Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[El Gallo]

Show me that your fanboi petting isn't just for personal ego, but that you really do have ideas that will work in practice IN TODAYS MMO MARKET.

Isn’t the point of Areae to work in TOMORROWS MMO market? 

Perhaps the most mindlessly content-free PR shit I've heard outside a Dilbert strip.  I hope you are getting paid for that.

As for the SWG thing, I think the critical point has already been made by co-founder John:

 

SOE specifically did not want another game with the same style of gameplay as EQ, Planetside, or Sovereign. We chose a virtual world – the most successful one to date was UO and we had the team of people who worked on UO who were assigned to build the game. SOE didn’t have a virtual world, nor was it in the process of building one. It “fit” within the product strategy, even if in hindsight it may not have fit with the license. At the time, I supported this decision, and our tagline became “live in the Star Wars universe”.

In one hand they had a round peg, the Star Wars license.  In the other, a square hole, room in the product lineup for a virtual world type product. Someone at a high level decided to hammer the round peg into the square hole. Breakages ensued.

Which OMG EVIL SUIT OPPRESSING THE POOR LITTLE JESUS DEVELOPER MAN said, "you know what would be a great idea for this game.  HAM.  You know, if it takes 10 shots of a rifle to kill something, and it takes 10 shots of a pistol to kill something, why not make it take 10 shots of the rifle AND 10 shots of the pistol to kill it if a rifleman and a pistoleer group up!  Because, as everyone knows, the real problem with getting shot by a laser rifle is that you can't do calculus as quickly, and the problem with getting shot by a pistol is that you gradually lose your ability to perform ballet.  So they are really hitting totally different pools!."

Because that doesn't sound like "evil suit" logic to me.  Suits do stupid things, but they don't do "any mildly retarded 7 year old would laugh out loud at this idea" stupid.  It sounds a whole hell of a lot more like "hey, the guys at Mud-Dev will FURIOUSLY circle-jerk over this, because even though it sucks, everyone knows it sucks, and frankly even my pet monkey with Alzheimer's could come up with a better idea, it's OMG INNOVATIVE and, while it's strictly inferior to everything that came before it, everything that came before was not created by me!  Fuck my players, it's all about me getting props from guys who made 17-person MUDs in 1990."

SWG reeks of a project with not enough involvement from suits, not too much involvement.

Its good to see Raph picking himself up and trying again.

I think just about everyone feels this way, but the level of denial in this thread is just too much to bear.

[Ironwood]

Key for whom ?

Well read one post up: "people who are waiting for the next Raph-worldy thing."

I guess that is not you huh?

No, you missed my point :  At this stage, you don't even know if it's YOU or not.

 

[Cheddar]

<words>

No idea what you said, but I just notice you updated your avatard for Christmas.


KUDOS TO YOU, SIR! 

[Venkman]

Which OMG EVIL SUIT OPPRESSING THE POOR LITTLE JESUS DEVELOPER MAN said, "you know what would be a great idea for this game.  HAM.  You know, if it takes 10 shots of a rifle to kill something, and it takes 10 shots of a pistol to kill something, why not make it take 10 shots of the rifle AND 10 shots of the pistol to kill it if a rifleman and a pistoleer group up!  Because, as everyone knows, the real problem with getting shot by a laser rifle is that you can't do calculus as quickly, and the problem with getting shot by a pistol is that you gradually lose your ability to perform ballet.  So they are really hitting totally different pools!."

I need to reiterate my earlier point, only because it rankles me when discussions about one concept can't be disassociated from another concept if there's any whatsoever overlap.

Once again this is an evaluation of the execution of a concept, not the vision behind it. We don't know if a HAM type system could have worked because the only thing we have to evaluate is the one we played. That's certainly a valid reference. After all, it is "proof in seeing". It's also bad science.

But code development from concept to live is a game of telephone. In some cases the message remains clear and deliverable. In other cases it gets fubar'd along the way, either because people weren't competent enough to keep the essence of the message, or have their own agenda.

In this case, whatever the vision of HAM was, it resulted in unhealable Mind damage and 10-shot-guaranteed kills. And Raph didn't code nor Produce the whole thing all buy himself.

SWG was a collective mess. But each person on that team is entirely capable of doing something entirely different when they are working in different teams with different teams with different variables.

Otherwise we'd all still be playing Ultima III.

[Lantyssa]

What continues to taunt me is that I have yet to see an idea that Raph has talked about actually succesfully and properly implemented in a game.

Bingo. You win.

No, I dont hate Raph.

Bottom line: Show us you can walk the walk, and not just talk the talk. If it is an awesome game, I will actually buy it. So there Raph, you have a potential customer. Show me through action, because ideas and talk are both cheap. Show me it doesnt just look good on paper, but will actually work.

Show me that your fanboi petting isn't just for personal ego, but that you really do have ideas that will work in practice IN TODAYS MMO MARKET.

My understanding is that Creature Handler was Raph's baby.  Now it was buggy as all get out, but was there a more dedicated bunch of players to a single profession?  Tthe design and play of the profession showed someone "got it".

Eventually others who only kind of understood got ahold of it.  Part of it they had right, part of it very, very wrong.

[WindupAtheist]

I still can't believe Raph felt motherfucking tamers needed to be a valid combat choice in fucking Star Wars.  It was one thing in UO with dragons, but nobody in UO had god damned guns.

[geldonyetich]

My Bio-Engineer never did pan out :(

[Nebu]

Which OMG EVIL SUIT OPPRESSING THE POOR LITTLE JESUS DEVELOPER MAN said, "you know what would be a great idea for this game.  HAM.  You know, if it takes 10 shots of a rifle to kill something, and it takes 10 shots of a pistol to kill something, why not make it take 10 shots of the rifle AND 10 shots of the pistol to kill it if a rifleman and a pistoleer group up!  Because, as everyone knows, the real problem with getting shot by a laser rifle is that you can't do calculus as quickly, and the problem with getting shot by a pistol is that you gradually lose your ability to perform ballet.  So they are really hitting totally different pools!."

Because that doesn't sound like "evil suit" logic to me.  Suits do stupid things, but they don't do "any mildly retarded 7 year old would laugh out loud at this idea" stupid.  It sounds a whole hell of a lot more like "hey, the guys at Mud-Dev will FURIOUSLY circle-jerk over this, because even though it sucks, everyone knows it sucks, and frankly even my pet monkey with Alzheimer's could come up with a better idea, it's OMG INNOVATIVE and, while it's strictly inferior to everything that came before it, everything that came before was not created by me!  Fuck my players, it's all about me getting props from guys who made 17-person MUDs in 1990."

SWG reeks of a project with not enough involvement from suits, not too much involvement.

This rant begs me to ask you how long you stayed subbed to SWG?  I played it for the free month, realized that the combat system was borked, and quit.  I figured that if enough people left that the game would die a fast death or the devs would be forced to change the way combat was handled. 

You do make a very good point though.  Perhaps I am letting Raph off the hook too easily with my earlier comments.

[Signe]

I stayed subbed to SWG for quite a while because we had the most awesome guild ever.

[Thelurker]

It has EVERYTHING to do with what EVERYONE's been talking about.

No actually it doesnt.

Others may be talking about it, but I'm talking about something else entirely.

I dont care about delivery of the product. I dont care if it does or does not come on a CD. I dont care of it is a monthly charge or not. I can give you examples of both good and bad games that charge monthly, and those that dont.

I am talking about gameplay, and whether something sucks or not. I'm also talking about getting it actually shipped, which is less directed toward Raph and more toward the entire MMO industry in general. So that one isn't a potshot at Raph, specifically. It is just a general sort of comment on my low faith in some MMO companies to show decent results.

They dont have to reinvent the wheel, and going into it with that mindset doesnt really equal "success in today's MMO market". Look at how different WoW is from EQ. It's actually not all that different in many points, but it is in ENOUGH. And those points are done really well.

[hal]

Actually... The guilds.. the people in swg were truly the best experience I have yet to encounter. And is that... perhaps as Ralph planned? This is not to derail the swg hate. I have said before and will say again too much stuff in that game was broken borked or generly trash. But there was a community, there were player run events and there was social interaction.

[Akkori]

Don't forget the resource game and the crafting. That and the player/guild stuff is why I subbed as long as I did.

[damijin]

Mmm guilds that have meaning, purpose, and real world-changing goals. I miss those.

[Venkman]

They dont have to reinvent the wheel, and going into it with that mindset doesnt really equal "success in today's MMO market". Look at how different WoW is from EQ. It's actually not all that different in many points, but it is in ENOUGH. And those points are done really well.

WoW didn't need to be different because they had $75mil to do it right. That is how you overcome competition in a clearly-defined marketplace: outspend them to make better quality and lower the barrier for a new consumer. But doing that is accepting the rules as is, and going up against those who dominate those rules. Fine if you're EA or someone with a similar warchest. Not so much for small startups and/or people who feel the current model is too limited in scope.

Anyone can create a new uberdiku. You don't need someone who's publically railed against the limitations of diku for years to go make a new one. And you certainly don't need every developer in the genre trying to iterate the same experience. That's how Blizzard, for a time, dominated their other two genres: people though those were the only ways to play until someone else came along and showed them otherwise.

Will Areae do that for MMOGs? I don't know. My guess is that it'll be for someone completely different, not one of the folks playing iterations of diku (WoW, Maple, etc). Different audience is different rules for success.

[Hellinar]

Show me that your fanboi petting isn't just for personal ego, but that you really do have ideas that will work in practice IN TODAYS MMO MARKET.

Isn’t the point of Areae to work in TOMORROWS MMO market? 

Perhaps the most mindlessly content-free PR shit I've heard outside a Dilbert strip.  I hope you are getting paid for that.

Hehe. And I thought I was just making an obvious riff on TheLurker’s already Dilbertesque phrasing. Sounds like someone has already used the phrase here too often. Guess I missed those postings.

The content I wanted to convey is that Areae seems to be aimed at people who don’t currently play MMO’s.  Note the missing G at the end of that acronym. Which sidesteps the almost religious debate about “what is a game?”. To quote their website, Areae provides “Something where anyone can find something fun to do or a game to play”.  In my vocabulary at least, “fun” and “play” can have a bit broader reach than “game”. Sounds like they do in Raph’s vocabulary too.

In one hand they had a round peg, the Star Wars license.  In the other, a square hole, room in the product lineup for a virtual world type product. Someone at a high level decided to hammer the round peg into the square hole. Breakages ensued.

Which OMG EVIL SUIT OPPRESSING THE POOR LITTLE JESUS DEVELOPER MAN said, "you know what would be a great idea for this game.  HAM.

I a bit baffled about the leap from the license misfit to the failings of the HAM system. To my mind, they are totally different levels of  “Whoops, bad idea”. Getting an SF action movie license, then tasking it not to compete with your current SF action warfare game, was basically a bad idea. I’ve not played Planetside, but several people who have have remarked that Sony would been better using the license to re-skin and expand Planetside rather than build a new game.

/irony on

In one respect, the poor Galactic Civil War implementation  was a success. It did at least achieve the corporate objective of reducing internal competion with Planetside.

/irony off

/edit minor typos

[Raph]

There are so many undercurrents in this thread that I hardly know where to respond.

But this one's easy: doing a PS reskin of SWG wasn't in the cards because PS didn't exist yet. The projects were going in parallel, and PS was farther along but very far from actually done. At one point before we got there, they were even being done by the same producer, but even then, they weren't sharing any tech.

Remember, at that time, the tech for MMOFPS at SOE was basically entirely speculative.

[Hellinar]

Remember, at that time, the tech for MMOFPS at SOE was basically entirely speculative.

Ah, OK. So the Planetside tech at the time was considered too risky to carry the weight of the expensive SW license. I can see that.

[Ironwood]

There are so many undercurrents in this thread that I hardly know where to respond.

Heh.  You shouldn't.  You should go sit quietly with your new company, proving the naysayers wrong and turning in a quality product for those others that believe you can.


Otherwise, what's the point ?  It's just wanking on a message board.

 

[tkinnun0]

Once again this is an evaluation of the execution of a concept, not the vision behind it. We don't know if a HAM type system could have worked because the only thing we have to evaluate is the one we played. That's certainly a valid reference. After all, it is "proof in seeing". It's also bad science.

We do know it could have worked, because

• it's an idea, and ideas are perfect until realized, and
• WoW has done it with pure caster classes. As a pure caster, I'm useless if I can't cast spells. Silence, Counterspell and Fear spells prevent spellcasting temporarily (M). Viper Sting and Mana Drain drain my mana permanently (A). And I can be plain old killed (H).

So what about design vs. code (or Vision vs. Execution)?

I don't believe in separating design and code. I think they are intertwined and have to be continuously evaluated against each other. One of the most important things that you can do is figure out that a design cannot be coded with resources that are available, because then you can figure out why and change the design. This is where I believe the SWG team failed. They have taken their players through (countless?) redesigns without major technical problems, they even bolted an FPS on top of their game. Their ability to execute is not in question. It must be the design that has failed them.

[CmdrSlack]

WoW has done it with pure caster classes. As a pure caster, I'm useless if I can't cast spells. Silence, Counterspell and Fear spells prevent spellcasting temporarily (M). Viper Sting and Mana Drain drain my mana permanently (A). And I can be plain old killed (H).

The analogy doesn't really work since losing your mana or being silenced/feared/counterspelled won't kill you.

Part of the suck of the way HAM was implemented was because mind damage was basically unhealable and the whole thing made no sense overall.

ETA -- At this point, considering the current SWG live team as being anything close to the development team is a stretch.  Saying that the design has failed them now is a bit obvious because the NGE was awful.  But that doesn't mean that the original planned design failed them, since that's not anything near what we're looking at.  Trying to make it an issue of causation (the original design led to the NGE, so it was a design failure!) is equally bunk because it's impossible to know.

[Fargull]

SWG was a fun little gem that was insanely flawed.  I spent a good four months really digging the game, probably a good portion of the charm was the fact it was not about elves.  The ability to see Sandmen and Stormtroopers was great, but the underlying mechanics drove a white hot poker in my eye.

For the past couple of years, the biggest things in the MMORG space has been Diku or Skillbased.  WOW is a brilliant take on the DIKU, but even with it, I think the main thing Blizzard did was nail the interface.  Sure, it was not perfect, but was way better than everything else I personally had tried.  I think part of the charm of UO was the fact it really did not have any UI.  The bloody game had so little information.  Hell, the damn game only came with a bloody note card and a sorta direction to read the website.

Anyway, my point really boils down to exactly what the hell are MMORG's not doing?  What do we not have in EQ, DAOC, SWG, WOW, or EVE.  Has anyone ever whiteboarded that?  Raph seems to favor that type of thought, just wondering if anyone that might actually be able to touch the reins of the game design has purposly looked at what is Not in a game, you know.. outside of the fun...

[damijin]

SWG was a fun little gem that was insanely flawed.  I spent a good four months really digging the game, probably a good portion of the charm was the fact it was not about elves.  The ability to see Sandmen and Stormtroopers was great, but the underlying mechanics drove a white hot poker in my eye.

Funny, because the charm of WoW to me is the elves (and orcs). The ability to see steam tanks and ziggarauts is great, but the underlying mechanics drive a white hot poker in my eye.

[Slyfeind]

Anyway, my point really boils down to exactly what the hell are MMORG's not doing?  What do we not have in EQ, DAOC, SWG, WOW, or EVE.  Has anyone ever whiteboarded that?  Raph seems to favor that type of thought, just wondering if anyone that might actually be able to touch the reins of the game design has purposly looked at what is Not in a game, you know.. outside of the fun...

This has been driving me insane lately, and I'm glad someone else asked this first! If you "whiteboard" this kind of thing, you come up with a list that looks something like:

• Gaia Online
• Second Life
• Habbo Hotel
• A Tale in the Desert
• Wurm Online
• Adventure Quest

And so on. But as we so often banter about these boards, these games don't count, they're not really games, so on and so on. Holy crap, we can't even make up our minds what "uber-diku" means, let alone define "fun game." Of course, we all know a fun game after we've been playing it for a while. If we don't think it's fun, then it just doesn't count, it's clearly not a game, and then we bitch about it years later, using moot arguments because -- for example -- there is no more HAM system, and therefore no reason to complain. At all. Yet we do; we bitch and whine, about game systems that no longer exist, for games that just don't count, because they're not really games.

Or something.

So what do we want? Don't nobody say "fun game" because that's the most retarded answer ever, and we all know better. (Personally, I want a game world where I can be a rock-n-roll star by day, then by night run out of the concert hall with an automatic-fire laser rifle and kill monsters. But there hasn't been that kind of game for a few years now....)

[stray]

So what do we want? Don't nobody say "fun game" because that's the most retarded answer ever, and we all know better.

Generally speaking:

I'd like to see more platformer, action-adventure, and fighter mechanics in these so called "games". I want mobs to be in overwhelming numbers ala Dynasty Warriors; minions to be as tough and varied in their tactics as they are in Ninja Gaiden or God of War; I want boss encounters to be based on patterns, and not a gajillion hitpoints; I want more player controlled blocking and dodging; I want combat actions to be carried out through button and directional combos, not hotkeys; I want stories, not grinds.

I'd also like to see virtual worlds get refined and invested in as much as diku has.

Personally:

I want a wild west world where I can serve drinks, whores, and play a saloon piano by day. By night, I defend my watering hole with a vengeance. I'd also like to rob trains every so often.

[Venkman]

Slyfeind mentions Habbo in the same breath as ATiTD, but that discounts the fact that Habbo's got more registered accounts by itself than almost the rest of the genre combined. Now, that doesn't matter to the Flat Earth Society Flat Monthly Fee group. But you can bet for all the VC coming in because WoW has made headlines, there's a lot more because of a game that has achieved a lot more reach for a lot less cash.

As for myself, I'm sorta flighty. Half of 2006 was spent in Eve, the other in WoW (a smattering of a dozen games in between, like anyone I guess). Every time I figure out what I really like, my preferences change.

It's why I don't even bother asking for certain things. By the time I get them, I've moved onto to wanting something else :)

Ah, OK. So the Planetside tech at the time was considered too risky to carry the weight of the expensive SW license. I can see that.

Not just that. Based on what he said, it simply wasn't an option because the projects were in parallel. Sounds like the only way they could have exercised their faith at all would have been to push SWG off another year or two.

We do know it could have worked, because
it's an idea, and ideas are perfect until realized, and
WoW has done it with pure caster classes. As a pure caster, I'm useless if I can't cast spells. Silence, Counterspell and Fear spells prevent spellcasting temporarily (M). Viper Sting and Mana Drain drain my mana permanently (A). And I can be plain old killed (H).

Odd way of proving your point, but ok. I'm a WoW caster. And an Engineer. No, I won't win fights if I'm Silenced or Viper Stung. But I'm not without options while I'm going down.

CmdrSlack got ya on the other stuff.

[Yoru]

So what do we want? Don't nobody say "fun game" because that's the most retarded answer ever, and we all know better. (Personally, I want a game world where I can be a rock-n-roll star by day, then by night run out of the concert hall with an automatic-fire laser rifle and kill monsters. But there hasn't been that kind of game for a few years now....)

Interesting question. Obviously, no two people will have an identical answer.

It comes down to a conversation I had a few years ago with a psychology professor. He asserted, and I agreed, that there are three general motivations behind this sort of play: simulation, "gaming" (for lack of a better term) and socialization. No, they do not correspond well to Bartle types. Simulation refers to recreating something real, or producing as realistic a simulation as possible given the subject matter. "Gaming" refers to competition and/or cooperation within a set of rules, whether the rules are arbitrary or not. Socialization is pretty obvious. All three aspects are in general tension.

I fall along the simulationist-gamist axis, primarily. From a thousand-yard perspective, I'd like success to be more a measure of utilizing wit, cunning, resourcefulness, inventiveness, analysis and memory to a significantly greater degree than Dinggratz Diku gameplay. To paraphrase Schild, I don't want to make 5,000 chicken fajitas. Internally-consistent, dynamic game systems - preferably simulationally-based - that are interesting to interact with, pick apart and master. I hesitate to use the phrase "worldy game" because invoking virtual worlds brings rather too much baggage with it.

From a ten-yard perspective, I'd like to see a good post-apoc simulational game, where survival in the wasteland and control of resources are your paramount day-to-day concerns. Alternately, I'd like to see an Old West frontier-settlement simulational MMO - the survival and competition theme would be similar. The big issue to be worked out here, specifically, is making those struggles fun instead of tedious. I'd also like to see a fuller virtual world implementation to get a feel for how well I enjoy that sort of recreation. I'd like to see a polished twitch MMO game, if we can solve the latency issues.

I think the issue of human-computer interface is also quite significant. In the end, our control mechanisms are limited to what consoles and computers provide. Until the Wii, that has been limited to moving a mouse/joystick and pushing buttons. Hopefully we eventually move away from reductionist interfaces towards simulational ones. (Poor example: WiiSports tennis - swing the Wiimote instead of hitting a few buttons to swing your racket; which is more fun? For me, the former.)

[tkinnun0]

I'm a WoW caster. And an Engineer. No, I won't win fights if I'm Silenced or Viper Stung. But I'm not without options while I'm going down.

And that's because WoW did HAM right. They could do it because their design didn't call for three bars for each player, instead HAM-like aspects emerged after they had repeated 'tweak the design-tweak the code' over and over.

Saying that the design has failed them now is a bit obvious because the NGE was awful.  But that doesn't mean that the original planned design failed them, since that's not anything near what we're looking at.

It failed precisely because HAM was, at launch, nowhere near what it should have been. Ergo, it was unimplementable with the team they had at the time.

The outsourcing of programming jobs to India is perhaps the clearest indication that code is fast becoming a commodity. And if code is a commodity then the only thing that can fail is design.

[Fargull]

I fall along the simulationist-gamist axis, primarily. From a thousand-yard perspective, I'd like success to be more a measure of utilizing wit, cunning, resourcefulness, inventiveness, analysis and memory to a significantly greater degree than Dinggratz Diku gameplay. To paraphrase Schild, I don't want to make 5,000 chicken fajitas. Internally-consistent, dynamic game systems - preferably simulationally-based - that are interesting to interact with, pick apart and master. I hesitate to use the phrase "worldy game" because invoking virtual worlds brings rather too much baggage with it.

Want to take a stab at your Fajitas comment.. one thing I liked about the original structure of Alterac Valley was the mechanism for collecting ram pelts to get the wolf riders (been a while, but I think that is right).  I would not mind having to craft x iron swords if part of the turn in would be to see the next set of npc guards walk out with those swords.  Hell, have it so no guards would spawn unless the PC community got all the peices in play.  I would love to see the "contested" areas with deformable terrain and the ability to build towns and boarder posts.  The staticness of the world is something that kills my sense of immersion.  The biggest pain in the butt about most of the crafting is no real game impact.  What, maybe 5% of what is crafted is viable?  I want character progression, but I don't want levels.  Is it possible to build a model that allows you to enter the game with a veteran level character instead of a babe fresh from the tit?

[Ironwood]

And if code is a commodity then the only thing that can fail is design.

And yet we're still fellating the guy responsible for that design and, hence, the failure.

Possibly.

[Morat20]

I'm a WoW caster. And an Engineer. No, I won't win fights if I'm Silenced or Viper Stung. But I'm not without options while I'm going down.

And that's because WoW did HAM right. They could do it because their design didn't call for three bars for each player, instead HAM-like aspects emerged after they had repeated 'tweak the design-tweak the code' over and over.

Saying that the design has failed them now is a bit obvious because the NGE was awful.  But that doesn't mean that the original planned design failed them, since that's not anything near what we're looking at.

It failed precisely because HAM was, at launch, nowhere near what it should have been. Ergo, it was unimplementable with the team they had at the time.

The outsourcing of programming jobs to India is perhaps the clearest indication that code is fast becoming a commodity. And if code is a commodity then the only thing that can fail is design.

Actually, the wave of outsourcing jobs to India has more or less reversed. It turns out that it's cheaper (because it's FASTER) to do the job locally -- for the same reason telecommuting never really worked as well as people thought it would.

It's just more efficient to go down the damn hall and hassle the DB guy over his interface, rather than try to contact the dude in India doing it.

As for mana -- when did Viper Sting get a 15 second cooldown? That's pissing me off....

As for HAM, SWG, and Design -- the original design team seemed marginally competent. Their most significant issue was the fact that SWG was released almost a year too early. (Neither "vision" nor "coding skill" are to fault when management decides you're releasing, whether you're ready or not). Second most significant was either poor DB design (not just the database design proper, but up to the crappy calls the server was making) or someone totally going cheap on the number of DB servers. SWG suffered from bad DB lag from the beginning, and it wasn't the fact that most items had a unique ID. (Database size is rarely the driving factor in lag -- there are databases holding the fucking human genome. SWG did not have that many instances, that many fields, or that sort of complexity).

[Venkman]

Gee, sorry to hear you can't chain-silence the Mages anymore  No, seriously, that was pretty powerful as is, against a number of classes.

And that's because WoW did HAM right. They could do it because their design didn't call for three bars for each player, instead HAM-like aspects emerged after they had repeated 'tweak the design-tweak the code' over and over.

I'm confused. I don't think the 9-bar system of SWG is comparable to the two-bar of WoW. And, WoW's HP and mana bar is a convention as old as convention itself. So, besides the progressive Rage bar and stacking Action Points of WoW, what did WoW do right that hadn't been done right in countless iterations before them and therefore much easier to understand, reference, and design?

And set aside SWG for a sec. We know what was wrong with that :)

[shiznitz]

And set aside SWG for a sec. We know what was wrong with that :)

We do? Could someone just briefly review it for me.

[Morat20]

And set aside SWG for a sec. We know what was wrong with that :)

We do? Could someone just briefly review it for me.

Couldn't play Ewoks.

[tkinnun0]

I'm confused. I don't think the 9-bar system of SWG is comparable to the two-bar of WoW. And, WoW's HP and mana bar is a convention as old as convention itself. So, besides the progressive Rage bar and stacking Action Points of WoW, what did WoW do right that hadn't been done right in countless iterations before them and therefore much easier to understand, reference, and design?

I'm trying to piece together from Raph's comments how the HAM should have played if it was just as he wanted, and that's where I end up.

So, Raph, don't do your HAM simulator, you'll be accused of copying WoW 

[WayAbvPar]

And set aside SWG for a sec. We know what was wrong with that :)

We do? Could someone just briefly review it for me.

Couldn't dismember Ewoks.

I think this is closer to the truth.