Blizzard CEO to visit Korea

[Driakos]

Also are me and Margalis the only people who think FFXI looked like a hundred times better then any other MMO when it came out?

The environments were the best I had seen at the time.  I loved how the little cliffs and mountain edges looked handcrafted, not procedural.  Once I got past the pixelation, it was a beautiful looking game.  Great character/monster animations too, just not the best looking models.

Install?  Worst ever.

Gameplay?  Meh.

[Trippy]

Also are me and Margalis the only people who think FFXI looked like a hundred times better then any other MMO when it came out?

No you aren't the only one.

[Numtini]

I was stunned when I saw the footprints appearing in the wet sand or when it was raining. If you manually turn anti-aliasing on, FFXI still stands up as one of the nicer looking games.

Yes, worst installation ever. Gotta be somewhere up their with Horizons for worst treatment of customers as well and without the excuse of incompetence.

[Nonentity]

We do intend to announce a new product at the Worldwide Invitational next month in Korea, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and interest in getting an advance look at what that will be, but players will have to wait until May 19th to find out more. Also, we have a very strong connection with the characters and settings of StarCraft, and we do plan to revisit that universe at some point in the future, but we don't have anything new to announce in that regard at present.

That's the response the Crecente got when he contacted Blizzard about the SC2 buzz.

So, it's not SC2. What is it then? It's gotta be big if the head honcho is coming down.

(Yes, I know I posted this in another thread as well, but I figured this information would help both threads)

[Simond]

Let's translate that from PR into english:
"At present" = "at the exact time when this statement was issued"
"At present" <> "May 19th" ;)

[Venkman]

I'd say Diablo except this announcement is being tied to a Korean-based event. Not sure if that IP means anything to them, so maybe it's something more from the Sierra Online side, some sort of game aggregation service wrapped with community stuff like persistent world game lobbies, avatars, etc?

[Trippy]

I'd say Diablo except this announcement is being tied to a Korean-based event. Not sure if that IP means anything to them, so maybe it's something more from the Sierra Online side, some sort of game aggregation service wrapped with community stuff like persistent world game lobbies, avatars, etc?

Except that Sierra Entertainment has nothing to do with Blizzard anymore. I.e. both are part of Vivendi Games rather than Blizzard being part of Sierra as it was once in its history so it would very odd for Paul Sams to be announcing a Sierra Entertainment product.

On a related note it would be very odd for Paul Sams to be making a new game announcement rather than Mike Morhaime.

[Venkman]

Exactly. This could be a case of big company divisional politics for all we know. We'll find out on the 18th.

[Xerapis]

Actually, Diablo II is quite popular here as well.

It's just completely overshadowed by Starcraft, that's all.

[Faust]

Wait, I think I missed something.  Is the CEO of Blizzard going to Korea for something specific? 

In my world CEO's go to Korea all the time for meetings and business deals.  Maybe I'm hard to impress, but if the CEO of Google (or any other company) went to Korea, nobody would be very excited.

Unless there's some press announcements expected, save the excitement for someone going to North Korea.  Now THAT would be interesting.

Meanwhile: Wow isn't conducive to game room atmosphere for a variety of reasons.  I've been to Korea, my inlaws are Korean, and I have read about/visited game rooms.  However, for me to list those reasons would be armchair marketing though, so I can only guess at the real hows and whys.

 

[El Gallo]

WoW isn't "hard" enough. Hello? Remember how Korea has complete shit for taste in gaming?

You loose your green text button or do we need to buy you and sinji a set of "I'm with Stupid" shirts?  This rangrang grindygrindy kekeke shit is so assbackwards...

I honestly don't know about the Korean MMO market, so please educate me on this one.  Grindtastic EQ was popular in the West until WoW, a legitimate less-grindy alternative, was released and utterly obliterated EQ.  Super-uptra-grindtastic Lineage was popular in Korea, Super-ultra-grindtastic Lineage 2 was popular in Korea.....and both still are.  So it's not insane to think that the Korean market favors grindy MMOs, or at least has a much higher tolerance for them.  Is there some Lineage-level-popular non-grindy MMO in Korea I don't know about?

Now, I certainly don't buy the borderline (and not so borderline) racist explanations behind/slurs describing this phenomenon, but it seems real enough to me.  Perhaps playing in a cafe with other people lends itself to group-centered gameplay in long, contiguous chunks?  That seems plausible to me.  WoW does a shitty job of that, at least during the 1-70 game.  So would any MMO that people on this board would say isn't a mind-numbing grindfest since saying "I like games demanding group-centered gameplay in long, contiguous chunks" around here will get you about the same reaction as saying "Bush is the greatest President evar" or "We should bring back Bruce."

Like I said, I don't know much about the market, so I may be missing something(s) obvious to those who do.

[Venkman]

Again: same culture that enjoyed the Lineages ALSO liked (by a way-fucking-lot): Krazykart Racer (kustom kart kracing), Audition (DDR), Maplestory (grind-tastic diku), and Pangyea (mini-golf). It's not about catering to the hardcore. They are merely a PART of the culture, just as they are here when a game like GTA sells rings about WoW, which by comparison to that is a contrived grind on rails to the average video gamer.

To look at global MMOs is to look at culture AND within the genre AND outside of the genre.

[Azazel]

Yeah, that I can see. Like the whole "band-aid on the face" thing means "tough" rather than "goofy". But comparing Asian and Western-style high fantasy is a world away from comparison-wise to showing all Americans as Cowboys and all asians as Japanese Schoolgirls in stripper-short skirts.

Was that an underhanded jab at Nelly or something?

Also are me and Margalis the only people who think FFXI looked like a hundred times better then any other MMO when it came out?

No, I thought it looked stupid back when Ryu wore one in SSF2TX or whatever the hell it was. Nelly looks like a fuckwit, regardless of the "story" he has behind the band-aid on his face. No underhanded needed. :p

And yes, I never played it, but a friend did play FF and I thought it looked very nice compared to EQ at the time.

[Venkman]

I thought FFXI looked good when it launched, but that godawful UI is what really turned me off, even using the Logitech keyboard that combined the PS2 controller with a full keyboard. I'm predisposed to dislike MMOs on anything less than a 16:9 high-def console for looks alone, but also because of what I think is a gimped control system for a still text-based game. This is why I'm so interested in AoC. That game is looking to be more console-y by default, which means a top-down integrated and consistent UI (at least from what I've played/seen at shows).

FFXI felt like a PC experience forced onto a console and then ported back to a PC.