Mr. Smart is the Best Forum Poster [INTERNET HISTORY ITT]

[LK]

What does ITT mean in the subject anyway?

[Lum]

The fuck it does.  The act of working harder than someone else doesn't cost money.  It's a matter of will.  I'm pretty sure you understood me.  

The act of committing a large team to work as long as required does in fact cost a great deal of money.

"Well, they should just WORK HARDER" is silly to the point of obscenity in an industry where "crunch time" is the norm.

[Merusk]

What does ITT mean in the subject anyway?

In The Thread, unless I'm horribly mistaken.

The fuck it does.  The act of working harder than someone else doesn't cost money.  It's a matter of will.  I'm pretty sure you understood me. 

The act of committing a large team to work as long as required does in fact cost a great deal of money.

"Well, they should just WORK HARDER" is silly to the point of obscenity in an industry where "crunch time" is the norm.

Well we see why you didn't make it as a manager, now.  Nowadays the line seems to be "work more hours and be happy you have a job, or I'll find someone else who will."   People are replaceable money isn't and we all know which is more important.

[Musashi]

The fuck it does.  The act of working harder than someone else doesn't cost money.  It's a matter of will.  I'm pretty sure you understood me. 

The act of committing a large team to work as long as required does in fact cost a great deal of money.

"Well, they should just WORK HARDER" is silly to the point of obscenity in an industry where "crunch time" is the norm.

Dude.  Come on.  That's not even what I meant.  Don't get all salty.  I'm sure you work hard.  Did you read what WUA wrote?  Do you disagree?  I don't think you do.  It's not even about working hard.  The working hard part was just there to describe the goodwill that makes Blizzard stand for what it does.  Keep in mind the context of the ludicrous assertion that ten million people went to Best Buy asking for the latest Blizzard game just because it was Blizzard.

Working hard doesn't cost extra money, it's just a hallmark of properly motivated people in a well run organization.

[Venkman]

There's a lot more too it than that, and WoW started off pretty small. Before WoW Blizzard was a company with a few good games to their name; but their name was no bigger than a dozen other companies making good games. As Lant said, WoW works because it does what it does better than anyone else, better than any imitator. I don't think you can ascribe much success to name recognition; Blizzard's name is big because of WoW, not vice-versa.

I think you're taking the "Blizzard" name and applying it across the entire industry of video games. But you can only do that when you include that huge catalog of console titles they've made.

Oh. Wait.

Blizzard is moneyhats in the PC games space, which has been almost their entire focus since Warcraft I. They're one of the few companies that get primo retail space at all, space usually given to console games. They generate the foot traffic retailers want, because there's still enough core PC gamers left to really want the games Blizzard makes.

As to "WoW starting small"? Again, only a valid statement if you compare it to something like MW2 or any other huge console launch. It broke like five records in the first two months. Before it hit the rest of the global markets the subsequent year.

WoW works because it does what it does well. But it did that in large part because of the budget, time, process and people that launched it, none of which would have been half or 1/3 of that if there wasn't a great deal of faith in the outcome. This isn't to say the name was the most important thing. The factors for WoW's success have been discussed to death. But the value of the Blizzard name is huge. You don't give that kind of development budget to just anyone. And they didn't created "ActiBlizzard" because they liked the sound of it

[LK]

Blizzard got to where it is through a lot of respectable factors, but luck plays a huge role in that as well.

[Sheepherder]

Working hard doesn't cost extra money, it's just a hallmark of properly motivated people in a well run organization.

It's also a hallmark of people who know what the fuck they're doing and are familiar with the work they're assigned.  Which is why people aren't actually replaceable and coding has diseconomies of scale which causes developers to vastly under hire for the work they want done and either miss deadlines, purge features, or work in a near permanent crunch-time state.

[Musashi]

You can't speak like Blizzard just spontaneously existed as a monolith.  They were small.  They did shit right.  They made money.  In that order.  I remember Rock n Roll Racing.  That fucking game was awesome.  I'm sure you remember it too.  Now that doesn't mean that everyone else is completely wrong.  They're just being too ambitious.  

It's not impossible for others to make a company like Blizzard.  It's hard.  But with the talent that's floating around out there failing on MMO's every six months, it's definitely not impossible.  I think people just have to lower the bar when they make new companies.  I don't think you can found a company on a huge MMO, unless you're rich like Curt Schilling, in which case your chances go up from zero to like 20%.  And that's probably generous.  Before trying to kill WoW - before even trying to compete, you have to knock out a few Rock n Roll Racings first.  Then work your way up to a Warcraft I.  Etc.  You can point to a dozen companies out there who did just that, were you can point to a dozen more who bit off more than they could chew that now look like QoL minus the retard (in some cases).  It's not rocket science.

fakeedit:
Sheep:  Tru dat homey.

[WindupAtheist]

I'll tolerate arguments about Blizzard's name recognition when one of these other companies turns out a Blizzard quality game that is nevertheless sadly overlooked due to lack of that recognition. Until then STFU because I'm just not seeing it. Mythic spent a Blizzard-sized budget on Warhammer, generated enough hype to sell a huge number of boxes, then took it in the ass because their game was just plain shitty and no one wanted to play it after a month.

Just.
Plain.
Shitty.

In spite of the massive budget. Speculating upon the extent to which the lack of a huge brand name might have held them back if their game wasn't total garbage in the first place is missing the point utterly. It isn't just Blizzard's budget, because others have spent as much. It isn't just Blizzard's name, because no one else is even coming close enough to quality for that to matter. They're just better at their jobs. They're a real game company in a field full of incompetent hacks and text MUD dinosaurs.

If Nintendo decided to make an MMO (pokemon omg moneyhats) it would be the exact same thing. Some bumblefuck company like Funcom/Mythic/whatever would never be able to compete with them, no matter how much money you gave them. They just don't have the chops.

[Goreschach]

I'm just waiting for Valve to announce that they've been working on an MMOFPS.

[craan]

I'd play that if I could have multiple snark pets.

[Lantyssa]

In spite of the massive budget. Speculating upon the extent to which the lack of a huge brand name might have held them back if their game wasn't total garbage in the first place is missing the point utterly. It isn't just Blizzard's budget, because others have spent as much. It isn't just Blizzard's name, because no one else is even coming close enough to quality for that to matter. They're just better at their jobs. They're a real game company in a field full of incompetent hacks and text MUD dinosaurs.

This.  Many, many times this.

[UnSub]

I forget exactly when Blizzard became a big name PC developer (Warcraft II? Diablo?) but one point to remember is that it very hard for such studios to remain operating over several years regardless of the quality of their output. Plus it hasn't exactly always been smooth sailing, with Blizzard North disappearing after Vivendi took over. There have been other studios that have risen to the same (and higher) levels of Blizzard pre-WoW, only to have collapsed / sold out / gone into a death spiral / been torn apart by their publisher.

However, Blizzard has established a rep for building genre titles that grab players like few other studios can manage. Part of it is polish. Part of it is the perfection in which they grab onto the reward centres of the brain, or are generally well-balanced-yet-different for competitive players. Part of it is that Blizzard 'got' the internet before a lot of other game developers did. Part of it is the name, but that isn't a big reason that 11m players log in to WoW.

It will be interesting to see what Blizzard's second MMO is like. To date, I don't there has been a second MMO from a studio that has exceeded the quality / appeal of their first title.

Also: 38 Studios is trying to go the Blizzard route by releasing a single player title before they put out the MMO. I think we all laughed / rolled our eyes at that strategy, because imo you are just increasing the paths you can fail to make your investment back.

[sam, an eggplant]

I don't there has been a second MMO from a studio that has exceeded the quality / appeal of their first title.

Everquest2 (well post-release, admittedly) and LOTRO come to mind. Also a bunch of asian grinds, but I don't count 'em. Aion is borderline there.

[schild]

Also: 38 Studios is trying to go the Blizzard route by releasing a single player title before they put out the MMO.

They are not doing this because Blizzard did.

[tmp]

It isn't just Blizzard's budget, because others have spent as much. It isn't just Blizzard's name, because no one else is even coming close enough to quality for that to matter. They're just better at their jobs. They're a real game company in a field full of incompetent hacks and text MUD dinosaurs.

It's not just that either, when you consider the fate of Flagship and Red 5 amongst others. Whatever that supposedly magical 'it' in the Blizzard staff is supposed to be, they seem to have awful trouble retaining it once on their own.

[Hutch]

I don't there has been a second MMO from a studio that has exceeded the quality / appeal of their first title.

Everquest2 (well post-release, admittedly) and LOTRO come to mind. Also a bunch of asian grinds, but I don't count 'em. Aion is borderline there.

To pick a nit, LotRO was not Turbine's second MMO (or even their third). Turbine's second MMO died, not quite as spectacularly as the original topic of this thread is likely to, but die it did.

Having said that, I agree that LotRO does exceed the quality and appeal of AC1. And the rest of the Turbine games that came before it, for that matter. 

[Musashi]

Also: 38 Studios is trying to go the Blizzard route by releasing a single player title before they put out the MMO.

They are not doing this because Blizzard did.

It is much more plausible to do something small before something big.  But what they're doing seems to be trying to do both at the same time before they've done either on their own.  That's not the Blizzard route.  That's why people are laughing.  It's probably a better idea that they try to release that console thingey first, no doubt.  But I don't think that's going to be nearly enough.  On the other hand, it's more than most people have done.  So we'll see, I guess.

[Azazel]

I'd have thought he'd be banned from here, if he was such a descending troll. Instead, he gets mentioned here every few months, and I've never seen him appear.

I seem to recall that he did a brief stint a few years ago.

Must have been right at the start, because I've been here 5 years now...

[Azazel]

Blizzard have the advantage that millions will buy their product just because its Blizzard. Same as millions bought Halo III, a run of the mill whatever shooter, because it was Halo. You can rabbit all you want about blizzard releasing polished games but at its start WOW was just an Everquest clone. And that's a fact. Millions clogged their servers at launch because it was blizzard, kept playing because it was blizzard, and then Everquest self destructed, those players went to WOW, and WOW was left sucking all the money there was out of the system. That's putting it very simply, but if WOW launched today under another company name everyone would be lining up to say how bland it is.

Not entirely accurate. The Blizzard name wasn't quite as good then as it is now. A lot of (initial) people tried it because they wanted a better EQ1 without the constant dickpunching, not simply because of I LUV BLIZZARD. With EQ2 being a fucking mess at launch that could barely run on most people's machines, most of their players went and tried WoW as well.

WoW was a bit of a lightning in a bottle moment. I don't know if even Blizzard could top WoW's success.

[Kageru]

Blizzard is really fairly irrelevant. There's a huge number of players who have quit or are bored of WoW and looking for something else to play. That's why AoC and Warhammer moved a million boxes.

But I can't name a post WoW MMO that hasn't been fundamentally fucked up in one or more ways. That's why AoC, Warhammer and the rest of them don't still have those million plus people they sold boxes to.

[Khaldun]

It isn't just Blizzard's budget, because others have spent as much. It isn't just Blizzard's name, because no one else is even coming close enough to quality for that to matter. They're just better at their jobs. They're a real game company in a field full of incompetent hacks and text MUD dinosaurs.

It's not just that either, when you consider the fate of Flagship and Red 5 amongst others. Whatever that supposedly magical 'it' in the Blizzard staff is supposed to be, they seem to have awful trouble retaining it once on their own.

Blizzard's success is organizational and not dependent on one or two or three prodigals. Which, I think, is the really rare thing in games development and especially MMO development, that they've managed to institutionalize a certain kind of professionalism so that it carries over even as people cycle in and out of the development team. 

[Mrbloodworth]

WTF is wrong with you people?

Did the "how blizzard do it" really need to happen again, in another thread?

FFS.

THIS BE DRAMA THREAD.

[Khaldun]

Oh, well, as far as that goes, I can only recommend that people catch up on the Gamasutra thread, which is still going, though Dr. Dmart's last contribution was Saturday.

[tmp]

The Gamasutra thread is moving too fast. Well maybe not exactly fast but they use lot of words.

edit: technically, his last post was on SUnday at 3.30 am

[Khaldun]

Well, yes, but if you don't read it, you'd miss this gem:

"Heck, I'm following Curt Schilling on Tweeter and just started following Serek Dmart yesterday and they Tweeted back and forth."

Somebody find that, stat.

[tmp]

google to teh rescue

[HaemishM]

The Good Doctor has Obliged Us with Another Interview

[Mosesandstick]

I can't believe people are celebrating how Serek is being 'truthful' about everything that was wrong with Alganon. Blaming other people really isn't hard.

[Ollie]

The Good Doctor has Obliged Us with Another Interview

It's like watching a syphilitic donkey drive a sewage disposal truck into a burning whorehouse.

I eagerly anticipate seeing Dmart introduce substantial system and content changes into a live MMO environment - in his usual cool and collected manner, of course. It's been a few years since SWG NGE.

Go, go, go! 

Though with SWG, there was a core game that some people actually liked. Not sure that's a problem with Alganon.

[Mrbloodworth]

I can't believe people are celebrating how Serek is being 'truthful' about everything that was wrong with Alganon. Blaming other people really isn't hard.

Its the Internets, half of them think he will just need to change a spreadsheet entry. Makeing games is easy after all.

[Cadaverine]

I can't believe people are celebrating how Serek is being 'truthful' about everything that was wrong with Alganon. Blaming other people really isn't hard.

Its the Internets, half of them think he will just need to change a spreadsheet entry. Makes games is easy after all.

I think you're vastly overestimating both the percentage, and the depth of knowledge, of these people.  Probably closer to 75%, and they think he'll just flip a switch.  Probably the same switch that controls the internets.

[Ingmar]

The fuck it does.  The act of working harder than someone else doesn't cost money.  It's a matter of will.  I'm pretty sure you understood me. 

No, I don't think I do understand you. You toss it out there as if anyone can do it, but they can't. They run out of money before they get to "years". Blizzard has the resources lying around to work for 5+ years on Starcraft: Ghost, and just decide it sucks and chalk it up as a learning experience. Nobody else in the MMO industry can do that kind of thing. It isn't free, it isn't even close to free.

[Khaldun]

I'm enjoying Doctor Strangesmart's circumlocutions when his various interviewers ask him, "So, um, wait, what is it about Alganon that you see as an asset you can build something out of"?

So far, his answers:

1. The really great core team. [Who will no doubt be the people he blames when he is unable to save the game.]
2. The very deep lore, which is somehow miraculously separate from the art assets and game mechanics that just imitate WoW. Because we all know that deep lore is something that really helps an MMO succeed.
3.

[Ingmar]

So I have a question, did any of you ever actually play the Battlecruiser game? Was it any good at all?