Tag Archives: Migratory Fluxes

The sky is falling twice! OMFG!

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It must be a designated fun day.

As seen on Q23, it seems that SOE forgot to charge for more than a year those players paying Planetside with game time cards.

Maybe its time to reveal one of your biggest mistakes in the history of this game? The one that nobody seemed to take notice of, mainly because nobody from Sony would reveal it. For the first 12 months of the game, people were playing for -free-.

You botched the subscription system.

Game Cards didn’t expire. You let an incalculable (except to you) amount of people play the game for free, for a year PLUS, and you did NOTHING about it.

It would keep you in a state of constant: “Cancelled” but would never “Close” your account.

Beside the screams and the actual real impact of this “glitch”, there’s a comment from Roger Wong that I consider trustworthy:

It’s true that devs have been leaving left and right, though. I know of five who resigned last Friday. In all, they’ve lost about 16 devs in the past 6 weeks.

And, as Mark Asher asked, where they going?

EDIT – Some more details (about SOE, not Planetside itself):

The talented, disgruntled devs weren’t fired. They quit. Last Friday, for example, SOE lost a lead designer, their lead 3d graphics guy, their lead client guy, their lead database guy, and their tech director.

The lost a bunch of other people the previous Friday too, one of who is coming to work for us. I haven’t met the guy yet, but I’ll ask him on Monday if he’s under NDA, and if so, when it runs out.

Blizzard crumbling down to pieces

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It started a few months ago.

Or, better, a few years ago. We know that some important figures left Blizzard during the development of World of Warcraft. Arena.net and “Guild Wars” are one of the most notable fragment, Flagship Studios working on “Hellgate: London” is another.

Then there was the news of more devs leaving early this year to join a sub-division of NCSoft to work on an announced project. Which is what’s written in the link above.

World of Warcraft is starting to become a major phenomenon affecting and even overwhelming the whole game industry. What could stop it at this point? It’s simple, it can crumble from the inside.

I’m starting to see the leaks of devs above as the tip of the inceberg. In just a few days we have the news of more notable defections. Krones already spotted and commented one and I don’t have anything more to say about it. But he didn’t catch another that hit the news a few days before:

Castaway Entertainment is proud to announce that former Blizzard North studio lead Rick Seis has accepted the position of Technical Director and lead programmer for their current unannounced project. “I’m delighted that I will be able to rejoin friends and former coworkers from Blizzard North,” remarked Rick “and I look forward to reuniting with several others from that team very soon.”

Before joining Castaway, Rick held the position of development team lead at Blizzard North, the company responsible for the creation of the highly successful Action-RPG series Diablo. Prior to this position, Rick, who joined Blizzard North in 1994 as one of the company’s first employees, served as both a senior programmer on the original Diablo and the lead programmer of Diablo II. He has also functioned as the company’s director of technology.

“We are very excited about acquiring more of the most important resources of Blizzard North: the people that comprised the team there were by far their most valuable assets,” stated Michael Scandizzo, president of Castaway Entertainment. “With the team we have built, we will be able to maintain the quality of development Blizzard North fans have come to expect.”

So not only we have the news of one more important dev leaving Blizzard, but also the implicit declaration that more will follow and that Blizzard won’t see anything if not the crumbs of what is left (which reminds me what recently happened at Turbine).

Blizzard North is gone. Completely. If someone was left after the leaks that spawned Arena.net and Flagship Studios, now has probably joined this newest studio-branch.

Blizzard South doesn’t seem much healthier either. We know that a first group left to join NCSoft and now, as Krones reported, we know that more left to start yet another independent studio working on an unannounced mmorpg.

Who’s left? No, really.

Krones writes:

I’m not sure how many of the original visionaries are still with Blizzard, but in the wings there is always new and old talent ready to replace the traitors.

I believe in authorship, myself. Blizzard’s qualities come from the single devs who worked within. Maybe more and better talents will join, but it will still be something new that just cannot be related to what was before.

Asheron’s Call transforming into a snowslide

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Just a few days and the “sky is falling”.

It started on Thursday of the last week. Arthur_Parker links to some rumors about AC2:

Developers down to two, support slashed to minimum people, and closure planned.

Just from talking to people that say they know a turbine employee and this is what is going on in AC2. This is AC2 only, all other projects are running normally.
The bad thing is I have heard this recently from two totally different people that live states apart. Both just happen to play other games I play.

Then he links together two other rumors. One says “Farewell Citan”. The other says that “Perpetual Entertainment hired veteran developer Daron Stinnett as Executive Producer in May”. The company now working on Star Trek Online.

Citan = Daron Stinnet, I guess.

Later the same day, we discover that the rumors are true and that AC2 is done. Along with the game, Turbine is shutting down the studio in Santa Monica:

Turbine reps tell GameSpot the studio will be officially shuttered concurrent with the shut down of AC2 in late December 2005.

Turbine staffers downplayed the connection between the two bits of news, stating the Santa Monica office was focused solely on the original Asheron’s Call, released in 1999. The rep elaborated, stating all business-development functions had transitioned back to Turbine’s headquarters in Westwood, Massachusetts, months ago.

He added that all 10 staffers in California will have the opportunity to relocate to Turbine’s headquarters in Westwood.

Uhm, 10 staffers. I guess most of them left the building long ago.

More insights:

Stormwaltz:
How many of them moved from Mass to LA last year? Having done two cross-country moves in two years myself, I know the financial havoc it can wreak.

Mr. Poppinfresh:
The move was two years ago, and was all of the AC1 team as far as I know. That leaves a lot of people holding on to mortgages by now, I’d guess.

Now excuse me. AC2 is closing but noone is being laid off. All its devs are now working on DDO or LOTRO. The studio in Santa Monica is closing too. But then the studio in Santa Monica had only 10 people left in it. And working on AC1, not on the sequel.

It was rather obvious that more was to come.

Firstly we have the confirmation that Citan, executive producer of AC2, is indeed leaving Turbine.

Yesterday, the news that even AC1 may be in trouble.

Sandra “srand” Powers, formerly a Lead Engineer and Producer, leaves AC1 and puts someguy called Alex “Ibn” Beckers in her place:

I wanted to post to let you guys know that I am no longer with the Asheron’s Call 1.0 Live Team. My last day at Turbine was about a week ago.

Before I left, the team worked out a solid plan for the future: Alex “Ibn

Vanguard’s Senior Designer resigns

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Filed mostly for my “migratory fluxes” category since I don’t know this guy and so not able to provide any kind of commentary.

Vanguard loses John “Kendrick” Capozzi

The rumors have been confirmed, John Capozzi is no longer a senior game designer for Sigil Games.

At Sigil he was one of the original core senior designers working on the Asian themed continent, Kojan.

More interesting informations provided by Krones, who had spared kind words, and AFKGamer, who is slightly more skeptical and dubious about the myth.

Those news are the most important even if they are often unnoticed or even hidden. Games are built by people, not by brands.

Valerie “Pann” Massey – From Eve-Online to Auto Assault

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Old news but new for me. From an interview at Killer Betties. Pann was the community manager for Eve-Online before being replaced by Kieron (coming from Ultima Online):

It was also through UO that I met Mike Wallis, currently the producer for Middle Earth Online. Back in 1998 when we first became acquainted, Mike was working for GTInteractive. He then went to Simon and Schuster Interactive and in 2002 began negotiations for S&SI to publish Eve Online, which was in development by CCP in Reyjkavik, Iceland. Mike liked the things I’d written for an online fansite and knew I had experience moderating message boards as well as the experience I had from my time in UO as a counselor and a seer. Mike told me that if he landed the contract, he wanted me to be his community manager, a real dream job for lots of gamers, particularly since I could work from home in Austin.

He got the contract and I got the job, staying with Eve until 2004 when I came to work at NCsoft. I am currently working with the Auto Assault crew and we’re ramping up for launch in Q3 2005.

Rod Humble fled as well

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It seems that Rod Humble left SOE, even if I don’t know exactly when. He was the producer for EverQuest Live.

He now works as Executive Pruducer at Maxis.

I archive here something that Rod wrote and that I quoted on a comment at Mobhunter about the mudflation and EverQuest that I also brought up recently on a thread on F13 (about EQ2) that I’ll save soon too (I was waiting Scott Hartsman reply, but it seems I won’t get it).

Loral writes:

—
A few older zones had their experience modifiers increased including Shadeweaver’s Thicket, Kurn’s Tower, Unrest, Crystal Caverns, Solusek’s Eye, Katta Castellum, Lower Guk, Nagafen’s Lair, and Umbral Plains. These new hot zones should help get newer players into zones they might otherwise skip for newer content. I like the idea behind hotzones. Without too much effort, older zones become much more desirable than they once were.
—

Rod Humble writes (answering to myself):

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As for the hotspots, no, the original intent was not to change populations in underused zones. It was to assist a more casual playstyle (whatever “casual” means in this case it just meant how some folks including myself play.)

Many of us in at SoE are casual players, its been an ongoing joke that I play a character upto level 23 then restart, then I discovered another person who played that way, then another, then another. Obviously we were not doing something right for people like us. If there were 4 people in the studio who played that way there must surely be many others out there.

This combined with the refrain I kept hearing from experienced players that “anybody can get to level 50 in a week” started to grate on my neves after all I know I cant do that….. so we took a look around..

We did some data farming and sure enough there was a big dropoff around certain key levels in player activity as a percentage of their numbers which shot back up again at later levels (when for various reasons there is a ton of more stuff to do).

Well EQ is in a pretty rare position of having more content than most casual players can ever handle so why not hit the level ranges where casual players have the biggest barren patches and give them a boost?

This combined with Marks comments about “why are developers afraid of letting players get to the top?” struck a chord with me. After all “hardcore” players get to the “top” anyway and they can still enjoy playing so why not extend that to a wider audience?

After all we WANT people to succeed and experience all of the fun content, we have years of it just waiting for folks to experience we dont want to put roadblocks in their way we want to take barriers away and give them a boost.

My initial suggestion was to alter the experience tables but the design team prefered “hot spots” as it would also bring people together so they were more likely to meet friends on the way up.
—

And it was a reply to something I wrote (beginning of May) that was mirroring what you say here:

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Weren’t hotspot introduced because of the basic problem of the umbalance of the PvE?

With the infinite and continuous addition of more zones and content it’s obvious that large parts of these games are left completely unused. This is a general design problem that every PvE game presents. FFXI, DAoC and EQ. In general the new zones provide better rewards, so they simply replace the old ones. But the true result is that large parts of these worlds become obsolete, and the content, even if expanded continuously, is simply lost in a zero-value zone.

I thought that hot-spots were being added to recycle the value of unused parts of the game. If this is true the purpose is good but the application poor.

In my opinion you need “substance” even below the PvE. World of Warcraft is addressing the problem right at the base. The world is balanced because you move through the PvE with quests. Quests are equal to a value of *use*. You move around to *do things*. Each thing you do is connected to a part of a zone. So each zone is kept “balanced” because it has a solid role and value in your story and gameplay. The quest system keeps the world alive and working and, if done right, it means that no part of it will turn obsolete.

This is how I “read” the “hotspot” implementation and the supposed problem behind it.

Rumors: WoW’s expansion and fleeing devs

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You know, when you cannot investigate and research something directly you can just sit back and try to filter what you hear and read from other sources. If you are dedicated enough to something you could even develop some competence that will help you to categorize properly what you hear, even in the case there’s nothing else than a few unconfirmed rumors. Maybe, at some point, you are able to see the hint of a “pattern”, something that “smells” interesting.

A month or so ago there was a rumor about a possible expansion for World of Warcraft set in the northern portion of the world and that would have enabled a new faction. It was an hoax and I didn’t fall for it. With the E3 approaching I was sure that Blizzard wouldn’t be able to announce an expansion and it was rather obvious that they were stacking everything on the Battlegrounds.

Now there’s this new rumor that matches rather well with previous leaked informations that I received from more attendible sources. And when completely different sources start to agree it could mean that there’s some truth somewhere.

I’m posting this because I’m “betting” on it.

—
The rumor comes from FoH boards as it often happens with the hoaxes. It mentions a few new zones, as the policy of mmorpg-expansion dictates, and one new race for each faction. Pandaren for Alliance and Blood Elf for Horde.

Some more leaked infos:

Blood Elf city is reached through a portal and they exist on “floating” islands. Another dimensional portal of sorts is also opened, to a high level area. I’m not sure if this is outworld or not, I didn’t ask. I was just told it’d be a hub of sorts with a few high level instances close by.

It’s not showing at E3 due to it’s incompleteness, it’s planned for a christmas launch (that was obvious) but from the sounds of it, it’s nowhere near ready.

My hoax-sense isn’t tingling much, so I actually believe these rumors and, in general, I’ve been lucky. On this site I often hosted selected rumors and I developed a decent discerning ability to part between hoaxes and leaked “scoops”. The two races make sense and do not go against some infos released by Blizzard along these last months. The blood elf race could also be seen as a band aid to give the horde a “graphically attractive” race .The other few details about the content also fit with Blizzard’s overall approach.

The fact that these races do not seem appropriate for their faction isn’t a direct reason to ditch the possibility. Often something that “doesn’t make sense” is the meat of a story to discover. The content of the new expansion could as well pivot around the reasons that brought to these “conversions”. In addition, the incomplete state of the development could also bring to some changes to the details we have.

The guy who leaked those informations also add some meat to a previous rumor:

I’m hearing from some good sources that theres been another exodus from blizzard? I guess a group of them got together and pitched a fantasy MMO to NCSoft Guildwars style. 12’ish of them have quit to pursue this in recent weeks, I’ve also heard of some warnings from lawyers being passed down to the new company against hiring more blizzard staff onto the new project.

Grimwell’s news didn’t specify the role of the “fleeing devs”. We know from previous reports that NCSoft already planned one or two other unannounced fantasy mmorpgs. So this rumor continues to make sense and is coherent with what we knew till now.

P.S.
It’s a somewhat old news but Shild was able to get a confirmation directly from NCSoft:

Yes, NCsoft has opened up an office in the Orange County area. Yes, some of the staff in that office came from Blizzard. However, that group is not involved with the development of Tabula Rasa, as has been rumored.

Plus a semi-related comment Lum wrote that I want to save:

It’s a cutthroat business where the person who works at the competition could work in your next door office next week, so it’s a good idea to burn as few bridges as possible.

EDIT – Last minute rumors:

Alan Dunkin:
I’m fairly certain that the “fleeing devs” from Blizzard were not a result of them not wanting to be stuck with a huge money-making game for five years. A sizeable number of people were being let go or decided they didn’t like the direction of the game (technically or otherwise). Suffice it to say a number of companies have been snapping up the ex-employees like bears in a salmon run.

McBain:
As I hear things, a large number of devs left because they weren’t getting any royalties past 100,000 units sold.

—
As I understand it, when Vivendi bought out Blizzard, part of the buyout had a clause regarding the WoW royalties.

Again, this could be complete bullshit, but the person giving me this info is 1) pretty trustworthy, and 2) had no reason to pull this shit out of his ass. I tend to believe it, particularly given the absolutely awful patch support post-retail.