Brad McQuaid Site Updated

[needraRZ]

Compounding that, cities typically don't give you a lot of gameplay. They are more often meeting places with services you need (banks, auction houses, etc.)

I read this and was nodding to myself, thinking of all the games I've played where this is the case.

Then I wondered... is it time for a change here? Every player now expects linked banks, an AH etc etc. Yet we mourn the loss of community in games.

Sure, its more effort to sell your loot when you have to stand and advertise it in a player designated trade zone.. but maybe this is what makes worlds more real and encourages interaction?

Perhaps theres a middle ground.. AH for low level stuff like crafting components, but no high level items or end crafted allowed or something

[Sancus]

Designers always think that game design is really important when making a MMO, and that theoretical design decisions have a huge impact on the marketability of your game.

I personally believe technical problems(or lack thereof) have a larger impact on the success of a MMO more often than game design does.

If you aren't going to show up with a working engine, that isn't strewn with major bugs and aren't going to have a halfway decent launch, your entire game design department may as well not exist. No one gives a crap what the gameplay is like if they can't play without struggling through stupid technical shit, bugs, and performance issues that they shouldn't have to care about.

Of course, game design does contribute to how feasible your game is, but still. An astounding number of games seem to think that having the best programmers, and the tightest code is not as important as 'what kind of world they decide on', and that's just retarded. Blizzard is easily the best current MMO studio at this. They put in an astonishing amount of thought and effort into things as subtle as how smooth their animations and combat experience are, how well it flows together, and things like that.

Meanwhile, Mythic seems to have only the vaguest idea that such concepts even exist at all, and even NCSoft, though their stuff is usually pretty solid in terms of bugs, isn't at the same level in terms of gameplay experience.

[Maxx]

It doesnt make sense that they would design a world so large and not make it have the ability to be scaled back.
How could they have time management and pour all their resources into making art for this world?

Brad Quote, "First, when it became time for the artists to start building these land masses, it took longer than was expected and hoped. The easy solution at that point would simply be to shrink the world. But when this problem occurred to us, when Thestra was already mostly done and Qalia in progress, it wasn’t an easy fix. People were saying ‘let’s shrink Kojan’ or ‘let’s just cut Kojan completely’. But shrinking it too much would make it much smaller vs. the already built Thestra and Qalia. Cutting it completely would mean we didn’t have a home for the races that started there. So we ended up cutting parts of it away, and the game launched with Kojan being smaller than the other two major continents. "

If he was on the EQ design team and managed them, why didnt he jsut copy the format and management processes they used to create it?

I don't know, seems like he has lots of excuses and no real answers as to what occured and why.

Why didnt they design the engine to scale in size? Why did they waste so much time on the art for the world?
Didn't they discuss the time mgmt issue and come up with a solution?
What was the other team members and mgmt doing? Simply going along with it all knowing that deadlines were not going to be met?

Also, I'd like to hear from other people who worked there (Yo nino !!) and get their take on it all, and see if it jives with what Brad is now spewing out.

[Venjenz]

Originally Posted by Maxx

If he was on the EQ design team and managed them, why didn't he just copy the format and management processes they used to create it?

I don't know, seems like he has lots of excuses and no real answers as to what occurred and why.

I think this cuts to the heart of the nerd rage about Brad, specific to his Vanguard excuses.

He trades on his reputation from building EQ, Kunark and Velious, yet building something roughly the same size as vanilla EQ, minus the Planes and the ocean zone, with slightly bigger cities, was somehow this new and unique challenge?

Prettier graphics for sure, but maps and levels are maps and levels. The complexity of the maps and levels may have grown, but the sophistication of the tools has grown as well. Not sure how one of the main zones with dungeons, cities, and the like was not really well developed right off the bat as nothing more than proof of concept.

One land mass, a melee, ranged and casting class model, some sample mobs, a few different terrains, and all built to the n'th degree of polish, right off that bat. At that point, you extend the model in size and scope using tools and methods you've already gotten working.

Weren't they in like the 3rd year when M$ demanded something working to continue funding and then pulled the plug?