If Ignorance Burned, the Internet Would Be On Fire
There’s a lot I can’t say about Mythic right now. But there are three points I can make, in direct defiance of silly children on message boards:
One, the people who lost their jobs today were not just a few extra QA folks, or a couple world devs hired on for the big push to completion. The pile included some very senior people, people who expected to stay at Mythic until they retired.
Two, many of them were good people who deserved the loyalty they’d been told so much about. If anyone reading this happens to be hiring (people still do that, right?), please give me a buzz.
Three, um, and I say this with love, but the mouth breathing troglodytes who post on boards in between bouts of masturbation and nosepicking should probably shut the hell up about how this was EA’s evildoing at work. I don’t know firsthand what EA was like before they bought out Mythic, but if “acting like adults” and “allowing the studio to set their own expectations” and “paying a decent wage by the standards of the game industry” are bad things, I don’t want to work for a good company again.
Maybe I was a bad beta tester but I cant recall ever doing a scenario in beta (I only got in just before guild beta). I did plenty of ORvR and provided a ton of feedback about how I could already see the dynamic of what they had designed causing problems. I wasn’t alone however. Bugmans had a few people posting their concerns until they were told that even Bugmans was not for feedback because it was off topic.
The beta process and beta forums was the most restrictive gaming experience I have ever had. I was in Vanguard and AoC beta and participated in WoW beta (but only through watching a friend). I believe that having such a restrictive focused beta caused a serious case of tunnel vision during the design process and the game is paying for it now. I was personally threatened with expulsion from the beta for providing feedback that was not on topic – not harping about it but just the one post.
They never allowed the beta testers a full experience of what the game had to offer. Even so a number of people saw the writing on the wall and tried to shed some light on the ORvR issues. Everything else aside the game needed another 12 months of beta, long periods of gameplay uninterrupted – not 3 days between character wipes. AoC and Vanguard were terribly buggy and should never have been released. Yes WAR had a much more stable release but just as much content was missing.
Some say that removal of cities and classes does not factor into the game being unfinished as they were removed well before release. But the removal of the cities dynamically changed the entire ORvR campaign. It focused all the players into the one zone and ultimately into the one fortress. The removal of so many melee classes provided a similarly disruptive influence to combat dynamics.
You cannot design an endgame around a concept of 6 cities, remove 2/3 and then expect it to perform the same. It would be like Blizzard adding Molten Core and having the entire instance full of trash with Rag right at the end. Anyone going to have fun running that?
Honestly, no one expects an absolute perfect release of an MMO. We wont expect it in 10 years time. However we should all expect a game released today to have the same basic building blocks of the MMOs of today. Not of MMOs of 5 years ago. The industry must look forward. You can’t say “well WoW didn’t have Factor A at release”. The fact is that WoW has Factor A now and that it is expected to be seen in any MMO that is released now.
It is like a car being released today with an 8 track player or without seatbelts or airbags but with a promise of upgrades in the future. No one would put up with that in other industries but some MMO players seem to have a mindset whereby they are willing to put up with anything just to have the game released. The problem is that many of these people are MMO veterans, they are the ones that get chosen for beta and they are the ones that are contributing to a stagnation of the industry.
I personally find AION to be exciting as by the time it reaches the west it will already have been played for 9 months by hundreds of thousands of players. This should be a good release. Similarly Star Wars being made by Bioware instils much confidence.
I really agree with Skeetarian. The ability to socialise in the game was very very poor. I loved the idea of the “living guild” but was terribly disappointed with its implementation.
The ability to chat with those outside the guild was impeded by the clunky interface and horrible design. Chat is really one of the easiest things to get right so it is even more boggling how Mythic managed to get it so wrong.
It was a real detriment to the game in those early months and I believe contributed to a number of people leaving. The amount of threads started on forums about the inability to chat and hence the inability to group up with people turned a lot of people off. The open party system was not enough to combat this as an increasingly larger number of people closed their warbands or made themselves anonymous to prevent gold spammers.
An atmosphere of isolationism entered the game and guilds and alliances became little oases in the desert. MMOs by nature are social games. When you can’t socialise your enjoyment is detrimentally affected.
Sure it was a small error in the overall scheme of things but it was such a basic oversight that it shed quite a bit of light on the design ethic that seemed to pervade Mythic. These are outside obersvations though.
The fact that it made it all the way through both closed and open beta into the release of the game indicates, to me, that Mythic truly does not understand the MMO market.
“The fact that it made it all the way through both closed and open beta into the release of the game indicates, to me, that Mythic truly does not understand the MMO market.”
Good Sentance!! I couldn’t agree more on that one.
DAoC had a decent amount of points in its favor (although launch made me want to punch a puppy) right from the beginning, but when I tried WAR I found myself wishing for those broken buggy days in Hibernia.
@ Malaal
“There is no way to predict what will be important to the paying customers in development, when all they have are a couple closed-beta testers.”
This is sadly a pretty typical statement of the average fanboi.
The facts of the matter at hand are quite different. I seem to recall being in beta and poiting out every issue I have poited out these last few days. I seem to recall my entire GUILD being in beta and giving feedback on the issues I and others in this discussion have pointed out.
Let me pull out my BS card and lay it on the table. Mythic knew dang well what these issues were. They had more than enough feedback to delay and fix them. They chose not to, plain and simple, and paid for it as nearly 3/4 of the people that bought the game left it in a few months. You can come up with as many pompous tsunami theories as you want to, but the plain facts are they released a buggy, unfinished game, and worse yet for most of us there wasn’t enough “fun” there to hook us, because they were too busy “burning the heretics” too listen to their testers.
“There is too much risk of polishing and developing something that people don’t actually like. Case in point: scenarios. The focus on the game was going to be primarily scenarios. It sounded like a good idea, and everyone was all for it in beta/the community, because it allowed equal forces to fight each other, etc. Then, after release, people realized they’d be running SP the rest of their lives, and started complaining about ORVR. So now the focus is changed, and ORVR is being tweaked”
The focus was always on ORvR. One of the things Mythic actually listened to was that ORvR was stale and boring. Hence them relenting and introducing keeps. Now we don’t know if they were holding keeps for an expansion or just didn’t think they were a good idea. What we ended up with was a concept that was butchered into uselessness and outshined by a lego castle made by a 9 year old.
Mythic may have trademarked RvR but I don’t believe they understand it.
There was no preconceived notion of ORvR being a huge “zergfest” in beta. The population simply wasn’t big enough to see even a shade of this. Phases did not last long enough for groups to become comfortable with the mechanics and starting from scratch time after time began to wear on peoples patience. Many beta testers I conversed with lost interest in the process and logged in less and less. We even put together a petition to Missy (who responded in a very lovely way) about the overly restrictive beta design not allowing proper feedback on a multitude of issues.
The fact is that the closed beta had many thousands of participants signed up. However many of these fell by the wayside due to the actual process that Mythic designed for them. A more open beta would have provided for a better game.
No one tested zone control dynamics. No one tested the RvR campaign. The closest we got were tiny focused city sieges that lasted a couple of hours. Outside of some internal testing the ORvR campaign was based simply on the designers vision pre-release. It was untested waters under live conditions. The shortfalls of the design were only barely perceived by some beta testers. Now it is too late.
Many people are now looking to the next “big hope” of the MMO scene. I fear that Mythic have really missed their chance at capturing a wider audience. The silver lining – hopefully developers will begin to learn that an MMO is just like any other computer game. It is not some sacred object that is somehow immune to market trends and consumer needs.
Well then. I guess since the game is so crappy, these people deserved the layoffs. The kind of systemic failure you’re describing can’t be achieved with ONLY the higher-ups frakking up, there had to be some contribution somewhere, otherwise what is everyone getting paid for, right?
That certainly makes the reasoning easier: They screwed up and released a buggy, unfinished game -> layoffs.
Millions of screaming WoW players flooding the playerbase of EVERY RECENTLY RELEASED MMO probably had nothing to do with it. Mythic deserved what they got, and by extension, so did the people w/out jobs atm.
It’s a nice simple theory, I’ll give you that.
Since the people who make the mistakes are also qualified to fix them, having written the code/script/whatnot though, they usually won’t let them go though… Instead, people doing support services are generally the ones let go.
Honestly, if they would just fix or have the appearance of trying to fix the problems then no one should *have* to be let go. If companies were like ships, then layoffs would be like throwing useful crewmembers overboard in the hope of making the rations and water last longer for everyone else. Yet if they would listen to their customers and sail appropriately, they would arrive well before the rations ran out and not have to let anyone go. By throwing their ears overboard first, they show that they are not willing to listen, which is the sure sign that a ship is going to sink, because they are so ‘proud’ or whatever of their design and unwilling to change it even though there is water pouring into the hull from dozens of leaks. But by golly, they are proud of their ‘great design!’
Sheesh
Guys, I have been getting increasingly uncomfortable with this conversation. It’s a good conversation, and no one is getting psychotic. Indeed, this conversation should be held. But my blog is not the place for it, for a lot of reasons that I can’t explain.
I’m really sorry.
If you all resume the conversation somewhere else, please bear in mind that you shouldn’t be tossing around “Mythic” so casually. That might have worked back in Camelot’s heyday, since there were so few of us making up the entity of Mythic. Even then the actual decisions were made by a tiny handful of people – and incidentally, while I often disagreed with those people, I also wouldn’t try to run a company any other way.
Mythic is now a huge studio, and while the ultimate decisions for WAR are made by the Executive Producer (the same person was also the final decision maker for TOA and New Frontiers, incidentally), there are dozens of factions. There are… committees. By reducing the responsible factor to a faceless monolith with a single name, you’re overly simplifying the problems and the solutions.
Anyway, if you guys could take this fascinating chat someplace else, I’d be grateful.
At the risk of sounding like a pimp – a friend of mine started up Unmoderated, as a place for people to talk about games without moderation. That doesn’t mean without banning, but the tolerance bar is pretty crazy. I’m writing rants and humor for him on Mondays, but since I’m not the owner, there’s less potential for drama.
No worries Sanya. I love your blog. As an impulsive lass I just have to say though that I think we all know that by using Mythic we know we are talking about a company comprised of many people, just like when people talk of “the government”.
I was really enjoying the discussion and it is a shame that some people cannot remain logical and continue to discuss without ranting.
I shall toodle off, maybe check out that link. Thanks.
@ Sanya
Sorry for making you uncomfortable. That was the last thing I intended, as the one time I did meet you in RL you were very gracious to me. I’ll head off to that link as well.
“…while the ultimate decisions for WAR are made by the Executive Producer (the same person was also the final decision maker for TOA and New Frontiers, incidentally), …”
ohmai
There was another MMO that EA owned / launched / f’ed up. Earth and Beyond. I was fortunate to get to play with the beta for that one. Problem was, once released, EA did nothing about the game. Didn’t fix bugs, didn’t enhance gameplay, didn’t offer anyone anything of value. Earth and Beyond died quickly, and quietly.
The point is, you can say any MMO isn’t “finished” when it’s released, but some companies put more into “polish”, look-and-feel, and nuances that make a game worthwhile. When these things are ignored, failure is pretty much a guarantee, no matter how big your company is.
The sad point of all this is that the people who made the decision to ignore these points still have their jobs. Blizzard has always looked to making their products of a certain production quality. Sure, there will be bugs, there will be tweaks, and there will be enhancements. But they are never pushed to the side just to get the boxes out the door. Remember Burning Crusade? Blizzard put of release for what, 6 months, to get it to what they wanted. They missed out on Christmas sales completely, and still rocked sales numbers.
The moral of the story. Put the quality of the finished product FIRST above all else, and you just might have a winner. Put it at the bottom of the list, and you are doomed.
@Mordur
lol I noticed that little ZZZZING! too.
@Sanya
I’m looking forward to someday seeing a “Sanya Unleashed” blog so I can find out what you really think about all this stuff. Perhaps when we’re all retired and gray. The community manager thing is nice, in a general way, but sometimes it’s a little too obvious that what you write isn’t really what you think. Or at least it’s not ALL of what you think.
Unfortunately, as a public representative of any company a level of discression MUST be maintained, even post-employment.
A lack of discression causes problems, not just for the previous employer, but it also shows prospective future employers that the spokesperson can not be trusted with information and can thusly prevent said person from obtaining a job in the future.
Indeed Ash.
Sorry we made you uncomfortable Sanya, and my appologies if I’ve said anything wrong.
My feeling though, is that with this new person, a new leaf is starting to be turned… Not sure what will happen on that new page, but a new page was definitely needed. Whether it is the final page or not, remains to be seen.
See ya later Sanya, I look forward to the next article
Once again, this blog is a slap in the face to masturbating, nosepicking, mouth breathing troglodytes everywhere.