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

[proudft]

I nominate Ingmar to take the bullet and report back:

http://www.3000ad.com/download/

[Khaldun]

I tried it once, though it went through so many iterations that I don't even recall which exactly. Millennium, maybe? It wasn't terrible by that point. If you subtracted all the bombast and insanity and hype and bullshit claims, you might have ended up regarding it as a kind of Dwarf Fortress sort of thing, a homebrew project that had big ambitions and many forgiveable shortcomings. Wasn't enough to make me really want to play it.

[HaemishM]

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

Yes. No.

Also, I find it hilarious that the Good Doctor Dillhole calls Alganon utter rubbish and just scant lines later says the backstory and lore is so great that the game will be great in the future.

[tazelbain]

The game is rubbish without the bold leadership of the Doctor.

[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. 

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.

Look at this list of games.  Look at what they were doing in the early 90's.  They made enough money to survive, basically.  They weren't some super-giant, and speaking as someone who was heavily involved in playing games at the time, I can say that nobody had ever even heard of them until like 1995.

The reason these other guys run out of money after a year is because they put the horse before the apple cart.  You've got to develop a revenue stream.  It's like, in the idot's guide to business.  So yea, anyone can do it, if they're relatively not retarded.  But you can't just start up a company, promise investors the Golden Fleece, shit out a semi-profitable MMO, and hope your company survives like these guys are trying to do.  It doesn't work that way.  Because after you release your semi-profitable MMO, you have to make enough money to be able to keep it afloat through an inevitably rough launch, patching process, and then expansions.  And if you don't have a solid business to drive that, then your company was fucked before you started.  What if the MMO doesn't make enough to keep itself going?  You can count the number of times that's worked out for companies on one hand.  Hi Curt Schilling.

So what you and others are saying is nobody can make an MMO like that.  And that's correct, likely nobody can.  Because it's impossible, not because Blizzard has money.  Blizzard didn't do that either.  What I'm saying is that it is possible is for people to build a business like Blizzard did, and then make an MMO if they choose.

[Mrbloodworth]

Dam it, one more time.

THIS BE DRAMA THREAD.

[Goreschach]

If we don't get back to the Drama, then DSma is never going to show up in this thread.

And we wouldn't want that, would we?

[LK]

Curt Schilling sounds like a WWE wrestler name.

[Lantyssa]

THIS BE DRAMA THREAD.

Then post some of it.  I got tired of digging for the link in the middle of page three to read more of his insane scribblings.

[WindupAtheist]

Here's a gem. I swear I did not make it up.

Once we run out of back-story in the lore, then we're just to going start making up stuff. No, seriously, we are. Since David, Hue and Jason are gone now, we can do anything we want. We already have, uhm, battle hamsters. So we're going to expand on those and take it from there.

[proudft]

Yessssssssssss.   

[Ratman_tf]

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

I actually downloaded and played a version of it. I couldn't tell you which, I didn't pay for it, maybe it was a demo?

It was atroctious. It played like a fan's hack of Wing Commander minus the fun parts.

[NowhereMan]

Haha, so aside from the GUI what was holding Alganon back was a planned and coherent game lore?

[Musashi]

And lack of hamsters.

[Count Nerfedalot]

If it's any consolation, you're now on a list of 3 people who have admitted to flopping an MMOG and at least recognizing why (which is a list of two people, one of the others got it totally wrong).

soooooo, who are the other two?  I recall some close calls.  Raph for example admitted SWG failed to reach the suits expectations or some such, but I don't recall him acknowledging that HE flopped it. 

[Cadaverine]

Jacobs, and McQuaid?

[Kail]

Once we run out of back-story in the lore, then we're just to going start making up stuf

Pfft, I thought they were going to stop imitating WoW.

[Ollie]

Jacobs?

What I remember from Mark and schild's little WAR slap fight, I thought Jacobs pretty adamantly refused to get it. At all.

Though I just lurked back then, so I could be way off.

[schild]

Jacobs, and McQuaid?

Bingo.

McQuaid only because I ambushed him. And only then, it was a bunch of half-hazy-truths.

Jacobs basically admitted to the wrong worldview on his blog.

[WindupAtheist]

So after I posted my mini-rant about how every MMO company except Blizzard are incompetent wankers on Raph's blog, Bartle comes up and basically goes "Well Bioware makes high-quality games, and they're doing an MMO!" Somewhere far away, Schild suddenly facepalmed without knowing why.

[schild]

If I hadn't read it 2 days ago, I probably would have.

[LC]

So after I posted my mini-rant about how every MMO company except Blizzard are incompetent wankers on Raph's blog, Bartle comes up and basically goes "Well Bioware makes high-quality games, and they're doing an MMO!" Somewhere far away, Schild suddenly facepalmed without knowing why.

Isn't it Bioware Austin which is made up of random guys laid off from other studios in Austin? I'm pretty sure it will be the standard disappointing Austin MMO.

[Rendakor]

Not to mention working closely with Mythic...

[taolurker]

Dam it, one more time.

THIS BE DRAMA THREAD.

Well, because teh drama isn't really over, there is even more Gamasutra comments today and quite a bit of trolling in the Massively comments for their article (and The MMO Antichrist appeared in page 2 of comments)

[Mrbloodworth]

I think we have a winner:

     
I will try to summarize Jack's observation more simply.

There you go again Derek, dragging the focus into strange areas. (now it's paranoia, I thought that I was supposed to be David Allen?) Derek you are supposed to be the President of the Alganon effort. Yet most of your statements seem to indicate that you're the President of bragging and insulting others, Alganon appears to be secondary and simply a back drop that allows you to brag about youself and to insult others. I suggest, Derek, that you just discuss the game and plans for the game? You are the one that keeps dragging things off topic and into unprofessional realms. It is really getting rather unbelievable in my opinion.

[NowhereMan]

I wonder if the Alganon investment guys feel like a Cthulu cult that's just managed to summon up one of the Old Ones and realise just what it is they've done and that they're probably not going to be getting their magical pony.

[Hutch]

If the Alganon investment guys were the types to read Gamasutra and Massively, they might not have gotten themselves into this fix in the first place 

[sam, an eggplant]

Massively is a media whore, much like the old vaultnetwork before the IGN assimilation. And after, actually. It's cut/paste regurgitation wrapped around commentary by lopheaded mongoloids. Their WOW-specific site is even worse, if you can believe it, consisting of totally inane "bloggers" expected to post X articles per day for their meagre crust of bread, stretching the slightest bit of news into dozens of posts. I wouldn't expect anything remotely insightful out of those filthy hookers.

About to hire some fuckstick? It's 2010. Google his name.

[Segoris]

Awesome. Posting this here in spoilers in case it gets deleted. I'm curious if Mr Serek Dmart can avoid the email challenge.

The Call out:
 

Avoidance:
 

Challenge!
 

[Ixxit]

Hey look, I'm an Internet detective.  

In all his recent interviews Dr. Unnameable keeps saying that David Allen approached him  to talk to the investors at QOL on his behalf and prior to this he had never heard of QOL and Alganon.  However when I was browsing his forums at 3000ADd he is telling another story.

hehe, nothing changes at 3000AD guys. In fact, this is good because if things play out right, we have a network on which to host our MMO games as well. No different than Acclaim, Truegames, K2 Networks, SOE etc. We bring the game, they have the network (and billing backend) and take a cut of the proceeds. That was the whole reason that I was in touch with QOL to begin with, but things kinda took on a different turn shortly after when the investors decided to utilize my track record and expertise.

My original role was an advisory one, but then the situation changed and they asked me to take on the reigns as President of the company with a view to help steer the team to completing and shipping Alganon.

And no, I'm not moving to Phoenix!

Anyway, read this.

So fear not, GCO - as well as a major surprise - is coming.

As to testing, all of you who want to help out can go to the website and create a game and web forum account. Then send me your details so that I can have you all setup with top level access

http://www.3000ad.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=50026988

What he says here really substantiates the view that it was Dr. Unnameable's intention all along was to usurp control of the tech/resources for his own game.  How convenient.

[Moosehands]

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...

I could have sworn he did, and it was.  As I recall, it was maybe like a couple weeks after the watershed split and he showed up to trade a few barbs with Rich Kyanka over the Desktop Commander article.  Shit I've been lurking here for a looooooooong time.

[Stabs]

Massively is a media whore, much like the old vaultnetwork before the IGN assimilation. And after, actually. It's cut/paste regurgitation wrapped around commentary by lopheaded mongoloids. Their WOW-specific site is even worse, if you can believe it, consisting of totally inane "bloggers" expected to post X articles per day for their meagre crust of bread, stretching the slightest bit of news into dozens of posts. I wouldn't expect anything remotely insightful out of those filthy hookers.

About to hire some fuckstick? It's 2010. Google his name.

At this point it seems reasonably likely that Alganon is not recoverable and that the reason this venture is still consuming capital is that Derek is going to "give it his best shot" before admitting defeat and suggesting (or better yet manoeuvring someone else to suggest) that the network, servers and staff might be better used making BC3K Online.

Half the game-playing internet knows this but not, apparently, whoever is supervising the guys who have spent a couple of hundred mill on this and appear to be perfectly happy to continue.

According to Derek (from page 2 of the latest Massively comments)

we can go a long way - for as long as the investors are willing to fund the company - before we even begin to think of giving up on Alganon.

Note that there's no suggestion that the game might at some stage be financed by paying customers rather than investors yet he is still confident they can go a long way.

For me the most fascinating aspect of this is despite the contradictions and inconsistencies, and the high probability that the motivation is self-serving duplicity rather than a genuine desire to make Alganon work people are impressed by the great man's honesty. There are many comments applauding his out-spoken honesty.

It's as if being rude about other professionals, airing dirty laundry in public engages an automatic reflex to consider a person honest quite divorced from any analysis of the facts. Click, whirr as Cialdini would say.

[Sheepherder]

IF I WERE A MADMAN, I WOULD SO CALL OUT THE ALL-SEEING EYE ON HIS SHIT IN MY OWN PERSONAL BLOG.

[schild]

I'm feeling like it's time I interviewed Mister Smart. What say you, peoples?

[WindupAtheist]

This should be fun.