What Would Matt Do

That’s a flippant way to say that their are big problems at Flagship Studios. The confirmed part is this:

Gamasutra has received confirmation from a Flagship Studios representative that the Hellgate: London developer has seen significant staff cuts.

This morning, Gamasutra obtained information from a source close to the company indicating that staff at both the Flagship development team as well as online services subsidiary Ping0 were let go. Both companies operate out of the same building.

Flagship declined to go into further detail about the layoffs, beyond stating that there was truth to the reports.

The unconfirmed part reported on a Korean blog and translated both in that last article and at Shacknews is that their creditors may be taking back Hellgate and Mythos to back up loans that Flagship took out on the respective IPs. OUCH.

According to the report, HanbitSoft said it that it intends to take full control of the property, adding that its own in-house development team will be able to "properly manage and develop Hellgate: London into a good game with proper content."

Moreover, HanbitSoft’s legal team reportedly told Voodoo Extreme that Flagship had offered up its Mythos (PC) intellectual property as collateral for a loan from the publisher to maintain operations. As revealed last March, Flagship pledged Hellgate: London for a loan from lender Comerica Bank.

"Flagship Studios does not currently own the intellectual properties to either game, which are held in separate companies subject to the security interests of lenders," said HanbitSoft’s lawyers. "HanbitSoft hopes to work with Comerica and some of the team at Flagship to see if there is a way to continue to generate content to keep Hellgate online in Asia and to finish the development of Mythos."

It’s not clear IF HanbitSoft can do that, per their agreements or if this is really happening. Flagship has officialy denied it:

Flagship Studios responded to the reports, dismissing the story as "an outright lie."

"We have no idea where they are getting their information from and have asked legal counsel to pursue the issue," Flagship said. "We are mystified by HanbitSoft’s conclusions and any attempt to take over the IP will be met with a strong and swift response… We are outraged that Hanbitsoft would attempt to completely tarnish the reputation of its most vital developer."

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a company losing control of its IPs like this. I’m hoping that Flagship is right and this is all a power play or a sham or something mistranslated.

Whatever it is, I hope everyone that is going through hardship at Flagship lands on their feet and is all right. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the five minutes I played of Hellgate, but I don’t like to see this sort of thing happen to any company.

What Would Matt Do: Hope for the best.

Update: I saw on Lum’s that he link to this with more news on it.

Update: Hanbitsoft’s lawyers got in touch:

Please understand that the facts are (1) HanbitSoft is an exclusive licensee of both Hellgate and Mythos in Asia, with rights to sublicense the games; (2) in addition, HanbitSoft is a secured creditor who has been pledged the Mythos (but not the Hellgate) intellectual property as collateral for a loan; (3) Comerica, another secured lender, has been pledged the Hellgate intellectual property as its collateral for a loan; (4) Flagship Studios does not currently own the intellectual properties to either game, which are held in separate companies subject to the security interests of lenders, and Flagship Studios’ interest in those companies is also pledged to its lenders; (5) it is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open, but HanbitSoft hopes to work with Comerica and some of the team at Flagship to see if there is a way to continue to generate content to keep Hellgate online in Asia and to finish the development of Mythos.

Note point five: "would have allowed it to keep its doors open."

Update #2: Subscription options have been removed from account areas, as has the ability to unsubscribe. On the forums, the lock-happy mods have yet to touch a fifty-seven page complaints thread that has spiralled out of control since the news regarding redundancies was released.

Update #3: The staff that still have a job have gone home for the weekend. However, we’ve been contacted by an ex-Flagship developer who has suggested that the studio is on the brink of closure and has no financial capital to fight Hanbitsoft’s legal challenge.

That doesn’t sound good at all. That’s a rough way to go down. My best wishes go out to everyone this affects.

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.

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, that’s right, City of Heroes/Villians is working on this potentially awesome new feature so I’ll come back…me specifically. Well, maybe for one other guy too. The idea is just too cool for it to be for one guy:

"Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialogue and any clues needed for the missions.

"When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon," added Miller.

Yeah, they just said that. And yeah, it has serious potential. But now I have to ask, what are they really saying. Developers claim all kinds of features all the time and often they either don’t deliver or at best exaggerate the features.

Here’s what I worry they are saying. You can pick a zone, pick a baddie type, and pick a baddie boss and add some dialog. And that’s it.

Here’s what I want them to be saying. You can pick a zone, pick a place in that zone, pick a time of day (if you want), pick what gang, how many, how many are strong and weak, how the quest starts, what zone it starts in (see, not just tied to one zone), full dialog options, what kind of quest it is (gather, kill x of x, kill boss, rescue, etc), what levels can do it, can the quests be linked (i.e. - you have to complete task x before you can try task y), can good rewards be picked, etc.

I want real quest creating capabilities. I want a world I can create content in and share it with others and have that be fun and easy. Whether that’s what they are talking about or not, I’ll give them this, it’s a good step. A right step.

I just hope they pull it off enough so that other MMO developers feel the need to put in their system.

Why, you ask? Because wouldn’t it be fucking wicked if you didn’t run out of good quests and you never had farm again? Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to do the oft lame quests the MMO came with, but could instead search a database of quests, all rated by millions of other users, so the cream of the crop would pop to the top.

Wouldn’t it be great if MMOs had fun quests.

One last thing…I’m not saying MMO developers can’t create good quests. They obviously can. I’ve seen it. But they get so wrapped up in other things I don’t care about (pvp in a pve game, battlegrounds type shit, etc), it would be great if players take up the slack.

What Would Matt Do: If the quest creating system is even half decent in CoX, I’ll resub.

(Alternate title: I’m shallow)

Ok, yeah, graphics aren’t everything AND this is just an early beta…but this being the first time I’ve seen the graphics in action I am completely underwhelmed. They remind of something I might have seen in EQ or maybe even DAOC. They aren’t lush, very detailed, unique or even that interesting. Yeah, it has dragons and castles and other potentially cool stuff. But none of it looked that interesting. Maybe WoW has ruined me with it’s level of detail allowed by it’s engine even though it’s a relatively low res engine. Maybe I was expecting more what with all the next gen games looking so spiffy these days. Maybe the source material was overly generic on it’s own. Or maybe it’s really is bland and boring. You decide: