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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."
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.
What sort of troubles that aren't related to Tabula Rasa?
Is Guild Wars 2 at risk?!
"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.
That name - Lord British - makes me cringe every time I hear it. General British is slightly better, but not much.
As a rule of thumb, consider that pretty much every person who could be considered British does not think of themselves as such - we're English, Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish, Cornish, Manx, and so on. Only someone not from here would call themselves something like that.
If your numbers of players are declining, your product is in a death spiral, even if it takes 10 years to drop to something equating to nil. If you are not doing well financially now, having fewer players - meaning less cash coming in - means you can afford to develop less and have even less chance of turning things around. And there are several MMOs that have closed down.
http://www.mmogchart.com/charts/ - have fun checking it out.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
[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
Despite being raised in the US and sounding American, Richard Garriot was born in Cambridge, England. He also did not give himself that name, it was given to him by others who thought he had British mannerisms.
All that was heard was Garriott's voice booming "Kal Ort Por" and a following puff of smoke.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
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.
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!"
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!
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