Starnick, I just wanted to say that you look much better in blue than yellow over on the suckboards
It's also nice to see you able to really post your true thoughts about things without having to deal with any hassles.
You were one of the only Senators that I never found BSing the community about the NGE and I think that everyone should respect that, because I can pull up "NGE IS RADZ" posts from just about every other Senator
Originally posted by SODAofBRIA Starnick, I just wanted to say that you look much better in blue than yellow over on the suckboards It's also nice to see you able to really post your true thoughts about things without having to deal with any hassles. You were one of the only Senators that I never found BSing the community about the NGE and I think that everyone should respect that, because I can pull up "NGE IS RADZ" posts from just about every other Senator
Tbh I always felt the blue > yellow lol. But blue or yellow...I have usually tried saying whats on my mind (and rarely has it been consistently positive...but its a manner of how I say it/word it...I've only gotten in mild trouble once because I was pissed off like a groggy grizzly bear). It is nice however, being a "swg civilian" again though, mostly since it has allowed me to focus more on real life (academic wise) and my own game development project, rather than just give me the freedom to talk freely (the -only- thing I can't talk about obviously are past NDA related items...which doesn't really matter now because A) I've forgotten most of it and the top NDA related items have either been leaked or eventually released! heh).
Anyways, in regards to all the NGE is radz posts...when I first heard of it (this was after turning down the offer to be one of the folks flown down to austin...so I was wondering what was up) via from rumors, I was kinda excited. I was expecting stuff like vehicular combat, and massive GCW battles that were fast-paced and fun...and maybe even finally atmospheric flight since we could shoot up at aircraft as in JTL. At least, that would be the only reason I expected to have such a big change...but instead their reasons were about trying to bring in more subscribers and a different player demographic. Then that hopeful optimism went to a watch and see to a cautious optimism to...well, the only real optimism I have is for commandos as that's the only thing I've seen improved with the NGE.
Yet going back to the reasons for the NGE...ok I don't have a business degree...but doesn't "Build it and they will come"? ring a bell? You don't go looking for subscribers...if you cater to someone, you're bound to get rejected badly. Building something that's great and interests people, rather than trying to tell them "this is interesting to your age group!" is the way to go...because you gain the best tool any marketer dreams of: word of mouth.
For SOE, it backfired and they got burned by word of mouth so hardcore it's depressing (from a business standpoint). Atm Im starting to ramble...but a few days ago I remember reading something about Rockstar games saying that they don't do a lot of market research, they just follow their passion and make a great game that is fun. And obviously a lot of their games have been widely popular...make a great game, your audience will come to you...try and build a game to impress your audience then you're going to fail most of the time. Its why (and this is totally random) a lot of kid shows are stupid and creepy...never liked them as a kid...and I bet a lot of kids feel the same way...they want to be entertained, not catered to (or be told "this is fun to you" from an adult who doesn't get it).
The sad thing of all this, Starn, is that if SOE and LA had left SWG alone, and just announced "SWG 2", and then worked on something very like the NGE and released it BUG FREE when ready (not last Nov but probably middle of this year) there'd have been zero bad blood and probably 2-3x more accounts than they now have, if you add both games.
The problem wasn't so much what they changed the game into, but that they threw those of us who liked the old game overboard in search of that elusive (and never appearing yet) audience that wanted more "Star Warsy and iconic" play.
Originally posted by Chessack The sad thing of all this, Starn, is that if SOE and LA had left SWG alone, and just announced "SWG 2", and then worked on something very like the NGE and released it BUG FREE when ready (not last Nov but probably middle of this year) there'd have been zero bad blood and probably 2-3x more accounts than they now have, if you add both games.
The problem wasn't so much what they changed the game into, but that they threw those of us who liked the old game overboard in search of that elusive (and never appearing yet) audience that wanted more "Star Warsy and iconic" play.
C
Oh there'd still be a lot of bad blood.
BUT...
If they made a SWG 2, with a bug-free and fully reworked NGE-like system, the current bad blood would eventually be overcome. It would be damned difficult, but it would be doable. I agree with that they made enemies with their current database, but that's 1/3 of the problem...
The other third, was and still plagues the game...boring content, uninspired content labeled "star warsy" to make it more exciting than ever. A lot of folks left the game for this problem pre-CU.
The last third has been the bugs and broken systems. Pre-CU had bugs galore and broken systems..with all the revamps, this has only been prepuatated. Although bugs can and many have been fixed, and things can work just fine...game systems can still be just outright BAD (from a design perspective). And that's the problem with all these revamps trying to "re-imagine" the game SWG has one foot in one type of gameplay and another foot in another gameplay with a very heavy wooden door crushing the hip those leg's owners.
They could easily make a SWG 2 that has great content (and not just got here and kill that...but have an engine and game tools that can make interesting dynamic content), relatively bug free (reliable dev team & resources & management, and realistic deadlines), and have a NGE-style game system built up from scratch that functions well and isn't a frankenstein's monster of 3 games.
Then and only then, can a pissed off community start getting by all the bad blood.
Unfortunately, it seems most game companies (and this going back to the thread's topic) are too afraid to deviate from the tried and true (what WoW has perfected), so as far as content goes...I don't expect many developers to make the interesting and dynamic content we all dream of. A redesigned NGE might be doable, since it takes heavily from the tried and true and adds a slightly interesting game twist (one that allows some of the ideas I mentioned a few posts before). And a relatively stable and working MMO is doable as well.
But...even if SWG 2 happens to be a built from the ground up NGE-like game...I doubt many of us would go and play it (unless if it was really good). Those who have been pissed off by SOE, or dislike the WoW type games...we all want one thing...we want unique and innovative skill-based MMOs that offer dynamic content. We want to have fun...not be immersed in a repititious grind-fest to unlock a new shiny. We want community...we want a social game...we want a virtual world that's not just a game, but also a simulation.
At the very least, thats what -I- want...and since SWG was like that pre-CU and post-CU to an extent, and many many folks have left the game because of the NGE being pushed on them (either due to the suddenness or just hating the NGE design)...I would assume there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of individuals who feel the same way.
Originally posted by Chessack Well he's got a bit of a point. The MMORPG game type, which was based on the idea of a MUD, only scaled up and "visualized" (instead of text) was not, originally, conceived as a mass-market system. With both UO and EQ 1, there was a smallish but non-trivial market of people who both (a) liked computer or pen and paper RPGs and (b) had modems of some sort (though not many had high speed back then). Nobody in their right mind would've expected more than a few thousands of players when these games first opened, and they were not really designed, from the ground up, to appeal to that mass of players. And he's right that, to appeal to large masses, the games have had to be watered and dumbed way down.
As for failing business 101... it is not necessary to "appeal to the masses" in the broadest sense. All that is necessry is to make a solid profit. Imagine if you will the corner restaurant that has about 12 tables and the best Italian food in town. They are NOT appealing to the masses... they are appealing to a small local group of patrons (in their town or the next few towns over) who like high quality (and potentially expensive) authentic Italian cuisine.
Now, are you going to say that they failed business 101 because they don't make mass-market food like Burger King and serve it to a billion people a year? Sure, they have less money than "the King"... but as long as that restaurant serves enough people to pay its bills, pay its employees (and pay them well enough that they don't depart for greener pastures) and allow the owners to create a retirement nest-egg, it's succeeded.
You don't have to crack the million player mark to be successful... all you have to do is make a profit. The original MMORPG model was able to do that with a much smaller player base because it had a much lower overhead, for example. And he's right, that the model really was not designed for mass appeal, because it inherently only appeals to a certain TYPE of gamer, and it is not a common type.
What WOW and others today are doing is changing the MMORPG model, tweaking it to appeal to the masses, and to do that they have to remove the elements that were designed to appeal to that original core group that was being targetted -- the type of gamer who sat for hours playing Baldur's Gate or Ultima V. They've got a much larger subs base and make way more money than the old guard did, but that doesn't mean the quality is better... any more than BK's quality is better than that of a gourmet Italian restaurant with 12 tables and a master chef from Tuscany.
Now don't get me wrong... I am not trying to knock WOW or BK... Sometimes I am in the mood for a fast-food burger, and just have a "taste" for it. But I also know I'm not getting the quality at BK that I'd get in the Italian corner place.
C
Nice comparison.
I would like to extrapolate on your model a bit. You make a great corner restraunt that serves fine tuscany Italian food with a small family style restraunt. It enjoys immense success. The vibe is there. It is the hip place to eat dinner in your community. People who know restraunts and food rate give it a Zagots 5 star. You are it. (UO/EQ)
The success gets you the ability to borrow money and open more larger restruants. You have the best of intentions to simply expand your business. You open a few across the country and they met with modest success. It is more profitable then your little restraunt ever was because its larger, you have better suppliers, more cash flow, can hire better help, etc. The food isn't quiet as good since there isn't your personal touch and the service sometimes lacks since turnover in help is higher without the family atmosphere. Not the 5 star restraunt you started with but a nice 4 out of 5.
Then Olive Garden opens. Its food is average, its generally regarded as cheap Tuscany italian food. It is highly profitable and appeals to the masses. They have all you can eat soup and salads. They have poor to average service and get about a 3 out of 5 stars. The "hip" cool people who know restraunts dont dine there.
Now did you start in the restraunt business to make great food and have a great restruant or did you start the business model to make mass market games?
Sony has a mass market games division. Walmart has cheap clothes. Customers want high-end product and are willing to pay for high end product a premium dollar. WoW imo is not a high end game offering a high end product. It is a generic, level based game without any crafting that is loot based, cartoony and geared towards the mass market of gamers. It is the Olive Garden of MMO's.
The problem is now all nice little restraunts are trying to morph into wow games and all publishers are looking at wow's success as a blueprint for future titles and existing titles that where never conceptually designed to be generic mass market games.
The real question I have to ask is and what I would like to see MMORPG.com ask of all these publishers they interview and work with is, "What happened to the high-end MMO Title?"
Oh and I can think of tons of high end products that aren't mass marketed and they didn't fail business 101.
Prada, Louis V., Mercedes, Ferrari. Who is going to be the Ferrari of MMO games?
Unfortunately, it seems most game companies (and this going back to the thread's topic) are too afraid to deviate from the tried and true (what WoW has perfected), so as far as content goes...I don't expect many developers to make the interesting and dynamic content we all dream of. A redesigned NGE might be doable, since it takes heavily from the tried and true and adds a slightly interesting game twist (one that allows some of the ideas I mentioned a few posts before). And a relatively stable and working MMO is doable as well. What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Originally posted by Rekrul Originally posted by Starnick
Unfortunately, it seems most game companies (and this going back to the thread's topic) are too afraid to deviate from the tried and true (what WoW has perfected), so as far as content goes...I don't expect many developers to make the interesting and dynamic content we all dream of. A redesigned NGE might be doable, since it takes heavily from the tried and true and adds a slightly interesting game twist (one that allows some of the ideas I mentioned a few posts before). And a relatively stable and working MMO is doable as well. What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well. WoW is the culmination and perfected tried and true, a bad analogy is the space program...the technology and innovation got better and better and was refined. At the moment, yes WoW is the MMORPG done right...it appeals masssively and it has superb polish.
However, to many folks...having class-based games and fantasy based games are boring and getting old. You said itself...people want to log on play a bit and move on. But will you have fun if you move on from WoW to another fantasy based game that tries to be the perfected MMO? Or do you want to try something innovative and unique?
Blizzard has done many, many things right with WoW and it should be a learning tool for every big game company out there, but it should not be an excuse to stop innovating and try something new. We have the whole fantasy-class based MMO down pat...what about a sci-fi skill based game? Why does everything have to be elves and orcs? Or have linear progression? It's been done thats why, and its safe.
I personally want to have fun with something I have not yet seen in a MMO, and that's something that's kinda rare.
Unfortunately, it seems most game companies (and this going back to the thread's topic) are too afraid to deviate from the tried and true (what WoW has perfected), so as far as content goes...I don't expect many developers to make the interesting and dynamic content we all dream of. A redesigned NGE might be doable, since it takes heavily from the tried and true and adds a slightly interesting game twist (one that allows some of the ideas I mentioned a few posts before). And a relatively stable and working MMO is doable as well.
What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
SWG was my first job in the game industry. I had played UO for a couple of years or so and knew Raph Koster in that internet sort of way: everyone that visited or posted on any message board anywhere on the internet knew Raph Koster.
Played EQ to level 35, got killed by the same frickin' sand giant three times in a row trying to recover my corpse two weeks after a bug caused me to lose all my gear before EQ CS had the tech to undelete items and man that was it for me.
So I made a "grey shard" using POL (written by Eric Swanson, who also works at SOE now ? how weird is that?) and did that for a few years.
Those were Good Times. Friday I'd post a "Wishlist" thread and people would reply with a hundred things they wanted added to the game. And Saturday and Sunday I'd add hundreds of things to the game. Production on a single small server is pretty nice. None of this "Oh, that'll take 2 months to deliver and will require two programmers, a designer and three artists."
A lot of .broadcast "Hey everyone, brace yourselves, I'm going to replace the magic system in 3?2?1"-sorts of moments. Frequently doing development on the server that people were actually playing on, while they are playing on it, and only using a local server for really significant changes.
In terms of administration, the people were a lot harder to manage than the game. Not just the players either, but the co-admin's: the folk that hosted the server, gm "staff", and whatnot. Janey emailed Raph describing a pretty ugly situation, and he'd responded with just some no-nonsense advice on how-to-run-a-mud, which she forwarded to me, and to which I replied, directly to him.
That led directly to establishing, in writing, just what exactly the scope of everyone's responsibilities were, what the rules were, how they would be enforced, and so on. Simple stuff, right? We had none of that and, duh, we ran into a lot of problems 'til we did.
This had nothing to do with his position in the game industry and everything to do with his experience with MUDs, and my lack of it, and his willingness to share info with a fellow enthusiast. Great learning experience, should I ever run a MUD again: Sony hires professionals to do that stuff.
But it also opened a dialog between the two of us and I s'pose put my crazyass game design ideas on his radar.
Anyway, hadn't talked to Raph in a while (because, well, things had been running pretty smoothly) so one day I emailed him and asked how he'd been. He said if I sent him a resume then he could tell me what he was working on.
So I sent him a resume. And they flew me down to Austin to meet the whole SWG team and interview for a systems design position, which I didn't get. Heh.
Couple months later they flew me back again for a worldbuilding position, which I did get.
Within a few months or so I was scripting systems. Then within a couple years, lead content designer for JtL. Then a few months ago, "live lead systems designer". My titles were growing and growing!
As of last week or so, now it's "Lead Game Play Designer". A step backwards in terms of character-count, but not actually a demotion, or even that big a change in responsibilities.
Mind, we have a Creative Director and that isn't me, and a Lead Designer and that isn't me either. They're both my bosses, even though my title's longer. And there's a whole plethora of producers and executives and executive producers above that.
So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.
So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"
It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."
There's no way we can do that.
There's no way we should do that.
Man that's fun.
The Man will never let us get away with doing that.
We can't do it.
We shouldn't do it.
Oh man that is fun.
When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph".
My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months. Lead Designer said it too, of course, but no one believed him, because he's crazy. Obviously.
And they would only believe me for a few minutes at a time.
It's frustrating to see the posts about Raph rolling over in his grave, crying himself to sleep, seeing all his design thrown out the window, etc. The notion seems to be that Raph's game is slow-paced, deliberate, social, "worldy", and in no case ever "fun" vs. this change which tosses-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Specifically, that 'removing the Raph' is what makes it fun.
First off, Star Wars Galaxies is already a whole lot of fun for a whole lot of people. And it was very successful.
And Fast Action Combat and the introduction of classes based on iconic Star Wars character archtypes doesn't toss-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Far from it.
The social elements of Galaxies' design remain, and for good reason. MMOs must be MMOs and not just big single-player games that everyone just happens to play all at once. We wouldn't have gotten things like player cities, entertainers and so on without Raph, and I wouldn't want Galaxies to be without them. Simply removing them wouldn't make the game more fun anyway.
There's a lot of cool in Galaxies. We're making all of it easier to see, easier to get to.
Honestly, I doubt I even have the capacity to design a game that is completely un-Raph like. Who do you think taught me this stuff? Over the course of years. Here's how you get X. Here's why you want X.
Yeh, I think I'm good 'nuff to see the 'why' and come up with 'Well if that's why, then we could do Z instead', but at that point it's a quibble over implementation detail, not design philosophy. I don't agree with Raph on every point about every thing, we're pretty much aligned in terms of high level game design.
For example 'Socialization requires downtime' is something Raph might say that I might not agree with. But 'MMO's require socialization, otherwise what's the point?' is not something we'd disagree about.
Many people have been influential in my personal development as a game designer and I've learned an awful lot on my own, but nothing and no other single person comes anywhere close the influence that Raph Koster has had on, in terms of game design from soup-to-nuts, what things I think about, if not in fact what I think about those things.
So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair.
I feel bad that I might have forced you to explain this or something.
Yer my favorite dev, but I only give you credit for what I know you've done, which isn't much with SWG, but I don't really want to know more about that anyways, that's just distracting and awkward.
And I was actually trying to promote him a little on Halloween 'cause I felt like he slipped off the face of the earth, which means he's prolly working on something interesting.
Seriously I figgered pointing people to him would make them smarter, even if they feel like arguing with him or something.
And Halloweed was two days before I heard about the new SWG stuff.
If you ain't yelling at me, then I'm sorry for blabbering and maybe making things worse or something, please delete.
And if I did something horrible let me know more specifically so I can do something better about it than this.
I don't make fun of people I don't like, it ain't funny when I don't like someone.
And I give Raph credit for way the heck more in games than I give you, actually, if that makes you feel better.
By Ole Bald Angus the Monk, at 10:04 PM
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Heh. Nope, I aint yellin' at you.
By Jeff, at 2:39 AM
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I dont think its anything personal about Raph, but people like a figurehead to blame when things go wrong. You have to admit things went *very* wrong where SWG was concerned.
Players saw a game launched 18 months before it was ready. Who could they blame?
Players saw a SW game with such iconic professions as fencer, swordsman, pikeman, combat medic etc. The majority of the skill trees were poorly constructed or 90% useless (smuggler anyone?) Who could they blame?
Players saw a SW game with a complicated Health bar system which made no logical sense whatsoever. They saw a skill tree system that let them effectively boost their health by over 200 times by walking around with 3 Rancors. They had a world devoid of content. A game where getting buffs and travelling anywhere could take an hour etc etc.
Raphs world failed and im sorry he has to shoulder some of the blame. Obviously lots of other people deserve blame also, its just Raph is the most visible target.
You cannot make an argument that SWG was successful. It didnt come close to meeting its projected subscription targets. Not a failure on the size of Sims Online I admit, but a failure still. Thats basically the reason for these changes isnt it? Seems to me it was this or switching off the lights...
I really do hope this new version is a success, but after how badly SWG subscribers were treated, how bad the word of mouth is, how many of those 900,000 accounts are going to come back?
By Anonymous, at 6:10 AM
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Well, I'm one of those he is yelling to ;p
I've read your point of view and I don't have much to argue or criticize, but at the same time my own opinion didn't change, mostly because I wasn't really ranting, just expressing my perplexity.
On the other side I still believe that Raph should never have left the game, mostly because I believe in authorship and I wanted him to take the responsibility of the game and remain committed to it. I wanted and still want to see him discussing specific games instead of just dabbing on the high level theory. And I believe it's fair to admit that the game would be *nowhere* where it is right now if he was still at the lead. Good or bad.
Ubiq wrote: "New blood coming onto a project bring their own ideas and ideologies."
This is undeniable. It's not "wrong" but it's a trait that cannot be dismissed. This is why I believe that Raph's SWG would be *very* different from today's SWG. And this also means that the scope and aim undoubtedly changed. The game had a rather high churn rate of developers and I'm sure it suffered because of this. It's the consequence of this.
What I believe is that after Raph left, he and the game splitted directions. It's a fact that most of the changes to the CU, professions, mechanics, PvP and this new last remodel are attempts to drag the game somewhere else. I'm not judging if better or worse, but undeniably different. I was the first to strongly criticize his ideas like I did on the thread on Grimwell and the following discussions so it's not like I'm trying to side with him. But I recognize this difference of opinions.
It's true that many elements of Raph's design remain, but what is also true is that the game didn't really try to build and improve them. We can say that some important ideas are still there, but many other were actually progressively eroded. Not expanded or made stronger. The game didn't move to bet even more on those points that made it unique, instead it was changed to move away from those positions and acquire more traditional elements (levels, simpler classes, more traditional combat etc..). Again this process was also excused because that design was being strongly criticized as "not fun". Hence the endless tries to simplify and streamline those parts that were perceived as too clunky and problematic.
It's not my intention to criticize this approach. It's like the father with the son. He taught you things, what you will do will be always influenced by what he did as also many others will feel that influence, me included. But this also fuels another personal point of view that is your own and must impose itself at some point.
And I really do hope this will go well, because if it doesn't we'll see the developers find yet another excuse to leave these game stagnate while all the work and resources are spent on stupid sequels. I wish they would keep the discussions and the development alive and vibrant, maybe without the need to change type of game and discard most of the work that was already being done...
By Abalieno, at 8:07 AM
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I usually try to restrain myself when I come here because I am not an insider or even someone like Abal that is really so seriously into this. Design review is just another small piece of entertainment I can drag out of the money I'm already spending.
That said, I can absolutely see the producers point of view on this. The game would never have really made any headway gaining ground without something radical. Skewing towards the core demographic makes perfect sense. I just wish that the emphasis wasn't pushed up in our face quite so much.
Finally to you personally, I don't understand how you guys do it. This like the third crunch this year? I appreciate your efforts. Here's hoping you get time for a Thanksgiving dinner with your family.
By Nyght, at 10:16 AM
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I'll say that I'm not into the new changes at all. I liked the complexity that SWG provided.. it was (emphasis on was) a game like no other.
I'm ok with the idea of change however. There are a multitude of reasons that I'm not privy to that a game like SWG does change.
As a programmer of 13 years, I am disghusted with the lack of BA/QA and CMM that SWG exibits. In over a year of playing, my interest in the game has slowly declined due to a few things. Mainly, bug reports from TC being ignored, faulty QA allowing one patch to break other game mechanics, etc...
My hope with this NGE is that the players who test (for free I might add) on TC be listened to, and that this is not just another hurried to production release.
That being said, my opinions are probably fairly useless at this point, as I'm more interested in stable games.
If someone else (i.e. not you) designs a house and asks you to come look at their design, then it is not your design, no matter how long you look at it, no matter what you think of it. And you didnt come up with it even if you like it.
If someone else asks if it is possible to build, and you say Yes, that is possible, then that is not the same as pushing or selling or demanding that your design be built.
No matter how many times they ask Are you sure? and no matter how many times you answer the question, and no matter even what you think of the design: it is not your design (keep up now, we just covered that) and even if it were your design, thats not pushing your design but is, rather, answering a question.
If it is possible and you say it is not possible even though you know it is possible, then you are a filthy liar.
If they say Ok, build that house and you join a team of builders who all work hard to build the house then it is still not your design, you didnt build it single-handedly, you didnt shove it down anyones throat and it wasnt your decision to build it.
If you make claims to the contrary then you are a filthy liar.
Im not talking about anything in particular, Im just sayin.
------------------------------------------------------------------ -Brenlo- First a request, to those of you using this thread as your personal battleground, please take it to PM's.
So, I wanted to clarify that we did, here at SOE conceive and develop the NGE. We did so with the best of intentions, to try and make a better game. No blame or buck is being passed.
We can, and I am sure many of us will, debate for years on end whether this was a good idea. Personally, I believe the concept of the NGE was sound. Some smart guys had some good ideas to make the game better, Jeff being one of them, and they went for it. A bold move and honestly, I am happy to be a part of a company that is not afraid to try something different.
Where did we go wrong? Delivery, we failed in our timing and communication. That is where we let you down most, SWG faithful, and for that I truly apologize.
Brenlo Bixiebopper Director, Global Community Relations - SOE --------------------------------------------- It's a rough life, but someone has to live it.
With the exception of the DC Comics game were working on, each of these games is an original IP. Our teams in San Diego, Austin, Seattle and Taiwan are excited about working on game worlds that were developing ourselves. Its often frustrating to work with third party IP. Theres a constant battle over what the right direction is for the game, and from our own recent experience, its not something we enjoy. It very often puts handcuffs on what we can and cant do and, frankly speaking, its a lot harder to make great games when the IP holders dont understand the online gaming market.
The exception to this rule has been our relationship with the team at DC Comics. I have to say they are indeed a pleasure to work with. Jim Lees involvement as the Executive Creative Director has been a hell of a lot of fun. I just saw the latest build, and the team has come up with a combat system that I think is hands down the best Ive ever seen. It doesnt remotely feel like todays MMOs. Its all about the action.
One last thing: In the near future, youre going to read about another big development here at SOE. We recently acquired a game developer that is going to take us into a new space entirely. Were really excited about it and I think when you hear what its about and see what theyre working on youll agree! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *edit, he edited and removed the above. Now his blog says this... JeffFreeman UPDATE:
Now see, this is just the sort of thing Ive been talking about. Ya get misunderstood, post a clarification, that gets misunderstood, so you gotta post a clarification to that, and on and on forever. Better off just leaving the misunderstood thing out there and letting people assign their own meanings to it.
Dont try to read so closely between the lines that you fail read the lines themselves.
All Im saying here is: When I wrote I looked at what this guy designed it should never have been interpreted to mean I designed that and everything else.
But it was taken to mean just that. Seems a little crazy to me.
So I finally wrote that it shouldnt have been taken that way (since it keeps getting trotted out and about) and now some folks are taking that to mean something other that just what it says. Cmon now.
Originally posted by haxxjoo Originally posted by Rekrul Originally posted by Starnick
Unfortunately, it seems most game companies (and this going back to the thread's topic) are too afraid to deviate from the tried and true (what WoW has perfected), so as far as content goes...I don't expect many developers to make the interesting and dynamic content we all dream of. A redesigned NGE might be doable, since it takes heavily from the tried and true and adds a slightly interesting game twist (one that allows some of the ideas I mentioned a few posts before). And a relatively stable and working MMO is doable as well. What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
I believe WoW has mounts...however, in conjunction to this and the points I made above...WoW is the culmination of the tried and true. Its perfect in how the "old" MMOs tried (some more successful than others) to achieve.
However, what interested most folks in SWG was the simulation aspect...it was a world we could do anything in, be our own person...do our own thing like run a business or build a city or own our own starship. All WoW gives you is to be able to explore the world of warcraft (a credit to its name).
Why do you guys think Second Life is growing in popularity? Or heck, to take examples outside of the game realm...why do you think myspace, facebook, blogs, and personal websites are common now a days? People want to express themselves and create their own niche. MMOs that allow this (all do to a certain degree...but im talking in scope of pre-CU SWG...where its a world simulation, with a thriving economy...community...it was practically alive), are going to become...albiet slowly...what MMOs will be all about.
I think the worst mistake SOE has done (and I think helios mentioned this a while back), is that the developers are making SWG a game. As Rekrul said, WoW too is just a game. MMOGs should not just be a game in the sense "ok Im done with the game, lets play another". Just being any other game limits their potential severely...where as simulation, although much harder, gives a very unique gameplay experience that is very hard to achieve in other games that are merely "just games".
Well, SOE is never going to give us our game back. But at least the stench of what they've done to us pretty much has sealed the doom of SOE. I doubt they ever have another hit on the PC.
Heh I see you went all out on the research Tillamook :P
Interesting reads...
With the NGE, with tigg's being fired, with everything that has ever been said in that November of 2005....we'll never know the whole story fully. I firmly believe there has been a lot of finger pointing after the playerbase reaction to the NGE...some folks want to cast blame off themselves rightfully or not, but the true story will never be told.
Maybe until E! does a series like their Hollywood true stories heh...
Originally posted by Starnick Heh I see you went all out on the research Tillamook :P
Interesting reads...
With the NGE, with tigg's being fired, with everything that has ever been said in that November of 2005....we'll never know the whole story fully. I firmly believe there has been a lot of finger pointing after the playerbase reaction to the NGE...some folks want to cast blame off themselves rightfully or not, but the true story will never be told.
Maybe until E! does a series like their Hollywood true stories heh...
Oh, I think there has been plenty of fingerpointing inside SOE. The NGE cost them Koster (who was the only person inside SOE capable of masterminding the development of a non-linear sim type MMO), and it cost them other Devs.
It's pretty clear to me that everyone who COULD leave SOE did. The Devs left on SOE are a combination of rookies and ones with names so tied to the NGE disaster they basically can't go elsewhere. So, the dev team is a combination of the inexperienced and the incompetent. Eventually the decent ones of the inexperienced (Hanse, Addy, EJ) will move on to other companies (or other projects at SOE).
It's pretty clear that the senior people know it's going down and going down VERY soon, hence them turning on the players of late. The shit posted by Cao and Helios is inexcusable. Even TH has been poking sticks at the players. Those three are unlikely to ever again be put in the roles they are in now.
Tiggs being pushed out when she did was probably the best thing that ever happened to her. I've had some PM conversations with her over at the DDO boards, she's very happy at Turbine. She has a following, and the instant respect of anyone who was ever victimized by SWG, because SOE made her a martyr.
The rest though have a bleak future once SWG dies. Smed won't ever entrust Helios, for example, with another major project, why would he, he failed? Helops can't go elsewhere, any MMO project foolish enough to hire him will have his gaffes and stupid junk taunted back at them
/Helios "you mean you buffed people and it was fun?" paraphrases like that will follow him FOREVER.
Cao's rant likewise will haunt him. There are 300,000+ former SWG players, most bitter over what happened. There will be dozens to hundreds or more popping into any given MMO they'd be involved in and they would haunt them with their own words.
As I've said in other posts, I think the main motivation against classic servers for these bitter people (they are at least as bitter towards us as we are at them) isn't that they wouldn't work, or that they wouldn't save their jobs (classic servers would extend the life of SWG at least another couple years, while NGE is certain to cause it to have to close very soon), they hate us so much they would rather go down than give us what we want. To them that would be to give us victory over them.
Ultimately, deciding on classic servers or not isn't up to Helios, or Cao, or really even Smed, it's up to LEC, if they decide they want the game to continue they are the ONLY option.
Unfortunately, it seems most game companies (and this going back to the thread's topic) are too afraid to deviate from the tried and true (what WoW has perfected), so as far as content goes...I don't expect many developers to make the interesting and dynamic content we all dream of. A redesigned NGE might be doable, since it takes heavily from the tried and true and adds a slightly interesting game twist (one that allows some of the ideas I mentioned a few posts before). And a relatively stable and working MMO is doable as well.
What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
I believe WoW has mounts...however, in conjunction to this and the points I made above...WoW is the culmination of the tried and true. Its perfect in how the "old" MMOs tried (some more successful than others) to achieve.
However, what interested most folks in SWG was the simulation aspect...it was a world we could do anything in, be our own person...do our own thing like run a business or build a city or own our own starship. All WoW gives you is to be able to explore the world of warcraft (a credit to its name).
Why do you guys think Second Life is growing in popularity? Or heck, to take examples outside of the game realm...why do you think myspace, facebook, blogs, and personal websites are common now a days? People want to express themselves and create their own niche. MMOs that allow this (all do to a certain degree...but im talking in scope of pre-CU SWG...where its a world simulation, with a thriving economy...community...it was practically alive), are going to become...albiet slowly...what MMOs will be all about.
I think the worst mistake SOE has done (and I think helios mentioned this a while back), is that the developers are making SWG a game. As Rekrul said, WoW too is just a game. MMOGs should not just be a game in the sense "ok Im done with the game, lets play another". Just being any other game limits their potential severely...where as simulation, although much harder, gives a very unique gameplay experience that is very hard to achieve in other games that are merely "just games".
No I want to be the 50th Aragon elf on my server at lvl 90 with phat loot!
What swg offered was truly unique characters, a complex player economy and a great crafting system. The issues of content and polish where always present in our sandbox game. Allowing the sandbox style to co-habitat with content and polish and this belief that you cannot do both is absurd. I see alot of that argument. It seems we cannot get both in a mmo. You either get some great content and balance or a sandbox. I am fine with having the quests and giving people a sense of ok I have "finished" this game. I am not ok with that being all there is to mmo's. WoW is a game where all it for all intent and purposes ends at lvl 60. The Original swg had no my character is done. Hell you might have had to become something else in star wars galaxies. You might have been the 50th Bobo Fett on you server. It got old for Bobo and took up an Arms business.
Just some useless conjucture on a dead game, but I really miss having a "character" in a mmo.
Originally posted by haxxjoo Originally posted by Starnick Originally posted by haxxjoo Originally posted by Rekrul Originally posted by Starnick
Unfortunately, it seems most game companies (and this going back to the thread's topic) are too afraid to deviate from the tried and true (what WoW has perfected), so as far as content goes...I don't expect many developers to make the interesting and dynamic content we all dream of. A redesigned NGE might be doable, since it takes heavily from the tried and true and adds a slightly interesting game twist (one that allows some of the ideas I mentioned a few posts before). And a relatively stable and working MMO is doable as well. What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
I believe WoW has mounts...however, in conjunction to this and the points I made above...WoW is the culmination of the tried and true. Its perfect in how the "old" MMOs tried (some more successful than others) to achieve.
However, what interested most folks in SWG was the simulation aspect...it was a world we could do anything in, be our own person...do our own thing like run a business or build a city or own our own starship. All WoW gives you is to be able to explore the world of warcraft (a credit to its name).
Why do you guys think Second Life is growing in popularity? Or heck, to take examples outside of the game realm...why do you think myspace, facebook, blogs, and personal websites are common now a days? People want to express themselves and create their own niche. MMOs that allow this (all do to a certain degree...but im talking in scope of pre-CU SWG...where its a world simulation, with a thriving economy...community...it was practically alive), are going to become...albiet slowly...what MMOs will be all about.
I think the worst mistake SOE has done (and I think helios mentioned this a while back), is that the developers are making SWG a game. As Rekrul said, WoW too is just a game. MMOGs should not just be a game in the sense "ok Im done with the game, lets play another". Just being any other game limits their potential severely...where as simulation, although much harder, gives a very unique gameplay experience that is very hard to achieve in other games that are merely "just games".
No I want to be the 50th Aragon elf on my server at lvl 90 with phat loot!
What swg offered was truly unique characters, a complex player economy and a great crafting system. The issues of content and polish where always present in our sandbox game. Allowing the sandbox style to co-habitat with content and polish and this belief that you cannot do both is absurd. I see alot of that argument. It seems we cannot get both in a mmo. You either get some great content and balance or a sandbox. I am fine with having the quests and giving people a sense of ok I have "finished" this game. I am not ok with that being all there is to mmo's. WoW is a game where all it for all intent and purposes ends at lvl 60. The Original swg had no my character is done. Hell you might have had to become something else in star wars galaxies. You might have been the 50th Bobo Fett on you server. It got old for Bobo and took up an Arms business.
Just some useless conjucture on a dead game, but I really miss having a "character" in a mmo.
Aye, I agree 100%.
All the crap about how content/polish can't co-habit a sandbox is BS. The reason why we had a lack of content and a lack of polish in pre-CU was because A) It was released too early and Half of the pre-cu's life was the CU in development which gradually went from a balance to a total game overhaul. It didn't need to be...and the year and thensome months spent reworking it and reworking could have been better spent just fixing what was broken, fixing bugs, and adding more content.
There were many problems, but it didn't require the game from being overhauled in the manner it was. Dungeons such as the corvette and deathwatch bunker (which are still popular) have showed that you can still have the usual MMO content. The warren too, even though it's older than hell lol...imagine if we got more? Imagine if we got the proposed ISD dungeon...or the hutt casino? Or the story arcs were continued?
The content problem in pre-CU was all because the devs wasted their resources on reworking the CU, and discontinueing providing content. Saying now its because simulations don't support linear content is absurd, since the reason we didn't have content was because *they* didn't provide it. It's self-fullfilling.
And a note about loot...its easy to have uber loot and a viable economy...loot components, decorations, mando...what about looting stormtrooper armour off NPCs (looting what an NPC was using/wearing...you could loot ST armour off of stormtroopers back in beta). Or how about looted broken "stuff" that could be RE'd by a crafter? Having Boss X drop Uber Loot Z 35% of the time is the easy way out...
"Polish" is really just another name for they bothered to debug it and test it to the point that things worked the way they were supposed to.
SWG's "QA" policy is horrendous. As far as I can tell their "build testing" doesn't test functionality, but "will it compile and then run". Even today they mostly fix bugs AFTER the fact, and only after they break something huge or people get really upset (such as the click on anything it's aggroed bug).
I know what proper QA testing procedures are, I did that for a year, for IBM, in their server storage division. We tested every supported scenario, every mode of the controllers, and looked for every possible flaw, using the same stuff the customers would get. We tested ALL functionality that the new controller and/or software was supposed to have and it didn't leave us until it all worked flawlessly.
The reason we(refering to most on these forums) are so picky is because most of us have already "been there, done that." So naturally everything is going to start to look same after a while.
Remember, we still havent even scratched the surface of what MMOs could be. Vast majority people playing WoW are playing their first MMO. Which contrary to popular opinion I think will be a good thing down the road. Eventually all these millions of WoW players are going to want more. Yes WoW is simple to learn, but that is usually the case when someone is learning something for the first time. It's the nature of the beast. People learning to play baseball for the first time dont start out in the major leagues.
I also believe the success of future MMOs will depend greatly on what the computer industry will determine to be "standard home PCs." The biggest reason for WoW's success is that it can be played on almost everyone's PC. Well if what is considered a great gaming computer today eventually becomes standard then more people will be buying next gen MMOs. Just look at the evolution of the automobile. Just 10-15 years ago a standard car came with a stick and a wheel. Now cars are coming standard with AC, CD/MP3 players, and automatic transmissions.
Content I have said before the content that was needed was more stuff like what we had (The Vett , DWB, warren) more along the time line of the world we all lived in and that we all miss.
We can talk all day long about the stuff that didnt work in the old game but Its the stuff that did work is what we all still liked to play.
I have always felt that we were ripped off with the funds that we had invested for a service that was turned into a new game for a different crowd and we all paid the bill.
So the next time you see a person that loves the NGE and wants to rag on ya just let them know who paid for there game they have now.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
Polish means things work as expected, and all to the same degree. It does not refer to quality. McDonalds has perfectly polished production line. Everything fits in place, everything works withing the scope of McDonalds. That doesn't make it great food, but it has nothing to do with polish.When you enter a McDonalds anywhere, you know what you're getting, and expect to get that. Nothing more, nothing less.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on." They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
MMOs never were anything more. Some people did forsake their real lives for them, but there are different reasons for that.
MMOs are games. DnD is a game. Basketball is a game.
Origin of MMOs? Rogue and Nethack. Neither of which consumed lives, although several individuals did suffer from the immersion.
When saying MMOs should be more, wouldn't you also consider Diablo to be more than Nethack, despite being just re-skinning of that? Is EvE so much more than Elite? What is this "more"? A game is a game. Anything more, and you get Second Life, which is a Virtual World, but not a game. It's only listed among those due to lack of better classification.
Why do people play MMOs? Social aspects. When you play poker/bridge/black jack you can do it alone with computer, you can also do it "alone" in a casino. But people prefer to get together with friends, and play a casual game of cards. It can get serious, with money and all that, but they prefer the comfort of familiar surroundings.
MMOs are games. Nothing more. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But that's it, at the very core, they are interactive computer games.
Originally posted by vontornm Content I have said before the content that was needed was more stuff like what we had (The Vett , DWB, warren) more along the time line of the world we all lived in and that we all miss. We can talk all day long about the stuff that didnt work in the old game but Its the stuff that did work is what we all still liked to play.I have always felt that we were ripped off with the funds that we had invested for a service that was turned into a new game for a different crowd and we all paid the bill.So the next time you see a person that loves the NGE and wants to rag on ya just let them know who paid for there game they have now.
Good point.
After JTL, was there really ANY content ever added to the game that really conformed to the timeline?
ALL the stuff added was prequel, ancient junk. Even the Restuss rewards were "Old Republic" stuff.
Originally posted by Wildcat84 "Polish" is really just another name for they bothered to debug it and test it to the point that things worked the way they were supposed to.
SWG's "QA" policy is horrendous. As far as I can tell their "build testing" doesn't test functionality, but "will it compile and then run". Even today they mostly fix bugs AFTER the fact, and only after they break something huge or people get really upset (such as the click on anything it's aggroed bug).
I know what proper QA testing procedures are, I did that for a year, for IBM, in their server storage division. We tested every supported scenario, every mode of the controllers, and looked for every possible flaw, using the same stuff the customers would get. We tested ALL functionality that the new controller and/or software was supposed to have and it didn't leave us until it all worked flawlessly.
No, polish is not QA.
QA ensures that everything is reproducible, operates within requirements, and so on.
Polish means the following: Ok, so to kill the mob, I press tab, then hit f1-f10. but f6-f10 are too far away, is there any way to change the key mapping, so that it's easier to hit.
Polish, should be referred to as Interaction Design. It's not based off up-front design spec, but itterative procedure involving incremental improvements to existing concepts. It can be designed up-front when working within a very familiar domain, but that's not the case with games.
While it's possible to deliver a perfecly up-to-spec product that has passed every QA with flying colors, such product can be unintuitive, unfriendly, unsuitable or undesirable for users. This is a common falacy that products led by process, rather than people, face.
WoW developers have stated the extreme importance of prototyping in their development process. They'd develop a small piece of game, then play it. All the time they'd be evaluating how playable something is, and adjust on it. This doesn't involve mob balance or stats, but the overall experience from everything including movement, transitions between quests, UI, locations and availability of vendors and items, and more (I don't know, I'm just speculating).
Google search engine was designed to be user friendly. Yahoo and Altavista were designed with high QA (they did rarely fail in any aspect).
Originally posted by achesoma The reason we(refering to most on these forums) are so picky is because most of us have already "been there, done that." So naturally everything is going to start to look same after a while.
This is all too true. But it's not unexpected.
Last great mainstream inovations in gaming were Dune 2, Civilization, Doom. But even those could be argued to have been merely made available through increasingly more powerful computers and graphics.
But all of todays games are based on exactly the same gameplay paradigms. MMORPG is in now way different from Space Invaders. You go through wave after wave of increasingly more difficult opponents. But rather than gaining new life every 10000 points, you level up. Both have the same effect, they increase your longevity.
This is exactly the reason why differentiation is becoming more and more important. Not trying to copy someone else, but to be different from others. The underlying concept will be identical - this cannot be changed, but success will come from differentiation.
SWG offered that. It was the same as every other MMO. Kill stuff to level up, gain rewards. But its realization, from combat, to social interaction, to world ownership differentiated it. CU killed that, sealing SWGs fate.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
MMOs never were anything more. Some people did forsake their real lives for them, but there are different reasons for that.
MMOs are games. DnD is a game. Basketball is a game.
Origin of MMOs? Rogue and Nethack. Neither of which consumed lives, although several individuals did suffer from the immersion.
When saying MMOs should be more, wouldn't you also consider Diablo to be more than Nethack, despite being just re-skinning of that? Is EvE so much more than Elite? What is this "more"? A game is a game. Anything more, and you get Second Life, which is a Virtual World, but not a game. It's only listed among those due to lack of better classification.
Why do people play MMOs? Social aspects. When you play poker/bridge/black jack you can do it alone with computer, you can also do it "alone" in a casino. But people prefer to get together with friends, and play a casual game of cards. It can get serious, with money and all that, but they prefer the comfort of familiar surroundings.
MMOs are games. Nothing more. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But that's it, at the very core, they are interactive computer games.
A game is a game. All MMO's are 'just games'.
About this, Rekul was making a good point that I was begrugingly going to have to concede, until he submarined his own arguement by going on to say that Second Life is not a game.
What makes Pre-CU a game and not a simulation? What makes Second Life a simulation and not a game? When you really get down to it, every human endeavor can be thought of as a game. The distinction between 'game' and 'not a game' is reallly just a value judgement we as humans assign to a particular endeavor. To many people SWG Pre-CU was more than just a game, because they valued it as such. Are you aware that real world phenomenon such as the Global Economy, and the Cold War are routinely analyized by Game Theory? Although both have enormous impact to humanity, on some level of abstraction both of these are games.
So yes, MMOs are games. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But some have more robust simulations. And all games may be considered more than 'just a game' by a given constituency.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
MMOs never were anything more. Some people did forsake their real lives for them, but there are different reasons for that.
MMOs are games. DnD is a game. Basketball is a game.
Origin of MMOs? Rogue and Nethack. Neither of which consumed lives, although several individuals did suffer from the immersion.
When saying MMOs should be more, wouldn't you also consider Diablo to be more than Nethack, despite being just re-skinning of that? Is EvE so much more than Elite? What is this "more"? A game is a game. Anything more, and you get Second Life, which is a Virtual World, but not a game. It's only listed among those due to lack of better classification.
Why do people play MMOs? Social aspects. When you play poker/bridge/black jack you can do it alone with computer, you can also do it "alone" in a casino. But people prefer to get together with friends, and play a casual game of cards. It can get serious, with money and all that, but they prefer the comfort of familiar surroundings.
MMOs are games. Nothing more. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But that's it, at the very core, they are interactive computer games.
A game is a game. All MMO's are 'just games'.
About this, Rekul was making a good point that I was begrugingly going to have to concede, until he submarined his own arguement by going on to say that Second Life is not a game.
What makes Pre-CU a game and not a simulation? What makes Second Life a simulation and not a game? When you really get down to it, every human endeavor can be thought of as a game. The distinction between 'game' and 'not a game' is reallly just a value judgement we as humans assign to a particular endeavor. To many people SWG Pre-CU was more than just a game, because they valued it as such. Are you aware that real world phenomenon such as the Global Economy, and the Cold War are routinely analyized by Game Theory? Although both have enormous impact to humanity, on some level of abstraction both of these are games.
So yes, MMOs are games. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But some have more robust simulations. And all games may be considered more than 'just a game' by a given constituency.
Just a game is an argument people use to just bypass the entire point. Its demisive nature allows them to sweep any discussion on video games under the rug. I understand MMO's are video games. The point is what is the difference between a MMO Game and other fantasy or fps games? What makes you willing to pay 14.99 a month?
About this, Rekul was making a good point that I was begrugingly going to have to concede, until he submarined his own arguement by going on to say that Second Life is not a game.
Games have a goal.
In SWG, the goal was to master professions, collect badges and items. In essesense, it was a big pack rat game.
Second Life, unless I'm missing something, has no goal. In SWG, it would equal removal of badges and skills (all granted to all). Then it would be purely up to you, whether you visit Krayt Graveyard. No badges, but you could tell others about it. Want something? No skill/level/profession restrictions. Just buy it and use it. Want to be Jedi? Go ahead, be. Commando? Be commando. Droid? NS? Krayt? Swoop? Cantina? Be any and all of those, just press the button. Hell, you could be pavement in coronet. Not to mention Vader, Luke, Yoda, Bobba, Jabba...
A virtual world is the Lawnmover-man type of deal. Everything is just a metaphysical representation, with no relation. SL doesn't even have rules about physics. Characters can float, be a rubber duck, walk through walls, spawn anything and so on.
But when you define rules, you define a game. A chessboard by itself is painted piece of plywood. But say chess, and you define the game through rules. If you don't do that, you can use the chessboard as a frisbee.
Shooting hoops or playing basketball are both games. But simply kicking the ball around is entertaining, but it's not a game. Not until you lay down at least some rudimentary rules. Such as, "kick the ball around till you're bored". That's my definition at least.
Oh, and SL has Jedi expansion. With LS, combat, and all that. But it doesn't make it SWG.
Comments
Starnick, I just wanted to say that you look much better in blue than yellow over on the suckboards
It's also nice to see you able to really post your true thoughts about things without having to deal with any hassles.
You were one of the only Senators that I never found BSing the community about the NGE and I think that everyone should respect that, because I can pull up "NGE IS RADZ" posts from just about every other Senator
Love, Sodapop
Anyways, in regards to all the NGE is radz posts...when I first heard of it (this was after turning down the offer to be one of the folks flown down to austin...so I was wondering what was up) via from rumors, I was kinda excited. I was expecting stuff like vehicular combat, and massive GCW battles that were fast-paced and fun...and maybe even finally atmospheric flight since we could shoot up at aircraft as in JTL. At least, that would be the only reason I expected to have such a big change...but instead their reasons were about trying to bring in more subscribers and a different player demographic. Then that hopeful optimism went to a watch and see to a cautious optimism to...well, the only real optimism I have is for commandos as that's the only thing I've seen improved with the NGE.
Yet going back to the reasons for the NGE...ok I don't have a business degree...but doesn't "Build it and they will come"? ring a bell? You don't go looking for subscribers...if you cater to someone, you're bound to get rejected badly. Building something that's great and interests people, rather than trying to tell them "this is interesting to your age group!" is the way to go...because you gain the best tool any marketer dreams of: word of mouth.
For SOE, it backfired and they got burned by word of mouth so hardcore it's depressing (from a business standpoint). Atm Im starting to ramble...but a few days ago I remember reading something about Rockstar games saying that they don't do a lot of market research, they just follow their passion and make a great game that is fun. And obviously a lot of their games have been widely popular...make a great game, your audience will come to you...try and build a game to impress your audience then you're going to fail most of the time. Its why (and this is totally random) a lot of kid shows are stupid and creepy...never liked them as a kid...and I bet a lot of kids feel the same way...they want to be entertained, not catered to (or be told "this is fun to you" from an adult who doesn't get it).
Wow I feel old...all this rambling =P
The problem wasn't so much what they changed the game into, but that they threw those of us who liked the old game overboard in search of that elusive (and never appearing yet) audience that wanted more "Star Warsy and iconic" play.
C
BUT...
If they made a SWG 2, with a bug-free and fully reworked NGE-like system, the current bad blood would eventually be overcome. It would be damned difficult, but it would be doable. I agree with that they made enemies with their current database, but that's 1/3 of the problem...
The other third, was and still plagues the game...boring content, uninspired content labeled "star warsy" to make it more exciting than ever. A lot of folks left the game for this problem pre-CU.
The last third has been the bugs and broken systems. Pre-CU had bugs galore and broken systems..with all the revamps, this has only been prepuatated. Although bugs can and many have been fixed, and things can work just fine...game systems can still be just outright BAD (from a design perspective). And that's the problem with all these revamps trying to "re-imagine" the game SWG has one foot in one type of gameplay and another foot in another gameplay with a very heavy wooden door crushing the hip those leg's owners.
They could easily make a SWG 2 that has great content (and not just got here and kill that...but have an engine and game tools that can make interesting dynamic content), relatively bug free (reliable dev team & resources & management, and realistic deadlines), and have a NGE-style game system built up from scratch that functions well and isn't a frankenstein's monster of 3 games.
Then and only then, can a pissed off community start getting by all the bad blood.
Unfortunately, it seems most game companies (and this going back to the thread's topic) are too afraid to deviate from the tried and true (what WoW has perfected), so as far as content goes...I don't expect many developers to make the interesting and dynamic content we all dream of. A redesigned NGE might be doable, since it takes heavily from the tried and true and adds a slightly interesting game twist (one that allows some of the ideas I mentioned a few posts before). And a relatively stable and working MMO is doable as well.
But...even if SWG 2 happens to be a built from the ground up NGE-like game...I doubt many of us would go and play it (unless if it was really good). Those who have been pissed off by SOE, or dislike the WoW type games...we all want one thing...we want unique and innovative skill-based MMOs that offer dynamic content. We want to have fun...not be immersed in a repititious grind-fest to unlock a new shiny. We want community...we want a social game...we want a virtual world that's not just a game, but also a simulation.
At the very least, thats what -I- want...and since SWG was like that pre-CU and post-CU to an extent, and many many folks have left the game because of the NGE being pushed on them (either due to the suddenness or just hating the NGE design)...I would assume there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of individuals who feel the same way.
Nice comparison.
I would like to extrapolate on your model a bit. You make a great corner restraunt that serves fine tuscany Italian food with a small family style restraunt. It enjoys immense success. The vibe is there. It is the hip place to eat dinner in your community. People who know restraunts and food rate give it a Zagots 5 star. You are it. (UO/EQ)
The success gets you the ability to borrow money and open more larger restruants. You have the best of intentions to simply expand your business. You open a few across the country and they met with modest success. It is more profitable then your little restraunt ever was because its larger, you have better suppliers, more cash flow, can hire better help, etc. The food isn't quiet as good since there isn't your personal touch and the service sometimes lacks since turnover in help is higher without the family atmosphere. Not the 5 star restraunt you started with but a nice 4 out of 5.
Then Olive Garden opens. Its food is average, its generally regarded as cheap Tuscany italian food. It is highly profitable and appeals to the masses. They have all you can eat soup and salads. They have poor to average service and get about a 3 out of 5 stars. The "hip" cool people who know restraunts dont dine there.
Now did you start in the restraunt business to make great food and have a great restruant or did you start the business model to make mass market games?
Sony has a mass market games division. Walmart has cheap clothes. Customers want high-end product and are willing to pay for high end product a premium dollar. WoW imo is not a high end game offering a high end product. It is a generic, level based game without any crafting that is loot based, cartoony and geared towards the mass market of gamers. It is the Olive Garden of MMO's.
The problem is now all nice little restraunts are trying to morph into wow games and all publishers are looking at wow's success as a blueprint for future titles and existing titles that where never conceptually designed to be generic mass market games.
The real question I have to ask is and what I would like to see MMORPG.com ask of all these publishers they interview and work with is, "What happened to the high-end MMO Title?"
Oh and I can think of tons of high end products that aren't mass marketed and they didn't fail business 101.
Prada, Louis V., Mercedes, Ferrari. Who is going to be the Ferrari of MMO games?
What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
WoW is the culmination and perfected tried and true, a bad analogy is the space program...the technology and innovation got better and better and was refined. At the moment, yes WoW is the MMORPG done right...it appeals masssively and it has superb polish.
However, to many folks...having class-based games and fantasy based games are boring and getting old. You said itself...people want to log on play a bit and move on. But will you have fun if you move on from WoW to another fantasy based game that tries to be the perfected MMO? Or do you want to try something innovative and unique?
Blizzard has done many, many things right with WoW and it should be a learning tool for every big game company out there, but it should not be an excuse to stop innovating and try something new. We have the whole fantasy-class based MMO down pat...what about a sci-fi skill based game? Why does everything have to be elves and orcs? Or have linear progression? It's been done thats why, and its safe.
I personally want to have fun with something I have not yet seen in a MMO, and that's something that's kinda rare.
What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
For Starnick
Friday, November 4
Shenanigans
SWG was my first job in the game industry. I had played UO for a couple of years or so and knew Raph Koster in that internet sort of way: everyone that visited or posted on any message board anywhere on the internet knew Raph Koster.
Played EQ to level 35, got killed by the same frickin' sand giant three times in a row trying to recover my corpse two weeks after a bug caused me to lose all my gear before EQ CS had the tech to undelete items and man that was it for me.
So I made a "grey shard" using POL (written by Eric Swanson, who also works at SOE now ? how weird is that?) and did that for a few years.
Those were Good Times. Friday I'd post a "Wishlist" thread and people would reply with a hundred things they wanted added to the game. And Saturday and Sunday I'd add hundreds of things to the game. Production on a single small server is pretty nice. None of this "Oh, that'll take 2 months to deliver and will require two programmers, a designer and three artists."
A lot of .broadcast "Hey everyone, brace yourselves, I'm going to replace the magic system in 3?2?1"-sorts of moments. Frequently doing development on the server that people were actually playing on, while they are playing on it, and only using a local server for really significant changes.
In terms of administration, the people were a lot harder to manage than the game. Not just the players either, but the co-admin's: the folk that hosted the server, gm "staff", and whatnot. Janey emailed Raph describing a pretty ugly situation, and he'd responded with just some no-nonsense advice on how-to-run-a-mud, which she forwarded to me, and to which I replied, directly to him.
That led directly to establishing, in writing, just what exactly the scope of everyone's responsibilities were, what the rules were, how they would be enforced, and so on. Simple stuff, right? We had none of that and, duh, we ran into a lot of problems 'til we did.
This had nothing to do with his position in the game industry and everything to do with his experience with MUDs, and my lack of it, and his willingness to share info with a fellow enthusiast. Great learning experience, should I ever run a MUD again: Sony hires professionals to do that stuff.
But it also opened a dialog between the two of us and I s'pose put my crazyass game design ideas on his radar.
Anyway, hadn't talked to Raph in a while (because, well, things had been running pretty smoothly) so one day I emailed him and asked how he'd been. He said if I sent him a resume then he could tell me what he was working on.
So I sent him a resume. And they flew me down to Austin to meet the whole SWG team and interview for a systems design position, which I didn't get. Heh.
Couple months later they flew me back again for a worldbuilding position, which I did get.
Within a few months or so I was scripting systems. Then within a couple years, lead content designer for JtL. Then a few months ago, "live lead systems designer". My titles were growing and growing!
As of last week or so, now it's "Lead Game Play Designer". A step backwards in terms of character-count, but not actually a demotion, or even that big a change in responsibilities.
Mind, we have a Creative Director and that isn't me, and a Lead Designer and that isn't me either. They're both my bosses, even though my title's longer. And there's a whole plethora of producers and executives and executive producers above that.
So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.
So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"
It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."
There's no way we can do that.
There's no way we should do that.
Man that's fun.
The Man will never let us get away with doing that.
We can't do it.
We shouldn't do it.
Oh man that is fun.
When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph".
My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months. Lead Designer said it too, of course, but no one believed him, because he's crazy. Obviously.
And they would only believe me for a few minutes at a time.
It's frustrating to see the posts about Raph rolling over in his grave, crying himself to sleep, seeing all his design thrown out the window, etc. The notion seems to be that Raph's game is slow-paced, deliberate, social, "worldy", and in no case ever "fun" vs. this change which tosses-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Specifically, that 'removing the Raph' is what makes it fun.
First off, Star Wars Galaxies is already a whole lot of fun for a whole lot of people. And it was very successful.
And Fast Action Combat and the introduction of classes based on iconic Star Wars character archtypes doesn't toss-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Far from it.
The social elements of Galaxies' design remain, and for good reason. MMOs must be MMOs and not just big single-player games that everyone just happens to play all at once. We wouldn't have gotten things like player cities, entertainers and so on without Raph, and I wouldn't want Galaxies to be without them. Simply removing them wouldn't make the game more fun anyway.
There's a lot of cool in Galaxies. We're making all of it easier to see, easier to get to.
Honestly, I doubt I even have the capacity to design a game that is completely un-Raph like. Who do you think taught me this stuff? Over the course of years. Here's how you get X. Here's why you want X.
Yeh, I think I'm good 'nuff to see the 'why' and come up with 'Well if that's why, then we could do Z instead', but at that point it's a quibble over implementation detail, not design philosophy. I don't agree with Raph on every point about every thing, we're pretty much aligned in terms of high level game design.
For example 'Socialization requires downtime' is something Raph might say that I might not agree with. But 'MMO's require socialization, otherwise what's the point?' is not something we'd disagree about.
Many people have been influential in my personal development as a game designer and I've learned an awful lot on my own, but nothing and no other single person comes anywhere close the influence that Raph Koster has had on, in terms of game design from soup-to-nuts, what things I think about, if not in fact what I think about those things.
So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair.
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6 Comments:
I hope you ain't yelling at me man.
I feel bad that I might have forced you to explain this or something.
Yer my favorite dev, but I only give you credit for what I know you've done, which isn't much with SWG, but I don't really want to know more about that anyways, that's just distracting and awkward.
And I was actually trying to promote him a little on Halloween 'cause I felt like he slipped off the face of the earth, which means he's prolly working on something interesting.
Seriously I figgered pointing people to him would make them smarter, even if they feel like arguing with him or something.
And Halloweed was two days before I heard about the new SWG stuff.
If you ain't yelling at me, then I'm sorry for blabbering and maybe making things worse or something, please delete.
And if I did something horrible let me know more specifically so I can do something better about it than this.
I don't make fun of people I don't like, it ain't funny when I don't like someone.
And I give Raph credit for way the heck more in games than I give you, actually, if that makes you feel better.
By Ole Bald Angus the Monk, at 10:04 PM
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Heh. Nope, I aint yellin' at you.
By Jeff, at 2:39 AM
===============================================
I dont think its anything personal about Raph, but people like a figurehead to blame when things go wrong. You have to admit things went *very* wrong where SWG was concerned.
Players saw a game launched 18 months before it was ready. Who could they blame?
Players saw a SW game with such iconic professions as fencer, swordsman, pikeman, combat medic etc. The majority of the skill trees were poorly constructed or 90% useless (smuggler anyone?) Who could they blame?
Players saw a SW game with a complicated Health bar system which made no logical sense whatsoever. They saw a skill tree system that let them effectively boost their health by over 200 times by walking around with 3 Rancors. They had a world devoid of content. A game where getting buffs and travelling anywhere could take an hour etc etc.
Raphs world failed and im sorry he has to shoulder some of the blame. Obviously lots of other people deserve blame also, its just Raph is the most visible target.
You cannot make an argument that SWG was successful. It didnt come close to meeting its projected subscription targets. Not a failure on the size of Sims Online I admit, but a failure still. Thats basically the reason for these changes isnt it? Seems to me it was this or switching off the lights...
I really do hope this new version is a success, but after how badly SWG subscribers were treated, how bad the word of mouth is, how many of those 900,000 accounts are going to come back?
By Anonymous, at 6:10 AM
===============================================
Well, I'm one of those he is yelling to ;p
I've read your point of view and I don't have much to argue or criticize, but at the same time my own opinion didn't change, mostly because I wasn't really ranting, just expressing my perplexity.
On the other side I still believe that Raph should never have left the game, mostly because I believe in authorship and I wanted him to take the responsibility of the game and remain committed to it. I wanted and still want to see him discussing specific games instead of just dabbing on the high level theory. And I believe it's fair to admit that the game would be *nowhere* where it is right now if he was still at the lead. Good or bad.
Ubiq wrote:
"New blood coming onto a project bring their own ideas and ideologies."
This is undeniable. It's not "wrong" but it's a trait that cannot be dismissed. This is why I believe that Raph's SWG would be *very* different from today's SWG. And this also means that the scope and aim undoubtedly changed. The game had a rather high churn rate of developers and I'm sure it suffered because of this. It's the consequence of this.
What I believe is that after Raph left, he and the game splitted directions. It's a fact that most of the changes to the CU, professions, mechanics, PvP and this new last remodel are attempts to drag the game somewhere else. I'm not judging if better or worse, but undeniably different. I was the first to strongly criticize his ideas like I did on the thread on Grimwell and the following discussions so it's not like I'm trying to side with him. But I recognize this difference of opinions.
It's true that many elements of Raph's design remain, but what is also true is that the game didn't really try to build and improve them. We can say that some important ideas are still there, but many other were actually progressively eroded. Not expanded or made stronger. The game didn't move to bet even more on those points that made it unique, instead it was changed to move away from those positions and acquire more traditional elements (levels, simpler classes, more traditional combat etc..). Again this process was also excused because that design was being strongly criticized as "not fun". Hence the endless tries to simplify and streamline those parts that were perceived as too clunky and problematic.
It's not my intention to criticize this approach. It's like the father with the son. He taught you things, what you will do will be always influenced by what he did as also many others will feel that influence, me included. But this also fuels another personal point of view that is your own and must impose itself at some point.
And I really do hope this will go well, because if it doesn't we'll see the developers find yet another excuse to leave these game stagnate while all the work and resources are spent on stupid sequels. I wish they would keep the discussions and the development alive and vibrant, maybe without the need to change type of game and discard most of the work that was already being done...
By Abalieno, at 8:07 AM
==============================================
I usually try to restrain myself when I come here because I am not an insider or even someone like Abal that is really so seriously into this. Design review is just another small piece of entertainment I can drag out of the money I'm already spending.
That said, I can absolutely see the producers point of view on this. The game would never have really made any headway gaining ground without something radical. Skewing towards the core demographic makes perfect sense. I just wish that the emphasis wasn't pushed up in our face quite so much.
Finally to you personally, I don't understand how you guys do it. This like the third crunch this year? I appreciate your efforts.
Here's hoping you get time for a Thanksgiving dinner with your family.
By Nyght, at 10:16 AM
===============================================
I'll say that I'm not into the new changes at all. I liked the complexity that SWG provided.. it was (emphasis on was) a game like no other.
I'm ok with the idea of change however. There are a multitude of reasons that I'm not privy to that a game like SWG does change.
As a programmer of 13 years, I am disghusted with the lack of BA/QA and CMM that SWG exibits. In over a year of playing, my interest in the game has slowly declined due to a few things. Mainly, bug reports from TC being ignored, faulty QA allowing one patch to break other game mechanics, etc...
My hope with this NGE is that the players who test (for free I might add) on TC be listened to, and that this is not just another hurried to production release.
That being said, my opinions are probably fairly useless at this point, as I'm more interested in stable games.
I wish you the best in your endeavors.
By jeff, at 4:48 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Freeman
http://mythicalblog.com/blog/category/personal/
------------------------------------------------------------
Posted in Personal at 12:14 am by Dundee
If someone else (i.e. not you) designs a house and asks you to come look at their design, then it is not your design, no matter how long you look at it, no matter what you think of it. And you didnt come up with it even if you like it.
If someone else asks if it is possible to build, and you say Yes, that is possible, then that is not the same as pushing or selling or demanding that your design be built.
No matter how many times they ask Are you sure? and no matter how many times you answer the question, and no matter even what you think of the design: it is not your design (keep up now, we just covered that) and even if it were your design, thats not pushing your design but is, rather, answering a question.
If it is possible and you say it is not possible even though you know it is possible, then you are a filthy liar.
If they say Ok, build that house and you join a team of builders who all work hard to build the house then it is still not your design, you didnt build it single-handedly, you didnt shove it down anyones throat and it wasnt your decision to build it.
If you make claims to the contrary then you are a filthy liar.
Im not talking about anything in particular, Im just sayin.
------------------------------------------------------------------
-Brenlo-
First a request, to those of you using this thread as your personal battleground, please take it to PM's.
So, I wanted to clarify that we did, here at SOE conceive and develop the NGE. We did so with the best of intentions, to try and make a better game. No blame or buck is being passed.
We can, and I am sure many of us will, debate for years on end whether this was a good idea. Personally, I believe the concept of the NGE was sound. Some smart guys had some good ideas to make the game better, Jeff being one of them, and they went for it. A bold move and honestly, I am happy to be a part of a company that is not afraid to try something different.
Where did we go wrong? Delivery, we failed in our timing and communication. That is where we let you down most, SWG faithful, and for that I truly apologize.
Brenlo Bixiebopper
Director, Global Community Relations - SOE
---------------------------------------------
It's a rough life, but someone has to live it.
http://soe.lithium.com/swg/board/mes...24 3#M1039243
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-Smed- pulled out the good stuff
http://stationblog.wordpress.com/
With the exception of the DC Comics game were working on, each of these games is an original IP. Our teams in San Diego, Austin, Seattle and Taiwan are excited about working on game worlds that were developing ourselves. Its often frustrating to work with third party IP. Theres a constant battle over what the right direction is for the game, and from our own recent experience, its not something we enjoy. It very often puts handcuffs on what we can and cant do and, frankly speaking, its a lot harder to make great games when the IP holders dont understand the online gaming market.
The exception to this rule has been our relationship with the team at DC Comics. I have to say they are indeed a pleasure to work with. Jim Lees involvement as the Executive Creative Director has been a hell of a lot of fun. I just saw the latest build, and the team has come up with a combat system that I think is hands down the best Ive ever seen. It doesnt remotely feel like todays MMOs. Its all about the action.
One last thing: In the near future, youre going to read about another big development here at SOE. We recently acquired a game developer that is going to take us into a new space entirely. Were really excited about it and I think when you hear what its about and see what theyre working on youll agree!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*edit, he edited and removed the above. Now his blog says this...
Jeff Freeman
UPDATE:
Now see, this is just the sort of thing Ive been talking about. Ya get misunderstood, post a clarification, that gets misunderstood, so you gotta post a clarification to that, and on and on forever. Better off just leaving the misunderstood thing out there and letting people assign their own meanings to it.
Dont try to read so closely between the lines that you fail read the lines themselves.
All Im saying here is: When I wrote I looked at what this guy designed it should never have been interpreted to mean I designed that and everything else.
But it was taken to mean just that. Seems a little crazy to me.
So I finally wrote that it shouldnt have been taken that way (since it keeps getting trotted out and about) and now some folks are taking that to mean something other that just what it says.
Cmon now.
What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
I believe WoW has mounts...however, in conjunction to this and the points I made above...WoW is the culmination of the tried and true. Its perfect in how the "old" MMOs tried (some more successful than others) to achieve.
However, what interested most folks in SWG was the simulation aspect...it was a world we could do anything in, be our own person...do our own thing like run a business or build a city or own our own starship. All WoW gives you is to be able to explore the world of warcraft (a credit to its name).
Why do you guys think Second Life is growing in popularity? Or heck, to take examples outside of the game realm...why do you think myspace, facebook, blogs, and personal websites are common now a days? People want to express themselves and create their own niche. MMOs that allow this (all do to a certain degree...but im talking in scope of pre-CU SWG...where its a world simulation, with a thriving economy...community...it was practically alive), are going to become...albiet slowly...what MMOs will be all about.
I think the worst mistake SOE has done (and I think helios mentioned this a while back), is that the developers are making SWG a game. As Rekrul said, WoW too is just a game. MMOGs should not just be a game in the sense "ok Im done with the game, lets play another". Just being any other game limits their potential severely...where as simulation, although much harder, gives a very unique gameplay experience that is very hard to achieve in other games that are merely "just games".
Interesting reads...
With the NGE, with tigg's being fired, with everything that has ever been said in that November of 2005....we'll never know the whole story fully. I firmly believe there has been a lot of finger pointing after the playerbase reaction to the NGE...some folks want to cast blame off themselves rightfully or not, but the true story will never be told.
Maybe until E! does a series like their Hollywood true stories heh...
It's pretty clear to me that everyone who COULD leave SOE did. The Devs left on SOE are a combination of rookies and ones with names so tied to the NGE disaster they basically can't go elsewhere. So, the dev team is a combination of the inexperienced and the incompetent. Eventually the decent ones of the inexperienced (Hanse, Addy, EJ) will move on to other companies (or other projects at SOE).
It's pretty clear that the senior people know it's going down and going down VERY soon, hence them turning on the players of late. The shit posted by Cao and Helios is inexcusable. Even TH has been poking sticks at the players. Those three are unlikely to ever again be put in the roles they are in now.
Tiggs being pushed out when she did was probably the best thing that ever happened to her. I've had some PM conversations with her over at the DDO boards, she's very happy at Turbine. She has a following, and the instant respect of anyone who was ever victimized by SWG, because SOE made her a martyr.
The rest though have a bleak future once SWG dies. Smed won't ever entrust Helios, for example, with another major project, why would he, he failed? Helops can't go elsewhere, any MMO project foolish enough to hire him will have his gaffes and stupid junk taunted back at them
/Helios "you mean you buffed people and it was fun?" paraphrases like that will follow him FOREVER.
Cao's rant likewise will haunt him. There are 300,000+ former SWG players, most bitter over what happened. There will be dozens to hundreds or more popping into any given MMO they'd be involved in and they would haunt them with their own words.
As I've said in other posts, I think the main motivation against classic servers for these bitter people (they are at least as bitter towards us as we are at them) isn't that they wouldn't work, or that they wouldn't save their jobs (classic servers would extend the life of SWG at least another couple years, while NGE is certain to cause it to have to close very soon), they hate us so much they would rather go down than give us what we want. To them that would be to give us victory over them.
Ultimately, deciding on classic servers or not isn't up to Helios, or Cao, or really even Smed, it's up to LEC, if they decide they want the game to continue they are the ONLY option.
What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
I believe WoW has mounts...however, in conjunction to this and the points I made above...WoW is the culmination of the tried and true. Its perfect in how the "old" MMOs tried (some more successful than others) to achieve.
However, what interested most folks in SWG was the simulation aspect...it was a world we could do anything in, be our own person...do our own thing like run a business or build a city or own our own starship. All WoW gives you is to be able to explore the world of warcraft (a credit to its name).
Why do you guys think Second Life is growing in popularity? Or heck, to take examples outside of the game realm...why do you think myspace, facebook, blogs, and personal websites are common now a days? People want to express themselves and create their own niche. MMOs that allow this (all do to a certain degree...but im talking in scope of pre-CU SWG...where its a world simulation, with a thriving economy...community...it was practically alive), are going to become...albiet slowly...what MMOs will be all about.
I think the worst mistake SOE has done (and I think helios mentioned this a while back), is that the developers are making SWG a game. As Rekrul said, WoW too is just a game. MMOGs should not just be a game in the sense "ok Im done with the game, lets play another". Just being any other game limits their potential severely...where as simulation, although much harder, gives a very unique gameplay experience that is very hard to achieve in other games that are merely "just games".
No I want to be the 50th Aragon elf on my server at lvl 90 with phat loot!
What swg offered was truly unique characters, a complex player economy and a great crafting system. The issues of content and polish where always present in our sandbox game. Allowing the sandbox style to co-habitat with content and polish and this belief that you cannot do both is absurd. I see alot of that argument. It seems we cannot get both in a mmo. You either get some great content and balance or a sandbox. I am fine with having the quests and giving people a sense of ok I have "finished" this game. I am not ok with that being all there is to mmo's. WoW is a game where all it for all intent and purposes ends at lvl 60. The Original swg had no my character is done. Hell you might have had to become something else in star wars galaxies. You might have been the 50th Bobo Fett on you server. It got old for Bobo and took up an Arms business.
Just some useless conjucture on a dead game, but I really miss having a "character" in a mmo.
What did WoW do? Seriously.
WoW has shown, once again, that polish > everything.
It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on.
What other try to copy (or not copy) is completely irrelevant. To put it in perspective: Is LOTR trilogy a great movie? Is Titanic a great movie? One has backing of an extremly popular fiction author, the other has real images of a sunken ship.
Why did they both gross in over a billion dollars? Easy. Polish. Neither of them contains something not seen before, neither of them carries some extraordinary depth. Both are long, contain lots of drama, action, love, hate, etc.
The MMORPG analogy here is, that a few kiddies with leet skills decide to make LOTR or Titanic clone, they get some venture capital, shoot a few scenes, then wait for masses to start rolling in.
Then there's second-rate MMORPG publishers. Their equivalent would be straight-to-dvd/video production. Those productions don't attract $50+ million stars and primadonas. They don't have $10 million sets or hundreds of hours of post-production time. Although many of them are good they are rated as B movies, and for a reason.
WoW is the first MMORPG done right. Others are starting to follow.
So in light of this, do not dismiss SOE as dead. Not everyone can be AAA and not everyone wants to be. There's lots of money to be made in B-production as well.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
The real kicker of your post I take issue with is "It's just a game. People aren't looking for discovery of meaning of life. They want to log in, play a bit, then move on."
They want to log in play a bit and move on? The violates the orgins of mmo's. If people wanted to do just that why get a mmo? Why not just get a fps? Why pay 14.99 a month? Why not get a rpg game? There is so much wrong with that for mmo's to follow. MMO's are suppose to be so much more then a standard video game you already had on the market. Its sad that mmo's have fallen to the status of just another game.
I believe WoW has mounts...however, in conjunction to this and the points I made above...WoW is the culmination of the tried and true. Its perfect in how the "old" MMOs tried (some more successful than others) to achieve.
However, what interested most folks in SWG was the simulation aspect...it was a world we could do anything in, be our own person...do our own thing like run a business or build a city or own our own starship. All WoW gives you is to be able to explore the world of warcraft (a credit to its name).
Why do you guys think Second Life is growing in popularity? Or heck, to take examples outside of the game realm...why do you think myspace, facebook, blogs, and personal websites are common now a days? People want to express themselves and create their own niche. MMOs that allow this (all do to a certain degree...but im talking in scope of pre-CU SWG...where its a world simulation, with a thriving economy...community...it was practically alive), are going to become...albiet slowly...what MMOs will be all about.
I think the worst mistake SOE has done (and I think helios mentioned this a while back), is that the developers are making SWG a game. As Rekrul said, WoW too is just a game. MMOGs should not just be a game in the sense "ok Im done with the game, lets play another". Just being any other game limits their potential severely...where as simulation, although much harder, gives a very unique gameplay experience that is very hard to achieve in other games that are merely "just games".
No I want to be the 50th Aragon elf on my server at lvl 90 with phat loot!
What swg offered was truly unique characters, a complex player economy and a great crafting system. The issues of content and polish where always present in our sandbox game. Allowing the sandbox style to co-habitat with content and polish and this belief that you cannot do both is absurd. I see alot of that argument. It seems we cannot get both in a mmo. You either get some great content and balance or a sandbox. I am fine with having the quests and giving people a sense of ok I have "finished" this game. I am not ok with that being all there is to mmo's. WoW is a game where all it for all intent and purposes ends at lvl 60. The Original swg had no my character is done. Hell you might have had to become something else in star wars galaxies. You might have been the 50th Bobo Fett on you server. It got old for Bobo and took up an Arms business.
Just some useless conjucture on a dead game, but I really miss having a "character" in a mmo.
Aye, I agree 100%.
All the crap about how content/polish can't co-habit a sandbox is BS. The reason why we had a lack of content and a lack of polish in pre-CU was because A) It was released too early and
There were many problems, but it didn't require the game from being overhauled in the manner it was. Dungeons such as the corvette and deathwatch bunker (which are still popular) have showed that you can still have the usual MMO content. The warren too, even though it's older than hell lol...imagine if we got more? Imagine if we got the proposed ISD dungeon...or the hutt casino? Or the story arcs were continued?
The content problem in pre-CU was all because the devs wasted their resources on reworking the CU, and discontinueing providing content. Saying now its because simulations don't support linear content is absurd, since the reason we didn't have content was because *they* didn't provide it. It's self-fullfilling.
And a note about loot...its easy to have uber loot and a viable economy...loot components, decorations, mando...what about looting stormtrooper armour off NPCs (looting what an NPC was using/wearing...you could loot ST armour off of stormtroopers back in beta). Or how about looted broken "stuff" that could be RE'd by a crafter? Having Boss X drop Uber Loot Z 35% of the time is the easy way out...
"Polish" is really just another name for they bothered to debug it and test it to the point that things worked the way they were supposed to.
SWG's "QA" policy is horrendous. As far as I can tell their "build testing" doesn't test functionality, but "will it compile and then run". Even today they mostly fix bugs AFTER the fact, and only after they break something huge or people get really upset (such as the click on anything it's aggroed bug).
I know what proper QA testing procedures are, I did that for a year, for IBM, in their server storage division. We tested every supported scenario, every mode of the controllers, and looked for every possible flaw, using the same stuff the customers would get. We tested ALL functionality that the new controller and/or software was supposed to have and it didn't leave us until it all worked flawlessly.
The reason we(refering to most on these forums) are so picky is because most of us have already "been there, done that." So naturally everything is going to start to look same after a while.
Remember, we still havent even scratched the surface of what MMOs could be. Vast majority people playing WoW are playing their first MMO. Which contrary to popular opinion I think will be a good thing down the road. Eventually all these millions of WoW players are going to want more. Yes WoW is simple to learn, but that is usually the case when someone is learning something for the first time. It's the nature of the beast. People learning to play baseball for the first time dont start out in the major leagues.
I also believe the success of future MMOs will depend greatly on what the computer industry will determine to be "standard home PCs." The biggest reason for WoW's success is that it can be played on almost everyone's PC. Well if what is considered a great gaming computer today eventually becomes standard then more people will be buying next gen MMOs. Just look at the evolution of the automobile. Just 10-15 years ago a standard car came with a stick and a wheel. Now cars are coming standard with AC, CD/MP3 players, and automatic transmissions.
Content I have said before the content that was needed was more stuff like what we had (The Vett , DWB, warren) more along the time line of the world we all lived in and that we all miss.
We can talk all day long about the stuff that didnt work in the old game but Its the stuff that did work is what we all still liked to play.
I have always felt that we were ripped off with the funds that we had invested for a service that was turned into a new game for a different crowd and we all paid the bill.
So the next time you see a person that loves the NGE and wants to rag on ya just let them know who paid for there game they have now.
Wow's combat system has polish. Its quest system is polished. If you want to be classic crafting professions in that genre it lacks any polish, substance or depth. Not many Armorsmith, or Weaponsmiths, or Alechamists in WoW and those a pretty significant professions of MMO fame that completely suck in WoW. How about Bards? What exists for that classic class combo of entertainer? Basically any support role doesn't have a place in WoW. What about player cities or player cities with sieges? Does wow even have mounts? I mean your defination of polish is fairly cheap imo. The original UO had more substance and polish for support classes. Guild Wars is superior in PvP then WoW.
Polish means things work as expected, and all to the same degree. It does not refer to quality. McDonalds has perfectly polished production line. Everything fits in place, everything works withing the scope of McDonalds. That doesn't make it great food, but it has nothing to do with polish.When you enter a McDonalds anywhere, you know what you're getting, and expect to get that. Nothing more, nothing less. MMOs never were anything more. Some people did forsake their real lives for them, but there are different reasons for that.
MMOs are games. DnD is a game. Basketball is a game.
Origin of MMOs? Rogue and Nethack. Neither of which consumed lives, although several individuals did suffer from the immersion.
When saying MMOs should be more, wouldn't you also consider Diablo to be more than Nethack, despite being just re-skinning of that? Is EvE so much more than Elite? What is this "more"? A game is a game. Anything more, and you get Second Life, which is a Virtual World, but not a game. It's only listed among those due to lack of better classification.
Why do people play MMOs? Social aspects. When you play poker/bridge/black jack you can do it alone with computer, you can also do it "alone" in a casino. But people prefer to get together with friends, and play a casual game of cards. It can get serious, with money and all that, but they prefer the comfort of familiar surroundings.
MMOs are games. Nothing more. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But that's it, at the very core, they are interactive computer games.
After JTL, was there really ANY content ever added to the game that really conformed to the timeline?
ALL the stuff added was prequel, ancient junk. Even the Restuss rewards were "Old Republic" stuff.
QA ensures that everything is reproducible, operates within requirements, and so on.
Polish means the following:
Ok, so to kill the mob, I press tab, then hit f1-f10. but f6-f10 are too far away, is there any way to change the key mapping, so that it's easier to hit.
Polish, should be referred to as Interaction Design. It's not based off up-front design spec, but itterative procedure involving incremental improvements to existing concepts. It can be designed up-front when working within a very familiar domain, but that's not the case with games.
While it's possible to deliver a perfecly up-to-spec product that has passed every QA with flying colors, such product can be unintuitive, unfriendly, unsuitable or undesirable for users. This is a common falacy that products led by process, rather than people, face.
WoW developers have stated the extreme importance of prototyping in their development process. They'd develop a small piece of game, then play it. All the time they'd be evaluating how playable something is, and adjust on it. This doesn't involve mob balance or stats, but the overall experience from everything including movement, transitions between quests, UI, locations and availability of vendors and items, and more (I don't know, I'm just speculating).
Google search engine was designed to be user friendly.
Yahoo and Altavista were designed with high QA (they did rarely fail in any aspect).
Last great mainstream inovations in gaming were Dune 2, Civilization, Doom. But even those could be argued to have been merely made available through increasingly more powerful computers and graphics.
But all of todays games are based on exactly the same gameplay paradigms. MMORPG is in now way different from Space Invaders. You go through wave after wave of increasingly more difficult opponents. But rather than gaining new life every 10000 points, you level up. Both have the same effect, they increase your longevity.
This is exactly the reason why differentiation is becoming more and more important. Not trying to copy someone else, but to be different from others. The underlying concept will be identical - this cannot be changed, but success will come from differentiation.
SWG offered that. It was the same as every other MMO. Kill stuff to level up, gain rewards. But its realization, from combat, to social interaction, to world ownership differentiated it. CU killed that, sealing SWGs fate.
MMOs are games. DnD is a game. Basketball is a game.
Origin of MMOs? Rogue and Nethack. Neither of which consumed lives, although several individuals did suffer from the immersion.
When saying MMOs should be more, wouldn't you also consider Diablo to be more than Nethack, despite being just re-skinning of that? Is EvE so much more than Elite? What is this "more"? A game is a game. Anything more, and you get Second Life, which is a Virtual World, but not a game. It's only listed among those due to lack of better classification.
Why do people play MMOs? Social aspects. When you play poker/bridge/black jack you can do it alone with computer, you can also do it "alone" in a casino. But people prefer to get together with friends, and play a casual game of cards. It can get serious, with money and all that, but they prefer the comfort of familiar surroundings.
MMOs are games. Nothing more. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But that's it, at the very core, they are interactive computer games.
A game is a game. All MMO's are 'just games'.
About this, Rekul was making a good point that I was begrugingly going to have to concede, until he submarined his own arguement by going on to say that Second Life is not a game.
What makes Pre-CU a game and not a simulation? What makes Second Life a simulation and not a game? When you really get down to it, every human endeavor can be thought of as a game. The distinction between 'game' and 'not a game' is reallly just a value judgement we as humans assign to a particular endeavor. To many people SWG Pre-CU was more than just a game, because they valued it as such. Are you aware that real world phenomenon such as the Global Economy, and the Cold War are routinely analyized by Game Theory? Although both have enormous impact to humanity, on some level of abstraction both of these are games.
So yes, MMOs are games. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But some have more robust simulations. And all games may be considered more than 'just a game' by a given constituency.
SWG Team Mtg.
MMOs are games. DnD is a game. Basketball is a game.
Origin of MMOs? Rogue and Nethack. Neither of which consumed lives, although several individuals did suffer from the immersion.
When saying MMOs should be more, wouldn't you also consider Diablo to be more than Nethack, despite being just re-skinning of that? Is EvE so much more than Elite? What is this "more"? A game is a game. Anything more, and you get Second Life, which is a Virtual World, but not a game. It's only listed among those due to lack of better classification.
Why do people play MMOs? Social aspects. When you play poker/bridge/black jack you can do it alone with computer, you can also do it "alone" in a casino. But people prefer to get together with friends, and play a casual game of cards. It can get serious, with money and all that, but they prefer the comfort of familiar surroundings.
MMOs are games. Nothing more. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But that's it, at the very core, they are interactive computer games.
A game is a game. All MMO's are 'just games'.
About this, Rekul was making a good point that I was begrugingly going to have to concede, until he submarined his own arguement by going on to say that Second Life is not a game.
What makes Pre-CU a game and not a simulation? What makes Second Life a simulation and not a game? When you really get down to it, every human endeavor can be thought of as a game. The distinction between 'game' and 'not a game' is reallly just a value judgement we as humans assign to a particular endeavor. To many people SWG Pre-CU was more than just a game, because they valued it as such. Are you aware that real world phenomenon such as the Global Economy, and the Cold War are routinely analyized by Game Theory? Although both have enormous impact to humanity, on some level of abstraction both of these are games.
So yes, MMOs are games. Some have better gameplay, some have better graphics. But some have more robust simulations. And all games may be considered more than 'just a game' by a given constituency.
Just a game is an argument people use to just bypass the entire point. Its demisive nature allows them to sweep any discussion on video games under the rug. I understand MMO's are video games. The point is what is the difference between a MMO Game and other fantasy or fps games? What makes you willing to pay 14.99 a month?
It sure as crap isn't just another game.
A game is a game. All MMO's are 'just games'.
About this, Rekul was making a good point that I was begrugingly going to have to concede, until he submarined his own arguement by going on to say that Second Life is not a game.
Games have a goal.
In SWG, the goal was to master professions, collect badges and items. In essesense, it was a big pack rat game.
Second Life, unless I'm missing something, has no goal. In SWG, it would equal removal of badges and skills (all granted to all). Then it would be purely up to you, whether you visit Krayt Graveyard. No badges, but you could tell others about it. Want something? No skill/level/profession restrictions. Just buy it and use it. Want to be Jedi? Go ahead, be. Commando? Be commando. Droid? NS? Krayt? Swoop? Cantina? Be any and all of those, just press the button. Hell, you could be pavement in coronet. Not to mention Vader, Luke, Yoda, Bobba, Jabba...
A virtual world is the Lawnmover-man type of deal. Everything is just a metaphysical representation, with no relation. SL doesn't even have rules about physics. Characters can float, be a rubber duck, walk through walls, spawn anything and so on.
But when you define rules, you define a game. A chessboard by itself is painted piece of plywood. But say chess, and you define the game through rules. If you don't do that, you can use the chessboard as a frisbee.
Shooting hoops or playing basketball are both games. But simply kicking the ball around is entertaining, but it's not a game. Not until you lay down at least some rudimentary rules. Such as, "kick the ball around till you're bored". That's my definition at least.
Oh, and SL has Jedi expansion. With LS, combat, and all that. But it doesn't make it SWG.