One thing I see that dominates that list is EGO. These guys were intelligent and visionaries... but what they failed to realize is how lucky they got the first time around. Each one of them, because of their previous sucess, stopped listening to fans and thought they had all the answers.
Their first success stories were from before they had fans to listen too. I actually think the real problem is a lot of these guys listen to much. They started out with a vision and went for it, making something truly great. However after that success, they have fans, followers, people with expectations. Its my opinion that its the success that actually lead to the downfall. They tried to make games that pleased to many people and as an end result pleased no one. As far as games being released to early goes, its the same problem, trying to please to many people. Focus on a set of goals for your target audience and polish the crap out of it. After launch you can expand, but undertaking it all in development just leaves everyone with something mediocre.
Lets face it, no one ever made a great game for someone else. The industry greats all made great games because they made the games they wanted to play. Its not until they started making games to please everyones desires (and get the biggest return by targetting everyone instead of a specific segment of the market) that they started making turds and unfinished mediocre games.
This should not have affected new visionaries coming forwards and creating their perfect game, yet it has. These giants failing scares investors and scares publishers who only want to take one safe secure games. Thus the 54385603487569034 WoW clones and another one every day (see rift). It saddens me that people could be so wasteful as to invest 50,000,000.00 in a company like Trion that has no vision and no desire to create a game, but rather swindle it on upgrading the graphics of WoW (and imo using cheap animations sets it right back in par with wow).
Lets face it, we wont see another great MMO until someone invests in one that requires risk. Indie developers are pumping out new games left and right, and none of them have the development funding to compete with the 50-100 million dollar clones being developed as we speak.
To put it bluntly I hope I never see another MMO with any of these guys names on it, I will refuse to buy it.
My only vice against Garrot, is that he went insane and flew into outer space losing all interest in MMOs.
Thus, I have no interest in him anymore either.
All are now losers because their vision ended with their first creation as well as their creativity, or in the case of Gaute and Brad, they are both 2 and 3 time losers (AoC, HGL, STO/EQ, VAnguard).
Dunno... with all of these game dev's flubbing after a point, perhaps their success was merely the luck of being in the right place at the right time? Are the old games great because we have rose-tinted glasses on and are looking with fond nostalgia at them? I mean, the context was different back then. There were only a few games out on the market back in 2003.
If someone released a game like AO today, it would die, considering all of the technical problems, all of the bizarre design decisions such as requiring IP-expensive adventuring to use maps, holes in character class progression, and the fact that at release there wasn't actually that much to do in the game. We consider it one of the greats now, but when it was released it was lambasted in the press as being truly anarchic, and in a bad way. It was rated very poorly by critics. However, it still managed to survive, with a small but dedicated population, and is still going. If the same happened now, the game would have probably had the plug pulled on it.
DAoC? If it had been released nowadays, people would have whined about it being a WoW-clone with no endgame (what? only RvR omg!), and it would have struggled along at best.
On the reverse side of things, if something like AoC had been released in 2002, I think it would have been a massive hit.
I mean... DAoC and AO are still going, and they haven't really changed all that much in the past 5 years or so. Why aren't people saying that they were so good playing them now?
Incidently, "Falls-from-Grace" is the name of one of the coolest priestesses in any game ever
If DAoC were released today with updated graphics, it would still do considerably well given that there has been NO game in the past 10 years that has provided the same experience of - 1) 3 faction RvR and meaningful PvP with Darkness Falls and relics as objectives, 2) continued character development through PvP and 3) solid community borne out of the ongoing server RvR.
Each of these men failed in their own, and unique way. Jacobs, Roper and Barnett for that matter are a bunch of hacks. These men obviously believe that their fanbase was too stupid to catch on to the crap they were pandering. I firmly believe that Roper's previous success at Blizzard was because of the direction he was given at Blizzard, and not because of anything he actually did.
Garriot is the only one who I might cut a little slack. In all honesty, TR should have been scrapped when they decided to change directions entirely. Something tells me that NCSoft wouldn't have allowed that though. Once they decided to change the type of game entirely, they shoulda changed out talent and started completely fresh. TR had some interesting mechanics, but the lack of overall content and polish really hurt the game. Not to mention whatever drama that went on between Garriot and NCSoft.
I know how in the snap of two fingers both Jacobs and Garriott can reclaim the throne as MMO gods:
DAoC 2 and UO2.
God, can you imagine the amazing fun it would be to return to these great old lands and systems given 2011 technology?
I wonder if EA now owns the rights to DAoC?
I am guessing yes, but oh my wishes have been to return to a redux of that game that put a little more action into the combat and had the graphic POW of todays titles... oh how I have wished: being that DAoC is my favorite all time MMO and nothing even comes in a close second ... but alas I am to burned out on the first to play it again. I desperately want an evolution of the title
Smedley deserves to be on this list. I guess he is more of a company head or producer and not a developer, but hes messed up enough MMORPGs to deserve his picture up.
And whoever said shit on Raph Koster, wth? Both of Raph's games, UO and SWG are hailed on these forums as being great until Raph LEFT, then they took turns for the worse. Both games are reminenced as once being great and ruined by people who took over later in the life cycle. A fan of MMORPGs only complaint for Raph should be that he is trying to make it on his own now instead of working for big companies. And who can blame him? People like Smedley have been destroying the creative visions of developers like Raph for so long on AAA mmorpgs that it's probably hard for them to deal with.
The word hacks and failure are being thrown around here pretty liberally. Makes me think everyone here is a designing legend. Glad im in such incredible company. Great work on your games guys, they are all awesome im sure.
That's a solid list of epic failures in MMO production. G Godager at Funcom (Failcom) was pretty sweet when he kept talking about the PvP aspects and DX10 of the game, and then launches the game without DX10 (despite being on the box) and very poor PvP. He then said he was surprised people wanted a lot of PvP in Age of Conan. What a dope. The good news is I shorted Funcom stock after playing AoC for a few days, realizing it was an epic failure.
As for Jacobs, he got RvR/PvP right with DAOC using 3 sides and having specific zones for consentual, meaningful PvP. He failed in delivering on class balance. All that was supposed to change in WAR, where he promissed that he had much more tools and information to balance classes prior to game launch. Whoops, I guess everyone telling him a Bright Wizard was overpowered just kept getting ignored, and he ignored the benefits of having a 3-sided RvR game and went the lazy 2-faction route. Both of these errors (and many others) led to servers closing within the first few months of the game.
The benefits of these 2 developers have shown others is that 1) don't make stupid promises about a game and PvP that you have no intention of fullfilling at launch, 2) make sure you have at least 3 sides for PvP (most games keep going the 2-faction route for some reason) and 3) class balance is so important that you are better off just having the same classes available in each faction rather than relying on tools and databases to balance unique classes.
So, I'd be waiting for a DAOC clone where the 3-faction classes were identical (except looks).
The word hacks and failure are being thrown around here pretty liberally. Makes me think everyone here is a designing legend. Glad im in such incredible company. Great work on your games guys, they are all awesome im sure.
"Hack" and "failure" are the *softest* terms I would use for people who try to steal money from me for products that don't exist.
Hmmm. I don't think Roper fell from grace. I think he left a successful company and tried to go out on with himself as a lead. And he just hasn't cut it. Hellgate, CO, STO. Done. Won't touch anything he is involved with anymore. I've learned painfully.
And McQuaid - well, he talks a good talk. But I was in the early betas for Vanguard and saw very little of the Vision he is so frequently linked with. I tried with Vanguard and even gave it some post-launch time to mature. I subbed briefly and then left it behind. He might be ok as a small part of a creative team but, like Roper, he has proved himself to be inadequate in my opinion and I don't think he should be in another leadership role... even something as small as a team lead position. Unless we send them both over to Facebook games. I hate that crap so if it keeps them busy, I'm all for it.
I don't with either to "burn in hell" or for their loved ones to die (or any of a dozen other things I've seen on the forums in regards to them). But I'll pass on what they work. They're a lot of talk, hype, and very little to show in the present. Maybe they were something special once but their glory days have long since past.
I know how in the snap of two fingers both Jacobs and Garriott can reclaim the throne as MMO gods:
DAoC 2 and UO2.
God, can you imagine the amazing fun it would be to return to these great old lands and systems given 2011 technology
AO as is with a new engine, new graphics and combat animations would be great, AO to this day still has the most indepth and best character building of any MMoRPG except maybe Eve, you reading this Gaute?
AO is still the best game i played so far in the by gone 10 years.
The new engine and new stuff in the game is really good .
The player population of AO is still not rising and that is bad.
AO should be tried by all again.
Cheers Sourajit Nandi
" Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't play this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind,and you'll never whine or repent about gaming hours anymore, then have a go at every Game. Open up the Internet, join in all the Mmorpgs you can. Go make the Guild. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible. "
If DAoC were released today with updated graphics, it would still do considerably well given that there has been NO game in the past 10 years that has provided the same experience of - 1) 3 faction RvR and meaningful PvP with Darkness Falls and relics as objectives, 2) continued character development through PvP and 3) solid community borne out of the ongoing server RvR.
I am not convinced of this even if I wish it were true. DAoC is one of my favorite games out of all MMOs. I still go back and play it several months here and several months there.
There is nothing to stop anyone from going and enjoying it now, it's still alive although with a small population. The graphics are really not bad in it. The only minor quibble is the game feels a little less responsive than something like WoW or AoC, though on par with LotRO.
No, if DAoC were released today, people would whine about it being a WoW-clone and kill it by word-of-mouth before it could ever get anywhere, despite its three factions and meaningful RvR. Everything is a WoW-clone nowadays unless it's a sandbox according to the forum boffins...
I cant say much about the other guys, except that Mr. Garriot is vastly overrated in my opinion, he just was there at the right time with UO, in a non-competitive market situation, so basically he "built a Homer" and draws a lot of fame from it since then.
But some comments on the case of Mr. Goddager:
Having followed the development of AoC early on, witnessed the annoying level of marketing and played AoC myself, combined with my experience (not personal but as a witness) how project leads in the software development industry are treated in general one word halls in my mind: scapegoat. In the end one single person is made responsible for this disaster? Ridiculuous! Was he the project lead also in a technical way or only the face in the public? Assuming he was the technical head, I see it in my own career how these things work out. Generally you have a management that calls the shots and you only follow, they only care about milestones and have no clue about technical aspects and implications of a half-done product. They decide when to ship, they don't accept arguing, they think that anti-patterns like "throw more men on it" or overwork hours can do the trick to meet a deadline, while in general only the quality of the work vastly declines. Because to them employees are just arbitrarily interchangable units. No project lead has such an absolutistic power and so little control, even less in a shareholder company, that he alone can do so much damage to screw this big up while no one else had a clue what's going on.
The marketing of AoC reached a new level of hype and annoyance, at least in my experience, then they came along with new innovative ways of sucking money from customers that fired back on them big time. Like this early-access bullshit, basically letting people pay to beta-test your banana product. And it was even executed half-assed, people could not use their early access. The they had advertised features (on the game box) that werent even in the game (DX10). All these things come from moneygreedy asshats with ties around their necks, generally with an economical background.
In general they didn't screw up because of technical deficiancies, most MMOs had these at launch, but the mountain of promises and bragging combined with their attitude of making money for thin air - that was what broke their reputation. And then they just let the one face get over the plank that is best known, to take away with him their bad reputation. The sorry part is, that it works, because humans - and apparently especially customers - are stupid.
Tabula Rasa may have crashed, but it was on the growth when it was cancelled with changes having been implemented and an expansion on the way. I don't seriously think anyone that enjoyed the game blames Garriot for its cancellation or its earlier than necassary release.
All the others I admit deserve to be blamed in some way for their failures, but Garriot's claimed failure was NCSoft, not him.
Because John Smedley isn't a developer. He doesn't create fun games like the people on that list have.
He is nothing more than a money man who runs off developers from the games they create and then squeezes the life out of them trying to make an extra nickle.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing what McQuaid or Garriot could produce if given a small project and some oversite. They both fell pretty hard, but I think underneath that are some very creative gaming minds that focus on making fun games and not just making a product that will sell X number of units. Something that is very lacking in the genre right now... see quote above for a perfect example.
Don't get me started on Mark jacobs. he was lucky never good. He never understood what he had in daoc and for a long time figured it was his cash cow to fund his "togas in space" disaster(which he crowed would have no rvr cause it was a hassel). DAOC suffered from short sighted attempts to wring maxium cash from it(buff bot anyone?)(TOA). Not to mention crappy design of expansions over powered and unfinished classes.
his lack of talent was proven with warhamper(NOT MISPELLED) online. AWFUL GAME. More effort went into the marketing Vids than the damm game.
If DAOC2 ever gets made and his names on it count me as a pass. I can see it now running back to the keep every death to buff with my second account while I spent 7568946 hours leveling up my leet artis so I and 39 other people can get hit with a 1:30 mezz by a no life gank squad 8 man. That was Mark Jacobs "vison" of DAOC.
I thinkl you should also consider the timing of the Vangard release in comparison to the Galaxies NGE. It went live right after everyon was totally pissed off at SOE and I, for one, had made the decision to never play another SOE game just as SOE announced buying Vangard's developer.
I stuck by my guns despite having bout the limited edition Vangard box. I still have not played it despite hearing about all of the updates and the current state of the game.
Blaming McQuaid wholesale for the Vangard "failure" is rather unfair.
Bill Roper... I could forgive him if he simply made a game, and it failed. Happens all the time. But that man lied, cheated, and borderline defrauded his player base and his employees. He has no business being involved in the industry, and I will never touch anything he is involved in.
Strangely enough, now that he's gone from Cryptic, they're beginning to take their current MMOs (Champions and STO) into the right directions. Huh, imagine that! Games get better when he's not around! Just look at Runic Games; almost the exact same folks as Flagship, but no Roper = MASSIVE SUCCESS!!!
Anyway, subject change. /rant
As far as Tabula Rasa goes, that failure lies solely on NCSoft's shoulders. They forced an early release, then pulled the plug FAR too soon. In fact, most bugs were fixed, cool new stuff was on the way (class vehicles), and the playerbase was actually rising. Not to mention that even at release the game had some of the most fun combat/gameplay I've ever experienced in an MMO. I truly do miss the game, even more so than I do Earth & Beyond.
I hope Mr. Garriott considers going back to what made him great in the first place; single player CRPGs. Ultima X, anybody?
That's like naming serial killers and leaving off Dahmer.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
All these failure are pretty much caused by 2 major things.
1-Unfulfilled promises.
2-Lack of money forcing early release.
Too many devs these days when making their games always talk about delivering the moon to the player but when the game release all you get is moon dust. Always be honest about what your game going to have, dont think over your head. Failure to deliver kills games.
Dont go seek money and tell the investors your game will take 2 years to develop, have more features then WOW with your 5 man crew. You will fail.
I cant say much about the other guys, except that Mr. Garriot is vastly overrated in my opinion, he just was there at the right time with UO, in a non-competitive market situation, so basically he "built a Homer" and draws a lot of fame from it since then.
But some comments on the case of Mr. Goddager:
Having followed the development of AoC early on, witnessed the annoying level of marketing and played AoC myself, combined with my experience (not personal but as a witness) how project leads in the software development industry are treated in general one word halls in my mind: scapegoat. In the end one single person is made responsible for this disaster? Ridiculuous! Was he the project lead also in a technical way or only the face in the public? Assuming he was the technical head, I see it in my own career how these things work out. Generally you have a management that calls the shots and you only follow, they only care about milestones and have no clue about technical aspects and implications of a half-done product. They decide when to ship, they don't accept arguing, they think that anti-patterns like "throw more men on it" or overwork hours can do the trick to meet a deadline, while in general only the quality of the work vastly declines. Because to them employees are just arbitrarily interchangable units. No project lead has such an absolutistic power and so little control, even less in a shareholder company, that he alone can do so much damage to screw this big up while no one else had a clue what's going on.
The marketing of AoC reached a new level of hype and annoyance, at least in my experience, then they came along with new innovative ways of sucking money from customers that fired back on them big time. Like this early-access bullshit, basically letting people pay to beta-test your banana product. And it was even executed half-assed, people could not use their early access. The they had advertised features (on the game box) that werent even in the game (DX10). All these things come from moneygreedy asshats with ties around their necks, generally with an economical background.
In general they didn't screw up because of technical deficiancies, most MMOs had these at launch, but the mountain of promises and bragging combined with their attitude of making money for thin air - that was what broke their reputation. And then they just let the one face get over the plank that is best known, to take away with him their bad reputation. The sorry part is, that it works, because humans - and apparently especially customers - are stupid.
Guate wasn't the "technical head", he was a founder of the company and the Game Director for AoC. The only one Gaute had to answer to was himself. Ty all you want to defend the schmuck, the guy deserves everything said about him and should have been "retired" by the FC board back when he created the travesty known as the "Shadowlands" expansion for Anarchy Online.
I bet you actually believe he "resigned" of his own accord too, huh? lol
Dunno... with all of these game dev's flubbing after a point, perhaps their success was merely the luck of being in the right place at the right time?
Richard Garriot was a visionary in his day. There was nothing else like UO at the time he created it. I think the fall of these devs has more to do with them just getting too old and out of touch to be able to keep up with gaming trends. They eventually failed to understand gamers and evolve with the rest of the gaming industry.
Comments
Their first success stories were from before they had fans to listen too. I actually think the real problem is a lot of these guys listen to much. They started out with a vision and went for it, making something truly great. However after that success, they have fans, followers, people with expectations. Its my opinion that its the success that actually lead to the downfall. They tried to make games that pleased to many people and as an end result pleased no one. As far as games being released to early goes, its the same problem, trying to please to many people. Focus on a set of goals for your target audience and polish the crap out of it. After launch you can expand, but undertaking it all in development just leaves everyone with something mediocre.
Lets face it, no one ever made a great game for someone else. The industry greats all made great games because they made the games they wanted to play. Its not until they started making games to please everyones desires (and get the biggest return by targetting everyone instead of a specific segment of the market) that they started making turds and unfinished mediocre games.
This should not have affected new visionaries coming forwards and creating their perfect game, yet it has. These giants failing scares investors and scares publishers who only want to take one safe secure games. Thus the 54385603487569034 WoW clones and another one every day (see rift). It saddens me that people could be so wasteful as to invest 50,000,000.00 in a company like Trion that has no vision and no desire to create a game, but rather swindle it on upgrading the graphics of WoW (and imo using cheap animations sets it right back in par with wow).
Lets face it, we wont see another great MMO until someone invests in one that requires risk. Indie developers are pumping out new games left and right, and none of them have the development funding to compete with the 50-100 million dollar clones being developed as we speak.
To put it bluntly I hope I never see another MMO with any of these guys names on it, I will refuse to buy it.
My only vice against Garrot, is that he went insane and flew into outer space losing all interest in MMOs.
Thus, I have no interest in him anymore either.
All are now losers because their vision ended with their first creation as well as their creativity, or in the case of Gaute and Brad, they are both 2 and 3 time losers (AoC, HGL, STO/EQ, VAnguard).
If DAoC were released today with updated graphics, it would still do considerably well given that there has been NO game in the past 10 years that has provided the same experience of - 1) 3 faction RvR and meaningful PvP with Darkness Falls and relics as objectives, 2) continued character development through PvP and 3) solid community borne out of the ongoing server RvR.
Each of these men failed in their own, and unique way. Jacobs, Roper and Barnett for that matter are a bunch of hacks. These men obviously believe that their fanbase was too stupid to catch on to the crap they were pandering. I firmly believe that Roper's previous success at Blizzard was because of the direction he was given at Blizzard, and not because of anything he actually did.
Garriot is the only one who I might cut a little slack. In all honesty, TR should have been scrapped when they decided to change directions entirely. Something tells me that NCSoft wouldn't have allowed that though. Once they decided to change the type of game entirely, they shoulda changed out talent and started completely fresh. TR had some interesting mechanics, but the lack of overall content and polish really hurt the game. Not to mention whatever drama that went on between Garriot and NCSoft.
I wonder if EA now owns the rights to DAoC?
I am guessing yes, but oh my wishes have been to return to a redux of that game that put a little more action into the combat and had the graphic POW of todays titles... oh how I have wished: being that DAoC is my favorite all time MMO and nothing even comes in a close second ... but alas I am to burned out on the first to play it again. I desperately want an evolution of the title
Smedley deserves to be on this list. I guess he is more of a company head or producer and not a developer, but hes messed up enough MMORPGs to deserve his picture up.
And whoever said shit on Raph Koster, wth? Both of Raph's games, UO and SWG are hailed on these forums as being great until Raph LEFT, then they took turns for the worse. Both games are reminenced as once being great and ruined by people who took over later in the life cycle. A fan of MMORPGs only complaint for Raph should be that he is trying to make it on his own now instead of working for big companies. And who can blame him? People like Smedley have been destroying the creative visions of developers like Raph for so long on AAA mmorpgs that it's probably hard for them to deal with.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
The word hacks and failure are being thrown around here pretty liberally. Makes me think everyone here is a designing legend. Glad im in such incredible company. Great work on your games guys, they are all awesome im sure.
That's a solid list of epic failures in MMO production. G Godager at Funcom (Failcom) was pretty sweet when he kept talking about the PvP aspects and DX10 of the game, and then launches the game without DX10 (despite being on the box) and very poor PvP. He then said he was surprised people wanted a lot of PvP in Age of Conan. What a dope. The good news is I shorted Funcom stock after playing AoC for a few days, realizing it was an epic failure.
As for Jacobs, he got RvR/PvP right with DAOC using 3 sides and having specific zones for consentual, meaningful PvP. He failed in delivering on class balance. All that was supposed to change in WAR, where he promissed that he had much more tools and information to balance classes prior to game launch. Whoops, I guess everyone telling him a Bright Wizard was overpowered just kept getting ignored, and he ignored the benefits of having a 3-sided RvR game and went the lazy 2-faction route. Both of these errors (and many others) led to servers closing within the first few months of the game.
The benefits of these 2 developers have shown others is that 1) don't make stupid promises about a game and PvP that you have no intention of fullfilling at launch, 2) make sure you have at least 3 sides for PvP (most games keep going the 2-faction route for some reason) and 3) class balance is so important that you are better off just having the same classes available in each faction rather than relying on tools and databases to balance unique classes.
So, I'd be waiting for a DAOC clone where the 3-faction classes were identical (except looks).
"Hack" and "failure" are the *softest* terms I would use for people who try to steal money from me for products that don't exist.
Bring back TR!
Hmmm. I don't think Roper fell from grace. I think he left a successful company and tried to go out on with himself as a lead. And he just hasn't cut it. Hellgate, CO, STO. Done. Won't touch anything he is involved with anymore. I've learned painfully.
And McQuaid - well, he talks a good talk. But I was in the early betas for Vanguard and saw very little of the Vision he is so frequently linked with. I tried with Vanguard and even gave it some post-launch time to mature. I subbed briefly and then left it behind. He might be ok as a small part of a creative team but, like Roper, he has proved himself to be inadequate in my opinion and I don't think he should be in another leadership role... even something as small as a team lead position. Unless we send them both over to Facebook games. I hate that crap so if it keeps them busy, I'm all for it.
I don't with either to "burn in hell" or for their loved ones to die (or any of a dozen other things I've seen on the forums in regards to them). But I'll pass on what they work. They're a lot of talk, hype, and very little to show in the present. Maybe they were something special once but their glory days have long since past.
AO is still the best game i played so far in the by gone 10 years.
The new engine and new stuff in the game is really good .
The player population of AO is still not rising and that is bad.
AO should be tried by all again.
Cheers
Sourajit Nandi
" Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't play this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind,and you'll never whine or repent about gaming hours anymore, then have a go at every Game. Open up the Internet, join in all the Mmorpgs you can. Go make the Guild. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible. "
Once An Addict Always An Addict .
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This × ∞ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bartoni's Law definition: As an Internet discussion grows volatile, the probability of a comparison involving Donald Trump approaches 1.
I am not convinced of this even if I wish it were true. DAoC is one of my favorite games out of all MMOs. I still go back and play it several months here and several months there.
There is nothing to stop anyone from going and enjoying it now, it's still alive although with a small population. The graphics are really not bad in it. The only minor quibble is the game feels a little less responsive than something like WoW or AoC, though on par with LotRO.
No, if DAoC were released today, people would whine about it being a WoW-clone and kill it by word-of-mouth before it could ever get anywhere, despite its three factions and meaningful RvR. Everything is a WoW-clone nowadays unless it's a sandbox according to the forum boffins...
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
I cant say much about the other guys, except that Mr. Garriot is vastly overrated in my opinion, he just was there at the right time with UO, in a non-competitive market situation, so basically he "built a Homer" and draws a lot of fame from it since then.
But some comments on the case of Mr. Goddager:
Having followed the development of AoC early on, witnessed the annoying level of marketing and played AoC myself, combined with my experience (not personal but as a witness) how project leads in the software development industry are treated in general one word halls in my mind: scapegoat. In the end one single person is made responsible for this disaster? Ridiculuous! Was he the project lead also in a technical way or only the face in the public? Assuming he was the technical head, I see it in my own career how these things work out. Generally you have a management that calls the shots and you only follow, they only care about milestones and have no clue about technical aspects and implications of a half-done product. They decide when to ship, they don't accept arguing, they think that anti-patterns like "throw more men on it" or overwork hours can do the trick to meet a deadline, while in general only the quality of the work vastly declines. Because to them employees are just arbitrarily interchangable units. No project lead has such an absolutistic power and so little control, even less in a shareholder company, that he alone can do so much damage to screw this big up while no one else had a clue what's going on.
The marketing of AoC reached a new level of hype and annoyance, at least in my experience, then they came along with new innovative ways of sucking money from customers that fired back on them big time. Like this early-access bullshit, basically letting people pay to beta-test your banana product. And it was even executed half-assed, people could not use their early access. The they had advertised features (on the game box) that werent even in the game (DX10). All these things come from moneygreedy asshats with ties around their necks, generally with an economical background.
In general they didn't screw up because of technical deficiancies, most MMOs had these at launch, but the mountain of promises and bragging combined with their attitude of making money for thin air - that was what broke their reputation. And then they just let the one face get over the plank that is best known, to take away with him their bad reputation. The sorry part is, that it works, because humans - and apparently especially customers - are stupid.
Tabula Rasa may have crashed, but it was on the growth when it was cancelled with changes having been implemented and an expansion on the way. I don't seriously think anyone that enjoyed the game blames Garriot for its cancellation or its earlier than necassary release.
All the others I admit deserve to be blamed in some way for their failures, but Garriot's claimed failure was NCSoft, not him.
Becasue he still works for SOE, these are guys who have either quit their job or been fired.
Because John Smedley isn't a developer. He doesn't create fun games like the people on that list have.
He is nothing more than a money man who runs off developers from the games they create and then squeezes the life out of them trying to make an extra nickle.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing what McQuaid or Garriot could produce if given a small project and some oversite. They both fell pretty hard, but I think underneath that are some very creative gaming minds that focus on making fun games and not just making a product that will sell X number of units. Something that is very lacking in the genre right now... see quote above for a perfect example.
Don't get me started on Mark jacobs. he was lucky never good. He never understood what he had in daoc and for a long time figured it was his cash cow to fund his "togas in space" disaster(which he crowed would have no rvr cause it was a hassel). DAOC suffered from short sighted attempts to wring maxium cash from it(buff bot anyone?)(TOA). Not to mention crappy design of expansions over powered and unfinished classes.
his lack of talent was proven with warhamper(NOT MISPELLED) online. AWFUL GAME. More effort went into the marketing Vids than the damm game.
If DAOC2 ever gets made and his names on it count me as a pass. I can see it now running back to the keep every death to buff with my second account while I spent 7568946 hours leveling up my leet artis so I and 39 other people can get hit with a 1:30 mezz by a no life gank squad 8 man. That was Mark Jacobs "vison" of DAOC.
I thinkl you should also consider the timing of the Vangard release in comparison to the Galaxies NGE. It went live right after everyon was totally pissed off at SOE and I, for one, had made the decision to never play another SOE game just as SOE announced buying Vangard's developer.
I stuck by my guns despite having bout the limited edition Vangard box. I still have not played it despite hearing about all of the updates and the current state of the game.
Blaming McQuaid wholesale for the Vangard "failure" is rather unfair.
-=[ Gaidin ]=-
/rant
Bill Roper... I could forgive him if he simply made a game, and it failed. Happens all the time. But that man lied, cheated, and borderline defrauded his player base and his employees. He has no business being involved in the industry, and I will never touch anything he is involved in.
Strangely enough, now that he's gone from Cryptic, they're beginning to take their current MMOs (Champions and STO) into the right directions. Huh, imagine that! Games get better when he's not around! Just look at Runic Games; almost the exact same folks as Flagship, but no Roper = MASSIVE SUCCESS!!!
Anyway, subject change. /rant
As far as Tabula Rasa goes, that failure lies solely on NCSoft's shoulders. They forced an early release, then pulled the plug FAR too soon. In fact, most bugs were fixed, cool new stuff was on the way (class vehicles), and the playerbase was actually rising. Not to mention that even at release the game had some of the most fun combat/gameplay I've ever experienced in an MMO. I truly do miss the game, even more so than I do Earth & Beyond.
I hope Mr. Garriott considers going back to what made him great in the first place; single player CRPGs. Ultima X, anybody?
What.. no John Smedley?
That's like naming serial killers and leaving off Dahmer.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
All these failure are pretty much caused by 2 major things.
1-Unfulfilled promises.
2-Lack of money forcing early release.
Too many devs these days when making their games always talk about delivering the moon to the player but when the game release all you get is moon dust. Always be honest about what your game going to have, dont think over your head. Failure to deliver kills games.
Dont go seek money and tell the investors your game will take 2 years to develop, have more features then WOW with your 5 man crew. You will fail.
Guate wasn't the "technical head", he was a founder of the company and the Game Director for AoC. The only one Gaute had to answer to was himself. Ty all you want to defend the schmuck, the guy deserves everything said about him and should have been "retired" by the FC board back when he created the travesty known as the "Shadowlands" expansion for Anarchy Online.
I bet you actually believe he "resigned" of his own accord too, huh? lol
Richard Garriot was a visionary in his day. There was nothing else like UO at the time he created it. I think the fall of these devs has more to do with them just getting too old and out of touch to be able to keep up with gaming trends. They eventually failed to understand gamers and evolve with the rest of the gaming industry.