It would seem to me that a MMO quote should be specific, and ought to say something about MMO's in general, or a game in particular, with preferably a heavy dose of irony, and ought to induce a "WTF" moment in the reader.

Of those chosen in the article, only #2 meets all those criteria -- a developer clearly stating what he thought of his game's subscribers.  "Taxi to victory" is old-hat and, I think, very very niche considering the game that led to its birth, and really doesn't say much.

If I had to submit one quote, I would choose that of Isildur, lead designer of Pirates of the Burning Sea, six months before release:

"The people who want to gank are waiting for the Next Big Failure to come along, to let them grief noobs for a few months before it shrivels up and dies. This is because every sane developer has learned this lesson: griefing and ganking doesn’t just lose you the $15/mo from the person who was griefed. It has a multiplicative effect, creating an environment in your game, and a reputation outside your game, and people tend to steer clear. ‘Play to Crush’ as a selling point and marketing slogan probably lost SB twice the players it ended up bringing them." (Full quotation here.)

Anyone who played Pirates of the Burning Sea can fully appreciate the irony of this statement, and I wish Isildur had stuck a post-it of it on his monitor frame when designing the rest of PotBS.

Gaute Godager's infamous steak comment might not have been in the Top 5, but I think it's definitely Top 10 material.

Since  I played WOW for so long I would have to say, "More DOT's" would probably be  my #1 on this list. Good list though, very fun!

My favourite (no matter how many times I see it) will always be...

Party:> Player1-"RUNwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww"
Player1 has died

Someone explain the story behind the "Taxi to victory" one to me.

Perdition, that one is exceptionally funny to me asit was one of the last statements before a wipe in a group I was recently part of in AION. :) 

Wow, look at all the MMO nubs.

Originally posted by Wrayeth

"Can I have your stuff?"

'Nuff said.

this

Originally posted by Perdition_uk

My favourite (no matter how many times I see it) will always be...

Party:> Player1-"RUNwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww"
Player1 has died

 

I almost ROFL'd in RL.

Originally posted by Velsha

Great list.  = )

"Soon (tm)"  should be added though, this one was made popular by the eq chat team way back when the game was new. 

Or along the same lines...  "The server will be up in about 10 minutes."  We all knew it would be another 3 hours.

QFE

The 2 above this are priceless.

Call me crazy, but I thought the legendary "All your base are belong to us" would at least get a mention. 

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Someone explain the story behind the "Taxi to victory" one to me.

It really won't have much of an effect unless you've been around long enough to remember who Lum the Mad was.

But basically Lum was playing WW2 Online and couldn't get his plane off of the ground because he had no throttle control on his joystick.  So... he was just taxing around the runway... Below some of the priceless quotes from the IRC chat session:

{21:12} <@Lum_> STEP 1
{21:12} <@Lum_> LOCK THE TAIL WHEEL
{21:13} <@Lum_> CHECK
{21:13} <@Lum_> STEP TWO
{21:13} <@Lum_> HOLD DOWN RIGHT AND LEFT WHEEL BRAKES
{21:13} <@Lum_> NOW I AM SUPPOSED TO SAY CLEAR
{21:13} <@Lum_> HOW DO I SAY CLEAR
{21:13} <@PyroRaven> yell to loh clear
{21:13} <@AIRtrafficControl> enter to chat
{21:13} <@Lum_> I SAID CLEAR
{21:14} <@Lum_> it didn't say to turn on the engine
{21:14} <@Lum_> ok
{21:14} <@Lum_> now it does
{21:14} <@Lum_> ok
{21:14} <@Lum_> engine ON
{21:14} <@Lum_> propellor thingy moving
{21:14} <@Lum_> we're COOKIN WITH GAS
{21:14} <@Lum_> READY TO BOMB THE HELL OUT OF FRANCE
{21:14} <@Lum_> max rpm SET
{21:15} <@Lum_> I AM MOVING
{21:15} <@DA_SLOG> throttle up on the joystick
{21:15} <@Lum_> my joystick doesn't have a throttle
{21:15} <@Lum_> WHAT DO I DO
{21:15} <@Lum_> WHAT THE HELL?
{21:15} <@Lum_> I CANNOT FLY A PLANE?
{21:16} <@Lum_> BECAUSE MY JOYSTICK DOESN"T HAVE A THROTTLE?
{21:16} <@Lum_> My plane is still moving
{21:16} <@Lum_> I WILL TAXI TO VICTORY
{21:16} <@Lum_> YES
{21:16} <@Lum_> I FIRED MY GUNS
{21:16} <@Lum_> I AM SO DANGEROUS
{21:16} <@Lum_> I DROPPED A BOMB!
{21:16} <@Georgi_Zhukov> You dropped the bomb?
{21:17} <@Lum_> I only had one bomb
{21:17} <@Lum_> I guess I dropped it
{21:17} <@Lum_> the plane is like bucking around now
{21:17} <@Lum_> OFFROAD TAXIING
{21:17} <@Lum_> BUT I ONLY HAD ONE BOMB
{21:17} <@Lum_> HOW DO I RELOAD
{21:18} <@Lum_> oh and I can't steer
{21:18} <@Lum_> I can only taxi forward
{21:18} <@Lum_> HOW DO I DO FLAPS
{21:18} <@Lum_> THAT SOUNDS IMPORTANT
{21:18} <@DA_SLOG> you locked the tail wheel
{21:18} <@Lum_> TAIL WHEEL UNLOCKED
{21:18} <@Lum_> um
{21:18} <@Lum_> and I still can't steer
{21:18} <@Lum_> OK
{21:18} <@Lum_> I STABILIZED
{21:18} <@Lum_> no, it's spinning again
{21:19} <@Lum_> REALISTIC
{21:19} <@Lum_> WHAT THE HELL IS REALISTIC ABOUT MY STUKA JOYSTICK NEEDING AN UPGRADE
{21:19} <@Lum_> I AM GOING BACKWARDS NOW
{21:19} <@Lum_> HEY
{21:19} <@Lum_> I THINK I TOOK OFF
{21:19} <@Lum_> no
{21:20} <@Lum_> it was an optical illusion
{21:20} <@Lum_> I just bounced real hard

Originally posted by Vetarnias

"The people who want to gank are waiting for the Next Big Failure to come along, to let them grief noobs for a few months before it shrivels up and dies. This is because every sane developer has learned this lesson: griefing and ganking doesn’t just lose you the $15/mo from the person who was griefed. It has a multiplicative effect, creating an environment in your game, and a reputation outside your game, and people tend to steer clear. ‘Play to Crush’ as a selling point and marketing slogan probably lost SB twice the players it ended up bringing them." (Full quotation here.)

Excellent quote thanx.

Dear Sanya - will we ever see a review / overview / interview from you that dares to criticize the Holy Company who developed the game?  I know in your worldview players are ALWAYS the ones to blame for everything that goes wrong but maybe a wee bit of objectivity and honesty might creep into your writings every once in a while?

I miss Old Man Murray and good ole CorpNews / Mr. Poppinfresh back in the day.  They'd a ripped Sanya several new ones.

I am not sure if it was released in english, but back when Age of Conan was about to launch, Gaute claimed to a Norwegian newspaper that WoW was like a hamburger, and Age of Conan was like a fine steak. I will do my best to find that article, but it still brings laughs to my wife and I. Dont get me wrong though, I loved AoC for a good while. Still doesn't change the irony.

I didn't find the exact article I had read, but this one is good enough: http://my.curse.com/blogs/aoc-en-news/archive/2008/09/17/N11185Id.aspx

Always lightens my day as a good "last words of the fool".

That was a great read. The only one I didn't know was 'catass'. There are many great quotes floating around from dev's and players and the like. But definitely the working as intended one is one of the best ones in my opinion. There are so many, it's hard to wheetle the list down to just five and I wonder what criteria Sanya used to choose the ones she chose. Smedley is a goldmine for many quotes: things pertaining to the legitimate RMT going on on all servers of VG and EQ2 for example, or the NGE release in SWG. Mythic is great at making silly quotes especially in their DAoC days.  Funcom, even CCP. Blizz is pretty boring in comparison.

I would have prsonally put the CCP/t20 fiasco in these quotes since it's one of the rare events of a dev playing a PvP game and being caught red-handed giving his alliance an unfair advantage in the equipment available to them. CCP's explanation of events was pretty attenuated considering what t20 was accused of. Their community messages were written in the most understated terms ever. Pretty cheeky...

"I must disagree with that list"

What about some of the SWG gems?

"We'll fix that in the combat upgrade"

"The smuggler patch is on the horizon/around the corner"

"We'll never do this to our playerbase again"-Smed

"It just wasn't Starwarsy!"-Smed

"There was too much reading involved"-Macintyre

"We need more kill/loot/repeat"-Nancy again

"If you don't like the NGE you should stop complaining and go play something else"-Torres

"I apologize for my statement and wasn't implying 90% of the playerbase should rage quit" (words to that effect) -Torres 2 weeks later

"This is the last Jedi publish" - SOE

"We won't give refunds on the ToOW expansion" - Smed

"We've decided to give refunds on the ToOW expansion to anyone that pre-ordered it or purchased it before the NGE" - Smed after threatened with lawsuit.

"The game is more Starwarsy now!" - Smed

"We'll gain far more players than we will lose" - Smed on the NGE

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining!" - Agricola

Only one i recognized/have ever heard was "working as intended". Never heard fo any of the others till now... so, can't be too common of phrases.... lol

Originally posted by jdm12983

Only one i recognized/have ever heard was "working as intended". Never heard fo any of the others till now... so, can't be too common of phrases.... lol

Well, they're antiques, and from way before my time.

In a way, it's nice to have them; they remind you of the evolution of the industry.  However, when all those quotes seem to come from the turn of the century, with nothing from after 2002, well, the choice is questionable -- especially when many of the quotes are just so vague as to be meaningless. 

I fear that if they tried the same exercise in ten years (so that we'd get all the "classic" quotes from today), the wittiest we'd get would be "Nerf pallys!".

The premise is great, but the execution is flawed.

Working as intended is the only one I have heard of....... But I have heard of a saying like...... Man that pizza is the cats ass.  Which basicly means it was Its really good.

Originally posted by cukimunga

Working as intended is the only one I have heard of....... But I have heard of a saying like...... Man that pizza is the cats ass.  Which basicly means it was Its really good.

"The cat's ass"?  Put like that, it sounds like someone went through a list of obsolete 1920's expressions and decided to give them a nudge towards the obscene.

 ah working as intented so many memories from City of Heroes

"Tankers are working as intended"

"Invunerability is working as intented."

"controlers are working as intented"

Which are then followed by, the global defense nerf, the purple patch, the control patch, enhancment disfunction...er Diversification, controler pet nerf, and then a invunerbility nerf or 3

Originally posted by Vetarnias

If I had to submit one quote, I would choose that of Isildur, lead designer of Pirates of the Burning Sea, six months before release:

"The people who want to gank are waiting for the Next Big Failure to come along, to let them grief noobs for a few months before it shrivels up and dies. This is because every sane developer has learned this lesson: griefing and ganking doesn’t just lose you the $15/mo from the person who was griefed. It has a multiplicative effect, creating an environment in your game, and a reputation outside your game, and people tend to steer clear. ‘Play to Crush’ as a selling point and marketing slogan probably lost SB twice the players it ended up bringing them." (Full quotation here.)

Anyone who played Pirates of the Burning Sea can fully appreciate the irony of this statement, and I wish Isildur had stuck a post-it of it on his monitor frame when designing the rest of PotBS.

 

I am sure Vetarnias remembers this, "Characters can be attacked by virtually anyone, and they can most certainly be ganked. That's the nature of the system, and we're not changing that system. So we don't want to hear any crying about it." This is another POTBS developer, DREWC's, infamous explanation of the POTBS mantra, there is no crying in the red circle.

Those words virtually guaranteed POTBS would be a niche title and never enjoy wide circulation, which has come to pass. What was amazing about this was the lead designer's understanding that griefing and ganking will kill a game, but yet they built the game for griefing and ganking. And the developer's didn't want to hear any crying about it? It's no wonder the game has failed on so many levels.

Originally posted by johnyjet

Originally posted by Vetarnias

If I had to submit one quote, I would choose that of Isildur, lead designer of Pirates of the Burning Sea, six months before release:

"The people who want to gank are waiting for the Next Big Failure to come along, to let them grief noobs for a few months before it shrivels up and dies. This is because every sane developer has learned this lesson: griefing and ganking doesn’t just lose you the $15/mo from the person who was griefed. It has a multiplicative effect, creating an environment in your game, and a reputation outside your game, and people tend to steer clear. ‘Play to Crush’ as a selling point and marketing slogan probably lost SB twice the players it ended up bringing them." (Full quotation here.)

Anyone who played Pirates of the Burning Sea can fully appreciate the irony of this statement, and I wish Isildur had stuck a post-it of it on his monitor frame when designing the rest of PotBS.

 

I am sure Vetarnias remembers this, "Characters can be attacked by virtually anyone, and they can most certainly be ganked. That's the nature of the system, and we're not changing that system. So we don't want to hear any crying about it." This is another POTBS developer, DREWC's, infamous explanation of the POTBS mantra, there is no crying in the red circle.

Those words virtually guaranteed POTBS would be a niche title and never enjoy wide circulation, which has come to pass. What was amazing about this was the lead designer's understanding that griefing and ganking will kill a game, but yet they built the game for griefing and ganking. And the developer's didn't want to hear any crying about it? It's no wonder the game has failed on so many levels.

Sure, I remember that one too.  Drew's quote is perhaps even more worthy of belonging in a Top 5 of quotes, perhaps in tandem with Isildur's, a la Laurel & Hardy.  One is far diminished without the presence of the other.

ones that come to mind for me are

Train to zone

No one expects the Seru Inqisition.

Come on, We can take <uber mob here> without everyone here.

<archer character> just broke mez.

Healer or Mage: I'll pull!

Quite a few classics forgotten:

Train to zone, Train inc, Train to exit and my favourite:

Lets train to DOT

- AO's Temple of Three Winds had a mob called Defender of Time which was halfway in and surrounded by mostly grey mobs which aggroed on sight but was easy to kill. They would instagank lowbies though. What you did was zone in the instance, which was shared with lots of players, no seperate wowie instancing here, and run like hell to DOT causing an extremely big train with 50+ mobs which where trivial to 55+ characters but deadly to 20+ ones.

Another favourite from the same place was:

Aztur at exit

- Aztur was the last boss in the same dungeon and one hardass mofo. Often players would aggro him, fail miserably and start to run towards the exit. Aztur followed them and stayed at the exit for a while ganking everyone that entered except the twinked-out 60's or GA fixers with the giant blue dildo of doom

Another good one is:

Heal you noob

-  You often get this when you play the main healer and almost everytime you see this, you're dead cause of stray aggro and get yelled at why you dont heal and what a nub you are cause you're dead.

Originally posted by Perdition_uk

My favourite (no matter how many times I see it) will always be...

Party:> Player1-"RUNwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww"
Player1 has died

 

Now that one has me ROFL!!! SOOOOO many personal experiences with that one.I had a vague recollection of "Catass"(but I know real life people who's house smells like cat pee:~{) and ya mostly just "grind" now. I am bad about forums so the others are also only vague recollections. But the "working as intended" has been in every game I have have ever played, and I have played since UO and it usually is followed by a *groan*.

I would have to say that they posts are better than the list as well. SoonTM (Groan), Train to Zone (which doesn't happen much with mob pathing and anti-kiting now days), Server will be up in x minutes (groan). PotBS and SB quotes are good. AoC another good one. All, I think, are more current and infamous than the list provided. But I would agree with (whoever said it in a previous post) that a clarification in the title about the list being a writers favorite list from old times might be appropriate.