But don’t just take our word for it.

Watch the game trailer for yourself:

It’s as close as I’ve seen to graphical and special effects realism in a while.

The AI and campaign game modes also seem to be very detailed.

Click here for more information from our parent network.

We have found some other very good resources if you are interested in MMORPG addiction and the psychology behind it.  Specifically, if you know about the mobile game, Angry Birds, here is a very detailed analysis on why Angry Birds is so successful and addictive:

http://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/2011/02/why-angry-birds-is-so-successful-a-cognitive-teardown-of-the-user-experience/

It’s not exactly about MMORPG gaming, but it still deals with game psychology and, specifically, how your game interface and UI can have a dramatic impact on the success of your game.

We also suggest checking out an MMORPG Maker review.

However, if you’re looking for a starting point or definitive database of in-depth research on MMORPG psychology and addiction, we highly recommend our previous blog post on the subject.  It’s well understood MMORPG games have skyrocketed in recent years due to the rise of broadband internet connections and the time spent on these games has likewise increased.

MMORPG games are actually a popular tool for many researchers, especially in the psychology and sociology fields where human interactions can be observed and measured.

I’m talking about Blackthorne and Lost Vikings.  Back in the DOS days (or SNES if you played it on SNES), these games were absolutely fantastic, and the graphics were stunning for a game in those days.

Lost Vikings revolves around you (the player) controlling three vikings.  It’s a side-scrolling platformer, and each viking has unique skills.  One carries a shield (that he can use to fly or use as a platform for the other vikings), another can use swords, and yet another one specializes in running and bulldozing.  Each level involves puzzles that require you to utilize one, two, or all three vikings in order to solve.  Great graphics and original gameplay make this a must-play!

Blackthorne was another great game.  It’s also a platformer, but it involves playing as a prince known as Blackthorne, and your job is to stop the evil Sarlac.  Like Lost Vikings, this isn’t the type of platformer where you just run and jump around!  You carry a gun to kill orcs, and the battles are just challenging enough to keep you entertained, but never so hard that it drives you crazy.  You can use a combination of items to advance through each level and solve puzzles, and it should provide hours of fun if you’re looking for a retro arcade style game.

Continuing our last post which discussed multiplayer Doom, we thought we’d dedicate a post to the original Doom.

Doom was the game that started it all.

Released in 1993, anyone that’s been around FPS gaming since the beginning knows this game.

Developed by genius programmar, John Carmack, the father of FPS gaming, and published by id Software, Doom is widely considered as the game that popularized the FPS games genre.

Believe it or not, Doom is not a “true” 3D game.  Due to the processing power of computers back in those days (or lack thereof), a lot of clever programming and techniques had to be used to create the “pseudo-3D” we see in Doom.  The technique is known as “raycasting” and it’s really 2D.

Nonetheless, Doom’s impact on FPS games have been dramatic.  It has been estimated that Doom reached an estimated 10 million players in its first two years, and the pseudo-3D graphics, modifications, and so on helped to popularize the FPS genre.

If you want to reminisce or simply have a totally new gaming experience, we recommend ZDoom.

ZDoom is classic Doom, and you can play it on any Windows platform from Win95-Windows Vista and even Linux!

ZDoom supports cooperative and deathmatch multiplayer online gaming modes!  The protocol is UDP/IP.

More about ZDoom multiplayer can be found here: http://zdoom.org/wiki/Multiplayer

A Doom LAN party never sounded so fun!

Total Annihilation was hands down my favorite game back in the 1990s.

Released by the now defunct Cavedog software, it was the best and most advanced RTS game even a decade after its release.

Don’t believe me?

GameSpy released a list of the top 10 RTS games of ALL TIME in February 2004, and Total Annihilation tops the list:

http://archive.gamespy.com/top10/february04/rts/index11.shtml

It even managed to beat out Starcraft (#2) and Warcraft 3 (#4).

Yes, we all know Starcraft and Warcraft are mega-popular and have sold huge numbers.  Sales figures don’t always correlate with best gameplay though.

For example, in Starcraft and even all the way up to Warcraft 3, you cannot dodge bullets.  Total Annihilation was released in 1997 with a physics engine that allows you to dodge bullets.  Starcraft and Warcraft battles may feature around 50 units for a “huge” battle.  Total Annihilation features over 1000 units in a mid-size battle.

If you’re a fan of strategy games and you haven’t played Total Annihilation yet, you need to get it.  You can probably buy it on eBay for a few bucks.

I recently came across Nick Yee’s research on the subject of MMORPG addictions:

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_addiction.html

Nick Yee is a researcher and Stanford PhD specializing in MMORPGs and online virtual worlds.

He goes on to note that MMORPG addiction will vary based on personality types.

It’s interesting that he notes that players with low self-esteem and feel they have no value in the real world feel a sense of power and appreciation in MMORPG worlds.  This is definitely a motivating factor based on my own studies, but there are also very many other factors including guilds, items and equipment, and so on.

Further, he specifies other personality types that wouldn’t be prone to MMORPG addiction.  His primary example is FPS gamers.  FPS gamers feel MMORPGs are “too repetitive and slow to be fun.”  MMORPG games definitely do take more time before you feel a sense of “accomplishment,” but once you reach a certain point, it may be difficult to turn back!

It loosely translates to “shot on goal” – a football reference.

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