Comments on: Venting The Spleen To Move On

By: y4

y4 — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:07:38 +0000

haha plat is following eric everywhere lol. (actually it might be from plat that i found this blog.) kudos

Ya I kinda figured mythic was that way. I also wonder why they reused DAOC models, or maybe their loyal but untalented artists can’t do any better than that. Some smaller companies do better (Spellborn Here I come!).

“80 percent of an MMO should be things gamers already expect an MMO to have, and 20 percent of it should be crazy.’”–Paul Barnett

Does a stable, smooth combat and animation engine count as part of the 80%? Also, I don’t see any crazy ideas in WhO:AoR.

“You Need Strong Ideas”

The problem isn’t coming up with ideas, strong or not. Not only the paid devs, but thousands of players are willing to contribute ideas. As the saying goes, ideas are a dime a dozen. No, the payoff is execution, implementation and polish. It’s quite obvious from reading the forums that WAR severely lacks all of these. That is to say, good execution and polish is a strong idea that Barnett neglected.

“But you can’t be The Beatles. If you try, he quipped, you will ‘…end up as the Monkees.’”

So it’s better to try to be something different and end up as the Spice Girls. (yes WAR is Spice Girls, a passing fad at this rate.)

You play the other MMOs so you can improve on them, so that you don’t come up with weak ideas and even weaker implementations thereof. Like the previous point about fostering strong ideas. How do you know what is strong or not if you don’t have something to compare it to? On the contrary, it’s too easy to make the same mistakes as previous games, even though they may seem like strong ideas.

“Find the right partner, work hard with them and be kind to them.”
Ya AC2 failed this hard. lol MS.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:08:47 +0000

Babs – yeah, I noticed that too. It looked almost like they reused the human avatars from DAoC. They seemed strangely out of place.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:06:52 +0000

Platinumstorm – ouch… sounds painful. I guess you’re one step closer to becoming a cyborg now, though…

By: Platinumstorm

Platinumstorm — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:47:37 +0000

While you “vent your spleen” I’ve been in the hospital for a week! Had gallbladder finally removed today.

By: MrWakka

MrWakka — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:56:26 +0000

Happy to see your back, always a good read, and i agree on the forums.

By: required

required — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:48:23 +0000

Not having a forum is worse than having one that you don’t like. People will make their own and you won’t have any control over it. Ostrich, meet pile of sand.

-V

By: Babs

Babs — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:55:04 +0000

Nice to see you again, Eric! And yeah, well, Mythic…kinda goes without saying.

Could the avatars for WAR be any more butt-ugly? Of course, I believe MMOs should attempt to be attractive if they’re going to try to take over your life. But that may just be me.

By: Bret

Bret — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:02:31 +0000

That Gamasutra article was pretty great.

“80 percent of an MMO should be things gamers already expect an MMO to have”

“[MMOs] are cancerous and will change the way you think,” he warned.”

And finally, my new favorite quote

“Strong ideas are unstoppable because they’re strong.”

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:30:30 +0000

Glad you’re back, and jeez did I miss your straight-for-the-jugular brutal honesty about stuff like this! :)