part of the game mechanics or anything. Honestly, it's just another kind of griefing (makes me think of summoning people off of cliffs and such). A griefer could do the same to an innocent.

And in a real game you could just log out from prison and create a new character. Or whine about it to a GM until they teleport you out. Or just corpse run.

Edit: I believe the original death mechanics of the game are that you teleport back to the closest town. Given that towns can teleport to each other freely, get out of prison would be beyond trivial.

edited 2nd Aug '12 6:18:54 AM by Clarste

I would like to think that under "normal" gameplay circumstances, the players would organize rules/laws, a trial/judge, and a bounty system for criminals and the GM's would respect those rulings. Get caught for repeated PK-ing and your character can spend a couple months in the slammer.

Even if you can't level while in there, you can still use your skills and get better at them. So it isn't like you have to spend your time there doing nothing.