He has his hands in it more than just that though. He makes his creative input, and along the lines of what you said above, he has the leverage to make his input without being correct, since the others want to make sure they still get fed. He also decides what gets funded and put into the game, and what gets scrapped, and how the different departments should be using their time and resources. So its not just managing money and resources, he is providing the direction the game should go in.

He was still customer service until NF, then he made a HUGE career leap from customer service to some kind of game design director/producer. That's where the concern is for most of us. So he has been in the design process since NF.

Yes, i was just giving the quick and dirty.

 

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Don't know about tidbits from Mark. The ealouse stuff can be googled. It was a barn-burner. Incompetent management, favoritism, backstabbing, all from an 'anonymous' source inside the studio. Seriously, google it, it is rich entertainment.
Yeah, curious to see how SWTOR unfolds. Could be interesting.

 

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This guy wrecked two game, and they promote him to run this? LOL. I wonder what secrets he has on John Riccitello. LOL.

I'll say this is a good and bad thing.

Wasn't responsible for ToA/NF but could be responsible for Catacombs/Laby.

ToA/NF weren't necessarily bad ideas when they were released, ToA was just really buggy and a little too difficult and NF has just gotten very stale over the years, though Catacombs, and to a lesser extent Laby, were horrible expansions; see warlock, bainshee, vampiir, instances, bugged out lab, mauler, etc.

Yet another reason not to try SWToR.

 

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This is a natural job progression in the industry, not a design director, or full on producer, usually an assistant. If its a smaller studio, as mythic was back in the day though, it would be much easier for him to make that jump

 

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TOA/NF were brilliant bits of code, but both were totally stupid things to have done to the game of DAoC.


I think it was Lori that once acknowledged/stated how one of the rules in development is (paraphrased) “players do not like their characters to be screwed with and before a game company messes with the players characters the developers should have a damn good reason”. TOA totally broke that rule.


While many other expansions were completely optional fun things to do if the player wanted, TOA was mandatory. TOA was not just mandatory, it was mandatory to do with ever single character in a players inventory because suddenly with the implementation of TOA, every single character in the game was no longer frontiers ready.


Even players that loved PvE did not necessarily want to spend months PvEing every frontiers ready toon they had just so when they felt the urge to go to the Frontiers and RvR a bit they could. The point of having frontiers ready toons is to be able to RvR on a whim, whenever it felt like RvR would be fun. TOA totally and completely screwed that for players.


On top of breaking such a fundamental rule of game development, on top of every toon needing to be drug though TOA, TOA was buggy as hell. Not just a few minor bugs, but huge problem bugs that should have been fixed long before the expansion was allowed to go live. Then Mythic took forever to get around to fixing the bugs and many fixes were not actual fixes but band-aids (remember how long it took Mythic to give leaders the ability to grant credit?)


There are pages and pages and pages of problems that came with TOA. Sorry but while TOA was a brilliant bit of code, TOA was also a steaming pile of cow dung. TOA was a psychotic mess.


NF: While NF was also a brilliant bit of code, only a total git throws out something that is working great and something that players are having a blast with and replaces it with something unknown that no one knows if players will like.


Yes players were asking for changes to OF, players were asking for repairs to OF, players were asking for bug fixes to OF, etc. . . I do not remember one single post where players said that “Mythic should throw out the Frontiers and totally remake it as if the game were being remade” (if you can find 1 or 2 posts where some silly player did ask for such a thing, 1 or 2 such posts does not mean Mythic should recode the game).


Many people do not do well with change. Some will say, “tough poop” and they are are morons. The psychological needs of the ‘typical’ MMO customer should be important to any MMO maker/developer. While change is necessary to keep a MMO fresh, most MMO players do not like to log out one day and log back in the next day only to find the game they used to play had been changed so much it almost does not exist any more. Change is necessary but their needs to be bloody limits.


Changing two of the old frontier zones from each realm to be New Frontier zones and keeping two OF zones would have allowed for implementation of new things, freshened the game and yet allowed those that loved OF to still have that which they loved. Also, by only changing part of the Frontiers if a huge problem arises with the NF changes there is still the OF areas for players to go to and have fun.


Again, pages and pages could be written about how NF caused damage. NF was a brilliant bit of code but it was not a bright thing for Mythic to have done.


Cat: As far as giving players new ‘optional’ things to do, Cat was much better than TOA. Both were huge worlds but Cat offered lots of ‘optional’ things to do. There were stupid things implemented with Cat that did harm to the game but not anywhere near the stupidity of TOA.


DR was an expansion pack (lite version) that was “how little code can we write and yet charge players for an expansion?” or “we squandered all our money and to finish other projects we need a bit of fluff we can charge players for”


LotM was stupid because it added area to the NF at a time when players were yelling that NF players were spread too thin.

 

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Great post semi4. When Lori was running DAoC (last year?) I thought she was fantastic.


Some examples of players saying one thing and Mythic hearing something completely different (and now for something completely different) are TOA and NF, which had obviously HUGE impacts on the game, and Warhammer land of the dead and the skaven.


I personally think NF is pretty cool, however it is probably too big. I don't like Agramon, but I'm off again/on again more casual so for example if Mythic had a poll on NF v. OF I would not vote. To continue rambling, just putting OF back now I think would be incredibly dangerous and risky without some rock solid research done first.

 

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