Tag Archives: Tinfoil hats

DDO: Rumors of implosion

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There’s a thread on Q23.

Here I know really nothing, so I don’t have a clue about what’s relevant, what isn’t, what’s true, what’s false. That DDO was doomed was already pretty obvious long before release, exactly as it was obvious for AC2. Just wait. Remember that AC2 was a major failure and STILL resisted for how long? Three years?

The news is that Ken Troop leaves Turbine to move to Wizard of the Coast. No clue about what this means. Here some quotes from the comments on Jason Booth website:

Anonymous 1:
I worked with Jason Booth at Turbine for almost 9 years. I can honestly say that he would always tell it like it is. Many times managment would not like to talk about the big white elephant in the room, but Jason would shine a light on it. Many managment folks resented him for that, but he was always right.

Anonymous 2:
Jason was just uncouth about how he approached things. That’s what led to his being fired from Turbine.

I recall when he told Robert Blackadder (the senior producer at the time) to “fuck off, I do what I want and answer only to Jeff Anderson” when Rob tried to schedule him for tasks. Or when the time he and Dan Ogles threw a fit when it was announced that Wizards wanted to change the combat system so it was more in line with traditional MMOs. Or when Jason walked out of a meeting as a form of “protest”.

Things like that don’t belong in a professional environment on any level.

Jason Boot:
clearly you have a nack for re-writting history; I never told Rob ‘fuck off, I only listen to Anderson’. I think I only talked to Jeff about 4 times that year, so he’s hardly the person I would be responding too.

Yes, I was always a controversial figure at Turbine. Love me or hate me, agree or disagree, I was going to let people know what I thought. But if we all just kissed ass and said things were great when they clearly were not then you wouldn’t have a place in this world; and that wouldn’t be good, now, would it?

Anonymous 2:
The point was not that you expressed a differing opinion. It was how you expressed it. Be professional about it, for God’s sake.

Funny how Rob himself told several of us one day that you yourself told him to “fuck off”. Why would he make that up?

Bottom line though is that I agree with you about the credits. People who worked on the game, especially those who worked on it for as long as you did, obviously contributed and therefore should have received credit. You were robbed.

Troop, btw, left to go to Wizards of the Coast. He can now fuck things up over there. Go go gadget ignorance!

Jason Boot:
Getting things done at Turbine required extreme measures. At harmonix, you simply have to state a reasonable case and someone will give you a reasonable answer and rational. But lets face it, whoever you are, you know that isn’t the case at Turbine. Someone up high gets a whim, and suddenly everything is pulled out from under you. That doesn’t make for good development, or good company health. You sit waiting for the axe to fall, because you know it will. There’s a reason DDO shipped and MEO hasn’t, and ignoring the problems was a big reason why.

Now, I will readily admit to some evil enjoyment in certain cases, but I am much happier not having to come down with a nuclear warhead when some bone headed move comes down the pipe. Those are the exact types of things that managers are supposed to filter out in advance, and that company heriarchy is supposed to protect people from. Instead, the filter seemed to work in the oposite direction. I shouldn’t have to deliver the mail to show management that they are wasting money by not hiring an intern to do the task. That having every developer on the project sift through a giant box looking for thier mail each day is a really bad use of resources. These things should be obvious, and if they are not, it should be easy to point them out and not require theatrics.

As for Ken, as I told him at GDC, I think he makes a lot more sense there than at a video game company.

Back from Q23:

Rumours peg DDO subscription numbers around 40000-50000. Concurrent connections around 15000.

Engineering Director Justin Quimby also has bailed for Maxis.

The low number of concurrent users is also having a strong negative and active impact on the players since it brings to serious LFG problems. How surprising, huh?

Rumors of gloom and doom are being weakly restrained on the official forum:

DDO is not coming to an end. We are still seeing steady growth in our subscriptions every day.

Another random quote, as an unreliable source:

By March 14th they had between 20k and 40k sales (30k +/- 10k). Now, you are saying that DDO has increased it’s playerbase to 160k, or more specifically, 800% since the 20k pre-release that were avail on day one and through all of this has not had to open 1 extra server? really??? no, seriously… I mean it? You are saying that?

Not only that but you are saying a game with a playerbase of 160k only manages to have 150-250 players online during peak play hours (Between 3PM and 9PM PST) on normal pop servers and the 3 highest servers garner 300-450 during those same hours?

Remember the Golden Rule of the mmorpg industry: the more you fuck up the higher you will be promoted.

Come on, prove me wrong.

Wolfpack blowing up

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From Grimwell, a few days ago (now edited):

– Wolfpack and Ubisoft not so friendly. Ubi dropped the price to “FREE!” and there is no SB2 announcement. Sat in on a PVP roundtable moderated by Damion Schubert and he didn’t mention this, neither did the other WP friends. At the end of the day SB didn’t bring the $$ on a large scale despite doing many things right for MMOG’s and PVP. Possible, but not verified.

Then Ashen Temper (Wolfpack Community Rep/Designer?) somewhat disproves the rumor:

While I do love a good rumor mill, let me point out that Wolfpack is not a third-party development house but is a studio of Ubisoft (we were not originally and some people still think we are). While I would love to talk about why Shadowbane is free at the moment, I can’t until an official announcement is released (from higher up the food chain than me).

As for any future announcements (pertaining to other “possible” projects), let me say three things: (1) I learned with Shadowbane that it is not a good idea to announce a project too early in its development. Having a rabid fanbase for roughly three years was hard to manage without having more than morsels to feed them for the first two years. (2) GDC isn’t the only gaming convention in the year and I know many marketers prefer E3 over GDC. (3) That I really can’t say if or what we are working on (aside from Shadowbane) but there seems to be a lot of bread crumbs out there…

And NOW, he reconfirms it:

I wasn’t going to post this initially but I figure the word is already out (I’ve already seen it on a few webzines as well as a multitude of forums). Yes, the rumor is true: I am looking for a new job. No, I did not get fired. Nor am I the only one looking for a job. We were recently informed that as of mid-May 2006, the doors of Wolfpack Studios will be closing. Ubisoft, our parent company, will be refocusing their efforts on the console market with the new fiscal year, what with the new systems coming to market such as the X-box 360, PS3, and the Nintendo GO! (or so the rumors call it lately). This is not an unheard of practice; many game publishing companies tend to put a majority of their efforts into development of games for new systems. It is best to strike when the iron is hot, as the saying goes.

What does this mean for Shadowbane? Truth be told, I really don’t know. I wish I did because I don’t only work on the game, I play it too. Once I do know something and can officially state as much, I’ll let you all know.

From mmorpg.com:

In total, approximately 25 people at the Austin, TX studio have been left without work.

TINFOIL HATS!

And Ubiq?

SOE: Tinfoil hats

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So, I sleep four hours and the place blows up. Krones is already on it.

Kotaku jumpstarted the rumor machine:

It’s no secret that things at Sony Online Entertainment haven’t been gumdrops and lollypops. While EverQuest has been a bonafide success, Star Wars Galaxies has been an enormous screw up. The massively-multiplayer online version of the popular George Lucas films has been a fiasco, costing SOE players and money.

A mole sends us word that Raph Koster has left SOE to start up a new games studio. Cindy Armstrong, head of Business Development, has taken an offer to become the new USA honcho for Webzen. Moreover, Lucas Arts is not extending their Star Wars license. Yikes.

The rot has started to set in, and the mole implies that it’s only a matter of time before SOE’s prez. John Smedley is sent packing. “Place has been falling apart for a while,” writes our mole. “Smedley is not long in his job.” May the force be with you, John.

The follow-up to the rumor is that Raph should have joined his mates at the new Bioware Austin studios. Which would mean that Raph will have to move since he was in the SOE studio of San Diego.

For what? The “Star Wars Galaxies” of the future, whose licence is suposedly being revoked to SOE and given to the Bioware studio. I doubt that Bioware can use SOE’s code if this is true.

This while Raph is happily blogging about the GDC and looking even too giddy.

Beside these rumors, nothing else official. Not even a hint or a confirmation from other sources if not players’ speculations. The only thing that comes close to an official comment doesn’t say much:

Our new sister studio, BioWare Austin, has yet to state what stance they will be taking. I would refrain from assuming anything, one way or the other, until they’ve released more information.

You can find more consolidated version of the rumors here and here.

Now. Here’s the part where I say I’m highly skeptical, but it’s confirmed. Shild confirmed it openely. I’m going to believe him.

Yea, it’s not a rumor. I already confirmed it. Discuss, or something.

Edit: I’m not posting sources or anything, but let’s just say it’s probably not a secret at SOE or even GDC by now.

I’m refraining to comment past this.

DAoC speaks for itself, you just need to listen to it

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I fixed my UI and logged in to look at the situation.

My usual server (Lamorak) is dying so I decided to get on one of my oldest characters on Merlin (a wizard) to see if I was able to do something. This server has always been the most popular and now also on the bigger cluster so I thought it was easier to join a group and do some RvR. I didn’t have any particular expectations, I just wanted to do something and have some fun.

I expected it would take a lot more time to reconfigure the quickbars and get used again to the character but my wizard is still quite limited as I remembered it, so I just needed slots for the two bolts, a direct damage and AOE. That’s pretty much all I can do beside the occasional buffs and situational realm skills like “Purge” or “Mystic Crystal Lore”. But getting used was also the smaller problem.

There were quite a bit of characters moving around the border keep, so I started to look for a group to join. I flagged myself in the LFG window for RvR and broadcasted in both the border keeps “wiz LFG” and even joined the frontier battlegroup (which remained completely silent and realtively deserted for all the time I was there). Well, the result is that I sat there doing nothing for two hours. Not a biggie since I was watching TV (elections in Italy are at the beginning of April and I’m following the debates), I didn’t try so hard to get a group but I still used all the functionalities I had available still with no luck.

After the two hours I was finally able to get in a random group that sat there beside me at least half an hour before inviting me and we waited there another 10+ minutes for a cleric. In the meantime a random Mid player ran in while we were all half AFK and started spamming pbaoe attacks, killing me and some other players before we could even blink. Then the cleric finally arrived and we moved. We took a boat and traveled to the Mid land, lost people in the process, waited for everyone to regroup and reached a Mid tower with the silly idea to try to take it.

We killed a few guards and dropped a ram. A couple of minutes later I see all at the sudden some explosions on myself and I wasn’t even able to turn that I was already hugging the ground dead, with the rest of the group joining me shortly after. We release, other two drop out of the group ranting against Mythic favoring Mid and Hibs and I decide as well that I had enough boredom for the day and quit.

That’s all that happened in two hours and twenty minutes I passed logged in, and I say this because it isn’t exactly a special case, even if not one of the best. Early today I played as well, I was able to find a group relatively quickly and there were 2+ groups chatting and fairly organizing, working to attack one of hibs keep from an alb tower. It was still rather boring but at least we were doing something, killed some guards and threw some fireballs to random target even if I didn’t see any Realm Points. I also passed a bunch of time playing tennis with a trebuched, shooting at the Hib keep wall.

I believe these experiences say a lot about the game and shouldn’t be dismissed. You can even laugh at me and how incompetent I am about the game. In nearly five hours I passed logged in I think I’ve got less than 1k of realm points. But I believe this is instead something that even other players experience and at the end there’s a problem if you log off bored and frustrated. It’s not something that should dismissed and it should be instead examined attentively to figure out if there is a problem, where it is and if it’s possible to mitigate it or even solve it. Or this is what I would do if I had an executive power on the game.

Because what matters is that beside special cases I continue to see a trend in what I have described that remains constant for every day I play, or try to play the game. The RvR moves slowly, the actual fights are less than 10% of the time you spend in the game and nearly always are resolved in a matter of seconds without even giving you the time to figure out what happened, even less to react or plan a strategy. Of course the game is frustrating when you wait so much time for an encounter and then die even before figuring out what happened. The rest of the time is passed reforming, waiting for people, sitting in the keep, repairing stuff or waiting repairs, killing guards and shoot keeps/towers with siege engine, which is another form of rather boring grind when it goes on for a long time with no actual change.

Without trying to polemize too much I believe that the responsibility is half of the players and half of Mythic. I really cannot understand why everyone decides to sit in front of a keep for more than half an hour, I would still prefer to be steamrolled ten times in a row than just sit there doing nothing. There are radical problem in the community, this is sure. It’s not acceptable to have to remain lfg for hours, this is a symptom of a serious problem for a game, in particular for one that promotes and is focused in a social activity like the RvR in DAoC. The more time passes the more the community closes on itself and implodes. No more groups organizing together, but just single groups independent one from the other, completely closed to the outside and extremely specialized.

This is the evolution of DAoC. Smaller, consolidated groups with lot of experience in the game but that only stick to the exact same type of gameplay. Rinse and repeat. Isolated from everything else. This is a community that doesn’t welcome returning veteran players, even less brand new players that may give the game a try. It’s an old, isolated and stagnant community that appears to be able to only lose players and slowly crumble. Inverting this negative trend doesn’t seem possible and in fact Mythic is building the graal of the “new world”, Warhammer, that will magically fix every problem.

The community is just too closed, specialized, used to the consolidated routine. It doesn’t welcome or integrates new players and as it always happen with stagnant water it can only start to smell and slowly dry out. The advantage is that the group of players that are still there is so used to the game that it will hardly leave it. They have their roots in the game, these roots are deep and it is actually surprising how well DAoC is “holding” if you factor all these elements together.

This makes sense if you see what happened with the “classic servers”. They were a success at launch but not as successful as I expected. They address some fundamental problems and, still, the players didn’t accepted them in the long term and they are slowly dribbling out. The idea didn’t “catch” as I expected. Why? I believe as a result of what I wrote above: the community is so self-absorbed, so tight that what drives the game further is not anymore the worth of game itself, but the “habit”. DAoC became the symbol of that immobility. The community inherited and mirrored the identity of the game, it became its face and expression.

The point is that the community isn’t truly responsible and aware of its form. Instead I see this more like a process of adaptation to the game that now reflects it. A mask that shows the exact same features of the face behind. Two levels overlapping. The community carries the “message”, but the message comes from the game. The community only adapted and voiced it. It expresses it, but it wasn’t really responsible of it.

This is why the polls aren’t going to work with DAoC. What the community is expressing runs deeper than that and requires a more attentive observation to really understand what it is going on. It isn’t an easy situation at all because now countering this negative trend would mean try to eraticate and go against a mindset.

So we go back at the last year AGC. What Jeff Hickman says makes sense if you look at it in the perspective of what I said:

For whatever reason, we make a change and it alienates people.

This is true. Particularly true in DAoC, the classic servers are an example. There is nothing wrong in them. They were a brilliant idea, maybe late, but a positive one. The players still didn’t fully accepted it. I believe we could all agree to ascribe the reasons of that “failure” to the fact that DAoC’s consolidated playerbase just didn’t want to leave its ties behind to restart from scratch on a new server and adapt and reform to it. They didn’t accept “change” even if it represented a significant improvement of the game. The game was just less important than what was consolidated, the background of the community.

I always think about what could have happened if the situation was reverted. If the consolidated servers were the classic ones and the new ones were the ToA-enabled. My bet is that it would have been a complete disaster and that wouldn’t be enough players even to keep one server up. To this Mythic reacted fairly well, as they saw that the classic servers were also stagnating, they decided to address the ToA problems directly everywhere instead of nourishing the split (which was always a bad idea. Alternate ruelesets just don’t work).

Now we have a community that is “intolerant” to everything. Good changes, bad changes. Whatever Mythic does is wrong. If Mythic does nothing it’s also wrong. So what? The point is that the community is expressing a discomfort that needs to be interpreted (as my weak attempt here). Really solving the problem isn’t easy at all, again because the real issues are buried deep. Extremely deep, to the point that you are risking a lot if you try to reach them and solve them. And why Mythic should afford this risk? Because it pays back if they do it properly and have the will to do so.

I don’t know. I can just observe and explain my point of view. “Fear change” is something that the community IS expressing, but I don’t believe it’s an absolute rule. It’s just a consequenece of many factors, the consequence of how the game developed along these years.

Mythic already decided to support the game without sudden shifts or revolutions. They understood that the players are still there not for the game itself, but for a nostalgic value and for the consolidated, isolated community that doesn’t accept any intrusion or disruption, even if it is finalized to an improvement. I quoted Lum a million of times when he writes how much more important is the community compared to the game. DAoC is reflecting this. Even the good changes are refused. But Mythic here could make a terrible mistake that is probably going to repeat with Warhammer since it’s independent from the game: the communities are portable. If the people are there for the people and not for the game, they’ll also leave eventually and will never come back. When these solid ties break they cannot be anymore reformed because the returning veterans will always find a cold community that doesn’t recognize and accept them anymore. Again the stagnating water can stay there for a long time, but it can only dry up.

Sadly I’ve learnt how Mythic observes, thinks and acts along these years. I often attacked them because it’s since when Dave Rickey left that they keep stabbing the game, unable to interpret correctly it needs and weeps. I was always there, partly weeping along, partly trying to support it the best I could. I have many ideas about how to invert the negative trend, in particular I think that it needs to pass through a reorganization of the PvE. The community needs to be stimulated again, made active and interested again, not just ranting and passively suffering along. Part of this process would take place outside the game because it’s also there that Mythic killed its community with a lack of involvement and discussion. The non-communication between the parts that brought directly to just too many misunderstandings and incomprehensions. Inverting this trend would be about having a precise plan, not just feeding the players a buch of polls and working on the patches like in a slapfight. The game needs a direction, a “will”. Ideas, discussions. It needs to draw again the interest. Enthusiasm. Creativity. It needs to be reactive, learn quickly, gain dynamism and life.

But then I know this won’t happen. Mythic is betting everything and then more on Warhammer. It’s their way to somewhat wipe the disaffection of the community. It’s a way to negate it happened. It’s a way to avoid to acknowledge the responsibilities and start anew. With the illusion that everything will be different and that they can rise a new DAoC and be praised again. Return at the center of the attention. But the truth is that avoiding those problems means making them even stronger and have them run back over with a stronger intensity. Deeply enrooted problems don’t go away if you look elsewhere and think you can ignore them. They will undermine every new project, no matter how much money you throw at it. No matter of the shiny new brand and virginal community to fool.

What I see, and I wrote many times, is that Mythic is not learning nor able to observe and interpret correctly the needs of their games. They just keep garbling the messages they receive and react inappropriately. It’s a company that was too complacent about their original success and now too arrogant and blind to figure out the next step.

It’s a pity because DAoC deserves much, much, much more. It’s a wonderful game and it’s completely unacceptable to see it sinking as a nicher product than Eve-Online. It has the potential to compete with the best and instead it is moving more and more toward the smaller. It’s like throwing away one of the best games in this genre that still has a lot to say. In particular when Warhammer is exhibiting the exact same mistakes, the same arrogance.

Lum is gone, when he was at Mythic at least I had some faith. He wasn’t there at the wheel but I’m more than sure that he had a very important and positive influence on everyone. I can put my hand on a fire and say that he contributed with far more than some lines of codes on the server, even if his title didn’t attest this. When he was there I still had the small hope that there was someone reading my rants. It meant nothing, of course, but at least I could believe in an implicit, tacit dialogue, agreeing, disagreeing. With him gone I just feel like talking, still a lot, but to a wall.

In short:
– Too much time passed idling or waiting in RvR compared to the actual action that is resolved in a matter of seconds (or less)
– Difficulty to join groups and play the game, hinting that there are deeper problems
– A stagnant, highly specialized community that remains relatively impermeable to both new players and veterans
– The “fear change” expressed by the community is a mask and the expression of a discomfort that needs to be interpreted
– Mythic’s inability to observe and interpret correctly the signs that both the game and the community are sending
– Warhammer, inesorably, will exhibit these problems right from the start, risking another false step
– Lum is gone and took the faith that was left with him

Biased against Warhammer

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Right now Eve-Online worldwide concurrent subscribers are surpassing DAoC’s ones by a few hundreds. I didn’t see this happening before. Just saying.

Today I decided to log back in DAoC after a long time. If I don’t have faith in a game company I just don’t feel like playing, not even for some minutes. I’m unable to enjoy a moment if I don’t have faith in the future and DAoC has always been in a unsteady balance. Some things convince me but the great majority do not and I’m always reconsidering if I should support it or not. There were some new pointless polls (which I decided to boycott) welcoming me and while I was logging in I also found some new Warhammer screenshots and the desire to play died there.

It’s a couple of months that I don’t play and the reason is still the same. I have little faith in Mythic and I see Warhammer as a huge conflict of interests that no one wants to consider. Mark Jacobs repeats it’s not DAoC 2 but the stupidity of this claim is obvious. What’s Warhammer if not “a PvP alternative to WoW”? It could be its slogan and I’m sure it will be marketed, implicitly or explicitly, that way.

The little infos about the PvP model it will adopt makes it look like an improved version of DAoC with some elements borrowed from WoW. What could you desire more? It seems a solid foundation to build upon. This is what people say. Instead for me this just amplifies the same conflict of interest. Why these ideas weren’t use to improve DAoC’s RvR?

The screenshots aren’t that awful. Even if I would have chosen a different style, I like the orc model. The little legs and the big bodies have some charm, the long faces with the thick necks appropriate (the thumbs are too long, though). With a good animation it could have a decent personality, I imagine it wobbling left and right while running. The dwarf model instead needs much more work to be appealing. Both seem to have already bad clipping issues with the head sinking in the left shoulder (see images 1, 4 and 6). I do hope that they use unique animations for all races.

Considering the horrible situation of PvP mmorpgs, bringing another one to the market isn’t going to be all that hard. DAoC didn’t move forward nor backward along these years and WoW fucked up all the potential it had thanks to a “brilliant” design. But Warhammer is the direction where DAoC should have moved along these years instead of remain immoble.

At the end all my comments are pretty much pointless. I want to find reasons to hate Warhammer. Give me more. I’ve already decided I’ll stick with DAoC till the end. I won’t play Warhammer’s beta, nor at release. It can do without me. I believe it won’t be able to reach even DAoC’s subscription numbers when it was at its peak (260k or so). I want it to fail because they wasted too many occasions and resources. I want it to fail because the conflict of interest is still waiting for an answer and you don’t turn your back to a playerbase as Mythic did. Change forum, put on another mask. You won’t fool me.

I find Mark Jacobs arrogant and self righteous. I’m not passing judgments, it’s just the way I feel when I read something he wrote. The truth is that with Lum gone I’ve lost the little faith I had left in Mythic and the more time passes the worst it gets. It’s like being slightly above the water or slightly below, it changes completely the perspective at how you see things. I never digested Warhammer stepping on DAoC’s toes and Mythic’s lack of honest answer about the two. I’m not liking how things are developing, at all.

There’s a lot of disaffection towards Mythic. The game is still solid but it is becoming another UO. People play it not for what it is today, but as a nostalgic souvenir. Stuck in the past. All the people I see praising Mythic and still having faith in it are people who stopped to play their games long ago or never stayed for more than a couple of months. Hypocrites.

I just have no faith. I don’t see Mythic proposing anything that truly deserves some interest. They don’t have ideas, they don’t have enthusiasm. DAoC’s team isn’t doing badly but it’s still all about conservative work that doesn’t really go anywhere. The game is “maintained”. I guess the continued support to DAoC just means that they are going to milk it till it remains profitable.

I think it will be a while before I’ll have again the “courage” to put my foot back in DAoC. I don’t feel optimist lately. Can’t help it.

We love DAoC and by continuing to improve and invest in the game, it will be able stand up in the face of current and future competition. We believe by continuing to drive DAoC’s evolution, it will remain the top RvR-based MMORPG as well as one of the top MMORPGs in the world. If you agree with us, we’re willing to put in the time and investment to make it happen.

Doom, doom, doom, doom. (and tinfoil hats)

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It’s been since September that I don’t spread some rumors.

Just yesterday I was writing some comments about WoW’s art on Q23 forums:

I still have the suspect that some of their best artists and animators migrated to some other companies because both the models and the animation of the characters during beta were way more polished and well planned than the updated versions.

But then, it’s just a suspect with no foundation. We’ll see what will happen with the expansion but from the few screenshots I’ve seen I wasn’t really impressed.

And, for a coincidence, this is what I read on FoH’s forums today:

Gamblor:
The exodus cost them most of their artists and the entire animation team. How the hell management allowed a situation to occur that pushed the man responsible for about 50% of the entire game’s animation and most of the other artists to leave for NCSoft is beyond me.

It’s going to be a while for the new art team, if it is even fully assembled, to get their sea legs. Keep in mind that most of Ahn Qiraj’s artwork was done by the previous team. Karazhan too. The expansion will most likely be the first place we see Art Team 2.0’s work as a complete zone.

And more:

Gamblor:
It’s harder to bribe a graphic artist than a programmer. Artsy types don’t typically thrive under a Machiavellian corporate culture. And if you’re good enough to get hired by Blizzard, there are plenty of companies you can get hired by that don’t force you to come into contact with dickheads like GFrazier.

The movie industry has a pretty good lock on most of the 3d artists who are just in it for the money.

Keep in mind this is a company that put their artists on the same work schedule as the programmers in the post launch crunch time, even though the art for BWL and AQ was done before the game launched. In order to be “fair”. If your entire division got their shit done, why the hell would you have to stick around 12 hours a day just because the programmers can’t fix offset teleport hacking (and have yet to fix that, I might add. GG removing chests and quests instead.).

When a Database goes down a normal company doesn’t force the secretaries to stay at their desks until the DBA gets his shit together. Overtime for salaried employees is a pretty good morale killer.

The first things Art Team 2.0 did that the public got to see was the T2 armor (except Bloodfang and Bullwinkle, those were Team 1.0) and look at how much the general populace bitched, and Blizzard’s whiny hurt response when given feedback on it. I’d say the art is still a sore spot in the company given their snotty responses to customer feedback on the matter.

It makes sense if you think how long the expansion is taking to release and how little they’ve shown about it. And how absolutely pretty are the new AQ armor sets (yes, I’m being sarcastic). And what happened to the weather effects?

I wish I had saved a post on the official forums where Tseric went berserk defending Blizzard after the claim that most of they key people left the building.

Fact is that I actually believe these rumors, they’ve been always consistent and even supported by official press releases announcing spawned companies. What’s left of the former Blizzard, then? Artists gone, animators gone and the two lead designers arriving when WoW was already in late development (one arrived in the middle of the final beta).

Yes, WoW is still terribly successful and, imho, it absolutely deserves this success. It is motivated. But it is also the result of solid ideas that were already there LONG ago as the foundation of the game. All I’ve seen recently (the whole PvP system and faction grind come to mind) sucked. PvP and endgame PvE. Exactly what the new team had to figure out, compared to what was already there long ago.

There are two comments from Tobold that I found rather funny:

Blizzard posted a new page outlining all the options you have once you reached level 60. Besides farming faction or raiding, they *do* recommend leveling an alt.

I am looking forward to the Burning Crusade expansion, which basically adds another 10 levels to the fun part of WoW, and pushes the unfun part further back.

So levelling an alt and pushing the unfun further back is all that Blizzard is able to offer? Seems so.

Blizzard is sitting on a success that seems to belong to someone else. They may have the rights to exploit commercially the quality work done by someone else, but they lost the control on that quality now and they are going to pay after they cashed.

The true impact of these changes will only surface entirely in the longer term. When it will be hard to remember about the causes, because we have a so short memory and believe that the name of a company is more important than the people working in it. How so terribly naive.

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.

OMG, the sky is fallen!

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Hahahahah!!

One of the “lesser” mmorpgs did the most fun thing ever:

Vendetta Online: All Characters Accidentally Deleted

On Monday, while attempting to restore a wrongly deleted character for a Vendetta Online player, one of the staff inadvertantly removed all characters from the game’s database.

Sadly (for the comedy value), they have a backup.

The steam Turbine

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After about three years from launch, Asheron’s Call 2 is finally done:

Dear AC2 subscribers,

In spite of our hard work and the launch of Legions, AC2 has reached the point where it no longer makes sense to continue the service. We will be officially closing the Asheron’s Call 2 service on 12/30/05. Until then, we plan to run live events, but we will not be adding any content or features.

We deeply appreciate the many dedicated fans of AC2 who have stood by us over the years. You have our sincerest gratitude.

Best regards,

Jeffrey Anderson
CEO, Turbine

We could argue again about MMORPGs life cycles but the truth is that this one was already dead the first day of release. “Mmorpg sequels are dumb”.

Calandryll succintly commented at Corpnews:

Not really much more to say. Nobody on AC2 was laid off, they’re on other projects (DDO and LOTRO) now. AC1 devs have all been given the option to move to Mass.

Obviously this is a difficult time for a lot of people and our first priority is helping out our friends in CA.

The first and only expansion (Legions) was released just this May, probably as the last attempt to see if there was something to save or not. There wasn’t much, of course.

One month after the expansion Turbine got even more founding. With two failures (as of today) on two released products and two upcoming projects based on popular IPs (Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons) I’m looking forward to more fireworks and even more spectacular failures.

As noted on QT3 the first thing you see on the front page is a free month for old players. Without a notice about the shutdown.