The sky has not fallen (yet)

[UnSub]

So...is the sky falling now?   

No, but the axe certainly is.

And I suspect the wider ramifications is that a lot of other publishers are going to be looking very closely at their MMO plans (except for Blactivision). Because if BioWare + EA + US$200 + Star Wars is unsuccessful, then whatever they have planned is going to have a rough time of it too.

[Venkman]

If there's anyone left thinking in that range, they're either new to the genre or already five years into development and operating on inertia.

The rest have moved over to mobile and social by now 

[Kageru]

I don't think so. As long as WoW is still printing cash there'll be people who think they deserve to be the ones in that position. So they spend a lot of money, aim at the broad market, emulate WoW without actually understanding it and then fail. They're what are called "bad games".

Mobile and social? It may indeed be a large market, at some point, but it's an almost entirely disjoint market.

[Margalis]

Most people with $200 million to spend have enough sense to now realize that spending that $200 million on a WoW clone is a bad idea. There aren't that many publishers with pockets that deep, and many of them have been burned. If you see more pricey WoW-clones it will probably be in the vein of 38 Studios - using creative financing from people who don't understand the risk.

If the sky falling means they didn't hit their dreamy number that allowed them to keep an entire expensive dev team on the books, yeah. Chicken little wins! Good on ya.

You've been asking for them to produce story content as good as shipped with the game, at a pace at least equal to what they did pre-release. Kind of hard to do that now no? What is a significantly pared-down live team going to get done?

[Sky]

You've been asking for them to produce story content as good as shipped with the game, at a pace at least equal to what they did pre-release.

No, I haven't.

[Rasix]

Lum said he's hearing close to 200. No idea what percentage that is of BW Austin though.

I think from numbers thrown around, it's probably half or a bit more than half.  I could be entirely wrong on this, however.

[Evildrider]

Rumor is Stephen Reid is gone.  Also I heard some of the contracted QA ppl got tossed.

[Fordel]

You've been asking for them to produce story content as good as shipped with the game, at a pace at least equal to what they did pre-release. Kind of hard to do that now no? What is a significantly pared-down live team going to get done?

That's my main concern now. Massive layoffs do not bode well for my Troopers Chapter Four story anytime soon. 

[Kageru]

The chance of that appearing has not significantly decreased.

[FieryBalrog]

Lum said he's hearing close to 200. No idea what percentage that is of BW Austin though.

I think from numbers thrown around, it's probably half or a bit more than half.  I could be entirely wrong on this, however.

Lum posted on somethingawful that he heard about 40%.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The chance of that appearing has not significantly decreased.

I see what you did there.

[murdoc]

Rumor is Stephen Reid is gone.  Also I heard some of the contracted QA ppl got tossed.

He confirmed that on Twitter https://twitter.com/Rockjaw/status/205290607856455682

[Paelos]

They should have fired James Ohlen.

[luckton]

   Way to go, EA corporate overlords.  Fire one of your most prominent CS and Community Liaisons.  Surely that will give everyone the impression that all is well  

[VainEldritch]

They should have fired James Ohlen.

Seconded - always thought he looked either scared or bored as if thinking "wtf am I doing here?".

Also, why is it the same gits (Walton, Vogel, et al) are always seen at or around the scene of the crime when an MMO is murdered? This is (at least) the second time Walton has waltzed off saying "my job here is done" only for the game to launch and go, if not tits  actually up, then staggering in the manner of one poisoned and soon to assume the position.

How do these people continually get hired?  

[Surlyboi]

I don't think so. As long as WoW is still printing cash there'll be people who think they deserve to be the ones in that position. So they spend a lot of money, aim at the broad market, emulate WoW without actually understanding it and then fail. They're what are called "bad games".

Mobile and social? It may indeed be a large market, at some point, but it's an almost entirely disjoint market.

Mobile and social? It may indeed be a large market, at some point, but it's an almost entirely disjoint market.

a large market, at some point, but it's an almost entirely disjoint market.

but it's an almost entirely disjoint market.

disjoint



As for why the same gits are always around? They've got the experience and the money men don't. The same reason the same shitty CEOs always seem to land on their feet in other companies. Boards like hiring people with track records, even if those track records are shitty.

[Draegan]

So apparently the LFD tool is going to be server only.

So big of a fail.  Sooooo big.

[Modern Angel]

How do these people continually get hired?  

Because the whole industry is borderline built on low-grade systemic corruption? edit: Well, I should modify that to say that the MMO industry. I'm really down on the way most of these assholes conduct business.

[Simond]

If you fail at something, you're supposed to learn from it ergo someone with a list of nothing but expensive failures on their c.v. must surely be the sort of experienced developer/manager/etc. you need.

Or something.

[Trippy]

They should have fired James Ohlen.

Seconded - always thought he looked either scared or bored as if thinking "wtf am I doing here?".

Also, why is it the same gits (Walton, Vogel, et al) are always seen at or around the scene of the crime when an MMO is murdered? This is (at least) the second time Walton has waltzed off saying "my job here is done" only for the game to launch and go, if not tits  actually up, then staggering in the manner of one poisoned and soon to assume the position.

How do these people continually get hired?  

I blame Rich Vogel. Seriously. Fuck that guy.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=6214.msg166773#msg166773

[Paelos]

Maybe we can get a kickstarter going to have him killed.

Or does that violate the terms of kickstarter?

[Venkman]

I don't think so. As long as WoW is still printing cash there'll be people who think they deserve to be the ones in that position. So they spend a lot of money, aim at the broad market, emulate WoW without actually understanding it and then fail. They're what are called "bad games".

Mobile and social? It may indeed be a large market, at some point, but it's an almost entirely disjoint market.

Margalis covered the first paragraph. Eight years of very public records on everyone else trying to print money the way WoW did, testament yet again to the competitve advantage Blizzard had that no one else can touch.

Mobile and social games, not mobile and social "mmo". It's disjoint as heck, but that's the current perceived goldmine. Is it actually one? Probably not for most players. And already the social scene seems to unraveling a little. Who knows. Maybe it'll swing back to consoles so we can all re-pay for the same games with better graphics or some shit.

Anyway, traditional AAA MMOs are likely dead. See "one server" thread :) I called SWTOR the likely swan song for this type of game (expenditure, mechanic, etc). There's nothing on the horizon that convinces me otherwise. I'd love to be wrong though. Still so much more that could be done if we could just stop giving the same jobs to the same core cast :P

[UnSub]

Maybe we can get a kickstarter going to have him killed.

Or does that violate the terms of kickstarter?

It won't if we can be creative enough and title it "performance art".

[Kageru]

I don't think so. As long as WoW is still printing cash there'll be people who think they deserve to be the ones in that position. So they spend a lot of money, aim at the broad market, emulate WoW without actually understanding it and then fail. They're what are called "bad games".

Mobile and social? It may indeed be a large market, at some point, but it's an almost entirely disjoint market.

Margalis covered the first paragraph. Eight years of very public records on everyone else trying to print money the way WoW did, testament yet again to the competitve advantage Blizzard had that no one else can touch.

Mobile and social games, not mobile and social "mmo". It's disjoint as heck, but that's the current perceived goldmine. Is it actually one? Probably not for most players. And already the social scene seems to unraveling a little. Who knows. Maybe it'll swing back to consoles so we can all re-pay for the same games with better graphics or some shit.

Anyway, traditional AAA MMOs are likely dead. See "one server" thread :) I called SWTOR the likely swan song for this type of game (expenditure, mechanic, etc). There's nothing on the horizon that convinces me otherwise. I'd love to be wrong though. Still so much more that could be done if we could just stop giving the same jobs to the same core cast :P

SWTOR is not sufficient evidence AAA MMO's are "over" as it was based on the false premise that "story" is enough to usher  in the next generation of MMO's and supplant wow. They are being punished for their error because as people finish the story, and look at what is left, they leave. I'd consider the MMO era being over if GW2 and Titan do really badly and there's nothing else on the horizon.

I'm sure mobile and social games are a goldmine (or at least "hot" and assumed to be one) but a good mobile or social game generally makes no sense on the PC/Console and no AAA PC/Console game would have been better made on a mobile (though tablets are basically in-between). The design focus is just going to be different. Though we are in the MMO section so no idea why it even got brought up here, it's not going to make MMO's unprofitable directly, blizzard is still printing money-hats.

[Kageru]

Hohoho... saving this for posterity and an amusing blast from the past (original article from 2008).

Both EA and LucasArts have confirmed to VG247 that the target for BioWare’s newly announced Star Wars: The Old Republic is to make an MMO with a larger userbase than World or Warcraft.

“We have very high expectations for this,” said EA Games president Frank Gibeau, speaking this week at LucasArts’ HQ in San Francisco.

“Just look at the base of Star Wars fans, plus what BioWare can do. Trust me: we want to win. EA’s reputation is for wanting to win.

“This is going to be a powerful category and there’s lots of ways to compete in this category. [Blizzard] created a much larger opportunity for everybody else, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way.”

LucasArts online boss Tom Nichols concurred, saying that the firm is banking on The Old Republic’s storytelling component to bust through WoW’s 11 million subs record.

“When World of Warcraft came out, everybody thought, ‘No, the market is only this big, because that’s as big as EverQuest was.’ Blizzard showed that it could be much larger,” he said.

“Our goal is to show that by bringing storytelling to the genre that we can attract an even wider audience. Plus, we have the benefit of this huge brand, which has done very, very well for nearly 30 years.”

When asked specifically if he believed the game will be bigger than World of Warcraft, Nichols said all the ingredients were in place.

“I think this game has that potential, with a premiere developer behind it; with a clear differentiating feature being story and something that’s very compelling, and being a feature that’s true to BioWare’s expertise as well as the Star Wars brand; plus the power of the Star Wars brand, which is still doing very, very well 30 years after it started,” he said.

“The opportunity is there for us to do that.”

[Fordel]

Has it been in development that long, christ. 

[Lantyssa]

We were talking about this game a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

[luckton]

All they had to do was duplicate WoW, put a Star Wars skin over it, and add story/lore. 

They succeeded with the last two points, but with the first, they half-assed it.  They duplicated WoW alright; vanilla WoW, devoid of any of the QoL features and mechanic/gameplay polish that came after vanilla's inception.  One could say that those things are what kept WoW going and ever increasingly popular.

It's like a goddamned car.  People these days expect features in new cars that were perhaps luxury/extra features as standards these days, esp. safety stuff.  You don't put out a car in the year 2012 of our lord Zeus without a fucking airbag, let alone an accessible Aux port on the stereo, A/C, power steering, and the other effects.  Likewise, you don't put out a game in late 2011 that essentially recreates the same experience we had six+ years ago and expect it to be the second coming of Christ.  Hell, after we landed on the moon, ratings for the subsequent moon landings fucking vanished, because nobody was getting a whole lot of thrill over watching a couple of dudes on low-quality video feeds bouncing around on barren landscape.

That they've dragged their feet on addressing the QoL stuff while still trying to maintain their vision of post-launch production shows that there's still a number of 'vets' in the MMO genre that both don't understand their audience and/or don't care.  It's their baby, their child, and they'll damn well do what they want with it, critics be damned.  I loved it for the longest time when Mythic would take that stance with DAoC, and when some news kids finally showed up on the block that did the things that Mythic's critics had hounded at them for years to do/fix/address, they still stuck to their guns.  At least, until they started to see those subscription numbers vanish like a fart in the wind.  But by then, it was already too late.

[Hutch]

All they had to do was duplicate WoW, put a Star Wars skin over it, and add story/lore. 

They succeeded with the last two points, but with the first, they half-assed it.  They duplicated WoW alright; vanilla WoW, devoid of any of the QoL features and mechanic/gameplay polish that came after vanilla's inception.  One could say that those things are what kept WoW going and ever increasingly popular.

Testify. I quit WoW in summer of 2005, approximately 5 minutes after I got my main to the level cap. All I could see to do at that point was alt leveling, the pvp that was available then, or the raids that were available then. Those alternatives were either uncompelling, or downright repulsive, so I laid down the game until BC came out. Blizzard has added so much to the game since they launched, that I wonder if any newcomer can really compete. Even a competent newcomer.

[Merusk]

A truly competent newcomer would start with a smaller scale world/ leveling curve but have all the key systems in place.  You then provide something to occupy players while more content/ level cap increases were generated - quickly.

So many games have failed because they were concerned about content over systems completion.  Content is easy, they're just time consuming to create.  Systems that work well and aren't broken/ incomplete/ buggy as fuck are hard, evidently.

[Paelos]

A newcomer that wanted to succeed would renovate the combat away from the hotbar. Otherwise, all the rest of the devs are hyenas circling the big kill.

[UnsGub]

So many games have failed because they were concerned about content over systems completion.  Content is easy, they're just time consuming to create.  Systems that work well and aren't broken/ incomplete/ buggy as fuck are hard, evidently.

Systems require content and content requires systems.   They are tied together.  There is no easy or hard.

Systems get many of the benefits from computer science while content does not.  Content is hand created.  The worlds best do not make 10x more content like the best programmers.

All the games I have tested the split bugs between system and content consistently at 50%/50%.  Naming scheme for VO files is just as important as your foundation game objects in the engine for example.

Games fail due what the features are and then building them in the time\money available.  The decisions made about quality and number of features as time moves before shipping once the building starts.

[Draegan]

A newcomer that wanted to succeed would renovate the combat away from the hotbar. Otherwise, all the rest of the devs are hyenas circling the big kill.

For realz.

Making an MMO is pretty easy if you just look at it from a macro level:

1)  Do you have a Looking For Group tool?  No?  Keep working.
2)  Is your UI completely customizable and moveable?  No?  Keep working.
3)  Is the bulk of your content for leveling?  Yes?  Keep working.
4)  Is your end game comprised of PVP battlegrounds and daillies?  Yes? Keep working.


Beyond that, stop creating games that require 4 hotbars and a mouse with 10 buttons.  I can not go back to playing MMOs that aren't like GW2 and TERA.

[Lantyssa]

0) Are you copying other games?  Keep working.

[Draegan]

0) Are you copying other games?  Keep working.

Going to disagree though.  You should copy what works and what doesn't work.  The tough part is figuring out which one is which.