Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Tancred]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

The bottom line is that I, as a customer, have the ultimate say in how they run their companies. If I disagree, they don't get my money.

Oh crap! I thought I had to keep playing and paying (for years) and bitching endlessly on every forum possible about how (company X) were mounting a personal vendetta against (me/my class) and my mental well-being by failing to immediately and instantly address my personal agenda of concerns at the expense of all others.

Live and learn :P

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Regardless of the examples and opinions the bottom line is it comes down to what you believe in as a company, and what you stand for. If you are a company founded on integrity, principle, respect and accountability you will be seen as such by anyone not possessing blind hatred for you.

That's not to indict anyone out there, because in the two examples being thrown around I have a ton of respect for both companies.

They've both made mistakes, they've both, imo, done things differently than I would have, but it's their companies.

I don't think either one has set out to screw their customers, ever. I think they both try and do what's best for themselves at every turn, with as little ramifications to their customers as possible.

The bottom line is that I, as a customer, have the ultimate say in how they run their companies. If I disagree, they don't get my money. If they make enough people dislike them, or disagree with how they practice their business, then they become irrelevant or go away.

Neither of them has done that. EQ2 has maintained a pretty consistent customer base and Blizzard is big enough that booting 59k customers for infractions against their users agreement was an easy thing to do.

I totally understand where you are coming from. People can decide who they do or do not give their money to. But here are the problems with unethical behavior forcing that reaction in the first place:

1> Publishers do not hold themselves accountable. As you will soon find out, there is a lot of scapegoating for common sense mistakes in this business. The Sims Online didn't sell because the game was purely a disaster. Instead, the producers behind that just said that their game was fantastic, it just didn't sell because the market was saturated, Then here comes WoW and gets 6 million subs.

2> The genre itself still gets harmed by word of mouth. How many people waited until a company with Blizzard's reputation touched the market? (Aside from some opinions at this point that they released an unfinished title) How many people were jilted by what they had heard with very poor QA and basically paying to make the game? (For this example, Star Wars Galaxies) I believe the harm caused was actually a barrier to entry for a lot of gamers that wanted to try an MMORPG, but heard all the horror stories of bugs and unfinished content.

3> Which genres have been completely killed? Planetside was a very cool concept with terrible implementation, design, and rushed processes. It wasn't well thought out, and as such, tanked revenue wise fairly quickly. I know that the MMOFPS genre can succeed if done right. Unfortunately, publishers that are in charge of some great IP's that can take advantage of an MMOFPS style game will not take the risk now because they see Planetside and they don't see a shitty game, they see a company that took a risk with the MMOFPS genre and they scapegoat the genre as a failure.

The things that some companies do today will effect the creativity and risk other companies will take in the future. If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't care nearly as much. But that is what is wrong with the industry at this point. There is too much finger pointing, scapegoating, and genre blaming -- and not enough common sense in saying "You know what... this game failed because of this or that in the game itself".

In the end, when it comes down to ethics, customers and players of games everywhere just want the truth. It isn't the game? Fine. Just let them know about it and do not lie about it. Gamers are the most forgiving people in the world when you are honest from what I have seen, but when you aren't, that's when you really stir up the pot.

Either way, mistakes are mistakes. Lying isn't a mistake, it's just a flat out wrong thing to do.

[Ngruk]

Hey. I will check out and respond to some points you make above Ut. Pretty valid stuff (although I am one of the people that does believe WoW was released unfinished, though it didn't affect my gameplay in the least).

But I saw some earlier posts hacking on R.A. and wanted to throw a link up for anyone interested to take a peek.

The world is a VERY small place. Turns out when I decided to take the plunge and contact R.A. to begin my pitch to him to be involved in GMGs first product, he lives like 30 minutes from me in Mass.

We've become very good friends, very fast.

In addition to my me being a fan (hey I can't fathom creating the stuff he has) I respect the fact that he's a pretty damn good person first and foremost.

Anyway, I thought I would post a link here to make people understand that GMG and our first title is not "Three rich idiots trying to make their idea of a cool game."

And also that there is some incredibly creative genius at work when it comes to the Creative Lead and his thoughts about what he is doing.

http://darkpartyreview.blogspot.com/...t-dourden.html

Oh and btw, I have ridden him mercilessly about the mullet, which he no longer has and claims vehemently that it is NOT a mullet. His wife comes to his defense but I ain't buying it!

[Itzena]

Originally Posted by Asmadai

When I picture WoW and EQ, I see two people sitting at a desk.

One claims he'll have his stuff ready by the project due date, but come due date, only parts of the project are complete. If you ask him about the incompleteness, he'll tell you 'oh it's complete; i'm serious.'

The other acknowledges the fact that there is a due date, but flat out tells you he won't have the project complete by then. Slowly, after the project was already due, he brings the completed numbers and pie graphs that were missing to the table.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I really can't tell which one i'd hate more. I guess it all comes down to how bad you hate being lied to. I don't mind it all that much; not near as much as some. Blizzard was upfront sure, but I wouldn't say that 'truth' outweighed 'incompleteness' here.

Speaking from an 'at work' perspective I'll take the slow, truthful worker over the liar any day of the week, and I'm pretty sure most people would as well.

Knowing that something isn't going to be finished manages expectations, and allows people to plan around it. Getting piecemeal, incomplete, poorly-done work at the last minute after repeatedly being told "It'll be on time...and it's going to be AWESOME" leads to pissed off workmates & management, and said worker being escorted off-site with his belongings if it turns out to be a habit.

[Eomer]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

Oh and btw, I have ridden him mercilessly about the mullet, which he no longer has and claims vehemently that it is NOT a mullet. His wife comes to his defense but I ain't buying it!

Cogratulations, you have my 60 dollars just based on that comment!

[FohMD]

1) One employee lying does not equate to a "dishonest" company (unless, of course, its the CEO or similar lying - though even then it's a stretch).

2) I have yet to see any proof anywhere of an SoE employee deliberately hiding the truth. At best, I've seen some inaccurate quotes of minor employees (not CEOs or developers, mind you) who probably didn't have all the information. Now this might sounds like fanboi talk, but we all know the communication lines at SoE/Verant in the old days weren't so good (they are much better now I hear). Thus, I think it's reasonable to suppose that no one really lied, they just gave information they thought was right at the time (but wasn't).

If you're going to try to refute 2 (good luck refuting 1), please provide the context and the quote (you can paraphrase it...I'm not a stickler on this point).

[Jovec]

Originally Posted by Itzena

Speaking from an 'at work' perspective I'll take the slow, truthful worker over the liar any day of the week, and I'm pretty sure most people would as well.

Knowing that something isn't going to be finished manages expectations, and allows people to plan around it. Getting piecemeal, incomplete, poorly-done work at the last minute after repeatedly being told "It'll be on time...and it's going to be AWESOME" leads to pissed off workmates & management, and said worker being escorted off-site with his belongings if it turns out to be a habit.

From a content perspective (if we discount what we expected to be in at launch) this analogy holds true for EQ and WoW. WoW isn't really making the same mistakes as EQ (nor should it, having the benefit of being released 5 1/2 years after it), but WoW has made/is making its fair share of mistakes too. I'd argue that these mistakes are even more damaging for the industry than what EQ did, as EQ and EQ2's numbers are a clear indicator of what can happen. The juggernaut that is WoW has the potential to set us back ("us" being gamers looking for a quality product) if the industry fails to understand that 9 out 10 MMOs would fail if they suffered the same problems as WoW does. There is going to have to be a hell of a game in VG or AoC for me to play them if they have queues, severe lag that the playerbase paid money to try to escape, raid ID/cascading problems, extended weekly downtime, P2P patchers, a "fuck you" attitude towards faction balance (we know raiding is unbalanced, but we'll fix it 6 months from now), a 40->25 raid cap change two years after release, etc.

[FohMD]

Originally Posted by Jovec

There is going to have to be a hell of a game in VG or AoC for me to play them if they have queues, severe lag that the playerbase paid money to try to escape, raid ID/cascading problems, extended weekly downtime, P2P patchers, a "fuck you" attitude towards faction balance (we know raiding is unbalanced, but we'll fix it 6 months from now), a 40->25 raid cap change two years after release, etc.

You forgot a "fuck you" attitude towards customer service.

[Moontayle]

Originally Posted by FohMD

1) One employee lying does not equate to a "dishonest" company (unless, of course, its the CEO or similar lying - though even then it's a stretch).

2) I have yet to see any proof anywhere of an SoE employee deliberately hiding the truth. At best, I've seen some inaccurate quotes of minor employees (not CEOs or developers, mind you) who probably didn't have all the information. Now this might sounds like fanboi talk, but we all know the communication lines at SoE/Verant in the old days weren't so good (they are much better now I hear). Thus, I think it's reasonable to suppose that no one really lied, they just gave information they thought was right at the time (but wasn't).

If you're going to try to refute 2 (good luck refuting 1), please provide the context and the quote (you can paraphrase it...I'm not a stickler on this point).

Before you send Ut into a raging ball of righteous fury...

Off the top of my head I can think of three things which SOE needed to divulge about EQ1 and never did.

1) Vex Thal not being in/working correcly... take your pick.
2) Access to Plane of Time was impossible to access due to an intentionally busted Plane of Earth B. It was intentionally busted because PoT was basically not done.
3) Gates of Discord was impossible to 'finish' because a very important mechanic... i.e. 5 extra player levels... was left out and packaged in with part 2 of GoD... Omens of War.

The only thing I can think of for EQ2 was the whole Froglok thing. I believe they either inferred our outright said Frogloks were in but needed to be unlocked before saying months down the road that they weren't ever in. They subsequently added them in with an LU patch which also coincidentally added in one of their early few Raid zones.

SWG is and always will be a big ball of broken promises and outright lies. I can tell you a big one right now (which is moot because they moved away from the Combat Upgrade after less than 6 months to the NGE). Anyhoo, each Correspondent was asked to choose 5 people from their communities to help with the Combat Upgrade. These people were given special access to a sub-forum where documents were presented and poured over and feedback was given, all with the promise that we'd get our hands on the material ingame first so we could give it a proper shake down. Fast forward a couple of months, about a month or so before the release of their first post-Space expansion. Test servers come down, test servers come up, CU-Beta is in full force. Alpha was skipped, the Correspondents and their picked testers were told "Feedback from the Documents we presented has been invaluable"... or basically... "no Alpha for you suckas!" Everything we wanted Alpha for in the first place, bad press, bad bugs, bad systems, is out there in full. There's literally no positive feedback at all for the entire Upgrade and a month later it's still not completely right... it goes live anyways. Yay!

*cough*

Out of all the SoE products, EQ2 has done their customers the most service but even they have a few blemishes.

So basically Curt: Don't hide anything the players are going to find out about anyways. Be upfront and honest, even if that means telling people that something they were looking forward to was shitcanned.

[redjunkopera]

2) I have yet to see any proof anywhere of an SoE employee deliberately hiding the truth.

We're going to push things from the design and technological perspective and our nerfing days are behind us all the people in this room swear.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

This was the summer before OoW was released... which most notably contained the bard PBAE nerf.

[FohMD]

Originally Posted by redjunkopera

We're going to push things from the design and technological perspective and our nerfing days are behind us all the people in this room swear.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

This was the summer before OoW was released... which most notably contained the bard PBAE nerf.

Lol at calling that a nerf. That was a necessary fix to an obvious exploit.

Originally Posted by Moontayle

1) Vex Thal not being in/working correcly... take your pick.
2) Access to Plane of Time was impossible to access due to an intentionally busted Plane of Earth B. It was intentionally busted because PoT was basically not done.
3) Gates of Discord was impossible to 'finish' because a very important mechanic... i.e. 5 extra player levels... was left out and packaged in with part 2 of GoD... Omens of War.

The only thing I can think of for EQ2 was the whole Froglok thing. I believe they either inferred our outright said Frogloks were in but needed to be unlocked before saying months down the road that they weren't ever in. They subsequently added them in with an LU patch which also coincidentally added in one of their early few Raid zones.

First, I know little of SWG, so you might be right about them lying in regards to that game.

As for 1)-3), I know all those happened (and suffered through them too!), but where/when did the actual lying take place (and specifically what was it - did some dev say "Plane of Time is fully itemized and the Rathe Council is perfectly tuned"?) Remember, I'm only really wondering about cases where SoE deliberately told players something that they knew was not true.

The froglok case for EQ2 sounds like it might be one of those cases - anyone able to confirm/deny?

[redjunkopera]

That was a necessary fix

A necessary fix would have been dropping a few rooting/snaring mobs in the handful of places where AE kiting was even viable. Anyone who thinks AE kiting was trivial is kidding themselves (well pre-nostromo... but even then all you need is a split second hangup in your client for instant death).

I suppose by that logic nerfs don't exist... they are all necessary changes to obvious exploits.

Froglok was very explicitly said to be in-game and it wasn't... Jedi were stated to be in game and weren't...

[Zuuljin]

Look Utnayan, this is why people keep pulling the WoW card on you. Your posting along, with things like this:

On one side, he showed that this market was a viable venture. On the other, he also showed himself and other publishers that live patching processes can be used for unethical gain.

We also agreed that the live patching process is easily abused (And was/is) today.

but my problem is in the delivery, the hype, the PR, and some of the business decisions made which have really brought this genre into the ground just as fast as it put it up. I often wondered just how long it was going to take people to stop looking at this genre as a, "Well, I'll buy this game in 6 months when they finish it after retail release". That's horrible. And as long as that patching process is abused by publishers, it is going to continue.

Then the game comes, a lot of features cut but those features cut are not given the same press as the hype they were given years ago, and you end up with a very pissed off fanbase.

But unfortunately, as time goes on, we saw it being used via every company as a way to shuttle out piss poor product out the door knowing they could patch it later while banking on the leveling curve. It failed every time. DAOC lacked post 35 itemization and RvR relics. EQ expansions lacked high end zones being completed, resulting in players hard work and effort usually met with a brick wall of no itemization or just flat out broken encounters.(What was worse though was they lied about it) AO was a joke. Star Wars Galaxies used the patching process to actually finish the retail game they already sold - and lied about it as well with many things (Jedi being in game for one, than watching even that patched in 6 months later)

Whatever you do, just don't use the gift of that to finish a game. Yes, an MMORPG is never truly finished - but there is a big difference in using the patching process to add content, fix minor bugs, etc; and using it to completely pass things that should have been done before the game shipped.

So to any sane person reading, we assume your point to be that the patching process has lead to evil. Games pushed out and patched later is a bad thing for companies to do, and Brad is partly responsible for what it has become. A slew of games tried this process, and were failures because people dont want to play for content that isnt there.
Did I get that correct?

Now it all comes to a crashing contradiction in your next line:

And I think you'll see that most people (Including myself) are forgiving as all get out if you slip up and are honest about it. Didn't get it in the game in time? Fine. Let the player base know it will be patched in later. But lie about it, and you are going to see a shitstorm of anti credibility rain down faster than station access pass subs have fallen across the board.

So everything you just complained about above is fine and dandy as long as they tell you up front all that shit is going to be missing?

Every single thing you said above could be applied to WoW, but its ok because they told you it was all going to be missing? You now switch rails and complain that its the LYING about said stuff thats really the problem. But really, at the end of the day, lied to or not, there is content that was supposed to be there, and is not. I'd be willing to bet 95% of the EQ1 playerbase did not experience the PoM/PoEb/Time/VT deal, since it was pretty much just the high end raiders dealing with it.

If anything, I would say WoW did this even WORSE, because due to their fast leveling curve, more people were at the top with nothing to do. Much worse then the measly 5% of hardcore raiders that EQ1 pissed off.

But yet, here we are, and WoW has 7 million subs, even when releasing the game minus the content that should have already been there.

But here is where I contradict myself. I believe you are correct, and that all that shit does have an alienating effect on the playerbase. WoW is just an enigma, and had it been named anything different and released under any other company, it wouldnt have done nearly as well. I believe this is one instance where the brand name most definantly sold the product. Now I think its a good game, and its fun to play so when people first buy it, they keep playing it. But there wouldnt have been nearly enough people buying it had it come from anywhere else.

I just find it funny that you give WoW a free pass over 90% of your post, just because they didnt lie to you. Stick to your guns and admit WoW did the same stuff you were complaining about.

[Duppin]

It's hilarious, to me, that people can still talk about the evils of SOE patching when Blizzard continues to use that utterly fucking awful BitTorrent nonsense just because they're too cheap to pay for patcher bandwidth.

(insert three pages of Blizzard apologism here)

[Neric]

I have the feeling that this is all similar to the Olympics and carrying the flame. Brad used to carry it for years, then he stumbled and dropped it, now Curt has picked it up. Let's see if he can reach the goal.