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Everquest 2 outsourced their models to Korea. They did a better job than SoE could do.
MMO developers most laid off.
- Thread starter kudos
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
AladainAF
Best Rabbit
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That's what surprised me about the closing of CoH. I knew and met -lots- of VIP Subscribers, myself included that played. It had a pretty strong core base. I'd be very very surprised if CoH wasn't profitable.
I miss that game already. So many good fun memories, even in the later years.
ZyyzYzzy
RIP USA
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Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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MMOs are more popular than ever but now there is competition and the genre just isn't about rpgs anymore. The millions of subs Wow lost didn't just vanish, most of them went to other mmos. And millions more are playing mmos than 10 years ago.
But the market has changed. MMOs aren't just about wizards and elves and endless questing anymore. There are a lot more options in theme and playstyle, and that is great. It use to be EQ, Wow and Lineage, now the list of mmo choices is almost endless.
And there are still a ton of people putting out the old, tired, Lord of the Rings copies. Wizards, Elves and Orcs never die, they just get renamed by the latest hack.
But the market has changed. MMOs aren't just about wizards and elves and endless questing anymore. There are a lot more options in theme and playstyle, and that is great. It use to be EQ, Wow and Lineage, now the list of mmo choices is almost endless.
And there are still a ton of people putting out the old, tired, Lord of the Rings copies. Wizards, Elves and Orcs never die, they just get renamed by the latest hack.
Kharzette
Watcher of Overs
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I can give you my 2 coppers from having worked on one. In our case there were instanced missions that made up the bulk of the content. They had a bit of story, some scripting, usually some kind of reward and took around 30 minutes to play.
However they took around a couple months to make. The math just doesn't add up. The main reason was that creation was mired in process. A document was created, a meeting held, more documentation, actual scripting, play session with feedback, document review, then wider testing.
While it's nice to have all the feedback, and some feedback is worth more than others (ie the boss), give a typical modder the above task and they would knock it out in a couple days. And I'd argue it would probably be better for the singular vision rather than the too-many-cooks stuff I saw.
In such an environment, the best stuff got made by hiding it, working on it on nights and weekends till it was almost complete, and only then showing it.
However they took around a couple months to make. The math just doesn't add up. The main reason was that creation was mired in process. A document was created, a meeting held, more documentation, actual scripting, play session with feedback, document review, then wider testing.
While it's nice to have all the feedback, and some feedback is worth more than others (ie the boss), give a typical modder the above task and they would knock it out in a couple days. And I'd argue it would probably be better for the singular vision rather than the too-many-cooks stuff I saw.
In such an environment, the best stuff got made by hiding it, working on it on nights and weekends till it was almost complete, and only then showing it.
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tyen
EQ in a browser wait time: ____
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AR geolocated MMOs is where itll go next.
Pokemongo touched on it, but the AR was awful. Niantic's harry potter game will set the standard.
I have a real fucking good framework that does 2cm accuracy where you can place things and itll be in the exact spot you left it.
im mostly slanging it for enterprise use, but this type of style is going to be adapted for real geolocated games.
Not like that bullshit jenga/slingshot/lego crap theyve been showing the past month.
Pokemongo touched on it, but the AR was awful. Niantic's harry potter game will set the standard.
I have a real fucking good framework that does 2cm accuracy where you can place things and itll be in the exact spot you left it.
im mostly slanging it for enterprise use, but this type of style is going to be adapted for real geolocated games.
Not like that bullshit jenga/slingshot/lego crap theyve been showing the past month.
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Having also worked on a few of them, as well as other non-MMO games, a lot of companies use very archaic practices to do work. A lot of them still use waterfall methodologies, or try to use Scrum, but its a bastardized version where they still value excessive documentation over working software. Also, game development is mired with poor producers/project managers that would rather micro-manage the creative process instead of just facilitating a team to build what they think is best. Very few companies in the industry do it right unfortunately, and instead choose to grind their employees to death (because hey, you're working on games! cool right?!) instead of trying to adapt and instill better processes with their teams. This then leads to either stifled creativity, or slow content releases, or both.
Consider, a lot of the guys running these companies have been building software before Agile became mainstream and haven't adapted - and frankly they somehow keep getting work/funding from companies that don't know any better
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