The Elder Scrolls Online

[Triforcer]

All the articles I've been reading lately are much more optimistic and complimentary than they were even a couple months ago.  I'm keeping an eye on this.

[HaemishM]

The blowjobs have begun. 

[Paelos]

The articles are getting better because the pre-release slush money is making the rounds.

[Samprimary]

ey, buddy. come over here. ey. I got some eights and nines here. flash the right kind of cabbage, I know a guy at IGN who can get you some tens. whaddya say. no harm in lookin, pal

[Dark_MadMax]

Ehh I recently was cleaning out my torrents and  saw that gameplay vid again. -Ehhh it will take a miracle to turn this into anything remotely good

[Bzalthek]

If I were a coked-up game developer these days, I may purposefully release really bad alpha footage so when the real stuff hits the fan everything looks amazing by comparison.  Then I'd die from a heart attack after snorting heroin off a midget's ass.

[Falconeer]

NGI gave this the best MMO award, other candidates were The Crew (MMO Racing Game) and Final Fantasy XIV.
MMOHUT on the other hand awarded Archeage, which NGI didn't even consider, as Overall Best MMO.

You know, whatever.

[Samprimary]

jeeeeeesus i am still so sad to see people i know working on this game and SUPER MEGA EXCITED about it

gwah

[Paelos]

Well as we know now, even when I suspected otherwise, no MMO ever really dies.

[KallDrexx]

Well as we know now, even when I suspected otherwise, no MMO ever really dies.

Except Fury 

[Falconeer]

And Auto Assault, and Motor City Online. Oh hey, Star Wars Galaxies.

[Paelos]

SWG lived on for years as an emulator didn't it? Or something?

I didn't even know the other two existed.

[koro]

And Auto Assault, and Motor City Online. Oh hey, Star Wars Galaxies.

And Earth and Beyond, and City of Heroes  ().

[Kail]

And Matrix Online and The Sims Online (oops, sorry, I meant "EA Land") and Seed and...

[Abelian75]

jeeeeeesus i am still so sad to see people i know working on this game and SUPER MEGA EXCITED about it

gwah

Heh, I know how ya feel. :)

[Samprimary]

At least they are working on something which, no matter if this game manages to suck as hard as we can only predict it will, will be completely competently done or even pretty awesome.

It just won't matter in the least.

[Venkman]

At least they are working

That right there. No matter what us external armchair critics think, these people are being paid to work on something and they're enjoying it. Are they thinking that in five years their creation might not "matter"? Maybe, and only in the esoteric since. Because they're skill as a coder or character modeller or level designer or producer is not going to be judged based on how many units ESO sells nor how many other games knock off their ideas.

So good on them for willingly getting paid probably peanuts because they're following their passion.

Even if I doubt I'll buy their passion at launch 

[Paelos]

I would agree with that sentiment if it were anything but the gaming industry.

[Samprimary]

They are the sorts of dudes who are legitimately going to be crushed if^when this game sucks and fails. They're the doe-eyed dreamers yet.

[Paelos]

They've obviously never heard of this place then. 

[Venkman]

They are the sorts of dudes who are legitimately going to be crushed if^when this game sucks and fails. They're the doe-eyed dreamers yet.

Again: why? With all the kinds of skills needed to make these games work, not everyone involved is deeply and emotionally attached to the individual game. When I said "these people are being paid to work on something and they're enjoying it", I meant they are enjoying the work they are doing. But their skill could be transitive to any video game.

In other words, just because they enjoy working on ESO as, say, a character modeller, that doesn't mean they'll be all sad and angry when they need to leave to become a character modeller on Wildstar or EQ Next or, shit, Titanfall, Destiny, random DLC, some Unity thing, whatever.

Yea there'll be people who will be disappointed, and maybe some will burn out too. But that's true of any industry that requires commitment. I swear, most of the emotion I see going from the announcement, rise, launch and eventual fading of an MMO comes from the gamers. 

[Margalis]

Because they're skill as a coder or character modeller or level designer or producer is not going to be judged based on how many units ESO sells nor how many other games knock off their ideas.

Being associated with a successful AAA game is very helpful in the gaming industry, and being associated with a low quality flop can be harmful, regardless of the quality of work of the individual.

[Ingmar]

They are the sorts of dudes who are legitimately going to be crushed if^when this game sucks and fails. They're the doe-eyed dreamers yet.

Again: why? With all the kinds of skills needed to make these games work, not everyone involved is deeply and emotionally attached to the individual game. When I said "these people are being paid to work on something and they're enjoying it", I meant they are enjoying the work they are doing. But their skill could be transitive to any video game.

In other words, just because they enjoy working on ESO as, say, a character modeller, that doesn't mean they'll be all sad and angry when they need to leave to become a character modeller on Wildstar or EQ Next or, shit, Titanfall, Destiny, random DLC, some Unity thing, whatever.

Yea there'll be people who will be disappointed, and maybe some will burn out too. But that's true of any industry that requires commitment. I swear, most of the emotion I see going from the announcement, rise, launch and eventual fading of an MMO comes from the gamers. 

Or you know, maybe we can just assume for Samprimary that he's right about how the people he actually knows are going to react? This is a weird post.

[Mrbloodworth]

It Depends on who you ask. No one wants a game they worked on to be seen as terrible. However, games are made by a cooperation between people and various disciplines, you normally can't fault a trench worker for an entire presentation. Most, are also gamers too.

No one ever sets out to make a bad game, technically, or otherwise.
Pure gamers? Can Cheer, and manifest though shear will and Internets for a bad game. Even if its not, they can make it so.

The "Developers are my enemy, how dare they make a game I may enjoy" mentality has always bugged me.

[Paelos]

The "Developers are my enemy, how dare they make a game I may enjoy" mentality has always bugged me.

More often it's the developers are my enemy because they are changing something I did enjoy. This is great example of that principle. They are taking the Elder Scrolls name and slapping it on something that's completely changed from the game we all like.

[Draegan]

The far majority of devs in the MMORPG world are clueless. Half of them are clickers, so I can see where they are coming from. Just like when Wildstar said, "Factions can't cross-communication because we feel it creates TENSION." Dumbasses.

[Venkman]

Or you know, maybe we can just assume for Samprimary that he's right about how the people he actually knows are going to react? This is a weird post.

Well that's fine if this is just about those people. But I read it as a larger statement about the idea that the emotions gamers bring to games match the emotions of the game creators. I have not seen that to be the case most of the time.

But if it's just about these people he knows, then sure, not worth debating because he knows them.

[Samprimary]

naaaaaaaaaah, if I had to describe the average person working in the game industry right now, it would be more on the cynical end too.

It's just those dudes. They are really just like WOW THIS GAME IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME :3 :3 and they think their devs are amazing and game totally going to be the Next Big Thing aaaand

[shiznitz]

I wonder what would happen if a dev house hired a dozen very experienced IBM/Oracle/Sun hard core programmers instead of gaming programmers?  There would have to be a very good layer of gaming people to manage the work so it didn't solely focus on efficiency, but it always struck me as strange that the programmers were also the idea guys.  They should be implementation only.

[Goreschach]

I wonder what would happen if a dev house hired a dozen very experienced IBM/Oracle/Sun hard core programmers instead of gaming programmers? 

They'd cost money.

[Paelos]

They'd expect to be paid like you are running an actual business. Not a brodude factory of failure.

[Fordel]

They'd also probably leave once they realized you weren't running an actual business, even if you did pay them like you were.

[UnSub]

I wonder what would happen if a dev house hired a dozen very experienced IBM/Oracle/Sun hard core programmers instead of gaming programmers?  There would have to be a very good layer of gaming people to manage the work so it didn't solely focus on efficiency, but it always struck me as strange that the programmers were also the idea guys.  They should be implementation only.

Hartsman made a point of saying that the console games programmers he used were a lot more focused and efficient than the PC programmers he was used to using, given that console developers were much more used to the idea that if you didn't deliver on time and on budget, you didn't have a job any more.

[Abelian75]

I wonder what would happen if a dev house hired a dozen very experienced IBM/Oracle/Sun hard core programmers instead of gaming programmers?  There would have to be a very good layer of gaming people to manage the work so it didn't solely focus on efficiency, but it always struck me as strange that the programmers were also the idea guys.  They should be implementation only.

In my experience it's not at all true that the programmers are the idea guys.  Indeed, I would say a major problem with the place I worked was that they weren't involved nearly enough in design discussion.

[Sir T]

When I went to college, the lecturers said that programmers were seen as more the blue collar worker types, just charged with turning the design into code. We wont require you to think, just code!!