John Smedley hired by Amazon to produce MMOs

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Zehnpai

Zehnpai

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Elidroth said:
I'm hopeful Smed and company can turn out some great games.
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There's a line between hopeful and expectant. I'm hopeful they put out good games. I hope anyone can put out a good game. If Brad McQuaid, Uwe Boll and Curt Schilling joined forces to create a scrabble-based MMO with a movie franchise tie in and it was a good game I'd play it.

Am I ~expecting~ quality though? Of course not. You can say "It's not Smed's fault really!" all you want but he's been at or near the helm of a lot of projects that started out promising but shit themselves over and over again.
 
Lendarios

Lendarios

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EQ2Wire » Closing the Book on EverQuest Next and Landmark

Are we famous?

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Rerolled

With Sony Online Entertainment giving way to Daybreak Games and Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson leaving for funtirement on other shores, there were many in the EQN/L fan community who felt that the game’s hopes and dreams went with him. The Rerolled forums, recently respun as the Fires of Heaven forums, are a hotbed of player (and sometimes developer) discussion. Much of it bears a strong resemblance to an average EQ2Flames rant, however some of it includes genuine, credible information. Reading the comments of three former SOE employees gives some insight into what really went wrong.

From Elidroth:

Dave’s direction pushed Landmark into being a game instead of just the tools to create the voxel world.. In some way, you could say this decision ultimately caused EQN to be cancelled.

"
 
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Elidroth

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His real problem is hubris. He simply cannot accept that he isn't right about everything.
 
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Kuro

Kuro

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Working in the Boardgame/CCG sphere, this is pretty much a problem with any "vision" guy.

The best is when they become convinced their design is flawless, and delude themselves into thinking it's just people with personal vendettas trying to personally harm him/her that's causing everything to fail.
 
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Elidroth

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One thing you can't fault Dave for is his enthusiasm for a project.. It's just while at SOE it seemed mostly misguided. SOEmote is a perfect example. Utterly useless in a game, yet pushed hard by him. I think he was genuinely shocked that people didn't care, plus he had way too many people blowing smoke up his ass saying how cool it was, even though it wasn't.
 
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Jysin

Jysin

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Aka, the George Lucas effect. Too many ass-kissing yes men.
 
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Flobee

Flobee

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Elidroth said:
One thing you can't fault Dave for is his enthusiasm for a project.. It's just while at SOE it seemed mostly misguided. SOEmote is a perfect example. Utterly useless in a game, yet pushed hard by him. I think he was genuinely shocked that people didn't care, plus he had way too many people blowing smoke up his ass saying how cool it was, even though it wasn't.
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The problem is that the idea IS cool. It just has little to nothing to do with the development of an MMO. Frivolous use of resources in a company that direly needed to refocus itself to save some of the games in its stable.
 
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Elidroth

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It was cool only in that it was interesting tech, but usefulness was absolute zero for in-game stuff. MAYBE the only practical use would be for creating dialogue visuals in a cutscene or something, but I'm fairly certain there is good tech already available for that.
 
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Lunis

Lunis

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Not surprising to hear that Smedley doesn't really like MMO's, he just picks passionate people and let's them do their thing. It worked for the original EQ but failed for EQ Next.
 
BilboFaggins

BilboFaggins

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Lunis said:
Not surprising to hear that Smedley doesn't really like MMO's, he just picks passionate people and let's them do their thing. It worked for the original EQ but failed for EQ Next.
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I still want to know what happened to the first iteration of Everquest Next that they showed us screenshots for at one of the SoE Live conferences. It looked damn good, and Smedley said we would be able to play the beta at the next year's conference.

Then the next year came, and he said they scrapped it and started over. Next thing you know we got that Lion King looking pile of crap demo shown at the next conference.

I mean wtf. What happened to the first Everquest Next that they claimed was not fun and scrapped?

I'm tired of these idiots in the industry telling me what is fun and what isn't. Let me decide damn it!

All I want is an Everquest circa 2001 clone with modern day graphics. Is that too God damn much to ask for?

We've got a thousand and one WoW clones, but not one single EQ clone.
 
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uniqueuser

uniqueuser

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AessaIO.jpg


Should've been a
item_709.png
instead.
 
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Shmoopy

Shmoopy

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Mick said:
John Smedley rallies the MMO community to help former EverQuest associate producer
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Lol top comment:

Untitled-1.jpg


edit: just read the GoFundMe.

after 15 years of alcoholism, body finally decided that it was time to die. I developed a bleeding ulcer, my 5th actually, and in addition to losing nearly half of my blood volume, my liver decided to shut down as well.
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All of my family members are either deceased, in prison, or a hermit somewhere on a mountain in Wyoming.
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After 4 or so bleeding ulcers the guy couldn't cut down on beer?
 
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Zapatta

Zapatta

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If this was Smeddies good pal he could throw a fundraiser or say he will match funds, asking games fans to bail this dude out is super McQuaid of him.
 
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