Oh, THANKS, Guys

Thankfully, they haven’t found that other thread where you talk about how everyone in the industry is actually part of a secret cabal that answers only to the Dick Cheney, the Bilderbergers and the Vatican. And how we really ARE trying to ruin lives, destroy families and generally do our part to accelerate the decline of human civilization so that our even-MORE-secret alien overlords can begin their million year Reign.

Because if people knew that the only thing stopping the aliens from taking over the whole planet and forcing all of humanity to toil for all eternity in the deepest recesses of subterranean, Martian Spandex mines is a series of strategically-placed LOS bugs in popular MMOs, they’d probably complain a lot less about it on the Internet.

And we can’t have THAT, now can we?

I’m only going to assume this is not authorized. Just a hint: I’m not that smart, and haven’t been to SA.com since it was bollocked at work over 2 years ago.

Meh, I am kind of tired seeing the Chinese economy compared to the US economy in regards to how players pay for MMORPGs. Maybe the US/EU market players should rise up and get pissed off for being overcharged?

Lum,

I hope you plan to release this new MMO on the PS3 given NCsofts new relationship with Sony and the PS3.

I read the original thread from day1. I thought it was well thought out and informative and, well, typical Lum style banter.

I’m not getting why it’s a bad thing that they gave it the recognition it deserves. Sure, they made fun of MMOG’s to start the article, but that’s just par for the course at this point. It’s not like you said anything that’s over the top or controversial enough to cost you your job.

I am disappointed that they left out the cross stitch your wife made. That might possibly be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

I think my point is more that people don’t ordinarily look on getting 8 pages of banter posted on Something Awful as a good thing.

Admittedly my self-preservation kept me from saying anything bomb-throwing in the initial thread, but my first reaction on seeing it in my RSS feed was “OOOOH crap.”

I thought you looked good in cat ears.

Wait, this was from a thread somewhere? Like … some sort of stealth interview?

Sneaky.

It’s good to know there’s a Lead developer somewhere that ‘gets it’. Very good interview

Did Lowtax or anyone even ask your permission before they threw it on the front page?

The fun of the job still hits you from time to time. Our lunch conversation yesterday was whether or not the Enterprise would beat the Death Star.

This is a conversation you can’t really have in other industries.

Why? Because it was Yet Another Dos Command Line thing. The kind of /slash commands that you know only if you read and bookmark patch notes.

First of all, this is true of anything implemented at all in an MMO. *Anything.* When I started playing EQ2 again I had to look at patch notes and community sites to figure out where the portals to the expansions I’d missed were. The very nature of MMO’s dictates that you either read the patch notes or have friends who can fill you in on what you need to know. MMO’s are not console games.

Secondly, Autoloot was so insanely popular that everyone knew about it within days of implementation. And since it was an optional mechanic, you didn’t *have* to know about it to still play the game.

What I expect? That if a programmer has a good idea he goes to discuss it with the team, so that it can be properly planned, scheduled and polished.

I can’t speak for Lum, but I’m willing to bet there was a lot of discussion on this before he up and did it. He also said he checked it into the version control whatchamacallit, so it’s not like he went out and threw a patch on the live servers.

For an /autoloot command this would mean taking the UI programmer and an artist to finally make it a feature to put in a context menu for the group window. So that players can see it’s there. Without being patch notes gurus. And you don’t fucking release it till it’s ready *and* presentable.

I like you Abalieno. I was sorry to see you quit writing because you bring a lot of good conversation to the table. But then you come up with shit like this, and I just have to wonder who’s driving. Autoloot was, as I’ve said, insanely popular amongst players. I daresay I don’t think I’ve run across a single player who thought it was a bad idea. It was pennies from heaven and you’re the only one in the room bitching that the pennies aren’t shiny enough.

Scott left a lot of the details out of that whole process, and you’re filling those empty spots in with wild conjecture and outright venom. Criticize Mythic all you want (I’ve done my share and it’s just too easy a target now) but at least come at it with an informed opinion.

Yeah, I never said that autoloot was a bad feature (and in fact looting has always been a chore because targeting was always fickle), just that it wasn’t well presented.

It was just a provocation. I actually thought that /autoloot came with a bunch of option -switches. Then I looked up at the Herald and it seems it was just /autoloot, I must have mistaken it with some other command. But at that point I decided to write down the rant anyway

That said, imho, things should never go in half-incomplete. That’s what WoW’s polish taught the market. Especially in MMOs, where features are released and then abandoned and never really polished up (wait another three years and if DAoC is still alive I bet the /autoloot will still be there as a slash command).

The /autoloot is exactly one good example of the difference between a game well planned and well polished, and one that instead tries to take the shortcut and doesn’t give importance to presentation and accessibility. It’s like “xp on/off”, in EQ2 you right click on the exp bar and select the option from a menu. I don’t think it took so much effort.

Imho it should have the priority over changing the fireball damage every other month.

Again, it’s important just because it’s a good example. Old patchwork school Vs new standards.

You know, if you take that point out there hasn’t been any step forward in the last years. Blizzard taught that what old school considered superfluous isn’t superfluous at all. So let’s give it some importance

Do a simple test. Without me biasing it.

Take SOE and take Blizzard.

Take the perfect slot machines example.

What kind of implementation would you expect from SOE and what from Blizzard?

Yeah, I’d NEVER expect slot machines running through slash commands in WoW, while I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that in a SOE game. In fact WoW pretty much demonstrated this with the polish they put in some of those silly holiday events.

My personal preference is for ten features well thought and well done than twenty half broken and obscure. Less but better instead of more but worse.

“Well thought and well presented” are superfluous details and luxuries. But they are basically the only reason that made WoW breach out of a niche cult.

WoW = EQ the superfluous

Okay… No way to use the “plus” symbol, but it should be there.