Paul Barnett speaks on being "Dazed and Confused"

[Ingmar]

Well yeah there's that aspect.

[Lantyssa]

I am color blind myself, about the worst side effect is I have to ask someone else in my company's IT department what color an LED alarm is showing. And I can't make my own cable. LIFE WRECKING.

You can't make your own patch cords?  I'm so, so sorry.

Dood.  How can you live with that?

[Arthur_Parker]

I'm slightly dyslexic, I'm happy to have terrible spelling in exchange for a faster reading speed.

It's the left handed people I feel sorry for 

[Ingmar]

I am color blind myself, about the worst side effect is I have to ask someone else in my company's IT department what color an LED alarm is showing. And I can't make my own cable. LIFE WRECKING.

You can't make your own patch cords?  I'm so, so sorry.

Dood.  How can you live with that?

I know! It is such a hardship to make someone else make a T1 crossover when I need one, as I have to sit there and read f13 instead while someone else works... terrible.

[FatuousTwat]

I have red-green colour blindness and I can't see in 3d.

Can I somehow get money from the government?

[Soln]

We need a word for design-impaired, I suggest grindlexic.

I am so taking that.

[Fordel]

I am color blind myself, about the worst side effect is I have to ask someone else in my company's IT department what color an LED alarm is showing. And I can't make my own cable. LIFE WRECKING.

You can't make your own patch cords?  I'm so, so sorry.

Dood.  How can you live with that?

I know! It is such a hardship to make someone else make a T1 crossover when I need one, as I have to sit there and read f13 instead while someone else works... terrible.

Don't forget the reflecto shield on some bosses 

[Lantyssa]

And y'all let him tank!?

[Fordel]

It's like playing on hard-mode!

[UnSub]

We need a word for design-impaired, I suggest grindlexic.

I am so taking that.

Dikulexia could also work.

Btw, being colour blind AND dyslexic makes you disabled, apparently. Add in hearing impairment (the extent to which is undefined by Paul) and you should be trying out for the Special Olympics.

[WindupAtheist]

I can't see in 3d.

Wait, what? Do you see everything from a side-scrolling perspective or something? Maybe top-down? Can you see on the other side of walls that way?

[FatuousTwat]

My eyes can't work together. The right one is very near-sighted, the left only slightly so. I have to concentrate to see much depth, I can't see stereoscopically (3d glasses don't work), and (I've been told) I don't judge distance in the normal way.

I guess there are exercises that can improve it, but they are tedious and I've never really NEEDED to do them.

[Hawkbit]

I've got Anisocoria but it doesn't make me a flaming douche like Barnett. 

[schild]

I'm a dick and have no readily apparent handicaps. Does that allow me to identify Barnett as "that retarded guy" or "the big retarded douchebag who just talks and talks and talks but no one listens because he's retarded (and also a douche)?" Just wondering.

[waffel]

So Paul is dazed, confused, color-blind, dyslexic, and hearing-impaired? 

[Hawkbit]

I'm a dick and have no readily apparent handicaps. Does that allow me to identify Barnett as "that retarded guy" or "the big retarded douchebag who just talks and talks and talks but no one listens because he's retarded (and also a douche)?" Just wondering.

As long as you stay with the format, I don't really see a problem. 

[ghost]

I'm a dick and have no readily apparent handicaps. Does that allow me to identify Barnett as "that retarded guy" or "the big retarded douchebag who just talks and talks and talks but no one listens because he's retarded (and also a douche)?" Just wondering.

Yes.  It really does allow that.

[Segoris]

It's the left handed people I feel sorry for 

It is a bitch in many situation

I'm a dick and have no readily apparent handicaps. Does that allow me to identify Barnett as "that retarded guy" or "the big retarded douchebag who just talks and talks and talks but no one listens because he's retarded (and also a douche)?" Just wondering.

You don't need to be lacking handicaps in order to call Paul by either of those options. In fact, I'd bet that those with severe handicaps can look at Paul, before this info was even released, and feel great about themselves and may even believe that things could always be worse.

[Redgiant]

Paul, Paul, PAUL,...

[IainC]

I've met Paul a few times and had several conversations with him where he said useful and insightful stuff and generally didn't act like he does in most of his videos. I'm not white-knighting for him or anything but assigning all the blame for WAR onto him is somewhat shortsighted. He's not the reason I'm no longer playing WAR.

[Modern Angel]

He's not the reason I'm not playing WAR, either. He's the reason I will never come back so long as he's an employee.

You should maybe call him and tell him to not be a fucking dickbag in public. I don't know who Paul Barnett is behind closed doors. I don't know who any public figure is. I'm left to judge them on the public face they present. When someone is presenting an ugly, petty, viciously stupid face to the public, so aggressively that I have to think this is what they want people to think, I have no choice but to judge them on that. That's PR 101 and maybe someone who knows him, maybe you back in the day, should've taken him aside and told him to shut the fuck up.

[Segoris]

He's not the reason I'm not playing WAR, either. He's the reason I will never come back so long as he's an employee.

You should maybe call him and tell him to not be a fucking dickbag in public. I don't know who Paul Barnett is behind closed doors. I don't know who any public figure is. I'm left to judge them on the public face they present. When someone is presenting an ugly, petty, viciously stupid face to the public, so aggressively that I have to think this is what they want people to think, I have no choice but to judge them on that. That's PR 101 and maybe someone who knows him, maybe you back in the day, should've taken him aside and told him to shut the fuck up.

Absolutely the same for me, well said. I'm sure Paul could come up with some gems for ideas, and even be useful and insightful as Ian said he has been before, but his pod casts continually lead me to believe otherwise and provide every reason to not give Mythic a single red cent. Which really is a shame since I would honestly pay just to play t1 a few hours a month.

[Redgiant]

EQ: "Please make a Classic pre-Luclin server."

DAoC: "Please make an Origins pre-NF server."

WAR: "Please make a Newbie pre-T2 server."

I guess WAR's "nostalgia" base kicked in a lot quicker than most games. Sad that it is actually true.

[UnSub]

He's not the reason I'm no longer playing WAR.

I learned long ago to distance the artist from the art. So, Paul being a dick has nothing on me actually playing a title he worked on.

However, I'm certainly not playing WAR any more due to Mythic's design decisions.

[Righ]

I am color blind myself, about the worst side effect is I have to ask someone else in my company's IT department what color an LED alarm is showing. And I can't make my own cable. LIFE WRECKING.

You never got laughed at by hundreds of pimply young teenage boys when you turned up as a special guest at a Warhammer tournament with an army of vermilion painted Greenskins. He's never been the same since.

[Chockonuts]

I learned long ago to distance the artist from the art. So, Paul being a dick has nothing on me actually playing a title he worked on.

However, I'm certainly not playing WAR any more due to Mythic's design decisions.

I don't really think Paul is a bad guy.  I think it's just the people like this he hangs with that influence him.

Check this dude's job and it explains a lot of things.  But you just know this guy influenced Paul's whole backwards hat phase he goes through.

[Nija]

I will say that Mark Jacobs ended up with a terrific fall guy. Well played, Mark. You'll have your stupid Romans in space yet.

[Arthur_Parker]

Thought this was interesting.

I didn't like WoW.

But first, a story. Once upon a time, there was a company that was supposed to be brainstorming for a Brand! New! Game!, but everyone there loved WoW so much that it was deeply coloring their "new ideas."

For the record, I think existing MMOs should be closely studied in terms of interface and communication tools (for reasons I've mentioned before), as well as combat system conventions. And then I think the designers of the "new" game should log off whatever their current brand of crack is, and stay off for the initial design cycle. Otherwise we as players wind up with derivative crap. Copying features never works unless you understand the problem that the feature organically evolved to solve. If the feature doesn't feel like a natural part of the game, the audience correctly identifies it as less than deeply rooted in the game.

We players are totally cool with devs stealing features *if* they improve the experience we're having at the moment. If a feature was copied just so the developer could put it on their box, we inevitably think, well, heck, I might as well go play the game that designed this feature for a reason rather than play a cheap knockoff.

Anyway, enough of my ranting. The point was, at the company to which I refer, it was pretty clear that if you wanted a seat at the idea table, you needed to be in the team leader's WoW guild. That was where everyone was bonding, building their relationships, and drawing all of their plans. Since I was supposed to doing some consulting with that team, I installed the game.

I uninstalled it the same night. It was a highly polished, smooth and easy experience. It was brilliantly executed with a lot of humor and style. Every rough edge had been meticulously sanded off, and for the first time in my life I found myself reading quest text written by someone with a mastery of English grammar and punctuation.

And I felt exactly like I did when I did the "It's A Small World" ride at Disneyland. I felt like a hamster being nudged through a maze with no branching tunnels, just one long piece of orange pipe. I felt like the genre had finally been reduced to the simplest possible Skinner box, and the lore didn't interest me enough to distract me from the pellet bar whacking.

You know what? That's okay! Did you see how I phrased my critiques? All about my feelings and interests. Your mileage may totally vary. The crazy jihad people go on when someone doesn't like their favorite game is just incomprehensible to me.

Anyway. You won't see many WoW pieces from me, but when they do highly notable things, I will always try to link you to someone who does an excellent writeup. Like... this one!

[Ingmar]

Given Paul's prior comments about WoW that doesn't seem to be Mythic she's talking about?

Unless of course he was blatantly lying the whole time about that stuff. 

[Nebu]

Unless of course he was blatantly lying the whole time about that stuff. 

Unpossible. 

[Hawkbit]

What game/s is Sanya playing now days, consistently?  I don't keep up with her blog, but I wonder what games are soooo much better than WoW that she couldn't make it a few days into the story?

[Goreschach]

Unless of course he was blatantly lying the whole time about that stuff. 

Unpossible. 

I don't know. If they were that into wow, you'd think war wouldn't have some of the blatantly fucking obvious mistakes that made it in. There are so many stupid gameplay decisions in war that wow managed to correct years ago, that it's hard for me to believe that the clownshoes embargo wasn't in effect.

[UnSub]

Unless of course he was blatantly lying the whole time about that stuff. 

Unpossible. 

Barnett did just start off as a consultant so it is possible that the WoW rot had set in long before he had any real power. Once he came in he may have said "Stop playing WoW", but if that is what the standard culture is...

[Bismallah]

What game/s is Sanya playing now days, consistently?  I don't keep up with her blog, but I wonder what games are soooo much better than WoW that she couldn't make it a few days into the story?

I dont know, but you can follow her here: http://www.examiner.com/x-5353-MMORPG-Examiner

[EWSpider]

I'd have to guess that she's referring to Jeff Hickman, the Executive Producer.