f13.net

http://www.turbine.com/news/99-warner-bros-home-entertainment-group-acquires-turbine-inc.html (http://www.turbine.com/news/99-warner-bros-home-entertainment-group-acquires-turbine-inc.html)

Maybe they'll get to stop tiptoeing around all the names from the Silmarillion now.  :oh_i_see:

"I don't mean to brag, but..."

How did i manage to miss this thread? Either way, it's not like they were going places. Everything since AC1 was terrible.

It was hiding in the graveyard.

Not sure how to feel about this.  I have a soft spot for turbine, so am hoping for the best.  At least its not EA.

I loved supporting Turbine because they owned themselves.... remember when they fought so hard to get out from under Sony so they could do it their way?

Man, Warner Bros.? 

You notice how they said that LotRO was designed after their movies?  Way to fail, Warner Bros.

Good start.

Microsoft, not Sony.

Hilarity ensues if WB tries to pull SOE off DCUO and give it to Turbine. The PR statement makes it all about LOTRO though, plus I'm sure someone at WB is thinking of all the other properties that could be MMOs.

Like, say, all the animated DC series characters they have. Probably not the Matrix again.

That won't happen.

Turbine has always been my favorite talented people who keep just barely missing the idea of fun. Also, their management can't seem to get a break on shitty freaking contracts.

Claims that WB paid up to $160 million for Turbine, including performance payments. (http://games.venturebeat.com/2010/04/20/warner-bros-acquires-lord-of-the-rings-online-game-studio-turbine/)

The Financial Times ignores the whole LOTRO angle, indicating that what was wanted is Turbine's micro-trans experience / tech and to link that to console gaming. (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80184a5c-4cbb-11df-9977-00144feab49a.html)

Just so I'm not confused, we are talking about the same Turbine that thought dealing with SmartRewards, infesting users' computers with spyware and giving away their emails was a good idea?

lol, yea, WB plans to make some TERRIBLE hobbit based "online" game and then dump turbine like the dirty whore they are. This is the end of turbine. Too bad.

My big regret here is I loved Dereth. It was quirky, unique, and for me completely engaging. The Glorantha or Tekumel of MMOs. I can't possibly see that happening now.

Some of you people are fucking idiots.

It doesn't fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling, that's for sure. Invariably, every single time an MMO company gets folded into a big suit run corporation the suits running the corporation demand WoW success. Meaning be more like WoW. Then they do because what else are they supposed to do and the game ends up sucking. I'd love to be wrong because I fucking love LOTRO. I hope WB gives Turbine a lot of leeway.

 :thumbs_up:

I imagine the move is less inspired by a desire to screw up Turbine's current titles and more by a desire to get WB's IPs out onto the web in some way.

Bugs bunny and Tom & Jerry would seem good fits for Facebook type games and Blade and Terminator perhaps good IPs for traditional MMOs.

They really have a ton of stuff that could be turned into some kind of internet cash:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros.#Warner_Bros._franchises

Like the Matrix!
 :thumbs_up:

WB never really had a solid gaming strategy to exploit their IP. They licensed it out frequently but were never particularly successful. They've dipped their toes in the water a couple of times, investing in eidos and buying midway and whatnot, but never really committed to the business. They don't seem to be driven, unlike activision and EA. On the bright side, this makes them much less evil; god knows I'd be happier with WB than Beelzebub Kotick. But the ceiling is lower.

Maybe this is just WB's second or third move in a bid to be a real player in the gaming space. But I kinda doubt it. They're just bumbling along like always.

Turbine have their own game engine, which is very good, I wonder if they plan to take advantage of that.

From what I am hearing through the grapevine, you folks would probably be more upset by the other main contender they were negotiating with - I don't know which Chinese MMO company it was, but it was them or WB. (Mind you what I heard could have been BS.)

Keep in mind, Warner invested $40 million in Turbine in 2008.  Industry sources put the size of this deal at ~$160 million plus performance payments.  I'm semi-out of my depth here, but that gives me the impression that Warner likes what it's seen out of Turbine in the past two years (particularly DDO's phoenix-like rise from an early grave -- Warner seems big on microtrans).

Yeah if it were EA I'd be all doom and gloom, but with WB, not so much. Agreed it's likely more about getting more WB MMOs out there. (Harry Potter maybe?)

How's Wizarding 101 (or whatever it's called) doing as Ghetto Korean Harry Potter?

A fully licensed version of that would pretty much be money-hats, right?

Their engine already has the tech to handle some degree of air physics, as the DDO Winter Games ski-jump-hit-the-midair-coins events demonstrated.  The Turbine Engine wouldn't be everything they need for ZOMG Quidditch, but it's a start.

Uhhh....

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/963220/schlammer-for-kanzler-wat-die-nich-konnen-dat-kann-ich-auch-horst-schlaemmer-wat-die-nich-koennen.jpg)

The Financial Times article surprised me a bit. Barely a single mention of LoTRO. Looks like Warner Bros. is making an effort to curb second-hand game sales by churning out DLC for its non-MMO titles.

It's 5 lines long and mentions it once. It also seems as if it's written by a non-gamer because he doesn't examine the MMO aspect. Most British people don't know what a MMO is - they've heard of World of Warcraft from TV ads but couldn't say how it is different from Call of Duty or Modern Warfare (except superficially).

It's a reasonable brief, superficial, article for the financial community not an insider leak on the "real deal". It really doesn't say anything that couldn't be gleaned from the press release.

Ah. Really? No. LoTRO may not be your cup of tea, or for that matter mine, but it's easily one of the better products on the market. DDO I never played but it seems to be finding it's feet with the F2P model. AC2? Yeah sure it sucked ass and didn't give you Dereth 2. Let it fucking go.

this isn't necessarily "bad".  Remember, Turbine was trying to raise $15-45M? in capital two years at the start of the recession.  This could help them avoid a Mythic-like sellout with WAR inasmuch as they already have they 2 solid, modern, and probably profitable titles.  Thus, less pressure to outperform immediately.  If anything though it does explain they lack of a published roadmap for LotRO.  They've been really into maintaining state in that game for awhile now.

Yeah, aren't they basically 3 for 4 on games that don't suck?  And don't those 3 games offer a more varied range of competently delivered experiences than pretty much any other MMO company out there?

I mean, fuck, they're far from perfect, but is there really another major MMO dev studio doing half as much for people who see WoW and go "meh" but like MMOs?


Didn't the second major expansion, Siege of Mirkwood, come out ~5 months ago?

Turbine has a mostly competent in-house engine that's been tuned, reused, and forged in the fires of MMOrdor, yes, but with one huge Achilles heel - server lag.

From rubber-banding in AC1 to feeling like you're underwater in LotRO, whatever magic it is that lets you hit an action key and have your character seem to do said action RIGHT THEN that pretty much every other MMO has, Turbines games lack.  And though I like many things about most of their games, I really really dislike dieing due to my character not reacting nearly as quickly as I do, or after suddenly finding myself in the middle of a dozen angry mobs due to rubber-banding.  And if their next game feels just as laggy, no matter how good it is otherwise it just aint gonna keep my subscription very long.

But that's just a whiny way of saying I wonder if WB actually got what they thought they were paying for.

LoTRO I agree with you, but didn't they supposedly change that with Mirkwood?  I thought that was one of the major features of the expansion.  I might be wrong.

AC1 was totally hit and miss, its feel is either incredibly responsive or really awful, and it was very random.  From what I understand, the real problem is that the game's underlying coding is shitty (UDP?) and there's only so much they can do.

DDO felt great, IMHO.

Most games use UDP.

From WB's point of view, I don't think they care that much about the MMO aspect - or, at least what Turbine have out right now. That Turbine is profitable helps WB, but that isn't what they were really looking for. They care more about the platform that Turbine offers them - they are increasingly looking to get into gaming and direct content distribution. Buying into Turbine gives them that quickly and it is all battle tested.

Also, the focus was on consoles, not the PC. That Turbine has a console MMO in production probably didn't hurt (http://www.mcvuk.com/news/35837/Turbine-working-on-console-MMO) either.

Gogo batman online!

Yes, this is about the platform people, not any one game title. Turbine has been pimping the platform for a while now. Check the main turbine site, especially if for some idiotic reason you think the "engine sucks", because it doesn't, and two, the tools set is the key here. It is an extremely refined, extremely well tooled for content, platform all the way to distribution.

To many here confuse game layers for engine features, stop it.

The only person talking about performance was Hyu.  And he apparently doesn't even know what UDP is.

LotRO pretty much fixed that lately. It's not quite WoW responsive, but not nearly so bad as it was when the game was released.

Also, this means that Turbine has got some big legal muscle in their kerfluffle with Atari over DDO. Despite not liking DDO, the turnaround on LotRO has me convinced they should get the opportunity to do some non-fantasy properties as MMO's.

I don't think that 'slow' feeling is a result of the engine, its a game design thing. They like to time the game effects with their animations, and their animations are done more... deliberately, we'll call it, than say WoW's.

Basically. Yes. Not the same as "lag". In the recent update, the bandwidth traffic did not change at all.

AC2 used the same engine and bow fire in beta was like using an Uzi.

Good point, and, quite technically, that was the old version of the engine. Again, game layer VS engine features, not the same thing. :)

Good God, how many times have we been over this? :D

Not enough?

Eliminate the repeats and MMO discussion becomes 5 threads.

Also remember that back then, they hosted the AC2 with Microsoft funds. When AC2 released I was on business fastpath DSL and I had a 15ms ping to Darktide. It was incredibly responsive and probably more twitch than any MMO I've ever played. Then again I was a run-casting cheater, but that's a different story.

Turbine sets out to assuage fears over the acquisition on the LotRO forums: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=328831


Commendable optimism. Too bad "the foreseeable future" stretches only as far as a single quarter at most. It would be interesting to hear what assurances WB made concerning future investment in Turbine's current portfolio.


Having worked for big corporations in my time, I'm guessing adjusting to a new kind of operative infrastructure and culture takes its time. Going from an autonomous entity to a cog in a machine is bound to spring a few surprises.

Neverwinter Nights, KotOR, Jade Empire, and The Witcher were all "the same engine."

Unreal 3, Lineage II, and Mass Effect were "the same engine."

An engine is not a game console with fixed hardware. It is a set of software development tools that evolve over time and between projects.

 - Why MMOs suck
 - Why PvP sucks
 - Why PvE sucks
 - Why non-combat systems suck
 - Why the next unreleased MMO is going to be awesome and avoid every single mistake every other MMO has made

I think that's a pretty fair and safe statement for them to make. Let's be honest, no matter what they say the next time the OCD hardcore don't like something that is done to LotRO (insert any live Turbine game here) the first thing they are going to do is blame WB and start to White Knight how Turbine would never have done this and is just having to serve the evil corporate master. Never you mind the reality behind it all.

They got bought, some changes are inevitable, but other changes were inevitable even without the WB factor. I think most of the impact and points of interest are in the future games of Turbine. What WB does with them going forward while milking ye old cows that currently exist.

I think you and UnSub are more or less spot on. WB has IPs it wants to utilize, and acquiring Turbine nets them a proven developer/service provider with years of experience, and even a few current titles thrown in for good measure. Whatever on-line content WB has set its heart on, it now has the tools to deliver.

And Turbine's LotRO post, as you said, is the kind of non-committal, upbeat PR piece they're supposed to run. No surprises there. Overall, I'll admit to a vested interest in LotRO from a customer's perspective. I enjoy the game, and it would be sad to see it phased out too quickly in favour of new projects. Turbine isn't a mammoth as far as development staff goes, so any major reshuffling will have a sizeable impact on current titles – barring further investment in personnel, of course.

I was hoping to get a couple of more quality years out of LotRO, so if it turns out that WB is contractually obligated to invest in its development for a set period of time, I'd be pleased.

So we are in complete agreement that just because some people consider LOTRO combat slow, that doesn't mean Turbine is forced to make slow combat games.

I see what you did there.

What I was trying to explain is that LotRO, while "the same engine" as AC2, may actually have significant differences under the hood. Speed/reactivity of combat may have been sacrificed to gain other features thought more important.

But hey, I don't work there. Go to the LotRO forums and ask the guys who can (theoretically) give you a straight answer.

It was simply an animation issue/Choice AFAIK. (no I don't work there, but all explanations support it). Animation completion, and blends were extremely strict. Now you can let things over lap and even not blend all day long if you like (more like wow). True time of combat and/or net messages haven't changed.

How is animation to blame for it feeling like there is a delay between hitting a key and the animation even starting?  A wind-up time is one thing, but my feel was always <buttonpress> <wait> <wait> <wait> <something starts to happen>

It always seemed to me that Lotro's delay was caused by the way it queued actions and delayed those actions to correspond with auto attacks.  That's what I remember at least but i haven't played in a long time.

I seem to recall one of those design document/letter from the designer type things where he never liked where you could hit a button and it would interrupt whatever animations were currently happening and your character would jerkily start doing some new thing. They wanted to wait until the animations were completed so that the movements looked realistic and had a flow to them.

Which might be pleasing to the eye, but my Warden was a pain in the fucking ass to play.

One animation will not fire until the previous was completed + Blend time.

Some animators prefer it, some do not care. On one side, you have fluid, complete, and smooth animations and transitions (transitions being procedural tweens of a sort), on the other you have a more responsive feedback, but animations frame time, and blends, as well as fluidity go right out the window. (see Nijas comment about jerkiness or twitching)

Now, I am not saying that some things in the back ground did not change, but I would not think turbine was inexperienced enough to attach mechanics to animation triggers (set frames in the animations time line) meaning, animations and mechanics are on different scheduled events, even if the match up.

It really all comes down to how things are implemented, as far as I know, the original combat speed (and by that I mean "feel") was completely intentional to the point that they made sure it reacted that way.

And that has nothing to do with the base engine, as DDO would be almost the direct opposite in feel. To sum up, its a game level design decision. More modern animations systems have really varied animation layering systems where procedural stuff (foot finds floor) and canned animations are blended/layerd and outputed so seamlessly its hard to tell by looking whats doing what. But turbines engine is (IMO) one of the best uses of "last gen" tech, but it comes with some real limitations or things to avoid.


EDIT: EHHH... That reads confusing, sorry. But I know you have seen it before.

No, I really was just agreeing with you.  You made the point far better than I did, though you did use more words.

I'm not sure how animation time affects the sluggish "stuck in the mud" feel of movement at game release, but that not the combat sluggishness was my biggest complaint. Moving was like driving my uncle's huge Lincoln with squishy steering.

That's gone now btw. I found the game pretty decent last I played in January.

Could be one of those "optical illusion, image mindfucking perception of reality" things.   Kind of like in WoW, how everyone who has ever played a Gnome thinks that all other characters run slower, just because of the change in the way the character animates while running (Tiny Gnome appears to run REALLY fast to cover the same distance a normal model covers with less animation steps)

I wonder if they got rid of Conjunctions (EQ2 style "heroic opportunities") if that would free them from another requirement to keep combat slow (if keeping combat slow had some design intent).  You need that 1-2.5 secs to have the wheel draw on your PC and then find the correct group button to push.