Well that's that then (Mark Jacobs leaves EA)

[NiX]

This image posting and bitching from Nija is making me stabby.

[Ingmar]

Speaking of trends.

I'm just tired of watching people - you're not the only one - copy posts off of forums - not F13 specific, either - and paste them to their blog.

The people who do this kind of stuff need to collectively get over themselves. It's pathetic.

I'm fairly certain you linked to the only time I responded directly to a post on F13 on my blog in that fashion.

The only time in the past week, maybe.

You just linked the same one they were talking about. 

[Delmania]

Perhaps it's a slow news day. Pretty sad though. I'm sure some groupies will rush in to defend his honor since he's a red name and well known.

Or in this case, some  of us tend to agree.  I would point out that the entry in question was made before the post in question.  Having answered the question before it was asked, why the hell would anyone write it out a again, especially when the hyperlink exists?

The Tier 1 game was so good because the PVP was solid... and it was actually PVP. It has taught me that castle/town/city sieges should be the exception in medieval fantasy MMORPG PVP, not the rule. See, slamming your dick against a door over and over again so that you can break through to slam your dick into ANOTHER door before finally being allowed to climb up a set of stairs to pound on a mostly static bag of hit points is BORING. What's the difference between doing that or just flipping a switch in the castle if there are no players present to defend? The keep lord shit in DAoC was tired, but it was DAoC and no one else was doing that kind of thing. But you take the T1 PVP which was all about pitched battles between asymmetrical sides across a town and the keeps just fall flat. The Empire/Chaos T1 RVR lake was brilliant.

I like the keeps and the BOs because they give people something to fight over.   Otherwise, you end up wth Emain Macha, either large zergs groupfucking everything in site, or gank groups waving their epeens around.  To me, that is one of the differences between PvP and RvR - in RvR you fight with and agaist other players over something. 

Plus, all the keep sieges really really really need to be instanced. Maybe you can have a zone that is all about great big pitched field battles but to get into the keep take, you have to queue up outside the keep instance (meaning you have to fight through the pitched battle zone to get there). Each side only gets a certain amount of "tickets" (yes, like the tickets in Battlefield 2) which are respawns for the keep zone. As one person dies, they get booted and the next person in the queue gets dropped in (defenders appear in a safe room in the keep). Certain points in the keep when taken quicken the rate of ticket loss. When your side is out of tickets, you lose. Set a timer on when the castle can get retaken. But really, for WAR, most of the game should be the pitched battle zones, with maybe 6 keeps total (1 for each race).

 

I want to say that instances are bad, and that companies need to take a cue from CCP's usage of Stackless Python to do I/O.  However, I can't really argue with outside of a desire for non instanced PvP.

[Redgiant]

I think WAR did attract the DAoC fans and most of them are still playing, well except the ones who went back to DAoC   

Exactly 0 of 22 people I know who started at release day playing WAR still are still subbed (and all of which happened to also have played DAoC back in its day). The last sub of those was a 1-month retry back in March.

Also, no one that I know of who I used to guild with on Nimue or Guinevere are still playing WAR; most if not all tried it at release. Many of us were in contact leading up to WAR thinking it would be great to ORvR again in style.

It is very much the opposite of your comment in my experience. Most ex-DAoC players are not still playing. The players still putting up with WAR have no decent frame of reference to see how much it sucks, or they just love WOW semantics.

[Delmania]

I know of only -1- DAoC fan that plays Warhammer and thinks it's any good.  That, or he's playing denial about the game and trying to find the silver lining.  The rest of them have either quit or a hanging on because that's where their friends are.

[ghost]

The Tier 1 game was so good because the PVP was solid... and it was actually PVP. It has taught me that castle/town/city sieges should be the exception in medieval fantasy MMORPG PVP, not the rule.

New Emskrank is really the only place they got it right in the entire game.

[DLRiley]

I think WAR did attract the DAoC fans and most of them are still playing, well except the ones who went back to DAoC   

Exactly 0 of 22 people I know who started at release day playing WAR still are still subbed (and all of which happened to also have played DAoC back in its day). The last sub of those was a 1-month retry back in March.

Also, no one that I know of who I used to guild with on Nimue or Guinevere are still playing WAR; most if not all tried it at release. Many of us were in contact leading up to WAR thinking it would be great to ORvR again in style.

It is very much the opposite of your comment in my experience. Most ex-DAoC players are not still playing. The players still putting up with WAR have no decent frame of reference to see how much it sucks, or they just love WOW semantics.

sadly I'm using the WHA forums as my reference, its not a bad guess to associate the WHA with WAR remaining playerbase.

[Hutch]

You just linked the same one they were talking about. 

Doh, so I did.

Wait here, while I go write a blog post about this experience we're all sharing.

[UnSub]

Like this. http://www.brokentoys.org/2009/05/01/worst-presentation-ever/

The people who do this kind of stuff need to collectively get over themselves. It's pathetic.

I appreciate the irony of you complaining about Lum linking to his blog on a related post, then you go linking to Lum's blog on a related topic.

Plus linking to the time Lum publicly disagreed with F13's ideas on a topic just makes all this look really petty. Who knew a thread about Mark Jacobs getting kicked out of Mythic would end in pettiness?

[Triforcer]

This thread has better RvR than the game 

[ashrik]

* ashrik gives you all a Terrible Embrace!

There now, don't you feel better?

[Xurtan]

I feel dirty. 

(Damn you Marauder pull!)

[Hartsman]

That's another reason Scott Hartsman rocks.

Blink.

Now that came out of nowhere.  Thanks. :)

[RhyssaFireheart]

I'm just tired of watching people - you're not the only one - copy posts off of forums - not F13 specific, either - and paste them to their blog.

The people who do this kind of stuff need to collectively get over themselves. It's pathetic.

Damnit!  I thought about doing the Photoshop angle to get around Rasix's threat, but just didn't feel like pushing the envelope.  Well played!

Uhh.. I've got nothing about Mark Jacobs leaving EA, sorry.  Only contribution I can make is that I enjoyed WAR while I played it and ended up stopping because of a billing glitch.  Wasn't bothered enough to figure out the glitch because I can always play EQ2 at any time. 

[waylander]

Exactly 0 of 22 people I know who started at release day playing WAR still are still subbed (and all of which happened to also have played DAoC back in its day). The last sub of those was a 1-month retry back in March.

Also, no one that I know of who I used to guild with on Nimue or Guinevere are still playing WAR; most if not all tried it at release. Many of us were in contact leading up to WAR thinking it would be great to ORvR again in style.

War only had 4-5 medium populated servers prior to the 1.3 patch. Looking at all the complaining and guilds announcing they are going to <insert game name here> on those few decently populated servers means there is a looming server consolidation coming, or that the games coming out in the Fall of 09 will suck most of the remaining life out of Warhammer.

The press might be talking up Land of the Dead, but the player base is mostly upset over it because its diluting world RVR and there are so many other issues with the game that should have been fixed before this live expansion was done.

The producers letter part 3 should have been the priority over the past 6 months, and most folks aren't giving them another 6 months to fix the game. I don't know if all this was Mark's agenda or not, but they can't sit back and wonder why all their players are leaving when the players asked for a pork chop and Mythic gave them a chicken leg.  Yea we still get to eat, but when you don't give me a pork chop I'll leave and pay someone who will. Mythic utterly failed to listen to their playerbase, someone's head had to roll, but sadly its too late for most people to care.

[Sky]

Diluting RvR? Not enough people to form roving gank squads or not enough small bands of hapless victims?

[Yegolev]

Not enough "fix bugs/broken design", from what I gather.

[Fargull]

You know.. I actually thought Mark was pretty decent, but I think his view of the game design is out dated.  Think for the most part most of the designers are now.  Having tried AOC, War, EQ2 and now back to WOW.  I have a pretty clear opinion that building a leveling treadmill is not the solution.

The death knight class really brought it home.  Why put off the fun when you can start off going full throttle?  Either I am old as fuck, or I am just fed up with having to pay; then whack the mole for weeks, and then actually get to play the game I want.

Barnett is the shamwow guy, a douche with an overly inflated ego.

[DLRiley]

The seeds of revolution is growing in this one. Fargull I reached that conclusion when I was 16 

[Fabricated]

Maybe day you'll post 1/3rd as Lum you'll have to talk.

http://pastie.org/528161

A mac, really?

[Trippy]

[Rendakor]

[Sheepherder]

The Tier 1 game was so good because the PVP was solid... and it was actually PVP. It has taught me that castle/town/city sieges should be the exception in medieval fantasy MMORPG PVP, not the rule.

Yet the most popular play types in a lot of online games tend to be the assault/onslaught/siege/CTF variants.  It's not fundamentally flawed, it gives players a lot of neat terrain to play with, gives the developers a lot of opportunity to implement chained objectives and secondary objectives, and if the zone is well designed inherently increments the difficulty for the attacking force upwards as the defending force is concentrated into a smaller area as long as AoE isn't fucking out of control.

[chargerrich]

Sometime, probably sooner than later, a developer is going to really realize that the best way to keep retention high in an MMO is not long mindnumbing grinds for levels and artificial mechanics that require extra effort for gaining access to parts of their game, but rather a brisk pace and rich experience in the leveling process and an ease of character attachment.

Gamers have changed and developers are just starting to realize this, chief among them Blizzard. Blizzard has steadily increased the leveling experience awarded in WoW and thus have significantly reduce the leveling time of characters. Yet amidst the vocal minority who complain, WoW has not see any negative impacts and has in fact continued the upward trend in subs. Mark my words, they will eventually create a /55 button and it will be a good thing (that or further increase XP yields significantly).

I was reading a blog archive yesterday from 2004 where people were talking about it taking 5-6 hours to reach level 8 in WoW at launch  

We have come a long way, and developers will take the cue. Make entry to end game EASY and then make us work at end game all the while providing lots of side content to keep people interested.

MJ, like Brad McQuaid before him, were too myopic and "old school" to see that and they payed the price. Adapt or die, stay the hell out the games business and the let the new breed in if you dont get it.

[Sky]

[Rasix]

Someone went and used notepad.  Now you've done it.

[Ard]

Someone went and used notepad.  Now you've done it.

[Azaroth]

Edit: FYI I'm not following this thread in the least and am probably missing the point on this joke. I just thought this image was very funny.

[kildorn]

I'm expecting this thread to turn into an emacs/vi fight within the next page.

[Yegolev]

I'm expecting this thread to turn into an emacs/vi fight within the next page.

[schild]

god

the standard xp theme with that wallpaper

what are you trying to do? blind me?

[Sophismata]

Going back to the initial hype for the game, Mark Jacobs made a lot of quotes about the importance of being able to see the RVR zones from the PVE zones and their hope to "attract" people to try PVP.

Might be a bit out of place at this stage, but when I saw those comments the scenario I came up with was a far cry from what was delivered.

Say you're crossing a bridge when, below you, you see a fellow player engaged in a clash with The Enemy. You could continue to progress on your PvE quest, or you could jump down (enter the RvR zone, get flagged and all) and help out an ally in need.

Stuff like that, I guess.

[Modern Angel]

Sometime, probably sooner than later, a developer is going to really realize that the best way to keep retention high in an MMO is not long mindnumbing grinds for levels and artificial mechanics that require extra effort for gaining access to parts of their game, but rather a brisk pace and rich experience in the leveling process and an ease of character attachment.

That game is APB. I know, I know... it's not out, EA, blah blah blah. I also swore off getting stoked about MMOs ever again after WAR since it's always a situation where they stomp on my balls. But at the very least, it's a AAA budget title that is taking a different tack, win or lose.

But this is what I meant about the MJs, McQuaids, Gautes making way. They're dinosaurs and they will never, ever change. They will not get it. Like you said, gamers have changed and while rampant corporatism in the industry is bad people still pretending that it's two dudes in a garage with a Dungeon Master's Guide are just as bad.

[Yegolev]

god

the standard xp theme with that wallpaper

what are you trying to do? blind me?

I use Luna because of you.

EDIT: only at work

[waylander]

Even though I hate WoW, I think it was a good thing that they reduced raids to 5 and 10 mans. Add a solo friendly leveling environment with raids that even small guilds can do, and you have a winner. 

Now if you wanted people to socialize more, you could steal War's public quest idea and put them near flight hubs for easy access.

But yeah...if the end game is supposed to be where the fun is, then it makes no sense to make people slowly grind through boring lower levels.