And we’re back with part two of my epic encounter with Paul Barnett of EA Mythic and the Warhammer Online project.

Yesterday we began by talking about Paul’s introduction to the games industry, and how he came to work at EA Mythic in the first place.

Today we’ll do up the part of the conversation where Mr. Barnett chats about his views on the gaming industry itself. This was my secret intention all along, to get him to weigh in on the role of people within the games industry as advocates and promoters of the industry in general. We also talk about Mr. Barnett’s favorite piece of content in WAR, and the role of those pesky designers we’re always hearing so much about.

Come back tomorrow for our conclusion, the audio of the recording (not to be missed, much better than the text here), and (at his request) my own thoughts on Mr. Barnett and his opinions.

Oh, plus: Hello to Paul’s Mum and Dad! Sorry about the swearing. He really is a nice guy. :)

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I’ve just been lucky enough to talk now with two of the driving forces behind Warhammer Online, and today MMOG Nation presents part one of a couple-part interview with EA Mythic’s Paul Barnett. Barnett is currently filling the role of Creative Director on the project, translating CEO Mark Jacobs’ ideas into game content and gameplay.

Mr. Barnett is an outspoken and enthusiastic fellow, precisely why I wanted to get him ‘in front of a microphone.’ We talk about Warhammer a little bit, but mostly this interview is a discussion with an inspired speaker about a series of subjects he feels very passionately about.

In this first interview, we discuss Paul’s connection with Mythic and Games Workshop, why WAR was moved back, the lack of reaction to that decision, and the rationale behind the inspiring phrase: “Fun, you F#ckers!”

Read on for Paul’s hilarious and lengthy responses, and come back tomorrow for Part 2 of our discussion.
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It’s a Wednesday, and I haven’t post about last week and this past weekend’s EQ2 adventuring. If I don’t get to it today, I’ll be really quite behind.

It’s been an exciting week, actually. New zones means new crafting (my wife’s favorite thing in the game), and crafting means gathering. So not only did we play in our usual slot last Wednesday, we’ve actually play three times since then. Saturday we played for many hours just gathering up materials, not really questing, and having a good time. Our Necromancer wasn’t there, so we kept things on the quiet. Monday we did the same, with a bit more militant bent. We were our full party of four again, so we interspersed gathering with bug/bear/boar/turtle/ slaying in Enchanted Lands.

It’s been a good time of late. I think we’re all really enjoying it full on again, and while there was talk earlier of us not necessarily making it to the level cap, I think that’s a foregone conclusion now. Everyone has agreed to standardize on the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, so soon enough we’ll be hitting the DoF content for levels 40+. Good times! Hell, at this rate we may even be at max level when RoK comes out! WoW was the first expansion I was ‘ready’ for … it would be exciting to have a regular group to explore a new expansion with in the manner it is intended. Woot!

But, I get ahead of myself …
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Update: It’s official now. Smedley’s post on the forums gives up most of the details. The official press release says that the game sold about 200,000 units since launch.

So. F13 has the news:

At approximately 4:30PM [April 14th], Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot. By whom? Doesn’t seem to have been Brad McQuaid, if it was, nobody is talking. But that doesn’t seem like something he’d do. But I suppose the executioner is irrelevant since most folks secretly want it to be SOE and it wasn’t. As it stands, people were told to come back tomorrow to do their paperwork and some may get hired by SOE.

Actually, we know for sure the McQuaid wasn’t the one to do it. Grouchy Gamer reports that lord-and-master of Vanguard Brad McQuaid hasn’t been in the Sigil offices since last year. You know, since before the game shipped? Just in case you think that’s some crazy guy on a website, I’ll go on record as saying I can verify most of what he’s saying. I too have heard from ’sources’ who say that the hard workers, the guys on the ground at Sigil, were fucked over by a gent who tipped his toe into the ‘running a company’ pool and decided it was a wee bit too nippy for him.

One of these ’sources’ has been suggesting I look into this further, talk to some of these guys and write it up. And I will say: if there’s any ex-Sigil employees looking to talk my email address is right here on the site. Update: F13 has a talk with one of the ex-devs and lays it all out.

But the reality is, I haven’t dug very hard because the whole thing depresses the hell out of me. How can a guy like McQuaid, who was there at the very beginning, care so little about the project he started? This wasn’t some green schlub out of college: he helped to make one of these things when ‘catass’ wasn’t even a term yet. Hell, he helped make the game that spawned the term.

Krones has a few insightful things to say about this over at Plaguelands, but the last words go to Grouchy:

I should tell you that I’m pissed that I wasted 2 years on developing a community at my site for a game that is nothing more than a steaming pile of shit. I’m pissed that the good people (and good developers) that I care about at Sigil are now in the street, and Brad still has millions and Jeff Butler a job … In the end, this game may someday be good. Tomorrow, when this news is announced a lot of the SOE haters will just jump ship, whether SOE had anything to do with this game failing or not. Fact is, it has (failed.) And fact is, it’s not SOE’s fault. The blame for this one falls squarely at the desk where the buck should stop. The CEO’s office. The empty one in the corner.

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At the SOE Gamer’s Day event in LA the week before last, I spoke with a couple of fascinating people. Getting to nerd it up with Scott Hartsman about the class balance of Inquisitors may be the most fun I’ve yet had covering a games media event.

John Blakely, head of the SOE-Austin development house, was onhand at the event and a nice enough guy to put up with my nattering questions about Star Wars Galaxies. It was, of course, all we had to talk about … he staunchly withstood the temptation to talk about DC Online. (Curse your Will Save, Blakely!)

Here are my notes from our talk, which I (for reasons I can’t comprehend) didn’t record:

• The Galaxies team has been stripped down to just about 20 people. Their aim is to be agile, flexible, and focused. IE: The whole group turns on a single project, attacks it, succeeds, and then moves on to something new as soon as they can.
• The folks that are there now are dedicated and passionate. They’ve learned a lot of lessons from the last two years, and all they want to do now is shut up and make the game.
• Despite my best efforts I couldn’t get any hints about what Chapter 7 will be about. John said that what they like to do is take some time every few months to do some ‘bug squashing’. Once Chapter 6 is stable on the live servers, they’re going to make some time to get on their list of outstanding problems. They essentially take the list of known issues, prioritize them (with input from the community), and then knock em off starting at the top and working down.
• We spent a goodly amount of time talking about the company’s relationship with LucasArts. He was reluctant to place blame with their group, but he did admit that SOE and the house that Skywalker built have occasionally had rough patches. His statement was that, if you look at the project’s history it’s possible to see where there were problems based on how the game was doing. Problems in SWG probably equated to problems between SOE and LucasArts.
• Mr. Blakely took pains to note that, while they have had problems in the past the relationship between the two companies is probably stronger than it has been in over a year. He also shared a bit about their process. Every year SOE-Austin meets with the folks at LucasArts to decide goals for the coming year. The tacke the queue of ideas they’ve built up over the previous 12 months, and use feedback from the community via boards, IMs, conversations, and player events to prioritize what needs to be done first.
• This year’s goals are exactly what has been said in public: no expansion this year, just lots of free content, making the game great for the players.
• Now that the profession expertise systems are all in place, they can start turning their attention to more ‘pure fun’ additions. He said to expect a lot more new content into the summer and fall.
• The one thing I could wrestle out of him is that … eventually … they are going to be expanding the Legacy quest series. They’d love to just be rolling out additions to the quest line all the time, but one quest is a not inconsiderable amount of effort.
• The problem is one of time. We talked at some length about the problems facing designers the simple act of adding a quest to the game. SWG was not designed to have quests added on a regular basis; SWG’s sandbox concept when the game launched is still working against them. As a result, the tools they’re using (to this day) are awkward and clumsy when you consider the amount of information they’d like to add for a given quest. It’s something they’re working on.
• When they work on systems in the future, they’re going to get a ‘big slice of the pie’ as they’ve done with the new version of creature handling going in with Chapter 6. If they spend time working on new systems, they essentially want as many players as possible to have access to those systems. Mr. Blakely didn’t rule out the possibility of more expertise systems, like creature handling, in the future.

Thanks again to Mr. John Blakely for his time at what was certainly a busy event.

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This is what Blizzard’s frontpage looks like right now:

I don’t know what they’re planning, and this is just a guess, but I think I’m going to agree with Brent: Not a StarCraft MMOG. The two lines converge on one title, the “?”. My hope is that this means a new IP, but I dunno. That’s my gut reaction to the image, though: NOT a StarCraft MMOG.

I don’t see a pattern in the lines or anything. As Matt says below, I think it’s just a timeline. What makes me think that it might be a new element is the fact that … well … they’re due. Their last truly new IP was StarCraft, which launched 10 years ago next year. The company has made some phenomenal games since then (obviously), but you can’t help but think the designers over there are ready to explore some new ground.

Assuming their Massive game is still in the works in the background and that this is a title in some other genre, my thought is that it might be another RTS title?
We don’t have long to wait, so …
Update: Re-written for clarity.

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One of my favoritest sites has been playing host to MMOG-related links you might find interesting.

Their report from the Indie MMOG event is a bit latish in coming compared to Brent’s coverage, but still worth checking out just the same.

Speakers and attendees took part in a two-day dialogue that explored history, philosophies and techniques of massively multiplayer game makers working outside the commercial realm. Keynotes from Dr. Richard Bartle, co-creator of MUD, and Josh Williams, CEO of GarageGames set the tone each day. The event, though modestly attended, was marked by the notable enthusiasm of participants. Each day offered two tracks worth of panels and round table discussions. The game design track focused on the creative side of world making. The free-for-all debate in “Class Systems Versus Skills Systems” found many designers seeking ways to sidestep MMO orthodoxy.

Last week’s SOE Gamer’s day information had the lock taken off of it, and so we have more on the Launcher, the announcement of Kung Fu Hustle, and I got to natter at Smedley again. Remember, kids, if you’re going to insult a company make sure and be polite so that you get invited back to things.

There seems to be a lot of focus on newer games, things on the horizon. Will there be a push back towards getting some of the older games into the public eye?

Well, our retention has gone up on a number of games, not down. The teams have their heads down, they’re working hard, and we’re learning from past mistakes. In the case of EverQuest 2, it’s still a very very healthy business for us. In terms of getting it in the public eye, that’s the purpose of the free updates; we’re trying to target several large-scale free things to add to the world.

Cuppy had a few things to say about the interview, that you might be interested in checking out.

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