Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

The issue is not PvE vs. PvP but "freedom". VG was on the right track when they tried to market "freedom". Freedom to PvE, PvP, solo, group, craft, not craft, sit in a tavern and chat, adventure, not adventure, etc.

The percentage of PvP Players in WoW is irrelevant, the fact that WoW has the freedom for Players to PvP is what should be the focus. Another example of this is Guildwars and Fury. Fury does not offer freedom to PvE, Guildwars does. There are other factors that contributed to the success of Guildwars and the failure of Fury but I think the option to do either has contributed to the success of Guildwars.

MMORPG Players are buying a virtual environment to live in for a brief period of time. Counterstrike and TF2 do not really offer that. They offer fun but not the ability to exist in a virtual, persistent environment that offers the Player freedom to do whatever he wants.

On a separate note, to lose weight for the season just do Nutrisystems for 2-3 months. It is like magic. The food tastes like shit but it works like a charm. Dan Marino did it also.

That"s what I"ve never understood, people who support restriction. Rich Bitch has it right, market and deliver freedom.

Regarding Maxxius oh, 20 posts ago or so:

I never said that someone was trying to state that WoW was only PVE or only PVP or anything else along those lines. But the game was undeniably designed around a PVE mindset. How long was it before BGs entered the game? How long was it before Arenas were added? How long did it take them to figure out that CC was overpowered and to implement DRs? For a game where the overall design concept is supposedly PVP oriented, that"s a terribly shitty way to handle it. Which given the amazingly large amount of blizzwang that gets slobbered for the entirely wrong reasons, I don"t think the company is really that stupid to completely fubar multiple times in pretty epic ways on delivering a PVP game at release.

I"ll toss the time periods since release for ya on those questions, just to give some perspective:

First bg was introduced to live servers in July of 2005, 7+ months after release. First Arena was introduced in January of 2007, 2 years and 2 months after release. DRs were added in May of 2005, 6+ months after release. I 100% stand by my statement that the game was designed with PVE as the primary focus. And it"s still the primary focus of the game. Average player picks a dps class in mmos, WoW is no exception. WoWcensus and well, every other site in the world will agree with me. PVP gear improves dps and is the path of least resistance. If you were to put mobs in place of players in every single BG, yet leave the rewards the same, you would still have the same people doing it, probably in greater numbers though.

And seriously, have you stepped foot into AV recently? You know, the primary spot for grinding honor to get these items? That BG is about as PVP as Sesame Street, and if anyone does any form of pvp that doesn"t directly contribute to the speed of completion to maximize honor gain, you get streams of insults and bitching in bg chat about them costing their side the game.

The fact that pvp is currently done in WoW doesn"t make it the focus by a long shot.

Regardless, and more recently on topic, PVP games with pve added in will always do better than pvp games without pve added in. The reverse is almost 100% true as well, though with a slight caveat. There has to be restrictions on the level of pvp allowed to affect the level of PVE, and vise-a-versa otherwise you end up with the UO situation where people left in droves from one type of realm. Freedom is the key to the genre, as I and pretty much everyone can agree on. The key to grabbing and maintaining more of the market though is all in balancing them yet at the same time keeping them separate enough to not cause a butterfly effect due to changes in one portion of the game.

But this is all conjecture anyway. Personally I"m simply down for something new that at least attempts something beyond the standardized game environs out there and tries to bring something new to the table instead of high fantasy/fantasy-steampunk shlameel that has been tossed around of late in the larger releases. When I read that Todd Mcfarlane was attached, I immediately had a burst of hope. That guy has some pretty interesting "fantasy" concepts in his artwork, and I"m really intrigued to see more of them in the months to come.

splok said:

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If sources are simple, where are yours? Half of the servers are pvp, so even if the average population is the same on both pvp and pve servers (though from the census info this doesn"t seem to be the case... you can say that "many" are high pop, but all that matters are the totals, not a few servers that happen to be super crowed), you"re saying that a game with half the draw of WoW is niche? Ok, but that"s a niche most people would be ecstatic with. . .

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Ok, good, so now you at least acknowledge the possibity that half of WOW is pvp focused using the pvp servers as indication (logging into wow and checking the server types and population size). Yet you assume the other is pure pve which I submit is not, except maybe the wussy RP servers. You will see more people running through BGs/arena than ever in the high end raiding zones. Many preferred the nonpvp servers because they CAN pvp and level up without any griefing. And don"t presume they are doing it JUST for gear, since they were doing it before TBC even came out (remember ss/tm and crossroads fights too). And if you do make that argument, then it applies to all the instances as well, since people are certainly doing those for gear too.

But please, cut the crap. WOW would never have been only "half" successful if it did not have the pvp draw card to begin with. You totally ignore where WOWs market came from. It wasn"t from teenage girls, or house moms. It was from the Battlenet crowd who were blasting each other in games like Starcraft and Warcraft. McQuaid thought like you, that there is this massive pve market out there. Fine chase that dream, but it just won"t come close to dethroning WOW.

I think one thing people forget about PvP in "older" games is that it basically sucked. Take the worst of the WoW PvP servers and that was the best you could hope for then. In UO you could be ganked, have all your shit stolen, your corpse chopped into pieces, cooked and eaten. That was great for some people but bad for the rest. People DO like PvP when it"s controlled. FPS games are hugely popular partly because you can choose when and where you want to do it. WoW PvE servers are exactly the same. Don"t feel like enduring griefing? Don"t have to. Have the itch to pwn face? Queue up and go!

People like freedom but they also like restrictions, especially when those restrictions allow them to play the way they want to play at the time.

Ukerric said:

. . .
Think about it: If WoW had only PvP, or WoW had only PvE, without the other... which of those two games would have the biggest subs? I"m pretty sure... it wouldn"t be the PvP one.

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I"m pretty sure it would have been the PVP one. And if WOW was a strictly PVE game its subs would have dropped a ton, once the charm wore off. Speculation on anyone"s part of course. But that"s what you have to go through when trying to predict the future.

I don"t think you can say that for sure. If WoW was only PvE it may not have all the subs it does, but it would still have millions and be hugely popular. Likewise if it was only PvP servers it would still be hugely popular. WoW PvP still has a lot of PvE, and with instances you can limit the PvP a fair bit. Like has been said before, having both is the way to go.

Rezz said:

. . .
I"ll toss the time periods since release for ya on those questions, just to give some perspective: . .

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I"ll toss in the most important date for you. When WOW was released with all those, umm, pvp servers filling up. The PVE ones did too. I went pve first simply to see the content without the griefing. Then got bored and restarted on a PVP one. Was having a blast until they came out with honor for deaths (hence encouraging ganking and corpse camping) and then BGs. Made more sense to go back to the PVE server where then I can PVP without the grief when doing pve content.

Twobit Whore said:

I don"t think you can say that for sure. If WoW was only PvE it may not have all the subs it does, but it would still have millions and be hugely popular. Likewise if it was only PvP servers it would still be hugely popular. WoW PvP still has a lot of PvE, and with instances you can limit the PvP a fair bit. Like has been said before, having both is the way to go.

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Oh don"t get me wrong, I absolutely like the pvp/pve type game. But seriously, if WOW did away with all the pvp, I would be gone since Blizzard really is way too slow with the expansions to keep my "pve" interest going.

One thing to note, while a lot of people may not like the full open pvp, there are still many people that do. While not as many as don"t, having 1 or 2 servers available for old school, UO style pvp is not a bad thing. It all boils down to having options. If you want to play PvE with minimal PvP, then go on the PvE server. If you want controlled PvP with minimal world PvP, go for a WoW style PvP server. If you want hardcore PvP, play on the hardcore PvP server. I"ve never understood why blizzard has never opened a server type with rules like that.

Vatoreus said:

One thing to note, while a lot of people may not like the full open pvp, there are still many people that do. While not as many as don"t, having 1 or 2 servers available for old school, UO style pvp is not a bad thing. It all boils down to having options. If you want to play PvE with minimal PvP, then go on the PvE server. If you want controlled PvP with minimal world PvP, go for a WoW style PvP server. If you want hardcore PvP, play on the hardcore PvP server. I"ve never understood why blizzard has never opened a server type with rules like that.

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Blizzard is the Apple of the gaming world,they appeal to newbies that don"t really know what the fuck they are doing. Having hardcore servers,means some of their precious newbie mmo players might stumble onto said server and have a negative experience and hate Blizzard for life. Can"t see them risking that.

Surlok TP said:

Lineage is the DOS of the gaming world,they appeal to h4rd3c0r3s that don"t really know what the fuck the value of their time is. Having a graphical user interface,means some of their precious h4rd3c0r3s users might accidentally have an intuitive user experience and operate their systems without having to know command lines and hate Microsoft for life. Can"t see them risking that.

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=D

FARK.com: (3317895) Once Curt Schilling is done with baseball, he"ll do what any other self-respecting athlete will, which is throw himself into developing a new MMORPG. Wait, hold on, that can"t be right

FoH mentioned in the very first post. Nothing further to add; I just thought it was kind of cool .

Adding to the linkage, this time from CNN:

Star pitcher trading baseballs for video games - CNN.com

Copernicus, huh? Brings to mind images of magically flying Pirate ships for some reason.

38 Studios reveals: Copernicus - Massively

w00t Studios is reporting that Curt Schilling of 38 Studios has released the title for their upcoming MMO. In an interview with Gametap at the Consumer Electronics Show going on in Vegas, Schilling said that Copernicus is a "working title" but revealed no other information regarding the game.

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However I believe it"s just a codename.

Thanks for that It is the codename, period. We knew something would get out there well ahead of when we planned or wanted it to, as well as needing to get something out there ahead of when we may have planned on rolling it out, so the smart people here came up with Copernicus.

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f13.net forums - Schilling"s Green Monster Games

Draegan said:

However I believe it"s just a codename.

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Yeah, I know. It still brings to mind magical flying pirate ships. And you know what they do on those magical flying pirate ships?Shennigans.That"s what.

Im sure this has been discussed in the other 182 pages but has Curt talked about acquiring say Speedtree or Unreal 2.5/3.0 ? Anything of that nature yet ? Or is he building everything from the ground up >?

He"s buying an engine, and he"s in that process now.