f13.net

From Gamers Daily News:
There's still time to get your tickets, so act fast!

"WHY: Hand waving, homemade pants, white sunglasses and offbeat insights."

How is it that none of these guys are seemingly acting like adults? Ever? I dig humor and not being all serious, all the time but serious... not everything is ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH WACKINESS YUK YUK YUK!

That event sounds ripe for a pie throwing terrorist attack to me.

[/quote]

No, shoes are the weapon of choice today. Pies are too unwieldy and anyways, it's a waste of good pie. If baked goods must be used, I'd go with a fairly heavy armor piercing fruitcake. Something that would leave a dent.

"‘Creating a Great MMO: How Mythic Entertainment Solved Production Challenges using Autodesk Kynapse Middleware and 3ds Max on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning’"

Really?

shouldn't Q1 sub figures be coming soon?  EA prolly reports Q1 mid April.

Pie R Nerfed.  Cake is OP.

If you want pie, wait til next update so Mythic can nerf the cake for you.

This is a crash course in "How to end your career in gaming by being consistently unprofessional".

Having fun is all well and good, but there's a time to take things seriously.  Like... when the ship is sinking, it may be time to start coming up with an exit strategy.

Gonna be a short seminar, guy hasn't learned dick.

I would contend that dick is the one thing he has learned about. 

Instead of hosting a seminar titled "Creating a great MMO" they should be attending one.

They will get up to the mic and just stand there because in real life they will see the following message in front of the teleprompter or power point presentation....

"you are disabled, you are disabled, you are disabled, you are disabled, you are knocked down, you are knocked back, you are disabled, you are dead".....click to respawn.

Hopefully the mob aggros him and we hear his terrified scream of "TRAIN TO ZONE!". No guards will help him though as he's pretty much KOS with every faction.

 
Well that's an interesting way to put it.

The layoffs and server merges have come and gone. The only thing that makes continuing to pick at this skeleton worthwhile is the team's inability to refrain from acting like fucking morons.

I thought Wall Street had cornered the market on seminars for "How to be the World's Biggest Complete Fucking Douchenozzle in 6 Easy Steps."

Seriously, why in the world would they think they have a world-class MMO?  Everyone knows they fucked up WAR, just look at the 43 or so closed servers.  The hubris is truly stunning.

Mythic learned NOTHING from DAoC.  In my opinion, in many ways WAR is a step back.  How can you teach something if you learn nothing?

How to splash the remains of your dignity/career all over the intarwebs?

I think this needs to be said a million times. 

WAR still has serious balance issues, dps issues, and cc issues.  I'm not going to even comment on the shitty pve and the slow leveling if you're not in some elite guild group.

I'd like to go to this.

Seriously.

It'll be epic.

Because "making his own game" refers to the MUDs he programmed back in his youth and apparently he "shaped" RvR in WAR to where it is today. There's gold in them thar hills.

63, if you include Europe.

And of course, Paul lives up to expectations:

http://gdc.gamespot.com/story/6206800/gdc-2009-paul-barnett-rails-on-game-theory

An excerpt: "Somewhat unsurprisingly, Barnett's talk didn't have much to do with the announced session topic of "Dazed and Confused in the MMO World," which was advertised as "how the Mythic team managed to take a beloved intellectual properly--Warhammer Fantasy--and convert it into an MMO." Instead, through a barrage of seeming non sequiturs, Barnett offered tips to aspiring creative directors, before settling on the topic of how the gaming industry, by way of new technologies such as the iPhone, has begun to resemble the rebellious days of punk rock, and no one saw it coming."

God, he's like the Toby Young of games.

(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2009/083/barnett685_embed.jpg)

lol  :awesome_for_real:

Can somebody quote the whole thing?

"Mythic Entertainment creative director says design should come from one's experiences, not snake-oil books on how to make fun.

Paul Barnett is a man with an opinion. And, unfortunately for show organizers of the 2009 Game Developers Conference, his opinion is that the annual game maker confab isn't all it's cracked up to be. Such is the way that Mythic Entertainment's senior creative director began his session at this year's conference, telling gathered attendees that he was only participating in the show to satisfy the demands of his corporate overlords, better known as Electronic Arts.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Barnett's talk didn't have much to do with the announced session topic of "Dazed and Confused in the MMO World," which was advertised as "how the Mythic team managed to take a beloved intellectual properly--Warhammer Fantasy--and convert it into an MMO." Instead, through a barrage of seeming non sequiturs, Barnett offered tips to aspiring creative directors, before settling on the topic of how the gaming industry, by way of new technologies such as the iPhone, has begun to resemble the rebellious days of punk rock, and no one saw it coming.

In the spirit of his rambunctious session, Barnett began the talk by answering his ringing cell phone, telling whoever was on the other line that he was busy. Referencing his opening rant, Barnett then offered a "vital lesson" to creative directors, saying that it didn't matter that he didn't want to be here, but it was the right thing for his studio.

He then went into detail about his creative mindset, noting the collage-coated green walls of his office and his early influences growing up in England. The point he seemed to be making, and which became clearer later on in the presentation, was that creativity is the product of a person's environment.

Growing up in England at the time, his environment was defined by the relative lack of things, he said. This led him, he continued, to engage in a good deal of game piracy growing up, as he and those he knew would copied cassette games for the Commodore 64, and then passed them around. He has played 7,600 games by his last count (and to be clear, he keeps a running record of the games he's played).

Barnett transitioned this point by saying that there are basically two types of people, as defined by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. There are creative people who don't know how to make any money and no one will back their efforts, he said, and there are business people who know how to make money but don't have a creative bone in their body. It's a problem, he continued, when a creative person is in charge of a company, just as it's a bad idea when the business-minded are tasked with creativity. Both situations, he said, are doomed.

This idea dovetailed into one of the key points of his session. Game design theory is very complicated, he said, because people are over-thinking the problem. "Theories in design are as timeless as the fashion of hats," he said. The theories, he continued, are a means to sell a product and are nothing more than a series of catchphrases that get traction and are then sold to people. "This is because we don't like chaos, we don't like uncertainty," he said. "So we look for earnest people with intelligent systems to sell. Prophets that can fortify our faith. It's caustic, and it's dangerous."

Drawing from his earlier point about what shaped his creative spirit, Barnett said, "Design is found from history, it has an attachment to philosophy, more than science or math. These people who think they have an equation are dark and dangerous. They make it sound like there is a formula for fun. Fun is genetic."

"We need to teach young dogs old tricks," he said. "Encourage people to think. There is no theory to fun. You will not find the fun matrix."

Luckily, he went on, game design has entered a "golden age," due to the rise of alternative forms of distribution such as the iPhone, Xbox Live, WiiWare, Flash games, and any number of other delivery mechanisms that don't necessarily rely on high-tech hardware. Instead of being built by massive developers and publishers, these games are built by small teams who can deliver solid, fun gameplay. "Big corporations are in the wrong place, making the wrong products," he said.

"Some things just matter, some things show up and are never going away ever again," he said in relation to the rise of these new forms of game distribution. "It's like punk," he concluded. "You can all do it."

Edit, the funniest part is reading the people's replies to the article. Kissing his ass like you wouldnt believe. "We need more people like him in the gaming industry. We need a "Sid Vicious" to tell EA and all the corporate prostitutes how we want our games to be. \m/" Yeah, go ahead and do that sweetheart, are you going to get paid with jelly beans and pop tarts too?

"The comedy stylings of Paul Barnett".   :ye_gods:

Well, at least he didn't claim he invented MUDs. 

I don't think I've ever read an interview or seen a video of him where I couldn't have mistaken him for a ranting drugged up bum that had in wandered off the street.

Speaking of videos....  I almost swear I saw a vid of him doing this exact same schtick while talking about Warhammer before release....

"In the spirit of his rambunctious session, Barnett began the talk by answering his ringing cell phone, telling whoever was on the other line that he was busy. Referencing his opening rant, Barnett then offered a "vital lesson" to creative directors, saying that it didn't matter that he didn't want to be here, but it was the right thing for his studio."


If he's using old material from pre-release hype vids...  it's worse than we all though.

My gods...  this man really doesn't need to be in the industry.  Perhaps any industry at that.

Gaming now has its very own Carrot Top.

I don't think a guy being a giant dick really qualifies him as a prop comic. This dude is just a tool.

Aw... he used a cell phone!

Not to drag politics into this, but this seriously sounds about as out of touch as Michael Steele saying he wanted to give the GOP hip hop makeover.  Cowabunga dudes.

This guy has a great future at OnLive.

How could it be possible for me to have any less respect for Paul Barnett? Just reading that article makes me want to stomp on his nuts with a steamroller.

Every time I read about him I keep thinking about the Biggest Douche in the Universe South Park episode.  John Edward versus Paul Barnett- tough call, but I think Paul's recent body of work gives the hardware to him.

Funny, I'd bee-line straight towards the Biggest Shit in the World/Bono episode.

I was gonna post something put this pretty much hits it on the mark.  I'd say doesn't his company have a leash or something to tether him to, but Mythic actually encourages this gibberish passed off as off the wall creativity.

so he winged it.  Nice.

GDC is expensive, if you only go to 8 talks and aren't press, you just spent a few hundred dollars listening to this giant asshole.

Fuck, I want to publicly embarrass him to the point of industry blacklisting. What a dick.

It almost sounds like he is advertising for something like this. Doing the math 7400 games is a fuck ton even over a 10-15 year span.

Was John Romero on first to warm the audience up?

and there's no way to refute that or prove it. 

he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who keeps good records of anything,  So this is just more grandstanding.  Pure hyperbole.


Edit: reality
10 yrs * 365 days/years * 24hrs/day = 87,600 hrs

87,600 hrs / 7400 games = ~12 hrs / game absolute time.

10 yrs * 365 days/years * 14hrs/day = 51,100 hrs

51,100 hrs / 7400 games = ~7 hrs / hardcore game time 24x7...

BS utter BS.

We could work backwards and rule out games he doesn't appear to have played, then count the remaining.

1. WoW
2. WAR

Well-played, nerd. Well-played.

This guy makes me want to bring back Raging Douchebag week. I already found the Mark Jacobs banner for that.

Lum seems to have yanked a critical but professional post about this.  Lum, think of the children!

Barnett doesn't deserve the attention we give him let alone the attention of other developers.

Also, Nintendo is thinking of the children. No one else needs to.

Jeff Hickman and Paul Barnett Interviewed at the 2009 New York Comic Con (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Net7UT3WGxE)


WAR finally makes sense.

Interview Part two (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nsSLbkmMPs)

1. He should go visit some people and Blizzard and learn just how much hard work and professionalism actually goes in to making money hats.

2. Imaging any output he might have as a milliner is amusing.

Everytime he grabs the mic I cringe


Edit: He has a tirade on claims that there should be developer credit on games not companies... Wasn't there some spat with IGDA with a game like this.  :uhrr:

In previous Barnett-related discussions, we've wondered about his professionalism.

So, in a public address organised to help promote his studio (and hence, publisher) among other game developers, he:

 - tells people he doesn't want to be here and is being forced to talk
 - answers his mobile on stage (gag or not)
 - doesn't stick to the topic
 - bags the idea of working with large companies (my e.g. EA)
 - indicates that people can't be creative and business-minded, despite there being evidence otherwise
 - talks about himself for the majority of the talk
 - thinks the future is in small indie games, using only the most successful examples
 - compares the future of game development to punk, indicating his awareness of punk's origins is incredibly spotty

This is exactly what I'd do if I'd already been given my pink slip. Or expected to be receiving one soon.

Oh, and also:

 - didn't talk at all about Warhammer, despite that being his field of 'expertise' that got him onto the stage in the first place

(http://www.imagedump.com/image.cgi?file=547111.jpg)

Speaking of which, it's a wonder you haven't update your avatard from this very thread.

"We don't want everyone anyone to play Warhammer."

Unreal. Well, I can at least say that he always surprises me, no matter how low I set my expectations.

I'm beginning to suspect that the whole WAR/Mythic thing is a plot to bring down EA from within.

I mean, there aren't clownshoes big enough for these cats otherwise.

Seems reasonable. Surely people went to that talk primarily for the comedy and drama. I can't imagine you'd go there to find out how to make a successful MMORPG from him. I didn't expect him to rise to the challenge quite so impressively though.

You know the humour is escaping me.

We're at the start of what has the potential to be the worst recession in history, millions of people are losing their jobs. I personaly know 4 professional, hard-working, intelligent people who are now unemployed and facing poverty through no fault of their own. And this idiotic, childish, contemptuous clown who blatantly fails at his job and seems to have no humility or shame about that whatsoever is still earning enough money to give a lot of real people real jobs?

What a wanker.

O hai. Welcome to America. Where the good die young and the stupid live forever because they're too stupid to know they should be dead.

That pudgy fuck is as punk rock as Pat Boone.

The VN board is ripping him a new ass. No sympathy at all anymore. It's damn funny. I wonder what the official boards are saying.

Do you really care? I mean, really?

Warhammer Alliance forums have a post titled "Losing interest" and there are no fanbois coming to defend the game.  It appears even the hardcore WAR fans are beginning to give in as well. 

I'm not surprised, but it is interesting to see diehard fans slowly lose their ability to defend the game. 

Yeah I've noticed that as well.  I always kind of think of those people as the St. Judes of lost MMOs, I'm surprised there's been so little retention for them in WAR.

I think they have watched how the DAOC faithful got rewarded for supportiing and sticking up for Mythic over the years with Origins, just like they asked for.  :awesome_for_real:

-Barnett's blog on that conference is pretty self engrossing.  Railing against EA for making him do actual work, just like the PR aides that he makes hold his bags and get coffee.  To quote Curly Howard: "Why... the noive of dat guy!"

Link please. I have a sneaking suspicion that we might be watching the beginning of the end for this clown. I sort of want to watch with unrestrained glee as it slowly snowballs while he keeps shouting about PUNK ROCK as his checks bounce.

If he's truly punk then he should revel in being penniless and destitute.  When can we expect the drug habit to start?

you know, in all seriousness, he may be trying to get fired.

With the Mythic acquisition he very probably has good equity and a secure severance agreement. 

Meaning: he can get asked to leave, land a new MMO genius job, dismiss WAR, and get well paid at the same time. 

Not a bad strategy. 

If he's trying to get fired, he's doing it wrong.  Wasting everyone's time at a talk a conference is a sure way to ensure continued employment!

People only fail upwards in game development, until they finally destroy their own company they didn't deserve and then they fail downwards one notch and repeat the process.

Let's keep focusing on Paul, not MJ!

I can guarantee you there was at least one venture capitalist with a boner for WoW numbers looking to poach someone at his talk who was turned off by his meandering horseshit.

Sounds like business as usual at pretty much any corporate structure, if you ask me.

 http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65908 

There ya go.  Surprised he got that many pages out between alcohol and ego poisoning.


EDIT-  He's made three entries there, but I refuse to spread any more than one of them to my fellow humans.

Christ

Here is one of the WHA threads referred to: Anyone else losing interest? (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=272045)

But homestly, they are a dime a dozen. Every day there is a new or necro'd thread about this there. Although as people have said here it does seem like the fanboi defense team has slacked off a lot more to the tune that some threads are almost 100% critical. Just imagine what the tone would be if most of us who obviously quit could still post ...

I was without internet for a few days.

Okay, so I read the other two blogs of his. Talk about thoroughly mediocre.

Hur. From WHA.

WHA is turning on Mythic pretty fast.  There are threads about cancelling meeting with little to no fanboi resistance.  The funny thing is that many people are leaving WAR to go back to DAoC.  It's a pretty sad statement when your old game proves to be better constructed than your new, multimillion dollar baby. 

That'll show 'em!  :awesome_for_real:

http://www.massively.com/2009/04/09/do-developers-consider-disabled-gamers-enough/#continued


...

Now that's the kind of designer I want making my games!

There's a deaf, dumb and blind joke in there somewhere. 

Warhammer Pinball! Now with Bright Wizards!

God this guy is just super qualified to work in entertainment. Hell, he's a walking circus.

Hearing-impaired? Is that why he is yelling all the fucking time?

No, he's yelling all the time because he's upset no one ever listens to him. Or at least, they don't hear him.

of course, he could also be lying about all of that

Oh my God, the comments.  :uhrr:

"Some people are, through no fault of their own, living a restricted physical life - on our world, you can fly, ride, get married, run, jump and swim"

... and we tried our very best to make you feel disabled doing it.

Sorry but..

"You Dawg.. I heard you were disabled in real life.  So we made a game where you get disabled a lot in game so you can be disabled while you play disabled."

I promise no more, but sometimes they just write themselves.

Unlike the real world, where cripples are shunned by the opposite sex and may never wed!

 :awesome_for_real:

He forgot to mention his Narcissism disorder too.

We need a word for design-impaired, I suggest grindlexic.

Oh grindlexic, that's a good one.

I caught that, too. It screamed lonely fat beard claiming ass-burger's benefits because of his obsession with Thundercats.

I was more agape at the couple posts where people said that companies shouldn't provide wheelchair ramps

Wait.  You guys can't fly!?

I think this explains why they only want 3 star talent. No matter who is working with Paul B on this project, they are going to be brought down to 3 star level. They could have John Carmack working on the client and it wouldn't have helped.

Man, wtf, way to trot color blindness out as a disability. HELP HELP MY SHIRT DOESN'T MATCH. Douchebag.

I am color blind myself, about the worst side effect is I have to ask someone else in my company's IT department what color an LED alarm is showing. And I can't make my own cable. LIFE WRECKING.

My sister still feels bad about acting like you were an idiot when you wanted to know if you had a red shell or a green shell in MarioKart.  :awesome_for_real:

Well yeah there's that aspect.

You can't make your own patch cords?  I'm so, so sorry. :|

Dood.  How can you live with that?

I'm slightly dyslexic, I'm happy to have terrible spelling in exchange for a faster reading speed.

It's the left handed people I feel sorry for  :drillf:

I know! It is such a hardship to make someone else make a T1 crossover when I need one, as I have to sit there and read f13 instead while someone else works... terrible.

I have red-green colour blindness and I can't see in 3d.

Can I somehow get money from the government?

I am so taking that.

Don't forget the reflecto shield on some bosses  :oh_i_see:

And y'all let him tank!? :ye_gods:

It's like playing on hard-mode!

Dikulexia could also work.

Btw, being colour blind AND dyslexic makes you disabled, apparently. Add in hearing impairment (the extent to which is undefined by Paul) and you should be trying out for the Special Olympics.

Wait, what? Do you see everything from a side-scrolling perspective or something? Maybe top-down? Can you see on the other side of walls that way?

My eyes can't work together. The right one is very near-sighted, the left only slightly so. I have to concentrate to see much depth, I can't see stereoscopically (3d glasses don't work), and (I've been told) I don't judge distance in the normal way.

I guess there are exercises that can improve it, but they are tedious and I've never really NEEDED to do them.

I've got Anisocoria but it doesn't make me a flaming douche like Barnett. 

I'm a dick and have no readily apparent handicaps. Does that allow me to identify Barnett as "that retarded guy" or "the big retarded douchebag who just talks and talks and talks but no one listens because he's retarded (and also a douche)?" Just wondering.

So Paul is dazed, confused, color-blind, dyslexic, and hearing-impaired? 

:roffle:

As long as you stay with the format, I don't really see a problem. 

Yes.  It really does allow that. :grin:

It is a bitch in many situation :cry:



You don't need to be lacking handicaps in order to call Paul by either of those options. In fact, I'd bet that those with severe handicaps can look at Paul, before this info was even released, and feel great about themselves and may even believe that things could always be worse.

Paul, Paul, PAUL,...

(http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/15/Never_go_full_retard.jpg)

I've met Paul a few times and had several conversations with him where he said useful and insightful stuff and generally didn't act like he does in most of his videos. I'm not white-knighting for him or anything but assigning all the blame for WAR onto him is somewhat shortsighted. He's not the reason I'm no longer playing WAR.

He's not the reason I'm not playing WAR, either. He's the reason I will never come back so long as he's an employee.

You should maybe call him and tell him to not be a fucking dickbag in public. I don't know who Paul Barnett is behind closed doors. I don't know who any public figure is. I'm left to judge them on the public face they present. When someone is presenting an ugly, petty, viciously stupid face to the public, so aggressively that I have to think this is what they want people to think, I have no choice but to judge them on that. That's PR 101 and maybe someone who knows him, maybe you back in the day, should've taken him aside and told him to shut the fuck up.

Absolutely the same for me, well said. I'm sure Paul could come up with some gems for ideas, and even be useful and insightful as Ian said he has been before, but his pod casts continually lead me to believe otherwise and provide every reason to not give Mythic a single red cent. Which really is a shame since I would honestly pay just to play t1 a few hours a month.

EQ: "Please make a Classic pre-Luclin server."

DAoC: "Please make an Origins pre-NF server."

WAR: "Please make a Newbie pre-T2 server."

I guess WAR's "nostalgia" base kicked in a lot quicker than most games. Sad that it is actually true.

I learned long ago to distance the artist from the art. So, Paul being a dick has nothing on me actually playing a title he worked on.

However, I'm certainly not playing WAR any more due to Mythic's design decisions.

You never got laughed at by hundreds of pimply young teenage boys when you turned up as a special guest at a Warhammer tournament with an army of vermilion painted Greenskins. He's never been the same since.

I don't really think Paul is a bad guy.  I think it's just the people like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FefWp_4B0k&feature=channel) he hangs with that influence him.

Check this dude's job and it explains a lot of things.  But you just know this guy influenced Paul's whole backwards hat phase he goes through.

I will say that Mark Jacobs ended up with a terrific fall guy. Well played, Mark. You'll have your stupid Romans in space yet.

Thought this was interesting. (http://www.examiner.com/x-5353-MMORPG-Examiner~y2009m4d15-WoW-patch-31-The-Secrets-of-Ulduar)

Given Paul's prior comments about WoW that doesn't seem to be Mythic she's talking about?

Unless of course he was blatantly lying the whole time about that stuff.  :heart:

Unpossible. 

What game/s is Sanya playing now days, consistently?  I don't keep up with her blog, but I wonder what games are soooo much better than WoW that she couldn't make it a few days into the story?

I don't know. If they were that into wow, you'd think war wouldn't have some of the blatantly fucking obvious mistakes that made it in. There are so many stupid gameplay decisions in war that wow managed to correct years ago, that it's hard for me to believe that the clownshoes embargo wasn't in effect.

Barnett did just start off as a consultant so it is possible that the WoW rot had set in long before he had any real power. Once he came in he may have said "Stop playing WoW", but if that is what the standard culture is...

I dont know, but you can follow her here: http://www.examiner.com/x-5353-MMORPG-Examiner

I'd have to guess that she's referring to Jeff Hickman, the Executive Producer.

I was just being silly... but you're right.  I guess that I just haven't seen what value Barnett has brought to the game.  Up until now (and in beta) everything he has said/done just seemed to be either for comedic effect or out of ego.  I understand that he's just one guy in a whole team, so it's possible he just got outvoted on... well... everything. 

I remember something very similar to the below about Mythic devs and WoW being posted on SA shortly after WAR was released, not going to spend ages looking for it though.

I take being left handed every time over those severe mental disorders Barnett seems to have.

They cherry picked the parts that appeared to be WoWtastic without understanding why WoW did them in the first place. That's gonna make some disconnects in what features they chose to "homage" and what parts of DAOC they clung to like rats in a shipwreck.

From the sound of it, Sanya doesn't dislike WoW because she thinks it's a bad game.  On the contrary, she seems to have high praise for it.  She just doesn't find enough of a sandbox in it to find it enjoyable.  Which is perfectly fine.  I have to wonder if she's been playing Eve.  It's the polar opposite of WoW in that it's one of the best sandbox games out there, but lacking in polish and with some pretty unforgiving (to put it kindly) game mechanics.

I believe she's playing LotRO or she was until fairly recently at least.

That boggles my mind then.  LotRO isn't a terrible game, but it's so much like WoW that I'm confused by her statements regarding linearity.  Imo, LotRO pellet whacking is no different than WoW pellet whacking, to use her reference.  The whole thing is confusing. 

LOTRO feels like a world, WoW is a great game.

I have to echo this.  It was immediately obvious that LotRO was meant to attract those gamers that want to feel a part of the story.  WoW is aimed more at steering players toward teh shiny.   Guess which gameplay style is more popular?

I don't think I agree with you because....

Ohh look at that shiny over there.

What was I saying?

For me it's all feel.  I couldn't get used to the feel of LOTRO combat after playing WOW.  WAR was less of a problem in this area (when not having to deal with the brain dead monster AI).  AoC was less of a jarring transition mainly because it felt like a new system for the most part and was faster paced.

Blizzard refined this in Diablo II.  New patch, new runes.  They kow what works.


Yes, combat is far less fluid in LotRO than in WoW.  Also, the game suffers from the problems the story has: the good guys are noble, the bad guys are nameless threats.  I hate being resticted to just one side, and I hate that all the classes noble. 

LotRO is also a hell of a lot more demanding on your system. I could not play LotRO on my old PC. It just wasn't happening.


WoW will continue to play on anyone's toaster oven of a machine.

And piss poor connection speeds.

I was in the middle of the bum fuck Anbar province for several months on an RBGAN pointed into the sky and I could still play WoW... yes my lag was red, but I still leveled a Shadow Priest and I still didnt have the cast delays like I had with WAR from my FIOS line in the states.

What were the specs?  I was playing the lo-res client on a machine that has 2 Gb RAM and 2 256 nVidia cards with SLI enabled, and the ran fiarly smoothly on the recommended settings.

What's funny is that LOTRO runs better on my system than WoW does at this point. WoW did something weird with their draw distance and you're drawing shit in Dalaran when you're not in Dalaran. Guess what's in Dalaran? YOUR ENTIRE SERVER POPULATION

Their monsterplay provides nice alternative to it, though... in fact, since it's tad bit more dynamic than the main world while still managing to stay a casual option, i spend more time in it than in the main part of game. It's a vent of sorts, that lets the player have both self-derogatory humour thanks to monstrosity of your character, and extra fun with stomping these noble heroes into ground and sending them bravely run away.

Unless you go to Dalaran.

As soon as you utter the letters SLI, you are out of the toaster zone.

Well the implication of his remarks were that the whole team was supposed to be avoiding WoW deliberately, is my recollection. Maybe I misunderstood and he was the only one covering his ears and shouting "I'm not listening!" at Blizzard.

He was out of it the second he mentioned 2Gb.  The SLI just turned it into an industrial grade kiln.

Or that tubby sack of shit didn't do anything, which I've seen written. In other words, it's a good soundbite and since he's a media attention whore guess what spews out of his mouth?

I have 4 gigs of ram in my mac mini and I have 2 gigs of ram in my $200 tiny silent linux box.

It's like $25 for 2 gigs of ram now, big deal.

(8 gigs in my gaming machine)

And that makes them barely more powerful than toasters?

I still have my 800mhz Windows 98 machine. I should try to fire up Wrath on it for shits and giggles. I bet It'll run.

RAM was always the biggest bottle neck I found.

When my old Toaster went from 500 megs to a gig, literal doubling in performance, if not more.



Yes, I was able to play WoW with 500 megs of ram.  :grin:

My current gaming machine happens to be a laptop, so I am unable to upgrade either the RAM or the video card...


What I am wondering is what people's analysis of the methods that Turbine did to acheive this.  If you remove the emphasis on the story, LotRO really is a clone of WoW in terms of mechanics and design.  You still quest for levels, you still hit buttons to fire off skills to win, you still raid to get endgame gear.

I imagine some of it is the history of middle earth, I read lots of tolkien years ago, also MERP rulebooks etc, so walking around ruins in Arnor is interesting to me.  Walking round WoW never really had the same effect, I can't even remember the name of the warcraft world.  But mostly I think it's an accident, nobody plans to create a nice setting rather than an excellent game.

The concept of being like wow, with just a bit of added material is what floated them for so long.  Just picking up on people were sick of killing Illidan for the tenth time, but weren't sick of the Diku loot/experience/crafting treadmill has kept them going.  And yes, the epic feel to it and the lore certainly helped...hell my friends and I were sold on the game just on the concept of maybe, possibly, one day being able to kill Sauron.

I think the difference is where the story is at when the game comes in. WoW is a continuation where LoTRo runs alongside the story.

Given how Turbine is committed to preserving the lore, I think that might be a long shot.....

Yeah I know...but still, I had one slim, the buzzers ringing so you might as well shoot the ball from half court hope.

#1: Scale. One of the biggest things keeping WoW from feeling like a "real" world is that the scale is so compressed. A zone in WoW and a zone in LotRO might be about the same size, but the WoW zone will represent a bigger chunk of the world with that size. That's good in some ways; it means that WoW has a much wider variation of terrain types and zone looks, but it also is much worse for immersion.

#2: Zone design. WoW zones are very clearly designed first and foremost for gameplay. The level banding of the mobs, the quest hubs, the progression of how you pass through them, espeically in newer zones, are all very game-y. LotRO on the other hand has less leeway to change, say, where a town is, and just generally spent more time on making things interesting to explore rather than making their quest progression work just so. Again, there are positives and negatives to this approach.

#3: Art design. LotRO goes for a more 'realistic' art style than WoW. As long as you don't go all weird uncanny valley, that will usually increase the immersion value of a game, especially when it comes to terrain art. While I personally like WoW's style and think it works very well for that game, there's no question that it takes you a step away from the game feeling like a world the way LotRO does.

It's just too bad that lotro didn't have ACTUAL faction-based PvP.

I dunno, there's something to be said for not having to dick class balance up with PVP issues.

LotRO succeeds at 'world' because I can open up just about any passage from the trilogy and use it to narrate a location in the actual game. If your greatest desire in life was to be a hobbit eating bacon and smoking pipeweed, it delivers.

I find it more amusing how almost every WAR thread now devolves into a LOTRO thread.  I'm not sure which game that actually says more about.

We needed to change it up from devolving into DAOC threads.

Not exactly. It's an inferior clone, and that works to its advantage. I think Ingmar's #2 is most important. Although the quest design in LotRO is careful to make sure you at least pass through most of the areas on the map, there's no sense that they have no other purpose.. In most single-player computer RPGs (and WoW) the gameplay experience is polished to the point that they no longer have towns or outposts so much as quest hubs.  Lore is only as deep as necessary to link the quests into story... and no deeper. The world is designed for you! If you won't be directly involved with it, IT DOESN'T EXIST!

If WoW were Lord of the Rings, the One Ring (http://thottbot.com/?i=5503) would be endgame loot, you would kill Sauron six hundred times hoping that he'd finally drop that helmet you need for your tank, and everyone would ride around on the Nazgûl's flying mounts. Everyone. It would also play more smoothly, be more popular... and be less of a world.

Funny video showing people in game.  Well, I guess you could call it "in game".     http://www.wegame.com/watch/Standing_in_line_in_Warhammer/


I think Jacobs probably is considering whether to use that as proof that huge throngs of people are playing WAR right now.  All it needs is Barnett's narration, really.

Thanks for the video, I forgot how horrible the character animations were.

Who on that website decided that constant pop ups would be a good thing?

What's really surprising about that video to me is...uhh...that people are standing in line, instead of clumping around the spawn point trying to grab the mob.  I don't think I've ever seen anything like that happen before on something of limited scope like that.

Take that, people who said no-one was playing WAR! Just count the number of people in line!  :uhrr:

There is nothing, nothing, nothing in WoW as immersive as the Shire in LOTRO.  Other LOTRO zones are nearly as great.  If I have one minor nitpick about LOTRO immersion, its that I don't remember from the books the population of 10,000 raging flesh-starved boars in the Shire that routinely attack you in the midst of the corpse-of-boar-victim flooded farms. 

So, are boars considered canon?

I remember it in the LotRO beta. There were a few unique quest mobs for lowbie quests that constantly had a queue waiting at the spawn point. Also when Catacombs was first released for DAoC there was a particular mob for one of the low level Champion Quests that usually had a small line waiting for him to repop.

Would also add #4: the 4h wall.

LotRO world is to large degree coherent and mostly lacking the "wink wink nudge nudge blatant pop-culture reference lolz" so permeant in WoW. This results in world that feels more solid and stand-alone so to speak, something that could possibly exist on its own and to exist for its own sake rather than for the sake of entertainment of computer game player.

Regarding that, I realized that WoW is the Robot Chicken of video game humor. You know what I mean... there's never really a joke or a punchline. Just a reference. So you reference something from nerd pop culture and the reference is supposed to be the entire joke. Except it's not really a joke and you realize that it's really, really lame after the third time going "HAHA! VOLTRON! I REMEMBER VOLTRON! I LIVED IN THE EIGHTIES! HAHA MAN VOLTRON! Wait... Volt... is there anything else to it except the reference itself? That... man, that's not that funny after all..."

What's even MORE surprising, was that was the "Destruction" side, including people from Chaos.


You'd think a side touting Chaos and Destruction would be a little more..  "chaosy and destructiony"   :ye_gods:

HAHA! A Blood Elf named Haris Pilton!  The endless pop culture references in WoW are a big turnoff.  I don't mind the odd one but you can't go 10 feet without tripping over one in that game.  When they're that frequent, they stop being funny or clever.  It really kills the immersion.

I'm not saying that I disagree with it being old, but it IS the world.  It was in Warcraft 1 and every game since.  There's always some pop reference of some type and a fair amount of sillyness to go along with demons, undead and the end of the world.

You'd have to be fairly sensitive or determined to hate wow to find it that much of an issue. The pop-culture references are actually pretty rare.

That said the Haris Pilton one is more a joke on blizzard for introducing a monstrously expensive consumable (22 slot bag) to act as a gold sink. So given what she sells the reference is perfect.

http://www.wowwiki.com/List_of_pop_culture_references_in_Warcraft  :uhrr:

I don't complain about immersion or anything like that. It's just this symptom of Generation Y humor typified by horrible shit like Family Guy and Robot Chicken (and WoW) where there's no joke. There's not even a setting for a joke. There's not even absurdist, hard to understand humor a la Kids in the Hall or early Monty Python. There's just a reference, hanging there, and you're supposed to laugh because you remember where it's from even if it's not funny. It's like you take the classic incongruity of something not belonging in a given scene/setting and rely on a generational obsession with unhealthy amounts of nostalgia to bring the laughs.

Over the total content of WoW that's pretty damn minimal. On top of the fact you'd have to be a pop-culture geek to even notice a lot of them. In which case you probably like it.

Wierd that you're accusing Gen Y of this fault, when Gen X seems just as guilty, perhaps even moreso. All the "har har a reference!" stuff I see is usually stuff that has a huge nostalgia factor for people slightly older than me, and I was born in 1977, one of those bastard years no one fits in either generation. But all the people I see making those sorts of jokes (and I don't really care about them, personally, if someone finds it funny, good on 'em, I don't feel a need to yell at them to get off my lawn) are older than me, not younger.

I'm also pretty sure most of Blizz's workers are solidly Gen X if the age of their panelists at BlizzCon is any indication.  :drill:

Really? I thought they were endless. Yeah every game had them and I can handle that but they just seemed absolutely everywhere to me.  Anyways, it's not the reason I don't play WoW.

Paul Barnett 13 May 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3w7n3lAbSQ)

Paul is going to do some work on UO.
 :popcorn:

Yeah, I meant to throw Gen X and Y in there but it was late. I'm 77. I'm at that tale end of it. I know. It's the same spirit that gets us Land of the Lost and GI Joe remakes.

Wow, I think that makes you the oldest person on F13!  :geezer:

Christ. See what happens when I post with a headache first thing when I wake up?

Although Tale is apparently about the same age too.

It's still plenty enough to run into them every now and then, and don't kid yourself, it does result in stronger impression the game is just theme park rather fully developed separate universe. My beef with this approach is mostly, it comes across as a really lazy way to develop the content -- after all it's much easier to make quest where Ford O. Teabaggins asks you to bring him an o-ring and excuse it as "it's a joke, and two references in one, get it? lolspit", than invent from scratch a new (fairly interesting) character and mini-story attached to them.

Given that creating a truly immersive MMOG would entail something along the lines of, say opening Ulduar as a new zone, into which everyone piles, and once a boss is down, that's it, no farmsies for you, I'm just fine with "theme park" as opposed to "world".  Because in a truly immersive world, Yogg Saron dies once.  Only one group or person destroys the giant robot in Storm Peaks.  No one needs to read the wanted posters for Mob X, because Player Y killed it months ago, and now no one else can.

Since that's really been done all of once in an actual MMOG (AC) and people screamed about that then, I seriously doubt it'll ever happen again.

Generic boss type + random item table + random ability table + random name table = "unique" boss kills and everybody getting a shot.

Diablo II?

Seriously though, that is doable.

WoW is a theme park.  You ride the rides, and there's lots of signs that say "You must be THIS tall..."

Doable, but pointless. Randomness doesn't fix anything, it's just a short-term obfuscation of the underlying problem (repetition). The people who played Diablo enjoyed repetition with a minimal variance. They are not the 11 million people playing WoW.

It's a bit different argument; this was in response to "ultimately every MMO is theme park because million people keep killing the same guy over and over". Changing the name/appearance/tactics of the boss so no two encounters are identical does reduce this issue to some degree. Even if it's as simple as letting people kill "Palpatine Sr." then "Palpatine Jr", "Palpatine the 3rd" and so on.

I'd still say it does, because then the encounters become even more generic, not less - because there's not even a possibility to back it all up with lore unless you have some advanced system where the swapping of bosses can make sense to the players, even be predictable. Every shred of consistency makes it more like a world and less like a squirrel wheel. I agree it might possibly make the game in itself more interesting, but I doubt it will make the game less game'y.

I guess it depends on the context and as such, is situational. E.g. if there's a dragon's lair and that dragon is at some point killed, it's not unreasonable for another dragon or even different kind of creature to inhabit the lair after a while. Or if a king or another prominent figure is defeated, there's typically a heir/vice-president/visier/toady de jour ready and willing to jump in and take over as soon as dust clears instead of whole structure just fall apart overnight. In this way it can imo help in making the overall world "make more sense". Of course, there's still room for recurring enemies system to run in parallel to this -- like in Star Wars with their concept of "Mandalore" being just a title for the ruler and new guy inheriting the armour/appearance together with the job, when the previous Mandalore is defeated. Or myths/belief systems which involve cyclical death and rebirth of certain deities and whatnot.

Moving, evolving "lairs" have been a proposed part of these games for a long time. It was what TR had in mind with the aliens flipping bases into monster spawn quest objectives. Turns out, players want stability and predictability. They want to know where to find which monster spawn who drops which equipment and satisfies which quest and levels them fastest in some particular level bracket. They want to know that when they log on tomorrow they'll be able to continue doing what they were doing when they logged off tonight.

The number of people you'd please with random content are outnumbered by the people you'd confuse and frustrate.

This.  Uniqueness of downing a boss or completing a dungeon crawl is cool the first time through, but by the time people start on their alts they just want to speed up the process and get to where they deem their mains are at, be it gear or something else.  That's where "Deadly Boss" mods, and "phat lootz" guides start showing up.  And of course there's those that grind play that way right from the start, but they're dochebags anyways.

I hope these games can eventually move past their legacy of locking player forever into single choice and forcing them to run through the same hoops all over again if they want to experience something new. Wonder if that's even financially sound model... i.e. if the number of players who stay and keep paying because they can have alts exceeds number of people who quit because getting these 'alts' developed to the point of 'main' means taking the same rides all over again.

You can't do that with out the encounter being generic and a dull loot dispenser. The WoW raid bosses are fairly complex engagements with a group of powers thematically linked within themselves and with the theme of the dungeon. It's a long way from "roll on boss effect table A".

And yes, it is a theme park. Each boss cunningly provides some mechanism by which they can be beaten and when beaten they'll be back shortly. That would be because it's a game.

Not much to do with warhammer though.

One fire elemental lord gets put out, another (by name) fire elemental lord gets in charge and goes in. Who says these bosses can't use same/similar set of abilities and run similar variants of fairly complex script? Especially when they both inhabit the same dungeon?

What would be the point?

Barthas the Lich Duke is totally different from Arthas the Lich King. He wears a different hat and does Leap, Chop, Nova, Chop instead of Chop, Leap, Nova, Leap.

Because defeating Thorzaniloch, fire elemental lord #1179436, is a lot more immersive and entertaining than being the 1179436th group to defeat Fire Lord Rochnar.

95% of the players are far more interested in the loot table than they are the encounter.  Changing the boss is little more than giving them a different lever to push before receiving their shiny. 

Focus should be on the fun of the gameplay, not the reward.  This is where I believe MMO's have gone terribly wrong in their focus.  Granted, it takes a lot less work to generate loot than it does to generate interesting and challenging content.   

MMOGs did what they could with the technology available at the time. While I don't completely consider this to still be the case with power users on the other end, I think we've just fallen into a downward spiral consisting of easy to make games (content-wise) combined with "still profitable."

That said, I can't imagine most MMOG gamers would be good at games that were purely skill-based and then the market becomes much, much smaller. Possibly even PVP small.

Nebu, I'd wager YOU would hate a purely skill-based game. Where Jacktard the ADD Warrior can wipe the floor clean with anyone else on the server. And THEN he'll make fun of your mom. Just sayin.

I'd LOVE a skill-based game.  My favorite games to date are BF 1942 and DAoC, both of which reward the more skilled player.  I think that we just define "skill" differently in games.  Twitch is only one type of skill.  I think a game with measured amounts of twitch and strategy would be a welcome change to the current offerings. 

You should watch that Starcraft 2 video between pro players.

Here. (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/48119.html?type=flv) Enjoy.
Might as well watch  this one too (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/battle-report-starcraft-ii/43900).

The point was listed on the previous page. It's still there.

DaoC rewarded who farmed the best gear and rolled the FotM class comps (which were decided on the current patch cycle of buffs and nerfs). The 'best' players were always the ones who were willing to reroll and regrind accordingly.

The number of times player ability mattered more then which group had the better setup, superior gear or had all their cooldowns ready were few and far between.

The playing field was never even.

Beating superior groups in terms of both RR and gear takes skill.  Beating superior classes in 1v1 took skill.  I'm fine with you being jaded, but to say there was no skill involved in DAoC is just plain wrong.  When things were as equal as it was possible to be, the better group or soloer usually won.  This was particularly the case pre-ToA and on the classic servers. 

Gear was so stupid easy to get in DAoC that it rarely dictated the outcome of 8v8 fights.  DAoC never had the gear issues that a game like WoW has with the exception of the first month or two after ToA released.  Then the better coordinated guilds had a HUGE advantage.  In today's game, gear matters a lot less than RR. 

RR took persistence, not skill.


I also never said there wasn't skill, I said it was no where near being the defining factor. Certainly no where near important enough to define DaoC as a skill based game, not compared to all the other factors.

It's as if you never read my posts.

It's a diku MMO.  Of course persistence (and time) is everything.  There were instances where skill did matter and I did my best to highlight them. 

And I argued that those instances were so few and far between, that you could not claim DaoC was skill based.


/completes the circle  :oh_i_see:

We'll juat have to agree to disagree.  In the 5 years that I played, there were MANY opportunities to see the effects of skill in the game.  I saw them on a nightly basis.  On the servers that I played on, the better (more skilled) gamers nearly always won regardless of gear or RR's.  Teamwork in 8v8 was much more defining in gameplay than almost any other factor.

Perhaps we just played the game differently. 
 

If the game for you was 8v8, then yeah you didn't play the game like Fordel (or me). DAOC was about realm warfare and keeps, not DIKU Counterstrike! (Just to Vault things up a little more.)   :grin:

EDIT: To be a bit more serious, the only real serious element of skill IMO in DAOC PVP, beyond meta-stuff like group composition, was the ability to get the drop on the other side - knowing the right hiding places, angles of attack, etc. I would venture to say that the outcome of 9 out of 10 'fair fights' in DAOC was set at the moment of engagement. Most everything else was just playing the class (or set of classes) that had the right buttons to push and pushing them at the right time. That's a kind of skill, certainly, but I don't think it is what you are talking about.

The beauty of DAoC was that the game was whatever you made of it.  Be it zerg vs zerg, 1v1, 2v2, 8v8, etc.  If you didn't have the opportunity to play on a server with an 8v8 or 1v1 culture, then you missed out on some of the best tactical aspects of the game.  The sandbox aspects are one of the things that other, newer games really miss out on with their more linear progression. 

Andred and Mordred were particularly interesting in that you could fight groups/solos with identical setups... that made it more obvious to see who the better players were. 

I played a thane, so 8v8 groups weren't exactly beating down my door to get me to come with them.  :oh_i_see:

Here's my take on what Nebu says, which I agree with about old DAoC overall rewarding the skillful.

If you take two players who are different RR, reduce them to the SAME RR and let them duke it out, the one who had earned a higher RR would still win based on skill level that got them the RR, not on the presence of the RR itself.

In most games since then that I have played that claim to be skill-based, what I just said isn't true. In those games, the higher geared and RR player will still win IF they get to keep their gear and RR and its conferred advantages. SO RR in and of itself is why  people seem better.

Now, I'm not saying lets get all socialist and distribute everyone's equipment around. I'm just saying that gear and RR in a game like DAoC was more a badge of honor showing what you have done and are capable of doing, and not as much the reason itself. Sure it gave advantages for achieving ranks, but until ToA the whole gear and RA-dependence so hallowed by Dikudom was a backseat to skill and coordination and tactics.

All you had to do was look at the dominance even when outnumbered and practically the same gear by guilds such as Nimue's Retribution (esp. Jander/Hod) or Guinevere's Xukuth d'Oloth (esp. Tyfud) to see how much skill mattered in early DAoC. Hell, they didn't so much "get the jump", they would actually advertise and taunt the other 2 realms to come and try to take back a relic, keep or just squad skirmish with them. The right spells or actions at the right precise moments, in concert with others on your team - isn't that what skill means? If not, what exactly does it mean?

Again, nobody is saying skill wasn't involved at all - but IMO it took a major backseat to class choice, RAs (especially when they rebalanced the tanks and introduced the special RR5 RAs), access to buffbots, and eventually gear, as happens in nearly every diku PVP game.

EDIT: Something like GW pvp, where every player has access to everything, and people can shift builds and comps as needed as the 'metagame' shifts, that's a much better skill test than anything DAOC ever threw at us. My guess as to why it isn't more popular has something to do with a lack of sheep for the wolves to prey upon.

Ingmar had a good point about getting the drop on the opponent, so I'll revise my snarky comment with more added snark:

I did my fair share of 8v8, the number of times we won or lost because one side was actually just better players... compared to the number of times we won because their purge was down, or our <insert overpowered ability> was up, or one side had full master level abilities and gear while the other side was still in their epic quest armor...


Even among the top tier gank groups, which all had everything farmed out the ass rr12 guaranteed or whatever. There was almost always a slew of external variables that prevented a fair fight. It's not just coincidence that after a big fight, the wining group would run off into the bushes and hide for 15 minutes.

http://www.mmorpg.com/profile.cfm/username/Sanya


I'm catching up in this thread. And resiting commenting on some of the LOTRO stuff, specifically, the wow clone comments.

I'm going to guess that you never played on the classic servers or on Mordred/Andred.  Very different game than what you describe.  Either no ToA or the ability to build identical groups.  Did you play on the Euro servers?  That may explain a lot. 

Like I said... just seems we had very different experiences with the game. 

Edit: It's sad that I enjoy rehashing DAoC more than I do discussing WAR.  So very sad. 

Fanboism alert!

I did not mean the clone comments in any derogatory fashion.  Like it or not, if you take away the LotR and Warcraft elements, you are left with 2 games that are designed almost identically.  Both use a quest system to level, the primary activities once you hit the current level cap are to either raid or participate in some form of PvP.  Clearly, Turbine was able in inject enough of it's own design into that design to build a game that is successful in the shadow of the 8,000 ton gorilla.

I was long gone by the time classic servers went up, quit maybe 6months or a year after ToA? I dunno exactly.


I dabbled on the dreds but that environment wasn't for me. I don't need the "thrill" of being ganked while I try to ding 38 or whatever.



I Played on Igraine (North America). Most of my time as a Hib, then tried Mid before going to WoW like everyone else.  Igraine wasn't a large server by any means, not compared to the 2-3 Big ones at the top.

No, just a difference of opinion and observations.

I think this explains our disagreement.  The classic servers solved many of the issues that we experienced in the year after ToA came along. With no ToA and no Master levels the game become a lot more tactical.  The 8v8 fights often lasted 5 minutes between good groups... long enough that their outcome wasn't dictated so much by RA's and gear timers.  At their peak, Lamorak and Gareth were very competitive and fun. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The only truly "skilled" PvP offered in an MMO is in Puzzle Pirates. It's just you and the puzzle, man.

I was going to post that, but let's make it more concrete with real data from http://www.worldoflogs.com/stats/ulduar/ (http://www.worldoflogs.com/stats/ulduar/):

Congratulations, you just beat Yogg-Saron the 1039th!

or

Too bad, you just wiped to Yogg-Saron the 38077th!

I can just taste the immersion.

Mace the 1039th (http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=46097) is just like Mace the 1038th (http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=46035) and the other 1037 that came before, amirite?

(they're of the same item level. And ultimately they work in the same way. But quite amazing what changes to name, item mesh/skin and stats can do)

Those don't drop from the same boss. What you are looking for is Adamant Mallet of <Random enchantment> (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=36497). There's 23 different flavors!

So?

Mind you though, i do buy the argument from earlier in this thread, that players go into these games with mindset/preference that it should provide them with as much predictability as possible. I.e. killing the same boss 1039 times in choreographed dance figured out through number of wipes ... is ultimately preferred over never knowing 100% how the boss will behave. No matter how much the same players will bitch about boredom of always getting the same boss fight, in their spare time.

You know what the funny thing about this thread is?  No one is playing Warhammer enough to have A Yogg-Saron the 38077th.  It seems to me, we beat the king, well that's it.  End game done.

Oddly enough, AION threads are popping up all across the warhammer fan site forums. It might be an Asian MMO, but more and more people are talking about it because it supposedly gives you the Warhammer RVR experience without the lag. 

I don't have time to start over in a new MMO right now, but if everything people are saying about AION is true then its a sleeper that could steal away a lot of Mythic's more moderate and hardcore players who are fed up with them.  Patch 1.3 looks to be another disaster, class balance will be out of whack still, and whoever the dominant realm is on each server will be living in Land of the Dead while the other side sits on their butts.

Mythic's approach has been like the old SOE "the players are never right" of pre-WoW days, and I don't think it can overhaul itself fast enough or expand to new territories fast enough to stay above 300k.  The 1.3 patch with Land of the Dead is make or break for a lot of players it seems.

What exactly establishes this? Has any serious game really tried adding any randomness? I mean yeah, the boss has to have set abilities, but I don't know why everything should have to be so scripted that a group of bots could run it with utter clockwork precision and certainty.

I don't want Diablo to become Eiablo and then Fiablo on subsequent runs, but occasionally stumbling over a Puke Grumble the Unholy is fun.

http://www.mmogamer.com/05/24/2009/paul-barnett-speaks-part-two

More talking, wish the feet were put to the fire about why the heck scenarios were even the best place to get xp.

Head-in-sand.

All this interview did was confirm just how disconnected the devs are from the playerbase. 

They think that they fixed the problems with the system.  They should play the game for a while and see hwo long it keeps them entertained.  I bet that not a single person at Mythic would stay with the game beyond two weeks. 

What is sad is that people still manually queue those specific scenarios that were mentioned, and they are still good exp per hour if you are on a server with decent population. The problem with PQ's are that there are too many per zone, and too many of them require balanced premade groups to complete for the best exp yield per hour.  The ones that require 2-3 players give crappy loot, bad exp, and take too long to do so they yield terrible exp per hour.

The problem with War is that T4 is their end game, and they just make you put up with too much crap and too much of a wait to get there. Then when you do get there you have a massive gear grind facing you, and in the meantime you get facerolled because the base loot that is accessible in that tier is not competitive at all.  Most players wonder why they bothered to get to T4, and then quit the game in disgust.

I think games can cater to the Hardcore and the Casuals and be successful.  Guild Wars did it, WoW did it, CoH did it, but too many other people design their games to where you have to spend a minimum of a 3-4 hour time investment to notice any significant progress.  If a game is fun people will play it a long time, but increasingly less of the audience can sit there for 3-4 hours in one sitting.  IMHO games should be developed to where you can see noticeable improvement with an hour's worth of play. 

But when you design a game where a level 50 always beats a level 49, then people are going to grind their asses off to get level 50.  The grind and the minimum time investment to notice improvement , 3 to 4 hours per sitting,  is what turns off most US players IMHO.

http://www.mmogamer.com/05/05/2008/paul-barnett-hates-you-the-warhammer-online-conference-call/3


Didn't see that quoted before.

I don't have a problem with WAR wanting to integrate PVE and RVR, I have a problem with their execution.

There is no gear grind anymore, at least not with Annihilator and Conq.  Conq gear is out there now like greens practically.  Invader and up is where the well dries up

I don't think anyone does. But the execution may be partially reliant on the fact that their creative director has a complete aversion to the cornerstone of the game. Fucking amazing.

Its sort of like hiring a postal clerk for a rocket scientist's job eh?

I'm thinking more hiring a vegetarian to be head chef at a steakhouse.

Which begs the question: why the fuck didn't you make WHFRP the MMO then? Because maybe that would've been good... not 1mil boxes sold at release good but the quality naturally goes up when it's not something you hate. So maybe you sell 500k at the start and keep 400k or something. Whatever. I always think this chucklefuck can't say anything to make my jaw drop but then he does. He is the doughy gift that keeps on giving.

I think he puts more thought into saying something that he thinks is clever rather than what he's actually saying.

Ha! Ha! I'm edgy! I don't like any of you! That makes me so cool everyone invites me to groups.

What does "Creative Director" even mean? Is it more "Lore and Story and Look" or more "Game Systems Crunchy Rules Stuff"?

I was always under the impression it was more towards the Lore/Story/Theme side of things.

It's probably a little more than the handwavey type stuff. Not much crunch but I imagine he has a ton of say in how things unfold, quest approval, PQ design, etc. So while he's probably not spreadsheeting all day I imagine his job bleeds over into that sort of thing, albeit indirectly.

Plus his disinterest in Order is also evident. He's a Greenskin man.

But I think he's suffering the Jade Raymond Effect: he's probably not responsible for a lot of the issues with the title, but since he is its most visible face, he cops the flak.

Perhaps if he'd shut the fuck up and stop being a huge cockmunch. ...that reminds me, is Jacobs still being a fucking forum troll's wet dream? Do they have their magical special forums yet?

They do.  It's straight out of the Stalin era.  As soon as someone posts a negative comment about the game, the thread is locked and removed with an unmatched efficiency.

Perhaps. But he just keeps sticking his chin out for more.

Oh, that's great, they reopened the beta forums!  :oh_i_see:

Given those exact quotes, it's more the opposite: putting a steakhouse chef in charge of a vegetarian restaurant.  His attempts to come off edgy and against the grain are mollified because the whole solo PvE concept is one of WoW is so wildly popular.  His view is the mainstream, and yet, he's tasked to work on a niche game.   It's ridiculous.  I get the sense that Paul is very unhappy with the direction of Warhammer and is not satisfied at all working for Mythic, and these interviews and videos are veiled attempts to lash out at both Mythic and the playerbase.  I think Mythic needs to do itself a favor and reevaluate Paul's work and the effect he's had on the companies image.

Given the few video blogs of his I've seen which had nothing to do with his work, I'd say he's just an idiot.

No, it's popping up on the WAR sites for the same reason that Warhammer popped up on the Age of Conan site, the same reason AoC popped up on the Vanguard site - it's a hell of a lot easier to hype up "The Next Big Thing" for a certain type of MMO player than to evaluate everything out there and say "Well, game X does most of what I'm looking for without being offensively bad so I'll go play that".

( (http://xs839.xs.to/xs839/09223/emot-ssh390.gif) (http://xs.to) And also because 'game X' is typically WoW but most of them quit WoW decrying how much Blizzard sux and how Vanguard AoC WAR Aion is gonna kill it, so going back to WoW would mean admitting they were wrong and making a good MMOG is actually quite difficult after all. (http://xs839.xs.to/xs839/09223/emot-ssh390.gif) (http://xs.to) )

you guys are crazy to feel sympathy for Mr.Paul in any way

I agree.  They took a great IP and drove it into the ground. 

Who's sympathizing with Paul?  He's out of his element, and his videos make him look like an asshat.   He needs to get out or shut up and actually do some work. 

Paul Barnett vblog Taiwan WAR launch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRkApnqhaPc)

Altho from poking around their site they allow full download of the client..

The 9.68gb full install (http://dler.org/index.php?o=display;id=5570) Today:674  Week:3427  Total:38579
Torrent: 35 seeds, 889 peers (total in the swarm)

I think Mr. Barnett should make Youtube videos often, provided they are of him selling cigarettes at the Greyhound station.  I'd watch that in a heartbeat. 

Paul Barnett: What? You think everything is horrible?


The MMO Gamer: Well, not everything, but I can find cause to gripe about many things.

Take your game, for example.

Paul Barnett: Right?


The MMO Gamer: One of the reasons for that burnout I mentioned to you earlier was the queue system, for instanced PvP combat…

Paul Barnett: Where you can join a scenario from anywhere in the world?


The MMO Gamer: Correct.

Paul Barnett: The one that was so good it’s been added to other games? That one? 

 :oh_i_see:

The MMO Gamer: Well, Paul, the fact that Blizzard adopted the idea means it's a good idea.  It doesn't mitigate the fact that your implementation of a queue system is bug ridden and en exercise in frustration to use.

Is he seriously boasting about a simple, logical, obvious-to-anyone thing like that? Even though the concept is easy and obvious, WAR's impl like the rest of the game isn't so hot.

WoW added it in patch 3.1 I think, so what. There are hundreds of changes made in a WoW patch that are like that. Little things that might help people play faster.


He'd take credit for the "invention" of the mouse button that depresses.

Almost everything about this damn game depresses.

Someone needs to remind Mythic that WoW ripping off WAR's queue system doesn't make WAR any better, it makes WoW better.

The MMO Gamer: Well done on getting that right, even though that's probably the whole point of a MMO. But having scenarios as the most efficient way of character advancement drained players from the world which then made it feel more empty. That was a huge problem. Plus scenarios-grinding was the only not-fully-insane way to grind out lvls for Rank 3 and 4.

Paul Barnett: But we got the idea of scenarios right!

The MMO Gamer: Ideas are only one piece of a very big puzzle. Like public quests tha-

Paul Barnett: The one that was so good it’s been added to other games? That one? 

The MMO Gamer: Yes, PQs were a great idea. But again, Mythic's implementation of them was poor and short-sighted. There were too many PQs that didn't scale to the number of players in the area, which in turn made them impossible to complete unless you had the right number of players. Tie that in with players going off to scenarios so that most PQs tended to stay empty and you've got a wasted opportunity.

Paul Barnett: But the ideas we've got in WAR are great!

The MMO Gamer: I don't play ideas - I play those ideas contained in game systems designed by Mythic. The execution was rubbish. Just look at RvR whe-

Paul Barnett: War is everywhere!

The MMO Gamer: The fuck it is, and you know it.

Waiting to see this interview on the front page of Kotaku.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71r5HiLa8bA

"ALL THE THINGS THAT WERE BROKEN FOR THE AMERICANS, WE'VE FIXED!"

My God, how embarrassing. (Not as embarrassing as my inability to properly link, apparently)

 :ye_gods:

I really really need to get this guy into an interview. Desperately.

Odds of him being at AGC? Basically zero.

Depressing.

Why can't some crazy-ass batshit insane 48-hours at a PC bang playing Lineage Korean erupt out of the crowd he's speaking to and just nutshot this greasy son of a whore?

What's the chance we get our money back as the game was obviously broken as their design manager stated.

Wow.  That was....just amazing.  The things that were broken for the Americans are STILL broken.  I like how the interpreter tried to stay far away from crazy English guy.

This is 100% pure, distilled win. 

Oh fuck I'm rollin so hard. He's trying too hard !

Just when you think he can't do anything more insane, there he goes.

When he said "Korea" I thought he was in North Korea and borrowed Kim Jong Ill's sunglasses. 

THAT. 
WAS.
AWESOME.

It gets better and better. 

I'm pretty sure this guy is drunk most of the time.  He has a hobo's dream job.

OMFG. This is...um...fuck. I dunno. Fuck. Please, someone. Stop this man.

It took me read through brokentoys.org to get that Barnett saying "WAR is coming to Korea" probably wasn't the most sensitive way he could have phrased it.  :awesome_for_real:

I don't want to watch it, but can you tell me if he is squinting while wearing a conical hat and plastic buck teeth while saying "aaah so" a lot?

He's wearing sunglasses, inside, while presenting....

enough said

That's kind of a running joke though with the WAR presentations. I'm not trying to defend the content or anything but the crappy white sunglasses is a long-established schtick with the WAR team in general, not just Paul.

Alas, no. Comes very close, though  :awesome_for_real:

(http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:6W1T19O9PydXIM:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v297/drewshack/South%20Park/1208_butters_cartman_chinese_outfit.jpg)

 

Yeah, but did they really need to make the translator wear the glasses? I felt really bad for her just having to translate for Paul but to be forced to wear sunglasses too?  :oh_i_see:

It is amazing though, despite my knowing what he was going to be saying I was still shocked by it.

I think the choice of words did it for me. You can't make this shit up

"ALL THE THINGS THAT WERE BROKEN FOR THE AMERICANS, WE'VE FIXED!"

and then the attempt to describe dwarves as " SHORT MEN WITH BEARDS". /wince

He did not prepare a speech at all and just went with it. Just a random spray of words that he felt like shooting off.

To be fair, his presentation was in January, which was well before the current North-South tension level.

True, but it's not exactly unknown in the region.

It'd be like starting a presentation off in Texas with "ALIENS ARE COMING OVER THE BORDER AND YOU NEED TO SHOOT THEM", which I expect to see when Barnett heads up the relaunch of Imperator.

He was also louder than usual in that "WHAT YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND ENGLISH LET ME SAY IT A LITTLE LOUDER FOR YOU"

That's his philosophy towards life -- i.e. "let's just wing it". Unfortunately for EA that philosophy is reflected in the game.

he was hyping ABP for EA this week.

http://www.massively.com/2009/06/04/e3-2009-apb-gets-the-paul-barnett-hype-treatment/#continued

I predict the utter universal meltdown of all things if he moves to SWTOR

The thought of Barnett being buried in an avalanche of smelly Star Wars nerdragers thirsting for his booze-saturated blood feels me with glee.  :drill:

or those koreans in the crowd snickering amongst themselves of how retarded this dude with sunglasses is in their native language.

 :drillf: : EVERYTHING BROKEN IN AMERICA. WE FIX!

 :uhrr: : huk huk babo

its very hard to stop cancer from spreading and some types even live through chemo. EA will rue the day that they dredged him up with WAR.

APB is that Grand Theft Saints Row MMO that we saw a pic of here a long time ago, isn't it?

I recall the guy in the pic was wearing three hats, and one of his legs must have been much warmed than the other, as he had rolled only one leg of his pants up.

OH man.  This was good.  thanks.

What the fuck do you think you're doing?  CHECK THE DATE.  Zombies don't need to be revived for "yuk yuk".

Edit: And yes, this is me being mean to the new fish.

He's trying very poorly to fit in.

Sort of like a puppy? They try so hard but just end up peeing all over the floor.

To be fair, this forum has so few threads that this zombie thread was only like 4 down the list.

Yeah, but the guy is the stereotypical butthurt Warhammer stalker. I don't know how he hasn't been deleted yet.

He hasn't busted out the 5 paragraph manifesto yet.

Could be worse.  Could be a one paragraph manifesto.

lol, are they worse or better then a stereotypical butthurt UO stalker?

Worse. If he were some deranged malcontent here to tell us how Trammel ruined the universe, at least I'd have some fun.

UO was great, just needed a justice system to somewhat police the reds.

Tease.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/07/21/develop-09-when-a-creative-director-attacks/#more-15044

This is about the recent Develop conference in Brighton (http://www.develop-conference.com/developconference09/biog_detail.html?id=2812) that Paul gave a talk at.


So much of his gimmick is to hold the opposing viewpoint, "Elite was shit", :shock: :horror:

Here's last year's talk (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19660).

LIFT Conference || Paul Barnett (2008) (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3224297147237187720&hl=undefined)

At this point I am convinced this is all a giant trolling research experiment for his PhD.  I can't believe his review board keeps signing off on this. 

That, or he is actually Sasha Baron Cohen, and this is all one big bit.

If Barnett was just a MMO blogger somewhere I think he'd be a genius. Or at least have some good columns now and again.

As someone on the inside, I think it is clear he needs to be a lot more focused. Again, if you go to a talk about a particular topic, you expect to see something on that topic.

Gods he's such an idiot.  I finally understand why he hasn't been fired yet though.  The suits must think he's a certified genius.

He's what a corporate suit thinks a punk rocker is. He name drops everything he can think of in the way of bands or games as a sly wink to the actual cool kids in the room. All image, from the sunglasses to the belt buckle to that retarded fucking picture of him with his mouth duct taped. He wants people to think he's The Dead Boys when he's just Generation X. Not unique; there are a million hims in every club, bar and gaming store around the world.

Fuck this guy.

poseur (plural poseurs)

   1. One who affects some behaviour, style, attitude or other condition, often to impress or influence others.

See also

    * pretentious

Even Wil Wright was happy to explore other... was fired. 


Genius doesn't matter much unless it produces genius profits.

No way WW was fired.

Oh please.

They shipped him off to a think tank where he can wank around for 7 years before coming up with something new. EA gets first rights to anything that comes out of his thinktank but obviously did it so they didn't have to pay his massive paycheck. He probably lives off royalties from The Sims, Spore and his other crap.

He was as good as fired. As far as gaming is concerned, other than his groundhog like 7 year cycle, he was sent out to pasture.

If he was fired he'd just get a new job.  The fact that he hasn't means he's retired or he wants to be the idea man not a manager.

He's been put out to pasture in a field surrounded by EA-brand electric wire. He's free but shouldn't try to touch the sides.

15 minutes with Paul Barnett (http://www.videogamer.com/news/15_minutes_with_paul_barnett.html)


The rest is just more of the same, Warhammer was Batman, he now says the the iPhone is the Sex Pistols.

Yeah but he talk about SWTOR:


Welcome to the SWTOR gameplay concept :D

what MMO development experience did he have before WAR?  Seriously.  MUDs?   


you know I am really losing patience with people who continue to crow about MUD == MMO's


if you want to claim all gameplay design ideas were already done to death on MUD-DEV (which I don't fully believe) then fine.  But STFU about implying to understand modern infrastructure and software services

AAAAHHHHH FUCK SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU STUPID FUCKING NAME DROPPING CARTOON PINHEAD FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK GOD SHUT UP ASDHJHASDJHASDJHASDJHSDASD

Something vexes thee?

He could be right, Warhammer shrinking population allows the removal of the MM part of the MMORPG. So it's now merely an 'Online RPG' :)

PB cannot explain what he does in that video... makes sense since it's clear he did nothing at WAR, other than shill the game.  It's hilarious that he talks to that audience like it's a bunch of 5 year olds. 

And with that, I'd call this a successful necro.  :ye_gods:

Anything involving WAR is a necro.

Does PB still deserve postings here? He made his job in hyping a game and he did it well (in terms of attention on the web). He even gets a coffee if he rings the bell at my home, trying to sell some insurance to me.