It’s too darn HOT to sit in front of the PC. Even if I’d have something to write.
If I try to play some graphic-intensive game I risk to crash just after a few minutes due to heat issues.
I’m in the mood for harsh rants and being mean. But luckily other things will keep me away from the pc.
So Blizzard asked us to remove the slides via e-mail. As SirBruce pointed out (and I’m also starting to think that SirBruce is in the wrong field and should have become a lawyer with all that arguing and stubborness so naturally flowing) the request to remove them wasn’t framed as a legal one. I wouldn’t even judge it a threat.
In the meantime I found this:
3. Information presented on www.sec.gov is considered public information and may be distributed or copied.
So I decided to link directly at least the first of the slides with the Blizzard logo. Why? To mock them a lil and because it fits sooo well with the blue on black layout of this site. Pretty.
Blizzard asked us to remove the slides and we did. The slides, though, are publicly available.
People on Q23 still argue whether we need a public execution for this crime or not.
Shild concludes all that went on with a very well written article thaty I’m going to quote. In the light of what has been said, I think that my first reaction still represents the heart of the discussion. Which is about the relationship between Blizzard and Vivendi that has already caused a good number of developers to quit both before and after WoW’s launch (Flagship Studios, Arena.net, Red 5, NCSoft Orange Country, Cheyenne Mountain and Castaway Entertainment to name those I remember, plus the single devs that fled to a number of other companies).
Right now Blizzard doesn’t even have enough resources to support properly the development of WoW and the expansion. Vivendi is another matter.
So I’m concluding quoting SirBruce again and then Shild to underline what we were actually talking about. (edit: added Darniaq)
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SirBruce: No one reported that in the future they would only focus on MMOGs or only on one platform; that’s a misinterpretation of what WAS reported, which was “All Blizzard franchises (actually, Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo) to become MMOGs.” The same slide that supports this suggests that those three franchises could expand into the console market, as well.
Rob Pardo is splitting hairs. *Blizzard* may not have any current development plans to do an MMO beyond the WoW expansion, but *Vivendi*, who *owns* them, does. So they can easily give Blizzard a bunch of money to make World of Starcraft, or even decide to delegate that to one of the other development studios under Sierra Online (although that would probably be a big mistake).
The news is “Vivendi plans to make more MMOGs, with Diablo and Starcraft among the IP possibilities” not “Blizzard is currently making Diablo and Starcraft MMOGs.”
Bruce
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Darniaq: Of course, I happen to agree with that, as I always have. They’re held in very high regard, and I certainly won’t argue against their skills. But they’re still a profit center, a division of a multi-national. The average Blizzard fan can believe otherwise, and are probably currently arguing all over the place in defense of some stance they thing Blizzard is taking. But this is still a corporation with goals and objectives and nowhere near complete autonomy.
Gotta love the web :)
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F13: Blizzard is owned by Vivendi Universal – or as far as I can tell they still are. They do not get the final word. It doesn’t matter who you ask at Blizzard – including one Mr. Rob Pardo. He’s a lapdog as far as I’m concerned. They pay him the big bucks to do what he’s told. I did not see a single website talk to the executive equivalent to Pardo at Vivendi. Someone might have, but I missed it. Referencing Blizzard/WoW moderators was a true sign of awesome journalism in action. These people, I guarantee, know less about what’s going on at Blizzard than the average player who scours the internet for every tiny nugget of information on their beloved company.
Also, the slide presentation – you know why I didn’t talk about it in my original post? Because it had nothing to do with what I said. See, the problem is, I have a majority of the facts – and put simply, I like playing some cards close to my chest. Especially when it’s about the three headed hydra consisting of Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft. By referencing some other folks, you’ve managed to get your dirty little paws on a slideshow given during the Wall Street presentation. GRATS. That slide show presentation – if you haven’t read it – did a great job of dumbing this gaming “stuff” down for people who have no clue what it’s about. They want the bottom line, that’s why population and dollars were the big discussion there. What hasn’t been discussed anywhere, as far as I can tell is the Q&A session that went on afterwards. Shortly after I posted the news, an unnamed source sent me news that people were getting it wrong. That the line “All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs” came from a Q&A with a Vivendi rep after the presentation. Have I said Q&A enough times? Is someone going to refer back to the WoW Slideshow for Dummies again? No?
A Vivendi representative saying [the bit about franchises] means two things:
1. All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs.
2. This will happen with the support of Rob “The Ego” Pardo & Co. or not.
Quoting from Q23:
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Subsequent to the story breaking, Blizzard has asked various sites who have posted the slides to take them down, citing copyright concerns. I want to make it clear that the material was obtained lawfully by me, that no confidentiality was violated, and that such usage by the media is also protected under the doctrine of fair use. The presentation is on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Comission, and is made available freely to EVERYONE So if you want to see the ENTIRE PRESENTATION yourself, including the slides relevant to Blizzard, simply go here.
And shame on Blizzard for trying to bully the media.
Bruce
This is an article I wrote in italian during the December 2004 that was supposed to appear in the most popular paper magazine about games here in Italy (also the one that spolied the WoW’s expansion before the official Blizzcon, if you remember).
It was a preview of “Wish”, the game developed by Mutable Realms and Dave Rickey. It was supposed to appear in the issue of February but it never did. Just a few days after the New Year’s Day (if I remember correctly) Dave Rickey was kicked out of the position of lead designer (to never be replaced) and the game took a really bad turn. One year later it was definitely canceled.
The article never appeared because all I wrote was wiped from the game along with Dave.
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Another MMORPG is coming into an already overcrowded market and people wonder, as always, if it is worth it.
This time Mutable Realms, developer of the game, has a modest team and resources, but looking solid. The path they chose (the lead designer Dave Rickey in particular) is about going in a different direction from all the other consolidated patterns that every mmorpg seem to repeat, to try to bet on original, well thought ideas, instead of trying to go directly against the genre behemoths and rinse and repeat with yet another pointless, boring clone.
It’s not simple to summarize in a few words the differences between this project compared to others, however two are the main points.
The first is about the character progression. The second is about the structure of the world and the dynamic relationship between its parts.
Concerning the first, the progression of the skills will be “linear”. Every character, newbie or veteran, will have from the first minute in the game the possibility to group with other players and have a small, positive role. Without the need to spend hours to reach an “appropriate level” in order to be able to join his friends. Moreover, the focus of the player won’t be on a infinite, obsessive level growth, but will be instead shifted directly on the game mechanics. If you are going to kill a goblin it won’t be to see a skill going from 1.5 to 1.6, but because that action has a meaning within the context of the game. A context where it’s the player to decide his own objectives and where the game world reacts appropriately and actively to those actions (quests in particular).
In short: an idea closer to that ideal of a “virtual world”, on which the very first mmorpgs moved steps and that now seems completely forgotten.
All this leads to the second point. There’s a lot of ambition behind these ideas on which the game will be developed. The final result and concrete value will depend strongly on the execution, but the premises, one year before the planned launch date, are very good. Beside the fact that these ideas will bring a “wind of change” in a genre that has so much potential but that seems now swamped on the same redundant ideas and styles of game.
To explain better concretely, Wish will be developed around a concept, a pivot, around which the whole game will revolve. This pivot is called “House vs House”. To those experienced with DAoC this concept could be easier to grasp.
The idea is about creating a world with villages and outposts spread around. The players will begin the game in one of these villages and will find outside an hostile world. The travels from one village to the other won’t be risk free. These players will have the possibility to form guilds, more or less big, that in this game will be called “Houses”. Once this step is done, they will have the possibility to move out of the starting village and try to go clear and conquer one of those villages under the control of the monsters to claim it for themselves. When an “house” gains control of a village, the village becomes their property and they can then establish a NPC guard system and taxes (beside the usual services such as vendors, blacksmiths etc…)
Essentially both the PvE (Players vs Environment, aka players vs computer controlled monsters) and the PvP (Players vs Players), will be completely immersed in the same game world pivoting around these villages/forts.
The monsters not only will overrun the villages not controlled and defended by the players/houses, but they could move out on their own to attack one of the players’ outposts, becoming an “active” element of the game and not just standing still under a tree waiting for a player to pass by to kill them.
Obviously the “rival Houses” will be able to declare a war on each other and then poke each other with sharp sticks everywhere in the game world. This will still leave the “neutral” players relatively safe, but still subject to the conquest system and the taxes, since thew world around will see a continue evolution.
The goal is to make converge all the positive and “fun” aspects of PvP coming from games like DAoC (of which Dave Rickey was an opinionated designer) to make them converge and then “signify” in a world that reacts actively to the players and just doesn’t remain in a state of staticity and neutrality.
Follow up to this (I will trim the post in the next days).
These are the “incriminated” slides from the presentation. Kindly made available by SirBruce.
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The last one is probably the one that generated all the rumors. Still FAR from the claim “All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs.” But maybe it was presented to the live audience in another way.
For now THE FACTS only describe a remote possibility. Not a concrete plan.
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EDIT: I remove the slides at request of Blizzard (I decided to remove them before receiving the e-mail after all the discussions, but I was away from the PC) and the same happened to Grimwell where they were posted first. People on QT3 wrote that it could be copyright infringement. Well, this is something too stupid to get in trouble with. I originally mirrored the slides just because I thought they were public and just to try to dig the facts behind the “news”. It looks like even this time this is about asking too much.
The slides didn’t even show anything we didn’t know already. So I really don’t know what all the fuss is about.
Surely I didn’t mirror them with malicious intentions.
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EDIT: Since the slides were removed I’ll just say that the last one showed a scheme where both Diablo and Starcraft were marked as “potential” in the MMO market, as well an extension to the console market for all three franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft).
As Shild explains here the original claim wasn’t coming from rabid speculation derived from these slides, but from a Q&A session with a Vivendi rep *after* the presentation.
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LATEST EDIT: The WHOLE presentation is available publicly here, as reported.
Everything went to smooth on Monday, so I decided to make a new trip to the dentist. No, really.
The pain I didn’t feel that time I’m feeling now. No, really.
Fact is that I discovered that the hole that my wisdom tooth left was so deep that it went right to my fucking NOSE. Air goes through it. A goddamn hole between the mouth and the nose. I couldn’t even imagine it could be something possible. Then, you know, Google-fu answered me that what I felt was, indeed, true.
Back to the dentist when I thought I was good AT LEAST for two years. It lasted TWO DAYS instead.
Got more needles and basically she closed the gum, “extending” it. Now I have STITCHES in my mouth and I feel them. Hello painkillers.
We’ll see if this is enough or if the oddissey continues through more complications.
It was too easy, I had to go back for some more fun.
First comments from Rob Pardo in a long while. Commenting the last controversial “news”:
Nothing in that rumor is true in regards to Blizzard. If I had to guess, there was some confusion between what Vivendi has planned for its game division versus what Blizzard has planned. While Blizzard is owned by Vivendi, their game division operates seperately from Blizzard.
-Eno
Since WOW shipped, we have lost some artists, and a few other folk, none of which were designers. As to faction grinding…I agree that it is way too “grindy” and we are looking to overhaul the way faction works in the expansion. It was one of those features that was put into the game in late beta and never really received the polish and refinement that it deserves.
-Eno
I really do wonder if he’s always been there or if he quite WoW for a while to work on something else. If he’s back it could be a very good thing.
He does not really convince me with that “if I had to guess, there was some confusion between what Vivendi has planned for its game division versus what Blizzard has planned”. Those quotes from Vivendi were quite precise and they were analyzing WoW’s costs and development time.
SirBruce, wake up and give us the slides (if they weren’t bullshit).
If you go look at the SWG category on this site you’ll see that I wrote a whole lot about the NGE (the last radical redesign of the game).
My opinion basically was that I wouldn’t have personally gone in that direction and dump the RPG-style of the combat in favor of something completely different. But I would still have moved away from that absurd and stupid kind of inconsistent, unimmersive “puzzle combat” with three bars and special shoots, to instead integrate more realistic elements that could make sense in a ranged combat. Like arcs of fire, covers, barrage fire and things like that. Patterns that make sense and are coherent with the setting, maybe even with a focus on formations and other tactical decisions (some elements taken out of “Jagged Alliance” could have helped).
I criticized strongly the way SOE brought over these changes, but at the same time I said that going toward a model of “twitch” combat whould have forced them to make it more consistent and move away from the retarded puzzle game. It’s not that “aiming with the mouse” is “more fun”. It’s just that it is more consistent with the mechanics of “ranged combat”. So more intuitive. So more fun because it speaks to you in a known tongue instead of through an arcane and abstract puzzle system that worked properly only in Raph’s mind.
Problem is that the execution, when you do a twitch game in particular, is king, and the execution of SWG:NGE was AWFUL. For example it was rather frustrating to manage aggro since a creature you were attacking could pass near a neutral one and you could finish easily to pull both. In particular with the jerky movements and animations that the game has (and a problem shared by all SOE games). You really cannot hope to do “twitch” if the controls aren’t perfectly smooth and if you don’t do a great work on the movement and animations.
With the last patch the devs finally managed to partially fix this system by improving its usability. There are detailed notes explaining how the new targeting system works. The complete patch notes are also available.
If you read their explanation you may think that the system is still rather intricate and complicated, but I think I can do a better work and explain how it works in short (guesswork, though. I don’t play the game from years).
With the “old” NGE system you basically had to target with your mouse as in a FPS and then shoot with the left mouse button, or use silly specials with the right, while switching them through an hotbar. This lead to the issues I explanied above since the game has no collision detection and the execution was really bad.
With the new system they introduce some sort of “safe lock”, so that you don’t shoot at things you don’t want to. Basically you have still to target with the mouse and then press “X” to acquire it and lock it. Let’s say that you are walking around and decide to shoot at something. With this new system first you target with the mouse (mouseover), then you press “X” to acquire it (the brakets around the target will change) and then you start to shoot with the mouse button. It’s not a “full” weapon lock because you still need to “aim” while you shoot, so if you turn in the other direction you will shoot at the air.
Basically the “lock” is just there so that or you damage it if you aim well, or you miss. Without risking to hit things you didn’t want to. Then with the “Z” key you can also cycle between the targets around you, classic style. But, again, when you fire you still have to aim.
My opinion is that these tweaks will help to make the original system usable. And it definitely wasn’t before. So it’s an improvement.
Darniaq is still convinced that collision detection is coming, while I’m still skeptical about this. Sure thing is that without it this system will continue to be crippled. Quoting the patch notes:
– Kneeling and Prone positions may be used in combat by using either an ability button (the buttons can be found in your command browser by pressing “;”) or the slash commands (/kneel, /prone)
What’s the sense and purpose of this without collision detection? It’s when I can take cover behind an object that kneeling can make sense. Right now you can shoot (and get shot) right through solid objects, so why I should need to kneel? To be a better target?
Plus they seriously need to bind those actions to default keys, not the quickbar or slash commands. At least if they want to incorporate those actions consistently in the combat mechanics (as they should when collision detection will arrive, if it will arrive). Giving more relevance to the environment (like ducts that you have to crawl through, indoor) is the way to go.
There are other fixes that were long due, like making creatures attack at slower speed and slow down melee movement. Things looked ridiculous before. We’ll see if the implementation is good this time and if the combat “looks and feels” decent. On the paper the changes are good.
Then there’s a last thing that drew my attention:
Weapon Retrofit: Combat damage inflicted by all weapons in the game will be based primarily on the weapon’s stats, rather than the character’s level.
I wonder who the hell approved the design document where it was written that the character level affected the damage of a laser pistol. This was utterly retarded. I guess that the weapons still have level requirements on their own, so the system is basically the same. But at least it is more coherent.
Darniaq also mentions a veteran reward that allows you to insta travel by calling a shuttle anywhere in the world. I wonder if you just click on an icon and select the destination from a menu before being insta-ported, or if you really do see a shuttle coming and landing that you can board with your group. Because if it’s the first case then it’s superbly lame. If it’s the second it’s the coolest thing ever.
I suspect it’s the first…
