Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Gecko

p.s. I hope you aren't mistaking Ut and I. Ut is a jaded guy. I just try to offer my unbiased and unattacking opinion.

Everyone should be jaded until launch or play begins and you can decide on your own. And I have not been attacking in the slightest this go around. I was asking where the business experience was when she was in charge of a non profit group and that was being pointed to as experience, which it isn't.

I try to get passed the bullshit fluff and get to the real answers people want to know about. Albeit, I admit I get carried away on certain days.

I don't want this site turned into a glorified advertisement Ala Vault forums where no one goes too any more. Negative and both positive instead of this fanboy shit we see constantly when a dev pops their head in. And ask pointed questions which matter, and not sugar coat shit.

Tell it like it is. And quit dancing around issues. Or worse, people afraid to post their opinion because they are worried about their internets or being chastised.

Which as you can see, doesn't bug me for shit.

[Lleauaric~EW]

Originally Posted by Gecko

I actually prefer companies that promote from within, .

.

Dont you think this is a tab bit unreasonable of a request for a company that hasn't even announced the name of its very first product?

Maybe in these 2 years little Brantley Foster from Kansas has worked his way up the ladder after starting in the mailroom by posing as a high powered exec. But barring that.. I would assume people are probably pretty busy doing the jobs they were just hired to do.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Please, it's upper management. They're too busy inventing new titles to give themselves to do actual work. 8(

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Lleauaric~EW

Dont you think this is a tab bit unreasonable of a request for a company that hasn't even announced the name of its very first product?

Maybe in these 2 years little Brantley Foster from Kansas has worked his way up the ladder after starting in the mailroom by posing as a high powered exec. But barring that.. I would assume people are probably pretty busy doing the jobs they were just hired to do.

38 is a small shop. If they're anything like other small shops, when someone leaves, another takes their workload, in addition to keeping most of their own.

Plus, actually not having a product probably allows them to shift executives without having an impact.

Also, Zhex is right....

[Mippo]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

To some degree you are 100% correct. People aren't just going to fall in love and start reading quest text dialogue boxes because RA wrote them. One of the way we have to innovate is in HOW and WHEN we tell the story. Those are as important, if not more so, than the story itself.



Yep. There is no deep science in this point, the game, experience HAS to be fun. For an MMO fun is a very different animal since that fun has to spread out over months and years of game play in one world. That's huge, that's the scary part.

In regards to lore, the first time it's beaten the lore is likely going to be posted either through screenshots or videos on the internet. Even if you limit when the story is told, it's eventually going to come out. What keeps people doing instances 10+ times is not the lore, it's the rewards that people want from beating the instance.

The system in which HOW people are rewarded is the most important. If people think that rewards are not worth the time in regards to the difficulty and time required to beat the content, they will lose interest. If the rewards are developed properly, people will repeat the same content a ridiculous number of times to get the rewards they want.

In regards to playtime, there isn't much to learn from the data. It's already well known that a large portion of the playerbase can only devote small periods of time per online session. In order to cater to those players, a game needs to have content that can be completed in that time period. Let's assume a portion of your playerbase can only login for 1-2 hours per session. If you develop an instance that can be completed within that time period, the content can be used by everyone including the players who can login for long periods of time. For that reason alone, if you want to cater to the largest number of players possible it's beneficial for a lot of content to be developed assuming players have short periods of time to play. The data is irrelevant.

World of Warcraft took it one step further, and actually took the random factor out of the rewards as well. If you kill a boss, you loot a form of currency which can be used to purchase the item you want. If you complete a battleground, you get a form of currency that can be used to purchase items regardless of whether you win or lose. That means that a player who wants the item, and can only login for short periods of time can still achieve the item he wants. Everybody is always working towards a form of achievement and when they login, regardless of how much time they have, there is something for them to do even if it takes as little as 15 minutes. It could be something as simple as a daily quest for faction for a mount they want etc. The wider variety of content appealing to different playtimes, and different forms of achievement, the longer you can keep a wider variety of people playing. The odds are greater you will have something that appeals to each type of gamer and because they want the reward they will keep playing to try and achieve it. My primary point here is that it would be very hard for the lore itself, due to how stuff gets spoiled on the internet, to ever become that proverbial carrot maintaining the playerbase. It's a bonus, a competitive edge.

Basically, the success or failure of Copernicus is likely going to depend on how you appeal to a players sense of achievement, and their competitive and social nature regardless of the lore.

[Drave]

,

[OneofOne]

Just when I want to tell Ut to bugger off already, along comes more slurp-slurp.

Keep on keeping it real Ut, someone here has to.

[Frax]

Originally Posted by OneofOne

Just when I want to tell Ut to bugger off already, along comes more slurp-slurp.

Keep on keeping it real Ut, someone here has to.

Ut just rails out here because if it was on his own guild's forums he would get banned for getting off topic or the odd typo.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Frax

Ut just rails out here because if it was on his own guild's forums he would get banned for getting off topic or the odd typo.

Then I would go down to Texas, buy Kaubel a burrito, and hack my way back in.

Two things are for certain however:

1> Grassroots shit wouldn't be put up with.

2> You, (Not you specifically) would be laughed right the fuck out of the forum if supporting a WoW Add on to garner more info for marketing for a video game from a different company to take market share.

Pretty sad state of affairs over at 38 when you are the owner of a company posting on an MMORPG forum asking others to download your spyware to track your gaming habits in a competing game.

This shows me they are thinking way too fucking much about what time the person logs in and how much play time is garnered and what they are doing, then sitting down and making a fucking game. If spyware analysis shows that people the ages of 16-25 play more between 4pm and 10pm and do their trade skills between 6pm and 8pm that Copornicus will have inate bonuses to leveling trade skills at 6pm to 8pm?

Come on.

[Flight]

Ut, your presence is requested in the Champions Online thread. Some joker just suggested we should finally accept unfinished, broken MMOs at launch. Go get him tiger.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Flight

Ut, your presence is requested in the Champions Online thread. Some joker just suggested we should finally accept unfinished, broken MMOs at launch. Go get him tiger.

Sorry. Topic of the day today is now about overallocating resources to analyzing your market via other games instead of making shit fun to play and you do not have to worry what time of day Joe Billy Bob makes a lion pelt.

[Flight]

Now, you see, women can multi-task. Thats why they make good CEOs. You wouldn't find a woman not being able to handle more than one topic at a time.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Flight

Now, you see, women can multi-task. Thats why they make good CEOs. You wouldn't find a woman not being able to handle more than one topic at a time.

Yeah. A dick in her hand, and purse strings in the other. She taught Lisa everything she knows.

But by all means, let's all download the WOW add on to help Curt in his endeavors to making the same exact game that WOW is. Raid times, raid groups, soloability, questing, phasing, certain things happening more at a certain time of the day because that was when the program said you played more...

Let's take every fucking ounce of creativity and originality out of development, and place it firmly in the ass of an add on marketing tracking UI and let it auto code the game for us because obviously that matters.

The point being if they put half as much energy into the fucking game as they are putting into this retarded UI and grassroots campaign, they wouldn't have lost the CEO and they would have something of fucking substance to show. Christ it's been 3 fucking years. Another game reminded me of this exact same scenario when it lost it's publisher.

[Sylverlokk]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

Since when does chairing up a non profit networking group qualify as expertise in running a business?

Edit: Still waiting for a reply on the spyware you want people to download in the guise of a Blizzard/WOW add on so you can track marketing stats.

So you didn't get the job man, its not the end of the world you know there will be other jobs. Turn that frown upside down.

[Gnome Eater]

Not that i'd ever use a service like azeroth advisor, but even if curt used it to track what people enjoy, how can you complain about that?

My only concern is that the type of person that is likely to use such a service is most likely excessively casual, so you will get a skewed perspective of what people enjoy.

Ut, you also are on this delusion that you are somehow saving naive idealistic gamers from corrupt corporation bosses that want to take advantage of us. Most of us have played games as long as you have and are just as jaded. I completely agree with you on the matter of taking everything with a large grain of salt and withholding judgement until a playable beta is out, but why do you have to be such a dick? Are you sore that people don't recognize your genius and hire you based on your videogame playing history and word salads?

I mean christ, really, we are wide-eyed, we know he is marketing and hyping his game, why do you have to assume he is a malicious bastard who will make a terrible game and wants to rape your kids? The first few assumptions are reasonable, the latter are not.