Game Classification

MMORPG Tycoon is a strategy game with glowing vector graphics developed for the TIGSource Procedural Generation competition. The player becomes the new owner of ShadiSoft Software, a development studio that went bust when their MMORPG failed to attract the public's attention. Taking command of the designers and programmers, the game's goal is to make the MMORPG successful again and destroy the competition.

The player has a futuristic, top-down overview of the game world, with extensive zoom options to view as close as a single player. Tasks for instance include planning the location of towns where players rest and pick up quests. Towns can have different levels and highly-skilled players will soon start looking for new places to stay. To avoid frustration, starting and respawn points need to be strategically planned, nearby towns and in low-level areas to avoid meetings with powerful players. They can be guided further by placing roads that lead to safe havens so they do not get lost. Without respawn points, players go offline and most likely cancel their account.

Progress is made based on the amount of subscriptions, as those bring in the money. Players need different locations to visit and the server cannot be too overloaded. Other accidents include extra players dropping offline when more than one hundred of them are inside a single area (sloppy ShadiSoft Software programming). Occasionally, this even crashes the entire region server. Overcrowded areas are marked in red on the map. Other information about progress is provided through different reports.

Players can manage zoning, build different kinds of objects and change the general design such as classes, the monster density and their statistics, the amount of experience, and keep track of the general cash flow, loans, subscriptions, the amount of employees, the competitors and more. Subscribers will often complain about overloaded servers, or the game being too easy or too hard. It is even possible to view the division of the different classes used in the game and general satisfaction. The forums also show the general buzz in comments, both negative and positive.

Aside from the regions, every single user can be tracked with the inspect tool. It shows information such as their name, class, level and experience. The game can be paused at any time to plan a next move without having time move on. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : Macintosh - PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/mmorpg-tycoon/