f13.net

Mhmm, anonymous man claiming to be from BioWare Mythic and about to be laid off vents, spills some TOR dirt in the process (http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/)

Not even getting into the Bioware/SWTOR stuff since even if this guy did work for Mythic, it doesn't serve any purpose to snipe at someone else's project

Bioware Austin and Mythic are pretty much one and the same now from my understanding.

October 13, 2010 at 2:52 am
I hear through the grapevine that the shit is hitting the fan over this, hope things turn out well enough for you. I know many people who want to shake your hand, after dealing with this.

While I do not know about the more recent events described, sounds like what was going on when I was there.

You didn’t even get into the Tool Support for devs, or the lack there of!
The items team had to manually make the items before the release (spread sheet, cell by cell) until it was clear they were not going to be done by the 3rd (or was it the 4th?) attempt at release. The guy they had to make a tool to help had 1 month to make it, and after that month, it was crashing, and making broken items.
I, on my own time off the clock, wrote a replacement tool in less than 12 hours (over 3 days after work) The day I finished the tool, I was fired for ‘not being early’ because of the same management BS you described.

They were still using MY tool a year later.

The day I finished the tool, I was fired for ‘not being early’ because of the same management BS you described.

That sounds like a bitter employee, I'm not sure how much should be taken at face value.

What about using EA Shanghai for art work?

What about Paul’s girlfriend’s job?

What about all the crazy promotions?

What about switching offices every 4-5 months?

What about firing people on donut day.

That sounds like a bitter employee, I'm not sure how much should be taken at face value.

Maybe when someone works at a shitty company surrounded by idiots it's okay for them to be bitter. Bitter != wrong

I think we all rather expected this after the announcement of the EA takeover. EA takes any handcrafted work, and turns it out for fast food production. They seem to cash in on a companies pedigree, but burn it out for, well I don't know why.

the whole thing reads like some bizarre defense of Mark Jacobs and how all of WAR's problems were other peoples' faults.

Mrbloodworth it's a rant about Mythic, the art outsourcing was pre release for WAR, I even linked the title credits for you.

Mrbloodworth it's a rant about Mythic, the art outsourcing was pre release for WAR, I even linked the title credits for you.   Trippy combined a WAR thread and a SWTOR thread, take a deep breath and consider that some people are interested in exactly how WAR came to fail so badly.  Even if this is all going to turn into a mess because of a 38 page fanboi outrage SWTOR thread (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=214165), but he didn't really say much about SWTOR, did he?

Almost none of us actually played Warhammer while we worked on it, it was so hard to get into, let alone Dark Age.

OK. So some devs tried to blame Games Workshop for all their “restrictions” but that was just bs. Utter bs. Paul Barnett wanted this game to be DARK. The management demanded dark, chaotic settings and ugly ass character models.

Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work.

I'm confused as to your post.

Even if SWTOR launches fine, the community will be the downfall. My god.

There's also a counter-point in the comments:

I do not expect a happy ending, so I’ll be personal and selfish, and this is just for me.

As for the name dropping, who does he name that wasn't already known to the public? Some of the people he "gives away" were people I assumed had caused some of WAR's issues and subsequent failure.

Interesting (to me at least) is his take on the split between Sanya and Mythic. Sanya danced around it while leaving the clues between the lines and now (allegedly) most people's suspicions are confirmed.

I read the Jacobs stuff as "Yeah, he was bad but you have NO IDEA how bad these other assholes were."

Artist has distorted view of game development.  News at eleven.

(Not that a bunch of it can't be true.  And it's quite easy to believe management had their heads up their bums.)

I liked the bit about marketing. Didn't War sell like a million copies or something insanely good like that? My memory is that it was a game that almost everyone was talking about, bought, tried, and left.

Yeah this part of the rant was weird. Marketing was the one thing they did really really well. The game was shit, the footage of the game was shit and they basically sold a million copies anyway and hype was through the roof.

No one has mentioned the swtor comment I think is very damning, the size. I know lots of us have big ole honkin hard drives with all kinds of terrabytes or whatever but 20gigs for sound alone? I'm not sure people realize how big a barrier a game of that size will be to a lot of people if true.

I don't think that was sound alone.

I don't think it's on Marketing to retain those customers. Unless marketing created Tor Anroc.

That would actually explain a lot, now that I think about it.

It sounds like that's the full client install. I did point it out above; the size of install and patches is one of the reasons I think VO in an MMORPG is a Mistake.

Points of comparison from my work HD:

• LotRO + Moria and Mirkwood + high def textures: 12.6 GB
• STO: 7.35 GB
• Guild Wars w/all expansions: 2.24 GB

Lum will probably have something to say at some point, if only because his blog is as much an MMO drama news site as it is a spot for his own opinions.

http://www.warhammeronline.com/newsletterarchive/2008/September2008.html

Yeah, the people left because the game was bad. Not sure what marketing could have done to avoid that short of brainwashing them into thinking the game was fun somehow.

Someone needs to tell these game companies how much their products suck. The obvious solution is an F13 mmo consultancy.  :awesome_for_real:

Someone needs to tell these game companies how much their products suck. The obvious solution is an F13 mmo consultancy.  :awesome_for_real:

Since it is, to some here, so easy, then why don't we have a private forum set up here where you guys can talk about these ways to innovate for a game like WAR/WoW/EQ/etc.  I'll happily participate as long as three rules are followed: 1) No flaming.  I don't have the time nor inclination for that type of stuff anymore; 2) Any idea posted is posted with an acknowledgment that is given freely to the public domain; 3) That nobody expects me to post everyday or even that I respond to all posts/mail.  Anyone is free to use it, not use it, get credit, not get credit, etc.  I'll tell you this though, any idea that someone posts there that I like and that I pass on to the design team, I'll make sure that the person gets game credit for it as well as WAR swag. So, if you think you have some good ideas but nobody is listening, here's your chance. I've always thought that there are lot of bright people here (as well as some who I would happily put in our of our catapults for a quick one-way trip just as some here would apparently love to do to me) and that's why I've read and occasionally posted here forever (and I post almost nowhere these days).

Someone is responsible for timing a game's launch. Even if it's someone who doesn't realise that certain phases of MMOland are more supportive to the fumblings of new-born games than other times.

MMOland is dominated by WoW. Well over half of the people playing subscription MMOs in the West are WoW players. These players experience enthusiasm cycles based around WoW's expansions.

So in December most MMO gamers will go back to WoW. Any games launched in October/November will lose lots of people, any games planning to launch in Jan will not sell great numbers.

And developers know this. Even DCUO has recently looked up, saw the headlights of the oncoming truck, squeaked and jumped away from a November 2010 launch.

This wasn't as well known in 2008. In fact MJ seemed to have had the attitude "we're so good we can launch against WoW and beat them". This was a mistake. A marketing mistake. (Marketing with a small m as the decision seems to have come from the top).

As it happened the WAR press release went out on August 5th announcing the release on September 18th while Blizzard dropped their press release on September 15th with a November 15th launch. Coincidence? You decide.

Indeed.

Stuff I was originally going to post: what happens to Bioware if their 300 million project does the WAR limbo? Could it conceivably affect their own IPs?

Judging by the other ex-Mythics cropping up in the comments here and there confirming the general thrust if not the tone it sounds more right than wrong.

I don't think it's on Marketing to retain those customers. Unless marketing created Tor Anroc.

That would actually explain a lot, now that I think about it.

Indeed.

Stuff I was originally going to post: what happens to Bioware if their 300 million project does the WAR limbo? Could it conceivably affect their own IPs?

I don't know about anyone else, but I can't wait to see The Old Republic tank.

I don't really get this. I can see expecting it to tank, but wanting it to? As gamers we only get these chances at potentially awesome AAA MMOs every so often, we should be rooting for them to succeed.

And that's setting aside the jobs lost, etc., if it does fail.

I don't really get this. I can see expecting it to tank, but wanting it to? As gamers we only get these chances at potentially awesome AAA MMOs every so often, we should be rooting for them to succeed.

And that's setting aside the jobs lost, etc., if it does fail.

Even if SWTOR is a shitty MMO and you quit upon hitting maxlevel, you're still getting the equivalent of 8 KOTORs in that box.

I should be rooting for more successful WoW derivatives when I hated WoW? The "I told you so." is a factor as well.

As gamers we only get these chances at potentially awesome AAA MMOs every so often, we should be rooting for them to succeed.

Psycho.

Oh fark, it must be mid-week then. Time for our regularly scheduled industry drama which should see us well into next week.

And developers know this. Even DCUO has recently looked up, saw the headlights of the oncoming truck, squeaked and jumped away from a November 2010 launch.

immense developer hubris and the budget to match it and (probably) pretty graphics over dull gameplay.

I've got wow, I like it but I'm ready for something different. I just want that something different to have the same level of care put into wow.

You know people keep saying this but then don't buy the games that come out.

SWTOR is a brave and innovative game in that it's trying for a story game in a genre where people famously click away quest text. Bioware know this but still feel they can deliver a non-standard MMO experience by making the quest text fantastic.

It might not be where I personally would choose to innovate but it is genuine innovation. They're trying something different and taking quite a risk to do so.

http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/and-another-things/

EA Louse updated, but it's only reposting his favourite comments by others.  I'm surprised he's not in a bush hiding from a crack EA legal sniper team.

SWTOR is a brave and innovative game in that it's trying for a story game in a genre where people famously click away quest text. Bioware know this but still feel they can deliver a non-standard MMO experience by making the quest text fantastic.

It might not be where I personally would choose to innovate but it is genuine innovation. They're trying something different and taking quite a risk to do so.

The parts of SWTOR that are like WoW, that they have said are "like WoW", are the afterthought parts - battlgrounds, crafting, parts that they don't really care about because they are focused on making an amazing quest text experience.

Short of being shot at, poisoned, stabbed or otherwise given a bad case of death, hiding behind a facade of internet anonymity is for cowards. Could you lose your job? Probably. So get another one. I can guarantee that some place will hire you simply for being forthright, honest and not a pussy when it comes to doing the right thing.

Recently there was a post by an obviously disgruntled employee with an axe to grind. They posted a scathing letter detailing the failure of Warhammer Online and the senior leadership at EA Mythic, specifically Jeff Hickman, Paul Barnett and to a lesser degree through scathing commentary Kate Flack as well. It also went on to say how The Old Republic will suck and how it’s all because of the link between Mythic and Bioware.

The letter was nothing more than a biased rant from someone about to get laid off in November (with a nice severance package I might add). It must be nice to know in advance when you’ll be laid off so you have a chance to start looking for continued work.

For the record I’d like to comment on the characters of Jeff Hickman, Paul Barnett and Kate Flack in rebuttal to this libelous piece of garbage.

1. Kate Flack. She’s not “Paul’s Girlfriend”. That’s not her job title. She may have that as a perk, but she was brought over from Games Workshop and is one of the most brilliant game designers I know (and I know a LOT of them due to working in this industry). She’s not some popsie who slid in to a sweet job, she’s fucking brilliant. She has a firm grasp on what it takes to work on a licensed product and keep licensing managers from pulling the aforesaid license. I’m offended at the insinuations regarding her because she’s actually really cool. EA Mythic is lucky to have her.

2. Paul Barnett. The crazy british guy. Yeah, everyone knows him. His tyrannical display over Warhammer being WAR, Grim and Dark is precisely what Warhammer online is SUPPOSED TO BE. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking retard who knows fuck all about the IP. Ugly characters? The Empire is full of ugly people with warts, gouged eyes, sliced tongues. It’s an ugly place. Orks and Goblins, plates tacked to their skull. If you weren’t aware of this, how on earth did you ever work on this product? Ok, High Elves are pretty, and Dark Elves are pretty sinister in a sick, morbid twisted way. Everything else should be gnarly. What does Games Workshop want? A WARHAMMER game. They don’t want WOW. Mess with the IP and they’ll pull that license. There is no better loud, crazy, obnoxious front-man to push a product, especially Warhammer than Paul Barnett. That guy inspires people to get hot for a product! Paul is also smart when it comes to dealing with Licensing managers like Paul Lyons whose job is to protect the GW IP from production studios losing vision and muddying the water with crap content that isn’t Warhammer.

3. Jeff Hickman, the bullseye of ire from this putrid rant is made out to be incompetent. Number one, unless you’ve worked on licensed products, you have no idea how hard it is to keep the IP owner happy. Add to this the EA ownership. now you have two masters, both pulling in opposite directions: Warhammer to keep it Warhammer-y, and EA wanting to MAKE MONEY. Is that unreasonable? EA is a publisher. They are there to fund projects that make money and can projects that don’t. Period. In the middle of this shit-storm is Mythic. In order to make Warhammer Age of Reckoning in the first place compromises must be made. The tabletop game doesn’t easily slide in to MMO territory. Classes are made, some adjustments are made to make it be somewhat balanced…and you have (loosely) an MMO.

Here’s the rub.

Warhammer is not for everyone. not everyone will get it. If you aren’t familiar with warhammer, and what it’s about, it looks like a dark, dirty fantasy setting. It is way WAY more than that, and people trying it out from WOW-land will not get it. Folks who pick up WAR on a whim…won’t get it. There is a very hard-core base of Warhammer fans who understand the IP and they won’t be happy with the compromises made to make this playable as an MMO, but given time, most will understand and get on board.

The other half of this equation is to pull in non-warhammer people. To do this, even more compromise was called for. EA wants to make money and Jeff, Paul and Eugene’s boss wanted to shift the game more towards WOW to make it more hip, catchy, mainstream to make it sell better. This just alienates the core of warhammer fans as the game shifts off-center away from the IP.

Jeff Hickman was at the heart of this trying to keep the flavor of Warhammer, and most importantly save jobs. If you don’t know Mr. Hickman, then you don’t know what he puts in to this job. He sacrifices more time, personal fundage, his health all to keep this boat afloat. He’s had to see family members cut from QA in order to save jobs for others. He’s gone to bat for his team more times than can be counted, and every single layoff costs him a piece of his soul. I *KNOW* this man. I know he has done everything in his power, and then some to keep EA Mythic alive, even when people above him didn’t care, or literally were sinking the boat.

Jeff Hickman has been one of my dearest friends since about 1990. I’ve worked for him. He’s one of the best leaders a guy could have. I know for certain that he will fight for his team. He was best man at my wedding.

Some dictates from on high cannot be defeated. Anyone in management knows that it is a tug of war between upper management/ corporate and the people working for you. As a manager you are the voice of the people. Jeff knows this. Issues have been brought up from the development floor to the top. In the end, Jeff is an employee too. Same with Paul. Same with Kate. Same as everyone else. It’s just that more lies on their shoulders and they get to work even longer hours.

I understand the position of EA and corporate decisions to make money. That’s the purpose of being in business in the first place. I do wish things balanced out better, that corporate entities had a softer touch and let the development studios have more control. It’s not that way. nobody can change that. If we don’t like the company we work for, we change companies. Period.

It kills me to see white-collar crybabies bitching about layoffs when people who work far harder, without donut days and comfy chairs get cut every day with no warning and no severance.

Bottom line is that working for Activision, Electronic Arts or any other big company is like eating a giant shit sandwich at times. It sucks. We eat it or we walk.

The passive-aggressive sniping from a wall of anonymity is for pussies. Bitches who have this sense of entitlement. The world owes them! Writing posts like that just stirs up a shitstorm and enrages the mob. The Mob who really knows fuck all about it means to work in a studio like this and what goes in to game development, especially on a licensed product.

Paul’s pet project for UO? Sorry cocksuckers don’t realize Mythic needs every single angle at retaining jobs right now. Little gigs like this are saving jobs. Mythic needs to prove itself again, keep content flowing on several channels else everyone is out of a job. EA will simply close up shop.

This whole tirade by EA Louse has me in stitches at the short-sightedness of it. people have no idea what the current management at EA Mythic has done since launch so safeguard people’s jobs. Just no fucking idea. Instead there is just an anonymous letter to stir up a lunch mob of people who know nothing about what’s going on. The truth…it doesn’t matter. “If it bleeds it leads” right? If you get enough buzz, and cry loud enough, people will believe you. People will believe what they want to believe.

In summary, in counter to the woefully biased, slanted and in some cases inaccurate rants of EA Louse I offer a counter from the other side. Admittedly biased as these three people, Jeff, Paul and Kate are my friends. From THIS side of the wall of anonymity I KNOW how hard they work at keeping EA Mythic alive and breathing, to keep seats filled.

Does that make me a corporate shill? I work in this industry. I understand the purpose of a business is to make money. I understand compromise. I understand that sometimes there is too much oversight, sometimes too little. People make fucked up decisions, and their vision doesn’t jive with others. Doesn’t make it ok, but it happens. Fix it and move on. Do the best you can and making the whole thing work for as many as possible. I can speak with absolute certainty that Jeff Hickman, Paul Barnett and Kate Flack have been and still are top shelf when it comes to putting together a quality product and keeping everyone employed, and that is the best anyone can hope for as an employee.

In the end, corporate management is akin to politics, congress, the senate. You cannot win every battle. All you can hope for is someone to do their very best for you. I know the sacrifices these folks have made and I know how hard they have fought for everyone.

This kind of backstabbery is abhorrent.

I am sorry EA Louse is losing their job. I’ve been laid off several times before. It’s never fun, but it is a part of the life in corporate America we chose.

Sincerely,

Jeff Preston

Art and Design

Someone from the industry, please tell me that somewhere outside of Blizzard there are competent people able and willing to build fun games, and that Blizzard's Mediocrity Principle isn't the only thing to look forward to for the next decade.

Donut days seem to be really important.   A few places are picking up this trainwreck of a reply (http://warhammervault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=58733) and saying Jeff Preston is from "EAMythic's Art and Design", he's not, he's this guy (http://team-preston.com/).

Donut days seem to be really important.   A few places are picking up this trainwreck of a reply (http://warhammervault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=58733) and saying Jeff Preston is from "EAMythic's Art and Design", he's not, he's this guy (http://team-preston.com/).

So another artist type. Why do I care about his opinion about games and game design any more than I do the disgruntled artist type who started this whinefest?

Donut days seem to be really important.   

There's dancing involved in this link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jfRwAg4sTw#t=4m47s).

ROFLMAO Easy hack! Password was only 3 letters long!

Lets play guess the new password! 8 letters long and all number! user name is ealouse

This epic troll brought to u by 4chan

Jeff was stupid to post that.

When do we get an "F13Louse" exposing the sordid truth behind the F13 Server drive?

You know people keep saying this but then don't buy the games that come out.

Jeff is totally banging Kate.

Innovation? SWTOR puts voice acting in a blatant WoW-diku clone. That's it.
 

Jeff is totally banging Kate.

She’s not “Paul’s Girlfriend”. That’s not her job title. She may have that as a perk, but she was brought over from Games Workshop and is one of the most brilliant game designers I know (and I know a LOT of them due to working in this industry). She’s not some popsie who slid in to a sweet job, she’s fucking brilliant. She has a firm grasp on what it takes to work on a licensed product and keep (..) from pulling the aforesaid license. I’m offended at the insinuations regarding her because she’s actually really cool. EA Mythic is lucky to have her.

"I particularly liked the contrast you drew between the three games, which makes a lot of sense."

Yeah, I totally cannot claim that as my own. I completely paraphrased Kate Flack who aside from being one of the Primary Devs for Dark Heresy is a really cool lady.

WAR didn't fail due to its dark gritty setting, whether that captured the warhammer spirit or not. It didn't fail because it lacked dancing, and wouldn't have succeeded with dancing. Baking bread does not make or break a game. Design does.

If the gameplay is initially fun and (more importantly) addictive, you can stick hot pokers up your players' peckers and they won't care. MMO players welcome abuse as long as they feel they're progressing/achieving/pwning nubs. Bugs are a problem, because they stop you from playing, but really it all comes down to content quality, quantity, and most importantly design.

Ever do something and then wonder if it is the right thing? I may have committed professional suicide last night.

http://twitter.com/teampreston/status/27359628878


No kidding, you now think that telling people that Jeff Hickman laid off family members might not have been the wisest course of action?

You can tell Jeff and Paul are douchebags by watching their interviews on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=codPNIBFAjQ

Yes I do think spending most of your budget on animated quest text is innovative. I'm quite happy to retract that position if someone points out a big budget MMO that did this before.

DDO did dungeon voice overs as well, I'm sure somebody cared.

I guess I'm a glass-is-half-full guy.  I thought it looked like two guys that were excited about their product and were having some fun with it. 

I'd be happy to have this much enthusiasm out of the people working for me.  Even if it was a bit misplaced and nerdy. 

No one cared enough for Sony to think it was worth spending money on after release.

voice-artists?

...though voice-artists would probably still be as expensive.

If pinball machines had invested in good Voice-over technology... we'd still be playing them.

Also, we need options to disable stupid one-liners that characters say. I'm replaying Borderlands and it is driving me insane.

I don't get all this angst about SWTOR potentially forcing people to listen to quest text. Has one of the non-existent super-arrogant obnoxious guys at Bioware Austin twirled his villainous moustache and announced that the game is being specifically written to torture people who hate Bioware style games or something?

Jesus. Given that story telling is pretty much Bioware's entire specialty do you think that just maybe they aren't aiming for the crowd that reflexively clicks the Accept button on their way to the next poopsock adventure of repetitive levelling?

I agree but I am a well known voice-acting lover/mole/something. If it was just someone reading off a one sided quest panel from WoW or something, yeah, that would be pretty lame, but it appears it will be participatory in the way any other Bioware RPG is - conversation trees, etc.

Jesus. Given that story telling is pretty much Bioware's entire specialty do you think that just maybe they aren't aiming for the crowd that reflexively clicks the Accept button on their way to the next poopsock adventure of repetitive levelling?

If it was just someone reading off a one sided quest panel from WoW or something, yeah, that would be pretty lame, but it appears it will be participatory in the way any other Bioware RPG is - conversation trees, etc.

Sometimes, its like you guys just want loot dispensers.

Sometimes, its like you guys just want loot dispensers.

DDO had and has someone narrating parts of quests in a Dungeon Master fashion.

I fucking loved the DM. He was the highlight of that game for me. Because he did it exactly right, he would try to "do voices" and stuff, it was hilarious and awesome and perfect.

I wonder how much of this angst is from professionals seeing their platform disappear as social games keep growing.

Everyone (only) wants fun loot dispensers, from every game. Why do you think no company in their right mind will launch against Diablo 3 (or any Blizzard game really)?

Why do you think they added gear and unlocks and crap to racing games?
Achievements in board games?
Etc.

It's all just loot.

AC2 had cut scenes after their set piece dungeons, these were a large part of the content in the game, yet everyone escaped out of them to catch up with their group.

I have a feeling we may witness failure on a more epic scale than any we have ever seen.

Bioware's specialty isn't voice acting.   It's specialty is giving you the choice to punch a bitch in the face (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju2t5VjKq-E) when she pisses you off. 
...
We can at least agree it's new though.

I mean Buddha fucking Christ, for $300 million you could make a couple of full-scale fully-budgeted Star Wars movies and still have enough left over to make World of Warcraft with the change. If that figure is anywhere NEAR true, if it's even a decent portion of that, then this is going to go down as an unprecedented catastrophe of fucking biblical proportions unless they manage to be a WoW-level success somehow.

If this game were hypothetically a flop of Warhammer proportions, how much damage would it cause EA? I mean movie studios have been sunk by flops with smaller budgets than this before.

About a month ago, I was doing a DDO quest with some friends of mine. At one point the DM starts talking like a emale character we were escorting, and my friend said "How come that princess sounds like a guy trying to talk like a woman" and I said "Becasue it IS a guy trying to talk like a woman." And he paused and said "Oh." From then on that NPC was known as Princess Transvestite.  :grin:

It certainly does add atmosphere.  ;D

Regarding the 300 million, what exactly could they have spent so much money on to make that figure accurate?

So its not about being bitter over not getting a job there?

Budget spiraling up to well over a quarter-billion dollars, for a fucking MMO...

I have a feeling we may witness failure on a more epic scale than any we have ever seen.

Cheer up Schild. I think I can say that almost anyone would be improved by being a mildly hot chick.

Regarding the 300 million, what exactly could they have spent so much money on to make that figure accurate?  

You hire all the wrong people to run the studio and then you let that studio grow inconceivably large.

Look, it took a true or not leak to make people question something I've been trying to pound into people's heads for like what, 3 years now? 2, at least. I don't see how any of this is shocking to anyone that reads these forums.

I guess ballooning up your dev team size really early in development would help a lot to reaching that goal.  Maybe that happened?  I dunno.  Regardless, god damn.

it needs to be reiterated but the 300mil figure is very possibly off. That's not important. Even if it's 150mil, which is what Lum reverse figured six months ago, that's still in most expensive game ever made range. So this guy's figure could be off wildly and they're STILL fucked. They're just not going to make that back without incredibly steady sub retention.

How much they've spent barely matters. Whatever the ammount is it's almost certainly too much for what they've gotten. Other than that cinematic trailer a while back, everything I've seen and read regarding this game is just boring and subpar. Hint to devs: Your combat animations should not look like you motion capped the robots at Chuck E Cheese. Technologically, we should be at the point where instanced battlegrounds are at least as action-packed and responsive as TF2.

Actually, they should have just taken the money and made a CGI feature length movie with it.

They're not Blizzard fans so much as "No one else has a clue" fans.

In fairness, I've also heard that the WoW team is an absolute horror to work on.

Actually, they should have just taken the money and made a CGI feature length movie with it.

what's the latest in this drama?

As a parting word to prove I am still EA Louse here is another secret project from Mythic.

Grimm Tales Online. Canceled. Was going to be a twisted dark fairytale world. Imagine Warhammer Online with knife-wielding Pinocchios.

Interesting question was raised earlier in the thread. Can you buy your way into designing decent mmorpg? Assuming you get mediocre, instead of criminally incompetent, management can you buy your way out of failure?

Interesting question was raised earlier in the thread. Can you buy your way into designing decent mmorpg? Assuming you get mediocre, instead of criminally incompetent, management can you buy your way out of failure?

EvE.

Eve was indeed saved by a management buyout but I don't think that was the question Sinij intended. (And I'm sure you know that, you sly dog).

WoW allegedly makes about $840m a year out of the NA / EU markets. That's the context that EA is thinking about SWOR in.

Platform is disappearing because of constant release fuck-ups compounded by ram-you-in-the-ass invasive DRM, compounded by micro-transaction/downloadable content milking, compounded with in-game advertising on top of all that. Industry is literally shitting themselves off the "platform" carpet.

And frankly its kind of not unrealistic to expect that kind of income of 10 mill subscribers. Servers cost peanuts compared to sub fees. Its almost all pure profit.

Granted, but given the talent they've hired and the design decisions we've seen they're betting on on the plow horse to beat Seabiscuit.  Again.  

I wonder if at some point the guys with the money need to wake up and pay attention, but that would require knowing games vs knowing just business. The top at EA still approaches games like making widgets.

So all up, WoW is a $1bn+ per year title. For several years now. It's the reason that Kotick is so secure in his position - WoW practically guarantees EA being in the black.

When I think about it, it staggers me.

Granted, but given the talent they've hired and the design decisions we've seen they're betting on on the plow horse to beat Seabiscuit.  Again.  

Damn those arrogant Bioware devs with their public announcements that spending 300 million dollars on voiceovers was going to make TOR bigger than WoW!

If they actually existed I'd slap them senseless.

As a controller or CFO, how the hell do you let things get this far off without starting to question the cash outflow?

Actor David White, a Bathhouse Theatre regular in former times, reassessed his devotion to stage work when his first son was born in 1993. "I discovered that in front of a microphone, I could make in an hour what I'd make in a week doing stage work,"

Rapid iteration—change the art, entities, levels, and behaviors and see the effect in your game without recompiling or restarting. This minimizes the need for game restarts and reduces development delays.

Bloodworth, WoW, wasn't one of the first three.

The Ultima series was why I even bothered to try UO. I am sure I am not alone.

The Black Gate and Serpent Isle were both critically and commercially successful, being widely lauded as a high point in the series and as two of the best isometric RPGs ever created.

Not having to pay for the license is moot

seems like for a <1/2 million sub mmo, a big license is maybe not worth the cost.

Excel is the front end for every systems designer. Sara Jensen Schubert (Lietgardis) gives some very good, and very popular talks on the subject. Here's the latest. Note how everyone SHUTS UP as they learn things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdP1PdOEpFM

Excel is the front end for every systems designer. Sara Jensen Schubert (Lietgardis) gives some very good, and very popular talks on the subject. Here's the latest. Note how everyone SHUTS UP as they learn things:

Coding everything in Delphi probably didn't help. Hey, I like Delphi.)

His app was not mission critical, it was a nicety (as I understand it)

His app was not mission critical, it was a nicety (as I understand it)

Tools determine speed of develoment along adding or subtracting human errors that go with software projects.

They are mission critical or we would still be workng with vi and no source control.

I think we should stop talking about a 300 million dollar budget.  That's just a figure from EA Louse guy, so it's likely just a rumour from within the Mythic offices, better if we maintain some perspective and use Lum's 150 million figure, that's wild enough.

It's a thing that seems easy enough to do "I can solve this problem very quickly by making a widget with ruby on rails on grail on carrier pidgeon" but, for overall consistency, even if it takes twice as long, any tools that are created should be created with maintainability and consistency in mind.

I say this as a system architect, and I fully admit it's a peeve of mine. No, random developer #37, you can NOT code that linker using the new Dev hotness. I don't care what you saw in annoying dev trends magazine, we are not using a random framework you saw on the internet because we still have to support that shit long after you've gone. No, random developer #64, you are not allowed to write that munger in LISP. I don't care if it'd be faster. We'd have to hire my grandpa when something breaks.

You bastard.

Actually, this is a prime example of the aforementioned sorry state of design. You don't let people do this because it creates a hodge-podge of cobbled-together unmaintainable frankencode. Things like this are a good indication of poor overall direction, since decisions like "What language should we be writing code in" should have been made at the outset.

DaoC was a special case; I remember that Lum, you were brought in mid-stream, but this is bad bad bad from a design & management perspective. Don't let people on your projects do this. Quash it, and quash it hard.

There are many MMO midle-wares out there. None have shipped a title.

Your statement hinges on how you'd define middleware.  These days, standard workflow is yesterday's "middleware."
But yah, you're right...  in the abstract senseofitall.

It's just one of those bullet points that I'll add when I publish my book - Warning signs: Quick and easy ways to see a project is headed for disaster.

It'll be a pop-up book so non-technical managers can understand it.

You mean Activision not EA. And Kotick had nothing to do with the success of WoW -- that all happened per-merger. Also Vivendi still controls Activision Blizzard so Kotick can not fuck with WoW or Blizzard for that matter with risking losing his job. Unlike some other companies Vivendi very much knows they have a goose laying golden eggs for them.

You could not get me to comment on the rest of the EALouse blog if you tortured me with hot pliers.

The ones that aim to address all the stuff above. Client, server and tools packages. Many MMO's don't use midleware, with a few exceptions on the client side, but that's mostly rendering and art tools, not aware of any that are the full shebang.

... Ultima I believe used 7 engine, and of course had its back end custom.

You could not get me to comment on the rest of the EALouse blog if you tortured me with hot pliers. I have burned enough bridges in my nascent game development career, I'm trying to remain at least partially employable.

I can kind of forgive DAoC since it was done on a $3 million budget by what was essentially an indie house. It was the first and last real garage band MMO.

"they made us use AVG free edition, expected the users to keep their machines up to date with patches

Yes because developing a game on PCs that ressemble the machines the game will eventually be played on....

If the thought remotely enters your mind, it's always always a troll.

If I had to wait for official, approved tools to be built before I could do my job, I'd never get anything done.

(uh, in general, and not speaking on behalf of any employer.)

Only ones I know of are Multiverse (now defunct it seems) and HeroEngine.  Then there's Cryptic of course (who 'self-middlewares').  And Perpetual went into the middleware business also,  :awesome_for_real:
RTW INTENDED to go middleware using APB as a biz model - they failed.  (well, technically it's an Unreal game right?)

One could consider UDK the best 'middleware' package ever made, with Unity perhaps a close second.  There are MMOs out there that use either.  Granted, they're heavily instanced and 'lobbied.'  Any giant "level editor" like UDK or Unity that allows streaming info. out of the level can be considered as MMO-middleware yes?

Fallen Earth uses a engine that I believe they were trying to get other developers to use. They do some very nice instant instances such that you have no zoning time on the client.

KOTORO is done on the HeroEngine, I believe.

HeroEngine has recently been licensed for a variety of projects including a virtual world with Enne Entertainment, a multi-title deal with a US publisher, virtual worlds with government and non-profit applications for a European organization, and unannounced projects from startups and major studios in China, Europe and the US. Details on these projects will be announced in the coming months. Previously announced HeroEngine licensees include BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic game and a stealth project from ZeniMax Online Studios.

If you remember back to near the inception of the HeroEngine you'll recall its whole reason for being was for some uber-secret MMO that it had a licensee for.  That MMO now being SWTOR.

I thought that HeroEngine was originally being developed for Hero's Journey?

My bet is an MMO based on 2009's smash console hit WET (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_%28video_game%29).

I wonder what a stealth project from ZeniMax might be!

You think SWTOR will be canceled before release? That seems fairly unlikely.

On the middleware topic though - One thing that I've seen at a few different companies now is that middleware companies seem geared towards wanting to provide you with a basically finished solution (client and server C++ code not something you should touch) that you then use scripting to customize for your game (and if you need some custom C++, they'll be happy to write it, for a fee), while the companies using them (at least for high end projects) tend to want the source code (available for a price) so they can customize it, or use it as the starting point for their own technology.  It always makes me wonder what a middleware product / company more focused on that would be like.

No comment! :)

You're right (late 90's I guess).  But that's not what kept it afloat obviously.

The hero engine is used a good deal in government projects.

The hero engine is used a good deal in government projects.

The hero engine is used a good deal in government projects.

I only use 'an' in front of a word starting with 'h' if it's supposed to be a British speaker which drops their h-sounds.

I only use 'an' in front of a word starting with 'h' if it's supposed to be a British speaker which drops their h-sounds.  It doesn't sound right for an American accent to use 'an', even if technically grammatically correct.

How (sorry, 'ow) do you mean?

OK, i fold. Can't find a crayon with any brighter green in my box :/

I only use 'an' in front of a word starting with 'h' if it's supposed to be a British speaker which drops their h-sounds.  It doesn't sound right for an American accent to use 'an', even if technically grammatically correct.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/An_hero (http://encyclopediadramatica.com/An_hero)

SWOR is using a lot of middleware, including (at one point, at least) something developed by the failed Perpetual Studios.

I only use 'an' in front of a word starting with 'h' if it's supposed to be a British speaker which drops their h-sounds.  It doesn't sound right for an American accent to use 'an', even if technically grammatically correct.

That's similar to the way it's supposed to be done, sort of. If the 'h' isn't pronounced (e.g. honour) or frequently dropped/a nicked French word (e.g. hotel) you're supposed to use 'an'. If the 'h' is pronounced, you use 'a'.

grammar chat itt  :grin:

Now I have visions of EA employees being given a THAC0 based on time served.

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

THAC0.  Hahaha.  Gods, you're so old, Nebu. :-P

That's not *that* old. Old is playing D&D from the original 3 book "white box" set.

The employees gather around and roll d20's to keep their jobs, duh.

A new crayon to fill in the numbers on your dice.

Zynga is like the dev house of cards.

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

Roll-offs?  :uhrr:

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

You forgot all the options in which they work for a successful studio that EA then buys.  :awesome_for_real:

6) Work for Blizzard Entertainment, toil long hours, launch a title people may actually have heard of and buy, be straight-jacketed into the most unimaginative design possible, not get fired as a cost-cutting move.

If ArenaNet sees GW2 launch and become bigger / better than GW, they'll have bucked a long trend in Western MMO development. I can't think of a Western MMO studio / developer who's second title / sequel exceeded their first effort.

... except for Funcom, but they set the bar real, real low with Anarchy Online's launch.

... or maybe Wizard101 rising from the ashes of Shadowbane.

 

Most game companies suck to work for.

Dono about all of that. You will always have various opinions on current or past experiences like any career field for any industry in the world.

Although I'm a strong believer in consulting with both consumers / end users / players for business decisions, there are some things you can't treat those groups as experts on. How to earn money to keep the lights on is one of those things.