Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR), the new Star Wars MMO, is out. While it has a superb new questing system with real story development and the ability to have companion avatars help you along the way… it surprisingly does nothing else to advance the MMO genre.

Certain elements from the last Star Wars MMO, Star Wars Galaxies, that we also saw in Second Life that weren’t in World of Warcraft or SWTOR are:

• Pure roles/classes that don’t involve fighting (dancers, musicians, crafters)
• Houses and virtual items for sale, earn, or trade (SWTOR has ships, but eh…)

SWTOR has crafting, but you actually outsource that job to one of your companions. WoW has crafting but most people add that onto another class. In SWG you actually could be a crafter or musician… and that’s all you did. These things actually led to gameplay that was creative and outside of what the creators had developed. Uber geek confession: I once hosted a speeder bike race for about 20 of my guild friends in SWG where we raced from house to house, purchasing cheap vendor items as we went to mark progress. The winner had to turn them all in at the end. This was MMO user generated content at its best – and we had a party at the guild hall when it was over!

Other things that are easily going to make any new MMO stand out are:

• Classes you can play for free (like a dancer, musician, crafter, etc…) without playing the monthly fee – just to get you in the door; let you see and explore the worlds. This type of class would increase the social features and player set of the MMO. Diversity – imagine that!
• Mobile content – like puzzle games that could actually be played to craft items. I mean, Club Penguin has this!? Why doesn’t a major MMO? Players should be able to interact with the world from an iPad, smartphone, etc…

SWTOR does have space battles which look really boring and don’t look like they cost a lot on the processing power. I’m guessing they might actually have plans to push that onto a mobile platform. Now that would be cool.

Final gripe: Travel. SWTOR looks like a giant and spacious world. This is cool – BUT it means that the majority of game time is NOT spent questing, engaging in stories, or otherwise playing the game. The majority of game time will be spent running or traveling by speeder bike or spaceship from one place to another. BOOOoooRING! I still have nightmares in which I run from place to place in SWG, EQ2 (now free by the way), or WoW. Who wants to play something in which the majority of time is spent traveling? I know I don’t.

For some videos on the new story-driven experience of STOR see here and here. Below is a video of the space battles.

Wouldn’t it be great if Rovio, the makers of the popular game Angry Birds, came out with a version of the game in which you could design your own levels?

Imagine a nice touch interface where the building blocks – wood, stones, ice, etc. – were available to drag and drop into a set of your choice. You could place the pigs where ever you wanted, assign which birds could be used, and test to see how hard your puzzle would be.

Then, let’s say you were able to post the puzzles you created for others to play? You could be awarded “designer” points for how many times they were played. They could rate also them for more points. Points could be turned in for rewards, badges, new games, etc.

This is how games establish creative economies. Now that the playability is beginning to wear off on Angry Birds, it’d be great to play with it as a creative tool and have as much fun as the devs have.

Jane McGonigal’s talk on gaming in the real world is totally worth the watch and I thank AJ Kelton for passing it on to me! I think what she outlines as gamer skills to be utilized the real world can ABSOLUTLEY be used to construct divergent assignments in an integrative classroom. Although, I totally disagree with Malcom Gladwell‘s theory in Outliers: that 10000 hours of practice at something = you’re an expert at it. Give me two hours on FarmVille; (something I’ve never played) and Google and I’ll can be an expert too.

Help me out here… add to this open google doc:

Bonus Points: Give students the Google 20 = 20% of class time to work on their own project! Not something you assign, something they come up with themselves and can turn in for credit. Let them write their own assignment.

Passively Multiplayer or PMOG

The PMOG Research paper

A while back I heard about Justin Hall’s idea for a Passively Multiplayer Online Game that would track your web surfing and give you points. An idea based off of the leveling system used in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).

It has occurred to me that much of what has been established as regular practice in e-learning could easily be tracked with such “myware” (spyware that consicoulsy tracks the data your computer generates for personal benefit) and later reported to the teacher in terms of stats and points.

Currently, PMOG only tracks the sites you frequent. Passively, you don’t have to do anything to “play” but go about your normal online lives. However “quests” can be created so that you may actively choose to explore what others have. Further improvements to the game are in development, such as tracking how often/much you contribute to peer production sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, etc…

Imagine being able to track a student’s involvement in class by the number of “quests” they complete… quests that the educator, or better yet, the students create. These quests can be based on research, blogging, editing or gathering information, collaboration, or communication.

Also, a fictitious element has been added that divides players (by the data of course) into a certain archetype of internet personality. See pic at left for more info.

There is still a lot of work to be done in the way the system works (it doesn’t actually track how often you blog, post picks, or edit wiki’s at this time). But I see great potential here for:

• engaging the student through competition in rank
• identification of study habits (good or bad)
• easily tracking what materials are most attractive vs. beneficial
• and what Hall calls “Literacy for Personal Data Control” or actively tracking one’s own digital paper trail

As the younger generation continues to dissolve the idea of “privacy”, I see this type of software evolving into a ‘paying’ game, where players are gladly rewarded with currency for completing quests. Many online survey sites already pay (check out opinions2cash.com) and even Google asks to track your web history while you are logged in. By the time we start actively using this in education, our students may already be “playing”.

Passively Multiplayer or PMOG

The PMOG Research paper

A while back I heard about Justin Hall’s idea for a Passively Multiplayer Online Game that would track your web surfing and give you points. An idea based off of the leveling system used in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).

It has occurred to me that much of what has been established as regular practice in e-learning could easily be tracked with such “myware” (spyware that consicoulsy tracks the data your computer generates for personal benefit) and later reported to the teacher in terms of stats and points.

Currently, PMOG only tracks the sites you frequent. Passively, you don’t have to do anything to “play” but go about your normal online lives. However “quests” can be created so that you may actively choose to explore what others have. Further improvements to the game are in development, such as tracking how often/much you contribute to peer production sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, etc…

Imagine being able to track a student’s involvement in class by the number of “quests” they complete… quests that the educator, or better yet, the students create. These quests can be based on research, blogging, editing or gathering information, collaboration, or communication.

Also, a fictitious element has been added that divides players (by the data of course) into a certain archetype of internet personality. See pic at left for more info.

There is still a lot of work to be done in the way the system works (it doesn’t actually track how often you blog, post picks, or edit wiki’s at this time). But I see great potential here for:

• engaging the student through competition in rank
• identification of study habits (good or bad)
• easily tracking what materials are most attractive vs. beneficial
• and what Hall calls “Literacy for Personal Data Control” or actively tracking one’s own digital paper trail

As the younger generation continues to dissolve the idea of “privacy”, I see this type of software evolving into a ‘paying’ game, where players are gladly rewarded with currency for completing quests. Many online survey sites already pay (check out opinions2cash.com) and even Google asks to track your web history while you are logged in. By the time we start actively using this in education, our students may already be “playing”.

Passively Multiplayer or PMOG

The PMOG Research paper

A while back I heard about Justin Hall’s idea for a Passively Multiplayer Online Game that would track your web surfing and give you points. An idea based off of the leveling system used in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).

It has occurred to me that much of what has been established as regular practice in e-learning could easily be tracked with such “myware” (spyware that consicoulsy tracks the data your computer generates for personal benefit) and later reported to the teacher in terms of stats and points.

Currently, PMOG only tracks the sites you frequent. Passively, you don’t have to do anything to “play” but go about your normal online lives. However “quests” can be created so that you may actively choose to explore what others have. Further improvements to the game are in development, such as tracking how often/much you contribute to peer production sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, etc…

Imagine being able to track a student’s involvement in class by the number of “quests” they complete… quests that the educator, or better yet, the students create. These quests can be based on research, blogging, editing or gathering information, collaboration, or communication.

Also, a fictitious element has been added that divides players (by the data of course) into a certain archetype of internet personality. See pic at left for more info.

There is still a lot of work to be done in the way the system works (it doesn’t actually track how often you blog, post picks, or edit wiki’s at this time). But I see great potential here for:

• engaging the student through competition in rank
• identification of study habits (good or bad)
• easily tracking what materials are most attractive vs. beneficial
• and what Hall calls “Literacy for Personal Data Control” or actively tracking one’s own digital paper trail

As the younger generation continues to dissolve the idea of “privacy”, I see this type of software evolving into a ‘paying’ game, where players are gladly rewarded with currency for completing quests. Many online survey sites already pay (check out opinions2cash.com) and even Google asks to track your web history while you are logged in. By the time we start actively using this in education, our students may already be “playing”.