The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Bit of a mess...

You make a lot of valid points man, but people do not respond well to "in your face" type dialog. I am as passionate as you are about making sure something gets done right, but you *have* to bring it down a notch if you're to get respect. The comments you made after the meltdown on F13 felt like a overcompensating attempt to prove that you're there to talk about Game Design. Whether you were trying to do that or not, that's how it was perceived to me.

When you bring what Jacobs says up to the light in your own special way, yeah, it does sound fishy. I don't know him well enough and haven't personally worked with him to know whether he's full of it or he's being sincere. I can only really make that type of judgement about the people I work with at my job. What I do know about the people I work with is that they are *very busy*. As fishy as what Mark wanted, he made a lot of valid points as well about why he wanted the forum, the benefits of it, and, taking into consideration his position in life, why he wouldn't want to continually engage in public discourse.

I think there's a whole 'nother "legal and business" side to this discussion that you haven't broached and aren't taking into consideration. Sure, you'd like credit for your ideas, but by publically posting them on here, you're essentially giving up your rights to them, so if someone were to take advantage of it, they'd owe you nothing. I'd like to shoot the shit about my game ideas, but I know that if I want to ever do anything with the ideas I truly believe in, I can never, ever tell anyone about them that I don't trust.

Still, I like coming on here and reading what you write. There's a certain je ne se qua about it that I find appealing and refreshing. I come on here, and your words are here without anything really blocking me from seeing them. Seriously, if I was to start a blog, I'd probably model it after this one. How did you acquire this software? :) If you're going to stop writing, I may as well start, but I don't think I could ever come up to par with the level of detail and discussion you bring to the table.

Wow.... just wow...

I think that forum should be under the definition of internet. There are quite a few well written insightful posts but then there are these hideous troll and flame posts that make me want to close my browser so I don't get stupid from them.

The point being that 'design' without implementation is irrelevant. I could 'design' a flying car but if the theoretical is never tested in the practical sense then it's absolutely worthless. So no, you haven't really designed anything because your ideas exist outside of any practical context. Design is about the elegant achievement of a goal within environmental constraints. Your abstracts don't do this ergo they are not designs at all, they're theories at best.
-Squirrel

This guy can go f*** himself. Has he been to a University before? All they teach are abstracts, most with barely any practical context. The point is that those abstracts let you look at things from a more dynamic context. It allows for creativity to fill in the gaps between theory and purpose.

A one page summary on a what something might do is as much design as the code running in the final product. Design is a process and not just a result. The philosophy behind a design is as intergral to success as the methods used to create a product. Look at how many scientific theories have sat unproven over the years before someone else had the resources to finally prove it?

I guess he didn't hear about the relic things in the DAoC expansion either.

The issue is how you came across. I enjoy your writings (though they tend to be long winded) as do others at f13, but at times your diatribes come across as vague and self pompous. The fact that you came back swinging for a few posts did not help get your message across.

Cheddar

As an FYI... At the time Savant tried to get me fired from my job a Bayer. He failed of course but the fact remains that it was just some "forum banning" that occured. My house was getting calls all hours of the night and day, ranging from hang-ups to death threats. Why? Because someone dared ask if LTM blog had been bought.

Honestly I think I know what MJ is going for here: He wants a forum where everyone can post ideas that he can rip off for WAR without properly compensation.

"Hey, I've got this great idea for a PVP system..."
"Wow! Thats great. We're using that for WAR. Here's a beta invite and a hat, now we're going to go make lots of money!"

I know WoW refrains from posting in their suggestion forum for this very reason, and asking for a private forum where everyone's ideas are in the public domain just reeks of lazy devs. You want game design ideas? Then HIRE people who know how to make games. Don't beg for handouts for free on a forum then act like you're doing people favors.

(Funny to me that everyone reacted largely to the fact that he wanted the forum invite only and not the public domain thing.)

The people defending Jacobs both in the thread and in this comment section, have obviously forgotten the pompous ass that is Mark Jacobs. This is the same guy that claimed he "invented MUDS and hence all MMO's"...this is the dude that instead of listening to his community, decided to drop kick customer service onto the VN boards, installed some pissy 15 year old moderators as the "message keepers", then told them to fuck off after all. A mate and I were actually discussing this trend. Back when DAOC was fresh, the dev's didn't give two shits, they brought out expansions, patches, items, changes, class balances that no one wanted, needed or could even possibly see a reason for. All in the name of allmighty Jacobs and Firor, that piece of shit shill. Now looky? When Jacobs and his lackeys fucked off to do the drop kick that was their little Rome in Space headfuck, the Live team actually managed to implement some OKish changes. When they started to do WAR full time, the live team actually started implementing things that people have been crying for 4+ years (Hello Warden shield spec, how are you?).

You can't have a constructive discussion with a narcistic maniac and expect to even get through, much less achieve anything.