I thought that was an odd choice, considering that the EPIA MII 10000 already has on-board video with MPEG-2 acceleration which is fairly well supported under X. Considering that the 350 costs roughly twice as much as the 150, with buying decisions like that it's no wonder that he went way over budget.
It's all so obvious. Low sales in the US are caused by generic Canadian versions of songs coming across the border. The US needs tighter regulatory controls on music to prevent this kind of thing.
Making armor in SWG using materials gotten from around the galaxy was just as much fun for many players as even playing the game
I have played that game and that's what I call "damning with faint praise". Making armour in SWG using materials gotten from around the galaxy was just as much fun as a root canal for many players. Heck, a lot of people said the same thing about playing SWG, so your original comparison still holds.
What CoH had was DIFFERENCE. Unlike every other major MMO on the market at the time it wasn't a mimeographed copy of Ultima Online and Everquest. It threw away the "must get more gear" grind that was the whole end-game of Everquest, tossed the tacked-on time and money sink that was crafting, and focused on making the core gameplay fun.
I won't say that it was a perfect game, but it did break away from the "Dungeons and Dragons Online" mold that the market was wallowing in at the time. That is the kind of thing that Gordon was talking about when he said "We're doing the same s--t over and over again." Look at what was on the MMO market when CoH was released: Ultima Online, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Everquest, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Asheron's Call, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Dark Age of Camelot, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Anarchy Online, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG thinly disguised as SF, Lineage, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Meridian 59, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG... The list goes on and on. What's more, just about every other game in development at the time was the same thing: A copy of UO and EQ with the serial numbers filed off and a few bits of chrome stuck on top to make it look like something new.
City of Heroes tried to break that mold and try something new, and a number of people liked it. You may not have, but if everybody all liked the same thing we would still be playing Pong.
"Personally, if the developers of future games are looking for a great model to base their design on, they should look at City of Heroes/City of Villains, which has it all and then some. Its not perfect by any stretch but it does more things right than any other title I can think of."
"We are herd animals. We are employing herd strategies in a creative business," he said, adding that everyone jumps on a successful idea, and makes a copy, but makes it worse. "Why do we do this? We do this because we're freaking mammals." Risk-mitigation, he claims, is a cause of our being mammals and more importantly, primarily herbivores who stick to the inside of the herd, for protection. "We're just a bunch of freaking mammals doing stupid stuff without thinking. And the thing that we're up to here is creativity.... We're doing the same s--t over and over again. We're not taking risk with gamplay. We're not taking risks with genre. We're not taking risks with audience," [...] "We need to stop running down other people doing crazy s--t. We need to celebrate somebody who is nutty enough to try something new and fall flat on their face. If we can get a hundred people to do that, two of them won't fall flat on their face. Our dev cycles are too long, which means we're not interating fast enough," he said. "Our strength is innovation and we're blowing our strength in this particular market."
I have already said this in another comment, but the reason that they can do that is this:
Blizzard Has A Lot Of Money To Throw Around
It's nice to say "We'll release this when it's ready" or "We want a few more months to test this out", but when you've just borrowed somewhere between five and ten million dollars (and don't run Infinium Labs), then people expect you to pay it back in cash, not promises.
"Thus Blizzard gives you games that A) Are finished. B) Don't suck. C) Run on normal PCs. D) Run stable. E) Stay very fun for an allmost indefinite time.
You forgot the most important one. F) Cost $100,000,000. That's why they can afford teams of caffeine-fueled playtesters. That's why they can spend an entire year in beta testing. Mere mortals have to show results long before then, and that's why you have seen dozens of "lesser" entries into the MMORPG arena fall apart with "tiny" budgets of less than ten million dollars.
This isn't sour grapes. I have played WoW, and it's a good game. I'm just trying to point out that with all the briefcases full of cash that were thrown at it, it had better be good.
One of the first things that other designers can learn from WoW is that having $75 million dollars to spend on developement without having to sell a single box, and being backed by a company willing to throw another $25 million on marketing when you finally do launch, really helps take some of the pressure off.
For comparison, EQ2 cost something around $25 million, Star Wars Galaxies somewhere between $10 and 15 million and the budget for the original Everquest was less than $5 million.
I don't have any numbers for how much DDO cost, but I somehow doubt that it was any more than Sony spent on their A-list games. I'm not trying to say that money is all that it takes to make a game good, but it sure doesn't hurt.
As for the features of WoW that you mentioned, keep in mind that some of them weren't in the game when it released. The "dressing room" feature, for one, wasn't added until November of 2005, a full year after the game went live. Map pings were a bit picky around release time and while the 'assist' feature worked, for four months WoW's 'target nearest enemy' function only worked on the right side of the screen.
This follows the general pattern of most reviews I have seen of DDO, or any other new game released since early 2004 for that matter. Let me see if I can sum it up a bit:
"It's pretty, but it's not World of Warcraft. I like World of Warcraft, and am accustomed to how World of Warcraft plays. The parts of this which are like World of Warcraft are good, but the parts which are different (from World of Warcraft) are obviously bad decisions. I'm going to go back to playing World of Warcraft, and if you like World of Warcraft like I like World of Warcraft, you should just keep on playing World of Warcraft instead of this game, which is not World of Warcraft."
I was pretty upset that the article didn't say a thing about the fuel economy of hydrogen powered vehicles too, but then I realized that it was actually a review of a mass market video card being sold for gaming purposes.
That helped me to calm down. If screaming about how you aren't being pandered to enough is what helps you, then go for it. It would appear that that is what Slashdot is here for.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought that was an odd choice, considering that the EPIA MII 10000 already has on-board video with MPEG-2 acceleration which is fairly well supported under X. Considering that the 350 costs roughly twice as much as the 150, with buying decisions like that it's no wonder that he went way over budget.
I knew it! I'm surrounded by assholes.
And yet, here you are on Slashdot. How does that work?
It's the pretty website's best friend.
Let Marvel and DC try to copyright that.
The next step is to take your email address, uber-rocksmokeerdood69woot@gmail.com, off of your resume.
It it helps you feel any better I can put the word "Wang" in it somewhere.
I think that Dante had a name for that one. Something like "Buffalo".
It's all so obvious. Low sales in the US are caused by generic Canadian versions of songs coming across the border. The US needs tighter regulatory controls on music to prevent this kind of thing.
I have played that game and that's what I call "damning with faint praise". Making armour in SWG using materials gotten from around the galaxy was just as much fun as a root canal for many players. Heck, a lot of people said the same thing about playing SWG, so your original comparison still holds.
What CoH had was DIFFERENCE. Unlike every other major MMO on the market at the time it wasn't a mimeographed copy of Ultima Online and Everquest. It threw away the "must get more gear" grind that was the whole end-game of Everquest, tossed the tacked-on time and money sink that was crafting, and focused on making the core gameplay fun.
I won't say that it was a perfect game, but it did break away from the "Dungeons and Dragons Online" mold that the market was wallowing in at the time. That is the kind of thing that Gordon was talking about when he said "We're doing the same s--t over and over again." Look at what was on the MMO market when CoH was released: Ultima Online, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Everquest, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Asheron's Call, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Dark Age of Camelot, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Anarchy Online, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG thinly disguised as SF, Lineage, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG, Meridian 59, a Swords and Sorcery fantasy RPG... The list goes on and on. What's more, just about every other game in development at the time was the same thing: A copy of UO and EQ with the serial numbers filed off and a few bits of chrome stuck on top to make it look like something new.
City of Heroes tried to break that mold and try something new, and a number of people liked it. You may not have, but if everybody all liked the same thing we would still be playing Pong.
More people agree with you than you may think. You may want to read this article on the MMO Rant at last year's Austin Game Conference. One of my favourite bits comes from former Sony Online VP Gordon Walton:
"We are herd animals. We are employing herd strategies in a creative business," he said, adding that everyone jumps on a successful idea, and makes a copy, but makes it worse. "Why do we do this? We do this because we're freaking mammals." Risk-mitigation, he claims, is a cause of our being mammals and more importantly, primarily herbivores who stick to the inside of the herd, for protection. "We're just a bunch of freaking mammals doing stupid stuff without thinking. And the thing that we're up to here is creativity. ... We're doing the same s--t over and over again. We're not taking risk with gamplay. We're not taking risks with genre. We're not taking risks with audience," [...] "We need to stop running down other people doing crazy s--t. We need to celebrate somebody who is nutty enough to try something new and fall flat on their face. If we can get a hundred people to do that, two of them won't fall flat on their face. Our dev cycles are too long, which means we're not interating fast enough," he said. "Our strength is innovation and we're blowing our strength in this particular market."
No need. I usually infer that a reviewer is an egomanaical wanker just because he is writing the review in the first place.
That and getting paid are really the only two reasons to write at all.
I have already said this in another comment, but the reason that they can do that is this:
Blizzard Has A Lot Of Money To Throw Around
It's nice to say "We'll release this when it's ready" or "We want a few more months to test this out", but when you've just borrowed somewhere between five and ten million dollars (and don't run Infinium Labs), then people expect you to pay it back in cash, not promises.
"Thus Blizzard gives you games that A) Are finished. B) Don't suck. C) Run on normal PCs. D) Run stable. E) Stay very fun for an allmost indefinite time.
You forgot the most important one. F) Cost $100,000,000. That's why they can afford teams of caffeine-fueled playtesters. That's why they can spend an entire year in beta testing. Mere mortals have to show results long before then, and that's why you have seen dozens of "lesser" entries into the MMORPG arena fall apart with "tiny" budgets of less than ten million dollars.
This isn't sour grapes. I have played WoW, and it's a good game. I'm just trying to point out that with all the briefcases full of cash that were thrown at it, it had better be good.
For comparison, EQ2 cost something around $25 million, Star Wars Galaxies somewhere between $10 and 15 million and the budget for the original Everquest was less than $5 million.
I don't have any numbers for how much DDO cost, but I somehow doubt that it was any more than Sony spent on their A-list games. I'm not trying to say that money is all that it takes to make a game good, but it sure doesn't hurt.
As for the features of WoW that you mentioned, keep in mind that some of them weren't in the game when it released. The "dressing room" feature, for one, wasn't added until November of 2005, a full year after the game went live. Map pings were a bit picky around release time and while the 'assist' feature worked, for four months WoW's 'target nearest enemy' function only worked on the right side of the screen.
"It's pretty, but it's not World of Warcraft. I like World of Warcraft, and am accustomed to how World of Warcraft plays. The parts of this which are like World of Warcraft are good, but the parts which are different (from World of Warcraft) are obviously bad decisions. I'm going to go back to playing World of Warcraft, and if you like World of Warcraft like I like World of Warcraft, you should just keep on playing World of Warcraft instead of this game, which is not World of Warcraft."
I think there's a comma missing somewhere in that.
That's what you all said two years ago.
"At least with G.W. Bush you know he'll be gone after 2008."
And then it will be eight years of President Cheney. I feel so much better now.
G. W. Bush: "There ought to be limits to freedom".
Go figure.
Yes. Getting sued for saying unpopular things is far preferable.
Well, more naked people for one.
I would say that clearly people were much smarter then, but then again they were running Windows 3.1 and 95.
Oh, if only they could learn to be as thoughtful and open-minded as you are.
Yes, it's on its way to Titan.
That helped me to calm down. If screaming about how you aren't being pandered to enough is what helps you, then go for it. It would appear that that is what Slashdot is here for.