f13.net

Unknown.




But they have confirmed that they have one in the chamber.


Let the speculation begin.

Source (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?SETVIEW=news&GAMEID=15&SHOWARTICLE=9495&bhcp=1)

It's obviously going to be Starcraft Universe.  With SC2 coming out then a year or two later an expansion then a year after that an MMO.  If it ain't broke don't fix it, and it worked wonders for their Warcraft franchise.  So that's about 4-5 years from now.  Enough time for Blizzard to milk more monies from 1-2 more expansions.

They've had job postings saying "NEXT GEN MMO" for months now on their website. I'm not sure why mmorpg is all jumping on it now.

(http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/089/reviews/932394_20060331_screen001.jpg)



yeh i know its fake, but thought I'd drag it out for this thread.

Spot on.

Now that WAR is coming out, this will Blizzard a chance to beat them on the sci-fi front before Warhammer 40k Online can come out lol.

Blog post from a guy who claims to know something. (http://www.gamingsteve.com/archives/2007/12/blizzard-confirms-new-mmorpg-and-i-have-details.php)

Nothing juicy though. Just a timeline of "development" so far, and the fact that some people from WoW development are involved.

An excerpt:

Holy fucking vague. Schild could probably make a more convincing "leak" of information. :awesome_for_real:

Because it's a shit shit shitty website?

I don't think it's going to be Starcraft...it would be rad if it were to be a MMO Diablo, but I've learned not to get my hopes up concerning that franchise.

Because they were waiting for the official word of "Yes, we ARE working on something - Someone that is official", instead of guessing by going on job postings? Its not just mmorpg.com.. Its most major MMO news sites that are posting this. The news is about the OFFICIAL comment.

Yep, I think this is one case where the most obvious answer is staring us in the face, and anything else is just daydreaming.

One wonders why, the wow-ernaught shows no signs of stopping with WotLK dropping sometime next year and a few more years at least worth of expansions they can milk wow for a long time. Are they going to try the tact of SOE's "we have a DIKU, lets make a world builder..." or just re-skin wow with whatever Star Craft/Diablo/... IP they like. My money is on Star Craft, SC2 will flesh out more of the back story and set the stage for a MMO just like WC3 did for WoW.

Rock n' Roll racing online.

Rock n' Roll Racing in Spaaaaace more likely.

My leaks aren't "convincing." They're simply true.

I'll inquire about this subject later this weekend.

Hell, I announced Starcraft 2 in 2004. Why not announce this 2 years early also.

Is there any evidence that shows Sci-fi MMO's are anything but niche?  Fantasy is much more popular.

If Blizzard did Sci-fi, they'd probably get bigger numbers than anyone has before, but it won't be anywhere the level of WoW.  It would still be profitable and would help provide a foundation of ongoing games that brings the cash coming in, but don't expect another mega-hit.

I'd be more than happy if they proved me wrong.  Doing Sci-fi right, would be quite nice.

My suggestion is to mix fantasy with Sci-fi (a la Hellgate.)

The thing i'm watching isn't really the game, but the hype. There will be a lot of people EXPECTING them to top WoW's successes... Questions is, can they, and what will happen when they don't.

Being at the top, means there are only two ways to go, and one way is easer than the other.

Well, how many people are there in South Korea? Cause you know pretty much every single one is going to subscribe if its Starcraft Universe.

I really hope it is SU. I cant see why they would do a Diablo MMO, it seems to close to Warcraft. I think they could get a lot more subs by doing some thing thats not fantasy. Gah, what I wouldnt give to play a good SciFi MMO right now. I mean, Im excited to play WAR, but seriously, we dont need any more fantasy MMOs for quite a while.

My comments were not really about what IP it would be, more about the total package. Accessibility, IP, Polish, Refinement ETC... I wonder if they can, or will pull off the implementation (what ever IP it is ) again...or perhaps, they may have gotten soft. We all ready know they have successful IP's.

Starcraft isn't good sci-fi.

And Warcraft is good fantasy?

Whatever it is, the shoulder pads are gonna be HUGE.

Relatively speaking, yeah.


Don't take that the wrong way though. I think fantasy is almost complete shit, and I don't like World of Warcraft.

I wouldn't be surprised if this new game is going to be a combo console/PC launch.  I mean it is coming out in 5-7 years.  Imagine the technology then.  Flying cars and Robots that give you handjobs.

I'm going to say something that not a damn person is going to argue with:

The next Blizzard MMOGs will look like high-end games do today. They're ALWAYS behind the curve. It's part of their mass appeal.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=11530.msg379848#msg379848

No one listens when I post, either way, I didn't think it warranted a new thread.  We already knew they were working on an unannounced MMO that isn't WoW related, didn't someone leak the code name or something and speculation ran wild like months ago?

Best bet? Quit fucking worrying, we're likely not to see it in our lifetime.

True.  But what the real question is what kind of art style will they be using.

Who cares?

Exactly. It will be the same art style that they use in Starcraft 2. It will be the same gameplay as WoW essentially, and people will flock to it. One exception? Three factions, so three way PvP. There's your game.

Oh, and probably 17-20 bucks per month. I figure MMOGs will get a monthly fee bump in late 2008, early 2009.

It's an academic question.

Oh. You were looking for http://www.fu.edu (http://www.fu.edu). Har.

IF it's Starcraft the MMO (and I too think it will be) I hope it's gonna be more fps/rts hybrid than rpg.
That's what I was hoping WoW's pvp would be like, and we got...

(http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2005/20050610h.jpg)

instead.

I disagree on the game play being the same as wow.  I truly believe they are going to try to shoot for something different with the space angle and the fact they have no need to make an MMO that directly competes with Wow (these words will probably bite me in the ass I'm sure).  It also doesn't matter about the graphics thing.  WoW still looks amazingly better than any MMO to me, and better than most games for that matter, due to the emphasis on art and style.  I wish way more people would jump to that approach.

C'mon of course the gameplay is gonig to be the same.  That's what Blizzard does, take a tired concept and polish it up.  Sci-fi MMO game play? Whaddav they got to start with?

Starcraft Ghost.










 :rimshot:

Starcraft Ghost played like a crappier Tomb Raider.

It'll be a Starcraft MMO and they'll steal from UO and SWG, while keeping the core successes from WoW.

Which means it might be the first decent MMO. I never had hopes from WoW from the first news but I have hopes for this.

Then again, hope springs eternal...

I think it's World of Diablo.  While it will be very Diablo-like, they will borrow heavily from the elements of WoW that work.  They will use it as a tech PoC to see what the state of the net is, and in what mode they can truly support FPS-type combat, but it will end up being turn-based and highly instanced.

I think they won't risk the World of Starcraft franchise until someone else launches a successful MMO game that has FPS combat (not turn-based FPS-like combat).  They will then try to copy/steal the developers of that other game, polish the experience, and voila, World of Starcraft.

A Starcraft MMO seems like really easy guess.  Blizzard's primarily been focused on Warcraft (which they already have an MMO), Starcraft, and Diablo.  (Unless you want to go really far back... Blackthorn MMOG?)

You know, a Diablo MMORPG seems very possible.

Planetside isn't an FPS MMO?

http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=582

Edit: Yes, I still consider it a joke newspost.

I don't see how this could be anything but Starcraft MMO. But I also don't see how this can do anything but cannabalize WoW players. Maybe that's why they only really started this year. I could see them projecting the growth curve of WoW over the next five years and not seeing much more than 10mil accounts peaking soon and then doing nothing but declining thereafter. So give it another 4.5 years and it might not be a bad thing to cannabalize WoW. They just do a SC MMO while also supporting WoW in the way SOE continues to support, but not exclusively focus on anymore, EQ1.

Diablo just isn't a strong enough brand to justify a similar level of investment. They haven't done anything else with that brand in forever, while Starcraft continues to be huge.

There's also some that think SC MMO makes sense mostly because of that Korean audience. Maybe right now it does. But five years from now as they've already evolved slightly differently than the West? Not sure about that.

Starcraft Online is the obvious choice.

Second choice is Blizzard coming up with a new IP. Diablo Online is too close to WoW in terms of concept and nothing else they've done would be worth revisiting from an IP recognition point-of-view.

If I were to set up a MMO tomorrow, the IP I see the gap for would be either modern dark world or dimension hopping (where you could have your cake and eat it too).

Yes, I believe it was Hydra. SC2 was Medusa.

Tabula Rasa

Hehe, it wouldn't happen, but I'd love to see an MMOFPS with the Starcraft theme, with vehicles, for low-spec machines.

So more Elves then?  Great.   :oh_i_see:

"We lied! It's World of Warcraft II!"

World of Burnout!

I'm pretty sure it wont be Diablo MMO because not only is that too similar to world of warcraft, they have already used a ton of the lore (class's/skills/etc) from Diablo in WoW.  WoW IS your Diablo MMO.

Unless of course they make it a sort of Diablo 3, with MMO elements built into it in a more heavy way (like Hellgate: London, only more so).  The game play would have to be just like Diablo though, nothing like Diku, otherwise, see above.

So I think Starcraft is a fair bet.

Another good data point of conjecture (how's that for self-contradictory statements) is that the announcement of a Starcraft MMO would coincide nicely with the release of Starcraft 2.

Fuck yes.

Whatever it is, I don't see it being an FPS. Those require too much skill and decent reflexes. Blizzard wants another 10 million sub game.

This is what I think they are working on.  I see them as having a philosophy similar to Ninentendo - they only want to release games that work very well within the technical and system capabilities of their clients game machines and network.  I'd say that the console market proves their is a large action-heavy-oriented audience out there, and that they can be hooked-and-retained with some MMO elements (like persistence).  It's also a decent tech exercise to see how close they can get to real-time combat.

I think they'd like to do a Starcraft MMO, and I think it makes to most sense that a Starcraft MMO have FPS combat (I'd love to see a RTS-FPS fusion game similar to Strife).  I think Blizzard's estimation is that 1) an insufficient number of consumers have a network sufficient to the task of an FPSMMO 2) there isn't a game that successfully combines FPS + MMO-style persistence (Planetside was a near-miss, it's level of success based more on people liking FPS then because the game got all the ingredients of a FPSMMO right).

Starcraft MMO with FPS combat, skill based character system which is a hybrid of UO/SWG & EVE (set skills passively to train, actively using a skill also gets skill gain), EVE's crafting & territory-holding and X-Wing vs Tie Fighter space combat for fighters/EVE for big ships.

And a pony.

Yeah, because noone plays FPS games!


I know, I know. Bring on the 'Counterstrike players won't pay subs!' riggamarole!

Thinking more about it, that direction might help to not butcher their current WoW sub numbers as much, or something.

How's this for a wacky prediction:

Blizzard's next MMO will not only have a strong FPS element, it will also have RMT! Players can literally empty their wallets into the coffers of Blizzard!  :pedobear:

How about EVE + Easy Mode + Masters of Orion?

They bought the licenses from Wish and Darkfall, and made it Wishfall.

No shit. They could totally go Starcraft II >>> Starcraft Universe like they did with Warcraft III >>> World of Warcraft.

Wait, didn't somebody say that in this thread already? My coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

*edit*

Strange pre-coffee thoughts: What if they tie Starcraft II and Starcraft Universe together somehow?  :ye_gods: :oh_i_see:

It's been pointed out already, however I think the would announce a SC MMO at the time of the SC2 expansion release.

That puts the MMO release sometime in 2011?

Sounds about right given their development schedules.

As for cannibilization, they could always start their own "Blizzard Pass" type deal.  I bet given the option many of the WoW subs would add another $10/month to play both games.

Blizzard / Vivendi don't give a damn if the new Blizzard MMO canniblises subs from WoW. If 50% of the player base quit WoW and came to the new MMO, they'd still be raking in more cash over 2 MMOs than most companies can do over 1.

Plus if 4 million people start out playing Blizz's new MMO, they'd be in a good position to top WoW in the sub numbers department at some point. Blizz would only care if people left WoW and didn't pick up the new game.

Actually Blizzard would almost certainly prefer it if their new game cannibalizes WoW since whatever deals they work out with the Asian operators will be far more lucrative for Blizzard than the ones they have in place now for WoW.

Edit: deals plural

I don't care what it is, but I sure hope it has a Horadric Cube.  That is one of the coolest things ever.  I was so hoping that jewelcrafting in WoW was going to involve a Horadric Cube, and so disappointed that it doesn't.

I want to play Diablo just to find, stash and combine gems.   Fun fun fun.  Why is it so fun?  I don't know, but it just is!

The Augumatrix in Hellgate should have been a Horadric Cube...

Not sure why I brought that up, but there it is.

Socketing in WoW was a totally wasted opportunity.

Totally.

Lets not forget... They are now partnered with Atari... They could pull a title out of their hat to. Who owns the Neverwinter Nights IP? Atari or Bioware?

Totally wasted opportunity to break the game and subsequently nerf everyone, sure.

Really, would it be better if you needed to do a spreadsheet to figure out which are the best gems to socket for your situation?

What ?

I presumed your complaint was that it was currently too obvious for all players what gems to socket where. And thus, a better socketing system should have had more different gems and more powerful gems and with more unobvious synergies.

If that's not the case I apologize and ask what was your complaint?

I believe they call them "Alchemists" in WoW.

It's actually not that obvious all the time. And further, sometimes getting the gems you want for your class|spec|playstyle is more important than getting that socket bonus. Finally, too, there's the Meta gem thing which often requires careful consideration about where else to put stuff.

It's no Horadric Cube, but it's not turnkey either.

Alchemists don't do anything near what you can do with a horadric cube either.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you.

1 - It's far too obvious.  Simplistic in the most brutal and unimaginative sense.
2 - The Meta Gem game is similarly Awful.
3 - The socket Bonuses REEEEEEEEEEEK.  I have an OCD disorder about them which means I HAVE TO HAVE THEM even though they are quite clearly complete Crap.  No +12 STA for me, even though it MAKES MORE SENSE TO DO SO.
4 - Diablo Comparatives such as Runewords, Special Gems and mighty combinations simply do not exist.
5 - Epic Gems are, for the most part, Complete Crap.  Further, there's no level between blue and rare that may be a 'geniune find'.
6 - Did I mention Runewords ?  Runewords in Diablo II were seven slices of Awesome even, and here's the kicker, EVEN if the bonus wasn't all that good.  Your weapon/armor was fucking CALLED something...
7 - Gems combining to make better Gems, ala Horadric Cube.  Giving that talent to JC would have made 17 types of awesome.

8 - And Finally, your post is a dumbed down version of my complaint, yes.  What you don't make clear is the connect between your post above and how this would "break the game and subsequently nerf everyone".  I don't get that at all.

Also, Spreadsheets ?  If you honestly needed a frigging spreadsheet for Diablo II, I worry for your attention span.

Hope that's all clear and I await the explanation to number 8.  With Great Humility and Keeness.

:
 :grin:

Holy Crap! He can type more then a single sentence at a time!  I bet he's napping now.

You'll get old one day too.  Unless you keep giving lip to the wrong person.

I will, yet again, be rooting for World of Diablo.  WoSC makes more sense though.  It could scoop up the Korean market, the one place WoW isn't dominating* and pick up some Europe/NA subs to compliment WoW.


*except for Habbo Hotel, of course, which we all know is the only game that matters.

As an alchemist, you take a number of smaller, less useful gems, a couple other ingredients, and turn them into a much more useful gem.

Granted, there's a cooldown and that's about as far as the comparison goes, but transmutes are the best I can do for ya.

Coffee. In my nose.

Ah yes, Diablo. I remember having gems and socketed items, but I don't remember the two ever meeting. It was always "I have this crap item and these crap gems, why should I combine them when I can wait for better loot items and combine the gems into better ones". Oh, that was joyful. <-- green


Let's see, the way a socketing system ties into item budgets is that a fully socketed item has a, say, 100 points, similar to non-socketed items of the same level. Of those 100 points, something like 70-80 come from the item and 20-30 from gem combinations and socket bonuses. Those numbers are from my arse, btw. Now, to make that more meaningful is to move points from the item to gems. To make it more deep is to make gem A and gem B be worth 10 points separated but 30 points when used together.

Pretty innocuous. Best part is you can just keep adding crap items with sockets and new gems with new bonuses, and no player can keep up thanks to the combinatorial explosion. You'll know you've gone too far when some hunter item with just the right gems is a better tanking breastplate than raid gear, but then it's too late because every tank is wearing one. And if you don't nerf, you'll end with something like AO's item system. There's no sane dev who could have designed that.

WoW's socket system is a) designed and b) accessible.

a) means that as an achiever, I don't need a spreadsheet (someone else's, in my case) to believe that no unintended über items lurk at the end of some weird combination.
b) means that I don't need to read a guide; how my class should socket can be explained in guild chat.

Both are good.

Starcraft Universe.  Blizzard Station Pass.  Option to invade WoW servers in Carriers and slaughter elves.

That would be so awesome, it would never happen. The awesome would blow up all the servers.  :cry:

K.


Still think you're wrong, but at least we both know how we're both wrong.

 :awesome_for_real:

Like the Dranei?

Yeah, pay a ton of gold for a +12 INT gem.  No thanks.  Sockets are a 'why bother' item to me.  Every item that has them that I've seen is ass anyway. 

From a design and marketing point is cannot be anything else except Starcraft, surely.

And don't we have a WoW forum for jewel blather?

Starcraft is, yes, rather obvious for the marketability of the game. I just so wish that's not true and that they created a new, proper MMO franchise that isn't old tired RTS lore hammered into an MMO mold. Warcraft got decent lore, WoW doesn't. It's shit, in fact. Lore, setting and immersion should be factors even in a ding-bling-shinies game. WoW is just a techni-colour playpen. But then again, I'm an RPer.  :oh_i_see:


And on the derailing discussion on gems;

The whole issue with socket items in WoW is that you get a crippled item that's only better than the intended item if you spend huge effort on getting the right gems. In many cases, it's obvious that they've made a complete item then stripped away a bunch of stats to make budget space for slots. The point of Diablo's gems and runewords was that you could get amazing items or entirely new effects, not just socketless item + 10%. What are you going to do, socket +spell hit rating on your tanking chest? It will improve your Taunt! :uhrr:

Could have had a point back in the 60-days, when itemization was utter crap. It's better now so I'll just have my items complete, thank you, even if it means that I might have to live with 10% less stats on three of my items.

Please explain how a game which expands upon the lore of the previous WC games can have worse lore than them.

Points will be deducted if you mention "Flying Naaru Castles" as lorebreaking without clarifying why "Flying Scourge Castles" are not. Similarly "Naaru transdimension travel" & "Dark Portal" :grin:

WoW's gems are closer to EQ's augments than Diablo's gems/runes/etc. This is because WoW is closer to EQ's dikuness than Diablo's glorified-roguelikeness. Fairly simple logic, I would have thought.

Possibly.  Who's to say that I wouldn't use the word 'Wank' if I'd ever seen the EQ augments ?

It's a thorny philosophical question...

A fair point.

Funny you should mention that. Meet Chaaz (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alleria&n=Chaaz).  Chaaz thinks he's an awesome tank.  That's his 'tanking set'.   No, I'm not kidding.

I can't see a single problem with that.


I suspect your link is not what you're expecting.

Naturally. But first I'd like to say that with "lore" I'm referring to what could be called "setting potential" or "background potential". They can't really change was has already been done, but they can change how it's implemented between games. Warcraft the strategy games had set timespans and most of all, set goals. They had lore constructed to contain the things that escalated in those games. WoW has taken that lore then shoehorned single man heroism into it in a relentless manner that completely contradicts the former implementations of the lore. Outlands has gone from a floating, dystropic place in the nether to a fairy land built to satisfy a need for a ding and a bling. The games may share the original framework of lore, but the values of the original lore are long gone. Rationalisation of relevant lore? Sure. Is it the same lore? No.

It's simply mucking about with the integrity of the background. Letting us gank the old arch-nemesises at a ludacris pace is just one thing and not the thing that bothers me the most, it's that nothing remains that's "unexplored" and not filled with player-friendly NPCs that'll gladly hand out some bling for another ten ogre beads. WoW has reduced the air of danger of the original lore to smouldering ashes in its eagerness to give cheap thrills and/or to achieve streamlining. Nothing says they can't add separate lore that scales well with the game pace, instead of burning their iconic traits at a stake.

Needing leeway for game mechanics is fully understandable, so I will never complain about killing a zillion orcs or anything similarly minor. That's just abstraction and rationalisation in favour of the game, while I can't see the abuse of the original lore as something that's needed for a functional and compelling game. It's not like anyone truly cares what the new zones are as long as they are cool-looking and offer epics, anyways, is it?

And yes, I do realise it's all about marketing and expectations. That doesn't mean I have to like it. I secretly hope they'll make a world that's expanding in this new MMO, rather than consuming itself.

---

And sorry Merusk, I too fail to see the atrociousness of the linked profile. It has updated since you posted, perhaps? :-)

I hate the word potential.

Chaaz needs less avoidance and more stamina, armor and block value. His healers must hate him.

All the melee DPS stacking is also 'wtf' worthy. 

Perhaps, but as it originated from a comment suggesting that tanks would want spell hit rating, I would have expected something rather more drastic than merely being suboptimal. Can't speak for Ironwood, but my guess would be that so did he.

This is the gear people get made fun of about nowadays? Ouch. Glad I quit a long time ago. Sure, its a little agility and dodge heavy....but at least he's prot spec :)

So...essentially your main complaint is that Blizzard is using their main characters from their RTSes as main characters in their MMOG?

 :uhrr:

It isn't "LOL" worthy, but the bar is indeed higher then it was for what I assume is a kara/gruul guild tank.

My guilds lead tank (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Doomhammer&n=Thorgrim) for comparison. Or a Paladin Tank (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Doomhammer&n=Eldaria) from a friendly guild we run kara with. Knock off about a 1k HP or so due to buffs still up, but the difference is significant. We've never really left Kara/Heroics and would classed at the bottom of the PvE table. (Out side of the dude in 'Champion' Greens trying to PuG Heroic ShadowLabs  :ye_gods:)

Healing those people is down right boring, but boring is good when tank healing  :-) . Mitigation over avoidance pretty much any day of the week.
 

 :awesome_for_real:

I can't speak for Tarami, but I believe their (her? his?) point was that the RTS games set up a linear timeline of Bad Things and Good Things, throughout which the player progressed, learning, winning, losing. They weren't exactly story books, but they did have a sequence to them, plot, character growth, etc. And the Warcraft world then was a lot more dangerous. We got these badasses invading our homeland with the power of gods behind them, and maniacal megalomaniacs turning on their own species in thinking they'll go it alone. Twice! (sorta. thinking Illidan and Arthas here, different ages, same cause).

Meanwhile, WoW is pure stasis. Candycoated cold war stuff with minor skirmishes and over populated nature. Even the Draenei, the very first in this lore to experience the problems Sargeras brought, are little more than reskinned Night Elves with some wierd crystalline spacecraft. Ya know, if you could build that, and it still had power, the first thing you'd do after crashing on a new world is pick berries and sell empty vials.

And I completely agree on Outland. This world was wiped clean of life by the distorted Orcs (Hellfire Peninsula actually depicts it very wwell) and then shattered by raw abuse of power. And yet, it still has atmosphere, and a bunch of different races doling out pick berry quests, and empty vials.

Oh, and there was no real progression from pre-BC to Outland, timeline-wise.

I understand why this is. You still need to offer access to Rags and Naxx and let people turn in their wool cloth to open AQ (though why those NPCs are still there is beyond me).

I'm hoping though that Sunwell actually advances things a bit. Otherwise, we're stuck with the same lore-issue SWG has.

Except, of course, nobody gives a shit :-)

The WoW timeline is centred around the player-characters, not the world itself. You finish up the Defias quests (for example) and, from a lore point of view, that's it - you killed the 'bad' guy, saved the kingdom, etc etc. Time to move on to the next challenge (haunted woods, savage jungles, daughter of Deathwing secretly running Stormwind, and so on).

All the content you've done is still there, of course...but from the storyline POV, you're done with it.

WoW has lore?

As much as any other MMOG.

Pretty much what I meant, Darniaq. I've been away and unable to reply, new year and everything.

There's no "worldly" progression in WoW, it's just spoonfed old lore. We get some old snippet of lore, chew it and spit it out. All these powers of awesomeness that -are- there, in the lore, do -nothing-. Why aren't we chasing them around the landscape, trying to pin them down under struggle, rather than just walk into their homes and choke them with pillows? Outlands right now is just yet another dead end, all the primeval evils are dead (they're in the game as raid bosses which in the extension means that they're dead, lorewise) and there's no "next step" to go from there. The Outlands are realised old lore, it's an illustration. It's like making a comic book out of Lord of the Rings.

What if Illidan tore a whole in the universe and escaped somewhere else, and we had to follow him there, just like he did once before? What if the Draenei fixed their ship and took their newfound allies with them to hunt down some remnants of the Burning Legion? What if the Blood Elves duped -their- newfound allies to go to the same place, in search for the Most Addictive Stuff Since Heroine™? Anything would work. Creating lore to introduce new races isn't "expanding lore", it's "covering your ass" (with bundles of $100 bills). The lore should bring an in-character incentive to go somewhere, even if it's just to relieve the world of one epic at a time, not merely an incentive to design avatars with a D-size cups.

I do care a major shit.  :-)

I agree. But it's the classic problem. What if you spent a bunch of development time on a story nobody reads? For example:



Yes. WoW is just a snapshot of a number of different ongoing storylines. There's pretty much a tale behind every major encounter and character. Some of it is told in the quest text nobody reads. Some of it is told on the website lore page that nobody visits. And the rest is told (or expanded) in the books nobody buys :-)

Hey Tarami - can you explain to me the fundamental difference between your 'new' approach of "Illidan fakes his own death and the players have to hunt him down and finish him off" and the (pending) Sunwell lore of "Kael'Thas fakes his own death and the players have to hunt him down and finish him off", please? I mean, to my eyes you're saying that WoW just spoonfeeds the lore to the players with no real input, then suggesting that Blizzard...spoonfeeds the lore to the players with no real input.  :headscratch:

I mean, the Burning Crusade storyline goes something like:
* The Burning Legion reopens the Dark Portal to invade Azeroth from Outland. (TBC launch)
* The Alliance & the Horde counterattack, establish a beachhead each, and start figuring out what's going on/where this new Fel Horde is coming from (Hellfire Peninsula quests/storyline)
* The good guys, investigating further, try to figure out what is going on in Zangermarsh, leading to the discovery that Lash Vash'j is trying to create a new Well of Eternity using the water & mana from the marsh and a vial of Magic Water from Illidan.
* The good guys try to figure out what's going on in Terrokar, leading to the discovery that Kael'Thas is planning to use magic nukes on his enemies (plus the Twliight Cult have managed to summon the Elemental Lord of Sound...and lost control over it)
* Nagrand is one big orc lore thing (and answers the "What beasts did orcs use before they found the kodos in the Barrens" question), with a side order of "What happens when an archangel-analogue dies?" and an introduction to the Sons of Gruul.
* Blade's Edge is Mok'nathal central with more ogre stuff, and we find out what happened to Deathwing's hidden egg caches.
* Netherstorm is "Why draining mana out of the land is a Bad Thing", some goblin & ethereal wackines, plus Kael'Thas working for the Burning Legion/semi-closure of the Blood Elf arc.
* Shadowmoon Valley is Illidan being loopy/Akama being smart/the return of Maiev/closure of the Illidan arc.

This could translate pretty easily into a WC3 campaign, imo - just strip out the sidequest stuff (ogres, bone wastes, ethereals, etc) and there you go - mission one: defend the Blasted Lands then sieze the portal. Mission two: Siege Hellfire citadel, kill the leaders, kill the pit lord. Etc, etc.

Probably should have made my lore comment in green.  From my perspective no MMO has had lore that matters enough to me to bother to read it in game or out.  In UO and SWG the back story didn't matter because I was off doing what I wanted to and knowing or not knowing the lore didn't make any difference.  In the DIKU games I've played, lore just makes getting to the accept button on a quest screen take longer.  Even when I bother to read quest text I generally don't read it as much as skim it looking for the clue that will let me finish the quest.  I understand that the lore gives the devs something to hang the quests and stuff off but in my case the intricate back stories that exist are pretty much complete wastes of time. 

If we are going to talk about WoW lore snafus, Mount Hyjal comes to mind. Here we have the build up of the Infinite dragon flight attempting to change the past with relation to the orc's rise to power in WC3 and the original Invasion in WC1, Leaveing clues that they are doing something big with the Battle of Mount Hyjal. Once you reach the mount you find that not only are the IDF not present you are proceeding thru history as if nothing has changed, in a sense its just a huge playground with no rhyme or reason for it.

I literally skipped all the quest text and cutscenes in Hellgate: London. I've read and done every damn type of quest known to man at this point, and all I need is the quest tracking summary and some zombies to shoot.

The changes are not of the fundamental nor revolving nature, it's about presentation. Saying "Oh my! He's alive! Again! Foiled by our amazing writing skills!" is vastly different to "Oh my! He escaped... forever? Will he turn up again? W00t?" The former is just a shitty Eddings'esque version of the latter. Anyone can resurrect a leading villain again and again, but it takes some creativity to stage a believable/sensible escape (not saying my example was a good one, it was mere illustration of the point) for one of the greatest bad guys Warcraft has. Especially when it's about reappearing around the next corner. I am aware that he "resurrects" as it is today, which makes it slightly less tacked on, but, seriously, recycling nemesises is never a good practice.

Alien was a good movie, Aliens was also good and Alien 3 was a good enough ending. Do I need to say that the whole "Surprise! They survived, with help from far-fetched technology!" twist of the fourth movie is/was revolting, perhaps why it tanked in so many ways? They're shooting aliens with machine guns, should be just as good as the second movie? Why isn't it? So with Kael'thas, when we kill him in the Sunwell, is he gone then, or will he resurrect in a twist of fate just in time for the next instance? They're just showing how little they care for writing something for the long term. Cheap, vulgar and right now, is the way they do it.

That's a nice list, but that's more of a "why is zone Z in way Y" than a storyline. Well, call me picky, but "investigating further" is not a good plot. I'm not even sure it is a plot device. And that's not a snipe at you in person.

I originally had the first sentence say "Not sure if that's green text, so I'll take it seriously" :-)

Otherwise, yes. There's no longer really any element of choice in modern MMOs, so no reason to read anything except the quest objectives. And even then it's getting to the point where the game tells you exactly what to get and where to get it, so all you need is a rolling Task List.

For Lore to be read by players, it first needs to matter to the game.
And for Lore to matter, there needs to be an element of choice.
And for there to be choice, there needs to be some measured accountability, which generally means some amount of content blocked from players who didn't choose certain things.

I'm all for that. Yes, it means something less than 100% of the players visiting 100% of the content. But devs make these choices already anyway. My Human Mage is never going to do Orc quests. WoW finally put in some real factions (Scryer vs Aldor). There needs to be more, and there needs to be more micro-decisions that can push you one way or the other (KOTOR style) rather than this all-or-nothing decided-before-informed nonsense that "makes the game more casual" (it doesn't).

I never understood the whole Kael thing, wouldn't the rest of the horde get kind of upset that he is off doing is his own thing and partially helping the burning legion?  Or is Kael not really in charge of the blood elves anymore, just that reagent guy in Silvermoon?  Maybe despite all the statues and propaganda Kael is unwelcome there but the new leaders are too frightened to tell the truth to the citizens.  I didn't get very far into the endgame and am wondering if this was explained somewhere.

And I think overall the lore is pretty good for a freaking video game, I mean it shouldn't really be compared to literature or even movies, this is a sliding scale.  Allthough I think the entire outland invasion is a fiasco when everyone knows Arthus is up there building an army of annihilation on our very own planet.

And I don't care how much you like the WoW lore (which I do as well) the LOL spaceships reference is valid.

I do read quest text, and am interested in the lore, but the trick is that what I read/see has to be good.  You notice how every now and then threads pop up about the most hilarious quests or NPC quotes?  Yes, people notice those.  I guess the problem is that most quests are bland, and you guys are complaining that you're bored because of that.

In WoW I liked the (alliance) Onyxia key quest chain, esp. the parts happening in Stormwind, the whole Deadmines line, the Thrall quests, the ogre stuff in Nagrand...  and I thought that the story behind how the player gets the key to Karazhan was cute (the NPC says "Wow, we sent you to just find some intel, and you came back with a key to this place!  How the hell did you do that?").  It's actually almost a form of fiction in WoW, it's not a novel, but you do get a bunch of quests leading up to some story arc involving each dungeon in the game.  How else are they supposed to let you "participate" in a story?  You do a bunch of tasks, some are menial then most are not, and there's some sort of closure or end once you kill the final boss.

It's unfortunate that MMOG force you to repeat quests and dungeons over and over again, and that's like reading a novel over and over again "for xp", but the lore is there, and sometimes it's decent.

Darniaq, I don't think the lore has to matter, it just has to be well-written and interesting.  That's enough for RP'ers.

But if the lore doesn't matter to the game play, you get what we currently have: a few interesting story arcs in a game that has thousands of quests. It's a double-edged sword. Most people don't care about quests because they aren't well written. Most quests aren't well written because most people don't care about quests.

This is how we have quantity over interesting. It's difficult to justify development time on words you can only hope 15% of the players actually read. And that's not going to change until someone turns the current lack of interesting quests into some way of making a better game.

I don't know, I think LOTRO does a good job with the lore/quests.  Most seem to mirror Tolkien's writing somewhat and there are stories in there.  Probably the best written quests in the business. 

I love WoW lore and read each and every quest, but not so much with PoTHBS.

I play "evil" characters in EQ2.  But if you look at my quest list, I am one helpful SOB.  If I was playing my char I would ignore 90% of all quests.  It is actually quite shocking when I run into quests that actually have me doing evil things.

Not 100% sure, but going by what lore we DO have available for the Blood Elf story progression we get something like this:

WC3:
- Scourge lay waste to Silvermoon, destroy sunwell
- Kael'thas rallies people of Silvermoon, renames his people from High Elves to Blood elves (in honor of those lost in the defense of Silvermoon)
- Kael sets off with large army to see what he can do about stopping scourge after Silvermoon is somewhat recovered.
- Kael gets mixed up with a contingent of humans, lead by an incredibly bigoted / xenophobic human commander, who tries to use the BE army as cannon fodder
- Kael tells Human commander to shove it, human commander goes "fucking elves, lock em up for disobeying orders, then execute them"
- Kael and his army are rescued with assistance of Illadin / Lady V, and escape to outlands, where Kael has adventures with Illadin
- Kael and his armies are now actively in a land that is INFUSED with demonic energies, and their magic addiction kicks into overdrive

Most of the above lore, i think, can also be inferred from a lot of books / quests in and around silvermoon from the starting Blood Elf quests.

WoW:
* note, you are NOT one of Kael'thas' blood elves, but are a Silvermoon Blood elf.
- Up untill level 60, you are primarily concerned with dealing with the after effects of the Scourge invasion, the uprising of the Zul'Aman trolls, new programs for feeding the cravings left behind by the destruction of the sunwell, Joining the Horde (and helping with their problems) and lastly, the ongoing effort to re-establish contact with lost Kael in outland.

Once you finally GET to outland, then you start to get the big picture of what happened to kael.
The BE lore in Outlands takes place mostly in: 3 zones and Shattrath city.
- In HFP, you get groups of elves, who are on some kind of pilgrimage (unclear if they are looking for Kael, or some kind of magical promised land)
- you also get your first introduction to Palatheon the Calculator (Mechanar boss) in HFP.
- Next stop is Shattrath, where you are introduced to the Scryers.  These are Blood elves who deffected from Kael's army due to his increasingly alarming behaviour.
- Next is Netherstorm, with the Mana forges, Kael's hijacked Narru vessels, Tempest Keep, and all its assorted lore.
- Finally "defeating" him leads to the reveal that Kael has gone over Illadin's head, and sold his services to Kil'jaden directly, in return for a lasting supply of demonic power.

So essentially, Kael has gone rogue, and quite possibly could be deemed to no longer be the leader of the Blood Elves as a nation.

The only thing i am not really sure about is the whole pilgrimage quest line / theme that seems to run through a lot of the blood elf story.  Seems there is some idea that has been set in the heads of the Silvermoon elves that there is some kind of "mystical promised land of flowing mana and honey" waiting for them in outland, but i cant really figure out where the idea comes from, since Kael should not really have had any contact with the Silvermoon elves after he escaped to outland, and the silvermoon elves shouldn't really know anything about outland till after the portal opened.  That and the fact that the whole "pilgrimage" storyline just abruptly dead ends at Falcon Watch in Hellfire Peninsula, with no clear indication as to where the pilgrims were intending to head after that stop.  While i suppose there is the possibility that the pilgrims are looking for Kael, there seems to be more of a "journey to a place" feeling about anything i remember reading about concerning it.

Also, as far as the "OMG, kael in sunwell, lol" complaint people have.  It seems perfectly logical to me.  It is VERY well established that Kael is NOT dead when you clear Tempest Keep and defeat him. There is a big event that goes down in shattrath when he gets taken down (could be a quest turnin, similar to Rends head or the Ony/Neff heads), where he monologues his "dramatic reveal of his true motives".  Would only make sense that if he is intending to assist Kil'jaden in some enterprise dealing with the Sunwell that he would show up there (for a note, appearently, he is going to be the last boss in the 5 man sunwell instance).

He sent a team back, with M'uru, after he captured it in the raid on Tempest Keep.  Grand Magister Rommath was in it, and he's allegedly the one (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/encyclopedia/451.xml) spreading all the "Outlands = Paradise" stuff.

DOH.  I KNEW i had forgotten something important.  I completely forgot about the captured naaru.  /Facepalm.  Makes perfect sense then.  I guess it is Kael's way of attracting new fodder for his corrupted Blood Elf contingent in outlands.

Still, i think i did a pretty good job of connecting the dots, having never read that wow lore entry, but only having played WC3 and WoW.

I'm of the opinion that instead of quest text lore should either appear in cutscenes (for really cool/important stuff) or integrated into the quest itself. However both of those require far more work than a block of text at the start.

Much of the WoW quest related lore IS integrated into the quest itself.  Problem is, too many people dont bother to read the quest text and just skip directly to the "Quest requires X for completion" summary at the bottom of the dialogue.

As to "cutscene style integration", well I can see a few potentially irritating problems with that. (TOO SOON. EXECUTUS!)

Mainly, if you want to integrate it into the quest itself, it is going to require a LOT of scripted sequences, mainly in the form of dialogues or speaches.
- If it is quest dialogue "read a page, click to procied" format, the player likely to skip to the end without reading it. An example would be any of the "Hear my story before i give you the next step of the quest" quests you occasionally run into in WoW.
- If it is spoken to them in text dialogue (ie, in the chat box), it is going to involve a lot of text to read, which is irritating (GO GO Introduction to Shattrath follow the elemental quest, or the "MOVE FASTER, TALK LESS BITCH" introduction to Caverns of time quest), and also affected by such things as local chat spam, potential gankings, and inability to "fast foreward" the dialogue
- if it is VERBALLY spoken, it is going to involve large amounts of disk resources to store all that voiceover

Many of the same problems would arise if you added "cutscenes" to stuff.  Everything cant have a cutscene, and many of them are annoying enough as it is (every time you had to wait through Ragnaros' intro speach before the first attempt, things like that)

WoW has this is a sense; Kael Fight, Illidan fight, When you finish the Netherdrake Quest Arc's Are a few that come to mind.

Like that quest where I had to kill boars and bring some part to a town so they could eat? oh, wait! THAT WAS EVERY FUCKING QUEST

No, it's not. But it is the majority of quests unfortunately, so it trains people to ignore all quests. There's a lot of cool quests in the game, but it's sporadic. And by the time you've stumbled on one, you're already trained to WoWWiki/WoWhead your way through to the reward anyway.

Again, it's catch-22. Why bother designing something no one's going to pay attention to? Why bother paying attention when nobody bothered with designing a good one? Particularly when the shift is away from mob grinding to quest grinding, which requires a huge quantity of quests to begin with.

WoW does use cutscenes, like WCIII where it's a scripted event that happens within the game world. That's even more immersive than the AC2 style. Not sure how it does things in FFXI though, but I hear it works well there too.

It's not catch-22.  Obviously some are paying attention, so you design just enough good/interesting ones to satisfy, while also populating your game with filler to keep the masses busy.  The lore and lore delivery methods need polish too, and just like everything else, the amount of polish is dependent on how much time and talent you have.  It's not catch-22, it's just a balance point that is somewhere in the middle, where what your playerbase wants, the level of polish, time constraints, budget, etc., all meet.

What's more interesting:  living in the past, where you only have access to literary masterpieces (Shakespeare, etc.) because nothing else gets published/distributed, or in modern times with access to a genre such as sci-fi, with plenty of average filler but also few really good books.

This may seem capricious, but if your game doesn't rely on players to make decisions at all (beyond to do or to ignore), then the quests are likely to be little more than task givers. In that event, you don't need to make all of your quests wonderfully immersive story arcs. So you can decide whether to spend a lot of time on it. And in making that decision, you perform the balance you talk about. But it's catch-22 because every effort to make a quest compelling can prompt the internal discussion of whether it's worth it and why.

Someone pointed to LoTRO earlier. This is a good example of a dev team leaning the other way, likely in large part due to the source material.

When I read lore text I tend to separate 'truth' from 'lies'.  The more 'truth' the more enjoyable.

'Truth' -- what is being mentioned is actually IN GAME or actually has/can/will happen IN GAME.  I'll let slide things like feeding outpost troops, if there actually are outpost troops there, I don't have to see them eating - but it would be nice.  But if there are no troops there, WTF are they talking about?

'Lies' -- stuff that is not in game, has never been in game, never will be in game.  For example, "10 years ago the monster X appeared and did this" - no he didn't, the game didn't exist 10 years ago.   I'd rather read "last year guild X tried to kill monster Y and failed!".

I hope to see someday where most of the 'quests' are 'true' and evolve as the shard evolves.

I liked one little thing I saw in LoTRO.  When I came back from a kill ten spiders quest the quest giver said something like "Thank you, I know the spiders will quickly rebuild their numbers but at least you have acted to slow the spread."  It was refreshing to have an NPC for once acknowledge that no matter what the spiders would always be there.

MMO's in general were Niche before WoW came along.  Sci-Fi MMO's are likely niche right now because they aren't as accessible/polished as WoW, or are downright dissapointing.

I'd wager the casual gamer likes guns more then swords.  A sci-fi MMO with guns has a decent chance in the Fantasy Fans demograph, and will also be more accepted amongst the military sim FPS crowd or the pop a cap in yo ass GTA crowd.  If you take the Starcraft universe (and a plethora of new fans after the release of SC2) make it as asseccible as WoW with shiny rewards to keep players playing and I think you would have a huge success.

If there was a really good sci-fi mmo out there, I'd be playing it over fantasy.  I'm pretty sick of fantasy mmo's.  And no, I would not like a sci-fi/fantasy mix MMO.

Ditto. I've got WoW if I want elves and dragons and shit.

More robots and guns and vehicles, plzkthxbai.

I'd say males probably like guns more, but it's likely that if you take away spells, elves, pets, and support roles, you'll lose a significant portion of the possible playerbase.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/21412

Another rumor hinting @ Starcraft Online.

(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)
(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)
(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/pylon.gif)

Easy drama queen.

While I will not deny a wealth of boar-centric quests, the game really incorporates a lot of the lore and terms into the quests.  Some of the lore terms I actually had to look up.

In their defense, wild boar is quite tasty.

My guess is something got lost in translation and they meant SC2's Online bits. AKA multi player.
That or just good old publicity stunt and/or someone talking out his ass.

Thats only in the overland, And LOTRO isn't wow, where daemons roam the countryside. Boar quests are meant to be done while traveling to real questing areas, and to stimulate the crafting portion of the game, you may not be a crafter, but someone will want the pelts, They also started replacing them (The boar quests) with other quests as of book 11.

They know. To the point where one of the quests has you investigate "striking absence of boars" in one of game zones.

Actually, I would rate the way FFXI does cutscenes for completing the big quest the nicest out right now.  You are basically wisked off into your own little dreamstate (much like an instance that is scripted) where you are looking at your self in the context of the event.  This is done in the style of most Japanese RPG on consoles really.  It sure felt that way to me anyway.  It would also incoporate the people in your group so it was actually quite immersive.

I really looked forward to seeing them each time I knew I was coming close to ending a string of quests.  I never had to repeat anything since they had the whole one character with multiple jobs method, but I could see myself enjoying them even after the 3rd or 4th time.  You always had the option of ending the scene with a keystroke, so if you got bored with it you didn't have to wait long.

*Edit:  I seriously suggest doing a trial of FFXI if you have never played it.  It has some of the best components of a MMO and really good ideas that nobody else is doing.  So, it is a nice journey to look outside the box.  I've often said that if FFXI just hadn't made the game centered around a very group oriented and grindy leveling system, it might have rivaled WoW today.  Hell, they were leading the pack for awhile and still had the grind.

I hate story driven quest/mission.  I would prefer a game with dynamic content and random wilderness.   Bunch of towns with npc merchants who simply want merchandises escort and far away ressources.  Add some random invasion and dynamic spawn and you have a winning formula.  Of course, most players would say random is meaningless.  Can't please everyone.

Right now, every quest I do in a mmorpg is tickling my bullshit sense.  Yeah, right, Kenny needs to be rescued for the 545 000 time.  Great.

FFXI makes me a sad red panda because it has so much I like about it, but not being able to solo (or duo) past level 10 kills the game for me.

I completely agree with that.  I probably would have given the game a good go if I knew I knew I wouldn't have to worry about finding a group if I wanted to play for an hour or so.  I've very nearly bought the game several times but I know that the lack of very casual play would get to me after a while. 

I can get over grind.  I can get over group-oriented game play.  I cannot get over a death penalty that removes experience.  That makes the grind and the group-oriented game play take unnecessarily longer.

Switching to an XP Debt system.  If I'm logged off, debt is slowly removed.  Slower XP gain while online with debt.

I'd resubscribe if they made that change.

After so many subsequent games from the early EQ1 days, it still continues to surprise me that anyone uses an XP-loss system at all. I'd have though even the legacy games had that sadistic part of the loss-corpserun-delevel trifecta beaten out of them by now.

That's some serious whack right there.

Loss, debt, same difference.  Give me the WoW "corpse run, maybe dura loss, but otherwise nothing" death penalty, or eat my shit.

I'm trying to work with their game design when I mentioned the XP Debt system.  But if they removed it completely, all the better.  But I can understand a need for their overall game design to have ways to limit XP acqusition.  The problem I have is when they allow XP loss.  A good death penalty for me is one that doesn't remove already-obtained progress with my penalty.  The most severe I'd like it is a debt that wears off if I'm offline.

Catgirls, am I rite?   :pedobear:

I do think Mithra are cute, however I was referring to the game systems and the overall style.  A class based system which lets one switch freely between them is the next best thing to a skill system to me.  (And has some advantages to various implementations of such.)

The Star Onion Brigade was awesome.

I was mildly interested in FFXI, then i saw chart describing their group combo system.

http://www.roeszler.org/akaitsuki/Misc/Renkai_Chart.htm

that kind of shit makes SWG look intuitive and preschooler friendly...

The new version is. :oh_i_see:

If you only look at a single weapon's possible combos, it gets a lot simpler. Once you've done a few combos, they become second nature. Especially at low skill levels, where only a few of the moves are even available.

The complexity (to me) came in knowing which creatures are vulnerable to which combo types. If that valkurm crab resists water attacks, then your water renkei is wasted effort.

... and if you spurt your renkei water impotently, you're really only playing with yourself.

Dammit! I should be working!

I agree with the womens about FFXI.  I played it until I could no longer advance solo or duo.

Send Grunk a PM.  He can give you the keys to the castle.  Or something.

Watch out, Grunk is a Galka. He will SIT ON YOU.

It's a lot easier to duo now, and soloing is more viable for at least some classes. It's also a lot easier to do well with less than optimal and smaller-sized groups. That said it's still very much a group-centric game.

Many many great things about FFXI, but yes the overall game is very group-centric and grindy.

reason i failed at FFXI was the UI, i would be ok with the death exp loss, the corpse run, the grind until I spend two weeks not finding teams then I QQ.
Tarutaru for the win.

FFXI: I've never been stabbed in the cock by a prettier more narrative MMO.

Asian MMOs don't just stab you in the cock. They tap into ancient art of acupuncture to permanently insert hundred of needles into your appendage.

Cockpuncture? I think we may have struck gold.  :grin:

This truly made me spit onto my monitor. Well played.

Shouldn't it be cockupuncture or something?

Who cares how it's spelled?  I just like the thought of guys squirming when they think about the subject. ;D

Dragging this thread back onto topic: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/21872

It's a no-brainer to me it would be SC.  Vivendi I am sure would like a "WoW in space" grabbing another 9 million players.  The space MMO market is wide-open (assuming Bioware isn't make a KOTOR MMO) and the biggest competitors are Eve (Niche) and SWG (well you know).

Koreans+SC+MMO=Money hats wearing money hats.

It would be cool if all the Terran worlds had a southern flavor, lots of stuff there for Blizzard to make fun of (I'm a Southener btw).

This post brought to you by parenthesis (apparently).

Fuck, I hope there's a Texas zone where I can fight GW as an end boss. That'd be fucking righteous.  :grin:

The only real question at this point is what order are they coming out in? Starcraft Online first and then Diablo the MMO or vice versa. It's a "When" not "If" question.

Blizzard has an even bigger opportunity to ramp up the hype machine this time around because now they can plan the story of SCII around the release of SCO (assuming this is the winner) and have it transition much more smoothly then WCIII did to WoW.

Hell the official announcement could be as simple as a five second title screen at the end of the SCII credits saying "To be continued in Starcraft Online." The gaming world would collectively shit itself in anticipation and the hype machine would go into Robot Jesus mode.

I could totally see Diablo 3 done like Guild Wars, as a "free" mmorpg over battle.net.

Sadly, I'm sure it would - but why? Don't get me wrong, I think Blizzard makes great games and I enjoy them a lot. But there are scads of other games out there that I enjoy just as much, and many I enjoy a lot more.

I just don't get the whole Blizzard-mania thing.

I think it's due in large to the fact that few, if any, other developers have the ridiculously top notch track record that Blizzard has in the PC world. Probably one of the most dependable developers out there. By dependable I mean releasing games that are enjoyable, polished, and actually ready for a retail box.

Sad, I know, that those last two have to be "premiums" in the PC gaming market but no less true unfortunately.

Why do you think Diablo MMO is a foregone conclusion? I'd only assume this if they come out with a Diablo III RPG first. But afaik they haven't announced it, or is it even rumoured substantially (except for that diablo3 rumor site). Compare this to SC MMO where even if they didn't announce SC2 RTS, they'd still have a big name awareness and guaranteed audience. And with them knowing that, they're still doing SC2 anyway, to grow it even more.

Nothing such so far for Diablo, and it's been 7 1/2 years since Diablo 2 launched, and 6 1/2 since the expansion.

Tbh it's not *that* hard to make things polished when one keeps re-releasing what's essentially 3 games (Diablo series, War/Starcraft series, now WoW) ... also, given they do release patches for all their games it's not exactly their stuff is really that much better developed than things you get from other developers outside of MMO space. More to do with fact their last game before WoW was launched over 5 years ago when all developers were much more careful about what they put in the retail box, and that helps to keep good impression.

Diablo III and or a Diablo MMO wouldn't have a big name awareness nor a guaranteed audience? Come on Darniaq, you can't be trying to sell that bridge.

It's been TEN years since the release of SC. That certainly didn't stop them from revisiting the series and it sure as hell didn't cool the demand for it. There is absolutely no reason to think that they wouldn't do the same for their remaining big hitter franchise.

SC has been played consistently in Korea for almost all of that time. It was the most popular online competitive game there for a long while. In a country with the type of experiences they have, that counts for quite a lot. That continuous competitive and highly public play of such an old game is why SC2 isn't the radical reinvention some expected it to be. And that SC2 is coming at all is what most people consider the harbringer of an SC MMO.

Where's Diablo been that whole time?

There's no doubt that people would play it. But they can (and are) making a bigger bet right now for an easier win. This isn't to say after SC MMO they don't start rehyping the Diablo IP with III. But I don't consider it that an absolute conclusion. A lot can happen in the eight or so years it'd take from now :-)

Also, isn't there Dungeon Runners that's basically Diablo wrapped in WoW skin/graphics with RMT side thrown in, and which despite these supposed money hat qualities didn't really do so hot..?

Maybe because it sucked hard?

Well didn't play it so wouldn't know. Checked couple reviews and they mention drawback that's lack of depth (all you do is run dungeons and click-click-click on monsters that drop various loot) but then you could say the very same thing about Diablo too so it may say something about viability of game concept no matter what brand is attached to it. What exactly about that game sucked so hard that Blizzard version would surely avoid and make it all "right" instead..?

The Dungeon Runners people have no concept of the heart or soul that goes into Diablo.

That's why it sucks.

Honestly, copying Diablo is not a hard feat. It just requires a certain amount of polish and hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing Diablo. This industry is fucked up as it is though, so copying Diablo - I imagine - could be the hardest task ever for them.

I have to admit I would likely embarrass myself with rampant fanboyism.  Fuck Diablo Online imo.  Gimme Starcraft.

Am I the only one that doesn't want Starcraft Online because it would only be Warcraft with a space skin?

Nothing screams boring to me more than that does.

Well I'm on your side, but I'm a rabid Diablo fanboi.

I want to be a zerg spitting face-melting acid. Sorry.

Yea, bah on Dungeon Runners. Close on paper, nowhere near in feel.

Starcraft MMO though, not sure it'll be WoW in space with Wookiees Protoss. Seems with the three big titles they've launched, they've "capped" a genre that needed to be capped at the time (RTS, RPG, MMO). Would they re-cap MMOs during WoW's waning days? Or would they try something new?

I could see them going a bit more of the HG:A semi-twitch route (though, like, doing it right), or even go the FPS route altogether. Now, I love COD4 and Crysis, but even I get all fanboi over the prospect of Blizzard taking on this genre.

Nope. But then i got bored pretty quick of any Blizzard game (save maybe Lost Vikings in Amiga days) so the whole "Starcraft MMO" is like 'meh, whatever' to me. Double so if it does indeed wind up as nothing but WoW with the space skin.

I would indeeed play WoW with Starcraft skins.

I would giggle like a schoolgirl if it was more like RTS/RPG hybrid gameplay.

What if it's like an FPS, but only with a collision system?

I keed, I keed - but really, they could take that IP in so many different directions, that speculating right now if it would be fun or not is pointless. Let's wait and see if it even IS Starcraft MMO first. Though I do think that will make sense.

As well as an eventual Diablo MMO, especially as WoW gets long in the tooth. From the many failings of UO, to AC2, to EQ2, it would seem that a successful sequel to an MMO is an untenable proposition. (Whether or not this is even true and why, I'm not even going to attempt to explain.) Blizzard could make a neat little end run around this question by hitching their cart to Diablo. Not that I think the Diablo world itself has very many "sticky" elements of fantasy prominent in most MMOs - chrissakes, I don't think they even have elves!

There's something wrong with you saying that Diablo has a heart and soul when it is the clickiest, grindiest monty haul of a game design ever (but you know, phat loot). Dungeon Runners works (as far as it does) in that it's free to play and it's got a sense of humour to cover its gaping lack of depth.

Besides, you've already judged Hellgate: London, which is basically Diablo Online, and found it wanting.

Besides, what ground does Diablo Online break that isn't available in WoW already?

Although I'm 90% sure that Blizzard is going to pop out Starcraft Online, it'd be nice if they actually developed and released a new property for their MMO.

Are you not getting that you could play a Protoss???   ONLINE!  :uhrr:

But yeah I'd hope they took a chance and made it a little bit different than just WoW reskinned. 

You must be the Dash from politics that everyone is raving about!  (http://www.invision.smileyville.net/smilies/girl%20(13).gif)

I disagree. IMO, they improved the model, by not taking themselves or the games setting to seriously. Good fun that game. But i also wouldn't call it a straight copy. Influenced, yes, copy, no. Thank god.

I never got the bug to try this. Partly because i had other games to play at the time, and partly because I was watching Sly play it. The humor (overhearing their dialogue and shit) got hella old real quick. IMO it was too far into the "silly" side.

Ok, how about this:

Licensed IP. Let's say... Harry Potter. (Not saying it is, just using it as an example of the type of IP that the mega-success of WoW might attract.)

Further: the title will have a strong chance of jumping the shark, as many licensed games do.

Now THAT'S interesting. When you think about who to trust making an MMO out of your franchise, who would you go to? The educated gamer would go with the company that exhibits features that would fit your game. But the non-gamer might go for the company with the best track record. Going with that Harry Potter idea, one can imagine Jo Rowling to say "I don't know too much about online games. World of Warcraft is big, isn't it? Who makes that?" (Well reportedly, she knows a bit about online games, but it's just an example.)

Or we can imagine LucasArts thinking about a new Star Wars Online. Who would they choose to develop it, given their disappointment with the current iteration?

Something to consider, anyway....

I don't think Blizzard would agree to use anyone else's licensed properties but their own.  They have made it a point to create and own every item that is used with their games, including the I.P.  That way they are the sole benefactor of said items.

I'm not so sure they wouldn't touch a licensed MMO. By virtue of the game's overwhelming success (and the fact that they are already talking about another MMO,) Blizzard is going to be a very different company from what it has been previously.

Stardraft or Diablo are probably the best IP you could dream of for a mmorpg.  I don't see the point of going with anything else.  And before someone says moneyhat, Blizzard is so rich that there's no point in taking a big check from a big IP, even less paying for it.  Beside, at that point, WoW must be more profitable than Harry Potter.  It's like they are releasing one major movie every month - with out the 100 milion production cost.

Not a company that's never played with someone else's IP, that's for sure :-) You can trust Blizzard to ship a market success that has broad appeal because of their track record of doing so with IP of their own. Like Lorekeep said though, they simply might not be as interested in a license (and all of the sycophants external controls it can bring).

I'd personally love a Diablo MMO, because I think it's an interesting lore. But my money's (well, no literally) still on Starcraft as the easy and obvious answer (otherwise we'd be talking about Diablo III RPG instead of SC2).

Besides, while there's still two or three more HP movies coming, they're just retelling a story that already ended. And given when they're coming, it's not like LoTR where it's a brand new audience either. A HP MMO would do well, but you wouldn't spend $100mil to make it for the 18-34 guy.

Edit: added the last paragraph... and learning about that big ol' preview button

Next: StarCraft 2
After: StarCraft Galaxies
Later: Diablo 3
Last: World of Diablo

WoW will be quite long in the tooth by the time WoD comes along, so cannibalizing it won't be as much of a concern.

Quicker than one of the few voice overs of from Diablo "Sit a while and listen".





Didn't think so.

Diablo 2 owned everything in the world, and if you don't think so then you have no soul.  That is all.

*ping*

(http://www.nowandfutures.com/grins/rose_colored_glasses.jpg)

*pong*

Cain got old and then got funny, like a fart joke.

Dungaree Runners was funny once, then annoying. Like a retarted kid repeating the same joke the same way over and over.

Come join fellow students of Hogwash School of Sorcery in Blizzard's next groundbreaking MMO based on brand new, own IP.

Sig'd.

Games Workshop has totally ripped off WoW.

Don't make me open one of my six mouths.

Could you at least bother to fix the grammar before putting something in your signature?

Then I would have to put editorial comments in the attribution. I'll tell you what, since it offends you so fucking much, I'll remove it.

What would be the proper grammar? Genuine question, english isn't my first language so may as well learn something out of it.

Come join fellow students of Hogwash School of Sorcery in Blizzard's next groundbreaking MMO based on their own brand new IP.

Totally lacks charm, now.  :cry:

But has Blizzard-level polish.

It was lovely the way you said it the first time.  Lorekeep buggered every thing up.  We should bugger him up with a pointy stick!  (http://www.sheknows.com/graphics/emoticons/stickpoke.gif)

Personally, I think that a SC MMO would be the bee's knees.  Make it a MMOFPS a la Planetside, with the 3 factions having gameplay differences that reflect the RTS.  The universe would be made of several planets, many of which would have capturable cities that would change art depending on who is in control.  Add in space stations, as well.  Allow a bit of PvE, but focus on the PvP aspect.

Just throw is up with the 3 factions like so:

Terrans - Plays much like Planetside.  You start out with the ability to work a few guns/vehicles.  After progressing far enough, you could unlock your latent Ghost abilities, or become a hotshot captain of a cruiser.  To pick up various vehicles, you have to be near a base.  If you get shot down, you can eject and fight on foot.  Death causes you to respawn back in a cloning tube of some sort. 

Zerg - Your character is a maggot.  You have the ability to metamorphosis into the various zerg units.  This work along a system similar to the Terrans.  The large units would be the equivalent of vehicles.  Only you wouldn't need a machine shop to morph.  You could do it in-field.  Only you can't morph again until you "die".  At which point you respawn at base and morph into something else.  Unless somebody was morphed into an overlord, which would be like a mobile spawn point.

Protoss - Your character would basically have a lot less variety in progression than the other two factions, but be more versatile.  Maybe do something with the Dark Protoss.  They could basically gate in any kind of vehicle they wanted within a radius of a pylon, but it would take time for it to appear (which they'd have to defend the gateway from attack).

To make it further interesting, allow 1-time faction changes.  Zerg infection, Protoss "enlightenment" or Terran technological enslavement.  This could give the various factions even more end-game balance.  (This would allow Zerg characters access to stealth if they levelled up a Dark Templar or a Ghost and then did the "infection quest").  Of course, this could lead to buyer's remorse, but advancement would be on the easy side of things.

Sorry, I'm a writer and that line made my eyes bleed.  I forgot the strength of any good quote goes up by 10 points if it's published on the internet and is also grammatically incorrect.

But the Blizzard polish line gave me a big laugh.

I can't play FPSes like I play MMORPGs, so I'd rather they didn't go that route. Agree with everything else though.

I really think there is a market for a Planetside 2008. Add some blizzard polish and you've got yourself a moneymaker.

If somebody could do a MMOFPS "right", it could be really awesome.  There is a ton of potential there.  However, at this point, Blizzard is the only one I actually would trust to pull something like that off, due to their professionalism, but most importantly, their resources (making an MMOFPS that works probably has to be one of the more technologically challenging projects I can think of, as the other attempts have shown).

Unfortunately, Blizzard has no past experience in doing FPS's, and I'm not sure if they would be willing to dive in that direction. Though I would love to see them open themselves up to some new game types (well, I guess they did that with WoW).  It would be interesting to see what they could do to other genres with the ol' polish.

They had no experience making an MMO either.

That doesn't guarantee they would do it right, but they certain have the capability of pulling it off, too.

I'm sure there are enough FPS fans in Blizzard, or at least a willingness to hire experts outside the company, where if they decided to make an MMOFPS, they would bitch slap all predecessors like WoW has.  It's not really unique mechanics or the such that define Blizzard, but what they *do* with those mechanics and how it integrates with everything else to create a smooth experience.  Plus they do a lot of stuff outside the game environment that tries to improve the customer experience (like Battle.net).

They sort of tried already* though with the Starcraft: Ghost. Both in-house and the hiring experts approach... granted Ghost isn't typical FPS but i think it came down to them realizing they couldn't come up with anything to bitch slap the predecessors.

*) single player not MMO FPS obviously but hey, getting the FPS part is as important as the MMO part.

An MMOFPS ideally would be COD4 with maps supporting 100s of players. But even if it was compartmentalized to 64 on 64 zones, I think it could be massive enough with the right objectives and meta-objectives. I'd love to see SC MMO go this route. While it'd have more appeal to the existing genre if it was the typical grind/achieve DIKU stats thing, Blizzard already won that fight so doing it again with a new theme only makes sense if they see it as a WoW replacement (as many have speculated). I prefer to hope they are looking at another genre to win, whether FPS or MMOFPS.

The only thing that turned me off of TR was, there was never a moment where I could catch my breath. It was all explosions, all the time, and I wanted to hang out in a tent somewhere and play cards with my fellow soldiers, or go to the pub or something. Downtime is important to me, as long as it's pleasant and not boring. Is this just me? Do most people want all explosions, all the time?

:mob:

Ghost was an attempt to replicate 3rd-person stealth action, not FPS.  Moreover, it was developed by non-Blizzard companies, and I imagine Blizzard wasn't as hands-on as they'd like to have been during the development process.  There were a lot of factors working against Ghost.

This is exactly why I burned out on Planetside. Action-action-action. Maintaining a high level of alertness means I am going to crash and burn eventually. And go back to a game with a more even pace.

Explosions and excitment and wild things have their place, but like eating <favorite food here> if that's the only thing you eat, you are going to get tired of it.

When you create games that cross genres, you need to understand whether that's going to increase your playerbase beyond the core from which you began or just alienate the players in that base.

PS tried to make MMO for FPS fans at a time when people who thought "MMO" thought stats and fantasy. Fast forward 5 years and that's largely still the case. But at least they tried. Unlike TR, they started with the total vision and remained largely consistent throughout. TR to me felt more like HG:L than any FPS (emphasis on felt).

SC MMO could be the way Blizzard delivers an actual MMOFPS for a crowd of players tired of WWII, modern warfare or Unreal. Or it could replace Warcraft as the preeminent stats-game.

As to the downtime thing, you need to be able to have players feel like downtime is appropriate. In PS it wasn't because there was no environment there. Just battleground after battleground. Take any MMO and remove auctions and crafting and it'd feel the same.

You KNOW I agree!  That's why I prefer MMOs that are craftastic.  I like mini-games, too. 

Whenever I get tired of my current MMO, I always go back to Puzzle Pirates. Something about that game just calls to me like a siren when I'm burned out.

I think it says something, when you want to relax with a game, you have to log off your current game and go play something else. In POBS, the music is entertaining enough, that I can just set sail to anywhere and enjoy the game. EQ is weird for me, that I actually look forward to sitting on my ass while my mana regens. I think it gives me time to consider what I've done and what to do next.

In WOW, I feel like the devs grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and threw me forcefully at level 70. In TR and Planetside, I was so busy that I didn't notice the advancement. While that might seem like a good thing, the advancement might as well not be there.

I suspect there's going to be many more formulae and combinations of game design to come...and a lot of them are going to be really really bad, and it's going to cost money. ZOUNDS OBVIOUS!

Well 1st person/3rd person isn't exactly much different, with lot of games letting you switch between both modes. Stealth is extra aspect but then iirc they tried to move towards less of it and more of regular shooter in the later iterations and that wasn't anything special either. Ultimately the buck still stops at Blizzard's desk -- they picked the development approach, the people who were supposed to do the work, and the way that work was supervised. It didn't work out (repeatedly) and it does imo show Blizzard methods aren't infallible and they don't have perfect grasp on every single gameplay model; so there's no guarantee everything they'd ever try is going to be the bee's knees, MMOFPS included.

Facinating conclusion.  The conclusion that I came to was something like this: What makes them special is that their business model calls for not releasing games that hurt the brand.  The risks they take that don't work out (the Thrall adventure game and Ghost are the ones we know about), the public never sees.  Someone at the top has the balls to say, 'no we're not releasing it' or 'no we're not releasing it yet' and it's worked really well for them. 

The "genius" seems to be that they only release games that are fun, which is unusual only because short-sighted thinking is the norm in virtually every industry.

Well, most companies don't have the resources to dump time and money into a product that's not going to ship. Could Mythic have survived if they decided to shitcan DAOC instead of launching it without Hybernia being itemized?

I don't think your conclusion is in any way contradictory with mine. They both take into account that:
... is not guaranteed. Your conclusion simply goes bit further than mine and focuses on likely way Blizzard would handle such possibility turning true. (developed game lacking bitch slapping prowess)

My hunch is that Blizzard has at least one guy who knows what a fun game is.  And they listen to that guy.  They also have at least one guy who knows how to make that game a reality.  They then have at least one more guy who knows how to polish that baby until it shines with the light of a thousand white suns.

I will bet a beer that Blizzard never makes a MMOFPS, ever. A MMOFPS is just not mass-markety enough for them. I don't mean that in terms of historical trends. I mean that Blizzard's bread and butter is making games that a large fraction of the world with access to a personal computer can play. A Blizzard MMOFPS will get axed in the design phase because the core elements of FPS (graphics, twitch) run counter to Blizzard's core business.

I'd argue that. I don't think graphics are a core aspect of FPS. Shinier and shinier has been the approach for a while now, with successive games trying to one-up one another with 49068058029809109 fjigapixels per goatload or whatver, but if you look at the most popular fps to date (Counter-Strike 1.6) i recon it's pretty easy to see that it's fun gameplay that is a main staple of a successfull FPS. And from that, i'd say Blizzard's core business is making a lot of money making fun games - whereby if they had impetus enough for a MMOFPS, be it from a design point of view or whatever, they'd do it in a heartbeat.

Yeah I was going to say that graphics would be a moot point for Blizzard, as Blizzard makes better use of graphics, not bigger use of graphics.  So if they did something, they'd make it work artistically instead of sucking down graphics card power.

Honestly? I think Battlefield Heroes might be Blizzard-like.  We'll see.

At level 60 (when that was the max in EQ) I used to hang around in East Commonlands at the tunnel where people sold stuff. At least on my server, that was the bazaar before there was an actual bazaar.

It was the most fascinating place to be. People wearing all kinds of gear came in from all over, showing off what they had achieved, and meanwhile the newbies were levelling in the zone. As a troll warrior I used to pull Sergeant Slate to the tunnel and beat him to a pulp (revenge) while an audience watched. Other people would be around doing crazy things that made people laugh.

I always left after a while because it was kind of embarrassing that "just hanging around" was fun. My guild wanted/needed me to do stuff, so I did. But that ability to step back and watch the world go by is an important part of these games.

If you don't think Blizzard and twitch go together, you haven't watched expert Starcraft players go at it. Twitch isn't just being able to snap a headshot off, it's about being able to react to a rapidly changing situation quicker than the other guy(s).

The real reason I don't think that we'll ever see a Blizzard FPS is that it's a genre they might not succeed in. Graphics are pretty important to FPS's on the whole (as you said) but Blizzard has never been highly praised for what they use - perfectly functional graphics. Which would leave the gameplay. Out of Blizzard's IPs, only StarCraft would be a really suitable FPS property - Diablo and WarCraft wouldn't. Or they'd have to create a new IP, which is actually a risk for Blizzard given how successful WoW was (because if the new FPS flops, it would certainly raise questions about whether or not Blizzard should have just stuck to the IPs that players know).

Now, if Blizzard refined everything gameplay-wise that exists in FPSes to a highly sheened polish, would they actually be able to compete with id or Valve? They probably wouldn't beat them, since they wouldn't be pushing the graphics envelope while they haven't really shown a talent for superior set pieces / action sequences. So a Blizzard FPS would probably be completely serviceable, but they wouldn't be breaking any new ground - something I think that successful FPSes need to do in order to succeed (barring established IPs getting players to buy the box regardless, of course).

Why are graphics pretty important to FPS's?

The fact that most FPS games are marketed based on graphics tech could well be limiting their appeal to a small subset of the possible audience.

I don't think that graphics are important to FPS games for any fundamental reason, it's just the way things are done now based on historical reasons.

I see what you're saying now, ya, I agree

Yeah, it would probably take a merger with a company that already has a mass market FPS franchise and a CEO that's looking for ways to turn said franchise into an MMO for Blizzard to somehow get involved (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6187208.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0).

I think Blizzard could pull off for MMOFPS what they did for RTS (*craft), RPG (Diablo) and MMORPG (WoW) though: make them mass-marketable (relative to the states of those genres at the time). Of course, they'd have to believe this is possible in order to do it. And the challenge is different.

• With RTS, RPG and MMORPG, there were just enough acceptable practices that they had a fairly well-defined foundation from which to iterate and polish.
• Such is not the case with MMOFPS. There's very little competitive landscape there within the sub-genre, because it's not really a genre per se, just a different way of playing FPS games.
  
  

So the question really becomes: could Blizzard make a better FPS game that also is an MMO?

They could do a better Hellgate:London with their Starcraft IP.  Just to piss Rob Pardo off.  I guess a Diablo 3:Paris would greatly increase the funny.

Because FPS's are the supercars of the gaming genre. They play fast, they look good and most people will never see one in full flight in the year they are released.

Where would Blizzard start to compete in the FPS genre? Serious Sam kinda sorta has the mass slaughter in lieu of intelligent opponents sewn up, id has the graphics, Valve has the storyline, AI and multiplayer... Blizzard would need to drop in something really exciting into the FPS genre to even make a ripple.

A persistent MMOFPS with large scale battles ... that's probably not enough.

Uh, what? Don't you remember the big buzz with BF2 when it came out with semi-persistent features?

I think you're wrong.

The only big buzz i remember was all the screeching from people who suddenly found out it wouldn't work with their gfx card. Which incidentally ties somewhat to that "FPS are flagship for shiny" thing, although maybe not in the intended manner.

So, we can safely surmise that there are at least three people working for Blizzard. All male, of course. Brilliant.

My hunch is they they also have a girl working the phones, because that's the kind of stuff that women are good at.

(Excuse me, I'm tired and bored.)

ololol

"working the phones" is a more suggestive metaphor than "making coffee" IMHO.

Ah. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

There, about as suggestive as the game industry can take. Or for that matter it can't....

Maybe those three guys are actually one guy?

It's hard for me to say if there is such a thing as institutional know-how. I tend to think that there isn't and that institutional know-how comes from a few key people, but I could be wrong. It's kind of an interesting question, can you develop a culture that works without any individual exceptional personalities to drive it?

There exists such a thing as a company culture, at least at the places I've worked.  Certain values are held in high esteem; others discouraged.  I suspect Blizzard's company culture is more responsible than any one particular person.

From my limited experience it relies quite a bit on those managing, not so much from those working in every position. For Blizzard, I expect that it began from a few key people, and as the company built up it built up along those lines, so that now there are so many people in the company who have been working from the original blueprint that it's not isolated at any one point or person anymore. I guess you would call this the company 'culture', but certainly it started from a more select group of people.

Institutional know-how is a top-down thing in my experience. But that top needs to have confidence in the people doing the work, who come to the organization with a willingness to, like, work. Blizzard is no longer a tiny garage shop, and I'm quite sure given their size they have some slackers there. But they don't let that affect the management, who seems to maintain strong veto power over sloth.

It's a two-way street, and Blizzard seems to manage it well. Other companies just buy other companies to try and reignite passion, or avoid getting rid of the fat.

Agree. The company I work for has a jackload of positive company culture. People love to work for us!   :drill:

If anyone cares, Blizzard/Vivendi execx have had many meetings with shareholders the last several months and their has been no corporate hints of the next MMOG post Activision-Blizzard merger. Management professes confidence that WoW can continue to grow organically.  Starcraft 2 is the only major future product discussed.  Who knows what will be announced once the marriage is consummated, though.

I wonder how Blactivision will react when Blizzard Prime says "We'd like 4 years and $100 million to develop our next MMO".

Cash or Check?

Really, we already discussed the sickening amount of money WoW is pulling down. I cannot fathom anyone, at any level of management would say anything but yes to WHATEVER Blizzard asked for.

Never underestimate the stupidity of management.

Blactivision Management: "Umm... err... that's a lot of money and a lot of time for just one game. How we lend you $30 million and you make WarCraft 4 for Xmas 09? Don't get us wrong - we appreciate what WoW has done for us - but we don't think any new MMO you create could compete with it."

(http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/ratman/vader-shoulders.jpg)

"SOE once thought as you did."