SOE to Publish Vanguard

[Jayce]

I watch game development, and I see the same shit I've seen in any other software project -- design bloat, feature bloat, and failure to follow software engineering principle.

I've seen the same thing.  On the one hand, I know that games are a different animal than say, a general ledger system.  I suspect that it takes some guts to say "Hey, that thing you spent 6 weeks on? It looked good on paper, but it's not fun.  Throw it out."

Beyond that, games would seem to be just a different type of software system, subject to the same problems any other system faces in development, as you list above.  But we (the general we - the industry) know how to manage that.  It seems like you'd see a lot more shops that at least hit an average level of quality and timeliness.

[Morat20]

Yeah that was it. They sounded pretty cool. I'm not sure if they stopped being interested in my or vice-versa, it was a while ago now.

#2 is tough. Project Managers are hard to find. Usually they are either promoted technical people with no management skills or professional manager types who have no touch with engineers and don't understand the product very well.

They are often in a jam as well as upper management will say "we need X and Y by Z date!" and then what do you do? If you can't make it you can say that once or twice but then after that you have to fall into line and just pretend.

At a lot of places being the guy in charge of the schedule means telling upper management one thing and developers another, and just hoping the result isn't a total clusterfuck.

I admit to being lucky -- our manager is a former developer who ended up using company education money to take a lot of software engineering classes. That plus 5+ years as a technical lead meant that he had a real solid base when he was promoted. He still codes when we need another person (he debugged some of our libraries when we were moving to 64 bit architecture), but mostly he just manages the team and runs interference with the customers. (Who are our upper management). He's not nearly as good a coder as I am (although he has enough experience to close most of the gap), but he's about 20 times the manager I'd ever be.

It helps that our customers are ALSO engineers who understand shit like "Changing your requirements 1/2 through development means it'll take twice as long and cost twice as much -- at least -- than we told you".

I wouldn't want my manager's job. I'd hate to be a technical lead (our tech leads are 1/2 managers these days, as they do design and requirements work most of the time) even. I'm a damn good coder, but I know I'm not built the right way to do that job. I do know that they keep a lot of shit out of my way so I can work peacefully.

I worked in ONE shop that had a piss-poor "promoted by default" manager. Never fucking again. He couldn't talk to customers, couldn't handle timetables, couldn't even manage to ride herd on a fairly laid back development crew. What we got done, we got done despite him. On the other hand, he was the first guy we called in when our net code was dying under the load. Guy dug into and rewrote half of it in a week and improved reliability and speed by at least 20%.

[DataGod]

"One thing I've always been curious about: How hard are the art guys to ride herd on? I'd expect -- based on nothing but stereotypes -- that getting them to come up with a consistant artistic vision would be difficult."

Not sure about "art guys" but I went through 3 web designers (and these were actually people I was going to give EQUITY to) in 4 months over the course of this last year  because they're so goddamn flakey....
My current partners are really kickass though, so I feel really lucky about that.

From a start up perspective its all about building the team, and having complimentary skill sets, and peoples willingness to work outside those skill sets when required.

[Nija]

Artistic people are sensitive. Like Smokey in the Big Lebowski.

                                     DUDE
                         Walter, you can't do that.  These
                         guys're like me, they're pacificists. 
                         Smokey was a conscientious objector.

                                     WALTER
                         You know Dude, I myself dabbled with
                         pacifism at one point.  Not in Nam,
                         of course--

                                     DUDE
                         And you know Smokey has emotional
                         problems!

                                     WALTER
                         You mean--beyond pacifism?

                                     DUDE
                         He's fragile, man!  He's very fragile!

                                     WALTER
                         Huh.  I did not know that. 

[Morat20]

Artistic people are sensitive. Like Smokey in the Big Lebowski.

I was thinking "stubborn" more than "sensitive".

[Simond]

Remember Sigil's plan to make pretty much every piece of loot droppable?
Yeah, that went away in a recent patch. Most non-trash gear is either bind-on-pickup or bind-on-equip now. Sigil is claiming that it's a 'test' but the majority of 'test' changes they make, stick.

No time like a couple of months before launch to completely rebalance your in-game economy, clearly.

[Nebu]

No time like a couple of months before launch to completely rebalance your in-game economy, clearly.

They're giving it thought prior to release.  I'd say that's a step above some.

[Venkman]

What was the point of making every piece droppable (and by extension I assume tradeable). 95% of stuff gained in systems where everything's a drop is either vendor trash or a resource for crafting. If VG could go with making most things BOP, then they obviously had a lot more vendor trash than they needed in the system.

However, there's a big difference between BOP and BOE (equip). The latter you can still trade, either to someone who can use as is or break it down for a sub-component. That doesn't impact the amount of items that are traded in a system by much because even if it's not traded, someone's using it.

And, to Nebu's point, it's still rare to see radical shifts in ideology before launch.

[Margalis]

One man's radical ideology shift is another man's "holy shit, this is what we are planning to ship?"

[Kail]

One thing I've always been curious about: How hard are the art guys to ride herd on? I'd expect -- based on nothing but stereotypes -- that getting them to come up with a consistant artistic vision would be difficult.

I think that depends a bit on what you mean by "art guys."  Conceptual artists and things I can imagine being difficult to schedule for; there are times when you just cannot come up with something that looks good.  Most of your art resources, though, are going to be for the modelers and animators and texture guys, and that kind of thing you can schedule for fairly well, because it's more directed.  It's a lot like being a programmer (I imagine, since I'm not one): someone says "Make a model that looks like this" and you have a set process you follow (the same stuff in the same order) and you can gauge how quickly you're progressing.

[Simond]

One man's radical ideology shift is another man's "holy shit, this is what we are planning to ship?"

From all the "It's much better now. Really!" NDA breaks, combined with Brad McQuaid caving on most of his Vision (corpse runs now only when you're fighting the Vanguard equivalent of elite mobs, BoP/BoE loot, dwarves that actually look like dwarves rather than short humans with beards, colours other than brown used in the world, etc, etc)...it's no wonder MS took a look at it pre-E3 and offloaded it to SOE.

I mean, how bad must it have been then?

[Morat20]

One thing I've always been curious about: How hard are the art guys to ride herd on? I'd expect -- based on nothing but stereotypes -- that getting them to come up with a consistant artistic vision would be difficult.

I think that depends a bit on what you mean by "art guys."  Conceptual artists and things I can imagine being difficult to schedule for; there are times when you just cannot come up with something that looks good.  Most of your art resources, though, are going to be for the modelers and animators and texture guys, and that kind of thing you can schedule for fairly well, because it's more directed.  It's a lot like being a programmer (I imagine, since I'm not one): someone says "Make a model that looks like this" and you have a set process you follow (the same stuff in the same order) and you can gauge how quickly you're progressing.

That sounds reasonable. My team's art resources are "The guy who took that GUI design class once". Thankfully, we also practice the time honored tradition of "Mocking that GUI for sucking" at team meatings. (In a good hearted way. People get promoted out of here -- I've not seen anyone quit or resign for anything but a massive promotion over the five years I've been there). We also have a test process called "Bring in someone who has no clue what the hell this product is, and see if he/she can make it work".

Admittedly, since we design for engineers and test with the departmental admin -- we really should test with engineers. Always go with the lowest common denominator...

[Venkman]

One man's radical ideology shift is another man's "holy shit, this is what we are planning to ship?"

From all the "It's much better now. Really!" NDA breaks, combined with Brad McQuaid caving on most of his Vision (corpse runs now only when you're fighting the Vanguard equivalent of elite mobs, BoP/BoE loot, dwarves that actually look like dwarves rather than short humans with beards, colours other than brown used in the world, etc, etc)...it's no wonder MS took a look at it pre-E3 and offloaded it to SOE.

I mean, how bad must it have been then?

Read any E3 report :) Seriously, the offloading happened in advance of E3, but not so much in advance that VG could have radiically changed before the event. As such, the Vision was still in full swing when VG was playable at both the SOE and Microsoft Games booths (think they were in nVidia too, can't remember). Since then, the game has gone through all of the changes.

That's the funny thing about people peaking early in life. Sometimes they are sheltered from what has transpired in the time after they peaked. It's happened to a lot of people in a lot of industries and the reason why most radical shifts in an industry come from new arrivals. Having mastered the rules once, it's hard for companies and individuals to master the newer rules that come along.

[HaemishM]

Brad McQuaid still hasn't learned the OLD rules yet: Don't punish your fucking players. What makes you think he can learn new rules?

[DataGod]

"That's the funny thing about people peaking early in life. Sometimes they are sheltered from what has transpired in the time after they peaked. It's happened to a lot of people in a lot of industries and the reason why most radical shifts in an industry come from new arrivals. Having mastered the rules once, it's hard for companies and individuals to master the newer rules that come along."

Hey when did this thread turn into a discussion about web 2.0?

Oh yeah wait til these 22-27 year olds getting rich on buyouts from Google, MS, Yahoo and News Corp hit 35 and realize they dont know shit.....

Living in close proximity to Silion Valley is actually entertaining, observationally talking to these web 2.0 retards and VC's its like going to the Zoo and seeing a Platapus, and your thinking to yourself "It took this fucker 300m years to evolve and all it could come up with is some dumbass duck beak and a beaver tail"

Seriously hers a typical conversation I have at one of these "mixers"

Me: So um what do you guys do at..what was it...Fleeboit <----meaningless web 2.0 name

HipScenesterEmo/Metro/Geek (HSEMG for short): "Well were a web, news, social, community, networking feed aggregator that empowers the user to maximize thier web experiance while finding the best prices for houshold goods....."

Me: So whats your name mean? Like whats a Fleeboit? Is it a Flea and Bait? How long have you been in beta, your logo has Beta on it?

HSEMG: I really dont know Ive never thought about it....what do you mean everyones "beta"

Me: Well you launched, hows your profit margin? So like whats the value proposition of your service?

HSEMG: Are you like one of those business guy types?

Me: Well if you mean do I have an MBA yeah, say did you find it difficult to do a SWOT analysis on your business plan....hey where you going....

HSEMG: (running away, at this point you wish you had a machine gun to cull the heard, but you just know this jackass is going to get funded with 3.8m because his uncle works at Fox interactive or some shit)  "Sorry, gotta run I think thats Michael Arrington talking to TIm O'Rielly over there (poor guy looks like he's about to mess his pants over this).....


Yeah good fun....



 

 

[Sky]

I suggest sticking to the doctor's recommended dosage.

[Stephen Zepp]

For the hypothetical $20 million question:

For some things I would want people with experience in games. Main graphics programmer and main network programmer, for example.

For most other things it probably doesn't matter all that much. You do want people who have some idea if what they are working on is actually fun at all, but that doesn't require gaming experience.

I think the whole "you must have passion" is a bit of a red-herring. You must have "passion" to work at a lot of places because by any objective measure they suck. People with "passion" often translate into people who will constantly put up with being shit on.

I'd tack on a few others:

1) Your DB design needs to be done by someone with formal training (degree or massive certs) and significant experience designing, maintaining, and upgrading high-end commericial DBs. Experience with MMORPG DB design would be nice, but frankly I'd go for the guy who did DB designs for bank transactions and stock trading. He'll fucking understand the concepts of "speed" and "reliability". Frankly, I could shit better DB design than some of the MMORPGs I've played.

Agree 100% on all points.

2) Your project manager should have experience managing projects (NOT be promoted technical lead unless he's shown serious management skills -- even then, have him trained first. Not a fucking markerter. AND NOT SOME GUY WHO WAS A WHIZ WITH HIS TEAM OF 5 MODDERS). This includes things like "setting realistic deadlines, and understanding that his hot-shot fucking technical lead thinks everyone can put shit together as fast as he can, and thus discretely tacking on some development time. He should also understand the concept of "quality" and have a large sledgehammer with which to beat the concept into his workers brains. If he cannot create, read, and explain a design document -- don't hire him.

Agree with everything except what I colorized. Many studios are finally realizing that if you are using a design document, your game will not be fun. Scrum Dev for the win.

3) I agree -- the graphics and network guys need experience. Games are cutting edge there, and you should get the best.

Spot on.

4) If one of your developers says "It'll run fine on a high-end machine three years from now" -- fire him. Salt his cubicle, lest that pop up elsewhere.

Not too sure I agree with this, but I do see your point!

I watch game development, and I see the same shit I've seen in any other software project -- design bloat, feature bloat, and failure to follow software engineering principle. I think game designers are more prone to chasing after the new shiny -- maybe your game NEEDS a realistic physics engine, maybe it doesn't....but you should have a better reason than "HL2's gravity gun was fucking cool!" to implement it.

One thing I've always been curious about: How hard are the art guys to ride herd on? I'd expect -- based on nothing but stereotypes -- that getting them to come up with a consistant artistic vision would be difficult.

This is the one that most people miss: almost 70% of your production budget will be content...you better for damn sure make 100% positive your Creative Director (Art Lead) is worth his pay--and that pay better be a lot.

[Chenghiz]

Didn't Doom use a design document? I was under the impression such a thing was rather integral to the successful development of a game.

[Trippy]

Didn't Doom use a design document? I was under the impression such a thing was rather integral to the successful development of a game.

Not really. Quake was their first game where they tried to have some sort of formal design document (written by John Romero). It's explained in the book Masters of Doom if you are interested in that sort of thing.

Edit: clarified author

[Morat20]

[

2) Your project manager should have experience managing projects (NOT be promoted technical lead unless he's shown serious management skills -- even then, have him trained first. Not a fucking markerter. AND NOT SOME GUY WHO WAS A WHIZ WITH HIS TEAM OF 5 MODDERS). This includes things like "setting realistic deadlines, and understanding that his hot-shot fucking technical lead thinks everyone can put shit together as fast as he can, and thus discretely tacking on some development time. He should also understand the concept of "quality" and have a large sledgehammer with which to beat the concept into his workers brains. If he cannot create, read, and explain a design document -- don't hire him.

Agree with everything except what I colorized. Many studios are finally realizing that if you are using a design document, your game will not be fun. Scrum Dev for the win.

Design documents don't HAVE to be a uber-detailed, highly-formal document that takes 6 weeks of meetings to change. (For some things -- yes, yes it does. For games? No, not it doesn't).

But if you're coding a game, and your latest hire gets told "Go work on the combat system -- we think "X" isn't functioning right" he should be able to lay his hands on a document that spells out the design decisions behind the combat engine and the methods, tradeoffs and potential problem areas in the design. If you want to change mechanic Y, there should be some paper some where indicating what relies on Y. Not locked up in the head of some Dev who may or may not still be there (or have time for it if he is). Not in badly documented code. A piece of paper, clearly spelling out what Y does and who uses it. You don't need detailed algorithims, full-fledged dependency charts (although those are nice) -- but you need something so you can make sure you don't change something than screw half the game because of it.

There's nothing about it that precludes, say -- rapid prototyping in order to test out the elusive "fun" factor of various aspects. But if you're simply going to rapid proto-type your whole damn game, once you've found the "fun" someone has to sit down and document all that code you just wrote into a cohesive whole. If you've got good Devs, they can sit down over a few weeks and assemble design document around what they've got.

That's the hard way -- you have to have discipline, or else specially tasked devs and tech writers to hassle everyone to get it all down on paper -- or else you'll miss stuff. But it can be done. There's nothing about "working from a design document" that is anathema to creativity, or to finding fun in a game. And they're not -- contrary to some managers beliefs -- an irrevocable truth handed down by God above.

They're a map, there solely so you can see what's connected to what and why. I would think that in an industry with as much churcn as game development, it'd be a flat-out necessity.

[Margalis]

Writing down some idea is key. If nothing else so you don't forget them and so that you have a common base for discussion. How often is it that someone has a good idea, someone else figures out a problem with it, then that idea is re-proposed 6 months later because nobody can remember the original discussion.

The problem is in understanding what the scope of the document should be. You want to iterate but at first it should be very simple. You don't need descriptions of levels or of individual items or damage formulas or anything like that.

Where people get into trouble is spending a lot of time up front on things that are going to change and that need testing before any determination can be made. You can rest assured that the name and stats of basically every item will change. If you are making an FPS a couple of sentences about each weapon type is probably appropriate. Maybe a paragraph, but not some fucking giant appendix.

A lot of very detailed up-front design miss the big picture entirely. Again, MOO3. The design was huge and had crazy stuff like the exact formula for planet-based combat. Pointless. How about:

There will be planet-based combat, similar to Moo2 it will be a single formula based battle. Attackers and defenders can choose different strategies. (Maybe give one example)

[Venkman]

Completely agree. You can't design the entire game in a document and then go figure out how to build it. The latter will always change the former. You need the happy medium between Overview and Specification, and many are still trying to figure that out. However, documentation is absolutely critical. No team survives intact from initial concept to Live +5 years. And it's not a good idea to rely on a clean turnover of personnel.

[Morat20]

Writing down some idea is key. If nothing else so you don't forget them and so that you have a common base for discussion. How often is it that someone has a good idea, someone else figures out a problem with it, then that idea is re-proposed 6 months later because nobody can remember the original discussion.

The problem is in understanding what the scope of the document should be. You want to iterate but at first it should be very simple. You don't need descriptions of levels or of individual items or damage formulas or anything like that.

Where people get into trouble is spending a lot of time up front on things that are going to change and that need testing before any determination can be made. You can rest assured that the name and stats of basically every item will change. If you are making an FPS a couple of sentences about each weapon type is probably appropriate. Maybe a paragraph, but not some fucking giant appendix.

A lot of very detailed up-front design miss the big picture entirely. Again, MOO3. The design was huge and had crazy stuff like the exact formula for planet-based combat. Pointless. How about:

There will be planet-based combat, similar to Moo2 it will be a single formula based battle. Attackers and defenders can choose different strategies. (Maybe give one example)

That's different parts of design, really. Concepts come first. I'd say some games need time spent at the detailed requirements and specification stage -- SWG was one. I don't see them as mutually exclusive -- designing a game like that is like writing simple code. You start with the broad strokes, using stubbs and drivers for the most part. You make sure the giant pieces fit together and the concept works, then you sit down and start pounding on the details.

Take SWG crafting -- all you really needed for high level design was something like "We need to make sure crafted stuff doesn't exceed what our combat guys are assuming is a theoretical maximum." WRite your code flexibily, and that 'theoretical maximum' can be defined once you have a lot of systems in place.

[Jayce]

In our organization we make a distinction between design documents and requirements documents.  It sounds more like what you guys are talking about are requirements documents, but sometimes you're getting it conflated with design docs.

Requirements say WHAT features are supposed to exist.  Design says HOW it happens - object hierarchies, dependencies, interactions, etc (again, that's the language we use at my job).

For games I'd say requirements would be pretty much a necessity, since the designers have to communicate somehow to the devs what they want.  This is unless, of course, they are the same person.  Also, requirements are pretty important for QA people to write test cases from - if you have QA (which I hope you do).

Design docs for the UI are useful, since it's different to say "the player should be able to cast a spell" and "the player can press keyboard * to cast a spell".

[Morat20]

In our organization we make a distinction between design documents and requirements documents.  It sounds more like what you guys are talking about are requirements documents, but sometimes you're getting it conflated with design docs.

Requirements say WHAT features are supposed to exist.  Design says HOW it happens - object hierarchies, dependencies, interactions, etc (again, that's the language we use at my job).

For games I'd say requirements would be pretty much a necessity, since the designers have to communicate somehow to the devs what they want.  This is unless, of course, they are the same person.  Also, requirements are pretty important for QA people to write test cases from - if you have QA (which I hope you do).

Design docs for the UI are useful, since it's different to say "the player should be able to cast a spell" and "the player can press keyboard * to cast a spell".

Don't forget concept documents. Concepts generate requirements generate design, if I remember the terms right. Games need concept documents and requirements documents (to highlight dependencies and such), but I can see them doing rapid prototyping that becomes a template for the design document.

[Miasma]

I wandered over to the Vanguard forums today and found a post from McQuaid which could be summed up as telling all the people who want a hard core grind fest to STFU.  Most of the sections were "This is how X is being done, if you don't like it then don't do X and stop your whining".

All the people who want huge death penalties, no solo content, no maps, long regen and downtime basically just got told off by their idol.  I can only tolerate going to those boards once a week or so as I go into conniptions when people complain that a mini-map exists and that there are "too many quests".

[Morat20]

I wandered over to the Vanguard forums today and found a post from McQuaid which could be summed up as telling all the people who want a hard core grind fest to STFU.  Most of the sections were "This is how X is being done, if you don't like it then don't do X and stop your whining".

All the people who want huge death penalties, no solo content, no maps, long regen and downtime basically just got told off by their idol.  I can only tolerate going to those boards once a week or so as I go into conniptions when people complain that a mini-map exists and that there are "too many quests".

I can almost taste the sweet, sweet tears....

[Signe]

I wandered over to the Vanguard forums today and found a post from McQuaid which could be summed up as telling all the people who want a hard core grind fest to STFU.  Most of the sections were "This is how X is being done, if you don't like it then don't do X and stop your whining".

All the people who want huge death penalties, no solo content, no maps, long regen and downtime basically just got told off by their idol.  I can only tolerate going to those boards once a week or so as I go into conniptions when people complain that a mini-map exists and that there are "too many quests".

Can you link me the post?  I couldn't find it.  He's really turned around his earlier statements and I find this whole "put in all the horrible grindy stuff all the other games have ditched" advocate group to be simply fascinating. 

Edit:  Nevermind, I found it.  IT'S IN THE  FORUMS! 

[Morat20]

In the NDA forums? Crap. I suppose copy the funnier statements would violate the NDA?

[geldonyetich]

So, the Vision (tm) caved to World of Warcraft subscriber lust?

Another artistic endeavor lost to the almighty dollar. 

I can understand how it is convenient to the player to have quick travel or solo gameplay or no death penalties (heck, lets give em death bonuses) and so on, but when you're making a game that is realizing an artistic vision it's generally better than yet_another_clone_03.  Give me the Psychonauts of MMORPGs, that's all I ask.  Those who have played that game from beginning to end may know what I'm talking about there.

[Stephen Zepp]

In our organization we make a distinction between design documents and requirements documents.  It sounds more like what you guys are talking about are requirements documents, but sometimes you're getting it conflated with design docs.

Requirements say WHAT features are supposed to exist.  Design says HOW it happens - object hierarchies, dependencies, interactions, etc (again, that's the language we use at my job).

For games I'd say requirements would be pretty much a necessity, since the designers have to communicate somehow to the devs what they want.  This is unless, of course, they are the same person.  Also, requirements are pretty important for QA people to write test cases from - if you have QA (which I hope you do).

Design docs for the UI are useful, since it's different to say "the player should be able to cast a spell" and "the player can press keyboard * to cast a spell".

Don't forget concept documents. Concepts generate requirements generate design, if I remember the terms right. Games need concept documents and requirements documents (to highlight dependencies and such), but I can see them doing rapid prototyping that becomes a template for the design document.

...so that's now three times the "required documents" for a game?

That's kind of my entire point :)

[Arthur_Parker]

So, the Vision (tm) caved to World of Warcraft subscriber lust?

Another artistic endeavor lost to the almighty dollar. 

I can understand how it is convenient to the player to have quick travel or solo gameplay or no death penalties (heck, lets give em death bonuses) and so on, but when you're making a game that is realizing an artistic vision it's generally better than yet_another_clone_03.  Give me the Psychonauts of MMORPGs, that's all I ask.  Those who have played that game from beginning to end may know what I'm talking about there.

Everybody is going to copy WoW, mostly because it makes shit loads of money but it also happens to have a lot of improvements and shock horror to be a decent casual game pre level 60. 

The constant WoW clone statements about every new game on the horizon are getting old.  What do you expect game companies to do? Copy EQ that reached a peak of 1/15 of WoW's subscriptions years ago?

If a new mmorpg is released without a standard WoW feature set it will get flak for not being as advanced as WoW by the very same people who throw out the WoW clone comments, every single new game will have it's ui compared to WoW's, same for quests etc etc.

The exact same thing happened with everything post EQ and the exact same thing will happen with whatever the game is that knocks WoW off the top spot.

The only chance of someone doing something different is if they are insane or have money to burn trying risky crap.  McQuaid is just showing he's not totally insane, I still wouldn't touch Vanguard if I was paid, he may copy WoW but deep down he wants to recreate the glory days of EQ when players had no choice but to put up his stupid painful timesink crap.

[Nebu]

The only chance of someone doing something different is if they are insane or have money to burn trying risky crap.  McQuaid is just showing he's not totally insane, I still wouldn't touch Vanguard if I was paid, he may copy WoW but deep down he wants to recreate the glory days of EQ when players had no choice but to put up his stupid painful timesink crap.

You do realize that there are millions of non-americans happy to eat timesinks up.  The key is tapping into untapped potential markets while managing to get a reasonable share of existing markets.  I don't believe that Vanguard will pull that off successfully, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone did it with a game that most westerners consider painful. 

[geldonyetich]

It makes sense to say, "Hey Stupid, just clone the successful formulas and make the bling - that's what it's all about!"  In fact, a goodly number of investors won't settle for anything less.  However, I don't think it's that easy.

For example, I'm under the opinion that one could make a game exactly like World of Warcraft, maybe even slightly better, and they will not manage to pull so much as 1% of the players Blizzard has.  The reason being that a great deal of World of Warcraft's population has to do with players jumping on the Blizzard brand-name bandwagon - playing it not because it's World of Warcraft, but because they've played Diablo, Warcraft, or Starcraft and want more Blizzard.  Another reason why a WoW clone may perform poorly is that WoW's success leads to many players having just about played out what appeal the WoW gameplay mechanics have.  So here we have a game with poor cloning potential and whose initial success wouldn't have worked for you unless you had Blizzard brand-name appeal to begin with.

If McQuaid decided to ditch the hardcore aspects of his game because he wants it to be World of Warcraft, he's shooting himself in the foot.  He can't be World of Warcraft because that ship has already sailed and he's not Blizzard.  If, on the other hand, he did it because he realized the hardcore features were removing more from the game then they added, that's another thing entirely.

Personally, I like the game developers who make the art and see if it stands on its own.  Their companies don't always survive, but they leave a real contribution to a gaming community.  Doesn't sound very feasible if you're planning to eat, but hey, that's what true artists are about.

[Merusk]

Dumbing-down and trying to copy WoW is probably the WORST decision they could have made at this point.  Yeah, many of us were snickering, awaiting the moment McQuaid realized 'the masses' weren't going to come to his game, but I still expected they'd get enough of 'teh h4rdk0r3' to keep afloat.   The asstastic graphics (Really, I've seen vids, the screenshots DO tell the tale) and insane system reqs mean only the hardcore will even be able tro try.

I expect it to crash even harder now that they're trying NOT to push the non-catassers away.