f13.net

Obviously with the Haemish's article about the death of PC games and the move to this new site - we're seeing the evolution of Waterthread.  But where the heck is it going?

I always came here to read critical points of view on MMORPGs.  When the devs and serious gamers come out and talk candidly about the direction and design of their games, thats a pretty unique thing that is hard to find anywhere.  Anywhere else its heavily moderated and managed by professional PR people who are deathly scared they might piss someone off.  With the latest changes, the best part of these forums die.  I highly doubt we are going to see Raph here mixing it up with Lum and debating about the death penalty and leveling treadmills in the latest incarnation of Super Mario Bros.

Of course, Waterthread has always been a strong anti catass voice for MMORPGs - and thats fine even if I don't agree with some of the extremes people feel about it, but these changes now seem to be firmly moving the site into the casual, mass market games.  Seems like a sellout to me and I am dissappointed.  

Someone give Haemish a fucking Gamecube already and send Joe to take some lessons on cartoon drawing.  Welcome to the next Penny Arcade wanna be site.  You're really soaking in it now.

Wt.O was like the republican party.  Direction but no movement.

Now there's a more organized place to pancake shitty products that jaded gamers loath.  Or discuss that that gem in the rough across genre lines.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling.  We still play MMORPG's, we still play single player games and hey, there's some damn fine games on consoles. Besides, having a direction is over-rated...and maintaining teh hate against the 10^3 MMORPG's on the market right now has some seriously diminishing returns. Now if Haemish starts bumpfuzzling furry's or Boog starts saying nice things about, well, anything, then i'll panic.

a) "The site" hasn't even been put up yet. I'm all for knee-jerk reactions but at least have something to react to first.

b) Your nick on the last incarnation of WT had 1 post in GenDisc. I'm all for lurking and whatnot but WT is what it is because everyone contributes. Even if that contribution is badly-timed comedic relief.

In other words: If you don't participate don't look for anyone to care that you think WT is a big whore-filled donut forcing it's wicked filling down your gullet.

When was the last time that happened anyway? When was the last time that happened and anything new was said?

The days of developers saying anything that hasn't gone through the PR sieve are pretty much gone anyway. MMORPGs have "matured", and many people have lost interest.

Anyway, it's too soon to tell what will or will not happen.

I fear change.

Selling out usually implies some sort of profit is being made.

As far as I know I haven't gotten a solid gold yacht full of hookers yet. Maybe Joe has.

Unlike PA, I don't think we'll just ignore the MMO(RPG) genre altogether.  Really, why set your sites solely on a niche area of games that hasn't really been producing anything new, innovative, and fun for years (subject to opinion, but grindfests don't exactly turn my key)?

I think this community has had a bit of tunnel vision.  We've so fervently followed the MMORPG scene that we've ignored what was on the edge of our sight.  We've extolled the virutues of games like KotoR, Max Payne 2, and a bevy of other Xbox, GC, PS2, and other non MMO pc games. Have we seen a MMORPG in the last 4 years that 75% of can agree upon is not complete shit in a barrel?

I don't know if this transition will work or the site will die. I don't really care. But I don't really mind that we've decided not to become so attached at the hip to a really stale and unimaginative niche genre of games.

I'm sure we'll still have nice lively debates about the MMORPG arena. With WoW, EQII, GuildWars and Sigil's Treadmill++ on the horizon, we'll be knee deep in discussion about a games that have learned less from the past than your average crack addict.

I just hope we start to see game reviews again with pretty pictures, I like pretty pictures.

Last time I checked we were still allowed to post what we wanted on the sites within reason, and that didn't seem to ever stop anybody from talking about whatever they wanted to. Nor did it stop people from derailing the conversations about other stuff.

We are a group of political, angry gamers. I doubt we'll stop talking about games in any variety.

I must agree with the original poster, I felt so special when the mighty devs would come talk to us and grace us with their presence :) I say don't knock something till ya try it.

Of course it's evolving. As you may have noticed, somewhere around a year or two ago everyone ran out of things to say about MMOGs.

I mean, there had really been the hope that, after the first generation, the second generation would do something new - that it would break in new, exciting ways that could be bitched about.

It turned out, though, that the second generation was just the first generation with better graphics. And at that point, it just became an issue of... what is there left to talk about? The games suck. They will always suck. The end.

Better that the site evolve and actually have things to talk about.

As for devs, Raph, Liet, Psycho, and Lum were among the first to register.

So I don't think we've lost that.

How and why is this going to change?
That's the simple reason why I joined the forums and continued to follow them even after being banned various times.

Till there's Haemish writing my interest will stay alive.

They were probably so desperate to keep them posting that they asked them to register as soon as the site was up.

Anyway, I though Joe had unlimited bandwidth for WT.ORG at 10 bucks a month or so (at least that's what he told me in IRC.)  And Schild? This is the guy who gave us such great quotes as

I agree that I don't think the shift is what bothers me as much as the faith put in people involved with the shift. Glean from that what you will.

Not my sandbox, but I would like to see one small change: a "MMOG" or "Online Gaming" forum.  Having those posts in with every other kind of game and with hardware discussions on the same forum seems a bit overdone.  I am all in favor of you guys casting a broader net, but I would like to have a place that feels a little like the old place, the older place, and the way way older place that we have all migrated from.

I also suspect that we are less likely to get MMOG developer participation in a forum that is 99% Counterstrike threads.

Like I said, not my sandbox, but I think a lot of the old fogeys who are still addicted to the treadmil and a lot of the old fogies who still like to rage against the treadmill would appreciate our own little pail and shovel in the corner.

And they did register. Which says something. Since, frankly, they were the only devs posting on WT.

As for schild, the quote seems true enough. Publishers do not pay stores to stock their game in the first place - they pay stores to promote their game. This is... ummm...

You're not a fan of facts, are you?

So Snow, was that an underhanded jab at certain other Devs?  Poor Psychochild managed the mighty honor of 1st post here you know.

Nah. I don't make underhanded jabs at devs. I make explicit jabs.

Incidentally, Raph, your game is a steaming pile of crap.

Snowspinner wrote:



There's also Copper, Dave and various devs peeking from time to time (I think Hellmar from CCP, Calandryll, Wish producer and other devs from text-games. Then there are non-devs like the Themis group).

El Gallo wrote:



I always liked to have standard singleplayer games on the same forum along with mmogs, but I would suggest moving hardware discussions somewhere else.

EDIT: I also forgot devs from Shadowbane and there's an user signed as MarkJacobs

This is something that is being looked into and will be changed as necessary.

No, its just typical of him completely missing the point.

EDIT: What the fuck?  I'm replying to Snowspinner.  Suckered by the troll again.  Score 1 for snow.

It is about the money though isn't it?

Who pays for Waterthread now, and who has the power to pull the plug on the site?

WT is just becoming dilluted.  Joe, you may not care about MMORGs any more, but I guess I don't care to read Dawn of the Dead reviews.

What is the audience WT is shooting for now?  Hardcore gamers or couch potatoes?  (maybe they think there is not much of a difference).

I think the change is a decent one opening it up to a bit more broad base instead of focusing on MMRPG. I am sure folks will still post about mmrpg and the ups and downs but making it more broad based can only help.

Myself I still play mmrpg quite a bit and infact have been enjoying the city of heros beta quite alot. Sure it is not anything super duper new but it does a good job of capturing the flavor of the super hero genera.

I will be looking forward to see how the new waterthread turns out.


Kaid

I'm now firmly of the belief that the greatest threat to Waterthread in general, in fact I would even go so far as to say the gravest threat to civilisation itself, is not the change of web host.

Nor, in fact, the as yet totally unseen new front page.

I do fear it is the new habit of quoting other posters in your sig line, this is starting to concern me, please remember I pointed this danger out first.

I agree 100% with that statement.

Hear, hear!

From the sound of it, Waterthread will continue to do everything it's been doing for the last several months; it's just going to be doing some of those things more officially.  The change in address seems more a reaction to than a cause of the change in the site and community.  If Joe's not interested in MMORPGS, he's not going to write about them, whether the site moves or not, whether you want him to or not.

That was no review.

I think it will be fun- setting Haemish's bitter ass loose on subjects other than games might be quite amusing. Hell, I might even submit something at some point (I know, you are all atwitter with anticipation). I just hope there are some new site skins available in the future.

Also, my old avatar is too big. Adios, Jesus!

OMGWTFSOL, Copper hasn't registered!  

Piss!

Moan!

I just want to be here when SirB starts posting.

Wow, a sell-out. What the fuck are you, 12?

Sell-out implies any of us is getting paid. When there's no money involved, how the fuck can you sell out?

Waterthread is and always has been Joe's playground. Sometimes he gives people like me the pail and shovel and let's me dig in the sandbox. If he ever told me "I don't want you to write about MMOG's" then I wouldn't write about MMOG's or I wouldn't get published on here.

There's fuckall new to say about MMOG's. They've made zero progress since I started playing them and they've made zero progress since I started writing about them. I've been racking my brain trying to come up with something to say about MMOG's that amounts to more than "You suck, your children will suck, and future generations will laugh at your naivete." Joe's in the same boat, probably worse off than me, since he seems to be playing EQ again or something.

Waterthread can be about more than just MMOG's. Console games, movies, politics, general bitching, sounds good to me. Hell, I watch more movies than film critics, I just never wrote front page stuff about them because we were mostly about MMOG's. Now we're not, you may actually see more front page stuff.

Don't you want to hear my views on Oliver Stone's career?

Well, my old nick (shiznitz) wouldn't take. The email confirmation link was non-functional. That is the only thing that remotely bothers me about this move.

PA doesn't ignore mmorpg's, they just don't dwell on them.  They don't dwell on any game inparticular really, except when they start going on about game X at their next lan party.  They've made posts/comics on swg, ac2, and planetside off the top of my head.

It does seem fairly certain that they emailed the devs about the site change, since 5 of the first people to register were devs.  It's not really suprising, however.

As far as the site, I reall only cared about the mmorpg discussions.  If they continue on, I'll still check in.

I thought the point of waterthread was t olaugh at the frenzied MMOG fans, who seem unable to realize they love the skinner box.

You mean the scope is being expanded to 'officially' cover other areas of idiocy and stupidity in gaming?

Score!

I do so hope folks will keep blathering about MMOGs here, I love to read that shit, it never seems to get old.

Even though, as Haemish says, there's nothing to say, that never stopped anyone from saying it.  No need to change, guys, keep babbling.  I need to be entertained.

Ouch, the age insult - how original and clever.

Selling out doesn't have to be about money, although you guys are so defensive on the matter, it makes me wonder.  Really though, its about the betrayal of the cause!  Our Holy Quest™ to improve MMORPGs and turn the genre into the ultimate gaming environment is now going to fail, and its all your fault!

Or something like that anyway, hell, it just doesn't feel right to me.



I am giddy with anticipation

Where the fuck is Boog?  This thread needs some serious "Quit your sand-in-the-pussy whining" type of Boog love.

I thought the "quest" was over. It is for me. I accepted that the super happy fun MMOG that was the object of my gaming wet dreams was never going to come, for reasons that have been stewed over here and elsewhere for half a decade. It's just not going to happen.

Personally, I find the current situation more insulting to those involved than anything I myself could think to say.

I mean shit, schild and Joe? And what, Chiastic too?

That's a website for the ages.

Man, you can't make up shit this funny.

How can you possibly forget Soulflame and Haemish?

Possibly because I haven't read Waterthread or #hate in a few weeks really, and didn't know they were here. Having Haemish isn't a positive, and I think the last time Soulflame found something he wanted to talk about was 1987. Maybe.

Mostly because of gems like the above.

As I said, I couldn't make it up if I tried.

Hmm, seems exactly like wto here so far. What's the worry again?

Oh yeah the forums are arranged differently. Its doomed.

But... but... What about Guild Wars? It will do away with the frustrating elements of MMOG gameplay such as treadmill gaming and create a fun and exciting experience right from the start of the game, even for first time players. It has been designed to reward gamers for their playing skill, and not solely for the number of hours they've spent gaming, which enables well-balanced competitive missions between players of almost all skill levels... what more could you want?

--dyvvu

Less slathering fanbois.

I can't wait until your holy grail turns you into another bitter hollow shell of gaming optimism that these games tend to produce.  Anyone thinking ANY future game in this genre is immune to suck is in for an eye opener.

Never claimed to be original or clever. But saying we are "selling out" sounds to me like you are pissed off about Metallica getting paid to make music. Like that's somehow surprising or something. Now when we start threatening to sue you for quoting our stories, then you can fully have considered us to sell out.




I'm not a paladin or a cleric, and I realized a long time ago that the only hope I have of changing MMOG's from shitty bugfests to decent games was to not pay for shitty bugfests. My writing is all about my ego. I actually think I have something worthwhile and entertaining to say, unoriginal though it may be. I don't care if it's orginal so long as its honest.

Again, selling out assumes someone has something to gain from me bumpfuzzling their product, including me. SegaSports offered me nothing for the fellatio of ESPN NFL 2k4 I gave, and Horizons gave me no luv for telling the world what it already knew. My writing has changed, because I have changed, and MMOG's have not changed. Thus, I need something new to write about.

Not that I won't every once in a while reiterate that MMOG's suck ass and needs to learn a lot of lessons. I'll just be telling you how much I like the latest DVD too. Or hate it.

I was joking.

Thank the risen lord.  It's hard to tell lately. With WoW coming around, GuildWars, etc, people have been tending to slip back into "OMG THIS GAME WILL CURE CANCER" mode lately.

We code for web accessibility guidelines now. Please use <sarcasm> tags to be picked up by the screen readers of the humor-impaired.

I noticed that myself.  It was starting to get like SWG v2 on the old boards.

And look how well SWG v1 turned out...

This sounds like a great innovation.  Often my posts miss their mark and I feel like the reader didn't understand I was being sarcastic or otherwise tongue-in-cheek.  However I have not located the sarcasm tag thingy to use... little help please?  Thx

Double bluff or triple bluff.  Arg, my head hurts.

I have more fun discussing the possibilities of MMOGs on message boards and in irc than I actually do playing them. Hell, I now spend more time thinking about game design and dynamics than actual realtime strategy or class optimization.

Message boards and IRC just seem to be the place where once-succesful players go to die.

Often my posts miss their mark and I feel like the reader didn't understand I was being sarcastic or otherwise tongue-in-cheek.

Yeah.  That's the meta game:  armchair developing or becoming an mmo observer instead of an mmo player.  

After 14 years of muds and mmos, I'm still looking for one that brings back "teh magic" of the first text muds and the first graphical muds I played.

Just like professional sports: burn out, then host the pre-game show.

Plus FFXI at least.

Their biggest gaming focus, if they have any, is the XBox. What with getting invited to Microsoft every now and then and all that, it's perhaps understandable.

A game that doesn't FAIL to live up to the hype when released. Remember back when Horizons was going to be the Holy Grail? Remember the laggy mess that finally was released? Now it's World of Warcraft that's getting beta praise (even though it's made by the same guys who vehemently failed to curb cheating on their Diablo 1/2 servers).

Oh, and Guild Wars. And City of Heroes.

Fool me once, and all that. Except it seems MMORPG players are inherently optimists, and keep buying the Next Best Thing in the futile hope it will not suck. Yes, myself included (though I skipped on Neocron and Shadowbane).

Well, with Blizzards no NDA on the beta, we are all actually seeing that indeed... WoW is pretty fucking great so far. Only more good news can come.

Or we're seeing that Blizzard let Blizzard fanbois into the beta. It's tough to tell. Lord knows there's enough Blizzard fanbois.

True.  But lifting the NDA at the very start of beta still takes balls.  Big ones.

Honestly? No.

About WoW: Blizzard, for now, has dodged the core points. Releasing a capped game with fun and quick gameplay works for a beta but not for a mmorpg that should be able to keep the interest alive for years.

They've shown a pretty void. No PvP, no endgame.
Is still to see if WoW is a good game or not, what matters is what you do after the first month of play. At this point they could even slow down the whole process and wipe completely what's good in the game.

They are collecting good vibes for now. But good vibes founded on nothing.

No. One possible bad thing that can come is that stuff that works for the small-ish number of beta players will not scale to a fully loaded server. I present Exhibit A, Anarchy Online, at its launch.

Another thing that could be bad news is if they don't manage to properly playtest content for levels above 30. Or even add any for that matter. But perhaps that's what the "stage 2" beta is for?

Stop acting like WoW owes you PvP.  They couldn't be more explicit about the unimportance of PvP in WoW without using the term "Fuck off."

 The reason why MMORPG fans were/are still..... hoping to see intense PvP in WoW is because Blizzard is ultra famous for having perma-death in Diablo 2.

 There is NOTHING like playing Diablo 2 in Hardcore Mode.
Duel emotions are constantly ripping the player apart - Fear and happiness, adrenalin (sp) rush and depression, anger and happiness.
 And there IS a market for PvP...... PvP done right.

 So far IMHO Anarchy Online, and Star Wars Galaxies are the 2 current MMORPGs with PvP done right compared to everything else out.
(And EvE.....but it's a space only MMORPG.)

 AO has PvP for landcontrol. Yes! Along with 24hr security systems, low level players having a legit chance a killing higher level players.

 SWG allows players to have their own NPC armies to help in PvP, no matter if their guild/PA is offline. As well as allowing newer players a legit chance to be able to kill a vet player. Now if ONLY SWG also had PvP for landcontrol...... and NPC spawning based on which faction owned land in the area..... :)

Blizzard has never been ready for the amount of people that buy their game.  Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 fell through the floor when they first started.  I don't think this will be much different.  I think it took them a while to get D2 up and running the way it should have been.  

Just keep us updated on how beta is going and tell us what you think of the gameplay.  Thanks.

When I say "endgame" I mean what could become an endgame.
And there are two ways actually: PvP and high-end content.
Both -missing- at this state of tthe beta. So Blizzard is showing nothing about the soul of the game. Both if this soul will be PvP or PvE.

About PvP in particular. I'm not pushing Blizzard to have that part. They told me about PvP. They explained more or less in which forms it will come, they told it will be one of the main parts (and endgame) of their plan.

Not me.

When I was at e3 last year and played the on one of the WoW alpha clients they had set up, I remember specifically asking about end game and leveling caps. The answer that I received was along the lines that leveling in WoW would be setup something similar to AC1, i.e. there would be no level cap and that you could continue to earn xp up 'till level N but also it was an exponential scale. Meaning at a high level N, the difference between N and N/2 would be like 10 skill points or whatever. It was awhile ago, so I'm not too sure of the details or even if the person they had at the booth answering questions had enough clout to answer that question.

D2 hardcore was indeed fun for the most part, but it was never in any form about the pvp.  Diablo 2 PVP was all about the one shot kills, or running around in a stalemate for 10 minutes until someone screws up their timing.

[randomly sidetracking]
PVP and PVE can indeed mix, but not in games where enemies are made harder by increasing their life and such geometrically compared to player characters.  Damage output targeted toward killing enemies with thousands of HP doesn't balance well for player characters with hundreds.

I'd like to see more games with mobs targeted around the same power levels as player characters.  Although of course the typical reason this doesn't happen is for reasons of AI.  This is essentially what happens in RTS games though when the AI gets the same units player characters do.

Of course I've developed an obscene Nethack addiction lately, so maybe I just want games that are hard on their own merits, but not at the idotic 50+ player "raid" levels that some of these games think constitutes a fun challenge.
[/randomly sidetracking]

I thought the only thing SWG needed was that "fun" thing I've been hearing so much about.  Of course, it does have milking.

I think you're going to be waiting a while.  The magic with the first time you hit a MUD, or the first time you logged into UO (or whatever popped your MMOG cherry), is right there - it's the first time.  It's new.  You do stupid shit, like train cooking because you think it would be fun to be the Aragorn-rangerish type.  Or you train smith, so you can make your own weapons.

THen you realize you're getting shit-canned by everyone else out there who figured out long ago that there was some sort of skill cap, and that left no room for cooking.  So you actually learn the rules of the game, to try to compete with these guys.  You aim for the endgame, because only with high skills can you reasonably compete with your opponent.  His +10% chance to hit and +10% damage on a hit, relative to you, is just too much to ignore if you take any sort of "I want to win" attitude.

Along the way, you forget what it was to start with that got you into this mess.  At some point you see a site like this, and make a post about how the last ten dollar trick just wasn't as good as the first go round.  So here you are.  I suggest you not look very hard for your exit off this ride - you passed it fourteen years ago.

A bit disillusioned?

I believe it was all said best in the Bible....specifically Job 13:5.

KJV


Or, for you non-"rollplayahs":

New Living Translation


Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

Actually, the reason new MMOG's aren't giving the same feeling as the first time you popped your MMOG cherry is because it's like fucking the same girl, who really isn't very good at sex, but was the only thing available at the time. Now she puts on different lingerie, tries to play different roles, but in the end, its still the same old sloppy seconds.

I'm sorry, you'll have to use analogies that I might relate to, given the experience I've had in living in my mother's basement my entire life.

Well, to be honest, it's more like dating several women who are exactly like that....but with each one you have to waste a bunch of time on early dates, buying dinners, cuddling, meeting her friends, getting her flowers, etc.

Then you finally seal the deal, and you find out that you just wasted a whole bunch of time and money, and the end result wasn't even all that fun.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

Hope is slim these days, but if I had no hope of finding something new, different and fun, I wouldn't come to this site at all.  I'd just fire up single player games and be done with MMOs forever.  




Bingo.  Devs keep bringing out the same old girl, but dress her up a little differently, saying "Hey GI, $10 a month!  She love you long time!"

We do seem to be getting a lot of "Sucky, sucky!" just not the promised kind.

Well, with schild at the helm, that's to be expected.


Expect this post to be deleted or me banned soon.

Dunno.  I wouldn't delete your post, and I wouldn't ban you for having an opinion about those who run the site (negative or otherwise).

Posts get deleted for being stupid, stupid being defined as and where needed.  Stupid, for instance, is creating an account for the sole purpose of posting something designed to piss off the people with the banstick, and then professing surprise and outrage when you get banned.

If you don't like something, say so.  If something can be done about it, it probably will be.  If nothing can be done about it, you'll probably be told as much.

In the end, it's about having something (hopefully) entertaining to read from time to time and posting what you think about this, that and the other.  If you can do that here, do it.  If you can't, don't.

Take care,

B.

Some posts are deleted and people banned for linking to a certain site that is along a similar vein that WT.o was.