VictorK wrote:Ruerl Khan wrote:Go re-read my post please and look at what the essence of my post where, it was'nt a comparison of warhammer the tabletop game and warcraft the strategy game, it was a critism of warhammer online and its methods, it was a critism of lack of ability to learn from the mistakes other MMO's make, thats what I where writing about, MMO's, not video games or tabletop games.
I'm not saying that you compared Warhammer to Warcraft in their capacities as a tabletop game and an RTS. But there is a comparison between the development of the Warcraft background through the games until eventually becoming an MMO to Warhammer's leap to an MMO. Y
ou said that Warcraft accomplished a stable transition (I agree), contrasting to the "unnecessary" alterations made by Mythic.
You want WAR to learn from other MMOs without imitating them, to create something new. A lot of this has to do with how Mythic managed the fluff.
Our argument is that it's difficult to imagine Mythic creating a successful MMO (and they have learned a great deal from other MMOs) and keeping the fluff in tact. In this sense it's bad to compare the Warhammer to the Warcraft fluff experience because Warcraft is a unified stable product contained within one medium and accustomed to the video game dynamic, Warhammer is not.
It was necessary that it changed.
Emphasis in the quote by me, to signify what I respond to
Incorrect, I stated that there are big changes from the various games before they evolve into WoW.
Incorrect, I do not say they cannot imitate, they can downright steal ideas and game mechanisms for all I care, if they work.
Incorrect, your argument -you do not speak for everyone.
Correct, it was necessarry, how they did it however was not necessarry but rather overdone, I can agree with the necessity of changes, not with the way they are pulled through.
VictorK wrote:Ruerl Khan wrote:I understand it perfectly Victor I just disagree with it, and in this case your statement as well. You need to understand that to understand my arguments instead of just assuming that i'm not understanding the concept.
It's your disagreement that shows you don't understand. You propose all these fixes, but none of them are successful. There's a reason companies use the two-side dynamic. We experienced that in our own campaign. You either don't understand what an MMO needs to be successful, or you don't understand the nature of the Warhammer fluff and why it can't be translated perfectly into a successful MMO model.
Quit that circulair argumentation please, I -do- understand, and I disagree with you, that I disagree with you does not mean that I do not understand.
It follows, from the logic of your argumentation that if I do "understand" your arguments, i'd agree, because disagreement shows lack of understanding. Therefore lack of the ability to percieve the truth as it is, ergo: your speaking the truth and those who disagree with you are just dilluded and unable to understand what your saying.
-Can you see why I get slightly annoyed at this? Quit your petitio principii, its beneath you, and simply understand that the reason I disagree with you, is because I have a different opinion, not lack of understanding.
Especially, since your statement above rather clearly shows that you don't understand my arguments, or ignored them completly
VictorK wrote:We experienced that in our own campaign. You either don't understand what an MMO needs to be successful, or you don't understand the nature of the Warhammer fluff and why it can't be translated perfectly into a successful MMO model.
1) Those campaigns where a) having a different audience b) a much smaller audience. It therefore follows that your campaign is a bad basis for comparison.
2) The criteria that I do not understand what an MMO needs to be successful.
3) The criteria that I do not understand the nature of the warhammer fluff and why it can't be translated perfectly into a successful MMO model.
Firstly: 2) and 3) are not mutually exclusive, I can understand the warhammer fluff and understand the requirements for an MMO to have success.
Secondly: I never stated that it should be "translated perfectly into a successful MMO model", i'm not an utopist I do know the difference between the real world where cash makes things run around and the tabletop game wich caters to a slightly different audience to put it mildly.
on 2) To put it in simple terms, for an MMO to have success it needs to be able to be financially viable, that means attracting thousands of players and keeping them there, to do so there are a multible different things for the game designers to keep in mind, to name but a few: graphics, design, music, gameplay, difficulty, accessability (how easy is it to get the game and keep paying for it) and pretty far down the hierachy of requirements come such a thing as the worlds background -its still on the list of requirements, but many MMO players won't care much if its warhammer or not, many MMO players will in fact be utterly uncaring about anything but the other more basic factors, many of them won't even be roleplayers and its mainly for role players that such a thing as a consistent background setting is important.
Roleplayers does not take up a majority of the games custemors, therefore it logically follows that this aspect is downplayed compared to the others.
However, this does not mean that a game designer should skip or directly change things if they take from a given setting, if they do that they scare a part of their potential custemors (the roleplayers) away, and while they (the roleplayers) may not be a majority, they are still a serious cash income, otherwise you would not find servers specifically marked for RP (roleplay).
It thereby follows, that a game designer has it in his best interest, to try and stick to the lore he's adapting into a game, at least from a financial perspective, Mythic has to my observations failed in this, they have delivered a game wich relies more on making it epic than making it good, more focused on the grand events than on character development, i've seen a screenshot on this forum of a level 9 great unclean one.
If players allready kill such things at that level, then I wonder how the game will be able to feel increasingly grand when you rise in the levels, without it being absurd?
This is one of the places where I believe that Mythic may have failed, there is a very good reason that most other games don't allow you to start as "archmages" to name but one thing.
To sum up my opinion: I believe that Mythic has failed in their translation, not that they should'nt have done one when transferring a tabletop game to an MMO, but rather they should have evaluated some of their aspects differently, and perhaps cut a bit of the present content out to have the rest interacting in a smoother way.
And they should send whoever was responsible for writing the text fluff to a penal regiment.
VictorK wrote: It's impossible to tell a story in such a setting. It's impossible to expect that the fluff will be maintained. This is the essence of the modern, successful MMO. And it's why a lot of us who are looking for an RPG experience as I believe that many who complain about the fluff etc. are get left out in the cold.
WRONG!
You -can- tell a story in such a setting, and you should give the players the option of following it while also allowing them to ignore the story as fits their style of play.
Age of Conan has some great examples of telling a story, while also making it fully possible for you to utterly ignore it.
Its possible, and not even hard, to tell a story with such a game, in fact one of the great strengths of MMO's are that they can tell multible stories at the same time, telling the story not just through text but through visual effects as well, in that regard they are closer to a theather than to a FPS, because the result tend to be given to a certain degree, especially when it comes to such things as quests.
Only aspect that is partially impossible to make a story for is the "successfull" PvP experience as you would find it in say a "battleground", but such ones are also taking place within their own domain within the MMO, the MMO as a type of game, are more than just that, and more than just PvP.