Maybe, just maybe Gaute is the smart one here, and has decided to be the first proverbial "rat" to jump out of the sinking ship. Just a thought...
Personally thats my view
Hes looked at the technical challenges to fix the game ,the realistic subscription numbers and the financial prospects and said "it's better to leave now "
Gaute in my view was actually a really good ambassador for Funcom ...this is a lose . Also the vision for AOC was never the problem...it was really inspiring .The problem was the delivery of the vision .....they failed technically to achieve it.
Lets' see.
Anarchy Online had a horrid launch and almost died out the gate. Director: Gaute Godager.
Age of Conan had a horrid launch the minute players saw past level 20 and is now on the brink of death. Director: Gaute Godager.
Who was in charge of delivering this "vision" you speak of? Gaute Godager.
Yeah, REAL good ambassador for Funcom.
I've never played AO so I cant comment
However you don't seem to understand the difference between a vision and the delivery of that vision.
AOC had a vision to revolutionize the MMO community with features like epic Siege battles ,unique PVP and an immersive game set in Conan universe. The vision required the technical ability to deliver that from the developers.Gaute is not a developer . Funcom failed in that respect ...he is responsible to a certain degree but can you blame him for the programming ineptitude of the Devs...maybe you can ?I don't think it's fair ?The problems with AOC cannot be fixed by him...they are fundamental and serious Dev issues and the way the game is coded ...egg instances ...and there is no quick fix
Yes he's to blame and yes, it's fair.
Gaute is not an ordinary peon. He co-founded the company. He was in charge of hiring and firing devs. He was in charge of making sure he had the right team to build the game as desired. Is it a devs fault for lacking certain skills, or is it the game directors' fault for not recognizing this and getting someone who could?
He was pretty free with all those millions, you'd think he'd have researched the talent he was spending those millions on.
Actually Wise if we are going to be correct about this then the person to blame should be Quality Assurance and Beta Team who should have reported back to Gaute the glaring issues .Then if he still chose to release the game in it's state if he had the information then yes he is to balme
Thats just silly. Who sadi they didnt? Your last sentence is reality while the first one has been shown not to be the case. Talk to the beta testers.
Frankly, I don’t care what happens to the guy, he deliberately and knowingly lied to his customers about game content, and he and everyone else who took part should be banned from developing games as all they have achieved is to solidify the stale crap that wow has become. the less people like him who work in the industry the better.
Yes his jumping ship is also a very valid reason. As I said earlier, he could redirect himself to be any position he liked, but he resigned instead. I'm thinking he left a sinking ship. Too bad he will have a hard time latching onto a new company. He sure as hell won't be making MMO games for a long time, but we might see him on a Madden title .
Well, I'm no fan of mr Godager, but I'm not sure if putting someone new in charge of AoC is really going to help. I'm enjoying my stay in AoC, but even I can see the glaring problems facing the new guy.
I wish him good luck!
Played: AC, AC2, Anarchy Online, AoC, D&D Online, Dark+Light, EQ2, EVE Online, FF XI, Guild Wars, Lineage II, Lotro, Ragnarok, Ryzom, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, WAR, WoW, etc. Also various MUDs
Gaute in my view was actually a really good ambassador for Funcom ...this is a lose . Also the vision for AOC was never the problem...it was really inspiring .The problem was the delivery of the vision .....they failed technically to achieve it.
Lets' see.
Anarchy Online had a horrid launch and almost died out the gate. Director: Gaute Godager.
Age of Conan had a horrid launch the minute players saw past level 20 and is now on the brink of death. Director: Gaute Godager.
Who was in charge of delivering this "vision" you speak of? Gaute Godager.
Yeah, REAL good ambassador for Funcom.
I've never played AO so I cant comment
However you don't seem to understand the difference between a vision and the delivery of that vision.
AOC had a vision to revolutionize the MMO community with features like epic Siege battles ,unique PVP and an immersive game set in Conan universe. The vision required the technical ability to deliver that from the developers.Gaute is not a developer . Funcom failed in that respect ...he is responsible to a certain degree but can you blame him for the programming ineptitude of the Devs...maybe you can ?I don't think it's fair ?The problems with AOC cannot be fixed by him...they are fundamental and serious Dev issues and the way the game is coded ...egg instances ...and there is no quick fix
Yes he's to blame and yes, it's fair.
Gaute is not an ordinary peon. He co-founded the company. He was in charge of hiring and firing devs. He was in charge of making sure he had the right team to build the game as desired. Is it a devs fault for lacking certain skills, or is it the game directors' fault for not recognizing this and getting someone who could?
He was pretty free with all those millions, you'd think he'd have researched the talent he was spending those millions on.
Actually Wise if we are going to be correct about this then the person to blame should be Quality Assurance and Beta Team who should have reported back to Gaute the glaring issues .Then if he still chose to release the game in it's state if he had the information then yes he is to balme
Thats just silly. Who sadi they didnt? Your last sentence is reality while the first one has been shown not to be the case. Talk to the beta testers.
No you misunderstand my point ,there are are two types of Beta Testers for any game .There is the public ...people outside of Funcom and there are testers within Funcom.I'm not blaming the public .They had a certain channel to report there views into Funcom...they didn't report directly to Gaute .Once issues are raised by testers these are presented to quality assurance who then decide how relevant they are and can they be fixed .Gaute gets a report and makes a decision and the release of the game based on this ...or he has input into this decision.The question is "was he honestly aware of the obvious problems " and could be have stopped the release based on this information?
Good riddance. He tried to play the norwegian media and stand out as the 'good' guy. Reading the comment on the articles, most saw through his attempt though, and told him to bugger off.
I think there is more going on behind closed doors than either party let on. Could be that the stock holders demanded he go, or he saw some serious problems with Funcom, and left before it was too late...as always, time will tell.
Anyway, Craig got AO up and running and fixed alot of problems that game had, and I'm sure he will do good for AoC now. Wonder if its too late though?
Oh, and OP:Excessive use of ! is a sign of a diseased mind
Craig Morrison aka Silirrion, the dude who delivered a final killing blow to AO with his stupid ideas of PvP revamping? Oh geez, AoC is dead... so dead now
excuse me but Silirrion saved AO. RK1 aint a ghosttown altho RK2 has a fairly greater pop these days, AO isvery much alive and is a good cashflow for FC.. i have more faith in AoC now.. lets see how it turns out
i dont know why u dont like pvp but theres so much more pvp content and is much better then the sloppy static stuff in the days of Gaute.. there were no outbursts of ppl claiming that the pvp revamping sucked, more the contrary.
MMOs currently playing: - About to play: Lord of the Rings Online Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
Having been at the helm while this horrible game was developed and released leaves Guate no option but to leave the industry entirely. Same as Brad McQuaid - no investors will ever trust them with millions of game development dollars ever again.
Ive always said the two most slippery individuals at Funcom are Gaute and Ellingsen.
1 down, 1 to go.
It all reminds me a little bit of Vanguards first 6 months. WIth Funcom's stock selling at an 80% discount, I wonder whether the Sony bean counters are putting AoC into a spreadsheet to see if has +ve NPV as a station pass game.... pretty extreme scenario i admit but maybe not entirely rediculous....
Within the first 10 minutes of playing AoC I knew, as a very experienced gamer, that AoC was a total failure. Hate to tell all you fanboy's I told you so, but I told you AoC sucked! LOL!
Gaute in my view was actually a really good ambassador for Funcom ...this is a lose . Also the vision for AOC was never the problem...it was really inspiring .The problem was the delivery of the vision .....they failed technically to achieve it.
Lets' see.
Anarchy Online had a horrid launch and almost died out the gate. Director: Gaute Godager.
Age of Conan had a horrid launch the minute players saw past level 20 and is now on the brink of death. Director: Gaute Godager.
Who was in charge of delivering this "vision" you speak of? Gaute Godager.
Yeah, REAL good ambassador for Funcom.
I've never played AO so I cant comment
However you don't seem to understand the difference between a vision and the delivery of that vision.
AOC had a vision to revolutionize the MMO community with features like epic Siege battles ,unique PVP and an immersive game set in Conan universe. The vision required the technical ability to deliver that from the developers.Gaute is not a developer . Funcom failed in that respect ...he is responsible to a certain degree but can you blame him for the programming ineptitude of the Devs...maybe you can ?I don't think it's fair ?The problems with AOC cannot be fixed by him...they are fundamental and serious Dev issues and the way the game is coded ...egg instances ...and there is no quick fix
Yes he's to blame and yes, it's fair.
Gaute is not an ordinary peon. He co-founded the company. He was in charge of hiring and firing devs. He was in charge of making sure he had the right team to build the game as desired. Is it a devs fault for lacking certain skills, or is it the game directors' fault for not recognizing this and getting someone who could?
He was pretty free with all those millions, you'd think he'd have researched the talent he was spending those millions on.
Actually Wise if we are going to be correct about this then the person to blame should be Quality Assurance and Beta Team who should have reported back to Gaute the glaring issues .Then if he still chose to release the game in it's state if he had the information then yes he is to balme
Thats just silly. Who sadi they didnt? Your last sentence is reality while the first one has been shown not to be the case. Talk to the beta testers.
No you misunderstand my point ,there are are two types of Beta Testers for any game .There is the public ...people outside of Funcom and there are testers within Funcom.I'm not blaming the public .They had a certain channel to report there views into Funcom...they didn't report directly to Gaute .Once issues are raised by testers these are presented to quality assurance who then decide how relevant they are and can they be fixed .Gaute gets a report and makes a decision and the release of the game based on this ...or he has input into this decision.The question is "was he honestly aware of the obvious problems " and could be have stopped the release based on this information?
Lack of good dirrection is what made AOC the way it is today after several years of development.
Most of the problems AOC suffers from look like they stem from crappy dirrection. If you have bad dirrection for any product, then you have things like switching ideas, no solid control about who does what and how good. Building systems and then switching them arround etc. Gap between what'ss developed and what's marketed. Those are all signs of crappy dirrection, and when you have that, no amount of good work on the ground level is going to make it right. In this case the director is Gaute, and in my logic he IS to blame for most things that happened to AOC.
Morrison is a really good choice in my opinion. His influence on AO shows. He took over an old game with less than solid background and I think he did with it all that could be done at the given time. If he had some negatives, they are greatly overweighted by the positives. He took a potentially good product but in a really shitty state and I hope he has a good flame suit for the job. I can't say I envy him because sometimes there is nothing worse than repairing what other people screwed up.
Within the first 10 minutes of playing AoC I knew, as a very experienced gamer, that AoC was a total failure. Hate to tell all you fanboy's I told you so, but I told you AoC sucked! LOL!
Wow .. within 10 minutes ... you should earn a reward for that, really. What did it for you? Was escorting that semi nude girl the give away? Or the art work of the Tortage gate?
Within the first 10 minutes of playing AoC I knew, as a very experienced gamer, that AoC was a total failure. Hate to tell all you fanboy's I told you so, but I told you AoC sucked! LOL!
No one cared, and frankly nothing's changed. If anything this is good news for AOC, it's quite obvious this guy was one of the main problems with the game.
In the end this news has no bearing on how I feel about the actual game, aside from a little bit more optimism. Bad products always stem from poor management, the buck stopped with Gaute. He's gone and someone with competence has taken his place.
It can't get much worse for AOC than it is now, and there's only one direction to go from rock bottom, up. What's the only other forseeable conclusion? It gets shutdown, won't be the first time, definitely not the last.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
This is a non-issue for current players. The reason being is that it's too late to save the game. If you consider AO 'saved' then you may disagree..but allowing a game to remain on life-support is not saving a game. AOC has already sunk to the point where it has no real development team nor real progress on even fixing bugs, let alone adding content. There are big game out there that add huge amounts of content and are relatively bug free. AOC will NEVER get to that point, the best you, as a player, can hope for is a year or two of bug fixes.
I remember one Dev from UO make a quote one time.. to paraphrase it was " Every 16 year old gamer laying in bed can have a vision of the perfect game, but a developer takes his vision and can implement it in a game". All this talk about GG being a visionary is worthless, because he has now completely failed to deliver on 2 games.
They could of replaced him with Jesus Christ it still wont make a difference to the game.
The game was an overhyped pile of rubbish, with a fanbase built on lies. Even the fanboys are starting to realise this game has absolutely no depth. The only thing that can save AoC is if they scrap it and start from scratch.
On the eve of a gargantuan release like Warhammer this news meets me with some dissapointment. This should have been done a month ago. I can only assume his resignation was given weeks ago and it may have played a small part in the delay of the much vaunted PvP update. Management shifts like that can always shake up a development team.
Gaute was a wonderful lier. His June/July estimate can only be looked at as such. I urge everyone to look up the interviews and videos of this guy talking before release of the game. I swear he and Ellingson are two of the biggest sheisters in the MMO industry.
Gaute in my view was actually a really good ambassador for Funcom ...this is a lose . Also the vision for AOC was never the problem...it was really inspiring .The problem was the delivery of the vision .....they failed technically to achieve it.
Lets' see.
Anarchy Online had a horrid launch and almost died out the gate. Director: Gaute Godager.
Age of Conan had a horrid launch the minute players saw past level 20 and is now on the brink of death. Director: Gaute Godager.
Who was in charge of delivering this "vision" you speak of? Gaute Godager.
Yeah, REAL good ambassador for Funcom.
I've never played AO so I cant comment
However you don't seem to understand the difference between a vision and the delivery of that vision.
AOC had a vision to revolutionize the MMO community with features like epic Siege battles ,unique PVP and an immersive game set in Conan universe. The vision required the technical ability to deliver that from the developers.Gaute is not a developer . Funcom failed in that respect ...he is responsible to a certain degree but can you blame him for the programming ineptitude of the Devs...maybe you can ?I don't think it's fair ?The problems with AOC cannot be fixed by him...they are fundamental and serious Dev issues and the way the game is coded ...egg instances ...and there is no quick fix
Yes he's to blame and yes, it's fair.
Gaute is not an ordinary peon. He co-founded the company. He was in charge of hiring and firing devs. He was in charge of making sure he had the right team to build the game as desired. Is it a devs fault for lacking certain skills, or is it the game directors' fault for not recognizing this and getting someone who could?
He was pretty free with all those millions, you'd think he'd have researched the talent he was spending those millions on.
Actually Wise if we are going to be correct about this then the person to blame should be Quality Assurance and Beta Team who should have reported back to Gaute the glaring issues .Then if he still chose to release the game in it's state if he had the information then yes he is to balme
Thats just silly. Who sadi they didnt? Your last sentence is reality while the first one has been shown not to be the case. Talk to the beta testers.
No you misunderstand my point ,there are are two types of Beta Testers for any game .There is the public ...people outside of Funcom and there are testers within Funcom.I'm not blaming the public .They had a certain channel to report there views into Funcom...they didn't report directly to Gaute .Once issues are raised by testers these are presented to quality assurance who then decide how relevant they are and can they be fixed .Gaute gets a report and makes a decision and the release of the game based on this ...or he has input into this decision.The question is "was he honestly aware of the obvious problems " and could be have stopped the release based on this information?
I see who you were speaking of now. More than likely it comes down on someone between QA and himself but if he cant convince the investors what will happen with a release thats too early or cant get his people to do the things needed then its still on him. Even if the whole vision for the game is bad its still on his shoulders.
No need to worry about him though. Im sure he made his money and I might even be willing to say hes still somehow involved. Hell if Smeds is still employed theres always hope for this guy.
Comments
Maybe, just maybe Gaute is the smart one here, and has decided to be the first proverbial "rat" to jump out of the sinking ship. Just a thought...
Personally thats my view
Hes looked at the technical challenges to fix the game ,the realistic subscription numbers and the financial prospects and said "it's better to leave now "
"after the time of dice came the day of mice "
Lets' see.
Anarchy Online had a horrid launch and almost died out the gate. Director: Gaute Godager.
Age of Conan had a horrid launch the minute players saw past level 20 and is now on the brink of death. Director: Gaute Godager.
Who was in charge of delivering this "vision" you speak of? Gaute Godager.
Yeah, REAL good ambassador for Funcom.
I've never played AO so I cant comment
However you don't seem to understand the difference between a vision and the delivery of that vision.
AOC had a vision to revolutionize the MMO community with features like epic Siege battles ,unique PVP and an immersive game set in Conan universe. The vision required the technical ability to deliver that from the developers.Gaute is not a developer . Funcom failed in that respect ...he is responsible to a certain degree but can you blame him for the programming ineptitude of the Devs...maybe you can ?I don't think it's fair ?The problems with AOC cannot be fixed by him...they are fundamental and serious Dev issues and the way the game is coded ...egg instances ...and there is no quick fix
Yes he's to blame and yes, it's fair.
Gaute is not an ordinary peon. He co-founded the company. He was in charge of hiring and firing devs. He was in charge of making sure he had the right team to build the game as desired. Is it a devs fault for lacking certain skills, or is it the game directors' fault for not recognizing this and getting someone who could?
He was pretty free with all those millions, you'd think he'd have researched the talent he was spending those millions on.
Actually Wise if we are going to be correct about this then the person to blame should be Quality Assurance and Beta Team who should have reported back to Gaute the glaring issues .Then if he still chose to release the game in it's state if he had the information then yes he is to balme
Thats just silly. Who sadi they didnt? Your last sentence is reality while the first one has been shown not to be the case. Talk to the beta testers.
Fungerer som det skal
Frankly, I don’t care what happens to the guy, he deliberately and knowingly lied to his customers about game content, and he and everyone else who took part should be banned from developing games as all they have achieved is to solidify the stale crap that wow has become. the less people like him who work in the industry the better.
Yes his jumping ship is also a very valid reason. As I said earlier, he could redirect himself to be any position he liked, but he resigned instead. I'm thinking he left a sinking ship. Too bad he will have a hard time latching onto a new company. He sure as hell won't be making MMO games for a long time, but we might see him on a Madden title
.
Colin is a fantastic choice, he will do right by Anarchy Online.
Well, I'm no fan of mr Godager, but I'm not sure if putting someone new in charge of AoC is really going to help. I'm enjoying my stay in AoC, but even I can see the glaring problems facing the new guy.
I wish him good luck!
Played: AC, AC2, Anarchy Online, AoC, D&D Online, Dark+Light, EQ2, EVE Online, FF XI, Guild Wars, Lineage II, Lotro, Ragnarok, Ryzom, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, WAR, WoW, etc. Also various MUDs
Lets' see.
Anarchy Online had a horrid launch and almost died out the gate. Director: Gaute Godager.
Age of Conan had a horrid launch the minute players saw past level 20 and is now on the brink of death. Director: Gaute Godager.
Who was in charge of delivering this "vision" you speak of? Gaute Godager.
Yeah, REAL good ambassador for Funcom.
I've never played AO so I cant comment
However you don't seem to understand the difference between a vision and the delivery of that vision.
AOC had a vision to revolutionize the MMO community with features like epic Siege battles ,unique PVP and an immersive game set in Conan universe. The vision required the technical ability to deliver that from the developers.Gaute is not a developer . Funcom failed in that respect ...he is responsible to a certain degree but can you blame him for the programming ineptitude of the Devs...maybe you can ?I don't think it's fair ?The problems with AOC cannot be fixed by him...they are fundamental and serious Dev issues and the way the game is coded ...egg instances ...and there is no quick fix
Yes he's to blame and yes, it's fair.
Gaute is not an ordinary peon. He co-founded the company. He was in charge of hiring and firing devs. He was in charge of making sure he had the right team to build the game as desired. Is it a devs fault for lacking certain skills, or is it the game directors' fault for not recognizing this and getting someone who could?
He was pretty free with all those millions, you'd think he'd have researched the talent he was spending those millions on.
Actually Wise if we are going to be correct about this then the person to blame should be Quality Assurance and Beta Team who should have reported back to Gaute the glaring issues .Then if he still chose to release the game in it's state if he had the information then yes he is to balme
Thats just silly. Who sadi they didnt? Your last sentence is reality while the first one has been shown not to be the case. Talk to the beta testers.
No you misunderstand my point ,there are are two types of Beta Testers for any game .There is the public ...people outside of Funcom and there are testers within Funcom.I'm not blaming the public .They had a certain channel to report there views into Funcom...they didn't report directly to Gaute .Once issues are raised by testers these are presented to quality assurance who then decide how relevant they are and can they be fixed .Gaute gets a report and makes a decision and the release of the game based on this ...or he has input into this decision.The question is "was he honestly aware of the obvious problems " and could be have stopped the release based on this information?
"after the time of dice came the day of mice "
Wow just wow!
Almost ironic, after having a little 'whine' he has upped 'Stakes' & left.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
Good riddance. He tried to play the norwegian media and stand out as the 'good' guy. Reading the comment on the articles, most saw through his attempt though, and told him to bugger off.
I think there is more going on behind closed doors than either party let on. Could be that the stock holders demanded he go, or he saw some serious problems with Funcom, and left before it was too late...as always, time will tell.
Anyway, Craig got AO up and running and fixed alot of problems that game had, and I'm sure he will do good for AoC now. Wonder if its too late though?
Oh, and OP:Excessive use of ! is a sign of a diseased mind
---
Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
excuse me but Silirrion saved AO. RK1 aint a ghosttown altho RK2 has a fairly greater pop these days, AO isvery much alive and is a good cashflow for FC.. i have more faith in AoC now.. lets see how it turns out
i dont know why u dont like pvp but theres so much more pvp content and is much better then the sloppy static stuff in the days of Gaute.. there were no outbursts of ppl claiming that the pvp revamping sucked, more the contrary.
MMOs currently playing: -
About to play: Lord of the Rings Online
Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
Having been at the helm while this horrible game was developed and released leaves Guate no option but to leave the industry entirely. Same as Brad McQuaid - no investors will ever trust them with millions of game development dollars ever again.
Ive always said the two most slippery individuals at Funcom are Gaute and Ellingsen.
1 down, 1 to go.
It all reminds me a little bit of Vanguards first 6 months. WIth Funcom's stock selling at an 80% discount, I wonder whether the Sony bean counters are putting AoC into a spreadsheet to see if has +ve NPV as a station pass game.... pretty extreme scenario i admit but maybe not entirely rediculous....
Within the first 10 minutes of playing AoC I knew, as a very experienced gamer, that AoC was a total failure. Hate to tell all you fanboy's I told you so, but I told you AoC sucked! LOL!
Lets' see.
Anarchy Online had a horrid launch and almost died out the gate. Director: Gaute Godager.
Age of Conan had a horrid launch the minute players saw past level 20 and is now on the brink of death. Director: Gaute Godager.
Who was in charge of delivering this "vision" you speak of? Gaute Godager.
Yeah, REAL good ambassador for Funcom.
I've never played AO so I cant comment
However you don't seem to understand the difference between a vision and the delivery of that vision.
AOC had a vision to revolutionize the MMO community with features like epic Siege battles ,unique PVP and an immersive game set in Conan universe. The vision required the technical ability to deliver that from the developers.Gaute is not a developer . Funcom failed in that respect ...he is responsible to a certain degree but can you blame him for the programming ineptitude of the Devs...maybe you can ?I don't think it's fair ?The problems with AOC cannot be fixed by him...they are fundamental and serious Dev issues and the way the game is coded ...egg instances ...and there is no quick fix
Yes he's to blame and yes, it's fair.
Gaute is not an ordinary peon. He co-founded the company. He was in charge of hiring and firing devs. He was in charge of making sure he had the right team to build the game as desired. Is it a devs fault for lacking certain skills, or is it the game directors' fault for not recognizing this and getting someone who could?
He was pretty free with all those millions, you'd think he'd have researched the talent he was spending those millions on.
Actually Wise if we are going to be correct about this then the person to blame should be Quality Assurance and Beta Team who should have reported back to Gaute the glaring issues .Then if he still chose to release the game in it's state if he had the information then yes he is to balme
Thats just silly. Who sadi they didnt? Your last sentence is reality while the first one has been shown not to be the case. Talk to the beta testers.
No you misunderstand my point ,there are are two types of Beta Testers for any game .There is the public ...people outside of Funcom and there are testers within Funcom.I'm not blaming the public .They had a certain channel to report there views into Funcom...they didn't report directly to Gaute .Once issues are raised by testers these are presented to quality assurance who then decide how relevant they are and can they be fixed .Gaute gets a report and makes a decision and the release of the game based on this ...or he has input into this decision.The question is "was he honestly aware of the obvious problems " and could be have stopped the release based on this information?
Lack of good dirrection is what made AOC the way it is today after several years of development.
Most of the problems AOC suffers from look like they stem from crappy dirrection. If you have bad dirrection for any product, then you have things like switching ideas, no solid control about who does what and how good. Building systems and then switching them arround etc. Gap between what'ss developed and what's marketed. Those are all signs of crappy dirrection, and when you have that, no amount of good work on the ground level is going to make it right. In this case the director is Gaute, and in my logic he IS to blame for most things that happened to AOC.
Morrison is a really good choice in my opinion. His influence on AO shows. He took over an old game with less than solid background and I think he did with it all that could be done at the given time. If he had some negatives, they are greatly overweighted by the positives. He took a potentially good product but in a really shitty state and I hope he has a good flame suit for the job. I can't say I envy him because sometimes there is nothing worse than repairing what other people screwed up.
Wow .. within 10 minutes ... you should earn a reward for that, really. What did it for you? Was escorting that semi nude girl the give away? Or the art work of the Tortage gate?
My brand new bloggity blog.
Now time will tell if the PVP has helped AoC. I plan on playing AOC for 1 month next year to see if it changed at all.
All MMO's have grinds. If you don't like to Grind then MMO's are not for you.
No one cared, and frankly nothing's changed. If anything this is good news for AOC, it's quite obvious this guy was one of the main problems with the game.
In the end this news has no bearing on how I feel about the actual game, aside from a little bit more optimism. Bad products always stem from poor management, the buck stopped with Gaute. He's gone and someone with competence has taken his place.
It can't get much worse for AOC than it is now, and there's only one direction to go from rock bottom, up. What's the only other forseeable conclusion? It gets shutdown, won't be the first time, definitely not the last.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I can see Funcom closing up shop and palming off all there titles to other developers.
Even Conan himself was Thulsa D00mD and put in chains on the wheel of pain before he conquered the throne of Aquilonia.
Mabye the &%/$-AOC goes the same way up now, who knows...
This is a non-issue for current players. The reason being is that it's too late to save the game. If you consider AO 'saved' then you may disagree..but allowing a game to remain on life-support is not saving a game. AOC has already sunk to the point where it has no real development team nor real progress on even fixing bugs, let alone adding content. There are big game out there that add huge amounts of content and are relatively bug free. AOC will NEVER get to that point, the best you, as a player, can hope for is a year or two of bug fixes.
I remember one Dev from UO make a quote one time.. to paraphrase it was " Every 16 year old gamer laying in bed can have a vision of the perfect game, but a developer takes his vision and can implement it in a game". All this talk about GG being a visionary is worthless, because he has now completely failed to deliver on 2 games.
They could of replaced him with Jesus Christ it still wont make a difference to the game.
The game was an overhyped pile of rubbish, with a fanbase built on lies. Even the fanboys are starting to realise this game has absolutely no depth. The only thing that can save AoC is if they scrap it and start from scratch.
On the eve of a gargantuan release like Warhammer this news meets me with some dissapointment. This should have been done a month ago. I can only assume his resignation was given weeks ago and it may have played a small part in the delay of the much vaunted PvP update. Management shifts like that can always shake up a development team.
Gaute was a wonderful lier. His June/July estimate can only be looked at as such. I urge everyone to look up the interviews and videos of this guy talking before release of the game. I swear he and Ellingson are two of the biggest sheisters in the MMO industry.
As someone else said: one down, one to go.
Lets' see.
Anarchy Online had a horrid launch and almost died out the gate. Director: Gaute Godager.
Age of Conan had a horrid launch the minute players saw past level 20 and is now on the brink of death. Director: Gaute Godager.
Who was in charge of delivering this "vision" you speak of? Gaute Godager.
Yeah, REAL good ambassador for Funcom.
I've never played AO so I cant comment
However you don't seem to understand the difference between a vision and the delivery of that vision.
AOC had a vision to revolutionize the MMO community with features like epic Siege battles ,unique PVP and an immersive game set in Conan universe. The vision required the technical ability to deliver that from the developers.Gaute is not a developer . Funcom failed in that respect ...he is responsible to a certain degree but can you blame him for the programming ineptitude of the Devs...maybe you can ?I don't think it's fair ?The problems with AOC cannot be fixed by him...they are fundamental and serious Dev issues and the way the game is coded ...egg instances ...and there is no quick fix
Yes he's to blame and yes, it's fair.
Gaute is not an ordinary peon. He co-founded the company. He was in charge of hiring and firing devs. He was in charge of making sure he had the right team to build the game as desired. Is it a devs fault for lacking certain skills, or is it the game directors' fault for not recognizing this and getting someone who could?
He was pretty free with all those millions, you'd think he'd have researched the talent he was spending those millions on.
Actually Wise if we are going to be correct about this then the person to blame should be Quality Assurance and Beta Team who should have reported back to Gaute the glaring issues .Then if he still chose to release the game in it's state if he had the information then yes he is to balme
Thats just silly. Who sadi they didnt? Your last sentence is reality while the first one has been shown not to be the case. Talk to the beta testers.
No you misunderstand my point ,there are are two types of Beta Testers for any game .There is the public ...people outside of Funcom and there are testers within Funcom.I'm not blaming the public .They had a certain channel to report there views into Funcom...they didn't report directly to Gaute .Once issues are raised by testers these are presented to quality assurance who then decide how relevant they are and can they be fixed .Gaute gets a report and makes a decision and the release of the game based on this ...or he has input into this decision.The question is "was he honestly aware of the obvious problems " and could be have stopped the release based on this information?
I see who you were speaking of now. More than likely it comes down on someone between QA and himself but if he cant convince the investors what will happen with a release thats too early or cant get his people to do the things needed then its still on him. Even if the whole vision for the game is bad its still on his shoulders.
No need to worry about him though. Im sure he made his money and I might even be willing to say hes still somehow involved. Hell if Smeds is still employed theres always hope for this guy.
Fungerer som det skal
well thats one down. How many left to leave before its a new company?