The Long and Morbid Tale of Sigil Games Online: Interview Edition

[Hoax]

So the fact that there was no precedent prevented Mythic from guessing that AoE almost irresistible 30 second + cc coupled with the best run buff in the game was a bad idea?  Or stealth classes being able to 1-hit cloth wearers and remain stealthed was a bad idea?

Well look, since it was four years ago it was ok.  People were braindead back then.  Or pvp hadn't been invented or whateverthefuck.  Are you kidding me?

Its not apples to oranges at all, you sound like McQuaid.

"Waaa Blizzard had more money"  well design with your budget, time and talent restraints in mind.  If you can't execute 20 unique classes dont fucking try to.  If you don't understand anything about basic pvp mechanics dont make a pvp game.

[Nebu]

I'm not going to get into a VN name-calling battle with you Hoax.  It's not worth it.  We just happen to see things differently and I'm obviously not stating my views in a way that makes sense to you.   

As a researcher, I see things everyday and wonder "how did they not see that this was a bad idea?".  Sometimes it's because they lack the intuition to recognize the obvious.  Sometimes it's that they lack the data to reinforce the intuition.  Sometimes it's because they just didn't see a better way of doing things.  Making the first mistake always comes with a bit of latitude, because it wasn't necessarily as obvious then.  If you make the same mistakes after seeing someone else make them for years before you, then those errors seem a bit less forgivable in my eyes.  I'm more willing to forgive those that drive innovation than those that simply embellish.  I think this is where we differ in our philosophies. 

That's my last effort.  If you want to ridicule me more that's your call. 

[Hoax]

That wasn't a fair post at all, I haven't personally attacked you at all.  My beef is with Mythic's incompetence not you e-personally.  But ok, play some kind of internet moral high-ground card or w/e just happened..

Sure you can assume that Blizzard would have made the same mistakes had they come first.  I can assume a bunch of things too.  The only facts I can present are the facts.  Blizzard's game at launch had class balance worlds beyond DAOC's.  So that's what I said.

I stand by it as being 100% true, you've presented a bunch of ifs, buts and thens to excuse Mythic of responsibility for there terrible balance at launch.  Which is your prerogative.  Dont act like I'm some crazed VN poster just looking to pick a fight though.  You're the fanboi here, I think both games sucked balls and said that from launch on  both of them.

DAOC sucked for sucking and having 1/3-2/3 of classes be obsolete at launch and needing several major overhauls get the balance into tolerable levels.

WoW sucked for killing world pvp and instead going for some kind of lame rpg sport pvp shit that has no place in a persistent world setting.

[Simond]

That went right over my head.  Some kind of euro joke?

Armadillo?

Anyway, saying that DAoC didn't have prior experience to build on is provably false (one of the launch servers for EQ was Rallos Zek, and that was an excellent source of data on how not to balance PvP in a diku...especially in the first year or so), as is the "Well, they didn't have enough money/time/whatever" - their whole selling point was 'Team-based PvP endgame' and their PvE game suffered because of that. I mean, if they didn't spend their time on balancing PvP, and they didn't spend their money on PvE past about L35 or so, and if they outsourced their engine tech...what were they doing?

[Ironwood]

That went right over my head.  Some kind of euro joke?

Dime Bar

[cmlancas]

That went right over my head.  Some kind of euro joke?

Dime Bar

The more I live in the states, the more I question why I do.

[Rannonzero]

Hi, I'm completely new here, but I'll try not to rant like I do elsewhere (out of respect and politeness mostly). So let me get straight to the point as quickly as possible.

These posts a page back are a fanboi arguement. Both games had good points and bad, but comparing a game that is four years old that couldn't build off of WoW's launch to WoW is needlessly insulting. To both games and their respective companies, actually.

First, Hoax said this:

Yeah dont get me wrong, WoW had the best pvp class balance at launch I've seen from a title worth mentioning.

But it still had some wacky bugs and pvp was obviously a last minute bolted on job.  Its a testament to how much better at their jobs Blizzard's people are when compared to say Mythic.  When WoW's balance (even w/ Shaman and Shadow Priests at launch) in pvp was better then DAOC's at launch.

Also Blizzard may be magical but their forum groupies are just as lame and fanboi as anyone else's also there are a shitton more of them.  If I had a dollar for every post that was "its just the beta" when it was obvious we were playing the current version of a game that was due to launch in less then a month...

Not to nit-pick, but you did say "Blizzard's people ARE" and "compared to Mythic." Both are present tense, and thus pretty insulting to mythic. Not that you were attempting to hide your distaste for DAOC's launch. But your remembered bile from the time I think is clouding things up. Yes the game launch blew. It was in part if not largely because that launch (and nearly every single other major launch of an MMO up until WoW really) blew so hard that WoW was such an insane success. Because WoW's launch was riddled with problems as well, but because of their popular platform, massive fanbase, and excedingly simple game core, they didn't have nearly as much work to do relating to the gamer OR balancing the classes and fixing game mechanics.

That's not to say at all that the classes were balanced in WoW. They weren't. Fully half the classes were so out of balance as to be considered broken. Which Blizzard then fixed post haste. Or really, some what, 3-4 months into live? They weren't breaking any records for turn-around time on bug work, but they weren't failing either.

And neither was Mythic. They promised a PvP centric game, and they gave people one. Without the real asset of previous games having come and gone with THEIR dynamic of gameplay or anything close (feel free to correct me if they actually did rip off an MMO that worked that used siege battles, third/first person views, multiple solutions and obsticales in PvP objectives, and some 20+ odd classes to boot). I imagine they stole their fair share of ideas from previous games as well, but they didn't promise one thing and then deliver another. They promised people a car, couldn't get the frickin wheels on in time for it to leave the lot, and finally managed to get them on when the car was parked at the customer's house. No it wasn't perfect. But they didn't promise perfect. At that point in the MMO industry there was no such IDEA as a consumer-level perfect launch.

WoW meanwhile never fixed world PvP. And has yet to let PvP leave the battlegrounds and become anything more than a gankfest with zero strategy or incentive to form up into cohesive groups larger than 5. While wow is a juggernaut of an MMO and actually a great game, they still have a pretty crappy promise/delivery ratio. No better than Mythic really, but, because the classes were fun right out of the box, and somehow DAOC's weren't, WoW wins? Then you have to boil that argument down to "Fun when? 1-50/60? Only in PvP? 1v1? 8v8? Before or after the first balancing patch? Before or after the first-upteenth content patch/expansion?" and so on.

Pretty grey-area and frustrating.

So your counter point is four years ago class balance wasn't seen as important?  Or it just wasn't invented yet?

Did I not call WoW's pvp a tack on?  Yes I did, more then once in this thread I believe.  Did I not also point out how that makes it especially telling that they still did such a good job of balancing their classes for a tacked on, total afterthought type of gameplay?  Because they are good at what they do.  Unlike, well fucking damn near everyone apparently who makes MMO's.

The difference in resources may have been huge.  But you know what we always say around here.  Stop designing shit you can't produce.  Dont plan to patch in the fun later.  Fucking polish your core gameplay and make sure it works.  Dont just throw a bunch of pie in the sky halfassed innovations at the players and hope some stick.  Etc etc etc.

I dont need to compare shit today.  DAOC at launch is the only fucking thing I've ever been talking about.  If the fun had to be patched in, well l2dev.

I disagree. And you are fooling yourself if you think that WoW was a successful launch because the developers delivered all they said they were going deliver AT LAUNCH. WoW was a successful launch because the servers didn't die  and the massive amount of logins meant that Blizzard employees were going to head to the bank, and buy a house, not schedual a parking lot meeting. Not that this bad at all, but other than the fact that the launch wasn't a failure, the game WASN'T finished, blizzard DID use pie-in-the-sky advertising to get people to play their game at launch, and they DID plan to patch the fun in LATER.

But then we have personal opinion from there, don't we? Other than the fact that BOTH games didn't have even close to 100% of the content that the game was "Supposed to have" and other than the fact that both games still haven't delivered every single promised feature that was mentioned as a selling point pre-release, there's nothing concrete to go on except subscription numbers.

And subscription numbers are more product of addictiveness, accessablity, and familiarity than FUN, so good luck trying to argue that "8 million people can't be wrong."

So, my two cents? Both games have their merit. One group of investors is fabulously wealthy, one group is just successful. After that, we have fanbois chucking flaming ox paddies at each other 24/7. It's entertaining for a while, but not so much when the vein on the head starts to look like it might burst...



To the OP and the follow-up articles (yeah, I actually kinda read this whole thread mostly) awsome digging, and awsome journalism. The downside is that Brad's idea of a Vision is now going to be swept under the rug and made into an object of supreme ridicule when it really seems to be horrible communication, horrible company management, and a fundamental lack of appreciation for efficiency that were the main problem.

It's a pretty simple but hard-learned lesson that you need a solid foundation in any team to make that team successful. The vision is what keeps it going once it has it's footing, sure, but you need that foundation first and formost. And in MMOGs, that foundation is a solid engine, a good management team as well as a good developement team, and QA.

I just hope that companies don't lose sight of ingenuity and innovation just because one group (or actually, several groups) of people who couldn't build a solid core and stick with that BEFORE going off on a tangent and reinventing the wheel.

[Cyndre]

Anyway, saying that DAoC didn't have prior experience to build on is provably false (one of the launch servers for EQ was Rallos Zek, and that was an excellent source of data on how not to balance PvP in a diku...especially in the first year or so),

I played on Rallos Zek.

[Simond]

Yes, and I played on Vallon Zek. What's your point?

[Vinadil]

I think his point was that Brell Serelis was the only true server for a good comparison.

[Cyndre]

Yes, and I played on Vallon Zek. What's your point?

My point is, I played on Rallos Zek.

[Hoax]

Maybe his point is Necro's were broken?

[cmlancas]

Maybe his point is Necro's were broken?

The whole lot of you who played on PvP in EQ1 are insane in a good way, and when I was fifteen I wish I had the balls to play with you.

Unfortunately I didn't and I pansied my way to EMarr. (This is a derail to what EQ1 server you played on, right?)

[HaemishM]

I just hope that companies don't lose sight of ingenuity and innovation just because one group (or actually, several groups) of people who couldn't build a solid core and stick with that BEFORE going off on a tangent and reinventing the wheel.

If you are talking about Vanguard's group, they weren't reinventing the wheel. They were copying the wheel they'd already built 6 years before. Their vision was not anything innovative at all.

DAoC's launch WAS a successful launch. It was not a failure. The game ran well, the servers never crashed, and unlike WoW's release day, there were no server queues. At the time, it was the gold standard of MMOG launches. As for the PVP balance, Nebu is trying to tell Hoax that no game before DAoC had attempted PVP on that scale in that kind of system. The EQ Zek servers did not have such great level disparrities as one would see in the frontiers on DAoC. It also didn't have 3 different realms, each with their own set of classes and races with racial abilities. Their class balance did indeed suck on release and for many months and years afterwards, which led to all their fiddlings. And yes, WoW's PVP at release was much better balanced.

WoW at release had only 2 realms, with 10 races and 8 classes total, not to mention being able to draw upon the knowledge base of how DAoC had dealt with PVP class balance in the past. That knowledge base is invaluable. I don't doubt that's part of the reason there's little to no crowd control spells in WoW, something which still plagues DAoC to this day. WoW's PVP balance was better at release, but it had no excuses to not be, because of all the fuckups DAoC had publicly been chided for.

[Rasix]

I would seriously run out of red ink marking all of the spots where that post was wrong.   

Anyhow, yall have gone off the reservation with this.  Sigil's corpse needs more humpin'.

[Harlequin101]

I just hope that companies don't lose sight of ingenuity and innovation just because one group (or actually, several groups) of people who couldn't build a solid core and stick with that BEFORE going off on a tangent and reinventing the wheel.

If you are talking about Vanguard's group, they weren't reinventing the wheel. They were copying the wheel they'd already built 6 years before. Their vision was not anything innovative at all.

DAoC's launch WAS a successful launch. It was not a failure. The game ran well, the servers never crashed, and unlike WoW's release day, there were no server queues. At the time, it was the gold standard of MMOG launches. As for the PVP balance, Nebu is trying to tell Hoax that no game before DAoC had attempted PVP on that scale in that kind of system. The EQ Zek servers did not have such great level disparrities as one would see in the frontiers on DAoC. It also didn't have 3 different realms, each with their own set of classes and races with racial abilities. Their class balance did indeed suck on release and for many months and years afterwards, which led to all their fiddlings. And yes, WoW's PVP at release was much better balanced.

WoW at release had only 2 realms, with 10 races and 8 classes total, not to mention being able to draw upon the knowledge base of how DAoC had dealt with PVP class balance in the past. That knowledge base is invaluable. I don't doubt that's part of the reason there's little to no crowd control spells in WoW, something which still plagues DAoC to this day. WoW's PVP balance was better at release, but it had no excuses to not be, because of all the fuckups DAoC had publicly been chided for.

1) WoW PvP was nothing close to balanced at release, and still isnt. ("ITS TEAMBASED!!!one1 We dont aim for 1 vs 1 !! wtf....)

2) WoW is FULL of crowd control spells, Ice nova, sap, seduce, blind, sheep..... unless you speak of AoE CC in which case there are to my knowledge only a few versions, Ice nova, hunter trap(AoE slow) and AoE fear.

The major diffrence is that DAoC was designed for PvP, WoW is nothing of the sort. DAoC focused on the Realm vs Realm thing more then any other western MMORPG had done before it Just look at the only large dungeon in DAoC at release (or close to it) Darkness Falls. This dungeon could be "taken" over by another realm and you would suddenly have to fight groups of mobs and groups of other players in the depths. EQ1, on the PvP servers had fights inside dungeons all the time, heck even raiding in Fear and Hate the first times were a constant battle. You had to try to pull mobs while fighting off other guilds trying to train you or outright slaughter you (good times, when I had time for it heh). WoW....lets just say that the moment they decided on private instances they removed any general PvP or PvP challange. Getting ganked by bored high levels in STV while they wait 1.5 hours in queue for a battleground instance is not PvP imho..

[HaemishM]

Darkness Falls was nowwhere near the release of DAoC. In fact, I think it was released either right after or right before their first expansion. I played DAoC for the first six months, and it was horribly balanced for PVP. The amount of crowd control spells, both single-use and AOE versions, was just obscene, especially because so many classes got them. WoW, even at release, had nothing like it. Sure they have a FEW CC spells, but none of what you mention has anywhere near the effect on the PVP game as DAoC's did (and still does last I played). I've never sat frozen for 20 seconds watching the enemy take out everyone of my group members one at a time in WoW. That was a common occurrence in DAoC both times I subscribed.

[Vinadil]

Nothing says Quality PvP quite like having one Sorceror (I think was the class in DAoC) step out of invis with an AE mez, then PBAoE your whole group down in 2 casts.  Mmmm... good times.  And yes, Darkness Falls was WELL into the release of DAoC.  That said, you could actually have some fun encounters in that game... sadly it just came down to "Whoever attacks first wins" because of the AE mezzes and such.  I cancelled when SB hit and never went back, so I am sure it changed quite a bit since then.

[Ozzu]

Darkness Falls was actually out quite a long time before DAoC came out. I played it back in 98 that I remember for absolute sure on the Gamestorm service. Hell, their first game was Dragon's Gate which came out in 1991 or somethin. They've been around for quite a while and had lots of experience before DAoC was ever even thought about.

I was a big fan of Aliens Online when it came out in 1998. They've had the same damn Mythic Entertainment splash screen since way back then and the same sound to go with it. :) Splatterball was okay too along with Silent Death Online. I'm a MMO whore.

[HaemishM]

He was talking about Darkness Falls, the dungeon IN DAoC, not the game they released before DAoC.

[Ozzu]

He was talking about Darkness Falls, the dungeon IN DAoC, not the game they released before DAoC.

Ugh. I r teh dumb.  Just ignore me.