f13.net

Rarely has this site ever posted anything by way of news that wasn't first passed by Mythic and fact checked. We've always appreciated the hard work of the developers and have always worked to get the facts straight before we bring it to the community. However, today's news item was met with both the suggestion I talk with someone higher up the food chain and a, "no comment". Despite the official company line, when unofficial people in and out of Mythic, as well as inside EA, all tell you the same thing, well, I'm going to listen and I think you should too.
 
Contrary to Marks insistence (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=854395#post854395) that there will never be official forums, last week I received word that plans are on for the building and launching of official public forums early in the new year. There are plans for three separate official forums, one for the USA, one across the pond at our GOA friends and also one for the good folks in Russia where WAR will be released in early 2009. It should be no surprise that this is going to be a huge undertaking and the community teams are staffing up to handle the new responsibilities.
 
Ultimately this is going to be a fantastic thing for Warhammer Alliance and the folks at this site. For more than three years this site has been the premiere community provider for the Warhammer Online community. In that time we've grown and shifted focus to handling the massive growth that the forums have been experiencing. In that growth however we have not been able to deliver the quality content and information that I feel this community deserves.
 
Official forums are going to definitely help lighten the load of the volunteers at this site and allow us to focus on getting the community better information, better guides, better tools and better insight. It's going to allow us to spend less time banning idiots and more time creating readable and interesting content. Most importantly, it's going to allow me more time to level my alt characters to 40.
 
Now while this bit of news is officially relegated to the land of rumor I would suggest that folks not be shocked or surprised when this is officially announced late this month or early next year.
 
Now with that bit of news out of the way, let me repeat what I said five months ago. Warhammer Alliance is not going anywhere. I and the staff of volunteers are committed to providing a quality community experience to everyone who visits Warhammer Alliance or our addon site at Curse.com, and the fantastic database at Wardb.com. We're committed to bringing great tools, great forums and great content. The prospect of official forums are going to allow us to focus on enhancing those things and frankly, I think it's going to bring about some fantastic changes for the site.
 
For those of you on the fence about WAR, I suggest you stick around. There are even more changes afoot at Mythic and we're going to continue to bring you the latest news, tools and information.

I don't know that I believe this, but interesting none the less.

Never.

There, I said it (again). :)

I would rather hear William Shatner and Roseanne Barr singing a duet while having my fingernails pulled out one by one while sitting in a pool of molten lava than have Mythic's own Official Forums for WAR.

How's that for clarity? 

Mark

Nope,

I believe the deal with EA puts Jacobs in charge of the bus.

Maybe EA finally brought the hammer down.  Certainly EA didn't buy WAR for CoH numbers which is where Mark's "the player is always wrong" strategy is leading.

At least he got Jacobs to post at WHA finally. :grin:

Nope,

I believe the deal with EA puts Jacobs in charge of the bus.

Couple of points.
 
One I think it's more than a little unprofessional to post rumors like this. I just checked with my sources at Mythic, the same sources that gave the heads up the Class cuts a good month before they happened and was told that it was BS, furthermore EA has a bigger issue with official forums than Mythic does so it's double BS. That is from a Mythic Employee guys. You guys know I have been posting here awhile and I don't BS, so take that, as you will.
 
Secondly and more importantly what is with the snarky way that this was presented? We get that WHA needs to prove that they do not kiss developer hiney on a hourly basis, but there is a fine line between being there as a community resource and flipping off the developers just to prove your street cred. Seriously guys saying you respect the developers with one face and pulling crap like this with another is a bit over the top.

I think we need to change the name of the Warhammer subforum to just  :awesome_for_real:

A short video - how open RVR contribution was broken for two months and nobody at Mythic noticed (http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=sjDGJrLzGlQ).  Maybe official forums would have helped.

That was my thought at the 'more changes afoot' bit... MJ has made it clear he is not compatible with the idea of forums. If they really are on the way, then a culture change is on the cards - perhaps one not involving him.

Probably  :uhrr: is more appropriate.

A short video - how open RVR contribution was broken for two months and nobody at Mythic noticed (http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=sjDGJrLzGlQ).  Maybe official forums would have helped.

:ye_gods:

A short video - how open RVR contribution was broken for two months and nobody at Mythic noticed (http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=sjDGJrLzGlQ).  Maybe official forums would have helped.

Throwing people under the bus is Good Business.

A short video - how open RVR contribution was broken for two months and nobody at Mythic noticed (http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=sjDGJrLzGlQ).  Maybe official forums would have helped.

:ye_gods:

I'm absolutely gobsmacked. I'm actually not that surprised the fucked up bit of code made it into the game and no one noticed. That happens on a regular basis in DIKU-style games, happened all the time in EQ1 (alchemy, rogues at release) and DAOC (left axe anyone). No, what gobsmacks me is that Barnett had the stones to essentially BERATE a subordinate in public about the fuckup. That's WHOLLY UNPROFESSIONAL. In a lawsuit, that shit could be used as evidence of a hostile workplace. Is he completely fucking braindead?

EDIT: And I see Mark just responded. Hey Mark, if you still read this board? Here's a fucking hint.

That shit is so goddamn amateur hour it's unbelievable that you let that kind of thing go on. In ANY OTHER FUCKING INDUSTRY, that is grounds for dismissal. It's borderline harrassment. It's the kind of thing that prompts people who are competent enough to get better jobs to start looking for other jobs. You don't create divisions between "code and design" even in jest and most especially not in public. It makes you look like garage band fuckups.

A sense of humor is a wonderful thing and necessary, especially nowadays.

Mark"

wow, you guys crack me up

it was all quite obviously in good humour, like every Paul video ever made for the last 3 years

Just for the record, I'm fairly well-known for not taking things seriously. And even I thought it was FUBAR. That's simply not a great joke. Particularly when Paul already comes across as a big poncy douchebag mouthpiece in half of his videos.

I couldn't disagree more  :grin:

I'd rather take this than complete silence or a column of robotic text like from most other companies. Too much sand up peoples vaginas these days  :drill:

I couldn't disagree more  :grin:

I'd rather take this than complete silence or a column of robotic text like from most other companies. Too much sand up peoples vaginas these days  :drill:

Look, in my day I have had to "dress down" an underling or two and they always have that same look in their eyes...............it is the same one this dude has. 

My take is that this was not a pleasant experience for him.  Maybe it was just a "joke", but then why the need to come out and tell us it was a joke? 

What an asshole...

"Folks,

Paul and Colin were trying to be funny. That's Paul's style and Colin is one of our most trusted, talented and valued guys. If they can poke a little fun at things...

And by the way, Paul also makes fun of himself and doesn't take himself too seriously (well, most of the time happy ).

Bugs happen, design errors happen and nobody's perfect. Well, except for some folks on the Internet who never make mistakes at their jobs and neither should anybody according to their posts.

A sense of humor is a wonderful thing and necessary, especially nowadays.

Mark"

So now he's trolling the VN forums?? Fuck this guy needs to stop posting.

When someone gives you millions of dollars to build a ship, it's only natural to get a little freaked out and defensive when that ship starts sinking.  Accountability is a bitch.

Yes it was supposed to be done in fun. The problem is is that every other sentence is like "it's not my fucking fault, it was the programmer's fault".  I.e. instead of making a video saying "Hi guys *WE* fucked it up, here's what happened, ha ha ha" he made a video saying "*HE* fucked it up not me, ha ha ha".

How the hell did you make it through the cleansing?

That's just not true at all.  Reading through the boards there is plenty of pro/con discussions and criticism.  The difference is that we will quickly and happily ban people who refuse to follow the very simple rules that we lay out for our PTS forums just as we did during beta.  If people cannot follow those rules, posts will be modded and people will be banned.  The PTS boards are not for "This sucks, the end is here, you killed my class, Epic FAIL!, you [Insert most hated class] are a bunch of *&*&*&*&*" posts.  We want to have discussion and feedback but it is not too much to ask that people stay on topic, don't continue to post the same thing again and again, refrain from personal attacks on other players or on Mythic. 

And BTW, we're perma-banned a total of 8 people so far, that's all including a number of people who post and flame us here as well.  Sorry, but I don't consider 8 perma-bans to be excessive at all considering what we want is a place where people can have an adult discussion without worrying about being flamed, yelled at and have that discussion in a place without having to deal with the drama so often seen around any MMORPG discussion on just about any forum.

Mark 

The reason MMOs are so great is not gameplay, or in-game social bonds, or any of that crap.  Its the infinite entertainment we get every day for free. 

I'm not certain saying "Dudes on the VN boards thought it was fine!" is the sort of defense you want to be using here.

Nope, no change in my viewpoint. I still think broad and lightly moderated OFs usually do more harm than good, need lots and lots of maintenance and are full of the same "Epic Fail, Class Action Lawsuit INCOMING!, Nerf every class but mine!" stuff that non-OFs are full of before, at and after launch the biggest difference being that if a company has OFs, it's paying for the privilege of seeing that stuff on its own forums. Since I started posting/reading here again, I've seen many posters/responses that have been great, extremely helpful, quite useful and, for the most part, I enjoy being here. If we could avoid all the useless, rude and insulting posting, it would be even better. And yes, I do think as always that epic fail, insulting, lying, rude and overly dramatic posts don't do anybody (except possibly the OP) any good whatsoever. Unfortunately, that's how some people feel the need to express themselves and their opinions. And as is the case in open forums, everybody has to wade through them to get to the good posts and that's a shame. The only time in my 20+ years of making online games that forums haven't had so many of these types of posts are when the forums are heavily moderated or when back in the early days of online, the clock was ticking in terms of per-minute charges for posting. I certainly don't miss the later but I do wish that people would simply be more polite both to us and to each other but as always, that's the problem with the anonymity/safety of the Internet and the fact that accounts/access are free.

Oh and in terms of anyone (EA!) changing my mind and imposing OF on us, etc. no chance of that. This sort of stuff is left totally up to us and in this case, any decision against/for OFs is my call. If we stay with what we are doing now or have OFs or some hybrid, it won't be because someone forced us to do that. The guys above me in the company have a lot more important things to do with their time than decide whether we are going to have OFs or not, like running the Games Label or even running the entire company. Frankly, running OFs costs more money, time and effort and doesn't have an easily calculated ROI so it's a safe assumption that would be a harder, not an easier sell to have OFs than do what we have done with DAoC and WAR.

Mark

There's a reason Blizzard chooses to remain utterly impersonal and not play the usual reindeer games.

A short video - how open RVR contribution was broken for two months and nobody at Mythic noticed (http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=sjDGJrLzGlQ).  Maybe official forums would have helped.

What the fuck are they doing over there?

Meh I dunno
I think zhe internetz are taking it more seriously that anyone else is

Common Design Faults

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Being sucked into the purity of  ~~~~~~~ rather than fun

An obsession with balance over excitement

Being subtle rather than

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Being too precious about your design

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A new short video - Humour in the last video has been hot fixed (http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=rkGtWEOv47E).

I find it perplexing that you guys are still moaning about this.

You make me die a little inside.

Watching the video in High quality, the poster on the wall says :-

They're more strict than any forum I've ever been on.