f13.net

... by Mythic Entertainment. (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/feature/2040)

Part 2 of the interview is meant to have some exclusive announcements. Depending on what they are, I may look like a greater or lesser dick for choosing the subject title.

I get it. But I really, really don't get it.

Funny, just read this article an hour ago : http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19325

And damn you, I thought we had a release date.

So is this genuinely "We're reclaiming our old name" or is it EA prepping Mythic for a sell-off?

Slinking away to hide behind a bush just in case war tanks, ready to pop out again with a 'ta-da!' if it does well?

I can't read the article but with the Activision/Blizzard merger having been finalized it's highly unlikely EA would be looking to sell-off assets ATM.

Warhammer Alliance has a couple of posts from Mythic devs in their newsthread.  We've been assured by MBJ that one of the annoucements is NOT a release pushback.  Another thread at MMORPG.com seems to indicate that release date won't be one of the 3 things either. 

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/feature/2041

1.  Punkbuster!

2.  Four capital cities to be patched in post-launch!

3.  Four classes cut!

4.  Mythic employees are going to kidnap your rl pets!

The last one is fake...for now  :awesome_for_real:

Well, that explains the "Mythic Entertainment" part - EA has set a deadline for launch which means two-thirds of the cities and one-sixth of the classes have to be cut (stick) and let Mythic change their name back to avoid total humiliation (carrot).

WTB c&P of details for those who get "SURF CONTROL - ACCESS DENIED"

Drama!

And the cycle begins anew.

You don't need a cut and paste of the PB announcement. It's PunkBuster. It'll run processes when it doesn't need to and do a half assed job at preventing hacking. WHEE! :drill:

Good, they have way too many classes. The game doesn't really need six separate lightly armored melee DPS classes with six sets of slightly different mechanics.

Focus, cut, polish. Repeat.

I don't have a problem with the class cut.  Things are always in flux before release on that front-- I believe AoC combined a couple classes (Lich, Druid of the Storm, etc) and WoW added Hunter a couple of months before launch.

What I AM worried about is the capital city cuts.  That entails quite a dramatic shift in RvR mechanics- a follow-up post on WHA indicates that you'll have to capture two of three campaigns to get to Altdorf/IC now. 

My prediction?  The capital cities NEVER make it in, because Mythic has discovered that routing attention three ways is bad.

If only I could bring myself to believe it's a gameplay decision and not a release scheduling problem.

I would much rather wait another six months for release and have everything make the final cut. Scrapping things this far along makes it sound like they are hurrying, which doesn't bode well. Of course, I am not the one on the hook for the development costs either.

Oh it's clearly a scheduling decision but it's one that I feel will help the game as a whole. Players need focused content-- trying to deliver three separate RvR endgames at release was foolish. Looking beyond simply developing quality content, what if you can't generate a critical mass of players at each site?

These are very good cuts in my opinion.

I wish I could agree with this, but the flavor in the Kool-aid is starting to seem a bit more like poison and a bit less like comety deliverance.  

I always thought content dilution was DAoC's most profound failure too, and that was only 3 factions. Only 3 melee dps classes. WAR had six. Too much duplication of effort. Too many classes to balance. Too many factions to balance in both PvP and PvE, the most difficult challenge of all. Too much time spent on separate newbie zones, not enough on the elder game. Too many empty capital cities. Too many playthroughs required to experience the content. Too much dilution of content. Just too much.

Focus, cut, polish. Repeat.

It's difficult to create melee classes, that have unique tank/dps mechanics. So I don't really bother about the missing classes...20 instead of 24 is good enough.

4 out of 6 capital cities delayed is a manpower problem, which indicated that they do not have enough ressources to get them in before launch and it might be a sign that they are not going to delay the launch again. Which could mean that, besides the missing cities, there is missing content in general at launch.

I can't imagine WoW being where it is today with only two release cities.  The amount of content and variety of content removed by scrapping 2/3's of the original cities has got to hurt.  Quality of content probably can't make up for it.

At least, the general gist of the AoC threads were that players need *more* content, not necessarily less content with more quality.  Though more content with more quality is good, of course, if you can afford it.

Twenty is way too many, once you factor in specialization via WAR's version of talents. If I were developing WAR, I would have a single archetype for each class and give each faction's version different customization options. For example, all six factions would have a lightly armored DPS class, and all six classes would have different names, but share all base abilities and two out of three talent trees, cutting my work down a thousandfold.

Edit: Really? You think WOW would be substantially hurt if they had never positioned Darnassus, Thunder Bluff, Ironforge, and Undercity as major cities and had instead used them as leveling hubs like crossroads and theramore? Not that it's a valid comparison, really, since WAR's capital cities are the endgame.

Looks like EA(ok i dont pay attention) is pushing hard to release pre-WOTLK, this of course is going to be their biggest mistake.  I mean even is you only see in dollar signs, can't companies see that the policy of rushing things out the door doesn't make nearly as much as finished product? Has their been any game in any genre pc/console etc that was rushed and still made a ton of money?

edit for retarditude

Activision? You mean EA yes?

And yes there's been lots of rushed games that made money. There's been very few rushed games that were good, but make money? Yeah. 5/10 EA Sports games were rushed so they could be ready for the season (ie. NHL 2006) and sucked ass. But they sold lots.

Yes, I think without those cities the game wouldn't have nearly felt as full of content at the begining.  If everyone had been funneled to Org or SW after their newbie zone experiences it wouldn't have lead to the variety of content that WoW has.  As it was you could take so many different leveling paths to around level 30 (as we discussed in the other thread) that it felt like the game was absolutely full of content.

We'll just have to see if these "leveling hubs" that the cities will supposedly become feel like enough content for the game to feel real and full enough without those cities.  I suspect that this will make the game feel much less solid, probably more polished than having 6 crappy cities, but no where near as solid and polished as having 6 good cities, i.e. I do not think this decision bodes well for the game.

EDIT:  I suspect if they can't polish the cities they can't polish the leveling hubs, and what will happen is that everyone will funnel into the two capital cities at a much lower level, thus less repeatable content, thus less longevity to the experience.  WoW had longevity because it had so much repeatable content at the lower levels.

Well, that's the first expansion sorted out then.

Basically, assuming no great problems with the launch that sees that work invalidated.

It's smart to make the cuts. To some extent, it would have been better to never comment on these things at all than cut them now, but that ship has sailed.

Someone could make an argument that AoC has prompted WAR to make sure the game it launches is solid if smaller in scope than having lots promised then under-delivering.

There's still too many classes.  Way too many, and I still expect some sort of DAoC "this class sucks so much worse than it's opposite faction class" imabalance.  I mean ACTUAL problems, not the usual based-on-only-the-user's-imagination crap.

The removal of the capitals could be a good or a bad thing.  If there's enough content for the PvE portion, it's NBD.  The PvP is the endgame, and funneling more folks into fewer areas can only be a good thing for pvp.   Barring huge population imbalances, but then that's a major flaw of the design anyway.

They say the cities get cut to two at launch, so yeah that seems to be just problem with getting things done between scheduled launch date, and from the wording i'd guess they still intend to add full set later. On the other hand cutting the classes they couldn't make to work well enough sounds like sensible decision given how many they have.... a mix of bad and good, indeed.

Wow, the choppa went from being OP to cut. That's quite a change.

That's the unfortunate victim of this. The one fun melee DPS class getting axed because they couldn't figure out how to make the others worthwhile. Hammerer especially. Oh well.


edit: Wasn't there a wall of text when EA absorbed them about how this was a good move because they didn't have to launch unfinished games due to lack of money? A lot of good that did.

You would think that after enough failed MMO's are rushed out the door at least one company would learn from the industry leader and not try to rush out unfinished crap.

Any sensibly business-oriented person should understand the costs and rewards of competing in the MMORPG arena, and they should understand that the surest way to kill the long term profitability of a game is to rush it out the door unfinshed. 

Eh, I still pre-ordered.  I will remain cautiously optimistic.

And you wonder why the publishers never learn.

Well crap, Choppa was the one class I was really looking forward to trying out.

I honestly didn't realize that there was 24 different ones though, which definitely is too damn many.

KOTBS was even more lame. An iconic knight class standing in the back twisting buffs?  :awesome_for_real:

Well it's the difference between making money and making a fuckton of money.

WAR will be profitable, no doubt and I'm sure AoC will be as well. The market for MMO's is big enough right now that as long as you don't make something that punches players in the dick you should come out on top financially.

I think sports games are a bit of a red herring when it comes to games because they are their own market, much like MMO. People who play sports games may very well not even play any other type, as well as they NEED to buy the game regardless of how rushed it is because well that is This years edition of their favorite sport.

Most other game genres though show time and again that the more finished product wins, not just wow but all blizzard games have made ungodly amounts of money and there's a reason. Other game companies as well that deliver solid product get solid results. I really think the problem in retrospect is not that the publishers(ea,funcom) don't understand that time spent = $$ it's that they don't care. Pushing an MMO out the door half finished will still make them a profit while if they were to give it another year and more money there is no guarentee the game will be big enough to cover that investment.  No one wants to gamble on another game hitting 10mil subs so the kind of time and money that would be needed to take a game even close to that is not being spent.

In short, pussies.

On the contrary, EA has treated WAR quite well. Their beta test has been under a strict NDA unlike Blizzard's, but it's been ongoing for a long time. They've been given tons of time to iterate and polish. As far as anyone from the outside looking in can tell, EA is not the bad guy here-- if WAR fails, it's Mythic's fault.

Kotaku is reporting that Guild Beta has started.  (http://kotaku.com/5024185/warhammer-online-enters-guild-beta-stage)

Their beta process is pretty good.  Focus on gameplay-X, take down beta, Focus on gameplay-Y, take down beta.  Then they cycle through everything.

They do a pretty good job.

They do have a lot of classes though.  Too many imo.

My friend brought up a good point. Basically if you want to play melee DPS now, you only have one option per realm. Thats pretty weak.

Very much untrue. Anyhow  :nda:

This is what I was trying to come up with a way of saying above, but just couldn't find the words.  This is the difference between the 10 million subscriber WoW killer that WAR looked like it had the potential to be, and the 700k subscriber very profitable but not quite capable of competing with the big guy niche game.

To me it's more indicative of the scope that Mythic thinks they are capable of achieving.  Perhaps this is a sign that Mythic has decided that in order to avoid being a Duke Nukem Forever of the mmog world, they just needed to take a step back and reduce the scope of what they wanted to achieve.  

Any way you cut it, I just can't see how cutting 2/3rds of the "Living, Breathing Capital Cities" for launch is a good sign for the players.  This looks like it will likely be a massive cut in content.  Probably because they couldn't polish the content, so I understand the motive, I just don't think it's a good sign for the game.

I highly doubt it is cut permanently. I think it will be implemented through future patches as content and labeled complete and playable. Also looking at it objectively it could be a positive thing as you will have more players in the zone of the two existing cities and upon implementation of new cities players will move over to them and make sure all content will actually be played.

If you remember that capturing the opposite faction's cities is actually the RvR endgame, it's quite plausible that they'll be patched in at some point, sure. From a PvE perspective they're entirely unnecessary.

Altaholics start playing on day one too, and to be honest, I think they are typically are a pretty big chunk of the player base (I'd suspect a majority in wow?  I know a lot more people switching between alts than I do people like me who pretty much stick with one character, perhaps it's just the people I'm exposed to, I don't know).  WoW was great for people who did that because they had 2 realms, 6 cities and 8 races to pick from.  Even if most people stuck to one realm the content between level 1 and about 30 was so varied that you could just keep making alts for quite some time without repeating content.  At about level 30 everyone got funneled together and the content repeated, but that is typically where people start to play up one character to max, at least from what I've seen.

I think Mythic is cutting out a large chunk of it's potential player base with this move.  I can't wait to be proven wrong, I've had two copies of the CE pre-ordered for a long time now, and this is my most "highly anticipated game of the decade", but I suspect we'll be revisiting this all about a month after release in the "What went wrong?" thread..

Of course I've been wrong before, we'll see.

EDIT:  I'm not in the beta, so maybe I'm wrong and they are going to have awesome well thought out polished and perfectly scripted leveling areas for all the races without using capital cities to do it.  I'm just suspicious that if they don't have the resources to make the capital cities work, that it means everyone is getting funneled into the same path at a very early part of the game.  Every other mmog I've ever played funneled you into the capital cities immediately after the newbie zones and those ended up being your main hub for quite some time.

If I had to go through tortage one more time i would gouge my eyes out....wait wrong game....or is it?


It took me three classes in wow to find one I liked and stuck with, if I had the same starting experience each time i would have burned out. Same goes for original EQ, even though it was a grindfest playing a dark elf was vastly different from playing a halfling in the starter areas, if only because of the scenery.

What people are trying to say is that adding these cities in later and level up, mid-game or end-game quest hubs is not the same as having a 'hometown' heck even if you live up in the tree and half the wood elves kill themselves, or in the undercity where the elevator has claimed your life at least once there is a certain pride many take in saying this is their home turf and having one giant starter city doesn't do it. When EQ2 came out and there was just freeport and qeynos? i hated it with a passion as did many other i know.

I'd almost say it's immersion breaking to say things like "ok you're all refugees and you start 'here' " it takes a lot of excitement and wonder out of the world and just makes things feel so much smaller.

The 20 or 24 classes of WAR aren't really 20 or 24 classes in wow. There is a LOT of skill overlap and you'll see stuff where healer X gets spell A and level 5, when healer Y gets a spell that does the same thing as A, but at level 15.

There are only so many things you can do with diku style skill bars. There won't be 20 different classes to learn, there will be about 40 instances of, "oh, that class gets that ability too. Damn, noted" as you're waiting for the respawn timer to kick in.

What it sounds like they are saying with "the cityies will be quest hubs" is that the content is still there, but the major city functions arent, like the RVR capture part. Or at least thats what I hope its saying.

Personally I never believed - nor do I now - that WAR had the potential to be a 10 million sub game. No way. It will be a big MMORPG relative to every other title, but like the rest it will remain dwarfed by WoW until Blizzards Next Big Thing ships. At which point that will be the giant. WoW is an anomaly due to a variety of factors. No other title will touch it for a very long time. As always, I could be wrong.

WAR will not reach the level of subscriptions of WoW. Yes, there are a lot of Warhammer fans out there, but they are not necessarily MMOGamers. Blizzard had a large following of gamers who bought WoW and then brought friends. Then there was more word of mouth, big newspaper write-ups, etc. and so on and so forth. Quality, yes, but a market blast to be sure.

Not sure where I was going there other than stating the obvious. Regarding the cutting of classes, they should cut about 8 more. I think even 12 would be too many if there are only two factions, but suppose it's doable. 8-10 classes ( with replication for each faction) is probably what is inflating that number. With WoW, there is crossover, With WAR, it sounds like there is crossover of classes for each faction, but in Mythic fashion, they decided to give those classes different names for each faction and possibly a few minor differences. In any case, it's a MMOG. Should be fun to try out. Here's hoping to getting to test it for free. I'm getting stingy in my old age. Are they doing an open beta?

Right now there are 10 for each side. Was 12 each before the recent cut.

The hysterics on Slashdot are pretty funny.  They are going bonkers of the fact that the end-game has been trimed from 6 cities to 2 cities for launch.  I hope they never find out about AoC.  A game with semi-functioning end-game 7 weeks after release should kill them.

Without any NDA antics I can tell you from their website, from previews on gaming sites and interviews that this is not true. There are two MDPS classes in each faction. Look at the "armies" on the main WAR website to find them in Empire and Elves for Order and Dark Elf and Chaos for Destruction.

How the fuck is it Warhammer without Orc Choppas and Dwarf Hammerers? About the only thing that would hurt my inner fanboy more than losing the hammerer would be losing witch hunters.

WAR is gonna suck, isn't it.

Choppa removal stunned me too, it was on my to-roll list on release. Hammerer not so much, they didn't go with Slayer and Hammerer just seemed like a cheap second thrill compared to it.

I know quite a few people who are very very angry about the Choppa removal. I was never really a fan of Greenskins or Dwarves, so it doesnt so much matter to me.

Also looking at the class vote over at Warhammer Alliance Choppa is a very popular class, however the removal should be perfectly understandable for anyone in the beta. I'm a sucker for Greenskins, but for me its all about the ELVSES. The High ones.

There's not exactly a shortage of MMOs where you can play elves, though.

This situation seems oddly reminiscent of DAoC's release; at release much of Hibernia's art assets had yet to be finished and several classes needed major retooling or entire redesigns. It seems they've taken a different path this time with deciding to cut the content entirely, which is probably a better long term decision but is getting them a ton of flack right now. It's probably not a bad thing for them to complain now either, better now than at release.

The removal of the Choppa is definitely disappointing though.

There is a massive shortage of MMOs where elves actually are cool.

This statement seems to assume that elves can, in some way...be cool. Sorry, not even in an alternate universe.

(http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/home/images/main/window-option_1.gif)

As cool as it gets.

Furry.

Well kinda sorta but not really. You're probably confusing the tank classes, which can spec for damage, with straight up melee damage classes. There's a fair amount of crossover based upon specialization; you'll probably be surprised to see the archmage considered a healing class, or a shadow warrior counted as ranged DPS. I think the way they figure it is that if you can tank or heal, you're a tank or a healer. If you can't tank/heal but can do significant ranged damage, you're ranged DPS. If none of the above, melee dps. The current distribution is:

Tanks: black orc, iron breaker, chosen, swordmaster
Melee DPS: marauder, witch elf, witch hunter, white lion
Ranged DPS: engineer, squig herder, magus, bright wizard, sorcerer, shadow warrior
Healer: shaman, runepriest, zealot, warrior priest, disciple, archmage

See how a lot of these classes sound identical? Witch elf/witch hunter, swordmaster/shadow warrior/warrior priest/runepriest, etc. Too many damn classes.

Too many damn classes is a virtual Mythic Cliche at this point. Is cliche even the word I'm looking for?

So if I log on my blood elf hunter and go tame Echeyakee I'll be as cool as it gets as well?  :drill:

Thats cause it isn't possible.

I agree with everything you've said above.

Mark

Hard as it sounds like it was to make those cuts, they seem like wise moves to me.  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about both DAoC's unfinished Hibernia faction and AoC's bait-and-switch difference in polish between the 1-20 experience and the post 20 game. 

A game that launches with a complete but limited set of content that you can play through from beginning to end, but with limited replayability will generate a lot more positive buzz than a game with lots and lots of mediocre/incomplete content.  And while you may lose some subscriptions when people run out of content if they don't like what you have for the end-game, they won't be out there telling their friends to avoid the game at all costs and swearing to never buy anything from that publisher again.

Folks who leave a game having had a good time and feeling they got their money's worth and are just sad they ran out of things to do will be favorably inclined to come back later once there IS more stuff to do.  Folks who leave because they were frustrated as heck at all the broken crap they kept running into and ran out of patience at the slow rate of improvement will be bitter and far less inclined to give you another chance.  First impressions and all that really DO matter!

I see no problem Brad...ärrr...Mark.....
Its not Housinghammer, AllClassesHammer, OpenRvRHammer, Cityhammer or Funhammer...its just WAR... :nda:

I agree with everything you've said above.   

Tega   

I do hope WAR isn't panning out in the same way DAoC did though. There was a lot of unfinished and untested content a few months before DAoC's release (Was Hibernia even in this many month's before release? I remember it being added very late.), so I'd hope WAR isn't in the same shape. On the one hand being willing to cut content and, hopefully, add it in later is fine and not a bad decision... but it still is a bit worrying.

Whatever though, Mythic's already got my money for a CE copy. Ignorance of what's happening in beta is bliss I guess.

Since NO ONE is spending a word on what truly matters.

Could you explain how the four city removal is going to affect the zone structure? If I'm not wrong the end game zones were all linked together so there could be a "war front" that would go back and forth and eventually get pushed back till one of the two capitals.

Three full zones, plus the two capitals. So five zones in total.

Now two fronts lose their capital cities. That's a total of six zones (plus four cities) that now lead nowhere?

It seems to me that removing four cities isn't just about "less content", but it's a completely turnabout of the endgame structure.

What are you doing with this?

I'm glad mythic is being upfront about what it intends to cut/push back from the release. Rather then take the funcom route of let the players discover what isn't there that was promised. On a related note...  :nda:

Live by the license, die by the license.

They said the access to the city would open when players are winning 2 out of 3 available campaigns, which makes it sound these 'no city' zones still hold equal importance in the whole city sacking process.

I'm not completely surprised about the cuts to melee dps, it doesn't have the range of options that support, or caster can have anyway.

But the tank cuts seem odd. KotBS was a buffing tank, wheras Blackguard appears to be a debuffing tank.

Seems odd to miss buffing tanks off of one side and debuff tanks off of the other, unless they plan to roll the abilities into Dwarf-tank and Chaos-tank (I forget what they are called)


meh.

Blame GW.

Most of the those class names you list are obvious choices based upon the GW army lists.

Personally I think there has been too much whining about the number of classes. I find the WoW approach tiresome. The more classes I have to mess around with the better. CoH, EVE, EQ2, even daoc all benefitted enormously from having a large number of classes.



Ok, so those cities aren't coming back then.

Thats were I differ, I prefer having a smaller selection of classes.  I like WOW's approach.  Have a bunch of archtypes then have your talent tree specialize into, realistically, different classes.

Don't even see the need for specialized sub-trees thing in class based game, tbh. Sure everyone wants to be the unique snowflake, but then at the end of day they are invited to group for the cookie-cutter ability their class brings to the table, not for their uniqueness.

And if they're going to allow change of abilities via specializations etc then might as well go the full way and simply allow players to pick up multiple classes and change between them.

I don't necessarily prefer a smaller number of classes, but I do feel there are certain advantages to restricting the number. Beyond simply making base development easier (and class/realm balance in a PvP game is a HUGE deal) it also allows for each class to have a distinct role and feel, with unique abilities and mechanics, and allows for creation of challenges tuned for abilities that are more likely to be present in a smaller pool.

Bear in mind that the WAR system is pretty close to the CoH & EQ2s archetype + class/powerset system.

You can think of WAR as having 4 classes if you want.

You could do that, if you knew nothing about the game or were looking to deceive people.

Here are the four melee DPS classes. All four have very different mechanics and playstyles. They do damage at melee range, and that's about all that ties them together. Now this all sounds pretty cool, but that's four classes that need to be polished and balanced. The other archetypes have five or six.

Witch hunter: mechanic is combo points(accusations)/finishing moves(executions), specialize in single-target damage / group or surprise attacks / DoT
Marauder: 3 stances: single-target damage / DoT and debuff / AE damage
White lion: Pet class, can specialize in debuffing / pet damage / AE damage
Witch elf: rage-like mechanic generating power on damage only, can specialize in single-target damage / DoT / group or stealth attacks

The trick is that within those archetypes the roles are pretty much the same, much like with CoH archetypes, which makes everything much easier to balance. CoH theoretically has hundreds of classes. They cope.


Compare that to daoc, where key functions were often divided in different ways across the realms, available in different amounts, and often with specialist roles not available at all in some realms.

You end up with cc being a specialist caster role in one realm, a healer role in another, and spread around the casters in a third.

You end up with all hibbie casters having 10 second stun, while albs are left with 30 second root, and you end up with functions such as turret pets in one realm only, or gtaoe only practical for use in two realms. Daoc also had different numbers of classes per realm, leading to (depending on your opinion) dilution by spreading abilities to thinly in the realm with lots of classes, or giving the many-classed realm an unfair number of choices.


Having many classes isn't the problem - doing it without some kind of structure behind it is what causes the problem.

I agree that having a ton of classes all with different mechanics is cool. All four of those classes sound kinda sweet, don't they? I question the decision to implement so many classes with the same purpose as I feel it'll be difficult to balance in PvP and deliver compelling PvE content.

If it were my game, I would use 1 hardcore melee damage class, 1 hardcore ranged, and 4 hybrids that can spec to damage/tank/heal. Six classes is plenty.

Was I wrong in thinking/reading that all the capital cities were linked. You had to conquer A to start attacking B, then C,D.

I did not think you could attack C before attacking Capital A.


If supose you could attack any Capital in any order, dosen't that design just lead to the Zerg whomping about whereever the action is, like planetside.


Beyond that without server regulation of player numbers on each faction, each server will get their own image of thats a Order server or a Destruction server. Will there be Login queues for factions?  No clue how DAoC did it.

DAoC didn't do jack about it, a few servers sucked as a result.

It wasn't quite so bad after new frontiers, where the imbalanced servers were paired up with servers imbalanced in the other direction for RvR.

I understand WAR has some kind of NPC driven auto-balancing to help the losing realm, but I guess no one can really know if it it'll do any good till launch.

It won't help that WAR has the wrong number of realms ofc.

My understanding is that you could attack any capital in any order, yes. That's why I like them cutting out the extra cities; it concentrates the PvP action and may lead to good fights.

I don't believe mythic has commented on what they'll do to address faction imbalances. The scenarios are instanced and can be handled like battlegrounds in WoW, but there are world PvP areas in every zone. Actually the capital cities are instanced once under attack too but since they impact PvE I can't imagine they'd be shared cross-server.

Each pair of capitals had a set of zones you had to 'win' to reach it. The sets were independent, you can attack any one of the three at any time.

This just means it is the same city at the end of each set of zones, and you have to win two sets to access the city.

Really? Still? You haven't given up yet? You must get off to following Mark around and claiming some new crime against your own personal humanity.

After it some thought, yes it makes sense to concentrate the pvp, however I'd surmise that if they do eventually put the other cap cities in after launch one thing that might be an idea is to have only one city that is vulnerable and open to attack a time, and rotate on a schedule or something. 

I suspect that Mythic were looking hard and realized that to get all this content polished, they were looking at a year, not a couple of months, and that that just wasn't going to fly.

I am skeptical about Mythic's ability to polish, though. A buddy and I pulled down the DAoC trial a few months ago. There were several quests right in the Albion newbie zone which were bugged, all these years after release.

In comparison to other titles of the era, daoc was practically chromed at launch.



Also, I think people are overdoing the polish argument. It's becoming something people just say when they have no evidence either way but just don't get a good feeling about a game. Having a hunch that something is going to suck is ok, we do that a lot.

I'm not trying to suggest it isn't important to polish, but the only mmogs I can remember that were thought of as fairly polished at launch were CoH and maybe PS, and even they burnt out relatively quickly.

Agreed, but you're missing my point. After all these years, DAoC is still not as polished as its modern competitors.

And "polish" can mean a lot of things. One interpretation is that it's all the little things that a game can do right that add up to magical and immersive experience. Another is having taken all the necessary rounds of iterative design to balance, streamline and weed out the parts that aren't fun. You can make up for a certain degree of this if your game is different in a revolutionary way. But WAR isn't.

Anyway, this is all talk, because I'm not in the beta so don't have any idea really.

Regardless of WAR people have just set their bar higher for mmo's. AoC is a prime example of this, as by the standards of MMO's pre-wow AoC would have been a smashing success even with the bugs and lack of content. I'm not talking about success as far as subcribers since the market has also grown I'm simply talking about mass appeal for the market that exists.

But AoC wasn't a hit, it did simply, ok. People want more and expect more now, whether it's an expectation that can be met or not isn't the point. As I've said in other thread games have to move forward. Either in graphics or gameplay or design. You have to give your customers something they can't get elsewhere and unless WAR can do that it will simply flounder.

This is just my personal opinion but war doesn't seem revolutionary at all, it seems like a different flavor of diku in the warhammer universe which means it will compete directly with the wow crowds. Yes WAR might have a different name for battlegrounds or the ruleset may be different but you're still playing the same DnD game, just a different campaign set instead of say playing rifts or something.

So considering WAR is the same model as WOW the differences lay only in the IP and the little tweaks. People will comb over every little detail of WAR, they will judge every single thing against wow because they simply are too similar. The question is, will WAr stand up to all of this or will people simply try it out for a bit and then get bored. What's the hook?

Mythic: Riding coattails since 2001

(insert "Sing the song that ends the Earth" PA comic here)  :awesome_for_real:

Gameplay-wise wow came first. That the warcraft universe was spawned from the warhammer one doesn't really matter, but hilarious comic regardless, link plz.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/4/10/i-hope-you-like-text/

And daoc came before that, and eq before that, and various other junk before that. Most steps improved the formula in gameplay and/or production values.

EQ2 and CoH have taken it on since.

You expect improvement over time in any industry, that isn't new or surprising. I assume Mythic would be disappointed if WAR turns out be only as professionally produced as DAoC. (Not that the industry has moved an enormous amount since then anyway)

It's an evolution I think we both agree. I should say wow came 'before' not first, which would be more accurate. If wow is homo sapien, for WAR to be big, it needs to be homo superior, which I'm not sure it can be. I think it will be good but another flavor of wow era gameplay at best, daoc/eq2 era gameplay at worst.

No, it doesn't need to be homo superior.  It just needs to be more attractive.  Homo Superior will be something else all together.

It doesn't even need to be better than WoW. It just needs to NOT SUCK and have enough shit different from WoW to attract a decent number of people who want something a bit different. The problem is that apparently no one in the world besides Blizzard is capable of making an MMO that has NOT SUCK.

This.

Hmm, a monthly subscribed buffet restaurant is what I compare MMORPGs to. Some never change their menu at all, some gives the occasional interesting spreads (Hey, new dish archetypes mmmm) or double ice cream scoops on weekends (COH). But if you serve the same food as WoW, prepare to be out-spread and out-serviced with their Cream of the Lich King special.

You all just lost 25 posts because someone couldn't obey NDA. Don't be retarded. Stay in school.

Looks like WAR has their own version of the WOW Armory:

http://realmwar.warhammeronline.com/realmwar/Index.war

If you're in the beta you can test it out.

As long as the rollback didn't affect my post count it's all good with me.

Is that some new form of currency? Or should I continue not caring?

I'm not in beta, but that looks like it's just the same thing as daoc had, a page that tracks rvr status, the guild scoreboards, and individual pvp achievements (that might be what you meant by a wow armory, I don't know what a wow armory is, but it sounds different?).

It was long stated that WAR will have an improved version of the Herold/Herald.... thingy.

WOW STOLE IT FROM MYTHIC!!!!!!!!!  :nda:

Honestly, I think this kind of a thing is now a standard for a top shelf MMO. And despite the best efforts of SOE, free of charge as part of your sub. Thank you Lum & Mythic.

Doesn't EQ2 have something similar? I remember following a link there at some point.

I assume the removed posts came from the guy adding his two cents to cut n' paste from a website devoted to beta leaks. Nice job.

DaoC had the Herald forever yea. One of the many things DaoC did right.

No.

I've highlighted the flaw in your argument: what is different 'enough' from WoW that a 'decent number' of people who want something 'different'? If you want to play something WoW-like, you play WoW. That's it. Game over. LOTRO gave it a shot, got enough subs to make some money, but aren't in WoW's league in terms of sub numbers.

Doing the same but different pretty much always sees the original dominate the copy.

What's more likely: that Blizzard's next MMO is going to be WoW 2 or Universe of Starcraft? Why do you think that would be?

Blizzard already has a diku clone, and they only rip off (polish/perfect/whatever) successful games, and the only successful MMO that isn't a diku is EVE online, so I'm going to be all bold and predict that starcraft online will be an ineffably polished homage to EVE. Either that or Activision forces them to clone/polish/perfect/whatever ZT Online (http://www.danwei.org/electronic_games/gambling_your_life_away_in_zt.php). In that case we're all just fucked.

I'm trying to work out if this has anything to do with man-dick or not...

I played WAR up at Origins a few weeks ago, and I'm not in the beta so please don't dock me 25 posts.   :ye_gods:

UI-Excellent, really good looking to me.  Loved the item boxes especially, great fonts.  Hear that AoC?
Avatars-Very good looking but they skate around the ground like they did in DAoC, minor annoyance
Terrain-Great visuals for the most part.  I got lost a few times in some forest.
Monsters-Looked good

I played a Elf Archmage (boring as hell, slow to level)
Human Fire Wizard (same fire wizard from DAoC, but killed stuff faster than the Spanish Flu)
Goblin Squig Herder (same as playing a Hunter from WoW you just get your squig at 1st level)

Overall my impression was a big fat 'meh'.  It's a shinier version of WoW to me.

But once the game opens I think it will be a lot better because I'll have my friends to group with and maybe do more than scratch the surface of this shiny game.  Plus it's beta.

Not playing a healer though, looks like a rough time leveling for them.
Just my opinion.

I think it would be more correct saying they have their version of DAoC's Herald.

EQ2 has a portal similar to WoW's armory, but they put a lot of the features at a $3/month charge. As a result, not very many people use it. (I've honestly never heard of anyone who did.) And a lot of us actively resent it because they're trying to charge for something everyone else offers for free. On the other hand, I can at least look up a guild roster and that type of thing, so it's a site that I have used the free parts of.

Eh, I didn't play DAOC so I stand corrected.  Could you look up individual players and check out their gear and spec etc?

It's curious that you have decided to enforce a contract that you are not a party to.  I can't wait for all the reviews here to have a minimum score of 89%

They have always been draconian about NDA breaches.  You act as if it is a new thing.

They want developers to post here, and devs won't post on a site with NDA violations as it could be seen as condoning that behavior. Simple as that.

Also, it's scummy.

I think I was the person who started it,.  But I am not in the Beta and hence I am not subject to an NDA, I was just reporting what I read on a third party website so I didn't think I was running afoul of the NDA.  is there a point at which leaked information becomes common knowledge enough that we can discuss it?

In any event, I recognize that it is schilds call on what is appropriate or innappropriate, so I will try to be more careful in the future.

Never paid attention before.  And "because we have always done it" just distracts from the question.

I guess as previously mentioned, anything you post can be determined to be an NDA violation since the moderators do not have access to each individual contract was agreed to (or if there even is an NDA.)  It's a private website that isn't subject to Free Speech rights and so on.

The corollary to this is:  only caring about NDAs where devs might conceivably visit here anyway.  Hence, the mixed signals coming from the WoW board. 

Well yeah, but the WOTLK NDA violations are so incredibly widespread that it would be like ignoring a purple elephant.

I don't dispute that as a practical matter.  My point is that the concern derives from self-interest (getting devs to post here), and not any innate belief in the absolute sacredness of the NDA. 

I think there's some truth to that, yes. Not that schild and co would break a NDA they personally signed, they aren't scumbunnies, but they would probably allow it to be linked from other sites otherwise.

It's my personal theory that Mark paid schild nuke the thread because we discussed WoW subscription numbers and Mark is trying to clean the internet of any discussion of WoW numbers so that when he tells us that 100k subscribers is better than WoW we'll agree.

Or something.

Mark reads here. Mark would ask to have the information removed if he saw it.  So, we remove such information as a courtesy without him having to send PMs.  Other factors are present, which I am unable to discuss. 

As far as I know, no one from Blizzard has asked us to remove any WOTLK information nor have we any first hand breakages. I'm somewhat ambivalent on this case, due to the largest WoW sites posting insider alpha information and there being entire well known wikis chock full of NDA breaking material.   :sad_red_panda:

Wish I could say more, but it just boils down to courtesy and respect.   We didn't get any bagels.

Read: Mods like being in the beta

You don't have to remove anything, even if he asks nicely.  Of course, you don't get beta slots...

 :roll:

You really don't know this place at all.

We had the technical capability to publish that data (it was available to CSRs) but our players were almost unanimously opposed to it.

Blizzard has views on data/player privacy (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/items/tinfoilhat.xml) that I... somewhat disagree with, to put it mildly.

As Mark's reading here:
WoW dropped their NDA in March for a late 2004 launch.
WAR still has their NDA up, presumably for a late 2008 launch.
Does this mean WAR is less ready than WoW was at this relative point in time?

As was mentioned before, it is a courtesy. We have always done it when we find NDA violations for any game. Plenty of places around the net to post and read if this horrible breach of free speech on a privately run website makes you moody.

One of the Netdevil developers was talking about Auto Assault, Betas, and NDAs in a recent interview.  His "lesson learned" is that Beta tests for MMOs are little more than Demos and NDAs in beta usually mean your game isn't that good and probably shouldn't be in Beta in the first place.

Well no, they're also useful as stress tests.

But really that's why I'm looking forward to WAR dropping the NDA so we can discuss how they conducted their beta, as I haven't seen anything like it before.

From the gameplay vid at E3 i agree.

Okay people it's time to stop speculating about why the posts were deleted. As amiable said it was schild's call. He's busy to moving to Austin so he can't give his reasons at the moment (assuming he wants to).

Read this post for the guidelines on what to post regarding games still under NDA:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13793.0

Firstly, NetDevil. Who appear on the verge of not being able to even get a Lego MMO done right.

Secondly, the market associates an NDA drop as the point where the game is good enough to talk about. Having an NDA on open beta is pointless, sure, but an NDA on a closed beta is useful as a preventative measure for stopping everyone talking about bugs / issues that are planned to be fixed. It locks down discussion to some degree, which is useful for a game under a form of testing.

Best practise in a beta is certainly not having an open beta too early or letting players scream far and wide that it OMG SUX. Hence the NDA, which says players can get kicked out of beta (at least) if they get caught breaking it.

As for what f13 does - it's a social contract of sorts. Just like I don't post NSFW pictures throughout threads - there's no contract that says I can't, but it is just poor form for doing it on f13. Elsewhere it might be acceptable.

I, for one, will be sure to not break any NDAs or post and NDA breaking stuff, even though I have no idea what NDAs are in place, having never read or been told of said NDAs.  (lol)

If a game is still in Beta assume there's an NDA in place until you hear otherwise from an official source.

So we can't talk about games in Beta?

His point was that by the time you reach beta, every system should be done and your bug queue should be close to empty.

You can still lie about them though.

Did you read the guidelines?

How could anyone be sure unless they read the NDA.  You are asking people to follow a document they have never seen...nevermind. Good luck on your beta invite.

... ready to be filled up with all the new bugs and system changes that players find / suggest.

It's a line call if changing systems in beta is a good idea or not, but if a lot of beta players say that system X sucks and needs to be improved, then you (the dev) should strongly consider it.

I agree on launching at feature and content complete, but beta should be a testing phase as well, and testing may reveal needed changes. Having an NDA in place for part of that stops a lot of confusing information coming out ("We started with a skill system, but now we have skill trees! Ignore all the other information you've seen about the skill system!").

He's being purposefully obtuse.  Don't waste your time unless it's to nuke him. :drillf:

We all know games like to put out some information.  With the number of people following them it'll be fairly common knowledge about what has been released.  The rest is speculation on past behavior, hopes, and the crap we've all seen before.  Thankfully, most of us have at least a touch of common sense.

A beta game NDA covers *everything* in the game -- i.e. you can't publically talk about anything in the beta version of the game. It's not a selective thing where certain beta features you can talk publically about and others you can not.

Okay I've modified the original guidelines since some people apparently don't know what a game NDA is about. Read this:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13793.0

and if you have more questions/concerns/comments post in there (I unlocked it).

Really? Still? The Armory has been violating the "privacy" of WoW's players for over a year, they never gave the players an opt-in or an opt-out, and somehow the game still has millions of subscribers. You still think they're doing it wrong?

I think they got an idea for a great peripheral feature of their game, developed it, and published it, and didn't roll it all back at the first sign of trouble from a player whining about "privacy". Now there are entire websites that are powered by this new data source that Blizzard has provided. I bet you could count the number of players who quit over the god damned Armory on one donut.

Here's an idea. You don't have to try it, though. I'm just thinking out loud here: Make a game that's so good that the players will accept little indignities, like having data that [Your Company] owns be published on [Your Company's Domain].

I've noticed that Blizzard does things that no one else will dare to do. Like poke fun at the small-minded idiosyncrasies of their playerbase. And publicly humiliate players who are trying to jerk them around. Oh, and create the best diku mmog in the world.

"The customer is always right" is a relic of a bygone age, when customers were few and far between, behaved like grown adults, and were willing to pay top dollar for good service. Here in the real world, the customer is sometimes wrong, the customer sometimes doesn't know what they really want, and the customer sometimes shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of improving your game.

I think you meant to say "they saw this idea for a great peripheral feature on 3rd party sites like Thottbots during beta, and rolled their own some year+ later".

That's just being a dick on the internets. Half of the MMO community managers are like that, Blizzard is hardly a spearhead here.

That is might fine cocksucking there, son.  Keep up the fine work.

Is Bat Country in this round now? Time to have them removed for far to much discussion so far. :P

Yes. Amazingly, some ethical decisions are based on other than financial considerations.

I also happen to believe devoting a page on your website to mocking the opinions of some of your customers may not be the most professional thing to do.

Clearly, however, since I do not work on World of Warcraft, my opinions have no merit.

Well I never said Blizzard came up with their own ideas :)

Apparently, it's not just ethical decisions that don't have financial success as a motivator. I predict that whatever you're currently working on won't break 300k subs. I'm sure you'll explain that away with ethics too.

I know, I know. How did I ever come up with such a pessimistic number. It's like I'm Nostradamus or something.

Hey you know what? I'd absolutely love it if someone would come along and knock WoW off its perch. Or even compete with them. It would be great for me, the consumer, if someone other than Blizzard was making high-quality MMOGs. But they're not. They're putting shit on a plate and expecting us to call it steak.

I called WoW "the best diku mmog". Some would say that was damning it with faint praise. You came up with "cocksucking".

Thanks for the update and the sticky!  Much clearer now.   Sorry for the earlier violation.

As for everyone else, whatever the motivation of the mods for not breaking the NDA (morality, free beta invites, hookers and blow) this is still a privately run website and they are free to delete posts or ban folks for whatever reason.  This is not a democracy and we are not unique and special snowflakes.

Introducing an Armory-like feature to an existing game that launched without it and therefore players had some expectation of keeping things about their characters secret from other players is perhaps a bit questionable, but launching a game that has such a feature already in place isn't, because it's part of the deal you sign up for.  Going to play this game?  Then you should be aware that your build/stats/items/etc will be publically viewable.  Even so, I support Blizzard's decision to introduce the Armory to their existing game despite the players' earlier expectations of secrecy, simply because I think the benefits outweigh the downside, and as with anything in MMOG's, all players should expect change in any or all areas of the game.

And except for the question of players having expected this information to be secret at one point, and later it no longer was, I see very little downside to the Armory that isn't overwhelmingly outweighed by its benefits.  Keeping those things secret has very few legitimate upsides, other than allowing players to decieve each other, while making them public allows players to ferret out the liars if they're interested.  The downside is that in some PvP engagements the enemy may have in-depth knowledge of your talents and equipment, but there are, honestly, rather few engagements where this is true.  It's rare to be able to spend time studying a target, getting their name, looking them up on the armory and learning about their build before engaging.

As for mocking your customers, I think some people deserve to be mocked when they behave in a manner that is worthy of it.  Including myself, on the occasions I do something worth mocking.  Should a company do that to its customers?  Eh.  If the people running the company feel that way, then I think they should.  But then I have somewhat unusual opinions about tact, being offended, and how to best communicate, so I recognize I might be in a minority when it comes to thinking that way.  Realistically speaking, it obviously wouldn't work for all companies - it works for Blizzard because they're secure enough to do so and because they've got a reputation that allows them to get away with it without pissing off too many customers.

Wow, way to be a dick there, Hutch. If you have something to say, come out and say it. Because it looks like you came out of left field and attacked probably the one single person everybody on this board likes and respects for no particular reason.

Oh lord, is this about the April Fool's day stuff?  If anything, their occasional parodies made me MORE likely to subscribe, because it shows that some people there have a sense of humor- and people with a sense of humor make better games than those without.  Do you think many of the humorous details in WoW (the kind of stuff that gives an MMO world life) would be there if they were all corpses in suits?  This reminds me of the Dr. Twista incident that you covered extensively on LTM (someone live-linked a photo of the EQ staff to the Twista frontpage, so the devs changed it to a photo mocking Twista).  In that comment thread, someone made a comment about how they were offended because the time the devs took to put that picture up is time they weren't spending improving the game.  Offense about the "tinfoil hat" is pretty much at that level. 

And re: Armory- as a lawyer, "privacy" does not mean what you think it means.  Blizzard isn't violating any of your "rights" by using the Armory.   

We covered the obligatory comment about free speech and the constituion already.  Thanks for playing

A DaoC armory that showed gear would be moot regardless, everyone used the same near identical SC-Templates for their classes  :grin:

I'm not trying to be a dick but do you even know what a beta is? A real beta, not the open beta stress test the servers stuff.

That was his whole point.  MMOG betas are no longer "real betas."  They are dog and pony shows. 

And yet you still complained...  Funny that.  And I was more mocking you for your accusations that there was some sort of Beta invite quid pro quo for quashing NDA violations.   :tinfoil:

Well at least you understood the point...

This is incorrect. Some betas are dog and pony shows, but many are making real changes based on how things work when players get in and put the game through its paces. Did you suddenly become a petulant newbie?

Wow, I'm kind of amazed that there are, like, intelligent people who consider WoW's armory a moral issue.  I mean... really?  Really?  Is it bad to be able to inspect people too?  What the hell?

It's too late at that point. If you are making wholesale changes in Beta, then your closed alpha testing was inadequate and you are in trouble. That was the lesson learned from Auto Assault.   I dug up one of the articles for you all via google cache for the other lessons learned, but so much is blocked here at work that I can't dig up the specific article I'm talking about.

 http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/7919

I probably shouldn't have responded to Lum's initial aside.  We risk unleashing a torrent of crazy (not from Lum specifically, just generally). 

A different game and anectdotal evidence so take it with inch of salt, but LotRO has the anonymous switch which also disables ability to inspect the player (their version of inspect shows equipment but also the traits they picked and such) ... i'd estimate ~1/3rd of the players do use that switch. The catch here is, there's no way to tell how many of these people utilize it simply so they don't show up in character listings and to free themselves from random PUG requests.

It's quite simply the MMO generation gap showing.

"In my day you had to stare at your spellbook to regen mana, that tub of true black was my goddamned right to own and get the hell offa mah lawn, corp por you little bitches!"

The righteous indignation and the outdated design philosophies of many in the industry show why we won't be getting our wow alternative for some time.

Oh, I can certainly see not wanting to add an armory-like feature for game design reasons, or a feature that allows you to turn it off (and turn inspection off, too), I just think it's a little over the top to suggest that the armory is a morally wrong invasion of privacy...

Plus, the Armory reveals the lies people tell about their avatar and its capabilities.  If pwning a 14 year old with PROOF that they are lying out of their ass or are stupid ("BUFF MY CLASS, I AM WEAK"- "Umm, you are wearing level 30 greens, newb") is morally wrong, I don't want to be right. 

I have some issues with it, but mostly because players are idiots.  If you read the forums post Armory, almost every thread devolves into a "Your ideas have no merit because your gear sux" followed by "lol, I can't believe the newb in T[X] gear just said someone elses gear sux!1!".  Of course that just means staying away from the forums, because the idiots there will find some way to be idiots no matter how much you limit their toolset.

The other privacy concern I have is that you can somewhat keep tabs on if people playing the game by checking their armory update times.  If you don't log in the "last updated" doesn't refresh.  I'm not quite sure WHY that bugs me, but in some strange way it does.  Of course with an account you can keep tabs on people's playtimes just by logging in and doing a /who, so I can't quite place my finger on why I don't like it from outside the game but I have no problems with it inside the game.  Probably just hung over.

Armory or not, this info would still be out there in some form or another. So why not just publish it yourself and call it a service? (http://eq2players.station.sony.com/characters/character_profile.vm?characterId=283053117)

Its just like way points for quest goals. The info, if not a mod/tool/plugin will be out regardless (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/addons/browse/?q=tomtom&s=1&x=0&y=0), and people will use it. So, why not do it yourself and make a feature (http://www.ageofconan.com/)? Then design quests around it, where the complication or challenge to the quest doesn't involve not providing (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml) enough info as (http://everquest.station.sony.com/) a way to make it take longer (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml) and add "challenge".

Because if not, the only challenge is deciding what website to look up where it is.

This applies only to the small minority of forum trolls.

But for a bragging rights game where success is measured in Equipment and recognition is gained through showing off the equipment (because laying a boss in PvE raid instance isn't recognized by 99,9% of server population), armoury for WoW makes some sort of sense.

However in my case, armoury is to blame for the breakdown of our Kara Raid. However I do not state that the breakdown wouldn't have taken place anyways. But it certainly wasn't beneficial.

Let's just say I don't agree. Snooping around and finding stuff is certainly part of the fun. Some quests have too crappy instructions, fair enough, but as long as there's some logic to why things are where they are, I would say a slight lack of directions is a good thing. I don't think Conan's way of giving out perfect information was in any way an improvement over previous models. It just made the entire game feel excruciatingly grindy as you never had to consider what a single quest ever said.

Because, to be honest, if one finds it more fun to just streamroll through the game, being served in detail what to do at any given time, there will be those sites to use in time, as you're saying. When presenting this information straight up inside the game, there's no way people such as myself can avoid using it. It ruins part of what we find to be interesting with being in another world.

You also don't have to in Wow, at all. (See tomtom, and wowhead UI mods) Was part of my point. But in contrast, yes in AOC you did need to read quests, it may have told you where to go, but once you got there, you had to figure out the rest.

Perfect. No.

Enviable. yes. Skip the middle man, and do it yourself, this way you have more control about the info you do provide players. Example: One brilliant thing about AOC (besides the really well written quests), were the area markers, the circles with the lines that told you "about" in this area.

In wow, its a double whammy, Badly written quests, bad world layout (nothing relates) and horrible directions, if at all. To some this is "challenge" to others, its just yet another cockblock.

There is a balance to be found.

As the developer don't you have full control what info you provide to the players anyway? If you choose to provide limited amount of info, one that creates room for the "middle man" then that's design choice. Providing as much info as that middle man would is also the design choice, but neither grants more control over how much info is provided, really. That control was always in your hands.

Btw this argument (if i don't do it someone else will so why not do it yourself) renders number of game genres that involve puzzles to some extent, either obsolete or self-defeating. There's FAQs and walkthroughs written for everything on the interwebs, why then even provide option of challenge for the player (including ones who aren't interested in just following such walkthroughs) to begin with? Could just fill the game with big arrows accompanied with "now click here, moron" ... but would that really improve experience for every player?

I know I don't have to in WoW, which was also a part of my point. :drill: I rarely did use sites for that, not until I had given it an ample try myself. Some did just suck, however. Great to have those sites for those, however rare, occasions. My point was that it shouldn't be mandatory to give out, not that it shouldn't be possible to look up if you wanted.

Secondly you can not control information by releasing better information. You can only suppress misinformation. Consider WoW Armory and WoWJutsu and all the other Armory-mining services. The more perfect information you can extract from the game, the more will people use it, the more it will become the norm to use. Essentially, what I worry will happen is that games that are already very heavy on number-crunching will be reduced even further, warping into hyperspeed one-way trains where nothing is allowed to take time or consideration. I feel Conan's way of fessing up with everything you need to know straight away is a step in that direction.

Optimally I'd like to see an official, external service (a bit like the Lorebook for LotRO (http://lorebook.lotro.com)), not the intrusive model that Conan uses.

Although, I may be biased since I haven't really played any quest-based games other than LotRO since it released, apart from some Conan. And you all know LotRO kicks ass. :awesome_for_real:

yes, one of the reason its awesome is the amount of info provided in the quest log about any given quest, including the pre, middle, and finished text of a given quest.

They do not intentionally inflate the time frame for completion by using lack of information as a "challenge". But they still leave room for exploration, and they way you receive quests, you will already be somewhat familiar about the area in question (the relation part of my other post).

In other games, the quest progression as you encounter them are disjointed, compounded with lack of useful info in the quest log text.

That puzzle games tangent reminded me of rather nice way the latter Tex Murphy adventure games (Under a Killing Moon etc) dealt with this issue -- they did come with basically whole walkthrough built-in and accessible from the in-game help system, but solution to each step was provided as series of increasingly easier hints... similar to how sites like http://www.uhs-hints.com/ work. That gave the player much better control over their game experience, but then of course involves more work.  :ye_gods:

I think I did just come out and say it, but I'll repeat it if you like. I'd agree with Lum, if Blizzard was publishing guild (or other private) chat, or players diaries, or something along those lines. Builds, gears, and rep levels aren't personal. They're just attributes of your character. You are not a unique and special snowflake. Blizzard owns that data, and they can do what they want with it.

On a more meta level, letting the players tell you what to do, instead of deciding for yourself what to do, is not the path to success. It's also not a way to guarantee that the players will stay subscribed. You're going to have to build a good game to make that happen.

Having said that, you're right. I was being a dick.

I also think it's fair to say that Lum is not drooling in the corner because some asshole on the internet told him he was wrong.

Some of the EQ quest design was excellent in this regard, and the world they created enabled it so easily.  Now, admittedly, a good number of early EQ quests left you with few clues to move on, but many of them were also tremendously well designed in the subtle sense, in that it makes sense if you really think about it and understand the quest you're doing and know the world.  Some of the epic weapon quests were like this - although an equal or greater number suffered from a 'sheer randomness' problem where key NPC's and items were scattered randomly about the world with no particularly apparent reason to be there.  Some quests were great, following a logical path that you could discern, others could only be completed by checking Allakhazam or by sheer luck.  One quest that sticks out most in my mind was the quest for Ice Comet.  You'd get a book with a number of rhymes, each describing a location in-game.  For example: "The tears of Marr a pool make, two towers stand within this lake.  In one tower, guarded high, the fana dreams of sleeping dry."  That was one of the easier ones to find - the location described is the Oasis of Marr, which has two towers, one underwater and one on the island.  The piece is found in the underwater tower.  Others could be much harder to get, such as the one that says the Tiger watches a waterfall or something to that effect, or well of water, upside-down, since far less people knew those locations well.  Those refer to the Tiger's Roar in Highpass, and the Reanimated Hand room in Lower Guk which consists of a 'well' of water magically suspended leading up to the room.

I too lament the fact that the vast majority of games no longer put much effort into this kind of thing, simply accepting the fact that it will be spoiled and thus who cares about making it that fun or interesting to figure out.  Sadly the fact is they're probably right about the value of time spent to reward.  For the few people who enjoy figuring things out themselves these kinds of things are memorable bits that create a world that we can really like, but the vast majority of customers don't even read the short quest text that describes exactly where to go in completely clear terms, which is evidenced by the vast amount of people not even reading quests in WoW, just checking wowhead or asking other people for the instructions on what to do, even on quests where the instructions are laid out perfectly clearly within the quest.  So practically speaking, there isn't a hell of a lot of incentive to put much time into creating such interesting and cleverly designed quests.  I don't want to be told 'go here, kill that, take it elsewhere, and do this', I want to have to figure out some of that for myself, but such quests are rare and will continue to get rarer because time spent on that makes a very small percentage of customers happy.

But you have to figure that WAR is being marketed primarily as a PvP driven game, not PvE.  I know when I want to do some PvP, the last thing I want to do is spend hours searching for the awesome hand of foozle or somesuch.  Folks who are interested in PvP pretty much view the entire run up to end game as something to get through so the real fun can be had.

They have been conditioned this way, because of bad writing, and "ding" gratz, shiny at the end. MMO have not been about the journey for a while now. Its about the reward, and in most cases for a lot of people i would imagine, quest text is a speed bump in that road they don't want to have to do. (enter wowhead ETC...)

Thats why i keep saying, remove it as part of any kind of "challenge" mechanism in quests (AKA: lack of info, obscure, intentionally vague NPC text), and do real challenges.

Or narration (http://everquest2.station.sony.com/)/ Cinematic presentation (http://www.allakhazam.com/tomec/AoCScreens/mithrelle.jpg).

This is the potential weakness of the daoc/WAR model - mythic don't see things that way, and want to build pvp into the traditional diku.

The awesome hand of foozle will feature, the question is whether it will feature like in ToA, or merely like classic daoc.

I thought they made it possible to level up whole way in WAR doing nothing but PvP, which leaves the PvE aspect pretty much entirely optional and up to the people who are actually interested in it..?

That's correct, yes. Supposedly you can start RvR at level 1.

Question is how fun it'll be, considering ganking, 1on1 balance and all that.

This isn't NDA breaking because it was in a Podcast a ways back, but each area has an RVR area and a PVE area and they won't be mixed.

Well crap Lum, there goes my get rich data mining site!  :sad_panda:

Just set up a useful UI tool that also happens to inspect every player in range and reports back its findings to a central database.

well in terms of real gameplay at least you could explain actually examining a person from what 30 in game yards, rather than alt tabbing out and typing their name into a web broswer to see what they carry. Its being done in game and if you mock said person your doing it in game, not thru some forum bluster which should be banned and handed out 1-2-3 forum bannings for doing.

(http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2008/20080714.jpg)

Actually, my reaction was "Hell, I'll take 300k subs!" Actually, that might be too many. As I've said publically on many occasions, the more customers you scale up to support, the more generic the game becomes. You can't make a game with risky design decisions on a $100 million budget supporting millions of users. If you make a game with a more reasonable budget targeting users in the 100k-500k range, you can afford to take some risks.

And if you make a game that can survive off of 50k subs, you can do whatever the hell you want.

I'd think the readers here would be all over that, but, well, I've had assholes on the internet tell me I'm wrong before.

(Note that reading anything about NCsoft's present or future plans based on my bloviating on a message board may not be the wisest of ideas. My job title is Designer, not Producer, General Manager or CEO.)

As for the stuff re: the Armory - I used to work for a data warehousing company. I am a privacy fascist, because I've seen first hand the results of privacy laws and policies being misused. Admittedly Blizzard has managed somehow to be financially successful despite holding opinions on avatar privacy that differ from mine. I'm not sure how, but I suspect blood elves are involved.

(However, you're never going to convince me that mocking your customers in a forum or on your website is a really cool kickass rebel thing to do. Note also that my use of the word customers instead of players was intentional.)

I've been begging for that 50k niche PVP game that doesn't suck for years now.

You and I both.  I've come to the realization that my tastes are niche.  I just need someone to come to the conclusion that a game can be both niche and profitable.

When you are the King you can do whatever you want (with privacy). Witness Google and the way they've handled privacy issues over their history (i.e. badly).

Privacy is all well and good for certain things, but the WoW Armory doesn't tell you what players IPs are, what country they play from, how many hours they play each day/week/year, how many characters that have on the one account and what their names/classes/servers are, et cetera.

I think you'll find that Blizzard has strong ideas about player privacy too, they just disagree with you about what information about the players and player characters is important to respect and what information is reasonable to share.

And when I'm being a stupid fuckwit and someone illustrates that to me with a friendly joke my typical response is to laugh, not feel mocked and outraged. The fact that Blizzard openly responds to stupidity by saying "we're not doing that", "bad luck", "get over it", and the like, indicates to me that it's much easier build a good game by building a good game and not trying to pander to, humor, or even passively ignore the stupid 'customers'.

If it's ethically justified for you to have views on player privacy then we can say it's artistically justified for people to have views on game design. And at the end of the day people play games because they're good, not because they agree with the devs views on privacy. They might stop playing because they disagree (though WoW's example shows that some people make a big noise about stuff that is reasonably trivial to them), but they're not going to pick a title up just because they agree.

Hoax said that WoW showed that the customer isn't always right, but this is incorrect. When you look at the changes that have taken place in WoW you can clearly see a movement away from some of the 'original concepts' of the game to many customer driven expectations, requirements and requests. The fact that many of these have been for the better and has made the game more fun for many players shows that the customers do have a strong idea on what is 'right' for the game, not that they don't.

Hoax just misunderstands the expression: The 'customer' is not an individual and the expression is not to be applied in every individual instance.

I'm not in the WAR beta, but it seems like they are actually using it to develop the game, rather than have it just be a demo.

Damnit Lum. Now you have me excited that whatever you are working on might be Robot Jesus covered in a delicious candy shell.

Does it have FFA?  Why did you cut that class that never made it beyond concept art, it was my favorite one?  Why isn't the world larger?  Why does it feel more like a game than a world?  Why are you trying to make an artsy world and neglect gameplay?  Why aren't there elves?  Why doesn't it support same-sex avatar marriage, are you racist?  You OWE me explanations as someone who might buy your game!  Why do you want to restrict player's freedoms?  I HATE YOU I HATE YOU WHY ARE U SO GAY I QUIT

Probably a good thing I am not a paid CM, since I would take great pleasure in weeding out those types. Best way would be to remove their posts and then give them read only access to the forums. That should torture them properly.

If everything I touched turned to shit, I'd be that cynical too.  After all, I'm the most gifted and talented person on the planet, so if *I* can't pull it off, everyone else's projects must be complete shit.

Can I have your stuff?

This is one of the reasons I'm watchin Jumpgate:Evolution so closely.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I dont know if its good or bad that as soon as you said that, I thought of the inn in Highpass.  And I haven't played EQ for about 7 years...

This basically then boils down to what are your graphic, visual enhancement requirements?

What?  I don't even know what you're attempting to say.  Games don't need to be visually spectacular to be fun.  They merely need to stay out of the way of the fun. 

What kind of shiny does it have? Well, I do like WoW graphically. Really, it doesn't have to be so goddamn shiney it blinds me, it needs to RUN WELL ON MY MACHINE. I'd settle for mid-range Battlefield 2 level of shiney, personally.

I agree about lack of shiny being ok (I am playing Diablo 2, for Christ's sake), but I hate the WoW cartoony graphics. HATE. Really really LOATHE. Like more than Jimmy Tudeski hates mayonnaise.

Again though, as long as the art style is consistent and well-done, all the shiney in the world is superfluous, especially if it means the game runs well on a lot of different configurations. X-Box level graphic quality is fine with me if the art direction is good, animation is smooth and the gameplay is fun.

This been posted yet?

http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/07/29/warhammer-online-dev-the-games-finished-we-could-ship-it-now/

Paul is certainly the hype man of this production.

buzzwords! :awesome_for_real:

and I thought WE overused the term polish

This also to me makes them say they are directly going after wow as polish is the wow buzzword du jour. The designers may not be but this statement seems to make it clear they are saying "do you like polished(wow) games? Well WAR is damn polished(wow) and so good right now but we're making it even MORE polished(wow).  Now, I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, in fact I really do want a game to come out and be a real overachiever. I doubt WAR will be it though and there's probably going do be a disconnect with marketing/design somewhere.

needs more buzzwords though.

If it were truly ready to ship, they'd drop the NDA. 

After AoC, I won't buy another MMO at launch if they don't drop the NDA in the 7-14 day period before launch.  It's my personal rule going forward. 

And start an open beta. Until you're confident enough to do those things, your game is not ready to ship.

Is it in a shippable state? I suppose that depends on how you look at it. MMOs have shipped in pretty bad condition. As to whether I would ship it in its current condition, shrug, NDA.

Why does a game have to drop an NDA or have an open BETA?

Faith and confidence, is the point i think people are making.

If those two things don't happen, leads to thoughts of "Cover up". Well founded due to history sadly.













Then there are those that just want a free trial.

Any movie that isn't first released to critics you know is shit and this is the same principle. It has nothing to do with the players wanting a free trial or expectations. The fact remains that holding a beta and releasing info on your game prior to release generates 'buzz' and in turn will make you the developer more money, to NOT do it is a bad business move and one can only reasonably assume there are reasons for keeping things hidden that outweigh the benefit of generating that buzz.

NDAs should drop so people can give opinions prior to release.  Open beta is folks wanting a trial before they lay their money out.  Nobody wants to spend money on a shit sandwich come launch day. Having at least one of the above means there's more valid opinions out there than game-rags who suck cock for cash AND don't play any game more than 10 hours. As you know its complete bullshit to evlauate the whole of an MMO on so little time in game. (Unless it's horribly, horribly broken.. which yo still don't hear from game rags.)

So you might say, "just wait until after launch and see what real players say."  Well, that's a heresy to most veteran MMOers/ achievers.  It's Launch Day or Nevar! It stems from the idea that if you're not there on launch day you're simply left-behind and may as well not play.  In a MMO that used to be a very big deal because if you were behind the curve, you were never going to have the opportunity to see a large chunk of content without some extreme catassing along the way. OR, in a pvp world, you were going to be fodder for a long, long, long time because 99% of the server was farther along than you.

Nowadays with instancing and private raids and general accessiblity as standard feature and PvP worlds with safe zones? Not so much.  Unless, of course, you're really concerned about "world firsts" and "we were the first to XYZ".

Oh.. also, not dropping your NDA makes folks think you're hiding broken, horrible features.  Secrets you force others to keep are 'always' bad.. so if you're telling other people to STUFU.. things must be horrible.

Well I just got an email about my preorder, and it seems that the launch date is now Sept. 16.

Take with not a grain, but a shaker of salt:

On Gamestop's page they have 9/16/08 listed and noted below is "Servers will not go live until 9/18/08 at 10 AM EST"

Because I want a free trial and because if the game is good, they have nothing to hide. If the game is facefuckingly buggy, an NDA serves them well, but makes me think about the facefucking part entirely too much.

THE DAY AFTER I GO TO JAPAN.  I AM SURE MY PREORDER WILL NOT FOLLOW ME.  GAIJIN SMASH. 

Yeah they're concerned about WOTLK, due in late october/november, and rightfully so. The market's forcing them to either launch by september or delay until Q1 2009.

The only fault in this logic is that I'll be putting whatever I'm playing on hold for WotLK for 2-3 months when it comes out.  It would serve them better to launch 3 full months post WoW's xpac. 

I foresee a real drop in first month WAR subs because of WoW.  Maybe that'll rebound a few months after, but it's not a time period I would launch around *if* I had the ability to change it.

Selling before WotLK isn't a terrible idea in terms of boxes sold.  There's nothing to play at the moment and the only other anticipated title is the WoW expansion.  Sell before WotLK and you'll hook a few waiting for WotLK.  Wait until after and you may miss many potential sales.

Now... if you're talking about subscription revenue, waiting may be a better option.  Tough call.

Yeah, I just got my release date email from Gamespot as well. Since it mentions sever start times I'm going to assume this is no longer a case of "this is our best guess." A full month early!

Minimum system requirements:

PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

For Windows XP

· 2.5 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
· 1 Gigabyte RAM
· A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
· At least 15 GB of hard drive space

For Windows VISTA

· 2.5 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
· 2 Gigabyte RAM
· A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
· At least 15 GB of hard drive space

It doesn't have to, but it was Mark Jacobs himself (iirc) that correlated amount of time the game is put in beta without protection of NDA, and the overall quality of the product. In simple terms, if there's nothing to hide, there's no reason to hide.

In theory the NDA is there to keep your competitors from being able to steal all your ubar ideas and implementing them before you ship.

Most of the time it's just used to hide the fact that your game is shitty so that you can get as many box sales as possible around release.

If people don't lift the NDA it makes me suspicious.

Maybe it is to control the flow of information. It is, IMO, more related to marketing and Hype and less about how done the game might be.

So you are saying there is some information that could be told to me by a beta tester that would make me not want to play the game, thus the NDA is there to keep that beta player from telling me said information so I will eventually play the game?

Because if that's what you are saying the NDA is for, that was kinda my point.  If they are using the NDA to hide information from me that would keep me from playing the game, as what is typically done, then it make it no different than any other NDA and it makes me want to avoid the game.

If the only information coming from beta testers would make us WANT to play the game, they'd lift it in a heartbeat.

This isn't quite fair.  For instance, WAR beta was ongoing a year ago.  If there was no NDA then, we'd hear bitching from retards about how a game barely out of alpha has bugs and imbalanced classes.  People who weren't aware that the game had only existed for 18 months at that point would then think "this sux" and never play it when it comes out. 

Its a different story two months from release, of course, but claiming NDAs should never be used is not wise. 

I wasn't saying that at all, sorry if I came across that way.  Considering that I develop products for a living and have real competitors I live and die by NDAs.  They are useful things and every mmog should limit the beta testers to an NDA; however, not lifting your NDA towards the end of development, when you claim to be ready to ship and the odds of your competitors stealing your ideas in the limited timeframe left before the ship date are extremely low makes me very suspicious.

I have no problem with NDAs, but we're a month away from printing disks for the game if today's release dates are to be believed, thus if the NDA isn't lifted soon, it is a bad sign from my perspective.

EDIT:  But I highly suspect that we're arguing a moot point, I bet Jacobs is smart enough to lift the NDA any second now.

I can't quite get into much detail :nda: . But look at it this way, if the game was not under NDA then it would have already been picked apart by game mag's, reviewers etc... and when the eventual release came it would be met with a resounding meh because all the goodies were revealed months before. People go see movies on trailers alone, how successful do you think some films would be if they just gave the whole plot away in a trailer months before release.

Their point being: A good movie will still fill the seats even if the beans are spilled far in advance. 

Everyone knew what "Batman: The dark night" was about.

In the same way you know that WAR is a fantasy based MMORPG, focusing on RvR combat between two factions from the game workshop IP. I saw the dark knight and I was still pleasantly surprised by some of the directions the story took.

So you're saying that you went to every spoiler site before seeing the movie?  Of course you didn't.

Removal of an NDA means that information becomes available prior to release.  The quality and accuracy of that information is still suspect enough that most of us prefer to see for ourselves.

Is it just me or are Nebu and Kith arguing with each other and yet both taking the same side?

This wins the "worst analogy evar!" award.

The average movie lasts 2 hours tops.  I'm at 100 days PLAYED on my WoW account and I'm low compared to some people I know.  If reading about something 1 and a half months before WAR is released is totally going to "spoilz" it for me, then uhh, the game has nothing at all and it will die on the shelf.

If the game is totally depended on some gimmicky trick ending or some silly little trick detail that will spoil the game just reading about it, then there is no way it will ever compete.  What draws crowds to movies is so incredibly different from what draws crowds to video games, especially mmogs, that I can't even believe you made that analogy in good faith.

I thought he was justifying having a late NDA.  Maybe I screwed up. 

After rereading I was wrong. Ignore me as usual.  :pedobear:

No its more you winning "worst understanding of a point being made", but hey whatever. 

I'm just providing a different viewpoint then "OMG still in NDA and release is in 2 months must mean it Sucks!!!!!"

That's what I figured.  I'm just a huge fan of transparency, especially when it's too late in the game to worry about an IP ripoff.  The core of anything with an NDA was in place long ago and is certain to be the primary basis for judgement.  The small details, often problemmatic at release, are easily overcome by a good core. 

Not only does this argument not make a bit of fucking sense but it flies in the face of every god damned piece of evidence in existence when it comes to games. Can you name me one good game...GAME, not a fucking movie that was spoiled or otherwise harmed by letting out details of said game prior to release?  Furthermore, what? seriously WHAT?! There's a lot of goddamned stupid on these boards lately but are you really mentally deficient enough to argue this point without green text?

Now, there could be some valid reasons for not letting up the NDA

1.The game is in a poor state
2.They have systems in place they are afraid wow will copy.
3. Even though the game may be good, people will compare it to wow and the developers are afraid people may find it lacking.
4. Aliens
5. Mark Jacobs is getting the right color for his Ferrari picked out.

All of these are more acceptable than the thought that 'spoiling' a game and especially an MMO will keep people from playing it. In summation.....what?!

I read it the same way, so you might want to clarify what you mean more.

Remember everyone!

Then why does said smiley exist?

It exists so that :nda:

I actually think it could be a smart strategy (assuming WAR is more content complete than AoC at launch) to launch before WotLK because it will constrain demand initially.

Here's why - MMO launches are dangerous affairs that can make or break the reputation of a MMO for years. On launch day, your servers are going to get hammered. Launching before a major competitor will see some people hold off buying WAR in preparation for WotLK. This gives launch a better chance of not collapsing under the weight of an extreme number of players (instead, WAR will get just a lot of players). WotLK comes out, players flood back to check that out, Mythic has a few extra months to add in new content / fix launch bugs. There's some special Xmas promotion to get players to shift back / join after they've finished digesting the new WoW content or something.

So WAR could look to get the advantage of a lot of players buying it, but not getting too far into it before WotLK comes out. They get to launch, make a splash, then have some extra time as the hardcore head back to WoW to add in new things / fix bugs, then attract those players back (because they are bored of WoW and Death Knights weren't the uber).

It could be a very good strategy. It's a risk and you'd need to be very confident in the product's ability to bring players back from WoW, but it does extent the length of time to fix launch bugs by a few months.

Cause I'm too lazy to take it out? Cause it can be used for other things?

Such as: I've kidnapped your wife. Here is a picture:  :nda:

Yes, that worked so badly for WoW.

Sounds like I'm not the only one that missed your point.

At this point I'm going to take your message to mean that Warhammer has about a days worth of playability.  Then I'll either find in game or externally read about the secret cool twist that makes the game so ubar and it will be useless.  Not worth my $75.

If you are under NDA you shouldn't even be talking about this stuff.

On the other hand if we're not under NDA we're free to speculate, second-guess the designers, and ask awkward questions! I've changed my mind - Mythic should keep the NDA up because then people can flame away and nobody can defend it.  :awesome_for_real:

My memory sucks.  How long was WoW in NDA-less beta?  I'm sure it was quite a while, I remember at the time thinking "Wow, thats ballsy having a NDA-free beta for so long".  But it did a great job at generating a lot of good buzz and showed as people are saying here - that they're not afraid to show off their game...

So is this really coming out in September?
I don't believe it..

I believe it was pretty much the whole last year of development.

Blizzard dropped it Spring time 2004, maybe March or April? It was around the time when the large scale closed Beta started.

Edit: oh hey, look what Google found:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13743.msg479373#msg479373

Isn't this just another case of "OMG Blizzard did it in another fashion- so WAR=FAAAAAIL!!!!!!" ??

Oh come on guys, this is getting old.
Besides, Mythic stated very early that they won't, at any time during Beta, will do a truly open FFA Beta and that's it's very possible they won't drop NDA until Release or shortly before it.

Yes yes, linky pls... I can't find it right now. But I was all over the game at that time, b/c I quit WoW back then, so my memory should be trustable on this.

No, it's a case of "Every bad mmog ever released waited till the last minute to drop the NDA.  We all know, because we've gone through this a dozen times."

I don't even think WoW had a completely open beta.  Did they?  I definitely wasn't in it, at least, but maybe I'm just a noob.

I think the last two weeks of WoW beta were completely open?  Perhaps I'm not remembering correctly.

Either way, I'm not like Haemish is on the Open Beta part, I don't need them to let me try the game for free so much.  But the NDA not breaking has me more and more nervous.

We are at least 2 monthes away, hardly the last minute.

Only 6 weeks if the gamestop news is to be believed.  It's getting damn close to last minute.

EDIT:  If 9/16 is the release date then we're 2-3 weeks from going gold.  That means that if something is glaringly broken we're getting very close to "last minute patch to remove debug code that fixes everything that's been internally tested for 2 years and works without a flaw" territory here.  Of course I don't know if anything is glaringly broken, because Mythic won't let anyone tell me.  That is what frightens me, since I have $200 worth of pre-orders on the line, and right now my mouse is hovering over the cancel button, to be quite honest.

Latest gamestop word: Open beta ONE MONTH away...

In September-ish they had a FilePlanet open preview that lasted approx 14 days.  I remember this because I did a one month sub to FP just to get in.  Late october they did a 2-3 week "open" beta as well.

Wait, are they actually making a trading card game system for WAR?

Yes they did. Except they had to cap it once 500K people signed up.

FAIL!

See AOC's level capped and content restricted open beta if you need clarification.

Wouldn't the issue more be if the NDA is level restricted like AoC.

But right now the NDA is still in place for all content and they are level restricting the "Open" beta, which is really a 9 day pre-order sneak peak that is level capped and content restricted.  So what's your point again?

No, the NDA is a separate bundle of fail.

Level-restricting an open beta just makes me think that the restricted parts aren't done. It also reminds me of DAoC where entire level bands of content just were not finished.

I'm hoping the game isn't a sack of fail. I want it to succeed, I like Mark Jacobs and Mythic because of their middleware approach to the creation of DAoC. But the less transparency there is this close to release and in open beta, the less faith I have in the product.

(http://www.marlerblog.com/train_wreck-782867.jpg)

LOTRO level-restricted its Beta and it had all (or most) of its content done.  I think you are just looking for something to be annoyed about.

With respect to war...  :nda:

Uhh, yeah and LoTRO sucked, thanks for helping make our point for us I guess?

I liked LOTRO a good deal better than WoW (I still play with my wife and friends).  The PvE is great, the PvP is terribad (but so is WoWs).  But to each his own I guess. 

Are you currently under the NDA?  It was discussed earlier that it acceptable to say that.

Yes I am, hence the  :nda: in the previous post.  I just got in a few weeks ago.

Thanks, if someone in the knows defense of the NDA not being lifted is that it's just as good as LoTRO, then it made canceling my pre-order all that much easier!

I owe you one (technically I probably will end up owing you $204.14).

LOTRO is possibly one of the finest crafted MMOs ever made.

Are you under the NDA as well?

Whos?

Wow, we're all working ourselves into that special Lum diaspora mood called "EVERYTHING SUCKS THIS WILL SUCK WAAAA LETS OVERREACT TO EVERY PIECE OF NEWS."  Simmer down and lets just see what the game's like come September.  

I don't think it's overreacting to save $204.14 and wait until I can get some real information about the game.

 :ye_gods:

Warhammer's.  I figure the more people that actually liked LoTRO that also seem to be defending Mythic and are under the NDA the more I feel like I've made a good move canceling my pre-order.

No.

I didn't know i was "defending" Warhammer.
 Did you read what i said? It had nothing to do with likeing the game, even if i do.

Please do tell us what game you are playing, so we can all raise to the standard.

Your reasoning skills are impeccable.  May I suggest you would be better served using them to solve crimes?  Go now, for the good of the City!!!!

Edit:  Seriously though, do whatever you want.  I'm making a statement about LOTRO and completeness at time launch related to open Beta.  I cannot and will not comment on WAR.

So then your recommendation is to go ahead and spend the money site unseen?  If Mythic doesn't want to give me any, or only extremely limited, information about the game prior to release then I see no reason to keep my pre-order.  I bet I've made the wise move, I'll see you in the "WHAT WENT WRONG!?!" thread in the Warhammer subforums in 3 months.

I'm not seeing where everyone is telling you to pre-order.  :headscratch:

I thought everyone was Discussing the releace, and NDA's "To drop or not to drop".

I try to avoid it.


WoW.

/shrug

I don't work for mythic and I could care less whether you cancel your pre-order or not.  I'm reacting to the tantrum that you are throwing because Mythic/EA is making a business decision that you don't agree with.  

And seriously dude...  weren't you the one defending Conan until the bitter end?  I'll keep my own counsel as to what is or isn't a good game.

We were, and I'm saying "not drop" means "no preorder".  That seems like a safe bet.  Some people are saying "ohh the game's fine, we just can't say anything because of the NDA."  If they are right, so far not dropping the NDA has been a stupid move on Mythic's part.

This is hardly a tantrum, this is me marking a thread so that I can bump it in 3 months and show you my wisdom. :)

I hope that Mythic proves me wrong, I want a PvP game that's playable and worth playing.

And AoC is still a way better game than LoTRO ever was, so I don't see where you're going with that.

No one said that.

You do realize that I wasn't making a direct quote, but instead generalizing on the dozens of  :nda: posts above, right?  You really aren't actually as stupid as you pretend to be on the internet, are you?

I really did LOL when I read this.  Age of Conan was a bug ridden steaming piece of crap that was broken after level 20.  In what way was it superior to LOTRO (besides hyped up box sales that a lot of folks, including yourself, have come to regret)? 

Show me on the doll where LOTRO touched you.

I think amiable had it right.

LOTRO is a good enough game, really.

However, content limited open beta combined with no NDA drop yet spells dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom to me. Maybe even with more 'o's.

Right here on the "most boring game ever created followed by no end game and grindy as all fucking get out deed system" part of the doll.  It's just left of the crotch.

I thought your standard was Wow?

While I don't think WoW was the greatest game ever created, or anything of the like (evidenced by the fact that until today I had 2 Warhammer CEs on preorder), LoTRO could ship with 20 grams of crack in the box and it still wouldn't be able to compete with WoW.

And this differs from AoC how?  At least in LOTRO you could quest your way to max level and the quests were usually far more story/flavor intensive than "I need 10 bear asses).  I will give you the deeds, that is a retarded mechanic, but not necessary to enjoy the game.  

The end game PvE content is great if you are looking for a game focused on challenging 6-12 man dungeons.  PvP was terrible (as I stated above), but this is THE game for small group PvE.  

Hmm.  Has Jacobs and team been hyping this lately? Or gone quiet?  I haven't been following, it's why I ask.

Otherwise, yeah -- this is ominous.

The endgame in LotRO was patched in long after I quit, as I understand it.  As far as the leveling in LotRO vs the leveling in AoC, two different worlds.  LotRO was the worst, slowest combat system ever designed in a mmog combined with a horribly slow and grindy (grinding on quests instead of on mobs) leveling system.  AoC was a fast combat system that was unique and fun (not just "WoW, only slower!" like LotRO) and a way to fast leveling system (which led to lots of "zomg you shouldn't be able to level up in 4 days /played" posts around here).

But weren't we talking about Warhammer online?  Ohh yeah, Mythic won't let us talk about it so we have to troll about other games instead, smart move Mythic, smart move.

Funny, all the new things coming form LOTRO over to Wow. Anyway.....

You derailed into your MMO nerd rage when people were citing examples of how MMO have kept the NDA, and yet still produced a full content game. It had nothing to do with liked or dislikes.

LOTRO did what Warhammer is doing, and is still possibly one of the finest crafted MMO's created. Regardless of your personal opinion of its mechanics and game play.

It meet its target audience, had a smooth launch, looks superb, runs great, stable servers, little bugs, constant full additions, ETC... craftsmanship all the way, even if it is more or less a progression and refinement of what came before.

Granted, i think its a flook in a world of rushed , incomplete, games but , there it is.

I'm not raging, I'm just pointing out that LotRO did what Warhammer is doing, and then it bombed horribly.

Just because it's your opinion that the game is good doesn't make it so.  Bad news for ya, the rest of the world didn't agree with you.

The markets were different hence the differences in gameplay.

LOTRO was a PvE game that delivered good PvE.  
AOC was a PvP game tht failed at PvP.

If you didn't like the game mechanics, I guess I have nothing to say about that besides we will have to agree to disagree.

Feel free to ressurect this thread in three months.  Take that as you will.

LOTRO bombed?

News to me.

Its funny to see you go in to combat mode over this.  Why weren't you so skepital over AoC where the Developers weren't a quarter as forth comming about the game as WAR?  Seems like you are blaming WAR for you foolishness with AoC.

The key question in my mind is will the beta players (who know the current state of the game best) be able to speak their mind before the release.  In the case of AoC, they never could.  It doesn't matter if the "open" beta is level restricted as long as the NDA goes down and we can talk with people who know about current state of the game.

Using LotRO as a measuring stick for whether it's a good idea to drop the NDA is really  :awesome_for_real: LotRO was a BORING BORING game. I lasted hours in that beta. It wasn't worth the effort. And as soon as the NDA dropped, I told anyone that asked about it. I think I even blogged about it. It also has not set the world on fire in terms of sales or subscriptions. It's generally thought of as being at best a minor success with most disappointed that such a visible IP couldn't garner more subs than say DAoC. So if you are saying that LotRO not dropping its NDA is a sign that Warhammer shouldn't drop its NDA, then you are telling me that Warhammer is about as fun as LotRO, meaning it isn't very fun at all at least to me. And of course, since you are under NDA, you can't tell me that anyway nor can you tell me how wrong that is.

See the problem with still having the NDA? Right now, I'm less inclined to buy the game on release than I would be if you could tell me about it.

It peaked at 200k subscribers and has gone down from there.  Fuck it couldn't even reach EQ1 levels, you think it succeeded?

You realize that the acronym stands for Lord of the Rings, right?  You seriously think that a LotR branded mmog that couldn't even get close to EQ1 levels of subscribers was a success?  You honestly think that?

Its depends.

Do you want the NDA dropped because you want to know if the game is finished (AKA not buggy, features in ETC...)?

Or do you want it dropped to know if its Fun?

I'll play a game that's both buggy and fun (at least for awhile).  I won't play a game that's unbuggy and unfun. 

EDIT:  Note to MMO devs:  My lawyers have advised me that the above statement does not constitute permission to release a buggy game  :awesome_for_real:

Which  is precisely what I wasn't doing.  I was using LOTRO as an example of a game that was complete but had a level restriciton on open beta.  Your issue is with LOTRO's gameplay which you didn't like at level 1.  Fair enough.  But the game was complete, even though they only let you level up a limited amount during open beta.  The claims being made  on this board are that if a game does not allow full leveling capability in open Beta it is defacto incomplete.  I am just giving an example where that statement is not true.

1)  This isn't combat mode, this is bored at work and watching Blood say stupid things like "LotRO didn't bomb!" mode.

2)  I didn't follow AoC or preorder it or play it on release (I bought it a week after release).  I was highly skeptical about AoC for two reasons:  a)  Funcom has a history of failure and b)  I hate the Conan IP.  Because of that I had no interest in ever playing the game and didn't in any way follow it (and openly laughed at it when I saw it advertised).  I was bored after it released and decided to pick it up, played it, it was better than I expected.  I came here and people were outright lying about WoW's release (the servers NEVER CRASHED EVAR!!11!) and so I pointed out that people are a little.. stupid.  I was branded a fanboi.

Did they make their money back? Is everyone getting paid? Is there an expansion coming out? Are investors happy? Are customers happy? Is a profit being made?


Your version of unsuccessful, and "bombed" is not mine.

Another hour passes, another change to gamestop's website.  They've now got boxart and in place of the beta info, this:

    

I think the claim was that if the game is capped during beta and doesn't lift the NDA before release, then the odds are it's not a good game.

No one said, or at least truly meant, that it was "defacto incomplete".  We're just saying that the way Mythic is behaving makes their game appear, at this point, a lot like a host of other bad games that have been released, thus it makes us suspicious.

Uh, yeah, folks were making that claim.

Did they make their money back?  I don't know, have a link?

Is there an expansion coming out?  SWG had an expansion, and it too bombed.

Are the investors happy?  Turbine isn't public, but I suspect they've had to do a lot of answering to the investors.

Are the customers happy?  I'd say no, since the subscriptions started dropping and then Turbine stopped telling us what the numbers were.  Anecdotal:  I certainly wasn't a happy customer, my wife wasn't a happy customer, my 3 friends that played the game weren't happy customers, the guild I was in that fell apart wasn't full of happy customers.

Is a profit being made?  No idea, Turbine isn't public as best I can tell, so I don't think either of us know that.

What's your point again?

You don't know what the words de facto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto) mean, do you?

He wasn't saying "level restricting means that it's incomplete", the example you quoted is him saying level restricting "makes me think" that parts aren't done.  Which is EXACTLY what I was saying above.  We aren't saying that level restricting makes it a fact that the content isn't done, it just makes us think it's not done.

I really wish they'd drop the NDAs for warhammer already. You don't need them past the alpha stage, and it just makes people scared of the product's quality.

I disliked LOTRO. Pretty game, but I just didn't enjoy it at all.

also:  :nda:

From merriam-webster:

Main Entry: 2de facto
Function: adjective
Date: circa 1689
1: actual; especially : being such in effect though not formally recognized <a de facto state of war>
2: exercising power as if legally constituted <a de facto government>
3: resulting from economic or social factors rather than from laws or actions of the state <de facto segregation>

Seriosuly dude.  All you have left is trying to grammar nazi (poorly) my response.  Lol.

(I will cut you some slack though as I got busted trying to use wikipedia to "prove me is smart" in another thread recently.)

1) Everything points to it being Turbine's most successful game. It has launched in the US, EU, Japan and China, counting 30+ servers. Money back? We can but speculate. Empty servers don't exist in any case.

2) This fall.
http://www.lotro.com/moria

3) 40 million in venture in May this year. Should mean something.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/05/02/lord-of-the-rings-online-developer-turbine-raises-40-million

4) Subscriptions have been increasing, that's the only "number" Turbine has EVER let out. They've NEVER mentioned subscription numbers.

5) You're right, we can't make off-hand assumptions.

For the record, I've been with companies that have raised millions in capital and, while signing the check, I've had the investors berate us for not being further along than we were.  Some people throw bad money after good.

As for the rest, the answer to Blood's questions are "no one fucking knows". 

It certainly looks like a bomb to me.  A pretty massive on at that.

Of course nobody said that - they cannot, because the NDA is still up!  :grin:

Huh?  you're just babbling nonsense now.  Haemish (paraphrased for the blood's amongst us) "level capping the beta makes me think the game is incomplete".  You said "you guys are stupid for saying that games are "of the fact" not complete if the beta is restricted".  I then responded "we're not saying that the beta restriction makes it a fact that it's not complete, we're saying it makes us think it has the potential to not be complete."  Then you uttered some nonsense that I'm being a grammar nazi (and a poor one at that).

We aren't saying that the level capped beta makes it a fact that the game is not complete.  We are saying it makes it appear that the game has the potential to not be complete.  If you can't see the difference between those statements then you're just.. well.. as stupid as blood.

OK, perspective people. Neither LOTRO nor SWG 'bombed'.

Auto Assault bombed.

Bombed doesn't begin to describe whatever it is auto assault did.


LOTRO definitely did not bomb however. I didn't like it, but it did well for itself.

No, I'm saying that restricting levels in an Open Beta on top of keeping an NDA going this long will make me THINK it's incomplete. The reality may be completely different, but you know, no one can tell me if this is reality or just my perception. And if I perceive a game is incomplete on release, I'M NOT BUYING IT. Thus, keeping an NDA this long and having a feature-restricted open beta are contributing to the loss of one potential customer.

haemish's  full statement:

"Level-restricting an open beta just makes me think that the restricted parts aren't done. It also reminds me of DAoC where entire level bands of content just were not finished."

My statement:

" The claims being made  on this board are that if a game does not allow full leveling capability in open Beta it is defacto incomplete."

I was using the term defacto as an adjective to modify "incomplete".

It would be synonomous to say:

The claims being made on this board are that if a game does not allow full leveling capability in open Beta it is actually incomplete.

Now are you arguing that Haemish's statment did not, in fact, state exactly that?

You have chosen a single definition for defacto and decided that is the only one you will apply, and then claimed I used it incorrectly. You are indeed being a grammar nazi, and a bad one at that.  You are the one who does not knwo what "defacto" means or its proper usage.

Edit to adress haemish:   So if I say because John Mcain slept around on his wife I think John Mccain has Herpes.  I can use the fact that I said "I think" as a defense for a defamation suit.

Please.  Using the qualifier "makes me think" does not change the fact that you are suggsting games that do not allow open leveling in Beta are actually incomplete.

Look, fuckhead, read the post RIGHT ABOVE YOURS. I did not state what you said I did. You even fucking quoted what I said and STILL you think I said what I did not say.

I'm talking about perception based on lack of information.

Yes I am absofuckinglutely saying that.  He said and you just fucking quoted him 3 times now it makes him "think" those parts are not done.

Can you not see the difference between saying "I think those parts aren't done" and "those parts actually aren't done"?  Are you really this dense?

This is the greatest thread in months.   :popcorn:

I think there is a chance John McCain has herpes because he cheated on his wife.

It is a fact that John McCain has herpes.

Can you spot the difference in those two sentences?

We really need a standard for "success" in the MMO world that does not include millions of subscribers and billions in revenue.  I suppose it is hard to quantify many times, but most people consider "success" a 10-12% return on investment, with 18% being increadibly successful.  So $40million in, $46million out... and we are good.  I think that is why people see games like SWG, LotRO, and others and call them a success.  They are likely paying the bills... and included in those bills is the return to the investors.

OK, so you guys are taking umbrage that I took:

"Level-restricting an open beta just makes me think that the restricted parts aren't done"

to mean:

"Level-restricitng an open beta is proof that the restricted parts aren't done."  

And that "makes me think" is not "proof" so the validity of anything I have to say about why that may be a false assumption is defacto incorrect?

Because that really is a point worth fighting over.  If so mea culpa.

Success in MMO land is not having your company's name/product becoming a verb to describe horrible things you shouldn't do.

It really makes you think.

But is not entertaining Triforcer, its own reward?

You're the one that put words in Haemish's mouth and then tried to quote him to prove me wrong, so uhh.. was it worth the fight?  

Personally, I had a fun 30 minutes.

It's an easy thing to calculate. Generally all you want is your return to be > your cost of capital. So Return (on either equity or investment) > CoC = Success.

ie. If it costs you 13% to borrow money and your game makes 15% return on the capital it's a success. This is a very simplified example of Net Present Value (which has a time component, i'm just making a point, don't freak out), which if it is positive is a success. What you count as your return really depends on how you're financed.

Now, that's from the business side, personally I think LotRO had much greater 'potential' and failed to realize it. So while not a failure, it's not what I would call successful, but then I don't have any skin in the game.

Yes, I learned something.

This was what I was trying to say, only I like to do it in a more inflammatory way so that I get a chance to bump my post count a little higher.

So did I.

Reading is hard for some and whatnot.

Well then, I will man up and admit I was wrong and you and Cezvik were right about my lack of reading comprehension.  I still think my point about LOTRO related to open beta is valid though.

A small profit is a failure if the same funds used to make the product could've produced a larger profit if diverted elsewhere.  Time value of money and whatnot. 

Heh yes I know. I was keeping it simple. Although technically any project where NPV >0  is a worth doing as NPV is designed to manage the time value as I said. However that doesn't make it a "good" investment if there are other opportunities that would've yielded a higher RoE/RoI. In that case you should do the project/investment with the highest NPV at the end. Of course those are reliant on good projections, which given the IP I seriously doubt LotRO had. Oil futures probably would've performed A LOT better.

I know it is semantics... but really I would call that a mistake, not a failure.  Otherwise you are saying that every choice I make that is not the BEST POSSIBLE OF ALL CHOICES!! is a failure.  I suppose a person could try to live in that world, but man that has to be a depressing place.

Yeah this is correct. Also, risk profiles are generally taken into account. Investing in monkey brain futures may conceivably be a better choice than steel futures, but it's hella riskier.

Also investors absolutely LOVE recurring revenue (such as subscriptions) which may account for some of the, erm, odd projects that seem to get funded.

Eh, he isn't defending NDA being kept in place; he's just providing LotRO as example of game that had level cap in open beta but still had content fully developed past that open beta cap, in response to your point how level cap must mean that content is missing.

Don't cross the streams.

Holy fucking shit, are we really about to do this all over again?

EDIT:  Just for the record, I didn't say anything about the level cap, that was someone else.  I'm all about the NDA not being lifted.

Queue benny hill music?

Well, the level cap thing was technically Haemish's saying and then there's your follow up to the effect how using LotRO as example is helping to make "your" (plural) point, but that's really a) splitting hair and b) largely red herring.

Regarding the main thing that's NDA drop i haven't actually seen a statement that it is *not* being dropped before game launch -- that quoted stuff earlier in the thread is about open beta and doesn't mention NDA in one way or another whatsoever. Then on another forum there's mention NDA is likely to be dropped next week, which seems reasonable.

Auto Assault got 200 feet off the ground, had the bomb stick in the bomb bay doors, then flew directly into a mountain of pig shit.

My point being, you don't know the opposite is true. You just like to hate games that are not your favored ones. You have become about as bad as an official forums poster. Enjoy extreme land where everything not wow is "FAIL!!1!!OMGWTFBBQ".

I'm not really being all that extreme when I say that LotRO didn't even remotely approach what it should have in terms of concurrent subscribers when it comes to the IP that they had available.

I don't think LotR is actually the primo gaming IP that everyone keeps acting like it is. It never sells like everyone expects it to, no matter what the game format is (boardgames excepted.)

You didn't say that now did you? You said it bombed, Failed, sucked ETC... those words to me, are reserved for things that really DO fail, or when im just voicing my opinion. Not for games i just don't like, or felt had more "Potential".

If that were the case, EvE should never have been what it is today, because it "FAILED" so long ago.

LOTRO is doing just fine from what i can see, and never "Bombed" or "Failed". Seed FAILED (RIP), Perpetuals ST:O FAILED, Auto Assault FAILED.

Doesn't really matter, this whole derail is completely stupid. Some one brought up a valid point (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13743.msg486991#msg486991) in response to what they quoted, but you just had to let everyone know your canceling your preorder.

Just for the record, I haven't claimed anyone else in the thread is even remotely aligned to my point, if I said something plural it was either a mistake or I meant it in the royal sense.  I even went so far as to say that the open beta parts of Haemish's point weren't really something I agreed to.

I just said that if someone likes LotRO, that if they also say they like Warhammer Online, I'm taking that as a negative towards Warhammer Online, not a positive.  This is especially true because the NDA is still in place, so the only information I'm allowed to know about the game is what Mythic tells me, and when I watched their released video of the game it looked like combat was slow and boring (see:  G4TV video) and, since I thought LotRO combat was slow and boring, it adds weight to the "if you like LotRO I probably don't share any common interests with you".


I can only go by what I know, and at this point the NDA has not been lifted.  Could it be lifted in the next hour?  Maybe.  But for every minute it stays under NDA I have to think it hurts the game more than it helps it.  Unless Mythic has something to hide.  Which goes back to my point, not lifting the NDA makes it appear you have something to hide.  If they do then not lifting the NDA is probably good to keep those only peripherally paying attention on board.

When you compare the actual LotRO subscription numbers to what any sane person would have thought the potential for that IP's subscription numbers could have been, it is my opinion that the game bombed.  It bombed in a horrible and tragic way.  It bombed so horrifically that I'm actually embarrassed when it see any of the letters l o t r or o.  A lot of words have one or two o's in them, I spend a lot of time embarrassed for that poor, poor abortion of a game.  And I'm using the word "game" very loosely here.

And it bombed because it sucked.

(http://kevinchiu.org/emote/facepalm.jpg)

But as we have been saying, it didn't bomb.  If a movie "bombs" at the box office it means that the production cost a great deal more than the revenue generated.  This clearly is NOT the case for LOTRO but it is the case for games like Vanguard or Auto Assault.  LOTRO still has all of its servers active and is releasing an expansion.  Just because YOU don't like the game does not mean it is a bomb.  

I'm going to sort of one-up this one, actually -- i quite like LotRO, find its combat pretty okay overall *and* yet watching the official WAR videos made me think it was extremely slow and boring. There seems to be pace difference between WAR and LotRO that's similar to one between LotRO and WoW, caused by the way animations are handled. That said since i'm not in beta i have no way to tell if that was changed with the recent updates. On the other hand it's something that can be easily verified in open beta despite any level cap.

Since you like to cut and paste from the dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=bomb):

    

I'm not saying that the production costs exceeded the revenue generated.  I'm saying that when compared to the level of potential success the IP was capable of generating, the game was a flop, it was a bomb.

Well since you like wikipedia so much:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_office_bomb

"The phrase box office bomb refers to a film for which the production and marketing costs greatly exceeded the revenue retained by the movie studio. This should not be confused with instances when official figures show large losses, yet the movie is a financial success; see Hollywood accounting."

And the definition you gave still doesn't prove your point.  It wasn't a flop. 

And to think you called me a grammar nazi:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bomb

To address your edit:  Yes, yes it was.  The game was a disaster.

[/quote]

How was it a dismal failure?  It wasn't.  Lots of people signed up, lots of people still play.  it made money.  They are making an expansion.   It is only a dismal failure IN YOUR HEAD!

The game failed YOU, it did not fail.

Because it took an IP that created a series of movies that grossed around $800 million each and reached millions and millions of fans at the absolute height of that IPs popularity and created a very niche game that barely crested 200k subscribers and has done nothing but go down since then.

You know, pretty much the definition of dismal failure.

EDIT:  yeah I typed to fast, go ahead and tell me how it proves me wrong.

So?  The gaming market is not the same as the movie/book market.  If you want to see a failure cascade of popular IP check out Matrix online.  Because something is not as successful as it could of been does not make it a "dismal failure." 

Dismal failure is not failing to get the job you want.  Dismal failure is failing to get the job you want and dying going on a bender, leaving you wife and dying of a heroin overdose (see auto assault).

i wouldn't do that because i know how generous you are when someone misinterprets or slightly misrepresents what some else is saying.  You're a ray of sunshine like that.

SWG, MxO and LotRO all share one thing in common:  They were all failures.

You changed "I think it may not be feature complete" to "it's a fact that it's not feature complete".  I'd hardly say that's a "slight misrepresentation".

Again, assertions are not fact.

So you have your opinion (that a failed game is not a failure, for some odd reason), and I have mine (that that game that failed, is a failure).  Why is it that your assertions are fact and mine are not?

Whatever.   :oh_i_see:

I thought this board had some kind of rules against obvious trolling, but maybe I was wrong. :heartbreak:

I may have slightly misrepresented what you said, but it was only a slight misrepresentation, so no biggie.

I agree, amiable and bloodworth should be banned for even remotely implying that LotRO was anything but a failure, those fucking trolls.

Because I am backing up my point with the following facts (please dispute any you feel are incorrect):

1.  The game made money.
2.  no servers have been shut-down/merged (classic sign of a failed/failing game).
3.  An expansion is coming out.

The only thing you are asserting is that it SHOULD have been more successful (based on numbers you pulled out of your head because you are an expert on market share, marketing and turbines business plan).

Edit: And I don't fuck goats.  We make sweet, sweet love.

Heh, funny guy.

1.  No one knows if this is true or not.
2.  This may be true, but they also haven't opened any new servers (a classic sign of a game that is succeeding)
3.  SWG had expansions, lots of failed games had expansions.  This isn't a metric for success.  Hell it sounds like AoC is going to have an expansion.  Since when did expansions become a definition of success? 

ITS NOT FUN ANYMORE MOMMY MAKE THE RIDE STOP

You just reminded me of the last time I ate shrooms.

It got better before the end though.  And pretty.

On what are you basing your expectations?  The name recognition of LoTR from the books and movies?  The stellar performance of the LoTR video games that came before it?  You're asserting "It bombed" because it failed to meet your expectations of what an LoTR MMO could have done, but you are not saying what those were or what you're basing them on.

LoTR makes money, and for all indications will continue to do so for a long time.  There is no other meaningful standard for success right now.  Now, if what you're really saying is that you *want* it to be considered a bomb, because you didn't like it and that will confirm your sense of moral order, then that is a whole different thing.

SWG, also not technically a failed game in a business sense.  Again, people felt it underperformed what a Star Wars MMO "should" have been capable of, but it was certainly profitable.  Handsomely so, until the NGE (which is directly traceable to LucasArts and their perception of underperformance).  But it's not like every liscensed IP is golden, and those two in particular have a mixed history.  Maybe our expectations were nothing but guesses we pulled out of our ass, and making business decisions based on them is a recipe for Dilbert-scale clusterfucks?

--Dave

How about this, when you have to come to the boards and say that a game is "not technically a failed game in a business sense", then it's pretty much a failure as an artistic creation.

Kinda like LotRO and SWG were.

EDIT:  The best part is that because LotRO way underperformed expectations and I pointed that out, I keep being accused of somehow wanting it to fail.  I guess if I point out we did shitty in Iraq, I wanted America to Lose?

How about this question:  If Warhammer Online peaks at 200k subscribers, will it be a success or a failure?

Doesn't this release date pretty much run head on into Spore's? 

This is too simplistic. What costs does it have in design, development, advertising, etc. Does it retain tose 200k subscribers for let's say, the average length of an MMO subscriber?

If those 200k are enough to offset the costs and it retains those numbers for 6 months-1 year it's a success.

Yes.

Neither are nebulous expectations pulled out of ass.

edit: to look at it from slightly different angle, how many currently active western MMOs that's been active for over a year can claim playerbase equal or greater than that guesstimated 200k? A honest question, beside WoW and EVE i'm drawing a blank... but then i don't follow the reports closely.

Anything can be construed as a failure "as an artistic creation". All that it takes is for the individual viewer not to like it. And based on your posts, that's exactly what you're not saying. You're saying that "because they have a license that should print money, they should have 12 zillion subscribers. Since they don't, they have failed."

MMOs are not artistic creations. They are businesses. If LOTRO (or SWG, or Hello Kitty Online, or whatever) paid back its investors and has a decent ROI, it succeeded. LOTRO is inarguably, uncontestably, a success for Turbine. Especially following AC2 and DDO (neither of which were business successes), Turbine had to have a business success and they did. It is now allowing them to solicit new VC and fund new teams - growing the business, in other words. Which is... how a business succeeds.

Would they have been happier if they had gotten 20 million subscribers, dethroned Blizzard as kings of the castle, and had horses and carraiges cast from gold that they could then use to traipse through the cobblestones of Boston? Probably (assuming that the load didn't make the servers explode and cause a massive failure due to that). But *any* business endeavour can be sniped at from the sidelines with that logic. One could arguably say that WoW is a failure because they do not have 20 million subs in North America, despite there being considerably more than 20 million potential WoW customers. Which would also be a somewhat laughable proposition. The benchmark at the end of the day is - is the business meeting its ROI goals, allowing for growth, and paying back investment.

Now, if you didn't like it... you probably shouldn't pay for it. If you didn't like it and think that it should be a failure and everyone involved should be unemployed so that your view of its merits can be validated - you may want to get some air.

Novels and movies are generally lousy IP for MMOGs. They're completely different media and it's unsurprising that stories well suited for heroic fiction falls flat on their faces in crowded social clusterfucks. Players come into them expecting that they'll get to be one of the heroes they loved... instead, if they are involved in world-shaping events at all, they find out they get a walk-on part without any dialogue.

In both Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, the world-changing events are pretty much set in stone. Everyone knows how, when, and why they happen... and nobody's going to have a say in that. Either could have abandoned or escaped the understood timeline, but that would have required as much effort, and sacrificed as much fan support, as making up a setting without the pesky bullshit inherent in adapting an IP (Lucasfilm's and the Tolkein family's involvement in those projects, for example.)

The idea that getting permission to make LotRO or SWG was a good move is open to a lot of debate.

What would be a success in an artistic sense for an MMO?  I've been trying to work that out for 10 years, and I still don't have a good answer.

--Dave

Something that everyone likes, but that doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator and isn't too popular to be unartsy. 

Jesus!

Yes, really.

LOTRO was a boring piece of shit. Who the fuck cares if it 'bombed' or not? You're a fucking retard if you want to fuck this thread up with shit about ROI and whatever to try and justify the fact that a game is worth something. If you think it's worth something talk about what it's worth as a game; I could give a fuck about a game that is shit but makes money, I like games because I like to play them.

This is a gaming forum, not a gaming VC forum.

Where do you keep getting that 200k figure from? My understanding was that LOTRO hit about 400k subs. AFAIK, Turbine have never released any sub figures, instead announcing stuff like "4 million characters have been created in LOTRO".

Is LOTRO a disappointment? Yeah, probably - I'm sure Turbine was thinking 1m+ subs. But it wasn't a bomb. It wasn't a failure in the business sense.

Also, please point out the range of artistically successful MMOs out there. You know, the ones that reached out an touched people in the heart and made them think and all that. The only one I can even think of was Seed and that lasted -3 days.

Some of us are interested in talking about the industry in addition to the craft of game design. That doesn't necessarily make us fucking retards. If you're not interested in that aspect of discussion, simply move on instead of dismissing it and reacting like an infantile pretentious twat.

I'm sorry that my use of the word 'fucking' bothered you so much. I think maybe there is a profanity filter you can turn on.


This, which is what I was responding to, is not a statement of interest in the industry, it is a claim that it is reaonsable to talk about games as an industry and only as industry.

LOTRO is not necessarily a good game if it is a sucessful product. It might be a good game to some, it is not to many others. There is no objective position to take here; when we talk about whether or not we think games are good we talk about our feeling for the game. To say "nah, you're wrong, it's a good game because it made money" is bullshit. You want to talk about the industry and success and whatever then fine, it's interesting, but don't try and use it to make claims about how subjectivly 'good' a game may have been.

(Also this thread was stupid and I like to get in on the stupid stuff, so I had to say something).

Back when I cared about this the best I could do, given all the bullshit Turbine PR, was put the subs somewhere between 200K and 350K:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10782.msg339155#msg339155

200K is the lower bound set by CoH/CoV. 350K is Europe sub numbers reported at that time + US box sale figures + some growth added in.

Except a sustained subscriber level does indicate something important about quality: That many people think it is good enough to keep paying for.  Not just buy the box based on branding and marketing, but keep shelling out month after month.  Although a creatively good game could fail on many other grounds, for it to gain and keep subscribers it must give the players something they find enjoyable.  A persistant online game is an inherently different beast, where commercial success is a pre-requisite for anything else (because if the servers are shut down, the game does not exist anymore).

--Dave

No. It is an acknowledgement of the reality that when an MMO costs upwards of $50 million to produce, it no longer is purely an artistic endeavor. At that point, you have to justify the investment made with something other than "dude, it's ART" or you are being criminally irresponsible with someone else's money.

You can say LOTRO or WoW or whatever is devoid of good gameplay or is boring or has poor art or whatever. All of these may or may not be valid. But when you start flinging around terms like "LOTRO was a failure", then you are in the realm of business, not art. You may REALLY REALLY HATE the latest Katy Perry album, but it is incontestably a commercial success.

You confusing things.

Something can be a financial success or not. Reasonably objective if we agree on expectations.

Someting can be an artistic success or not. Subjective.

At no point am I saying that we should only consider the latter. I'm just saying that trying to argue the latter based on the former is stupid.

Is WoW a good game? On the first criteria I think we would all have to agree it is, but that doesn't mean schild is necessarily wrong when he says it's not; because he's judging it on a different criteria. The former is only a necessary part of the latter if we include "financially stable, long running, large playerbase" as part of our criteria, and many of us do not. Even if we do include that in our criteria, that does not mean it becomes more important than any other criteria we might have, such as "runs on my pc", "combat mechanics are smooth, simple and responsive", or whatever else we desire to include. If it fails these other aspects we are justified in saying it is not a good game.

Which nobody actually said by the way. If you read the argument, all anyone said is that LoTRO was not a "failure/bomb" as premised by Cevik. Not a single person said it was a good game because it made money. Some said it was a good game because they enjoyed it. Others said it was a good investment because it made money. These things are not equal. So, yeah. Keep on keeping on though, with the retards thing.

The Da Vinci Code is full of fai.. hmm.

The Da Vinci Code, as a well researched, fun to read, intelligent thriller is a failu.. wait, I can't say that either.

Umm.

This thread, despite the recent flurry of posts, is a failure.


Oh look, it's my stop.

So you're just winding us up for fun.  I'm tempted to break out the flamethrower, but I'll try this instead: What would make a game "Artistically Successful"?  Given that a persistant online game doesn't exist when nobody pays the server bill, how could an online game be "Artistically successful" (regardless of how you define that) without commercial success?

--Dave

Is reading really that hard?

Because I really don't want to say more in this thread (I was afterall just being stupid and drawing out a point) I will add some more to simplify this:

A - finacial success
B - shiny
C - artistic success
D - a good game

1. If A and B then C.
2. If C then D.

If A, then D is false.
If B, then D is false.
If A and B, then D is true.

(What terrible notation).

To the extent that isn't gibberish, it's bullshit.  If your standards for "artistically successful" is only that something be both financially successful and "shiny", your standards are considerably lower than mine.  Not to mention that "shiny" is an undefined term that seems to stand in for "artistic merit" in your formulation, making the whole thing a recursive pile of crap.

I gave you a chance to redeem your stupidity, you didn't take it.  Fuck off.

--Dave

Scary movie 2 made enough money to be successful and pump out sequels. It may not have been flop but would anyone put it in even their top twenty list?

I knew I should have left them as just letters, but I thought that would confuse you even more. How wrong I was. Logic is even harder than reading.

Alright guys, find something else to argue about.

I hear Mythic is releasing an online game based on the Warhammer universe, how do you think they will handle all of the potential classes available?

oh u

I think I heard somewhere that they had to cut some classes to make their release date :ye_gods:

Don't be cynical.  It could be as Marc says and that they just weren't fun and never would have been.   :roll:

What defines B?

Shiny:
   
Something that is great, neat, very cool, peachy keen.
From the short lived Joss Whedon television series "Firefly."
"Have a shiny day."

To be fair, and to risk sparking this debate again, I said "artistic failure" but it was because I was in a hurry to get home from work.  I think in a pure business sense, if I were investing money and expecting a return on said money, that the result we've seen out of LotRO is extremely poor compared to the result I would have expected before launch.  Perhaps I'm a crazed nut that just wants America to LoseTurbine to fail or something, but 200k peak and then a slowly dwindling subscription base afterward just doesn't seem worth the initial investment into the game.

I may be wrong, the numbers I have to go by may be wrong (but I notice Turbine isn't rushing out to give us real numbers to work with), and it may be a smashing success, but if I were an investor I'd be more than just a bit disappointed in the results.

Idle curiosity question:

Why are people so wrapped up in whether an MMO is or was considered a success or not? Nobody gives a shit about single player games, at least I don't remember any threads discussing the finer points of whether S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a financial or artistic success. Is it because people get butthurt that games they don't like continue to draw in millions of dollars of revenue a month?

Or is it because they are so in love with their little precious snowflake that when someone with a penchant for hyperbole and a lack of seriousness makes a flippant and offhanded remark that they fly into a fit of nerd rage and create three pages of posts saying "NUH UH!"?

all trolling aside it's an interesting question -- if kept objective -- of why some MMO's succeed and some don't.  And by success I think it's fair to use sub count.  Box sales translate to nice license sales, but it's recurring revenue plus the cool allure of a healthy community that keeps some games in the spotlight.

For instance, I can't succinctly say why DDO and LotRO and Eve and others didn't work for me without bringing up a lot of subjective, anecdotal design issues.  But isn't that enough?  If a player can't feel they are succeeding/learning/whatever-fun-criteria then can't a player then claim those games didn't succeed for them?

Again, I'm not trolling but it seems fair for players to wonder about the criteria of playability of certain games and then pass that on to other players.

Not really.  We were trying to make a point about game completeness and restricted leveling in open Beta.  You turned it into a 3 page flame war over the success/failure of LOTRO.

It takes two to tango.

It takes two to tango.
[/quote]

Res ipsa loquitur.

So, show me again on the doll where AoC touched you.

Depends on what we are talking about, like i said before. Are we talking technical: bug's, stability, design, art direction.

Or are we talking "Is it fun".  They are to diffrent things, one can happen without the other.

I had original said that "LOTRO was one of the best CRAFTED games to come out in a while".  That had nothing to do with "Is it fun".  But someone needed to make sure everyone knew they hated that game and that they were canceling the preorders on hearsay (http://)..

To answer your question directly. Yes, its just fine, sadly thats not what the conversation was about, thats when it went downhill.

There was also a very valid counter point/consideration made that seems to cause anger.



LOTRO was a flook in a sea of Non-NDA dropping, leading to exactly where HaemishM's well founded fears come from. Its the exception to the rule, amiable was trying to point out. It also still had nothing to do with "Is it fun" or "How many subscribers does it have", its completely about ...well, completeness.

We now return you to your regularly schedule trolling.

Or both. I'm just curious why MMO's evoke such a strong reaction one way or the other from people who (I assume) don't play the game? Those who are still playing the game I can understand.

I think it's because those that aren't playing could be playing if they found a game worth playing. 

I'm assuming you are aiming this at me, but honestly I think you are projecting your anger on to me.

As I repeatedly said above, I think LotRO was a failure when compared to the expectations that I, and I assume most, people had about the possibilities for the property at launch.  While I realize the flame war immediately preceeding this flame war involved changing the word "think" to "absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is fact", I'm still using the more colloquial and quaint form of the language where think means think.

Not once was I ever angry.  Sure I felt sorry for you, and I think much less of your opinion now than I did before yesterday, but to be honest I didn't think much of your opinion before yesterday anyway, so it's pretty much a wash.  But no, no anger.  Unless we're using a new form of English where the word anger now means mild amusement.

The skin around here used to be much thicker, but I like the new thin skinned f13, it's pleasing to the soul to watch people get so easily offended by a self confessed drug abusing alcoholic that admittedly has never had anything important to say.

Actually I think it was over changing "think" to "defacto."  Do we need to bust out the dictionary defintion of defacto again?  (Hint:  It is not "absolutely know beyond the shadow of a doubt" it is closer to "actually").  And when I figured out what the beef was I apologized for the poor word choice. 

Of course it is irrelevant to the point.  Haemish was concerned that there was limited access in the Beta.  He said it made him think the game was not complete.  I was trying to provide an example of where that wasn't the case.  Hilarity ensued.   :awesome_for_real: 

Hyperbole, amiable, hyperbole.

Didn't you just spend 3 pages flogging me over hyperbole?  :wink:

And fun times were had by all.

MMO's more then other games, let you feel like you're contributing to the design/creation process. Usually that feeling (true or false) is reserved for the folks in a alpha/beta. But as we all know, a MMO never stops developing, so there is always time to 'effect change'.

As in any environment, idea's often conflict and etc.  :oh_i_see:

Anyway, if we really want to know why WAR is going to suck, we need look no further:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19660

#11 is probably the most egregious thing in the interview, but crapping all over the Civ games other than Civ 1 and Revolutions is pretty ridiculous too.

EDIT 1: Seriously though - let's fire the talented people who have the gall to criticize decisions we're making, while keeping the untalented ones who blindy say "yay team"? That's no way to run *any* business.

EDIT 2: Man I can't stop coming back to this. A friend of mine just said, essentially, its like he admitted, publically, that he can't manage people, so he just hires lackeys. That is pretty much how that reads. Astounding.

I'd be more worried if it was Mark Jacobs saying that.  Barnett's just a crazy p.r. frontman type, all MMOs have that type. 

Jacobs is the CEO and Barnett is the Creative Director right?  Are the titles misleading in the fact that Jacobs is really maintaining creative control?  Because from what Barnett is saying it sounds to me like he thinks is God's gift to video game design and that anyone who disagrees isn't worth listening to, which is scary (though sometimes you encounter people like that who are actually right, most of the time they are just suffering from delusions of grandeur, much like me).

His band analogy, that he really seemed so proud of, is so incredibly flawed.  The Beatles were a great band, but you can directly hear their influences in their music, and while the Monkey's sucked, there were a ton of greeat bands that were directly influenced by The Beatles and you can hear those influences all over the place. 

Most bands only exist BECAUSE of the influence of the bands before them.  For instance, Nirvana would have never been Nirvana if Kurt had thrown out all his Pixies records the moment he learned his first chord.  You don't smash your record collection because you are a rock star now, in fact I bet rock stars listen to more music than the rest of us.

Of course, that's all a digression from the real point, which is, he sounds like he thinks he has all the answers.  I've met a lot of people who think they have all the answers, but rarely have I met people who actually (de facto!) have all the answers.  That was a strange speech he gave there, I imagine being in the audience would have been rather uncomfortable (of course, my nay saying means I'll never get a job at Mythic!).

Paul Barnett does artistic direction, lore, and is GWs man on the project. He never really even speaks on detailed design.

Josh Drescher is in the lead design role as far as I can tell.

Mark Jacobs is CEO and seems to have some quiet obsession with the crafting mechanics.

Well, the proof is in the pudding. I'm pretty dubious about his point 11.

I bookmarked that link and fully intend to come back to it in november.

Perhaps it's all just a big misdirection play.  The general hype I hear is that Warhammer is "too much like WoW" and generally things along that line.  Maybe they are pretending to be crazy in the other direction to quell some of that criticism. 

There's a vast world of difference between constructive criticism, and being a whiny douche that constantly complains about how everything sucks, and it'll never get done, etc.  As someone who is stuck working with the latter, you talk to them about their negative attitude once, and if it keeps up, shitcan them pronto.

Unfortunately though, there are quite a few people who have a hard time distinguishing that fine line when it comes to constructive criticism aimed at their ideas.  Constructive criticism can sound like whiny douchebaggery when it's about your really stupid pet idea.

Paul also does (did) the outlandish PR videos, the most vivid for me being about the Knights of the Blazing Sun, which went from being these way cool dudes with funny hats that were hinted at fighting from horseback, then to DAOC paladin clones with oh yeah no mounted combat our bad, then to no longer being in the game. So much for underpromise overdeliver.  :oh_i_see:

There's a bit of discussion on my blog about this, (http://brokentoys.org/2008/08/01/burn-them-at-the-stake/) where I also thought that particular talk was somewhat boggling of the mind.

I agree with him on Civ to a point though. Although it shows that he never played Civ4 (which did dial back on the chromed complexity of Civ3). I also happen to think CivRev goes way too far in the other direction, though this is the subject of frequent arguements at the office (I'm the designated grognard that downloads each new Fall From Heaven patch!)

How DARE you say that CivRev is anything less than a masterpiece!  My veteran catapults will be arriving at your city gates posthaste sir!

Seriously though, I like Barnett's rants; he just hasn't learned that MMO gamers forget NOTHING.  Plus, why not stir up some gamer blood with these comments?  Gets more folks talking about WAR.

WAR is not the WoW killer.
WAR won't seriously wound WoW.
WAR won't cripple WoW and leave it in a ditch.
WAR won't even give WoW a nasty scratch that, if left unattended, might develop into an infection.

But I think WAR will do good business, about 1 mil subs and then some of those go back to WoW and they keep at around 700k.

The one that sticks out most for me is #6:
You can only ignore an entire genre if you plan to do something actually different. When you're derivating to build upon success though, you better damned well play the successes and then understand why it's successful. If not and your game is not completely inventive, you've just made mistakes you could have avoided, because you repeated what your priors did.

Maybe he just can't tell which things were good and which things were bad and he was afraid they might copy the wrong one!   :oh_i_see:

Well he's just one man and building anything as huge as a MMO is a massive undertaking of an enormous team, but as Lum adeptly put it looking to "hire team members who have more enthusiasm than actual ability" would tend to imply to fanboys and girls everywhere that WAR's success or failure is entirely due to the machinations of that weird cracked-out british dude with the sunglasses.

Not that he's wrong per se, like woody allen said, 90% of success is showing up. You need dependable people, not manic depressive geniuses who take two week sabbaticals to explore their psyches munching on psilocybin and quaaludes and drinking absinthe in the desert. But I don't think the public will really get that. In fact, I know they won't. They aren't.

We're still quoting Milo Cooper's "porsche performance upgrades" bon mot what, 8 years later, and he was just some random modeller. But EQ1 was a truly significant landmark in the genre; WAR very likely won't be.

I totally had this same thought! They'll be lost under the "OMG SPORE IS SO RAD." Poor dears. :(

You know who he is? He is every Games Workshop middle management or up guy you will ever encounter. It's obnoxious as fuck but way back in the day when I worked in the retail US arm that was exactly how my manager, district manager and regional manager were. And my good buddy in England who worked for them heard the same stuff.

Seems like that would be the case since he's also the GW-liaison then, doesn't it?


He's got a point with the 3-star talent 5-star drive thing.  It's said in such a way that if you execute it in that manner you're going to have problems, though.  Perhaps worse than a poisonous demoralizing cynic in your organization is a boring or lackluster product because of poor execution.  Proper management can corral or compartmentalize the cynic, little can be done to make a poor product better with talent already doing their best.

Right, which was my point. There's a company riddled with those guys who have a one true wayism, Games Workshop uber alles viewpoint as their stock continues merrily down shit alley. So of course GW is going to send one. It's not surprising but it still irritates me on an almost visceral level.

And then there's this recent trend of MMO talking heads trashing their competition in not so subtle ways. Between him and Gaute Goddager, neither of which is going to eclipse WoW, talking shit about WoW... yeah. I'm just saying that we all pilloried McQuaid for doing essentially the same thing. This isn't really so different.

They are the type that get MMOs into trouble.

No-one cares who said it - a mod, the Creative Lead, the janitor - if it is by a red name, it has substance and people will complain if it doesn't come true.

McQuaid, Garriott, Barnett, Emmert et al - being enthusiastic is great, but telling players your plans, then failing to deliver, leads to a lot of unhappy players. Emmert appears to have learned - he's refusing to talk about ChampO in depth until everything is nailed down.

Interestingly, Pardo's attitude towards team management appears nearly the polar opposite to Barnett - everyone contributes, everyone vetos (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=193951).

And as for burning the heretics... the problem with people who listen to God tends to be that they don't listen to anyone else. Sometimes the heretics may not be wrong.

I don't think Emmert has learned. I think he has PR people and CRMs cuffing him. Or at least, they better be ^_^

Yup that is Blizzard's game design philosophy. It's why you really never heard about the lead designers in Blizzard games until Blizzard realized how huge WoW was going to be and wanted a "face" to put with the game and Rob became it (he isn't even the original lead designer on the game and came in late to the process).

I think Mr. Pardo hit it on the head in the interview.  Nothing gets in the way of you playing the game.  The UI is slick, the action is butter smooth; spell, cooldown, spell, cooldown, add, sheep, spell, dead etc.  There is no wrestling with the camera or the UI or a hitch as some graphics load.  In WoW all that shit stays out of the way while you can focus on the action and thereby the fun.

Speaking of fun, I read an interview with some WoW guys before the game came out.  They were playtesting and they kept asking themselves "Am I having fun?" 

Forget all the badges, rep, gear, the bottom line when you play a game should be fun.  And I think that was the key for WoW, they were focused on the fun.  Sure there as some not fun times, like a zepp run, but overall they succeeded. 

He says he has learned. (http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?p=198612#post198612) We'll see.

"Show, don't tell" needs to be the basic communications strategy of every MMO pre-launch (of any content, be it launch or an expansion or just an update). It's less fun, but a whole lot more sensible and professional.

Pardo's attitude seems to be actually quite bit different from that if you read what he says... it sounds more to me like "the squeaky wheel gets the grease":
in a sense "people passionate about something" isn't really that far off from the "5 star drive, 3 star talent" -- both put loudly voiced passion first.

I think that is if he's got an idea - what I found interesting is that he doesn't mind if other people put ideas in, but that they can be vetoed elsewhere. I'm sure it's not a perfect democracy - Pardo's ideas probably don't get vetoed that often, if at all - but it sounds a lot more flexible than Barnett's "burn the heretics!" ethos.

The irony is that they're in the business of entertaining. Which involves some artistic creation.

Some clarification from Barnett on his points (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=78047629&blogID=420605542):

His "black hate" comment is interesting but he doesn't seem to understand where it comes from or the solution to it.  Whenever I work on a new project if some of the key people are sour on it it really does hurt the entire team and makes development slow and painful, he is correct.  The problem is that if the key people have "black hate" there is probably a very good reason for it, that is why it is so powerful and can have such a damaging effect on the project.  It is usually created when the developers don't feel like they are being listened to, that decisions are being made in an arbitrary manner with no basis in reality.  This would be the project manager (as in his own) fault.

Warhammer has gone through so many redesigns and delays that whoever had the "black hate" was clearly entirely justified in feeling that way and he should have not only listened to them but actually admit they might be right.  I am guessing he is the type of guy who gets an idea in his head and then absolutely refuses to believe it could be flawed until all the people under him work on the bad idea, finish it, present it and only then when trying to use it does he realize it was a mistake.  That wastes a huge amount of time and effort.  The people under him have probably scrapped far more code than what is actually going to make it into the game, that's the type of stuff that creates his black hate.

Well you could make the same argument about movies.  Ideally a good movie makes a lot of money and is a good artistic creation (Dark knight).

But usually terrific artistic creations that make no money are considered failures (Grindhouse), and movies that are terrible but make a lot of money are considered successes (Meet the Spartans).

That isn't irony.


On the subject of Paul's comment, it was a silly thing to say, but only because anyone in any management position should be aware that most of what they say will be happily quoted out of context.

Out of context?

The way he's having to backpedaling now, quoting him out of context would have been beneficial.

So basically, don't take anything Paul Barnett says on the interwebs seriously, because it's all hyperbole.

Got it.

1) let's see what this guy does post-WAR (I don't know what he's done pre-WAR)

2) regarding #11 -- this is the bias of an individual contributor / evangelist.  Not a manager.  If people are complaining, there's usually a reason.  And it's the manager's job to alleviate it either by addressing the concern or helping the complainer(s).  This doesn't mean necessarily firing them.  I get the whole negativity cancer ward issue.  It's just that it's juvenile and short sighted to think you can threaten people into line. 

The just-do-it attitude this overweight, over hyped guy is mouthing off about only work sfor these kinds of come-to-Jesus projects that are the hallmark of consumer software.  It's a bully mentality that ultimately doesn't work when you need to manage a live service.  Yes, it gets your project done with 70-100 work weeks, but it's not sustainable.  And it's usually the drama queens who espouse this kind of approach because they know no other way of getting results.

99% of what developers say is worthless. Most of them know how to talk a good game, they'll say all the right things even if they are doing all the wrong things. It's barely worth following what devs say about their own game.

My theory on games and most products is as follows. There are two ends you can work from:

1: Get rid of all the annoying shit.
2: Add in good stuff.

If you do ONLY 1 you'll end up with something pretty good but uninspired. If you do only 2 you'll end up with something that is endearing but ultimately flawed. If you do both you've created something great.

#2 establishes an upper bound on game quality, and #1 the lower bound. Without some interesting new stuff there are limits to how good a game can be, but enough annoying shit can sink any game. It's amazing how many games you play that could be substantially better with minor tweaks - they don't have huge problems in design or inspiration they just have so many rough edges.

I'd also point out that adding cool new stuff is genuinely difficult and requires inspiration but sanding off rough edges is just a matter of resources - it's craft, not art.

I imagine what he will do is end his secondment and go back to pissing shareholder capital up the wall at Games Workshop.

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1041804
Now that's just plain odd.

What is odd about it?

The game launches in, what, five weeks and the  :nda:-breaking beta leaks are mostly positive (with lots of "It could go live right now and it'd be less broken than most other mmogs" type stuff) and it sounds like the NDA is going to be taken down in maybe a week, maybe two.

What on Earth could simultaneously be so important that they're stalling for time before the NDA drops but also can be completed in ~a week?

Probably some end of closed beta event that if they screw up royally they don't want all over the interwebs. Not like it won't be anyway...

when an NDA like this is lifted cam you talk about things in the game BEFORE the NDA was lifted? and if so how is waiting a week going to matter?

Yeah, this is confusing.  Whatever super sekret system they are implementing is going to be detailed on a certain site within an hour of it going live anyway.  I understand having an NDA when everything is still half-born and ugly (and where one site, not universally known, will spread much less bad buzz than no NDA) but to do it for the sake of one system is odd. 

Next week they are going to apply the super sekrit ubar beta patch that removes the debug code, makes everything stable and faster, and adds all the fun into the game that has been tested internally for the last 4 years?  Then it won't matter if people have complaints about something from BEFORE the patch, because it will all be fixed by the magic patch?

That's my guess.  Also, Simond and I are getting NDA leaks from very different places apparently.

I must be getting them from the same place as Simond.  The difference between comments now and 8 months ago are like night and day. 

Well then, lets hope they lift the NDA so they can get all the good press that awaits them!

That could mean anything.  You would think most people who hated the game eight months ago would have stopped playing by now.  Maybe there are only hardcore sycophantic fanbois left to provide NDA leaks now...

I had thought it only took one raving dev video to figure that one out. He's got the GW "It's all so WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGH!!!" attitude about everything he does. Someone needs to tell him to dial it down.

PR videos are one thing, you're supposed to make a splash. When you give interviews and prove you know jack and shit about successful project management and then try to backpedal, all that "exuberance" just makes you look like a clueless twat.

Two words. Games Workshop.

Hmm, I take it this is not news. I never really did the GW thing. Tried playing 40K once with some dude in his basement who had a 20ft long table covered with minis, rulers, protractors and terrain. I got creeped out and left.

People keep saying that, has there been an actual announcement?

Back in a pre-internet era, I did some table-top gaming, mostly BattleTech but sometimes Avalon Hill for a change of pace.  Then everyone followed GW's lead on deliberately disqualifying parts of their catalog and issuing new units every year, and it got to be way too expensive of a hobby.  There was always a few guys that were trying to buy their way into the center of things, but after just staying in the game started requiring thousands of dollars a year it got insane.

--Dave