f13.net

Apparently 7 million customers a month isn't enough, they want maybe 8 million spread across 3 games. (http://f13.net/?itemid=167)

STARSIEGE

MMO

NOW

GOGOGO

plz?

I can think of fewer things more boring and mindnumbingly grindy than a Starcraft or Diablo MMOG.

Hmm...

More power to them....I guess. Wanting to become an MMO behemoth isn't any different than what SOE or NCSoft wants.

The only difference is, I'm skeptical whether Blizzard tries anything new (to Sony's and NCSoft's credit, they've tried that a few times at least). Telling from what Blizzard did with their RTS model, it makes me think that all their MMO offerings will resemble each other as well.

Hmm. I could take that a few ways -- ranging from a committment to multiplay games are being the foundation of any new game designs, to a total refocusing towards a massively multiplay vision -- short or long sessions. For the MMORPG-style ones, if they were very clever on engine design -- the MMORPG equivilant of building the Half-Life or Unreal engine, then I could see three years and 50 mil as a workable figure. That's sufficient for a decent art and quest system, and even time to to add modules to the engine to differentiate the game mechanics.

I doubt they'ld use the WoW engine -- I suspect they'd design a modular and extensible engine (using what they learned from WoW) first, so that their end-products didn't feel like reskinned versions of the same thing.

Yea, but a Warcraft MMOG is one of them.

Again, telling from their previous games -- They'll be doing quite a bit of recycling, I think (if not a complete reskinning of an old thing). You don't even have to look at the RTS's. Diablo I and II are like 4 or 5 years apart -- How much of an upgrade is Diablo II really?

I'm not saying that's necessarily bad or anything though (besides, somehow it's worked for them all these years).

Diablo technically is an MMO already. All they need to do is roll up the trading/chat/matching interface from battle.net into the client and wallah, mmo.

So, it's not an MMO because they haven't implemented the trading/chat/matching interface from battle.net into the client?

What? Did I say something wrong?

Also, I'd like to see the current Blizzard pull a Diablo from their ass. I don't see it as being a possibility. They've already proven that they can make a random item system totally shitty despite having the best one ever to work from.

Guild Wars isn't that much different actually. Or DDO. I'm not sure if those are MMO's either though.

Let's not have THAT conversation again. I was just picking nits with Lum. OF COURSE Guild Wars and DDO are MMOGs. Just because they aren't as ambitious as WoW or EQ2 or DAOC and what have you doesn't make them any less of a genre game.

Starcraft:Galaxies as Planetside-done-right?

I must have missed that discussion. Sorry...

Either way, I am being serious.

If they make WOW in space, ill play it. GIMME NOW!!!

WORLD OF MOTHERFUCKING DIABLO BITCHES.  FUCK YEAH.  FUCK.  YEAH. 

WoW + (The lessons they've learned since release) + (a much bigger budget) - (cutsey, anime inspired shit everywhere)  = omgwtfbbq.  OMG.  WTF.  BBQ.    O.  W.  B.

+ hordes of douchey b.net kiddies running around pissing in everyone's cereal.

No they aren't. If you can play Serious Sam Co-op with more players at a time, it's not a mass multiplayer anything.

Zoning into a tavern with 50 people AFK 3 ft from a door doesn't make the game massive.

Who cares.  It won't be a McQuaid-Koster-Forced-Socialization-Shitfest (TM), so the kiddies can do whatever the fuck they want.  I'm not one to rant because some kid made a masturbation joke in Barrens general chat; I'm just not quite that ornery yet.

OWB!!

But yes, a WoW-like game based on Starcraft might be interesting ... for 6 months, just like WoW.

Whoa

I feel sorry for Mythic and SOE now.

I don't. It's been put up or shutup time for a while.

I'm so there. I'm weak. :(

I wonder how many employees it would take to administrate/create live teams for minimum 3 MMOGs with a minimum of 3-5 million customers a piece.

Blizzard could very well possibly BUY their publisher one day.

DDO and GW are technically MMOs, but I guess it could be argued that they don't really encapsulate a lot of the MMO experience in the traditional sort of sense.

In regards to the actual news, I fervently hope that Vivendi doesn't make Blizz release its first shitty game ever by rushing Universe of Starcraft early under this new "model".  "Bifrication" of market- mixed feelings; everyone likes to log in for an hour to accomplish a bit, regardless of whether they have more time later.

Will be years before we see any of this in any case.

Vivendi couldn't make Blizzard rush shit. At this point they could probably afford to take their ball and go home.

I think it's cool.  I'm not going to slag Blizzard for not making the perfect game, and more power to them for making something that works pretty well.  I want to see more MMOs, not fewer, especially since I'm so fickle and like to flit from game to game every few months.

More games = more competition = more different things to choose from.  Yay!

Uh, Vivendi already owns Blizzard. Blizzard can't take their ball and go anywhere as they don't even own the ball.

Is Blizzard a wholly owned subsidary? I sure didn't know that.

Yep. Thus the rumors back when about Blizzard being sold off to Microsoft, which Blizzard couldn't do much about except harrumph loudly (and walk out en masse if it happened)

50 million Euros is ~$62.8m at today's rate. I have no idea what the Euro did vis a vis the dollar over the four years of WoW's development, though.

I see this as the end of an OLD story, in fact.

Blizzard is evaporating at a rather fast speed. I think in the next years this process of Vivendi taken over will accelerate till they will be able to DESTROY everything they found.

Vivendi does have a history of doing that--see Dynamix.

The Euro didn't do anything special. The dollar collapsed. Then it collapsed again. As a party trick, it collapsed again. Between the collapses, everybody speculated that this would help the trade deficit. It didn't.

Seconded.  If they make something with the production values of WoW but which tastes less like Everquest and more like Diablo 2, holy shit.

OWB!!!

I'd prefer cutesy anime styled shit because then they can get super outlandish with the armor. But then, if it was dark and gothic enough, I'd prefer that to anime shit. But it'd have to be really fucking dark AND gothic. Or at least weird victorianesque shit. I like the art style in Grenada Espado btw.

They exhumed Rob Pardo from the grave to deny everything:

He does not convince me, though.

See, the problem with this is What VUG has done is not in Blizzard's style. Blizzard normally announces one huge title at a time and doesn't do it in such a lame way. There's press all over the place when Blizzard (officially) has something to say. Simply put, they'll deny it until they at least have screenshots they want to show off. People dealt with WoW's graphics because of how Warcraft 3 looks. They won't except that simpleton shit for Starcraft or (especially) Diablo.

Yes they will.

And you'll bitch and moan that they do so.

I would be pretty shocked if Blizzard went the cartoony way with Diablo and SC as they are, to say the least, about 1000x more dark than anything warcraft had to offer. Hell, even the angels in diablo were sinister. And Starcraft always had an air of apocalyptic future. The warcraft series has had none of these things. Hell, Warcraft 2 was a goddamn cartoon.

I like that word "cartoony."  It makes me want to drink martinis and eat macaroonies while dancing the Macarena!

(http://www.gifs.net/Animation11/Food_and_Drinks/Main_Dishes/macaroni_macarena.gif)

there was that trauma earlier in the year when they lost a lot of artists and that went public.  Near then they cancelled Starcraft.  Maybe they were already gearing up for this.  Whatever "this" is.

Oh crap. Signe's having gin for breakfast again.

I would bet that if Blizzard were to make a Diablo or Starcraft MMO that they would stick to the (relatively) low-polygon model concept rather than go for uber-realism. I'd also bet, however, that they'd find artists who could make that shit look good and dark and sinister.

So 'cartoony' in one sense (not even attempting for realistic models, but instead choosing easier to render and less-resource intensive models) but not 'cartoony' in the "Happy fucking go lucky panda hour' sense.

The angels will look like Varimathras.

Why would they do that? A stunningly vast amount of people have shown they'll play exactly that, and just as many have shown they'll play Diablo despite it never being anything to write home about other than clickety-click random loot dispensing WITH DEVILS! If anything, it'll taste more like EQ.

Diablo MMO:
WoW Talents on crack = character development.
Huge amount of levels but very fast level gain.
Quest system that generates its own random location and random dungeon entrance (ala AO but sans the crappy implementation).  Very minimal world spawns, zero static dungeons.
Clickity-click combat + hotkeys.
Loot lewtz l3wt and lootz0rs
Small towns for player gathering
Several types of item refinment via player crafting, perhaps even going the L2/Ragnarok route of making vital crafting classes that everyone needs but nobody really wants to level up.
High level of character "look" options, the best dress up MMO evar!@!!


Starcraft MMO:
Really I just dont see this as being doable pre-2015 so lets not talk about it.  Blizzard will wait and see if there is anything worth stealing from RvR v2.0 when Mythic releases WAR.

*shrug*  I felt like posting something...

http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=24710907&sid=6152718

lol internet.

Edit: I should clear up this post. If I labeled that sort of stuff on the frontpage as rumor instead of FACT would it be taken as gospel? Could Gamespot have rumor-rumor controlled? Could Tor Thorsen, with his obvious capacity for deep investigative work, have maybe dug a little deeper than MODERATORS. Or does Blizzard treat all press like shit?


WTG.

So DDO, except with less polygons and more style?  :rimshot:

Heh. Watch out...you are on Blizzard's list now.

Fuck that, I want to be on IGE's list. Check plz! DING. Shoe money tonight!

Your like, famous and shit. Ding grats.

Anyway. Does anyone really take anything the mods on the WOW forums say serously? If they do, they shouldnt. It is very obvious that at Blizzard the left hand isnt informed about what the right hand is doing.

I really don't see much difference between a Warcraft MMO and a Diablo MMO. Add necromancers, replace the monster graphics to make em all look like demons, and rename the zones. Done. Skill trees, socketed and set items...druids and paladins and mages and, yeah, all the character classes are in place too. We gots Diablo MMO already. *shrug*

Starcraft might be a little more interesting, with a third realm. But we all know by now Blizzard won't make a PvP-centric game; otherwise WoW would have delivered. It'll be quest-based up to 60, then raid raid RAID!!!

It does make sense to split their playerbase between three games though, because them that get tired of Diablo Online might go straight to Worlds of Starcraft. And you can bet yer booties that their entire fanbase would pay $25 a month for access to all three.

And cows.....lots of them

Screw the shoes. You need a new computer.

The hits are doubling baby!

Honestly, the only thing by Blizzard I would ever want to see transformed into a MMO world would be Blackthorne

You guys are WAY too easily entertained.  Diablo and Diablo II held my interest for perhaps a total of 4h.  I'm guessing that some of that stems from the fact that I had already played the game when it was called Rogue and/or Nethack. 

Personally, I'd love to see Blizzard create something with a bit more depth to it than all that superficial glitz. Sadly, I know that I'm in the minority.  

You hit slashdot frontpage. Hold onto your socks! The bad news is sirbruce is also in the same paragraph.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/14/1558217

I still can't bear to read the comments. Not even at 4+

Damn, now we are all like famous and shit. ding grats us.

All Blizzard does is shallow games and superficial glitz. You don't want them to try and make otherwise. As for you not liking Diablo I/II, you're not a lewtwhore. Therefore not the target demographic.


They refuted me with HRose, SirBruce and a guy who doesn't control the money at Blizzard - Rob Pardo.

So that brings the tally up to at LEAST 5 people who are ignoring what was said to a live audience at a presentation - that is, depending on how many moderators think they can manipulate the press.

Zonk, you know better.

(http://joemonahansnewmexico.blogspot.com/drama.jpg)

How do I get a piece of the cheescake?

From:

http://www.warcry.com/

Blizzard says there is no Cash Cow Level, no more MMOs planned
Using words like "there was some confusion" and "this was a misquote" Blizzard Community Reps and even Rob "Sly One" Pardo have come out of their cubicles to shout down the rumor started yesterday by schild. All I have to say is these are the same Blizzard puppets that denied up and down that the Dranei were the new Alliance race, even forcing a magazine to cover-up all mention of them in a foreign issue. Meaning, I trust them as far as I can throw a cheesecake underwater. At least I trust schild to bring me the cheesecake. An Epic [Cheesecake].

You mean an epic [Cheesecake].

@Haem and others:
Why my pretend Diablo MMO is nothing like DDO...

First of all, we're talking randomly generated dungeons, not static missions with voiceovers and lots of levers!one!  That alone makes the replay value about 10,000 times DDO's.

Secondly I said tons of levels, Blizzard has shown time and again that you can never have too many dings.  There is no such thing as a ding that pisses off the player.  So you've got tons of levels, fast paced leveling and the loot system that makes EVERY SINGLE DROP interesting, if it is magical+.  So now we have 10,000 times more replay value and 10,000 times more DING!GRATZ.

DDO = owned by my pretend MMO that consists of 8 obvious bullet points.  We can therefore conclude what we all knew already DDO sucks monkey balls.

Anyways, Schild grats on all this when I first came back from a short hiatus I thought someone had bought the site, what with having a front page that works and tells me things.  It was sort of scary.

I look forward to more well done MMO games, even if they aren't exactly what I want to play. You can't please everyone.

You please a hell of a lot of people by releasing a complete game. Mythic, Turbine, SOE, I hope you've been studying.

I guess I can expect the cops at my door tomorrow. I was already on Vivendi's black list when I posted the screenshots from the expansion the last year and got menacing phone calls from them.

Thank god someone around here isn't an RPG only whore.  God I hate Vivendi.  By the way Stephen whats going on with Tribes Vengeance?  Did it turn out ok?  I hate going to TribalWar some people there make f13 seem like a hello-kitty themed 6 yr-old girl sleepover party.

I thought a lot of us weren't. This is the gaming community that wants RPG's to not be RPG's.

I'm not sure I'd consider WoW a "complete game" at release though it was closer than many that have come before it.

Wake me up when they will figure out a formula to come up with something new in under 10 years/gazilion millions. All they can do now is clone more Diku, how many clones would it take to saturate the market? 1.5, maybe 2?

The best Slashdot comment is the one that points out that HRose has a slide of Vivendi claiming 6.5 billion WoW customers:

(http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/storeroom/wow-repository/hellovivendi/003.gif)

1,300 game masters for 6.5 billion million people? Seems low, doesn't it? But I'll admit this right here, I know NOTHING about that shit.

1300 GMs => An average of 400 at a time. Let's guess they handle a ticket every 10 minutes, that's 2400 tickets an hour.

6.5M subs => 5M active players => Guess an average 17 hours a week play => 500k online simultaeneously.

So if each player calls a GM every 200 hours of play, or once every 12 weeks, then everything works out fine.

How often do you call a GM? I certainly don't call them more than once a year tops.

People who call GMs call them chronically. That much I do know. It's like any call center/technical support. They probably have a very good system of weeding out bullshit requests.

I bet people call them on RP servers most often.

Get past the big titles and the proof is already there.

MMOGs aren't a novelty anymore. We don't play them just because they exist. There's scores of titles out now, all worth checking out to at least help ya figure out which ones you like.

They won't give WoW a run for their money, but who gives a shit when you're only talking about a few thousand people at a time anyway?

In other news, CCP flipped a switch and 200,000 Chinese accounts turned up in their bank, with 30k concurrent sessions on their new service, pwning their 3 year record with the English EVE.  The Earth still moves.

Fuck all this noise. This is good. It will force people to innovate to compete just as Blizzard's RTS titles forced people to innovate to compete. And by fucking God if it means that we get more awful shit in a box MMOGs short term in that mad dash to cash in while trimming the garbage down long term as people start wanting more than we win.

Call me when you hit Time's Man of the Year, Schild.

Will do.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?loadNews=5506&bhcp=1
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/81787

http://pc.ign.com/articles/712/712554p1.html
http://vnboards.ign.com/wow_general_board/b19789/97281992/p1/?14

Just sticking them all together because I have nothing to do right now and if I go to sleep now I'll be up and about before 5 AM.   :|

The thing got posted everywhere. Everyone has a different distorted view of facts and their own contacts. Not a single one of them has managed to do proper fact checking. I love gaming journalism. I'll write an update about it tonight I suppose. Since people probably expected me to 10 hours ago.

I'm still waiting for that to be true.  Maybe I'm just not into the genre enough anymore, but I've harvested enough lumber and built enough space marines for one lifetime.  Innovative is not a word I would pair with the RTS genre post 1998 or so.

When they say "all Blizzard thingies will be MMOs," do they mean that the regular titles (e.g. Starcraft II) are gone?  While I like the ideas of MMOs and all that, I also like being able to buy games and frickin' play them without having to authenticate my PIN and hand out my credit card number.  I'm not the biggest Diablo fan in the world, but I'd happily buy Diablo III over World of Diablo: (internet connection and online subscription required, additional fees may be incurred in the course of online play, for details please read our four-hundred page EULA, any violation of which will render the software you have just purchased worthless). 

The sad truth is that ALL fields of journalism, not just gaming journalism, is this way.  Shit gets printed that people want to read (i.e. pay for).  The truth is often a byproduct that does/does not accompany the story.

I've been involved in healthcare, science, political, environmental, personal, and other news stories and have YET to see one that got all of the facts straight.  It never ceases to amaze me how things get so distorted so quickly. It's like that game where one child tells the next a story and you pass it along to 20 more kids only to have the end product be a very different tale than the original.

You know how you tell the truth? You write very little and stick to the facts. We're an opinion site, I made an opinion based on the news. SOMEHOW every other big site that linked to it (gamespot, ign, etc) had a longer article than we had. Obviously, they're new at this whole thing.

By my logic, I'd argue that they're old pros.

I think schild was just lucky that none of them turned it into a 7,000 word dissertation.

Just to clear things up, I meant the "internet" thing. Magazines are one thing. You have pages to fill. The internet? Not so much.

I just noticed a typo on the frontpage for the article heading. Son of a bitch.

If Blizzard makes another MMO, I just hope it doesn't have elves. I HATE ELVES. Floppy-eared bastards.

Also, congrats on all the...publicity, though I refused to read the /. link. I will not read their shit until they make their format Not Ugly.

Cross posted because this appears to be where all the discussion is happening.

Everything as an MMOG sounds to me like a marketing strategy or organizational objective that has nothing to do with what actually gets developed. It should influence decisions, but is more of an executive statement about where Vivendi feels the gaming market is heading and where the cash is to be made.

To try and make an automotove analogy, I see this like Ford announcing they will have production capability of 250,000 hybrid vehicles a year ( Linky (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092101831.html) ) by 2010.

WoW has brought MMOs to the masses and Vivendi sees large dollar signs. That's all it means. It is Vivendi's way of telling its investors they have found the golden goose.

If they're doing new MMO's, what the point of denying it?  And if they are not, what's the point of denying it (by Vivendi)? 

Feels like we're all stuck in just a bad office "miscommunication".  And people are back paddling to save staff morale or something at Blizzilla.

Neg. Read my most recent article in the other forum - it should expllain my take on it.

Schild Linkage (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=7291.0)


yeah that's all probably right.  Vivendi owns the assets, Blizzard is an operating company.  End of story.  Nuance: "we won't hurt current title(s) and planned expansion(s) with unofficial announcements.  And damn Bruce."


Makin' friends!!

(http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/modhealth/images/health_logo.gif)

Only, they didn't. Blizzard's RTS success hasn't changed anything other than make more shitty, repetitive, derivative, stale, me-too RTS games available.

You're shitting me. Their new China cluster launched like that? They should be kissing our asses for spending the last year making sure their hardware and software could handle it. :)

EVE's on haitus for me right now -- but with school out for the summer, I might open it back up. I do love the game.

I'm going to jump on the you are super wrong Modern bandwagon.
Dude, you are super wrong on a factual level.  Starcraft basically killed the RTS genre.

Why you are partially right is because MMO's are different.  You dont design EQ.25 when EQ is still going strong.  Nobody will quit their current character/time investment for 0 change in gameplay/gfx/features.  Look what happened to EQ2.  Therefore I do believe that WoW will push some innovation into the medium.  Denizens of Diablo and Storytime Starcraft should theoretically help the anti-diku cause as well.

I agree that WoW's success will eventually push innovation in the MMOG medium, because competing with Blizzard in fantasy-diku space is STUPID and unpossible. I was just disagreeing with his statement that Blizzard's overly derivative schlock RTS'es caused any sort of innovation in the RTS space.

EDIT: And Diablo almost did the same thing to CRPG's. It's only now that the industry is coming back to non-Diablo-esque non-clicky fest type of RPG's where you play more than one character.

*cough*  You never read my posts all the way through and it hurts me on the inside *endcough*

I'm going to jump on the you are super wrong Modern bandwagon.
Dude, you are super wrong on a factual level.  Starcraft basically killed the RTS genre.

agreed+1

How did starcraft kill the RTS gerne? Perfection?

Right now I've got dawn of war (+arctic) and rise of legends installed. People are still making them...

Disclaimer: I played starcraft. A lot. And loved it. (that's right!)  I still play Wc3 frozen throne, but only for DotA.

Age of Empires 3 was a really fun game too. I don't know about Starcraft killing the RTS genre anywhere but maybe Korea, but we've established they have no taste in games.

Admittedly, I still go back and play Starcraft on occasion, but I also played the Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, Rome: Total War and a handful of others....

I didn't comment on that part, because it said what I said and I agreed +2.

EDIT: The Total War series IS NOT AN RTS, no matter what anyone tries to convince you of. Don't believe the hype.

As for why I think Starcraft killed the RTS genre: nothing much has changed about any of the games released since Starcraft. Oh there are little really small bits added, like waypoints and 3d landscapes, but really, they are more derivative than dikuclones. I liked Dawn of War and Age of Empires, but they aren't much more than Starcraft/Warcraft/Command and Conquer with a few bells and whistles added.

OK, but why do you single out starcraft as the genre killer? By simple virtue of being successful? Starcraft itself isn't exactly a revolution in gameplay from command and conquer as you said or even Dune 2: A building of a dynasty for that matter.

I am not sure I agree. It may not have the build, expand, capture, repeat gameplay, but it is strategic (actually more tactical) and plays out in real time. My main complaint about it, actually. R:TW was beautiful, but the min/maxer that lives in me hated not being in control of every unit at all times.

Not just successful, but wildly, religious zealotry in action successful. Games that sell so many more copies than anyone else the people with money cannot hope to ignore their influence. You know, like Diablo. Or Starcraft of Warcraft.

So in other words it's a killer becuase on the surface it encourages the genre by causing numerous knock-offs in it's wake but at the same time limiting the direction and creative expansion of said genre becuase publishers ONLY want knock-offs?

I won't say that you're 100% wrong, but you do still have games out there like Black and white and even Utopia that are significantly different but cast from the same idea mold.

My wife actually hassles me to play it because of the music (the singing one) that plays on the main map. My son, on the other hand, is a fan of the war dogs and flaming pigs. :)

To address the actual point about Starcraft killing RTS -- isn't the Total War series a unique and non-derivative take on RTS? It has all the elements of an RTS, although the build and resource elements are pushed to a different level. It'd be kind of ironic to bitch that Starcraft killing innovative RTS games and then complain R:TW isn't a RTS game because it's not enough like Starcraft and it's derivatives. :)

Trying to cast Black and White under the RTS shield is stretching. You might as well put the Sims and Simcity and Spore in the same genre if you're going to include Black and White.

If Spore's what it looks like, it'll be it's own genre called "Fucking Awesome". I suspect it won't be, but given that it's Wright doing it, I'm willing to hope.

It's under the genre "Software Toy" just like the Sims, Black and White, Sim City, the movie-making portion of The Movies and other such games that are more freeform.

I liked "The Movies" but it got too annoying to micro-manage, plus it was too constrictive in ways that hampered, rather than channelled or enhanced, gameplay. Still pretty fun, if not the "I'm still playing it a decade later" fun of Civ or Sim City.

One day we will fill the internet, then we can stop BSing.

I'd assume they'd stagger the games so that the new one would come out when the old one was tapering off. the new one would capture the market. I'd guess that this is a strategy to maintain control of the market over a period of time, rather than segmenting it among their own competing products.

Based on their prior history of releasing games, I, for one, welcome our World of Starcraft overlords.

Perimeter and Ground Control are examples of RTS gameplay that's pretty radically different than Starcraft. You could probably also include the Homeworld series in there too.

I'll give you Homeworld. Ground Control... not so much.

I think that's more a limit of what can be made while still falling into the RTS category than anything else. MMOGs have alot more leeway with what can be done. Nobody will compete directly with WoW. Not now, possibly not ever. After some shit knockoffs being churned out people will be forced to innovate.

Or this might be completely wishful thinking on my part. I'm holding onto the hope that someone willing to take a chance busts through with even a moderate success. Maybe Age of Conan if they don't fuck up the technical side of things.

I see the major innovation in Ground Control in that you don't harvest resources or build bases. You have a mission, you can choose between a limited number of units and loadouts, and there you are. It emphasises the tactical and eliminates the strategic - great for me because I suck at thinking ahead and I hate micromanaging resources.

The Close Combat games did this long before Ground Control (along with a slew of other RTS innovations: ballistics, in-depth damage modeling, LOS, concealment and cover, elevation, morale, psych model, etc...). The Close Combat games require a much different approach to tactics than other RTSes. Back in '96-'97 I was hopeful to the point of certainty that other games would take these elements and make a new style of tactically rich RTSes, I couldn't have been more wrong. We've had a decade of pretty but tactically bereft RTSes.

For a long time Richard Garriott has been saying how he feels that WoW and other big MMOGs are great for others in the industry and for innovation because it expands the pool of customers. In theory that sounds great, but my casual observations disagree. The business pressure to conform to others successes seems to deflate the will to innovate considerably.

Delicious (http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20060616.jpg)

(http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20060616.jpg)

OMG that is CLASSIC.

WoW is Diablo online?

What?

How did I miss that when I played?

He's not wrong -- WoW borrows a lot of Diablo concepts. The randomly generated loot -- your 7 Iron of the Monkey, 9 Iron of the Bear, and Pitching Wedge of the Rabid Mongoose, to name some -- for one. The upcoming ability to add "Sockets" to items, and place jewels and other loot into said sockets as another. (Burning Crusade crafting, I think).

However, Blizzard's always had a tradition of borrowing shit from their other games and even builds in a lot of jokes about it. I'd expect World of Starcraft a hell of a loot sooner than World of Diablocraft, for the simple reason that a Diablo MMORPG would be way the hell too much like WoW.

If I was Blizzard, I'd strike out differently with World of Starcraft. Totally different feel, totally different playstyle.

Starcraft + Planetside + being done right = Possibly the best MMOG ever made.

Least that's what I think. I remember blizzard having a lot of level designer and 3d art positions open and people whispering about an FPS project, but I know that was probably Ghost. I still maintain hope though.

If you were Blizzard, you'd kneel before the might of the Vivendi Empire and start cutting and pasting art assets and text into the same game for your magnificent messianic overlords. Hallelujahwobble.

Possibly. It depends on the internal politics of Vivendi. I've been involved in that "wholly owned subsidary" thing before, and sometimes your group has almost total autonomy -- your bosses on the owning side tend to give you HUGE amounts of leeway, because you're getting the job done and making them shittons of cash. Sometimes your bosses micromanage your ass, sucking anything good you might do out of it -- cause if you're doing that well NOW, think about how much you could be raking in with real management?. Sometimes they strip all your key people and shuffle them throughout the rest of the, hoping your magic mojo will rub off on the rest of the company.

Blizzard's standing with Vivendi and the degree of their autonomy regarding their IP and such depends on whether they've got some higher-ups on their side -- a patron saint or two in Vivendi.

First time poster here - couldnt help but chime in.

The best thing about the O.G. starcraft / warcraft was in its simple design.  Like playing chess - you dont have to jazz it up for people to keep playing it.  It was the original gameplay that made those games successful in the later.  Though WoW was executed quite well - despite the fact that I was bored in 4 days.  As long as they dont mess up the fundamentals of what made those games great - you already have it "in the bag" so to speak.  Just on the nostalgia factor alone starcraft is an insta-sell.  Its already money in the bank no matter what they do with it.  I just hope they dont mess it up - whatever it is they decide to do with it.  And no, im not expecting the same game with new bells and whistles - just a good game based on solid gameplay driven content, as was the first.  If they can recognize that strength, and not what the people who are giving them money want (another WoW clone if anything - rumors or not).  They will beat that dead WoW mmorpg horse until we stop paying en-masse for it.  We dont need another - we already have it.  I'm sure they know that something genre-breaking must be done to live up to the standards they set for themselves.  Tough job.  I dont evny any company that wants to tackle that one - as far as im concerned, they got lucky with WoW.  If it was as buggy as say AO from the start, you have some alienated and highly pissed off fans.  You dont mess with your core base of players.  You tread carefully and you have a blockbuster.  They can do no wrong as long as the quality of gameplay is there.  So, let their be starcraft - I cant wait, ive been waiting for a long time to see anything (hate the idea of "ghost") to match the gameplay driven monster that is starcraft.  Its proof that you dont need the latest graphics to sell a game, you just need a solid gameplay experience, not who can craft the fastest or who can spend the most time in front of their computer to get ahead - you just need to learn to 'play chess' for lack of a better analogy.

btw - the warhammer 40k universe is just as powerfull - they finally have a game thats off to a magnificent start, they can take the reigns if they can find the new genre breaking gameplay first IMO.  40k is truly a great wrecking ball.  I hope they continue, their expansions are forthcoming and somewhat solid - cant wait for the new one.  A smooth transition with the next expansion will be the tell all to me.  They have a great thing going and they will have the capital and support to do whatever they want - as long as gamesworkshop will continue to play ball. 

Theres my forum-troll 2cp.

I see no trolling.  You should visit politics.  We got plenty going on.

Political trolling is an ART. You don't get those kind of trolls on games, unless it's pre-Trammel UO. Then you get trolls with charts. Good times.

Ibn Shaun?

It was charts in the very loosest sense of the word though.

It was as factual as the De Vinci Code.

or something.

I'll have you know it's a PROVEN FACT that Jesus Did It. Totally proven. It's in the Bible. Go look. Go ahead. I'd tell you where, but then you'd never learn for yourself.

See I dont think Dawn of War can beat SC as long as it is an RTS.  Starcraft is similar to CounterStrike in that regard.  No matter how much better or how much depth another fps may have.  Fuckers keep playing those games.  I really can't even fathom how a game of SC can still be fun.

Given the way they release games (aka "when it's done"), Blizzard has enjoyed a lot of autonomy from its many masters over the years (they must own the video game developer record for the number of owners they've had). However WoW was clearly rushed to meet the end of year 2004 release date given that many talents trees and even an entire class (Hunter) were added at the very last minute before release. So Vivendi clearly can and does exert pressure on Blizzard. However they also don't want to kill the goose that's lying its golden eggs -- large groups of people have been leaving Blizzard since at least 2000 (the group that left to form Arena Net) -- so they have to be careful that they don't piss off the key people and cause them to leave.

WWJD?

 :wink:

Mary Magadlene, if you believe Matrin Scorcese.

I hope that you're being facetious.  One would have to assume that the bible isn't a work of fiction for anything within it to be considered fact.

Yeah, that would have been some sarcasm in there. Just a smidge.

Us old folks are aided by the use of green text. 

And the sarchasm claims another victim.

I've fallen and I can't get up.

I agree.  More green, less beige.

Because of Teh Zerg Rush.

Duh.

Kekekekekek

Because for them SC has become a sport in addition to a game.  Baseball is pretty weak as a game, but as a sport it has much more appeal.