Originally posted by AnsgarIsen

Originally posted by Artjom2

BECAUSE "PIXEL" didn't care about mmorpg gamers, left the company and left behind a code noone could work with. Not because they were incompetent. But, because he was incompetent and his code was sloppy. 

I'm with you in my personal disblief in regards to the habit of quite some folks to make a demi-god out of Pix. He's giving his side of the story, and that's fair enough and absolutely understandable. Also he's claiming what he sees as his rights here. How far he holds responsiblity for the failure of the entire project, nobody knows. He will have his share somehow, - to blame him as being the single point of failure is ridiculous however.

I don't know much about PIX or what his role in working on DnL was. But I do know that he has actually come down here to the level of us mere mortal gamers to explain his story and thats a hell of a lot more than any other game developer I've ever met has done. That alone makes him a good guy in my book in an industry where most game developers avoid forums like the plague and act like wizards at the top of their ivory towers as if they don't have to anwser for their actions.  Look at other game developers: Where are the guys who screwed up AoC? Or the Shadowbane developers? All these guys hide behind "Public Relations Managers" whose sole job is to make sure that the developers never have to talk to any of their customers. And look at SOE. Here we are all these years later after they wrecked Star Wars Galaxies with the CU and NGE and those guys still won't admit their mistake. We still get reports of how they believed the NGE was a good idea and they aren't sorry that they did it. Just recently Thomas "blixtev" Blair left the SWG team and like everyone else he praised the NGE and the team which produced it. There are so many total sell outs in the gaming industry today who produce the worst games they can, lie about it and never admit their mistakes. Those are the guys who don't care about gamers. PIX isn't one of those guys and I don't care if hes the worst programmer who ever lived. The fact that he quit working on DnL because he saw what a worthless game it was and then sued the crap out of the company tells me that he isn't a sell out like all the other game developers these days. I'm not saying hes a demi-god, but atleast hes honest. Thats more than I can say for anyone else in this industry.

If DnL failed because he left the company and they couldn't find anyone else to do his job, that doesn't really speak well of that company that they apparently had only one employee who knew what the hell was going on, now does it?

SoG was beta. I don't care what anyone says. You put out a game before its ready, its filled with bugs and half your customers can't even log in - thats a beta. Peroid. End of story.

Originally posted by AnsgarIsen

Originally posted by Artjom2

Ansgarisen.

 

SoG was a "dumbed down" or pre-version of DnL live.

So was the beta if you say that they were the same. Things that weren't stable were taken out from SoG untill they could be repaired (knockback spells etc..) . That unfortunately only happened to some things. Hence some of the improvements of DnL live. Other improvements was due to longer development time. .. SoG was also much smaller in size.

It had a different look and feel than the live game. I remember this clearly.

 

The question is why these things were not working!!

BECAUSE "PIXEL" didn't care about mmorpg gamers, left the company and left behind a code noone could work with. Not because they were incompetent. But, because he was incompetent and his code was sloppy.

 

 

 

I think there's a little misconception on your end:

I wasn't posting assumptions but what I know for a fact.

SoG was NOT a dumbed down version, it was all that they had at that time, - nothing but putting the latest beta version into production. They didn't take anything out of it, they simply didn't have any more at hand.

The only thing that they did to SoG in the direction you're poiting at was the decision to keep some parts of the map locked. They were still there however.

Everything making the final release of DnL different was coded and "tested" (beta wasn't running any more at that ime, mind you) while SoG was running, leading to the desastrous QM everybody involved had the pleasure of witnessing.

The reasons for the massive problems on the technical side none of us knows for real. I can only assume from all I saw that the main problem was an incredible lack of management skills.

It was obvious that they had quite capable coding resources and also brillaint ideas, however, no matter where you look, there was nobody to tie all this together and make it work.
I'm with you in my personal disblief in regards to the habit of quite some folks to make a demi-god out of Pix. He's giving his side of the story, and that's fair enough and absolutely understandable. Also he's claiming what he sees as his rights here. How far he holds responsiblity for the failure of the entire project, nobody knows. He will have his share somehow, - to blame him as being the single point of failure is ridiculous however.

In fact his part was amongst those that acutally worked pretty well. It's just as ridiculous to state he was the only one doing his work. The VWolrd part by far is NOT the only thing that actually was brilliant about DnL, - there are numerous other bits and pieces.
It's managing all this and quality management where the overall failure happened; - an amazing level of incompetence when it comes to actually integrate and produce a well rounded gaming service out of it.

Thanks for sharing, Ansgarisen. I respect your view on it. .. And it is interesting to hear you talk about the beta. .. We shall see what comes out of the lawsuit and in the future of DnL. 

Raltar.. pix is using this board to his own advantage. Its his personal hobby. He doesnt do this for us. Dont thank him for being a selfish ... ... . He is being himself. Just like he was when he quit the team.

About SWG.. You're wrong. There was an explanation of the NGE recently. And Blixtev is right about everything he says in that post of his. I read it myself.

I do think a lot of people see the progress of SWG far too onesided. They think NGE was it and now the game is fucked. But NGE was bad. It left things broken and it removed fun features.. However, the game has improved since then, And though it is no longer as sandbox. They have totally repaired the game now and added awesome things to it. .. Ims orry Blixtev leaves. The last few years for SWG have been amazing. I've played the game and I've been excited about all the patches. Im really excited about the future too. 

Originally posted by ZtyX

Raltar.. pix is using this board to his own advantage. Its his personal hobby. He doesnt do this for us. Dont thank him for being a selfish ... ... . He is being himself. Just like he was when he quit the team.

 

About SWG.. You're wrong. There was an explanation of the NGE recently. And Blixtev is right about everything he says in that post of his. I read it myself.

I do think a lot of people see the progress of SWG far too onesided. They think NGE was it and now the game is fucked. But NGE was bad. It left things broken and it removed fun features.. However, the game has improved since then, And though it is no longer as sandbox. They have totally repaired the game now and added awesome things to it. .. Ims orry Blixtev leaves. The last few years for SWG have been amazing. I've played the game and I've been excited about all the patches. Im really excited about the future too. 

So PIX is a bad guy because he refused to continue to work on a broken MMO being developed by an obviously corrupt company? Even if you are correct and he somehow "wrecked" the game because he was the only programmer who knew what he was doing in the entire company, how did that translate into ALL THE OTHER PROBLEMS the game had? Did Pix somehow force them to charge monthly fees from people who had already cancelled their accounts? Did Pix somehow force them to hire multiple incompetent public relations firms which insulted and harassed the loyal fans of the game? Did Pix make up a BS story about their beta being a "pre-release" so they could charge money for it? Did Pix try to lie about the game and supress people giving honest opinions on it? Did Pix fire all their employees and run away to China to avoid a lawsuit?

Even IF (and this is a very big if) you know something you haven't explained yet about Pix that would make me change my mind about him, your assumption that he is somehow the sole person responsible for the failure of DnL makes no sense at all. Even if it had been the greatest game of all time it still would have bombed just based on the way the developers were treating their customers alone. Pix isn't responsible for that. Even if it turns out he is Satan in disguise and you have the pictures to prove it, that wouldn't somehow redeem all the other fools who screwed up the game.

There have been a lot of "explanations" about the NGE. But what has always been lacking is a clear and honest apology for ever considering the NGE in the first place. It has been clearly stated WHY they did it, we already know that. Lucas Arts was mad that the game wasn't "Star Warsisy enough" and demanded that they make the game more competitive with WoW. The developers told them: "If we do this, we will lose ALL of our customers" and Lucas Arts said "Thats fine because you will get more" and so even knowing how many people it would tick off they went ahead and did it anyway. They didn't care that all the long time fans of the game would hate the NGE, as long as it made them more money in the long run they were willing to screw over every single person who had paid to play their game up to that point.

And thats the bottom line: The SWG devs never cared about their customers. They talk a big game about how their goal was to make the game "more fun" but that doesn't really matter if you piss off and drive away every single customer you have in the process, does it?

And thats the same mistake the DnL developers made too. They just plain didn't care about their customers and never did. They wanted to make a game and sell it at any cost. Well THIS is the cost.

Instead of trying to blame one guy (while at the same time trying to forgive entire teams of people who have done much worse things) you should be working to make sure that other game developers learn the lesson of SWG and DnL: Respect your customers or else.

Whatever Raltar.. Whatever.

I really disagree with you on both DNL, PIx and the NGE. .. If you want you can read my new post here on the forums about the history of VWORLD.

TL:DR

I'll ask you one more time, real short and simple:

Even if Pix is satan himself, Vworld was just asking to be stolen and you have all the evidence to prove it, how does that erase all the other problems with the game? How does that erase the fact that nobody else at the company could program their way out of a cardboard box? How does that forgive the fact that they stole from their customers and charged money from people who had no desire to play? How does that change the way they lied to and mistreated every single paying customer in every way they could come up with?

Even if Pix doesn't give a flying rat's hindquarters about MMORPGs and even if he destroyed the game by leaving the company, that doesn't change the fact that the company itself was corrupt and mistreated its customers. Even if the game had been great there would still be legions of people unwilling to play it because of the mistreatment they had to suffer at the hands of Farlan and NPCube. All the begging, pleading, harassing and trolling you do on these forums won't change that fact.

Originally posted by Raltar

TL:DR

I'll ask you one more time, real short and simple:

Even if Pix is satan himself, Vworld was just asking to be stolen and you have all the evidence to prove it, how does that erase all the other problems with the game? How does that erase the fact that nobody else at the company could program their way out of a cardboard box? How does that forgive the fact that they stole from their customers and charged money from people who had no desire to play? How does that change the way they lied to and mistreated every single paying customer in every way they could come up with?

Even if Pix doesn't give a flying rat's hindquarters about MMORPGs and even if he destroyed the game by leaving the company, that doesn't change the fact that the company itself was corrupt and mistreated its customers. Even if the game had been great there would still be legions of people unwilling to play it because of the mistreatment they had to suffer at the hands of Farlan and NPCube. All the begging, pleading, harassing and trolling you do on these forums won't change that fact.

Now, now, you should know better then to argue with Ztyz when it comes to DnL. It was Pix's fault, the Masons conspired against the game, Jupiter and Venus weren't in alingment... blah, blah, blah.

Everyone but the developers fault. Frankly, with people like Ztyx, no wonder game developers keep churning out the same crappy games/ There is always some suckers who will swallow the hype and beleive to the end that the game would have been great if it wasn't for the haters on the forums.

Gosh, you'd think Ztyx  had money invested in this fiasco???

<rant off>

There are several posts from this person ...stating the same crap....and this same person was shown, logically.... plainly..just how absurd this single-minded blame is.

Zytx....your time is almost up. The sentencing is on the horizon...you havent much time left to show your wit and persistance. Give it all ya got good buddy.......it hasnt and wont change the hard cold facts.

What's the actual shame is that one of the most brilliant mmo engines ever built is now stored in a set of DVDs somewhere in France. (France ffs!!!) DnL was brilliant, no doubt about it, plain stupidity and greed killed the damn game.

It'll be years since we see something like what DnL could be.

Seems Zytx is now infatuated with Adventurine.