Josh Drescher put this up on his personal site a while ago, and I keep meaning to put it up here. It’s the cinematic from the killed-in-development roman/sci-fi MMO Imperator. Good stuff.

This is something that I have to say, I love about my job. Despite the pain, suffering, and etc, there is never a truly ‘empty’ week in MMO gaming news. The doldrums of regular game releases just never hits my favorite part of the industry thanks to patches, updates, and (this year) drama out the yin-yang.

Last two days alone:

• SOE Launches Proper RMT services for EQ/EQII
• Warhammer adds two of its missing classes
• Infogrames/Atari purchases Cryptic Studios
• Age of Conan server merges delayed
• Mythic won’t skimp on WAR Updates for Expansion

Paul poked me to be sure I watched the follow-up to the video I was critical of the other day.

Message recieved, guys! Glad to see it was all in good fun. My original statment of “awesome that you’re admitting when there are problems” and Mark’s subsequent statement about making sure issues are taken care of before tackling the expansion ring very very true to me. Well done!

I’ll add my own “Sorry Colin” – and add one for Paul – if my own reaction was overly knee-jerky.

It’s incredibly encouraging to see Mythic take the bull by the horns, addressing the Open RVR issues that Warhammer seems to be having:

oRvR should be a major focus for leveling, item gain, etc. in WAR.  Some of the systems are already in place and in Tier 4, oRvR is alive and well.  On other Tiers, however, oRvR is not being engaged in as often as we had hoped when we launched WAR.  Our goal is to ensure that oRvR is the place where players can level the fastest, get the best items and overall, have a great time while doing it.  It is supposed to be riskier, more challenging but ultimately, more rewarding than any other place within WAR.

What is outlined in this letter are some of the ways we plan on making this happen over the next few months and beyond.

As always, we thank you for your patronage and support.  We won’t let you down.

Mark Jacobs, for all the things you can ding him about, really knows how to bring it home with statements like that. MMO gamers are customers, first and foremost. I don’t think that you should have the same expectations with MMOs as with other products, but this kind of forward thinking active response to real issues speaks volumes about Mythic’s commitment to the game.

So: industry cheerleading yay! Go Mythic Go!

In a comment to my post yesterday about Warhammer, Snafzg said: “If you’re releasing a product you’re damned right I’m going to compare it to another established product in the market. If you launch something that doesn’t compare in terms of quality, why should people give you the benefit of the doubt, especially as paying customers? We don’t do it with automobiles, restaurant food, or clothing. Why do MMOs get a free pass?”

Sorry, I just don’t buy these ‘we’re too easy on MMOs’ arguments. Should they be good? Yes. Should they run? Yes. Should they be fun? Yes. If any of these things are untrue at launch, I totally agree, that’s unacceptable. Witness: Vanguard, Age of Conan, Auto Assault, etc, etc.

But if the question is, “Should they be as good as a game that’s been running for four years?”, the answer is no. If you think the answer should be yes you’re dreaming. Seriously. Look at this realistically. While WAR was still deciding whether to wear boxers or briefs World of Warcraft was fiddling with PvP balance, raid tweaking, even superfluous fun content like mounts. Blizzard has had four years of live service to tweak, fix, and change their game. As a result (as I said on SUWT), World of Warcraft is the best MMO ever made, hands down, do not pass Go.

Warhammer has had two months. If you seriously expect a game that’s been out in the sun for two months to compare, polish/content/balance-wise with a four year old game, you’ve really got to re-examine your priorities. MMOs are not likes restaurants, automobiles, or clothing. If a car doesn’t run, it’s because there was a problem in the factory that could have been fixed on the drawing board. If clothes don’t fit, it’s because they were sewn wrong in the factory. If restaurant food tastes bad, it’s because it was prepared badly in the kitchen.

Get it through your heads:

Beta testing is a joke. We’ve talked about it for ages, about the motives behind ‘free players’ and the lack of actual testing. People do not play Betas like they play live games, it’s a demonstrable fact. As a result, the only way to know for certain if you’ve done the right thing is to launch your game. Warhammer did the right thing; they launched, they hit the waters, and now they’re swimming like crazy.

They’re trying to understand what exactly they’ve built in relation to how players interact with the systems, in relation to how the systems interact with each other, and so on and so forth. In a couple of months Warhammer is going to have more content, two more classes, and a lot more balance. That’s when I’ll go back, and that’s when we’ll start to hear a lot of amazing things about this great game Mythic has created.

So, say it with me: MMOs are different.

We all knew it would come, of course. Folks who have  … perhaps not experienced the full heartbreak of MMO after  MMO … psyche themselves up and get ready and raring to go. From optimistic post-launch experiences at K&G’s site to this enthusiastic one-month lookback at Waagh!, the mood has turned and it has turned quickly.

I think the good still outweighs the bad – barely

“I must admit that WAR is turning a bit dull for me. Days has gone past without I felt the old urge to log on and play a few hours, and that’s pretty bad considering that feeling grew in my mind first after months and months in World of Warcraft. Tier 1 was fun, tier 2 was also fun, but somewhere in tier 3 it all went wrong.”

A.I.

“The end result of WAR’s stupid mobs is another weak link in their PvE chain. I know PvE can’t be expected to rise to the challenge or complexity of PvP, but c’mon. We can try a bit harder than this. How the enemy mobs act, react and fight goes a long way to making me feel as though world PvE combat actually means something and has context — that I can strain my believability to the point where I accept that these mobs have an identity of their own. (And not to pile on or anything, but can I put a vote in that WAR needs a bit more in terms of death animations?)”

This is probably my favorite example, wherein Keen essentially espouses the viewpoint that Mythic should dump most of Warhammer’s core design concepts.

Drastic changes needed for Warhammer Online

“All around me my friends, brother (yep, Graev quit a little while ago), and guildmates are calling it quits and either hanging up their mmorpg hats until the next ‘next best thing’ or closing the door on mmorpgs altogether.  WAR -has- lost a decent number of people to WotLK, although the game is holding up remarkably well I must admit, and it’s really caused me to stop and look at the game as a whole.  Drastic changes are needed in WAR if the game will survive. It’s time to pick up the hatchet; the time for using a scalpal has come and gone.”

Read on for a few thoughts on this snapback.
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My new header!