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Richard Garriott Quits NCSoft
unc0nn3ct3d writes "In a shocking update on the seemingly endless troubles plaguing NCSoft, Richard Garriott — the king of online games, creator of The Ultima Series (and consequentially Ultima Online), as well as the recently troubled Tabula Rasa — has announced that he would be stepping down from his position at NCSoft. Apparently motivated by his recent trip into space, perhaps he has found a higher purpose while orbiting so high above the earth."
As they say, and nothing of value was lost.
Does this article call for a racist or anti-semitic diatribe? What a personal or disgusting description of a sexual encounter be more appropriate? What about a goatse link? Thank you in advance.
The "recently troubled" link leads to a blog posting from February 2008. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Tabula Rasa's still having trouble, but that's an interesting definition of "recent".
He needs to care for the alien fetus growing inside his stomach.
The games industry has sucked the life out of any 'franchise' inherited from when the PC game market was healthy.
Tabula Rasa has zero name recognition.
The number of people who know who Garriott is, is not enough to sustain usage on an MMO.
The cost of the game was exorbitant when you have zero name recognition.
MMOs have a shelf life and expire after a (very few) years.
Therefore, why would someone do a project like this, as a pure business case? I love Richard Garriott and what he represents, but I blame NCsoft for greenlighting and funding this MMO, rather than Garriott for creating it.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
This actually is a phenomenon known as the overview effect. Space travelers often report a transcendental sense of connectedness.
Damnit Richard, man! I was calling you as you passed over the UK, but you never answered. People think I'm mad when I'm looking into the sky, saying I'm trying to talk with spacemen.
Get your own free personal location tracker
What sort of troubles that aren't related to Tabula Rasa?
Is Guild Wars 2 at risk?!
... Long live the King!
Thank you for everything. The Ultima series over the years has brought me countless joy(and a bit of sorrow as well). Good luck in all that you do, Lord British.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
go and live in a monastery?
Or John Carmack...
-l
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Garriott should buy back the rights to Ultima single player games and develop remakes of the Ultima series.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The Total Perspective Vortex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Gold_(spaceship)#Total_Perspective_Vortex
Think of what it does. From the book:
"When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here."
Which is like putting someone in a space ship, have them look back at the earth, and understand how small earth is, and how small each of us are compared with the earth.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
who wants to bet he is going to start screwing up WoW next?
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
"He needs to care for the alien fetus growing inside his stomach."
... so he can help start the alien space invasion!... oh no!... This would also explain his sudden career change and it would also explain John Carmack's move into Aerospace!... see it explains a lot! ... they are both aliens!
:)
Maybe aliens have already replaced him with a replica?
Maybe the Armadillo's are behind it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace
Then again, maybe we have both had too much coffee today.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Now that he's a Space Ace he has to rescue a princess he goes time travelling. He's just cleaning up some loose ends first.
MMOs have a shelf life? Really? Since when? Thus far, I'm not aware of ANY MMOs failing. Hellgate London probably will, but it'll be the first. Ultima Online, Everquest and the like are STILL online. Not just online, under active development. A new UO expansion was released in 2007, and there's another slated for 2009.
Thus far, it seems MMOs just keep going and going. They peak and then player count drops off, but it doesn't fall to zero it levels off and you just keep running. Even MMOs that were fucking disasters on launch, like EVE Online and Shadowbane are still running.
I'm not seeing this "shelf life" you are talking about. Ultima Online is now over a decade old. That's some staying power.
Ever since I read Heinlein's 'Man Who Sold the Moon' I've hoped we'd see an entrepreneur take on the role of 'D.D. Harriman'. Lord British would be a good fit. Hopefully the perspective he gained from his space trip is outbound rather than Earth related.
Playing TR beta, I never really got the feeling he was involved beyond them using his name left and right.
I was wondering the same thing... How long would it take for them to fire him for not showing up... It may be a while before they figure out how to get that big head of his out the door of the Soyuz.
[NT]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
did he have Martian Dreams after his Ascension? Is he going to have an Exodus?
http://www.object404.com
Then again, maybe we have both had too much coffee today. :)
DDDDDDdoooonnn'nn'ttt bbeee sssiilllllllyyyy! Nnnnnoo sssssuuccchh tttthhhinngggg!!!!
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Making games that don't suck.
Oh wait... that hasn't been since Ultima Online, pre-UO:R. It was all downhill from there.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Interesting that this is in almost total opposition to the Total Perspective Vortex.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Or perhaps you've been watching the X-Files recently.
I wouldn't be too worried about Armadillo Aerospace, at least yet. If the name changes to Union Aerospace Corporation or Roush, then it may be time to worry.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Maybe aliens have already replaced him with a replica? ... so he can help start the alien space invasion!... oh no!... This would also explain his sudden career change and it would also explain John Carmack's move into Aerospace!... see it explains a lot! ... they are both aliens!
Maybe the Armadillo's are behind it!
No way, man. Garriot was possessed by an alien when he went up to the ISS (it's occupied entirely by aliens now). Carmack is still human, he's one of the few who knows the truth and is trying to boot-strap a space-militia to fight off the invasion!
The enemies of Democracy are
wasn't Warhammer Online almost completely designed around battlegrounds? I've heard it was better, but that was by Warhammer players.
I have only had a 30 day free acct for WoW and played exclusively PvE so I don't know how the PvP is, but I played lots of PvP in the Warhammer beta and heard it was similar to battlegrounds.
OTOH, I've never played Tabula Rasa, and yes their decision to scrap most of the game and start over was probably the major reason it cost so much.
I still don't think the monthly fee model will be successful for many games, yet many still try it. I think Guild Wars is probably the best content model, which basically took the magazine as a subscription model but I think they failed on execution by exclusively using zones, making PvE difficulty ramp up too quickly (esp. mid-to-late game - then compensating with consumables and heroes which makes those areas too easy) and putting the game too much on rails which I think limits the fun factor, not to mention almost completely killed the necessity for parties with skill programmable heroes (killing the social aspect almost completely). About the only time I play GW these days is when I delete a character and start over or play PvP - the early game is the only social part.
Which always goes back to WoW - they did the world model correct but I wish they'd have a different content model, which is basically charge for content and a monthy service fee to even play (which I call the ISP model), which to be honest is sustainable for that game and maybe a couple of other A list titles, but software as a service is easy to budget out (and fell to the budget axe at my house without me ever paying a service fee, as did Age of Conan, which I paid for the box and played only until the initial subscription expired) so most games that are not in this top tier are doomed to failure if they use that model.
The rest have to do something different if they want to succeed, whether that be micro payments or using a different model such as quarterly or yearly fees. The micro payment model tends to work better in Asia than the US because they tend to do everything around micro payments, including gaming time (in cafes). In the US I think the magazine model works better - charge a fixed fee for the game and a fixed fee for content updates, however, an in-game store or real-world trading auction house could be very profitable if done correctly (i.e. the auction house takes 10-20%, just like in the real world).
All that was heard was Garriott's voice booming "Kal Ort Por" and a following puff of smoke.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
That's his name in Tabula Rasa.
the message it left you was "Woosh!"
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
Software executives R moving to aerospace in droves. Once cashing in on their employees success, they almost never reinvest in the business which made their money.
My biggest complaint about Tabula Rasa was that it was so generic. When I got into the beta, from all the material and previews I'd read, I was expecting something like WW2 Online (but good) against an intelligent, dynamic AI army.
Instead I played WoW with crappy pseudo-FPS controls. About the only innovative feature was the cloning, and even the appeal of that was diminished by the near-Korean levels of grinding the game required.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
Apparently motivated by his recent trip into space, perhaps he has found a higher purpose while orbiting so high above the earth. o/~ far beneath the ship the world is mourning they don't realize he's alive no one understands but Major Tom sees now the life commands this is my home I'm coming home o/~
Maybe when he realized that you could see his ego from space he decided that his work was complete?
He didn't produce the first, the most successful or even a particularly good online game: so why would he be "king"?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I hate to break it to you, but computer games were being made before 3 years ago. If you were a gamer in the 80s, you KNOW that Garriot is indeed a king. Ever heard of the Ultima series?
If you were gaming in the 80s you are either -
A) trolling hard
B)living in an ignorant state of denial
C)lying
about the "washed up has-been" crap.
"But this one goes to 11!"
WAR battlegrounds, or scenarios as they call them, are more designed around DAoC battlegrounds, which are what WoW is imitating, badly.
Not just a stab at WoW (but it's all that and more!), but DAoC was first with functional PvP.
Oh God, no. PVP in MMOs goes back to Diablo, Ultima and Everquest, and even the AOL version of Neverwinter Nights. DAoC is a latecomer to that party.
functional PvP
PVP, or rather, RVR(realm vs realm) was worlds better than anything that had come before it in terms of PVP. In fact, it made PVP more accessible to a larger part of the audience, which made for more varied encounters, which were more fun. Instead of Joe the Newbie, saying oh, what is this PVP stuff, I think I will go che.....
Dead!
Actually, we're all aliens now. You're the last human left who we've not infected. And, until you posted this message and we got your IP address, we had no idea where you were. Just stay there and wait. It will be easier that way, trust us.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
gods...haven't played DAoC in ages but i agree that their battlegrounds where great (siege engines ftw!) but as for WoW they took thier battlegrounds straight from Team Fortress during the old quake days. Warsong Gulch is 2fort5 without the underground river passage and AB is Zones to a T. not sure where AV and Eye of the storm came from but those may be from DAoC. but like i sais. i have not played Dark Age for eons.
seems to have misplaced his
I couldn't stand PvP in WoW. It was a boring, repetitive grind full of idiots, moreso than the PvE content which I did not tire of so quickly, and arena was even worse (and I did well!). WAR's PvP may share some of the same mechanics but the experience as a whole is incredibly better. You couldn't pay me to go back to playing WoW's battlegrounds. I find the claim that they have "raised the bar" to be wholly inaccurate, if anything they've set the progress of MMO PvP back to the stoneage.
:(
WAR is supposed to be about the open RvR but of course since players are too impatient that doesn't happen in the lower tiers like it did in beta when levelling didn't matter as much as fun...
Ezekiel 23:20
No, Garriot is no longer the king. Sorry, to maintain the status of King in the arena, you need to keep innovating and creating new stuff.
And yes, I've been gaming for as long as people have been able to game electronically in their home.
I enjoyed his series, although I felt some of the ultima where way over hyped*. Ultima online was cool, for a while but The lag and getting jumped changing 'zones' got tedious.
*Geeks over hyping something? The deuce you say!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I haven't played every online game out there, but I have played a few - including WoW, Lineage ][, PlanetSide, and some others. I like Tabula Rasa, and I'll be dismayed if they call it quits. It has a nice balance of a lot of things, including the level of effort required to level. Although you can rally groups to do instances, they aren't so difficult that you have to. There are some nice touches - the sense of humor of the announcer at one of the main bases, mobs that actually look like they occupy their own world (they're often seen fighting with other mobs), and lots of other stuff. I'll miss it if they have to shut it down.
He paved the way for how MMOs are to be now. Sad news, although Tabula Rasa was deadpool! Btw Check out http://www.jobstaxi.com/ New Jobs. Nixon Inc.. oDesk. Rockstar New England. FixYa. Snap. Gorilla Nation.
...the only video game developer who can truthfully say "My worst day was when I got killed by an exploiting terrorist".
Ironically, "exploiting terrorists" encapsulates all that was awesome and frustrating about UO in a compact two-word phrase.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
As a fellow geezer, I hate to break it to you, but a fair portion of the population has never seen Ultima III, and even fewer know what M.U.L.E. is.
The kids these days, nothing before Halo ever existed.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
M.U.L.E.!!! Thanks for reminding me of that awesome game. I had to go fire up my Atari 800 emulator and play that for a bit!!
"But this one goes to 11!"