What Would Matt Do

If you’re interested in MMOs or EA Mythic or particularly in Warhammer Online, this news probably doesn’t interest you that much. If you’re a Warhammer lore geek though, I’m about to crush you with this news. There will only be two cities when Warhammer Online is released:

“we decided to focus our energies on two capital cities; one for Order and one for Destruction, and make them fabulous, said Jacobs. “Not good, not great, but fabulous.”

“We wanted to make our Capital Cities the best cities in any MMO. We think we’re doing that, but it came at a price and that price is that the other cities aren’t going in the game right now.”

Oh, and these classes no longer exist, at least not at release:

“This isn’t something that I can say that it is really a good thing for the player,” he began. “We’re cutting out some classes. I can say that we are doing this for quality, absolutely. Unfortunately, what I can’t say, and I won’t because I’ve never lied to the player base and while this would be a great place to start, I’m not going to.”

“Four of the classes that we’ve been working on, we just couldn’t get great,” he continued. “We looked at them and we said these careers are just not great… and we tried, and they weren’t coming out well.”

The four careers that are going may surprise players (and even includes one of Marks personal favorites). The list is as follows:

Choppa (Greenskin)
Hammerer (Dwarf)
Blackguard (Dark Elf)
Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire)

This means the removal of two tanks and two melee DPS classes.

There are two ways to react to this information I think.

One, be outraged. They promised X features and are only delivering on part of them! And that means there will be less game and the Warhammer lore won’t be right and well, just keep freaking out.

Two, offer up a so what? Does this mean anything to me, the guy who has never played the game as of yet and couldn’t give two craps about the Warhammer Lore? Not at all. I’m told there are still twenty other classes and it sounds like they are cutting out the bullshit instead of including it (like the Elves city in DAOC) and trying to really deliver a full, polished experience.

It sounds to me like we should be patting the Mythic guys on the back. They cut features that weren’t up to par, they didn’t consult with EA (always a good choice) and are really trying to bring a game they think will blow us away. I can’t really complain about that sort of thing.

I’m very willing to give Mythic the benefit of the doubt. Back when MMOs were still pretty new and WoW didn’t exist, a small company released a game called Dark Ages of Camelot. And you know what? They didn’t hate their customers. I know, it’s stunning. After coming from UO and EQ, it was a HUGE breath of fresh air to not feel like the developers were actively working against you, the enemy. It almost felt like they cared. Scary shit right there, a MMO company actually appreciating their customers. Who knew it was possible.

Because of that and the level of communication Mark Jacobs and Mythic have always given us (Tweaty/Sanya made my game days in DAOC better just by sharing the information she and others did), I’m going to share something back with them. Take a page from Blizzard’s book and quit announcing features in advance. Yeah, it’s good to hype your game, but you have to be a bit less specific about what’s guaranteed to make it in so you don’t have to do exactly what you’re doing now…announcing you didn’t get everything you wanted in for the release. Just a word to the wise.

I’m still really looking forward to Warhammer and I still like that the Mythic chaps feel the need to keep us informed and while they suck at spinning, they appear to be at least somewhat honest about trying to make a good game. Keep up the good work guys. Oh, and beware the hype machine.

What Would Matt Do: I’m going to keep wishing I was in the Warhammer beta. And wonder if they can really pull of the RvR and single player all mixed together as closely as they say it is. I’m definitely curious.

If you have no idea who/what I’m talking about, you’re probably not alone. You see, Dum doesn’t like to pimp his stuff or do it for a job (he’s turned down offers). But the good part is that he can’t stop posting new reviews..slowly. For today’s viewing pleasure, I bring you the review of Assassin’s Creed. Having never played AC (I know, I know), I now feel that I have a REALLY good idea of what’s good and bad about the game. Unlike most reviews, these are actually informative and smart and always funny. Oh, and if you look at the main site, you’ll see they don’t come out often…they sure are worth the wait though.

Assassin’s Creed Review

I included some older reviews below because every single review he’s created so far has been worth reading.

Stalker Review

Crysis Review

What Would Matt Do: Were it up to me, Dum would be hired by some gaming website and make some money doing this. But since it’s not and he’s turned down similar offers, I’m just going to wish him the best and wish he would review more.

I have no idea on the stats or even if it’s really for serious true (I saw it on Kotaku), but if you have a PS3, you might want to hold off a bit on updating to the latest version. Apparently, 2.40 is bricking some systems.

Owners of PS3s in all shapes and sizes have been reporting that their systems were loading to the initial PlayStation wave screen and simply hanging there after applying 2.40. No icons, no controller functions, no nothing, just the wave across the middle of the screen.

I also see a couple of forum posts around the web very similar to this one on Eurogamer:

Downloaded the update, installed, and it restarted itself. It made the usual start sound, and just stopped and wouldn’t go past the waves.

Didn’t show any user accounts. It stayed on the waves for a good five minutes.

I decided its already installed the firmware, so switching it off wouldn’t make a difference.

And it didn’t. I switched it back on, and it still stopped at the waves. I switched it off again, and held my finger on the power button to reset the display settings (being that’s the only thing that I can actually do) and now it just display a black screen.

Controllers don’t connect (didn’t since the beginning), they just flash red and turn off.

What do you think? Fucked?

Yeah, I’d probably go with fucked.

Kotaku also mentions that some more tech savvy users have found out that if you take the HD out of the PS3 and format it, it’ll work again after the ps3 formats the driver when you put it back in. Which means you lose all of your saved games and installs, but at least you don’t have to send it in for weeks. Does removing the HD on a PS3 void the warranty? I doubt it, but it’s something you should consider. I know it doesn’t on the 360.

Oh, and Sony? Good fucking job. Do me a big favor, be sure to publicize whatever jackass QA firm you’re using to test your updates so I never go near them.

What Would Matt Do: Being that I don’t own a PS3, I’ll just shake my head sadly at Sony and wish the PS3 owners out there well. On the plus side, you’re probably just playing Blu Ray discs on the thing anyway so maybe you won’t lose anything with the format!

I say that it might take more than a few weeks. (I couldn’t resist)

Seriously though, I was going to let this one go, since I’m not playing AoC, but in reality that’s never stopped me before. I can’t really say much about the specifics of it, other than, test much? Funcom, did your QA department take a break for a couple of months? Did your developers decide women are inherently slower? Do you hate the womens?

"I know that many of you will probably be disappointed to hear that it might take us as much as another three to four weeks to solve this issue, for which I can only apologize, but we want to make sure that we devote the amount of time that an issue of this magnitude and importance deserves … I have to stress that even with our internal goal set and everything currently proceeding on schedule I cannot currently promise that this will be patched to Live at the projected date."

Sure, I’m poking some tongue in cheek fun at Funcom, but in reality, this just stops me from playing a bit longer. Sure, it’s not stopping me as much as their being no demo, but if their was a demo today, I wouldn’t play and wait for them to fix up the women’s animation. So I’m still in no big hurry to play AoC. Probably for the best, since I’m really busy doing nothing these days.

Back to Funcom…You’d think they’d be working over time to fix this problem. It’s literally made half the choices in character creation not as good. How come they can’t kludge in a fix for the animation while they fix it up? How come they can’t come up with some solution that isn’t at least a month away (and probably more, knowing MMOs and schedules)? You’d think this wouldn’t be the kind of press they’d want at a time when they are rocking it with 700k subs.

And as a former QA guy, I’m dumbfounded that such an easy to find bug got through the process. I’m wondering, is there a process?

Oh, one more question that I can’t figure out. Why in the fuck is damage tied to the animations in any way? Is there an actual technical reason for this? It sounds pretty iffy, at best, to me. As a friend pointed out, doesn’t this mean ANYTIME you want to adjust the speed of an attack, you have to fuck with the animation? That’s plain retarded and suggests that maybe they never thought about the future and how things might change.

What Would Matt Do: I’ll continue to not play AoC. Maybe in a couple of months after they’ve got the launch bugs figured out, I’ll give it a shot. Oh, and after they quit hating women.

Yeah, Microsoft makes noises about supporting the PC gaming industry from time to time. They even joined the PC Gaming Alliance. Do they really care though? Do they really want PC gaming to succeed as a whole, or do they just want the game they release to still have decent market after they’ve been on the 360 for awhile…? Evidence points to the latter:

"If we launch a game that is on 360 and PC simultaneously, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing the German market to choose to play the PC version – because they are more likely to buy that than spend their money on the Xbox 360."

"If we launched a Halo game on PC and 360 in Germany simultaneously, 80 per cent of sales would be on the PC," he added.

Hmmm…that’s pretty damning. I don’t even need to translate that. Based on that statement, what they’d really like is for everyone to have enough money to buy a 360, buy all their games on the 360 first and then buy them on the PC too. Or at the very least, just buy the 360 version. So instead of releasing games on multiple platforms, they push their main focus, the 360. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone with half a brain.

So they are happy to support PC gaming as long as it’s not cutting into their real business in games, the XBox. I wonder what that makes studios like Ensemble feel…are they making games that are now 360 first, then PC, like most other Microsoft studios?

What Would Matt Do: I use Microsoft technology in work and play, constantly. Some of their decisions aren’t making sense though. Word to MS, quit competing against yourself. It’s not helping us, the gamer/consumer.