Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Zeste]

Originally Posted by Old Man Potter

I would respectfully ask you this Mr. Schilling: if 38 Studios is not ready to release information about your game(s) then what is the purpose of this thread existing many years before the projected release of your game?

Thank you.

Are you fucking kidding me? Hopefully someone else wants to take the energy to point out the finer retarded qualities of your statement.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Agraza]

Originally Posted by Old Man Potter

It's not unreasonable to believe that gamers genuinely come to discussion forums to discuss MMOs.

Fixed.

This isn't a blog or a news site. New information isn't aggregated to the top of the pile.

I'm also curious what special treatment he is getting. Obviously there are cock suckers in this thread, but so what? They exist for every MMO. Is it the comics inspired in part by the thread? What control would you like expressed over them? "No quality cock sucking allowed, only the bleeting of sheep and teeth gnashing of trolls is to be permitted!"

I don't see where you get the notion that people have a legitimate expectation of finding information in this or any other thread here. I think they have a legitimate expectation of finding a FoH style rant/counter-rant slapfest with the rare informative post thrown in at a 1:100 ratio.

He didn't even create the thread, so why does he have to explain why it exists? He's just participating in it, and given that his name and his company are the claimed subject of the thread, I think he should have every right to. Shouldn't he be allowed to face his accusers?

This thread has moved from one subject to another, and has been a catch-all for wishful thinking, theorizing, and protest in relation to the current state of the MMO industry. While 38 Studios has remained a vague, intangible focus for most of the thread, Curt has rarely defined the subject himself. Most of the time it is free-form bullshit like your post and mine.

[Grave]

There's plenty of substance to this thread for those of us who are interested in the company and what it's like to brave the waters and take on the daunting task of creating an MMO, and beyond that, a brand new IP, from scratch. There has been a great deal of information that I was able to read about in this thread before I saw it posted anywhere else, and that is a very cool thing.

In some cases the thread has derailed into some great discussions about game design choices and preferences, the hardships of new MMOs competing with a giant like Blizzard, and various other topics that were arguably more interesting than most of the other top threads on this board.

If you're not interested in the company, that's perfectly fine, but some of us are and it has nothing to do with the fact that Curt is behind it and much more to do with the people he has hired and the statements they have released that get people excited. It has nothing to do with giving Curt special treatment.

[Gaereth]

The thread was created by a gamer and Curt just happened to respond...as a gamer AND as the owner of said company. The ability for him to jump into this thread and give and take, even without being able to tell us much, gives at least the illusion that he could pile right into a group of us with ease.

It is decidedly different from the other head honchos that have participated in this forum because he isn't just talking about his game. He is talking about his gaming experience, just like we do. He is learning about new games, like some of the conversations about Eve, and then going and taking a look. Just like most of us do.

From what you can derive from the thread, if you either were with it from the start or actually sat down and read it all at a later date, is that Curt has a very same nerd love for these games that we do.

He got the special love that all new posters get on this forum. He rolled with that love and returned it in kind in many instances.

[Faille]

I think Mark Jacobs made a very good point that companies need to have the resources to cope with the inevitable setbacks that MMOs are going to face when they enter the market. Attemping to make a great, fun, stable, polished game straight out of the box is certainly admirable, but it's not realistic. Knowing a company has enough resources to delay until it's ready is a good, but even knowing that have enough resources to fix things after release without it being making the customer pay for the fixes would be good also.

[Quince]

Originally Posted by Old Man Potter

I never complained about being forced to read this thread. I just offered an explanation about why this thread which is about your and our company seems to be getting special treatment despite the reality that there is very little actual substantive information about your products.

Special treatment? So is the FoH mods bumping up this thread just so they can get "leet infoz" from curt or are people discussing topics in the thread and thus keeping it up top? I would read the rest of what you said but I stopped right there.

(yawns)
Old Man Potter =

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Faille

I think Mark Jacobs made a very good point that companies need to have the resources to cope with the inevitable setbacks that MMOs are going to face when they enter the market. Attempting to make a great, fun, stable, polished game straight out of the box is certainly admirable, but it's not realistic.

The flaws in this comment are just, well they're just wrong. This is how the normal everyday business world thinks, and in many cases it's why things happen the way they happen.

Will our product be perfect? Nope. Will it be flawless? Probably not.

Will it be fun? Damn well better be.

Will it be stable? How on earth could I spend the huge amount of money I am and then launch an unstable game? That just cannot happen and the bigger point is that we have the say in WHEN it happens.

Will it be polished? Hell yes it will. We don't have ANYONE breathing down our necks to hit a release date.

Here's the thing. Doing what I did for a living, meant to me that no one on earth was ever harder on me than me. This is no different, they all get that. If we don't fall over with excitement and passion about this thing we're f'ing it up, and we wont CONTINUE TO F IT UP when/if we ever realize that. You course correct.

[Necrolyte]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

The flaws in this comment are just, well they're just wrong. This is how the normal everyday business world thinks, and in many cases it's why things happen the way they happen.

Will our product be perfect? Nope. Will it be flawless? Probably not.

Will it be fun? Damn well better be.

Will it be stable? How on earth could I spend the huge amount of money I am and then launch an unstable game? That just cannot happen and the bigger point is that we have the say in WHEN it happens.

Will it be polished? Hell yes it will. We don't have ANYONE breathing down our necks to hit a release date.

Here's the thing. Doing what I did for a living, meant to me that no one on earth was ever harder on me than me. This is no different, they all get that. If we don't fall over with excitement and passion about this thing we're f'ing it up, and we wont CONTINUE TO F IT UP when/if we ever realize that. You course correct.

I'm equally harsh on everyone so don't take this the wrong way. Making comments like those is the right thing to do from a developer; however, to actually produce those outcomes is a different story. Saying your product will be "hell yes" polished, and saying you won't continue to "F things up" if things go wrong is all fine and dandy, but until we see the goods, it's just commentary and wishful thinking.

Having seen Blizzard's talent, "infinite" funding and worked with them first-hand, even they had to face reality a lot of times when WoW approached launch and a lot of things were simply dropped and cut for later (e.g. Battlegrounds/Arenas), and a lot of mistakes were made that impacted "fun factor" or stability.

Even though no one is breathing down your necks, you do have a legitimate window of time from start of development to release to capture fans' attention and then sell them on the product then earn their loyalty. You don't see Blizzard taking 10 years on a game right? There are headaches with hardware cycles, etc, etc. It's a fine balance between choosing to delay the game further, or to settle for 90% polish and 90% fun-factor.

Prepare and expect the worse: let the fans and subscribers of your game tell you about your game. Don't tell us how your game will be XYZ until you can give us the opportunity to give you feedback on the actual game.

[Grave]

So, yeah, forever ago in this thread we were discussing problems with loot on raids, and how the job system or an "heirloom" system would be a great way for people to remain excited about running raids after they've already gotten what they need for their main class.

Apparently, someone at Blizzard read it or had the same idea.

Account Wide - Level scaled items
A new type of items has been added to the game.

* These items are Bind To Account items, you can transfer them between characters !
* These items scale with level, a level 1 character can perfectly use it and stats will scale accordingly !
* In the current beta build, you can buy them with tokens from raid dungeons
* They are not unique.

How cool would it be if we actually influenced this?

[Agraza]

I imagine a lot of people have been having the same conversation for some time, but it's nice to see our wishful thinking becoming reality regardless.

They're effectively making leveling 4-5x easier than it was in the olden days with the XP changes and these BoA items. Melee will always have a good, updated weapon, casters can get some +SP, and everyone will look fucking cool.

I would still appreciate the option of starting a new character from a higher level, but this is helpful.

[Grave]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Now that I'm seeing more about it, apparently it's less to do with helping raid loot and more to do with mains having excess badges and nothing to spend them on. You can now use the badges on these items and give them to an alt.

Still though, now that the capability is in place they could do anything with it.

[Cadrid]

Wow, I may actually finish leveling an altwith that system in place.

[Khane]

Originally Posted by Cadrid

Wow, I may actually finish leveling an altwith that system in place.

Well it's nice to see.

Currently it's only weapon,shoulders and trinkets that you can buy via this system. Though the weapons themselves relieve a lot of the levelling grief and the shoulders come with a +10% experience gained for killing mobs mod.

Hopefully, they continue to add on until you can get a full set of gear. Also you buy it with Raid badges currently, not heroic badges which kind of sucks for non-raiders.

[Tyen]

Curt, question.

First the introduction:
Now we all have been around the block and understand that we don't need fancy groundbreaking shit in our game. We just want things like combat, quests, raids, abilities, etc to fucking work. There is no secret sauce to it, just make it work, as in the opposite of broken.

The whole reason we play is the social aspect, we wouldn't be batshit insane over MMORPGs unless the social aspect is a large portion of the game.

What was amazing about Everquest is there was an immense amount of accomplishments that you could toss your cock around like it was a dressing shooter at your favorite all-you-can-eat buffet. You had tough quests that made it rare to get great looking items. When you saw someone walk by with an insane robe, weapon, bow, or decked out armor you always inspected and said "fuck that dude is leet."

THAT is what we want. Something to feed the epeen and allow us to achieve hard quests. hard missions, hard raids, and a hard experience. Every game is going the same route, tedious boring shit until max level than the fun begins. The road to max stopped being fun when it started getting easy. Shit is epic boring when it's easy.

Question here:
Are you planning on making this a difficult game, or something that holds your hand until you are max level? What is your vague outline of start to finish, am I doing a bunch of quests and dumbed down instances? Will I be going toe to toe over the best camp spots with other players? Will there be competition on the road up or will it just be a happy-go-lucky hand hold session? How do you recapture this without segregating yourself to a smaller audience?

I'm not asking for direct information from within the game, just the Foresight(tm) on the direction you are going. I would guess from being a competitive person that this better be a game that delivers player competition?

[Draegan]

You know he's not going to answer that yet, they havn't even released the name of their game yet. I'd wager you might get some answers after they tell you what they're calling it.