Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Tropics said:

So, I cannot read back 258 pages of thread but any word on the direction 38 Studios is thinking about going on graphics?

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I don"t think any solid information on this has been released.

Personally, I"m hoping the style falls somewhere in-between WoW stylistic graphics and more realistic. I don"t want them to push system specs like AoC and Vanguard, but I also don"t want the game to be overly cartoony.

Luckily, the work that I"ve seen from some of the artists they"ve hired is very good and I think the art style may end up falling exactly where I"ve hoped.

One of the best examples is this rendering of an orc byBrian Jones. He basically took the WoW grunt and redid it in his own style, which is far, far cooler than the WoW version. I"ve also attached one of his works in progress of a dwarf which I think also shows off his style.

As you can see, it"s a bit more "serious" looking than Warcraft, but still looks like it could be done with relatively low polys.

Grave said:

Personally, I"m hoping the style falls somewhere in-between WoW stylistic graphics and more realistic. I don"t want them to push system specs like AoC and Vanguard, but I also don"t want the game to be overly cartoony.

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That sounds just about perfect to me as well. I find the games that try to go for ridiculously detailed and realistic graphics tend to have fairly bland overall worlds because it is so much more work to add alot of intriguing content at that level of detail now. It is a pandoras box better left closed. Would not mind seeing the armor become a little "thinner" and more form fitting, the giant shoulderpads in WOW are a wee bit over the top.

Agraza said:

Tanking = Warriors in WoW. The pretenders are less intense.

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I thought warriors just mashed a certain macro or two over and over and sleepwalked through the job?

And WTF, Curt"s guild has 2800 members? Big thread, don"t know if that was brought up before. Just went to armory after looking at the sig. That"s a pretty insane amount of people, even factoring in alts.

Noob zerg guilds.

Fammaden said:

I thought warriors just mashed a certain macro or two over and over and sleepwalked through the job?

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Yeah you thought wrong. Way, way wrong. That"s like thinking the Pope is Gay kind of wrong.

Less than 10 people on the GM staff (of about 60+) had any end-game raiding experience and knew what they were talking about. None of the upper-management could even give loose descriptions of the raid zones.

I think we did about 3 "official" company raids before they put a stop to that. Upper-management trying to run the show when the peons knew the encounters better than them.

It"s good that Curt is getting some raid experience under his belt, and it"s good to have people on your team that have been there and done that. As long as you get teamplayers, and I suspect this isn"t a problem for Curt to identify, the company will do fine. But you also have to be willing to let other people take the lead if they know the content better. Why hire "experts" if you"re not going to listen to them?

I"m always worried about game developers that have no experience with the product they are trying to make. I hope this isn"t the case.

Zarcath said:

Less than 10 people on the GM staff (of about 60+) had any end-game raiding experience and knew what they were talking about. None of the upper-management could even give loose descriptions of the raid zones.

I think we did about 3 "official" company raids before they put a stop to that. Upper-management trying to run the show when the peons knew the encounters better than them.

It"s good that Curt is getting some raid experience under his belt, and it"s good to have people on your team that have been there and done that. As long as you get teamplayers, and I suspect this isn"t a problem for Curt to identify, the company will do fine. But you also have to be willing to let other people take the lead if they know the content better. Why hire "experts" if you"re not going to listen to them?

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That in a nutshell is why all current SOE MMOs suck. They are controlled by the suits, and not designed and run by the people with the love and passion.

I dislike WOW for the same reasons Genjiro does, but it is a creation of love and the raiding and design are by those who know MMOS, have raided them hardcore, and are deep in the muck.

If you create endgame content without the people who have that hardcore MMO raiding love, I"d wager you"ll get another mediocre creation that will be fun to level and look around but lack the long term hooks.

Having people that are experienced in the raid scene is good, but you also have to not allow yourself to fall into the current box of raiding.

Raiding stacking?? raid switching? Healing assignments?? Tanking?? Consumables?? etc, etc

When you"re using what has gone before as a template you can very easily end up with a shallow interpretation of what we have already seen rather than something new. A lot of very experienced raiders can"t think in terms of anything OTHER than what they have done before.

You suggest a more pro-active and defensive healer and they immediately say it won"t work. A more organic and sharing tank system?? What the hell are you talking about???

Knowing what has been done and how the bigger guilds have reacted to it are good things.....if you can use them as examples rather than blueprints.

If the core of the game is fun and well thought out then making a raid out of it just becomes a continuation of the core gameplay. Where the benefit of having a hardcore raider on your team "consulting" is that you tend to avoid shitty mechanics etc along the way.

Gaereth said:

Having people that are experienced in the raid scene is good, but you also have to not allow yourself to fall into the current box of raiding.

Raiding stacking?? raid switching? Healing assignments?? Tanking?? Consumables?? etc, etc

When you"re using what has gone before as a template you can very easily end up with a shallow interpretation of what we have already seen rather than something new. A lot of very experienced raiders can"t think in terms of anything OTHER than what they have done before.

You suggest a more pro-active and defensive healer and they immediately say it won"t work. A more organic and sharing tank system?? What the hell are you talking about???

Knowing what has been done and how the bigger guilds have reacted to it are good things.....if you can use them as examples rather than blueprints.

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But what you are talking about with raiding is simply a ripple in the pond. The rock that makes the big splash is *class design*, which affects everything else.

If you have built in mechanics that work differently, say for example, abilities that let multiple tanks overlap shields (gratuitous 300 imagery here) to greater effect and protect a main tank, well this will not only make tanking different in instances, in group content etc, but also trickles down to raiding. Your classes have to have a great amount of depth and something more than simply upgrades to the same crappy spells (hi EQ2 outside of healing classes which they did well). I personally think that social games should reflect that, and that an increased raid size can add more room under the umbrella for different specs and allows for some variety and specialty for specific encounters too (ie, no need to stack raids with optimized raid specs). I personally enjoyed 40 man raids more, but I understand why some hated them (ie, recruiting officers in good guilds on low pop servers--finding anyone with 2 brain cells etc). Then again, they allowed a little more breathing room for error, which is sometimes good if you can find the right balance between that and still challenging to top guilds.

Edit: tl;dr version of this post was from Draegan, but I"m long winded I guess

The newb is into some raiding. Got to heal on a Gruul beatdown and MA on a bashing of Mags last night, fun stuff.
Curt

Whatever game you"re making, please include cross-server chat channels!

It seems unacceptable in this day and age to be separated from friends/family. It"s impossible to try and manage face-time with different groups of friends, and it"s not like you can hop on other peoples ventrillos for 5-10 minutes and expect things to be kosher.

Thats one of the biggest things for me in regards to EQ/EQ2. Even if friends left for EQ2, I could still chat with them. I don"t know why Blizzard refuses to implement it. Even if channels were locked to factions that would be better than nothing.

Zarcath said:

Whatever game you"re making, please include cross-server chat channels!

It seems unacceptable in this day and age to be separated from friends/family. It"s impossible to try and manage face-time with different groups of friends, and it"s not like you can hop on other peoples ventrillos for 5-10 minutes and expect things to be kosher.

Thats one of the biggest things for me in regards to EQ/EQ2. Even if friends left for EQ2, I could still chat with them. I don"t know why Blizzard refuses to implement it. Even if channels were locked to factions that would be better than nothing.

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/signed - All MMO"s should have this feature.

Teljair said:

/signed - All MMO"s should have this feature.

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Strange, I chat with my friends and family on my cell phone or using VOIP not in a f"n game.

Of course if you want the original graphical chat room that was EQ then I can see your point but other then to shoot the shit what purpose would it serve to waste programmer time offering cross server chat?

It is not like you can play with those people anyway.

gnomad said:

Strange, I chat with my friends and family on my cell phone or using VOIP not in a f"n game.

Of course if you want the original graphical chat room that was EQ then I can see your point but other then to shoot the shit what purpose would it serve to waste programmer time offering cross server chat?

It is not like you can play with those people anyway.

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Well, I would find it nice to be able to discuss my class with other top players of the same class on different servers.

It would hardly be a waste of programming time.

gnomad said:

Strange, I chat with my friends and family on my cell phone or using VOIP not in a f"n game.

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I have more e-friends than I can keep track of. Friends that still play EQ or play EQ2/CoH/AoC. Friends from EQ that went to different servers, old guilds, people from message boards, people from steam. You can"t hang out on 2 ventrilos and expect to be able to participate in both. When I was a full-time raider I never had time to hang-out with my close e-friends on their ventrilo. Now that I"m not raiding anymore I can chill with them more.

This is an age of virtual communities. Keeping people grounded to one social circle is the stone-age, and WoW is doing more than that, not only are we split by server by split by faction. Why use in-game email when you have regular email right? Better yet, just handwrite a letter and throw it in the ocean, save programmers some time. Why use a friends list, just buy a rolodex!

Ngruk said:

The newb is into some raiding. Got to heal on a Gruul beatdown and MA on a bashing of Mags last night, fun stuff.
Curt

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cut down on the sig tags

Honestly, I"d settle for something like EQIM. While we"re on the subject of things that have seemingly disappeared since EQ, an in-game mp3 player would be nice.

Is there any kind of timeline for this game yet? Any news on game world, etc?

I am a huge R.A. Salvatore fan. Any chance this game world will be similar to his books?

-Arukk