Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

I think the bigger point is getting designers who live, eat, and breathe this stuff.

Raids are important, but so are classes, quests, immersion, and the rest of the game.

If the people making your game didnt play UO, EQ, DAOC, and WOW and be immersed and tear up all the content then they probably aren"t going to be making a successful MMO that people will flock to.

I have no clue what Tigole did prior to Blizzard, be it wax floors at Safeway every night or make Subs, but he obviously was picked due to his online writings and raid experience. He was 100% involved in the industry, but as a player with immense knowledge. I"m sure being guilded with Blizzard didn"t hurt, either. I think it"s safe to say that was a pretty good hire and if you ignore that and get an "established" person who has a nice resume but in reality is a clueless MMoer and raider then your game will go the way of AC2.

Once BWL was fixed it was amazing, probably the best overall raid zone in WoW to date. Never raided in EQ2...was it anything special?

It was worse than EQ1, and easier too...at least for the first year. My guild decided bad raid content was no fun to get worldwide first kills when it was so easy we could do it with 18/24 people.

Genjiro said:

It was worse than EQ1, and easier too...at least for the first year. My guild decided bad raid content was no fun to get worldwide first kills when it was so easy we could do it with 18/24 people.

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Edit: misread.

Hachima said:

Let me guess...you also think a company that makes excellent trucks can also design a great car too right?

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Well. Toyota makes the Tacoma which was the 2008 Truck of Year, and it also makes the hybrid Prius, which is the "hottest" car at the moment and has like a 4 month backorder nationwide, so yea.. Id say its possible.

But I was thinking more about Google.

This is a company that branches out into a wide variety of things, and does them very well. This is because they have a very creative staff and great management.

Lleauaric~EW said:

Well. Toyota makes the Tacoma which was the 2008 Truck of Year, and it also makes the hybrid Prius, which is the "hottest" car at the moment and has like a 4 month backorder nationwide, so yea.. Id say its possible.

But I was thinking more about Google.

This is a company that branches out into a wide variety of things, and does them very well. This is because they have a very creative staff and great management.

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You might as well say "like Blizzard can make RTS, action-RPG, and MMO all from the same company?!?" Toyota is the WORLD"S LARGEST AUTOMAKER and has been around for 3/4 of a century.

Secondly, Google did not start with its doe-eyed staff and just decide to branch out. They hire like crazy and have a huge staff. When they want to go in a direction, they hire people for it.

What an awful counterpoint.

It was an awful analogy in the first place.

The Truck thing wasnt my analogy... so, take it up with Hachima.

But id say Googles success comes not from mass hiring but from top down vision and creativity. Mass hiring of people doesnt equate success, there has to be more than that. Similarly, there has to be more to a successful designer than, "Zomg, I did a 18 hour Fear Break". If I had a list of credentials for what I was looking for in a good designer, extensive EQ or WoW raiding experience would be fourth or fifth down.

To illustrate this point, Id rather have Valves design team for Portal turned loose on raid zone design than see the Tigole and current crop of Blizzard retards.

Google hires people appropriate for the job, just like Toyota hires people appropriate for the job and S38 should be hiring people appropriate for the job. Don"t create a strawman with the assumption that what we are looking for is a team full of raid veterans. What is necessary is to have that experience on the team, especially on the raid team, because it is simply not replaceable with vision or leadership. You have to know the realities of what you are doing, what effects the raid environment will feel from it, what raiders will do to content, what raiders will experience with the content aimed at them as well as the content necessary to their means of gameplay. I"ve put it about as plainly as I can.

I"m not saying that you should go hire Xi because he"s clearly got the experience to be a good designer. I"m saying that pretending it"s not a consideration, that it"s not something you need on your team, is just that: pretending. So go get people with vision, with fresh ideas, that may not really know the ropes of raiding, fine. But just like you need a good business manager with your visionary, you need a raid-grounded person for every pie-in-the-sky designer who doesn"t really have the experience to go with his ideas. It"s really that simple.

But just like you need a good business manager with your visionary, you need a raid-grounded person for every pie-in-the-sky designer who doesn"t really have the experience to go with his ideas. It"s really that simple.

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Isn"t Curt that guy?

Did Curt hardcore raid in EQ? Doesn"t sound like he is a high end raider in WoW. Not flaming him, just saying, I didn"t get the impression that he was really in any sort of Tigule + Foror position as a "raid content expert". I really don"t know about EQ though.

Somehow I don"t think MLB career and serious raider can possibly go together.

I got the impression when I first read about his EQ habit a long time ago that he actually had tons of time to kill on the road and stuff. Still doesn"t fit in with a typical raid guild schedule but he could have been raiding with Euros or something.

I dunno what he did raid wise in EQ1, but I remember a PC Games article he wrote /w screenshots when POP was released. It was funny looking at some of his text screenshots of him going "OMG!!!!!!!!" as some mecha-gnome attacked them.

kegkilla said:

no, it can"t.

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Yes it can!

Allakhazam.com: News

Allakhazam: How would you describe your typical playing style? Hard Core Raider? Casual Gamer? Role Player? Do you prefer Pvp or Pve? The good races or the evil ones? Tell us what Curt Schilling the gamer is really about.


Curt Schilling:I am a hard core raider, who loves questing. I don't really like PvP. Never have, although some of the newer WoW real world PvP stuff I find to be a ton of fun because I can co-exist with PvP players and we don't have to impact either"s play styles if we don't want to. I tend to steer towards evil races as well.

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Although Im sure now people will stop giving advice from their vast experience running a gaming company and will now start giving advice from their vast experience as an All Star starting pitcher.

OK, so he said he was a hard core raider.

I am a serious politician.

I believe this is the definitive "screenshots or it didn"t happen" moment.

Oh yea.. of course. Curt Schilling is lying about how much he plays a video game. Sure. That makes PERFECT sense. Besides, the fact is that its a credibility issue.

He has it, you don"t.