Tinfoil hats
Submitted by Abalieno on August 28, 2008 - 11:12.
Despite all the praises about the gameplay and design choices, there are still those glaring flaws that I and others pointed out... years ago.
In this case I quote someone else, as a good summary:
There are 7 public quests (that I know of) in the first Chaos zone alone. That means you’d need 42 to 70 people in that zone working on public quests to do them all at once. I even ran into one completely empty PQ over the weekend even though almost every Chaos player was in that zone.
Will there ever be that many people working on PQs in the same low level zone after the first week or two after launch? Probably not.
I suspected that they would dynamically scale public quests based on the number of players currently participating. When I found a PQ that nobody else was doing, I worked my butt off and completed the first stage alone. Then Champion mobs spawned in stage 2, and I was screwed. So, it looks like they aren’t doing any sort of scaling.
Unfortunately, even though public quests are extremely fun, I fear they won’t even be doable throughout the majority of the game for those of us who will get behind the curve. As soon as I fall behind the pack, which inevitably I will, I’ll be unable to do any PQs until the end game.
I was able to have a similar experience in the second chaos zone, even with 2500 players logged in. Not exactly during an off-peak. And not even weeks or months or years after a server launch.
There's a way to sum it up in an even more significant way:
- Too many parts of Warhammer's core design are strictly dependent on keeping a fine balance on the number of players participating, and so vulnerable. It's not about PQs only. It's about PQs, faction balance in open RvR, issues of overcrowding and depopulation in all the parts of the game. The *fun* strictly depends on that fine balance, to keep all the options viable at all times, and to keep the single option fun without suffering overcrowding or depopulation.
Right now Mythic does absolutely nothing to preserve that fine balance, and down the road I only expect XP, renown bonuses/disadvantages for a faction or the other that won't really move anything in any significant way.
There are certain workarounds that may help, some of which I also suggested (de-levelling, multiple scenarios queues, adaptable objectives for PQs). But to me it's very clear that this game required to be built different at its core.
- Dynamic server structure with a mix of persistence and instancing. Server(zone) created dynamically depending on the number of players. Something like a creative use of Guild Wars system.
Certain design schemes need their specific systems to work. Or they just remain pretty ideas that do not work in practice.
The scheme Mythic's adopting here will have its flaws hidden or sweetened for a while, but it will hurt them hard in the long term.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 15, 2007 - 05:47.
It's been described in a brutal way:
At approximately 4:30PM today, Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot.
Did they tell them to stand along the wall before they got executed?
Do we have the movie on YouTube?
Only official comment from Nino (FoH's mascot), on the FoH's boards:
I will make an announcement tomorrow regarding my status...
That isn't a denial of the news.
My guess is that SOE cherry-picked some of them and fired the others. They'll probably pretend Vanguard is going to be supported at least to milk it as much as possible before its demise. After all SOE still has Matrix Online active.
In other news SWG team is made by 20 devs.
Submitted by Abalieno on April 24, 2007 - 05:26.
Four months later and Vanguard is now perfect.
...What? Isn't what everyone used to say a few months back? That the game just needed a few more months of development to be ready?
shiznitz: Latest hubbub: Sigil UI dev quit a few weeks ago and the UI mod community is annoyed that no one is helping them any more. While reading the rants, I discovered my issue with having to click on spell icons twice to actually fire the spell was not my issue but a long known bug. Wonderful.
Devs, your UI is the first and last thing your customers see when they log in and log out. It should work and not suck. Looking like WoW's isn't enough.
Also, Nino seems to have left Sigil.
Kageru: Meanwhile I have no idea what happened with the game coding. The code seems to already have reached an unmaintainable state where bugs just can't be fixed. I can't imagine how else the act of forming a group, or not falling through the world, can still be so flawed. Meanwhile the rate of introduction for new bugs is scarily high.
I honestly can't see the game holding enough subscriptions to fund the development it needs to be decent.
Rumors. My opinion is still the same, the game was broken this January, as it will be broken next January (if it survives till then).
And not much because of Brad's hardcore game design, but more because of execution was poor (and planning, which is Brad's fault in this case).
One player also noticed that quests don't work in multiplayer, which would be interesting to discuss.
EDIT: New rumor. I doubt it's true. And even if it's true SOE will never admit the game isn't doing well and will probably dress the press release so it sounds positive.
Submitted by Abalieno on April 14, 2007 - 12:07.
I'm biased against Turbine, so read keep that in mind.
Months ago I was guessing possible subscribers numbers for the next Turbine's game based on the Middle Earth and I said that I was expecting around 200k. More recently I noticed that the interest in the community was rising, in particular not in a specific niche, but in a more transversal way, so I thought that they could be more successful than I expected. 300-400k maybe.
I posted a quote from EQ2's Scott Hartsman that is interesting to see in the context of this upcoming game. He says that the constant rise in subscriptions is a privilege of "the king of the hill", while all other "players" live with the same rules upside-down: retention demands revolution, while for the king of the hill growth demands stability. This is not only true, but also particular enlightening, even if apparently so simple, because it explains so much.
I was finding something in common between these two points above. I said that I'm noticing an unexpected enthusiasm toward LotRO, but the real point is that when you dig in the enthusiasm you find out that is not just unexpected, but also unexcused. The enthusiasm isn't backed up by actual solid points that justify the interest. You can call it classic beta hype.
WoW created expectations in the market, in the last few years since its release the market wasn't really providing interesting alternatives, so the demand for "new" grew. People like to anticipate stuff and a big mammoth like WoW, while still top-quality, failed to renew that part of interest that is only awaken when you offer new perspectives. The Burning Crusade expansion is overall very well executed, but it delivers more in a kind of horizontal growth. Surely it doesn't go to explore new frontiers, the game is enclosed in its boundaries and rules. It's still an excellent experience, but you know what to expect.
LotRO falls in this particular "momentum" and it becomes a double-edged blade. From a side the game is "familiar", and this is positive. People appreciate familiarity. I remember a post from Vanguard's UI designer ,who joined late in development, who justified WoW's UI ripoff because she said it is important that you carry over and respect some expectations, some standards. When the mass market is reached (through WoW) it's convenient that you don't impose a whole new language but instead integrate it. Instead of re-training players, you continue on the same path. You try to deliver on the specific genre, following its rules. Players come with expectations, directly compare features between games even when the comparison makes little sense, they impose their own needs and habits. If you want to be considered by an already formed audience you need to talk them in their language.
From the other side that approach becomes negative: the "sameness". The feeling of "already seen". This isn't a problem of the first approach, I wrote not long ago how the first ten minutes are the very best experience in every game. During those ten minutes everything is a discovery, the brand new look. Even if it's a familiar game it still appears very shiny. Things change with the time. The "familiar but shiny" loses its glint, the drug tends to fade and you look at things more consciously, you ask yourself what is deserving your attention and dedication.
I said that the enthusiasm I'm noticing about this game is both unexpected and unexcused. Unexcused because when you scratch below the surface you don't find worthwhile concrete points. The most interesting feature I've read about is the "title-driven carrot", depending on some actions and triggers you may unblock special titles, and there are a whole lot of them. Well, it's nice, but this is what I call a "gimmick". It's not really part of the game fabric, it doesn't affect the game rules and the final point is that, while nice, you surely won't decide to play this game because "it has titles". It is actually the perfect example of feature that gets your interest right away, part of the exploration and first impact. But three/six months into the game, do you think you'll still be excited about these titles? It's all presentation. Good presentation puts you in a good mood and it is very important, but you won't stay because of it.
Is that where all the enthusiasm is coming from? There's the "same girlfriend with a new dress" that I explained, and then there's Tolkien. From what I'm reading Tolkien is really the whole point, what gives that particular flavor that people are liking. So it doesn't matter if the actual art direction is just "passable", it's still Tolkien and (it seems) feels enough like Tolkien to trigger that special flavor.
And we arrive at the last point. For perspective I remind that Codemaster (euro publisher) is expecting 1M subs JUST for the european market. Then read again the quote from Scott Hartsman, is LotRO going to be enough King of the Hill to see a progressive growth in subscribers along the months? Let's say it will be successful, do you think that WoW is going to lose from 500 to 1M subs because of LotRO (beacause for sure it won't tap a new market with just a license)? My idea is that there's a period when players keep their former account and also go try another game. LotRO may pulg there. I expect a good numbers of WoW players to try this new game and even like it. Either they are bored of WoW and so canceled their accounts, or they are still subscribed. In the first case I seriously doubt that LotRO will be interesting for them in the longer-term. In the second case I expect players to keep accounts active on both games and this usually lasts for a while but sooner or later they'll decide one or the other.
I expect LotRO to be a short-lived bubble even on the forums. I don't see the game having some serious draw that is not that special glint derived from the "newness" and "being Tolkien". MEO will draw a lot of attention, it could initiate an interesting process of "mass-market", but I also believe that it will be a comet. Big burst and then very quick fade.
My prediction is that the game, while starting quite well, will enter "subscription retention mode" very soon. Like two months after release.
It's known that gamers have ADD. Especially those who go after the "shiny".
Submitted by Abalieno on March 1, 2007 - 07:18.
What I told you about SOE's business practices and trends?
I saw this looking at other blogs feeds (Cuppycake and Krones). I guess Brad McQuaid pretended the price to raise in order to keep Vanguard vaguely profitable.
The price is now thirty bucks (in Europe add another $5 of taxes) and they even rebill you automatically with the higher fee (effective April 2, 2007).
Firstly they publicize Vanguard and the All-access pass as both part of a very convenient deal, then, I guess, they are successful but so successful to the point that they cannot keep all games and live teams alive with one reasonable monthly fee that has to be split thin.
So it's now thirty bucks. Still cheap? Well, it's almost what you would pay for a FULL brand new game with years of development behind it. And you pay that MONTHLY.
Prediction: this will break either EQ2 or Vanguard, as they are now forcing players to pick one side. As I anticipated, only one will survive.
Next step is obviously rising the single monthly fee. But they just cannot do that before the competition moves the first step ;p
They also gave NCSoft the perfect occasion for a winning stab. Release Dungeon Runners, Exteel and Tabula Rasa and launch their own version of an all-access pass with an accessible monthly fee. If they are going to miss this opportunity then they are just crazy. A victory handed on a silver plate. With their accessible games and variety of styles it even makes sense to play more than one mmorpg.
P.S.
Planetside monthly fee is also going up: $13 -> $15
The player-reported news on VE3D is worth a quote:
After more 3 years of continually dwindling subscriber numbers, corporate mismanagement, a botched expansion, the addition of in-game advertisements, and numerous unpopular gameplay changes, SOE in all their wisdom has decided to increase the subscription rate from $13 to $15, citing investments to improve the game's support and infrastructure. Any long-time player knows the only support they have given is life-support. Barely keeping the game running is their idea of investing in it.
EDIT-
And another quote from Amber:
The short-sightedness of this approach is staggering. In a marketplace that Sony hasn't come close to dominating for well over 5 years, they're behaving like a monopoly with a captive player base.
Submitted by Abalieno on February 26, 2007 - 22:44.
This is about that "Top Secret" project that claims to give you the occasion of your life.
Hey, if I'd be a goon that would be the occasion of my life. Since I don't have the opportunity to work on games following the standard path (as foreigner) this could be the only way to actually try!
"I've always loved the idea that someone, from their bedroom, reveals their passion and talent, then suddenly can have an absolutely stunning career explosion, becoming a famous Game Director with a pre-built fan base. We're going to make it happen!" says David Perry who is a Game Director and Chief Creative Officer for Acclaim Games.
David Perry will be building the new online game from scratch and is offering members of the Acclaim player community a rare opportunity to help him develop this video game in a collaborative effort with some of the industry's best talent. "We will bring in some surprise guests along the way to inspire and mentor the contributors," says Perry.
One lucky winner who shines the most during the development process will be given the top prize. "This is the only chance I know of to jumpstart a directorship career in the video game industry," continues Perry. "Everyone wins. They get to learn how to make professional games, and if they get anything in, they get a real professional credit on their resume." Perry finishes, "But, if they win, well then they get their life changed."
Interestingly, applicants don't need any prior game development experience. In fact, Perry refuses to look at resumes. "We only care about the pure, focused, passionate talent they show up with," he says.
Hey, it IS me. It's about MMO. It's about bedroom game design. It's about offering a lifetime occasion. It's about an opportunity for those who cannot have one. There isn't anyone else in the world who could make a better target!
But I'm not so naive and my first reaction was the same of Stephen Zepp on the F13 thread: a laugh.
I'm mildly curious about how they are going to attempt this. I'm one of those who like to plunge in the community for ideas and feedback, I'm the one who believes that it's an indispensable part of making games. But at the same time you just cannot let the players, as a vague group, build a game. And what game by the way?
You cannot design "on the air", you always need a context. A project must have well outlined goals and purposes, then you can start to gather ideas about a specific system or possible alternatives. The problem working with "the community" is that there's no synthesis. It's pure chaos and without someone directing the process and taking decisions then it's all absolutely useless and superfluous.
Without a set context the ideas would be contradictory and conflicting. Building a game is about having a coherent Vision. Letting a whole community build a game instead equals to a "patchwork". Even assuming the execution is exceptional, you still have a castle of cards lacking solid foundation, principles and goals.
And would be Dave Perry(™) the director that is supposed to make all this happen? Who will tell good ideas from bad ideas? Who will make the calls? Who will evaluate the community work? Since Lum was too modest to brag directly, I'll quote what he linked, last year's Austin rant where he comments one of Dave Perry's ideas, this wonderfully creative guy:
As an example of that last bit, Jennings brought up a new project by Dave Perry and Acclaim that will include in-game classified ads on the screen. They can be turned off, but players won't level up as quickly if they choose to play without them, a point that drew a chorus of boos from the assembled audience. He also suggested facetiously embracing a "wonderland of consumerism," with Coca-Cola-sponsored magic swords, Kobalds corpses that hold Skittles, and a Jet Blue dragon to fly players around.
"When you totally disrespect your consumers like that, I can assure you of one thing: Your project will fail," Jennings said. "And deservedly so."
Jennings ended his rant to a hearty round of applause
Submitted by Abalieno on February 8, 2007 - 00:59.
From an interview with Copper:
what we're doing is taking the resources we would devote to an expansion - artists, quests, content, programmers - we're taking those guys and they are all focused on delivering high-level content every two weeks.
When you replace the last bits of game development with "live events" it means it's really over.
Submitted by Abalieno on November 28, 2006 - 20:27.
The firsts, vague details about the already hyped, upcoming Bioware MMO are coming out from the first interview they released about the project.
As a first comment I'll copy what Haemish said: "I see a whole lot of naivete in that interview".
Summary:
Gordon Walton, co-studio director, BioWare Austin: We announced the game around March, but we'd really started on it in the beginning of December 2005.
James Ohlen, creative director, BioWare Austin: We've got a lot designed -- we've got the GDD [game design document] done, we've finished more than three quarters of the detail design documents. We've got a couple prototypes up.
And we can talk about the high-level goals: We basically want to bring what BioWare's famous for to the online space, and one of the things BioWare's famous for is storytelling ... and it's something that pretty well doesn't exist in the online space right now. Most "storytelling" in MMORPGs is just FedEx quests -- you know, you have to go get some eggs -- and it's presented in a format that's just a bunch of text thrown at you in paragraph for ... and that's not so exciting. We want to bring a level of storytelling that's equal to the single-player box games that BioWare has done.
JO: You can't stop the world from being destroyed by [Sauron], but you can do a lot of things that are personal to your character. You change how your character evolves over the game, the player's personal story -- and a player's personal story can be quite epic. It can involve parts of the world that, while they're epic, exciting, and interesting, don't change the landscape of the entire world for everyone else.
Rich Vogel, co-studio director of product development: One thing we don't want to do is NPC Pez dispensers, as I call them -- go over there, dispense a quest, and then go "vacuum-clean" a zone. We want to make sure you listen to NPCs, because choices matter. And that's really important.
JO: and they can still -- especially when you use things like instances -- go on a quest that involves killing an ancient huge red dragon.
JO: In WOW, you get XP when you finish a quest, but the weighting on that is pretty low; there's not much benefit to doing that over finding the perfect monster to grind and kill. If those quest experience points were a little higher, it would make a lot more sense to go along with the story.
GFW: How many of your key staffers migrated from SOE [which also has a studio in Austin]?
GW: I don't know that we have a count. Some from SOE, some from BioWare Edmonton, some from other companies completely. It's not like we had to go knocking. Experienced people want to work on a product that can be successful.
We probably have the most experienced team in the business, as far as building MMORPGs.
JO: we don't want players to be stuck grinding through the same content over and over again.
RV: is our game going to be a simulation? No. Our game is an entertainment experience.
RV: it's very important to have directed content ... especially if you want to get to a mainstream audience.
JO: If we're going to create immersive, epic stories that are believable, that really goes against having a simulation-type world.
RV: The key points that we're gonna do that no one's done before in an MMOG are bring story, character, and emotion to it. Decisions matter, and NPCs aren't pez dispensers, and you're not in a grind.
JO: One of the things we want to do is create more story content than in any other BioWare game before, and we started a writing team earlier than in any other BioWare project -- more than twice as big, nine total. The reason is that the world is huge and has tons of paths and options.
So they found the magic recipe for the Endless Stream of Quality Content and No Grind that no one was able to find till today: hire nine writers.
And when it was asked how to "bring the story, character and emotion" the answer is: instancing.
If there's one thing that irks me is when people disown what they have done in the past (SWG). You know, the more I hear them talk and the more I think that the "dinosaurs" Raph Koster often talks about are those two guys. Rick Vogel and Gordon Walton.
They come from a systemic game, it fails and now they are all for the directed gameplay "because you cannot be successful without". And because of the WoW "me too" syndrome.
They are just running around aimlessly, glad that they now have "Bioware" printed in their resumes.
It's not like we had to go knocking. Experienced people want to work on a product that can be successful.
Experienced people are looking for the Bioware name. Between these people are Rich Vogel and Gordon Walton.
For these "experienced people" what matters is their resume. And the fact that now there's "Bioware" printed there. The rest? Irrelevant. They are leeches.
By the way. I also wrote a bunch of design notes in the past about how to bring "story, character and emotion" (part 1 - part 2). With the difference that I explained *concretely* how to achieve that. It's there and you can agree or disagree with it. And surely wouldn't be the only thing to make a game significantly different to be INDISPENSABLE and EXCUSED in the market. Because if no one feels the need for another cookie-cutter game (beside those "experienced people" who care only about a new voice on their resumes) then it shouldn't be done.
One thing is an excuse to get a job. One thing is working because you believe in what you are doing. Because you have something to say.
But of course they would say that they HAVE innovative and interesting ideas, but, of course again, they cannot disclose them JUST YET. All those other MMO companies out there are just waiting the occasion to steal all their incredible, brilliant ideas. Okay. Sure. How much time do you want? One year? Two? Three? More? Whatever. Because I'm sure that no matter how much time we will wait, at the end there won't be absolutely anything new behind the curtain.
Maybe a brick: in the form of instancing, nine writers and, maybe, branching quests (that will effectively double the time of content production).
In the meantime I really have one question. Honest. I hope someone will ask them in an interview in the future. The question is: Why a MMO?
Wait...
Why a MMO?
Better :)
"Because I want it on my resume" is NOT an answer.
If this project deserves some attention it is because, as I wrote on the forums, there's Ubiq working on the combat system, and lately he seems more enlightened than usual.
Submitted by Abalieno on August 5, 2006 - 13:28.
If Codemaster were (or going to be) relevant to the mmorpg space, I would write about this (Lum did), but they don't.
Codemasters Online Gaming today announces ‘PlayPLUS’, a revolutionary subscription system for the hugely anticipated MMORPG ArchLord™. The PlayPLUS system will enable players to purchase packages that include both game time and in-game bonus credits. Credits will be redeemable against in-game items and benefits, such as experience bonuses, teleportation spells, health boosts and many other desirable enhancements.
Enjoy your way out of this industry. Noone is going to miss you.
I would also laugh so heartily if they could manage to convince Turbine to use that system on the soon to be failure MEO.
Shame on you, Sunsword.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 25, 2006 - 20:06.
So again with The Escapist, I'm reading this description about John Romero and I couldn't stop to think about it as an omen for Brad:
McQuaid's game was Vanguard. It was intended to be larger and grander in scale than any videogame ever made, and was heavily advertised as the game that would make you, the player, Brad McQuaid's "bitch."
That Vanguard eventually sold 200,000 copies - a smashing success by some standards - is irrelevant. Costing more than $10 million and taking three years to develop, Vanguard would have had to do far more than make you its bitch to have been considered a success. Since day one at Sigil, McQuaid and Co. had set their sights on EverQuest-like sales figures, and in what was certainly the greatest example of star-driven, game industry hubris, had been completely surprised by their failure.
Sigil's Carlsbad, California office, rocked by political in-fighting (which led to a near-complete walk-out of McQuaid's Vanguard team) was closed in 2007 by SOE following a bail-out deal in which the publisher had acquired a controlling interest in the hemorrhaging game company.
Hey, maybe it could work like a lucky charm ;p
Submitted by Abalieno on July 25, 2006 - 13:27.
I was reading a rant linked by Jeff Freeman and written by Dan Rubenfield (who apparently has a long experience in the mmorpg industry and recently left SOE in search of something different). I liked it quite a bit. I agree on most of those premises.
Dream games. All developers and designers have them. In fact, everyone has them.
But we never make them. We all want to but don’t have the time or the resources.
So all designers have dream games. We bandy them around but tend not to talk to them while employed as there’s always a fear of “losing your idea” to your parent company.
Well, I'm not sure that I understand this. I would love to "lose my ideas" to make them possible, myself. In fact I expose them often when I write. So I see that trend described as really counterproductive. Why you should hide your ideas when employed? And what's the work about then?
See ideas becoming real should be the most rewarding experience ever. The "parent company" is supposed to valorize the people who work within and let them express at their very best. Put them in the condition to do so. If instead the devs shy away it means that something is going really wrong.
Making a mmorpg is about harmonious teamwork. You dedicate yourself to the game and everyone contributes with what he does best. Competition inside the same team is a bad thing. But this is a digression.
Currently nobody’s making anything new for MMO development. There’s a smattering of small developers pushing the envelope but the majority of the big publishers out there (Except Blizzard) isn’t doing shit.
There’s a palpable sense of fear and terror amongst mmo developers right now. They’re scared shitless of WOW. They see it, believe it’s insurmountable, tuck their tails and go the opposite direction.
What does that mean?
It means you’re going to have company after company fucking around with smalltime, smallscale free products. Myspace Killers, Habbo Killers, Runescape Killers, you name it.
It’s going to be reactive, marketing driven, and for the most part, failure after failure.
It’s going to be company after company saying things like “We’d like to focus on the Casual market instead of the hardcore”.
Dan considers the "casual market" as a "null" one, since it is made by non-gamers who will never really cross the line to become gamers and true supporters of this industry:
(about casual gamers)
We should figure out how to craft and sell games to the people who legitimize us before dorking around with people who don’t buy or enjoy our products.
Continuing on the same rant:
Everyone looks at MMO development as “Competing” with WOW. And nobody wants to do it. They’d rather scrabble for the detritus that falls from their pockets. They’d rather go for spillover and for some fucked up reason, focus on the Non-Gaming market.
And once again, I ask “What The Fuck?”. We haven’t figured out how to reliably create and sell games to the people who buy games and we’re fucking around trying to sell games to people who don’t even play games?
We’re once again not using the strength of the medium, once again not asking the questions that need to be asked. The people who hold the purse strings aren’t interested. They’ve retreated into their developmental shells in an attempt to go for the “untapped potential” market.
The thing is, we’ve seen this happen over and over historically. If you single track your product lines like this you’re going to end up fucked. You’re might see some short term success but long term you’re going to end up in very bad financial shape.
We’re not in a static environment of game players, game developers, game sales, game platforms. There’s an ever evolving sense of tastes and ever shifting marketplace. Our marketing efforts and development dollars tend to use history as the basis for choices. Unfortunately this is only part of the equation.
We should be looking historically as well as looking forward for future trends and desires.
Like I do, he hopes for games that expand their sighting, new approaches, different paradigms. The current rules in the market are just consolidated and conventional, but not absolute.
So the market is incredibly malleable. It can be shaped. This is the correct perspective to see it. Hystorical rules are just consequences of what is being made. Different things being made would lead to a different types of market and completely different influences for future products.
It is important to understand the market, but not react to it passively.
The part where I don't agree with Dan is where he is over with the analysis and proposes an alternative:
Everyone’s piling into that rowboat because we’ve convinced ourselves that WOW is insurmountable.
And to a degree we’re right. WOW is not something you can ever compete with. So DON’T.
I will bold this yet again.
STOP TRYING TO MAKE THAT SAME FUCKING GAME.
Raph made a comment a few years back that WOW was going to set our industry back 10 years. It wasn’t meant as a derogatory statement about WOW but instead about the reactive, bullshit nature of us.
And you know what? He was right about that too.
From there he starts to pitch his own game idea that I want comment (but it's good enough).
I don't agree with him even if I agree with all the other premises because I see things from a different perspective.
What I strongly believe is quite simple: it is possible to make new and different games IN the "fantasy genre".
From a side Dan proposes to start from a different game concept, from the other to push a different pricing model that relies heavily on RMT.
I heartily *hate* the second part for reasons I won't explain again (in short: real money should stay OUT of the game, it doesn't belong there), while I see the first as not the obligatory solution.
I'm between those who really dreams and wants completely new and different games. Focusing on the immersion, with a true ongoing, dedicated, passionate development to shape and nourish a *world*, and not bouncing devs and resources between a bunch of mediocre projects or sequels that won't leave any sign and will be obsolete and forgotten after a few months or years. Ambitions and myths. Not consumer society.
But I also believe that the "fantasy genre" is far from being just WoW. Or pinpointed by it. Different games are possible. And not only possible: successful. And the same for different genres. I would love to design a Space Opera mmorpg, or a steampunk based world (think to Myazaki's Nausicaa), but you aren't forced to abandon a genre because you blindly believe that nothing else is possible within it.
I just refuse to believe that WoW has now the monopoly of the fantasy genre. And I refuse to accept that you are now forced to make games into different genres if you want to survive.
Hell, even the same Warcraft could be made into completely different games.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 23, 2006 - 14:26.
Lum worries about his friends at Mythic, now lets not start worrying about Lum, please...
While I was writing the Prey review I noticed this comment:
Offtopic, but there are rumors about trouble in NCSoft Austin -- layoffs.
I checked the link provided but saw nothing relevant.
Then I start my usual blog tour and I see this on F13:
NC Soft (US) just had a big layoff today:
80% of GM's
90% of tech support
75% of QA
Numerous other staff, from producers to marketing/pr.
They are blaming the declining subscriber numbers for City of Heroes/COV which has slowly dropped to just over 100k total. Also to blame has been the disaster that is Auto Assault, which has yet to climb over 10k total subscribers since its launch in the third week in April.
Tabula Rasa continues to suck massive amounts of cash, yet still has no release date in sight.
Not good.
I'm sure we'll hear more about this later. It's starting to sound less of a rumor.
EDIT: Comment from Alan Dunking on Q23, and official announce here below in the comments:
We can't really comment on anything regarding this, honestly. I think I can safely say Lum & I are still employed.
I do want to give general advice for any kind of weird anonymous posting on the net:
* Don't believe everything you read.
and
* It's never as bad as it sounds (or looks).
--- Alan
EDIT2: For a mean chuckle notice Walt's comment on the Q23 thread:
EA Mythic's hiring.
From incestuous families only deformed childs.
What about new people?
Btw, I doubt that people in Austin (the Hollywood of mmorpgs) are going to move to Fairfax Virginia to join Mythic.
HIRE ME! I'll cross the seas like Christopher Columbus and discover the new world!
(J. also commented)
Submitted by Abalieno on June 21, 2006 - 09:46.
Gathering some comments I wrote about Mythic being sold to EA.
--
It means that EA will now set too high expectations. And when Warhammer won’t reach them (and it won’t), EA will take over completely and put Mythic to rest forever.
The only difference is that this time they’ll let it release.
Really. The only REAL change after this acquisition is that the 120-130k subs DAoC currently has aren’t REMOTELY enough for Mythic to exist. And that Warhammer must do 5x better only to be granted continued existence.
You think throwing money at it is enough. I don’t. Before this Mythic could survive with modest-sized games and still slowly building very good ones. I seriously think that they threw away a lot of potential because they had the possibility to slowly increase their market share, instead of slowly losing it.
Under EA they don’t have anymore the luxury to go on with modest-sized mmorpgs. It’s quite obvious that EA will now bet heavily on this. It’s quite obvious that they will throw a bunch of money at Mythic. And it’s quite obvious that things at Mythic will change SIGNIFICANTLY because of this.
--
Athryn: Who knows, maybe they will infuse some life back into DAoC?
DAoC was already the sacrificial lamb for Warhammer. They are too similar to let them compete for the same audience and it already happened that they used DAoC shortcomings to publicize Warhammer (instead of fixing them).
This already before EA's acquisition, so nothing will change. Maybe DAoC will even have a few more leftovers devs that will give the illusion of more support when instead they will complete the disruption of the original DAoC team (as SWG demonstrated the simplest, quickest way to kill a mmorpg is to have an high churn rate with the devs).
The true impact of EA's acquisition is that now Mythic is something *completely new*. Maybe not in those who work there, they won't even relocate. But in *expectations*. Before Mythic could survive and prosper with medium-sized mmorpgs finding their own space. 100-200k subs were absolutely viable and they still had a lot of resources to increase their market share with the time if they wanted to (instead of losing it).
After this, the rules are changing. EA is going to throw a lot of money at Warhammer. This is good? Not from my point of view because it's quite obvious that you don't hand out money at will if you don't expect something BACK. The "old" Mythic dies here (if it didn't before). Expectations change, plans change. And you can be sure that when Warhammer won't reach those insane expectations, EA *will* take over completely. Or start the cleansing.
Till now Mythic has been DAoC. Warhammer doesn't exist. Well, for EA DAoC is nothing less than a grain of sand. You really believe that it's enough to grant Mythic a continuity similar to the one they have now? Hell NO. You really believe that Mark Jacobs told EA that the target market for Warhammer is 200-300k subs? HELL NO.
EVERYTHING changes with this. The scale changes. The company's objectives change. The production process will change, testing will change. The ambition and overall strategy change.
No matter what Mythic reps are saying while trying to reassure themselves.
Jason Booth commented on Lum's blog:
As for Mythics future games, I wish them luck, but so far, no studio has managed to hit it out of the ballpark more than once.
And that's the point. Before Mythic could sit in the back and remain prefectly active and healthy in that ballpark. They were deciding for themselves. Set THEIR OWN goals and ambitions. They should have tried to slowly improve and increase their market share in small step as CCP is doing with Eve-Online.
After this acquisition the objectives skyrocket. EA didn't buy Mythic for *what it is*. But for what they hope it will become. Not for their identity, but for their potential. Not for their current worth, but for growth possibilities.
They bought it as a raw material to transform. Hence the reason why Mythic is now FORCED to "hit it out of the ballpark" or die in the process.
Putting their hand on EA's wallet means accepting their conditions and expectations. It's not about getting a disinterested donation. It's betting with the devil.
They aren't anymore their own measure. They are EA measure.
Mark Jacobs decided that continuing to do small steps wasn't anymore satisfactory and, quoting:
We chose to do this deal because of what it meant to Mythic today and to our company going forward. It was a grand slam home run.
They chose to make this big jump at the price of their identity. You know, a sellout.
And you are silly if you believe that "things will remain the same". Nothing will. For the worse or the better.
You really believe that EA will let Mythic survive with similar subscription numbers to DAoC? And you really believe that throwing money at them is enough to make great games?
Submitted by Abalieno on June 20, 2006 - 22:48.
Rumors were correct.
EA is now officially going to acquire Mythic:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 20, 2006--Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS - News) today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Virginia-based Mythic Entertainment®. Upon completion of the acquisition, Mythic Entertainment will become EA Mythic, a wholly-owned studio dedicated to developing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs).
Upon completion of the acquisition, Mark Jacobs, the President, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Mythic, will become Vice President, General Manager of EA Mythic. Rob Denton, the Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Mythic will assume the role of Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of EA Mythic. Mythic's 175-person development team will remain in Fairfax, Virginia.
"Mythic has always been a leading independent developer in the online space," says Mark Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of Mythic Entertainment. "EA's commitment to the online market as well as its focus on creating games of unsurpassed quality, scope and scale gives us opportunities and resources we could only dream about in the past."
"The addition of Mythic to the EA family reflects our deep commitment to the online gaming market worldwide. Mythic will bring one of the industry's most talented MMORPG teams to EA. Together, we will create games that will introduce MMO players to a whole new level of game play and excitement," said Paul Lee, President, EA Studios.
The only good part of the news is that I underlined. Now I'll wait before picking some fun on Mark Jacobs. The post where he denied the rumors (sort of) can be found here. This is what he wrote today:
Mark Jacobs: As you can imagine, it's been a rather interesting few weeks at Mythic. I promise to post a much longer letter here but the rest of the day is filled with interviews and questions and then I fly out for a few days with the folks at EA. I'll try to find time to post here during that time but if I can't, I will do so upon my return.
As always, there is nothing wrong with being skeptical, worried or cynical (traits that are near and dear to my heart) but we will prove over the next 15 months why we deserved your trust and faith from the beginning.
WAR is still coming and nothing will change, except for the better and nothing will stop that.
I'll leave you will one final bit, we didn't need to do this deal, we chose to do this deal because of what it meant to Mythic today and to our company going forward. It was a grand slam home run.
Expect LOTS of spinning. LOTS. Mark Jacobs will do his very best.
Sanya also commented:
- EA came to us. Not the other way around. And our deal with GOA (to work as partners on CS and simultaneous patches, etc) still stands.
- We have not been absorbed. Mark's title is the highest/best/most powerful one he can have. In other words, he remains the studio head.
- I don't blame MMO players for being nervous, but think about it - we KNOW the history of all previous deals. Only a complete monkey wouldn't have taken that history into account while the contracts were being written.
- Wait and see if a chunk of sky hits you in the head before you say the sky is falling, okay?
NO ONE is being laid off, moved, rearranged, or changed. Mythic is working with Games Workshop and that isn't changing in any way. I believe, and I will leave it to Mark to confirm, but I believe that keeping the relationship between us and GW exactly the same was kind of key here.
You don't have to believe it, but I had to try
Yes, we knew all this. Money hat for Mark. The true impact of this will be only visible in the long term. And it won't be pretty.
SELLOUT!!1! (this beats Brad bringing Vanguard back to SOE)
Submitted by Abalieno on June 14, 2006 - 05:18.
When you see these kinds of news the first question is: "What's the source?"
The source isn't available but it should be still reliable. It comes from a presentation given by Vivendi to Wall Street, so something intended for the financial analysts. Source is F13 who had someone there, I think. I quote:
"All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs."
They claim they have a model now to develop an MMOG in 3 years for $50 million. WoW cost 50 million euros and took 4 1/2 years.
It is not an official announce since it's more like in the form of "hype" to feed that type of audience with speculations. But I still consider this a reliable plan they have and that they WILL pursue now. Here Blizzard doesn't exist anymore. My guess is that Vivendi is taking over. It's not Blizzard deciding what to do next or even organizing the workflow. This is Vivendi seeing an insane stream of money coming in and going all "OMG, MONEY HATS FOR ALL!". Then they rush in Blizzard's offices with a grin, "SEE WHAT WE DID? NOW WE ARE MMOGs."
Vivendi is not only taking over at the level of decision making. They are really stepping in Blizzard's offices and taking over at every level. Before Blizzard was just an anomaly. This studio is so strong, as I pointed out in the past, because they ARRIVED to the success after a LONG process and hard work. It's something handcrafted, done by people passionate about their work and slowly improving. "Vivendi taking over" is instead part of that other process who made so many important devs FLEE from Blizzard. Because they saw what was going on and that Blizzard was losing its role and slowly becoming just a "puppet". The premises that made all that possible were changing. Those who saw that, left. With WoW's HUGE success this process was accelerated considerably and I consider this presentation as the ultimate consequence: Blizzard's autonomy is being killed.
Before WoW Vivendi didn't have a particular attention for Blizzard, like every other division they have under them. Blizzard was successful, but only one cog in a huge machine. After WoW everything completely changed. While Blizzard probably had still a certain amount of autonomy, after the huge success of the game they weren't anymore "invisible" to the Vivendi guys at the high levels. And this accelerated the process. You see, when you work for someone and do a good work, it's all ok, you receive some praises and everything continues along the same lines. But when you start to do something absolutely *amazing* then you can be sure that they won't leave you alone. They'll come into your office, start asking questions, and yes, starting telling you what to do next so that TOGETHER you'll conquer the world. Because they made you. And you are their property and merit.
People don't leave you alone doing your work if they see that everything you touch becomes gold. Blizzard is the new "King Mida". They make money hats. And now they totally have the attention of Vivendi. And they won't leave them alone anymore, they won't let them do their work. Instead they WILL take over, they WILL pretend to control and pilot them.
So this is what I see: it will need a few years before this process is complete. But Vivendi is going to take over, and this sort of "invasion" will have the consequence of ruining completely and slowly erasing all the "worth" that Blizzard slowly built along the years and with their hard work. They are guilty of having drawn too much attention on them, and now they are being swept away. It happens when you overdo, when you shine too much to continue doing what you do without things changing around you.
Diablo and Starcraft MMOs weren't announced by Blizzard. They were announced by Vivendi. Blizzard is no more.
Those games will be made. Whether Blizzard wants or not. They aren't no long masters in their own house. And in the next few years we'll see a bleeding fracture between Blizzard and Vivendi management, trying to preserve control.
Right now Blizzard has barely the resources to support WoW. They don't even have two separate teams to work on the live servers and the expansion.
Whatever will happen, things won't be anymore the same.
From Blizzard's rep:
I believe this was a misquote. We haven't announced any specific development plans beyond the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft, and we don't have any intentions to focus on only one genre or platform with our future games.
We'll see if it "was a misquote", or if it's just that Blizzard hasn't anymore the freedom to decide what to do next.
Let's see who makes the biggest voice.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 12, 2006 - 06:04.
This time the silly claims about the european market are coming from an official press release (that I lost in my "notes" file when it appeared a few days ago and recalled when it was quoted on F13) and the textual words of Mark Jacobs (that I keep for posterity mocks as I always do):
“The initial partnership between Mythic and GOA resulted in Dark Age of Camelot being the number one MMORPG in Europe for many years,” said Mark Jacobs, CEO and President of Mythic Entertainment. “With WAR our goal is nothing less than to take Europe by storm and regain that leadership position in the European market.”
It looks like talking big about the european market is the new trend.
The actual news is that Mythic is again in partnership with GOA to manage Warhammer in Europe. I'm not going to comment this as I always played DAoC on the american servers, so I cannot judge their work, but I'll say that it's a very bad decision on all fronts to keep the US and EU servers separated and inaccessible to the same account, and I'm not glad at all to see this pattern repeated. This time I'm not going on with that crusade, though.
Other vague "news" are about the release planned for "fall 07" and the contemporary release, but we knew about these already.
I don't really think they will regain "leadership position". WoW has now nearly 1.5M subscribers in Europe alone. For the first time the european market is getting bigger than the US. DAoC, when Mythic considered itself "number one" in Europe, topped in EU at around 150k or so. Come on, it's not even on the same scale.
Let's make some predictions about the numbers Warhammer will get in EU and US. Let's see who will get closer. My idea is that the reasonable goal that Mythic should take nearly as an imperative (meaning that it won't be a "success" and that they should start dancing if they reach it, but that the devs should work *hard* to reach it) is the 250-280k EU+US that DAoC had at its peak. Anything less would be a delusion (in particular with the silly claims above) and I don't think that the game will move too far away from that number (meaning that I don't expect them going far above either).
I have this theory that sequels, or semi-sequels like this one, are never able even to top the original title when it was at its peak. I always criticized "sequels" in the mmorpg genre and I think they are a total waste of money when much better *commercial* results could be obtained by truly supporting the main title (meaning giving it more and more resources, instead of less and less), like CCP is doing with Eve (which grows constantly despite being three years old and recently reached more than 100 developers involved full time with it), instead of eroding progressively the resources from the game to migrate them somewhere else and then see an obvious decline as the direct result.
So my idea is: Warhammer won't top DAoC when it was at its peak. They could go slightly above or slightly below depending on the quality of what they are doing (and I think some ideas are promising if they don't cripple them with the usual bad execution), but that's what I'd take as a reasonable goal. That's what I'd tell my devs if I was Mark Jacobs. Go for that. That's our goal.
"Regain that leadership position in the European market" is laughable. PR or not they should have never said something like that.
Maybe after launch, if they hit that 250k mark, then they could start to work *hard* to solidify and INCREASE their market share (you know, the mythical positive trends that seem a chimera for a mmorpg). Like the hard work EQ2 is doing despite being a retarded sequel. But then there's always this stupid risk that the resources will be moved on yet another stupid new project, instead of supporting the development to make the first title more solid. And just watch it passively declining and fade into oblivion (also because it HAS to be killed, as the interest and hype MUST be shifted to fed the "new").
Which was DAoC's own destiny with that foolish "Imperator" project first, and Warhammer now.
Submitted by Abalieno on April 28, 2006 - 15:17.
Dave Rickey: There are a lot of lessons Eve can teach us. But let’s not go off half-cocked and learn the wrong ones. Eve’s business position is so unique, it serves only as an outlier, a boundary point that shows what can happen, when a game has a niche to itself that grows so slowly that it attracts no competitors.
--
Raph recently put together some predictions about this industry and people nodded their heads in agreement. I have many thoughts about this but it's not easy to put all of them together in a simple thesis. I'll throw some of the thoughts here and maybe I'll find a thread.
The first point to consider is that I find those previsions vague. At some point I could imagine me commenting, "It went exactly the opposite of what you said." and Raph, "No, it went exactly as I said". Some of those predictions are plausible (like the online distribution), you could even argue that the scenario he portrays is already here. More like a description than a prediction. But the title says "next-gen". Next-gen supposes that things will change and this is exactly the apocalyptic scenario that both Lum and Psychochild have perceived. A tone confirmed by Raph himself:
Looking out at the future, what I see is an extinction-level event.
That sounds quite different from a description of the current scenario, it implies some huge paradigm shifts, innovation, revoloutions. Exciting times!
Well, my predictions are much more shocking than that: things will remain almost exactly as you see them now.
If you observe the situation with a huge magnifier then everything you'll see will also appear huge and exhalted, but the truth is that it all falls in the average "normality". Raph seems to predict significant changes, in particular he focuses on the extinction of the majority of the large projects for the rise of the indie companies. A plurality of offers, tiny blocks of innovation. The "spring of all the new species". Even a new growth of the PC gaming market!
My suspect is that Raph wrote that while asleep and dreaming. A pretty, positive scenario that he wishes more than one he expects, I think. Again we could argue that all this is already happening. But where is the prediction? If it's just a relative point of view the discussion would be pretty much null, what you see as "huge" and "next", I see as "small" and "current". Without an objective platform we don't go anywhere. That scenario is already here or it is an incoming revolution? Because if it's already here then I don't see it as "huge", I see it as "negligible". Are things really going to change significantly? And for who?
Who will say what is "next-gen" when it will finally arrive? Because my suspect is that everyone will have a different opinion. Everyone will be convinced to be right even if everyone says a different thing.
So let's focus on the three points I find relevant to discuss, at least:
- The Big Guys will crumble under their own weight
- Smaller, indie companies will flourish everywhere with a plurality of ideas
- Everyone will be happy (the market will grow, there will be more space for individuality and the offer will be richer)
Do you really believe that this is going to happen or you just wish that it is going to happen? My opinion is that things will change only if you go look in detail at every small trend, pretty much as things can already be seen from many different points of view right now. This is why I say that nothing significant is going to happen anytime soon. The genre will mature. Maturity usually brings to specialization more than variety. I don't think we'll see a plurality, I think instead that we'll see a consolidation.
See? Things are already much different and still the same, at the same time. I say there will be a consolidation but this implies that there will be failures, projects going nowhere. This scenario not only is something already happening under everyone's eyes, but it may even fall in that first point about the Big Guys.
It is going to be extremely hard for medium-sized companies to compete in the mmorpg market. There's a race for the leadership. The upcoming scenario is an oligarchy. A few, consolidated titles, with dedicated development teams. The great majority of the companies that found their own space won't have an easy, quiet life. They will have to fight and there will be losses because those smaller spaces will become more desirable when the market will saturate. This isn't a process of extinction, this is a process of selection and assimilation. It isn't even a trend specific of this industry. The mass market implies an hegemony. It's the Borg process of assimilation and transformation. Things that will be rejected will be excluded, but after the process started it doesn't stop, like the excessive growth of WoW. Beyond the normality. There's a point where it transforms in a flood, the mass market culture permeates and convinces. Conforms and uniforms.
Who will survive in this scenario? The indie companies or at least the smaller sized ones that won't fit in the Uber Oligarchy will only survive if they don't draw any attention. Live of breadcrumbs. When they'll rise their head and draw the attention they will get assimilated or wiped away. Or a project is too tiny to be relevant, or it will draw attention and it will be eaten alive. This is what happens when you draw attention. The Big Guys and every mass culture trend never live of innovation. Innovation would kill mass culture. They live of assimilation. They slowly recycle what happens around them. In this scenario the indie companies aren't "next-gen", they are just food for the dinosaurs.
What is sure is that the dinosaurs will continue to rule this land and decide what happens on a significant level. Maybe the small companies will have the blind illusion of being the center of the world, but they will only exist as long the dinosaurs want, as long they get unnoticed, as long they remain negligible. As long they don't harm. As long they don't poke their heads out of their holes.
And in the case they try to do that... ROADKILL!!
Submitted by Abalieno on April 24, 2006 - 10:04.
It speaks by itself:
Vice president and general manager of Codemasters Online Gaming (COG), David Solari, has revealed a target of over a million players for the division's upcoming Lord of the Ring Online (LOTRO) title and admitted intentions to compete directly with Blizzard's genre-leading World of Warcraft.
"I think the goal [for LOTRO] would be over a million subscribers in the west," said Solari, speaking at the COG LiVE event in Warwick, UK, yesterday. "World of Warcraft is such a benchmark now, but if something's going to do it it's going to be a Lord of the Rings brand that lets people play in that environment and experience that content. It's got to have probably the best chance of competing with it."
LOTRO, developed by US developer Turbine, is scheduled for a Q4 release. Demoed in fully playable form at the event by executive producer Jeff Steefel, the initial release is to include the content from the first Lord of the Rings book, The Fellowship of the Ring, with the rest of the trilogy to be added as the game evolves.
This goes right into the group with Campion (Eve-Online clueless producer who luckily quit shortly after release) claiming that Eve would have 100k of players online at the same time (and the servers supporting that without troubles) and Marc Laukien (MutableRealms clueless president) claiming that Wish's target was at least 100k subscribers.
Why people in the high positions never have even remotely a clue?
Adding my own guesswork:
1M of players is laughable, 500k is laughable. Anything below that depends solely on the quality of the game.
Imho the best scenario they have is 150k to 200.
(I think I've been excessively optimistic, this game may never see the light of the day)
Submitted by Abalieno on April 20, 2006 - 05:26.
Auto Assault should have launched recently and noone cares.
At least I don't. I played Jumpgate for six months after launch. There was ZERO support. Nothing if not superficial massive "events" that were all about massive grinds (think to Ahn Quiraj). It was pretty obvious that NetDevil shipped the game and then forget about it.
When you do this, you deserve to go back into irrelevancy and stay there.
But of course people are stupid and the worst companies always get more founding. So now we have "Auto Assault". It seems they worked on this for more than four years. With a team of 50. While Jumpgate was going on with a team of one.
Here's the reason why this game and this company will never go anywhere:
NetDevil’s only other game was another massively multiplayer game called Jumpgate. NetDevil still maintains the game, which was launched in 2001, even though only about 1,000 people still play it.
And Brown said he plans to expand the company beyond its two current games.
“NetDevil is going to start another team and multiple games,” he said, adding that the company might also look at creating more traditional, non-MMO titles.
You cannot support ONE game and you already plan for multiple projects. What a fucking CLUELESS management.
For now, Brown and his crew will watch the gamers roll into Auto Assault and hope they stick around long enough to see what else they’ve been working on.
I hope they don't.
This whole industry needs surgery to remove inflated egos.
P.S.
There's a thread on Q23 if you want to read more specifically about EverQuest on wheels.
In Interstate 76, you had to deal with the physics of your car, and what armor was on what quadrant. You had to use your front rear and side weapons very intelligently. If your left armor was gone, you had to constantly manuever to keep that side out of the line of fire.
In Autoduel, it was even more strategic. You had to do many of the things mentioned above, as well as deal with subsystems of the car going out. Like tires, engines, weapons getting destroyed after the armor was gone (Granted, Auto Assault has this as well, but with one health bar car placement strategy means nothing. Once your health bar is gone you have no control over protecting your precious interior).
In Auto Assault, you have one health bar. Your main weapon is on a turret, so it doesn't matter where the enemy is. You can always shoot it. Also, how you manuever your car and it's position relative to the enemy means very little. There are front and rear mounted weapons, so you have to keep the enemy in this front arc that is drawn in front of your car to use the front mounted weapons.
The problem lies in the fact that skill plays almost no role. For the turret, if an enemy is in range, every shot may or may not hit them dependent on a die roll. Same with the front weapons. You basically just drive around in circles keeping the enemy in the front arc and hope that the die roll rolls a hit. It's a piss poor merging of standard MMO combat mixed in with a pseudo-skill based system.
The reason this exists is to give you weapons firings stats that slowly increase over time, to keep you playing. Unfortunately, it makes the combat so ridiculously dull because it doesn't reward skill. The only reward is eventually getting your weapons skills high enough to auto-hit enemies.
If it was for me I'd have put all the weapons on fixed positions so that you have to steer the car. More like an x-wing simulator done with cars, which should be easily doable even in a mmorpg since the car movement is easily predictable for the netcode.
Then it would be all about ramming other cars with blades or tailchasing them with a machine gun. It seems Auto Assault fails already on these extremely basic expectations.
Oh, and if I would make a game about "cars" it is quite obvious that it would all pivot on "modding" them. That's what the car geeks expect. No "ding, level up" shit.
Submitted by Abalieno on April 5, 2006 - 00:05.
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.
Submitted by Abalieno on March 28, 2006 - 23:50.
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?
Submitted by Abalieno on March 23, 2006 - 22:09.
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.
Submitted by Abalieno on March 14, 2006 - 02:46.
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
Submitted by Abalieno on March 10, 2006 - 05:16.
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.
Submitted by Abalieno on January 22, 2006 - 01:24.
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 expan
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