Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online

[Meester]

Tyranids are actually good in that, a) they ate the squats and b) they ate some space marine chapters thereby decreasing the amount of space marine players. Theres probably a c) there somewhere. Plus they look cool.

[Teleku]

Tyranids are actually good in that, a) they ate the squats

[Stabs]

You can't put these in your game and say these aren't evil because they are established in popular culture as evil tropes.

Yeah this is obviously just wrong. I mean, you can't have a movie with good vampires or a Star Trek show with friendly Klingons either, right, since those are already established as evil tropes in pop culture!

Sure authors can do that but it's extremely hard to pull off without the result being crap. Vampires generally don't work as good characters although they may be sympthetic. Only Blade springs to mind as a good vampire that's at all credible. The Anne Rice vampire were fascinating but not good. The Twilight ones seem ludicrous, basically cute boys with a bad boy habit the heroine can't tell her mum about. And vampires as non-villains were only really made possible by a huge body of fiction exploring the moral boundaries of the affliction.

Star Trek made Klingons work after laying a lot of background plot down first. The Federation is peace-loving and employs multiple species - it's not a stretch that a Klingon might be accepted into the Navy.

Warhammer 40K has done none of the prep. If they want to make H R Giger aliens into peacenik touchy feely hippies who like knitting baby clothes it will just be stupid. It's not the prerogative of an author to determine good and evil when writing genre fiction within the constraints of a 25 year old IP. Good-aligned tyrannids or orks would just be terrible retconning and would absolutely destroy the game.

[Malakili]

You can't put these in your game and say these aren't evil because they are established in popular culture as evil tropes.

Yeah this is obviously just wrong. I mean, you can't have a movie with good vampires or a Star Trek show with friendly Klingons either, right, since those are already established as evil tropes in pop culture!

Sure authors can do that but it's extremely hard to pull off without the result being crap. Vampires generally don't work as good characters although they may be sympthetic. Only Blade springs to mind as a good vampire that's at all credible. The Anne Rice vampire were fascinating but not good. The Twilight ones seem ludicrous, basically cute boys with a bad boy habit the heroine can't tell her mum about. And vampires as non-villains were only really made possible by a huge body of fiction exploring the moral boundaries of the affliction.

Star Trek made Klingons work after laying a lot of background plot down first. The Federation is peace-loving and employs multiple species - it's not a stretch that a Klingon might be accepted into the Navy.

Warhammer 40K has done none of the prep. If they want to make H R Giger aliens into peacenik touchy feely hippies who like knitting baby clothes it will just be stupid. It's not the prerogative of an author to determine good and evil when writing genre fiction within the constraints of a 25 year old IP. Good-aligned tyrannids or orks would just be terrible retconning and would absolutely destroy the game.

I think we are just having two totally different conversations at this point.

[Rendakor]

Stabs, it's one thing to say that you cannot change a faction's morality while working within a given IP, and another to say that you can't because POP CULTURE SAYS SO ZOMG!!!

[Lantyssa]

Relying on tropes to define a character means it's shit writing.

[UnSub]

You can't put these in your game and say these aren't evil because they are established in popular culture as evil tropes.

Yeah this is obviously just wrong. I mean, you can't have a movie with good vampires or a Star Trek show with friendly Klingons either, right, since those are already established as evil tropes in pop culture!

You have a german accent, don't you?   

Nein!

[Ratman_tf]

Now for tabletop wargaming you need that. It would be a royal pain in the arse to set out rank after rank of infantry minatures only to have your opponent plonk a diplomat down and say he's come to negotiate a trade treaty.

Now I want a figure for a water caste envoy. 

[Bzalthek]

Ah, I see.  He can't disassociate.  Also, when people leave his line of sight, they completely cease to exist.

[Modern Angel]

Nonsense

Fess up. You wrote that terrible article and you want our validation.

[Arthur_Parker]

Love the GW IP, play lots of WoW... I've heard this almost verbatim somewhere else. Someone help me out here? It was like Boreslammer: Rage of Beckoning or something like that.

I believe if you put on some shitty sunglasses, throw up the satan's horns gesture, and stick your tongue out with your mouth open while running around screaming "I'm a fucking douche bag. Everyone look at me because what I'm promoting is EVERYWHERE WAAAAAGH!" it will come back to you. 

Classic, what is Paul up to these days anyhow?

The Force is strong with this one

Image from Video EATV: E3 Live Stage

[Ingmar]

 

[Sjofn]

Fuck do I hate that guy! Argh!

[Lantyssa]

Still wearing the sunglasses I see.  WTF is he still employed?

[Teleku]

He fills an important niche.  Who else could do what he does?

[DLRiley]

3 laws of the universe

1. Douche bags wear sunglasses when there is no sunlight.
2. Douche bags are always employed.
3. When a douche bag fucks up at the job he makes more money not less.

[kildorn]

He fills an important niche.  Who else could do what he does?

Every dude from the Jersey Shore

[Modern Angel]

Haha! I *knew* that fucker was going to be front and center at Bioware eventually! Oh SWTOR, I expect great things from you.

[eldaec]

To be completely fair to the douchebag, there wasn't actually much wrong with the creative direction of WAR, which was theoretically his area.

The problems were on the Mythic side, not the GW (or even EA) side.

[Sheepherder]

The reason I quoted Castronova is his argument that tropes cannot be inverted by designer fiat, not his argument that people who play orcs are evil.

He only makes one argument, the former is predicated on the latter.

In the meantime, I posit that you are not allowed to write a good or sympathetic Jewish character: established culture demands otherwise.

[Tannhauser]

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if a million fans cried out "WTF?  This guy is still employed?"

Darth Douchebag.

[jakonovski]

PeeBee visited the Giant Bomb live podcast at E3: http://www.giantbomb.com/news/giant-bomb-live-from-los-angeles-day-three/2208/

Yes, he wears sunglasses even there.

[ghost]

He fills an important niche.  Who else could do what he does?

You really do have to respect the quality of his douchebaggery.  Most folks couldn't be that big of an asshole even if they put in with lots of training and hard work. 

[Soln]

PB still kicking around is one of nature's miracles.  For him.

[HaemishM]

Image from Video EATV: E3 Live Stage

I think I begin to see something here. A pattern has emerged. I truly believe that this cockmouthed douchenozzle not only counts himself lucky to be in a job, I think he's genuinely surprised that ANYONE, much less one of the largest video game publishers on the fucking planet employs him. And he's even more surprised that not only do they employ him, they pay to send him to places where he has to talk to the actual real people.

[Lantyssa]

Like a modern court jester?

[Tearofsoul]

WAR40K courts 1 million users, WoW players

I begin to worry about this game 

[Lakov_Sanite]

WAR40K courts 1 million users, WoW players

I begin to worry about this game 

Does anyone know WAR's max sub count? If it broke a million I'd be surprised and even it it did, it wasn't for long. I mean honestly even if they are two totally different companies do you really think the 40k version isn't going to suffer from a LOT of bad memories from WAR?

[DLRiley]

No it won't. Its a setting about pew pew and more pew pew.

[eldaec]

WAR40K courts 1 million users, WoW players

I begin to worry about this game 

Does anyone know WAR's max sub count? If it broke a million I'd be surprised and even it it did, it wasn't for long. I mean honestly even if they are two totally different companies do you really think the 40k version isn't going to suffer from a LOT of bad memories from WAR?

From memory it was about a quarter million. There are threads somewhere here discussing it.

[Malakili]

"Have you seen it? The movie? I think it speaks for itself," Bilson told CVG. "I'm a diehard MMO player myself - going back to EverQuest. I've spent lots of time in WoW. As a WoW fanatic, I'm going to go right to 40K as soon as it comes out. It's very friendly to the WoW player."

Its like they've been reading f13 and consciously decided to do the exact opposite of everything we say.

[Arthur_Parker]

From memory it was about a quarter million. There are threads somewhere here discussing it.

They said 800k accounts shortly after release, first quarter sub numbers were 300k then 300k next quarter, not said since.

Remember this WAR interview?

Eurogamer: Do you have a number of players in mind that you'd consider a success?

Paul Barnett: I don't know what the business people have - they have all sorts of crazy numbers, and things to do with shareholders, and things that would probably get me fired. But we're having a staff pool. I put down my bet: a million within the year, and then three million.
...
[On releasing in Europe.]

Paul Barnett: Because if you look at Europe, you realise that WOW took months and months and months to get there. It's really really hard to find a company that understands how to put servers in, get bandwidth, speak loads of languages, co-ordinate with all the different countries, realise that the Italians don't like the Germans who are suspicious of the French who don't talk to the English who don't really like the Dutch who don't understand the Spanish.

GOA did it with Dark Age of Camelot and they've done it really well. They've done it in a very European way, but they've done it very well, and it's more of the same. EA couldn't have done it, what the hell would EA know about it? They know nothing about launching MMOs in Europe, unless it's spending lots of money closing them down I suppose.

Paul is wasted on mmo's in my opinion, he should be anchored in a flagship somewhere exotic, surrounded by the disciples of his new Religion.

[Modern Angel]

This shit is great. This is all EXACTLY THE SAME as WAR. Exactly. The tone of the press releases, the WoW Done Right spiel, the art style, the movies, the sub predictions. I wasn't expecting much but I am quite literally agape at this because it's like these people live in a world where WAR never existed.

[Ingmar]

None of those things are why WAR was bad, though. WAR was bad because they fell down on the actual execution. 3 star talent etc etc etc.

Nothing about what they're saying about the 40k game tells us that it will be good or bad, really. We can't say they're 'repeating the mistakes that Mythic did' until we see them actually repeat them in the product. All that shit in WAR's marketing would look fine today if the game had been any good.

[Malakili]

None of those things are why WAR was bad, though. WAR was bad because they fell down on the actual execution. 3 star talent etc etc etc.

Nothing about what they're saying about the 40k game tells us that it will be good or bad, really. We can't say they're 'repeating the mistakes that Mythic did' until we see them actually repeat them in the product. All that shit in WAR's marketing would look fine today if the game had been any good.

Yeah, this time its gonna be TOTALLY different.