Re: Waging WAR: RvR packs

Dear Massively,

Your article shows excessive lack of general knowledge on the subject which you’re writing about. Your speculations are based on other speculations, your facts are based on pre-alpha hints, and your article overall just has a mediocrity sort of smell.

Next time, please try not to use the word “DLC” as a fear mongering tool. Show me an MMO without DLCs, and I’ll show you an MMO that has not had an expansion pack released. Your behavior towards the issue can only be compared to running around a record store screaming “DRM! DRM! DRM!”

Your job as a news-oriented blog is to report news about games, and report to the MMO community on how they’re doing in general. Being a news-oriented blog means that you should have very little to no opinion in any of your articles without a clear disclaimer of such. I’d very well consider Massively the Fox News of MMO blogging sites because of this atrocity. “Although concrete information is scarce and difficult to find…” That’s about where you stop writing. Right there. Instead, you took ideas from some of our lesser informed community and jumbled it up into a post with an atmosphere critical of BioWare Mythic’s decision to take a route most studios don’t have the balls to try and take in the western market.

“Four sets of armor and two sets of weapons per career sounds like a lot of work for Mythic – who can’t even release all of the first batch of scenario weapon art in one patch.” – Massively “writer” Greg Waller

Massively is one of those sites I expect to show at least some amount of respect when it comes to the issue of people losing their jobs. I hope you realize, Greg, that much of the Mythic staff lost their jobs in a rough economy. That’s why scenario weapon additions took a little extra time. I’m sure you had nothing to do with anyone losing their jobs, since you have never cancelled your WAR subscription, right?

All of that being said, I would really love Massively to write up a post for us explaining why exactly cheap DLC-like twice-per-year content delivery is a bad thing compared to *gasp* $40 once-per-2-years content delivery.

I’m sure that will be rife with mediocrity and biased criticism also.

On The Community: Mark Jacobs

It’s important to me that this gets reposted so it can be seen by the WAR community. In other words, this is serious business.

QUOTE:

“Folks,
Over the years decades (what a thought), I have always tried to express my appreciation for the support of the Community in my State of the Game/Mea Culpa messages. While some have thought of it as disingenuous, anyone who worked closely with me at Mythic or back in my AUSI days knows just how much I care about the players who play in and pay for the games I have had a hand in creating. Publicly I have always talked about the difference between Community and community and even when some communities were mad at me/Mythic, I was always grateful for their support. While at times I could get frustrated with members of a community when things got especially personal and nasty (being human and all that), I always remembered that it was the players who make up the Community who were paying to play our games. Back when I was designing and coding my own games (Galaxy and Aradath) I pioneered the twin concepts of “Suggest and Win” and “Bug Hunt and Win” to reward the community for helping to improve my games. I knew the importance of doing such things then as I still do to this day. That being said, it’s a really good time to once again thank you all, especially now when I don’t have a paying/playing Community anymore.

My thanks go out to all the players who have come through the doors of the games I have been privileged to help create over the years. The run that started with Galaxy and Aradath/Dragon’s Gate, passed through Aliens Online, Silent Death, Godzilla Online and grew to Dark Age of Camelot and ended with WAR was made possible with your support and I’ve never forgotten that and I never will. I have always been and will always be a believer of not treating the players as nothing more than walking and talking wallets and I have and will always maintain that belief even if/when it comes at a personal cost.

So, a special shout-out to all the communities, fan sites and forums out there whether or not I’ve been roasted, toasted and posted there, you may never know just how important you really were to me and to my games but maybe one day you will.
Mark”

Source: http://onlinegamesareanichemarket.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/thank-you-vivendi-universal-interactive-publishing/#comment-2623

Why MMOs Are Like Industrial Bands

Pretend for a moment that MMOs are Bands. You know, the music kind. In this comparison, I’m going to use Industrial genre references because that’s what I like. I don’t care what music you like, because my likes are more relevant to -my- blog.

Here’s where I’m going to make wild links between things, and you’re probably going to disagree. Keep in mind that I’m going to leave lots of games out, I’m going to leave lots of great bands out. This is a simple Saturday project for fun.

First off I’m going to compare EverQuest to Throbbing Gristle. Throbbing Gristle was rough around the edges, it was mean, it was basically the first of it’s kind… but most importantly, it’s the forefather of Industrial music. EverQuest is the basis for today’s MMOs. It had PvP, but it was rough and original to itself. I’d say EverQuest’s popularity brought a lot of people into the world of competitive massive online gaming. It’s PvE was competitive, and it also had PvP. EverQuest is Throbbing Gristle to modern PvP MMOs.

Let’s scoot ahead to Dark Age of Camelot. DAoC as all know it. Let’s compare DAoC to Skinny Puppy. Skinny Puppy picked up where Kraftwerk and Throbbing Gristle left off and they refined it into something way more listen-able. It was still rough, it was still growly, and it wasn’t perfect. This is where a fan-base for Industrial style really started shooting up. Similarly, DAoC is responsible for bringing people into massive, cooperative PvP, called RvR. Neither Skinny Puppy or DAoC are on a strict IP ruleset, they’ll readily change to meet what they feel is best for themselves. They’ve both made mistakes that their fans regret, and they’ve both evolved a long way. Either way, every future PvP MMO or Industrial band can thank DAoC or Skinny Puppy. Both Skinny Puppy and DAoC are still alive today, and their loyal fans still have great memories.

Here’s where I’m going to do something a little more daring: Compare WoW to Marilyn Manson. I’m making this comparison because once, Marilyn Manson was respectably fantastic. WoW used to be a great game, I don’t know many people who would completely disagree with that. Both Manson and WoW quickly forgot about the things that got them where they were, however, and quickly detached from their roots. WoW and Manson are very refined, very clean. Once their following started getting big, however, they pulled heavily away from the way they got there, and appealed to the masses that started following. Many original WoW adopters (the people who got it where it is) wince at the sight of what it’s become, similarly many original Marilyn Manson fans look at the music he puts out today and will get violent about it. What does this have to do with PvP? Well, like it or not, WoW is still a MMO title with a sizeable PvP following… or a memory of a PvP following if anything.

Here comes WAR. I’m going to compare WAR to Nine Inch Nails. Nine Inch Nails started out very closely to Skinny Puppy, and Reznor has stayed very close to his roots, albeit with modern enhancements based on more recent, more popular successes. The same can be said about WAR. Both actually have had very large issues with money. WAR isn’t old enough to see if it will pull it’s self out with a big bang just yet, but when it does, Nine Inch Nails will be by far the best comparison. I think it’s safe to assume that sometime in the nearish future, WAR will be able to pull itself out of this financial hole and be that one Industrial band you actually hear on the radio outside of Hot Topic.

If WAR fails us (and I trust it won’t be Mythic’s fault), maybe we’ll get an MMO that we can compare to KMFDM one day. is a drug against WAR!

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WAR Moderators: Unofficial Official Response

WAR Forum Moderators get $0/hour. We aren’t Mythic employees. It doesn’t say BioWare under our names, it says Moderator. We don’t have special privileges. We don’t get to talk to Devs about Developing.

It’s time for someone to shed light on the Volunteer Moderator program for WAR forums. I’ll do it.

• Moderators a players too, and when we’re giving an opinion or response we’re giving an educated opinion or response from a player’s point of view. When I say that Shaman is underpowered, I say that as a player, not an official BioWare Mythic source of information.

• Moderators are under the strongest EA NDA there is. Even if we had information that you don’t, and we just might, we can’t share it. We can be held accountable in a court of law. You’ll know a Moderator said something official when they’re in court the next week. So far, none of us have seen a lawsuit.

• Moderators have their game accounts compensated. This seems like we make $15/month income for Moderators and are therefor employees, but this isn’t how it holds up in technical terms. Technically, account time costs nothing for BioWare Mythic, and they’re still paying us nothing. I don’t get a statement in the mail every 2 weeks. I get ORvR every day.

• You can dispute Moderator actions. Talk to James if you have a problem with something we did. However, Mythic can decide to do whatever they wish in terms of forum moderation, and just like your in-game account, your forum account can be terminated without even listing a reason. So be nice.

• Yes, your in-game account is held accountable (heh) for your forum actions. If you’re a big enough pain in our asses, you might lose the ability to log into the game. This is something that was said when the Lithium forums were initially released and I think some people have completely forgotten about it.

Please, ask questions. If you ask questions here and I don’t know the answer I will actually contact James and get it answered.

Related articles:

• BioWare Mythic says “Never!” to Real ID (massively.com)
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Moderators: An Unofficial Official Response

1.3.6 Character Select: I got lots.

This will be short, if for some reason you haven’t noticed, 1.3.6 includes a control for switching between pages of characters, or which realm you wish to play on. On the PTS, we have 20 character slots.

1.3.6 Test 2: More To Learn

Friday, August 6th.

Anyone who’s anyone who’s anyone’s anyone will be there. The 2nd 1.3.6 test already? It’s coming quick, even though I blogged about 1.3.6 back in June. It’s been a long time, hearing about changes, some of us actually giving feedback about them, and seeing new changes come through based on that feedback.

1.3.6. Test 1 saw us capturing our princess, which just happened to be in another castle. We saw the test removal of friendly collision… and surprisingly I haven’t actually seen a post about it yet on the forums. Dunno what’s up with that. That is a change that needs to come into the game, if there’s any feedback Mythic should ignore, that’s it. Ignore negative feedback towards changes I like, please.

1.3.6 Test 2 can only bring more excitement, more player involvement, and a few less princesses. This PTS build will -probably- be further along, so it’ll be somewhat closer to what the final version will feel like. I expect 1.3.6 to release August 10th if everything is going well. If too many bug reports are submitted, I fully expect an August 17th release. QA takes time, although not many new changes have been announced in the roundtable area lately, so I believe the internal build is complete.

I’m not about to link to any information on the matter, you should know exactly where to find it.

Oh, and bring your guild.

Re: Eurogamer Comments Section

Referring to the comments made by users here:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bioware-mythic-interview

You people are the cancer that killed WAR’s initial success.
You people are the cancer that’s killing new MMORPGs.

You aren’t welcome in the world of niche MMOs, take your delirious comments like “WoW was good at launch” elsewhere, it’s pure insanity and blatant ignorance for the workings of MMORPGs altogether.

More publicity for WAR is great, especially when it’s positive publicity. However, I’m sorry it was published to a cesspool like Eurogamer.

They might as well have posted it on the WoW forums.

Soon

It was quiet again.

My attorney had taken his robe off and was pouring an AP pot on his chest to facilitate the tanning process. “What the hell are you blogging about?” he muttered, staring up at the daemon moon with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Elven sunglasses. “Neva mind” I said. “It’s your turn ta drive boss.” I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Ridin’ Wulf toward the edge of the path.

No point in mentioning these rats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

Picture: Realm Balance Explained