[Pantheon Has Fallen, But McQuaid Can Still Go Lower]

Color me completely unsurprised:

"It's widely agreed upon by all parties that this project took in roughly 145 thousand dollars. A large chunk of that money, 35k, came from a single individual who promised another couple hundred thousand once he cleared it with his trust. Brad was having personal problems at the time and needed to take a cash advance from the project. He took roughly three months pay in advance which equaled roughly 38% of the funds that were left. Brad thought the rest of the money would come in, but the trust supervisor declined without even looking into the project. Reason being, he didn't want to be sued if the start up failed. Brad admits that it was a mistake and wishes things worked out differently but the money is spent and there isn't anything he can do. He then went on to express that he was sorry for how it happened and is planning on liquidating personal assets to put the funds back into the project."

 Why on earth are so many fanboys still willing to give this nostalgia-exploiting hack their money? He did NOT single-handedly build EverQuest and Vanguard, despite what so many fanboys seem to believe. Teams of hundreds of other talented people put their real work into those games (as opposed to just loftily spouting 'Visionary' ideas around, which are worth exactly squat without actual effort behind them), and in the second example McQuaid was the one who ran that real work into the ground and lied to and exploited everyone around him the entire time.

This cult-attitude many oldtime MMO fans have of deifying this man as some kind of visionary who single-handedly makes 'dream MMOs' baffles me, particularly in the light of everything we know about how he mismanaged and destroyed Vanguard. Despite so many fans' attempt to rewrite the history of that debacle as being everyone else's fault but Brad's, the real facts of the matter are still public online for anyone who cares to see them. Which I hope people will do before tossing any more cash in this guy's direction.

But then on top of this all, he skims almost 40% of Pantheon's Kickstarter money to cover his own personal bills. Nobody should give this joker a dime for any future MMO project ever again, no matter how many nostalgia-tinged PR shills or game concept mockups (or tiered monthly subscription plans for the ability to post on the game's forum) that he rolls out.


Related Reading:
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's Financials Under Scrutiny
Brad 'The Vision' McQuaid, Round Two

[Brad 'The Vision' McQuaid Round Two: Rise of the Fallen]

   So it seems Brad McQuaid is done with that vanity-position he's had in EverQuest after that little Vanguard embarrassment of his and has moved on to a new Vision! I assume he figures it's been long enough now that most folks will have forgotten the messy details of his last epic failure as a boss and developer and will be willing to fund this new Kickstarter project out of idealistic nostalgia and the belief that putting their faith in one guy whose last successful game was made 15 years ago (which was hardly a one-man project anyway) will finally pay off this time around.

I'll be busting out the popcorn for this one.


Related Reading:
Brad McQuaid: Cult of Personality or Friends in High Places?
Brad McQuaid Abandoned Sigil

[Brad McQuaid: Cult of Personality or Friends in High Places?]

So Brad McQuaid has been accepted back into the MMO Industry fold.

Why, exactly, given the complete fiasco of his last project?

  How many other people, after doing such a terrible job running a development team and company, would get a second chance like this? Is it because he's 'One of the Guys Who Designed EQ' and knows the right people and has a cool personality? When Vanguard got bought up and put on life support by SOE  (which was an oddly nice gesture of them), I had initially gotten the impression it was because someone high up there was being sentimental, and this latest development just reinforces my suspicion.

  Either way, in the light of the recent examples of high-profile MMO projects being brought low by gross incompetence, and the importance of developers today to be professionals aware of current market realities and not arrogant posers blinded by their personal 'Vision', I don't understand why this guy, who showed himself as being a terrible leader and an out-of-touch designer, is the one who gets chosen to be given another chance in the gaming business. It just baffles me.


Related Reading:
Great MMO Company Collapses of Our Time: Sigil
A Vanguard Retrospective
Brad McQuaid Returns to EverQuest

[SWTOR's Failure Was Not 'Random Chance']

  Let me be clear first off -- I mean 'failure' as in the game clearly did not meet the expectations of success it was aiming for, not that the game is without any merit whatsoever. With that said:

  The disappointing performance of Star Wars: The Old Republic was not the result of a bad 'roll of the dice' or because the market is saturated with MMOs. It was because of a clear lack of knowledge and competency on BioWare's part to design a strong MMORPG, despite getting around $200 million thrown at them.

  Firstly, any claims that SWTOR's failure to explode into a massive hit will harm the industry are not counting the number of MMORPGs that have been simultaneously available for the past 5+ years. Count the F2Ps, because they outnumber P2Ps by a large margin, though most may be virtually unknown by the majority of sub-model-only players (and regardless, the F2P MMORPG playerbase is plenty robust with new games coming out regularly, obviously because people are still interested in playing these types of games). By that metric, the MMORPG market is saturated with games at pretty much every point in time and has been for several years now, albeit with games of varying quality. Before WoW was released, nobody could imagine that the market for every MMO combined could possibly number in the millions of players, let alone the playerbase of one game. So apparently the situation here is more along the lines of 'if you build [a game people want to play], they will come'.

  I won't rehash all the ways SWTOR was designed from the core out as just a variant flavor of World of Warcraft's basic gameplay mechanics, because that has been done to death in many places already. The fact is, in an environment shaped by 7 years of the dominance of WoW and scattered with the corpses of games released since 2004 attempting to ape WoW's success by copying it's gameplay to varying degrees, the majority of MMO gamers are just plain tired of it. And because they've become very familiar with the tropes of WoW's formula, they've also become a whole heck of a lot pickier when it comes to judging any game that tries to make it's own spin on it. So far the only game that has done this and succeeded has been Rift. So the right question to ask is not 'Is the market over-saturated with MMOs' but 'Can the current market support WoW and 2 sub-based WoW variants at the same time?' And the answer might just be 'no'. In the words of ArenaNet's founder Jeff Strain in 2007:

"Don't be fooled by the much-hyped success of the top MMOs on the market. The game industry is littered with the carnage of MMOs that have failed over the past few years. Due largely to the social nature of MMOs, gamers rarely commit to more than one or two MMOs at a time. This is in contrast to the traditional game market, in which there is room for many games to be successful, even within the same genre. You may play ten different action games this year, but you are very unlikely to play more than one or two MMOs. This means that it is not enough to make a great game – instead you must make a game that is so overwhelmingly superior that it can actively break apart an established community and bring that community to your game."

 He may as well have written that today, for all it's remained relevant (the only thing I would add is that it goes double for any game attempting to run under the '$15 a month sub fee' model nowadays). For anyone to conclude that the failure of games like Project Copernicus and SWTOR's lack of popularity means the MMO industry itself is in peril seems to forget that game studios being run into the ground because of poor management is hardly new. If anything it's showed that the MMO industry is not immune to the reality that exists everywhere in business: that throwing tons of money at a game (or using a popular IP) doesn't automatically mean it will be a smash hit. Any problem for the industry here is a self-caused one: disinterest in the playerbase because gamers are getting tired of companies rehashing the same-old ideas with prettier skins and expecting people to keep paying $15 a month to play the same game they've already been playing for the last 10+ years.

   SWTOR bet the lion's share of their hundreds of millions of dollars on the premise that the way to outdo their competition would be to make individual class stories as interactive and cinematic as possible (since that is their studios' strength in singleplayer RPGs) and setting them as the core of the entire game, while simply copying 'what's worked before' for everything else. But they attempted to 'innovate' in the completely wrong direction because they lacked fundamental understanding of what makes a strong MMORPG -- the long-term replayability of a game's core mechanics, as well as underestimating just how tired many people are of those gameplay systems that 'worked so well for WoW'. So after their awesome single-player interactive movies were all finished, most SWTOR players looked around at the rest of the game, said 'meh' and unsubscribed.


Related Reading:
How to Create a Successful MMO [GDC 2007]
Behind the Scenes of Star Wars: The Old Republic
Story vs Persistent Game

[Ultimate PvP Potential or Recipe for Disaster?]

So there's an upcoming MMO, Salem, that's going to try tackling full loot free-for-all PvP, player-made building destruction, AND perma-death. Sounds like a winning combination!

"'When your character dies, he stays dead,' Johannessen said matter-of-factly. This is made even harsher by the fact that Salem will allow free-for-all PvP, which means that anyone can attack you without provocation. Player buildings can be razed and their corpses looted, but Johannessen hopes that the players will band together to protect each other and mete out justice."

I predict lots of fun times when that sucker gets released, of the 'wailing and gnashing of teeth' variety. That is, if anyone actually ends up playing it for reasons other than to indulge in sociopathic carnage.

I still say there are a lot of very confused FPS fans still trying to shoehorn their preferred gameplay style into a genre that was simply not made for it. Now, if the death system ends up being something like Mabinogi's Rebirth mechanic, where certain stats get carried over (and the game doesn't have levels or strong gear dependency) maybe it could be feasible. Otherwise, I'm sensing a pending crash and burn and a stark reality check for the devs of Salem.

[What Defines a 'Failed' MMO?]

 What do all these games have in common?

1. Horizons
2. Warhammer Online
3. Age of Conan
4. Aion
5. Allods Online

...they were all highly hyped before their release, and then loudly proclaimed 'failures' and 'dead' by large numbers of their (former) playerbase soon after (often via lengthy tirades on various message boards).

Yet, they're all still online. Which, I assume, means they're still making money and being played, sometimes years later. What does that say about the definition of 'failure' as it's often used by so many MMO gamers? Does it simply mean a game is a big disappointment? That it 'failed' to fulfill its ambitious concept promises? That there's only a few(!) hundred thousand people playing it instead of millions? Or because it's gone F2P?

I think many times, people toss around the accusation that a game is a 'failure' too easily, and often because they're feeling personally let down by the game. A lot of MMO gamers get very emotionally invested in their games (often years before they are even released!) so it's only expected that there can be a lot of bitterness when that investment ends up not paying off. Sometimes that bitterness becomes an active attempt to smear and tear down a game, hoping to drive people away (I've seen this with many former Allods players most recently).

In some ways I think the rise of WoW has skewed people's perceptions of what makes a game a failure population-wise. For example, nowadays MMOs are assumed to need a few million players in order to have a viable population (as a comparison, when WoW was first released Blizzard was expecting around 300,000!). The definition of success was different 5 years ago, that's for sure.

I think that the MMO community needs to be less eager to throw around the term 'failure'. I also think the biggest barrier to a  new game's success now is the box price+monthly fee model, which I hope is soon replaced by the free download/trial model (I still think it's baffling why most new MMOs treat trials as something that should only be offered later in a game's life rather than right at the start) or any of the various F2P+micropayment models. I honestly believe that could allow smaller games, niche games, to succeed in a way that is nearly impossible in the current MMORPG market. The more options for different game sizes, types, and payment models that there are, the more chances for success for a modern MMORPG.

[APB's Crash and Burn Explained]

I will admit, I'm always fascinated reading breakdowns of dysfunctional game development companies and how they eventually imploded. Vanguard and Horizons, for example, both had very drama-filled environments and amazingly arrogant/clueless people at the helm, and some of the stuff that went on in the backrooms of those games is frankly mind boggling.

At any rate, even though I never played APB, this series of posts from one of the devs is an interesting read: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3.

It's really shocking how unprofessional and inept some game companies are.

[We Are Not the Customer Anymore]

  Even though the RealID blowup is over, I think it's brought to the foreground a fact about the relationship between gamers and their game developers that I think most people (especially those with an emotional attachment to a particular game) find disheartening.

  It began after this post brought to light the timeline of developments after the Blizzard-Activision merge, which put into a larger context the attempt to integrate real identities into the forums (no, it was never about just 'stopping trolls').

  For insight into the character of the man that the CEO of Blizzard has to report to, here are some choice quotes:

"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks [people not part of the gaming culture] into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

"[Y]ou know if it was left to me, I would raise the [game's] prices even further."

  And in response to why Kotick got rid of several popular Activisiion game franchises:

"[They] don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. ... I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus... on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we'll be working on them 10 years from now."

  And finally, Escape Hatch sums it up nicely:

"We, the players, are no longer the World of Warcraft's customer base. Advertisers are."

  In the past, when MMOs were a niche geek hobby, the gamer WAS the customer. This connection between dev and player was reflected in how loyal people got to a certain company, how invested they were in the game's wellbeing and success. But it was only a matter of time before the businessmen saw this attachment as the potential for huge profit. This is why you have Robert Kotick bragging about taking the fun out of making games, of how he wants to turn game-design into an assembly-line of franchises and sequels churning out products filled with as many microtransactions and advertisements and profit-expanding features as he can get away with. Because he doesn't give a crap about the players. To him, we're just geeks whose emotional attachments to our games and the devs that make them makes us vulnerable to being exploited by guys like himself. To be fair, it's not all this one guy's fault, but it reflects the kind of attitudes that start cropping up when a company quickly shoots up into becoming worth billions of dollars like Blizzard did after it made World of Warcraft. The bean-counting vultures start circling.

  However these kinds of guys control future of the 'modern AAA MMO'. This is the kind of guy dev companies have to impress to get initial funding, to survive (i.e. get MILLIONS of players as fast as possible or else be labeled a 'failure'), and to be considered 'successful' on the business side of things in a world where having 'only' 3-500k players is considered 'not profitable enough'. However I think for many of us, this change from 'small tight-knit company to mega giant' is a sad one, especially if you've been in MMOs a long time and remember when things were smaller and more personal. It's the price we've payed for embracing the MMORPG 'going mainstream'.

  This is why I'm starting to prefer the smaller F2Ps, and indie games. They're lower budget, sure. Not so shiny as the 'big games', rougher around the edges. But a lot of times, when things get bigger they don't always get better. And I think we've finally crossed that line in the MMORPG sphere. Sure, it means bigger budgets, flashier graphics, bigger expansions and tie ins, and more prestige. But I think the MMORPG as a genre has lost a part of it's soul; a part that had originally appealed to many players in the first place.

[Blizzard's RealID Fiasco]

Will I quit WoW permanently over this change? No. But I will also never again participate on any Blizzard forum. Scott over at Broken Toys sums up my feelings pretty much, and presents a reasoned defense of online anonymity.

The folks running around calling people who have a problem with this change 'irrational' and 'paranoid' must be really happy in their privileged denial bubbles where the world is always safe and where losing your privacy online couldn't possibly have any negative repercussions.

Plus there's the fact that MMORPGs were originally based around creating an 'alternate persona' separate from real life, so why would folks be surprised that a lot of people who enjoy that aspect would consider bringing RL into their game as a sort of violation?

EDIT: Oh look, Blizz made a deal with Facebook to share RealID info across platforms. So at least now we know the monetary reason for this change -- the claim that it's all 'to improve the forums' is just PR bunk. You don't need to strip away pseudonyms in order to properly moderate an online community.

EDIT2: After the enormous outcry provoked by this announcement, Blizzard has pulled the idea.

[Horizons: The MMO That Just.Won't.Die.]

  If you're familiar with the debacle that was the launch of Vanguard (and the subsequent drama-riffic crash and burn of it's developer, Sigil), then the saga of Horizons: Empire of Istaria will sound mighty familiar:

1. Game developer (Artifact Games) promises all kinds of cool, innovative features.
2. CO is an idealist with little clue how to run a company, deal with employees, or actually make significant progress.
3. Original publisher drops the game before it's released.
4. Bugtastic, broken-content, horrible performance, and lack of many advertised features plague the game's release.
5. Bankruptcy of the development studio ensues.
6. Original devs create a 'new' company, Tulga, (*cough*tax shelter*cough*) and maintain the game on minimal life support.

  Only for some reason, Horizons inspires near-religious loyalty among it's (tiny) remaining playerbase. Seriously, it's pretty amazing. I really think only a few hundred people even play this game, but despite the huge grinds, the 90% content-free gameworld, and ridiculously bad game client, these people just keep on keepin' on.

  After about three years of this, Tulga finally got it's lifeline pulled, and some shady ghetto-publisher bought the rights to the game. Things went from bad to worse (my opinion is that EI Interactive is also a tax-shelter joke company like Tulga, but that's neither here nor there). Basically, for the past year, absolutely ZERO has been done to develop or fix the game, aside from keeping the servers plugged in. Even billing no longer works, allowing ex-players to play the game even though they no longer have paying accounts (Not that I'm guilty of that at all... *cough*)

  After a year of THAT, someone apparently has busted out the defibrilator once again; some Tulga employees, under the name 'Virtrium', in cahoots with some of the players themselves, have apparently organized a takeback of their game.

  All I have to say is... holy CRAP. I mean, I know we MMORPGers get attached to our games, but this has to be one of the most obsessive lifesaving efforts I've ever seen.

 Now, I've played Horizons. Despite all the bad reviews, the game had three aspects I heard good things about: flying playable dragons (woohoo!), intricate crafting, and a strong community. In my opinion, the world is also one of the best-crafted ones I've seen, in terms of landscaping and placement of cool landmarks for explorers to stumble upon (one of my favorite MMO pastimes).
  However, the level/crafting grinds are atrocious, unlimited multiclassing means players can get to godmode and never need to play with anyone else, and, like I've said before, 90% of the world isn't even populated with mobs. And the fanbase, being so small, has a lot of unpleasant incestuous drama and clique-ism that all isolated small groups tend to develop after a while.

  In my opinion, it's the presence of free-flight for dragons, and the fact that dragons are playable race in the first place, is what inspires a lot of this rabid fan-loyalty. Never underestimate the power of dragons. =P

  But I have to admit to being really baffled by these latest turns of events. Even as someone who liked the game for the first few months of playing, it reached the point where the grinds, poor game client performance, lack of content, and broken gameplay just didn't make it worth my time or money, dragons or no dragons.

  And yet... the die hard fans and devs of this game just will not give up trying to make Horizons fulfill the potential they see in it, even if it takes years longer than most sane people would tolerate. I don't know whether to be impressed by their passion, or moved to pity by their inability to move on with their lives.

ETA: Horizons: Empire of Istaria has now been renamed Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted.