The argument was first off whether or not any of the founders of anet where at blizzard when WoW was being made. Clearly this has already been proven, and YOU would be the idiot for try to argue that considering the amount of evidence that supports that being true. Secondly the argument has become whether or not any work was done on WoW specifically by Jeff Strain. There are many news posts articles and quotes that support that. Obviously he isn't credited with being the lead programmer because he wasn't at the time of release. This is incredibly common in the gaming industry, and someone with your far superior amount of knowledge I would think would know this. Honestly stfu stop being a dick and trying to pull the whole "oh i'll just derail threads cause I like wasting peoples time".

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/ncsoft-loses-jeff-strain-and-david-reid/

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/ncsoft-loses-jeff-strain-and-david-reid/

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,9171/


Google ftw noob. Even the mmorpg post of this new article cites him as lead programmer. Enough sources?

edit: Another official news post, this one is from 2000 so its blizzards "unannounced project"
http://www.arena.net/press/triforge_games_will_be_new_venture_for_senior_blizzard_programmers

Originally posted by Gennadios

 The initial anet staff did not work on wow. There would have been a very nasty do-not-compete clause in their contract if they left blizz while WoW was still being developed.

Jeff Strain is a game programmer and one of the three founders of ArenaNet. He served ArenaNet and NCsoft as the leader of the Art and Production teams and President of Product Development respectively. He was previously the lead programmer of Blizzard's MMORPG World of Warcraft.

Um in other words WRONG
 
Edit: Oh and a side note. "f2p" as you guys like to call it makes sense. The p2p market is pretty full atm.

I apologize if this has already been brought up (I've read most of the posts though).

The reason Anet was founded, well at least why several blizzard employees left blizzard, was because the devs who left the company wanted WoW to be free to play. Several sites have reported this and there a quotes that support this such as comments made by Rob Pardo. Many many moons ago, blizzard wanted to charge for battle net. Lets be honest guys, does anyone here really believe blizzard would have ever been as big of a success if that had happened?

 WoW cashed out on the blizzard name and reputation, and from a purely monetary point of view, they've done a great job with that game.

Some of you have been drinking the Koolaid. P2P has nothing to do with quality. How many games that are p2p have failed horribly? Yes WoW was incredibly successful, and many people attest that to the fact that the core game was great. On the other hand I've heard many times that (in the short run) patches/updates and expansions have completely sucked. I don't have first hand knowledge of exactly why some of the updates have been considered fairly bad. What this does tell me is that the original devs who helped create WoW are a major reason that WoW is successful. The following is a snide remark so feel free to ignore it: Where are those devs working now?

Guildwars had solid gameplay even during the beta. Yeah there was imbalances, bugs, not a whole lot of content. On the flip side, I was playing a game that was FUN. I didn't have to grind up to level 100 bazillion and get uber l00t of + Pi. Guildwars has been updated, in some way, on average several times a week since it was released. If anyone thinks complaining about devs not being involved is valid, I highly doubt they've had much hands on with the game.

To sum things up I'd like to a few points. First off the biggest excuse for a monthly fee, is server costs. Calling it an excuse might be slightly unfair, but honestly that is what it seems like to me. Secondly is the costs of supporting a dev team. Really? That 50$ I just handed you didn't cover that? To get around this first problem anet has used some very impressive (imho) networking coding to avoid having to use large amounts of bandwith. While there is no single sentence answer to explain why they don't need a monthly fee to support a dev team, I'll simply argue that their track record proves that they know what they are doing.

Guildwars 1: I thought it was great, and it clearly proved pay to play as a necessity is a lie.
Guildwars 2: Hoping its even better.

Although I appreciate the attempt at helping me, my biggest problems with groups, or the lack there of, was not for pve. I've beaten all the campaigns, 2 of which by soloing some of the end missions. Its doable, it wasn't a "problem" in terms of being able to get it done. It was just annoying, that I as a more experienced player, would often times be doing something other then the "flavor of the week" build, so I choose to just play myself/with few people, because of the hassle involved with groups. PvP is the real problem, and has been adressed in other threads.

Amusingly enough, I use my hero battles builds to do pve. So far I've been able to do every mission I've attempted with them. I never saw most missions as requiring a gimick, but I've also not gotten into hard mode, or some of the most difficult post campaign missions, simply because those seem to actually require real players.

Since the game has not been released, this is speculation but I thought the game was to work like this: Mission areas will mostly if not all be instanced, and perhaps more so "main quest" missions. The non-instanced areas will be mostly "explorable" and side-quest areas. Most of these non-instanced areas are meant to be more solo-able, and pug friendly. The mentality behind this being that it is an area for people to meet. Mission will continue to require cohesion within your team, but if there continues to be a "mission hub" for the missions, it will give you an area to coordinate before entering the mission.

On to how I saw Guild Wars 1 as working. In Guild Wars the only real requirement, for pve, 90% of the time, was to have an effective build at doing something. Whether that was protection type skills or healing or dot or spiking, as long as the build did SOMETHING and did it decently, you could be viable in a group. Sometimes it required finding the group looking for whatever you were playing. Also as the game progressed, it became less noob friendly in many ways. People required specific builds to join their group in pve, and specific titles for pvp.

Although that system certainly prevent bad players from joining your group, it also prevented good players too. If there is one thing I hope gets changed between games, it would be a way to somehow change how this affected the game for far too many players. Its something that was done by the "community" so I'm not sure how much control the devs actually have, but it certainly hurt people who did not grind up certain titles. In the long run I saw some better players getting stuck unable to get the titles to be able to get into better groups, while idiot players who had simply gotten the titles (through abuses, imbalances, or simply having grinded since closer to release when it was easier) were getting into groups much more easily.

Also, I, as many other players do, do not want to see the game changed into "wow 2". The grinding, and lack of planning and tactics required for most mmos, is something we do not want included in "our game". The counter point to this, is simply, many do, and we all should, want the player base to expand. Guild Wars was great, it started off great, and rarely did any additions hurt the core game. The problem was, it like many games with loyal small communities, became a game of "elitists". It certainly hurt some of my later experiences with the game (such as the rank requirements I stated above),  at times forced me to pve, with a small pool of people, who either were newer, or simply didn't care about all the requirements the community had created. PvP became something like a game of politics to get into any guilds/groups, and really stopped me from enjoying the game post nightfall release.

To finish this, I was a beta tester. I was in a highly competitive guild in beta, and especially post launch, up until the release of factions. About that time, most of the officers left my guild to join top 2 top 10 guilds. Somehow I got left behind (It was about when I was my busiest during college). I'm an experienced pve and pvp player, I've played guildwars off and on for years, so I do have idea of how that game worked. It was certainly great, but it can certainly be better.

Originally posted by Dameonk

Originally posted by Telre

Darkfall is a sport. We'll say hockey.

 

I'm sorry, Telre.  Your analogy is seriously flawed.  Darkfall is an MMO game.  The reviewer plays MMO games.  So in your analogy Ed would have already been famaliar with ice sports dealing with nets, sticks, and pucks.  Honestly, he probably would have enjoyed playing hockey.

Here's a sports analogy for you that fits reality a little better.

Lets say Ed loves American football (WoW) but doesn't care for rugby (UO). He hears about a game starting up that is like rugby... called.. lets say Dugby (Darkfall... obviously).

Now dugby is a lot like rugby only you play in dress shoes, it uses a beach ball instead of pigskin, and you can only play in the rain.  Oh, and also when your teams is getting close to scoring there will randomly be a game restart called and you have to start over entirely.

Now... Ed may understand the appeal of rugby, and give it an average review.  But a horribly designed and flawed game such as dugby would most likely get a low score because of it's flaws.

I think that's a little more accurate than your hocky analogy.

Oh.. and of course all of the people that love playing dubgy would say that Ed only played for 2 hours so how could he know anything about their precious game!?

My hockey analogy was perfectly acceptable. You're supposition that the game is "broken" (playing ruby in dress shoes), is in no way more correct then my proposed analogy. Darkfall yes clearly is not like football, and Ed seems to only like figure skating based on his reviews. Also I find the argument of Darkfall being "hard to learn" and the like as laughable. Day 1 I had already figured out how just about everything in the game worked (minus a few game rules such as how exactly turning rouge, and how started and player cities worked). Ed complained about the difficulty of a rhythm game, arguably one of the easier types of game to master since it only presents a static challenge.

He clearly did not enjoy his gaming experience, thats fine, and as a reviewer he should state that. But how is it fair that he rated a game that requires a better gamer then someone who has difficultly with guitar hero? The fact that so many people are taking his review as being representative of the game, is a problem. Its not, and although some people who have played, agree its has its problems, I nearly universally seen people who have actually played the game, say it deserves a better review then that. Thats not even talking about the score. His review is simply awful, and really gives an innaccurate picture of the game, regardless of whether its "good" or "bad".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Some educational reading Zorvan
 

Originally posted by TdogSkal

I have played Darkfall.  I do not think that Ed is that far off.  The score should be 4 at best.   Its not a good game, its not finished, it lacks tons of content.  No player skill for PvP, No player choice in toon development, cheating (Macroing), potions mean to much.

I played during beta, I have seen what darkfall has to offer, I am not a carebear, I am a hardcore gamer that enjoy's fun player skilled PvP.  

Yes Darkfall is a niche game, not everyone is going to like it.  That I understand but do not tell me I never played Darkfall

 

I was very specific in who I was addressing in my post. I never claimed you specifically didn't play the game. Stop attempting to discredit rational arguments by making a straw man argument.

Originally posted by oddjobs74

Originally posted by Telre

Instead of trying to argue agains the many comments that the game "deserved" the score, by people who have never played the game, I'd rather try to make an analogy to help people who perhaps haven't played the game understand.

Lets pretend for a moment.

Darkfall is a sport. We'll say hockey. Not everyone likes hockey. Also we aren't judging whether or not hockey is fun to watch or not. We're judging whether or not its fun to play. Clearly many many people believe hockey is fun to play. Along comes a "reviewer" who decides I'm going to publish my opinion on hockey. This reviewer spends 2 hours "playing" hockey. Most of that time is actually just spent looking at uniforms not even actually playing. He never bothers to find out how to play hockey before hand, he just skates out on the ice. Obviously the people who have played hockey for even a few months have no problem easily beating this person at hockey. After spending a few short shifts trying to play hockey, the "reviewer" decides hockey is a horrible sport. Its hard to understand, and you can't pick up the puck with your hands. That makes it so much harder to get it into the goal. Clearly sports that allow you to use your hands are far superior, play those.

Obviously the thousands of people who have played and play hockey and enjoy the sport, would be quite annoyed by some unskilled whiner who clearly just sucks and doesn't even understand the rules publishing a "major" review that is incredibly negative. I'm only considering it major because for some reason metacritic has decided to use it when rating darkfall.

Ed Zitron, does not right good, has lots of typos, and has tons of factual errors. If you miss the irony in the last line I think your going to have missed a lot. On top of that he makes statements such as:
"It's the emperor's new clothes of 2009: such a marvellous game that only an idiot wouldn't realise the beauty of the gaping holes in its content, its wonky control system, and its seemingly decade-old engine."
By calling people who enjoy the game idiot's, he seems to believe his argument is made correct. Writers and critics of any kind who make statements like that are idiots. Based on past reviews Ed should have very little credibility with anyone. Sadly a good 80% of gamers do not bother too look beyond 2/10 (thats what he gave guitar hero 2 also....) and simply take his opinion, regardless of whether or not its correct, as being fact.

You counter you own argument. Especialy when you say he " does nor right good"  Ed only states fact. when talking about idiots and the like.

If that isn't irony please someone explain something that is. LMFAO. Also there's several (I would say at least 5 or so) negative statements he makes about the game that are incorrect about how the game works, including "respawn time", hitting being "random", his complaints of a lack of an "experience system", saying there are multiple servers, his belief that you can't move manage your inventory or anything else. Theres more but these have already been stated.

Instead of trying to argue agains the many comments that the game "deserved" the score, by people who have never played the game, I'd rather try to make an analogy to help people who perhaps haven't played the game understand.

Lets pretend for a moment.

Darkfall is a sport. We'll say hockey. Not everyone likes hockey. Also we aren't judging whether or not hockey is fun to watch or not. We're judging whether or not its fun to play. Clearly many many people believe hockey is fun to play. Along comes a "reviewer" who decides I'm going to publish my opinion on hockey. This reviewer spends 2 hours "playing" hockey. Most of that time is actually just spent looking at uniforms not even actually playing. He never bothers to find out how to play hockey before hand, he just skates out on the ice. Obviously the people who have played hockey for even a few months have no problem easily beating this person at hockey. After spending a few short shifts trying to play hockey, the "reviewer" decides hockey is a horrible sport. Its hard to understand, and you can't pick up the puck with your hands. That makes it so much harder to get it into the goal. Clearly sports that allow you to use your hands are far superior, play those.

Obviously the thousands of people who have played and play hockey and enjoy the sport, would be quite annoyed by some unskilled whiner who clearly just sucks and doesn't even understand the rules publishing a "major" review that is incredibly negative. I'm only considering it major because for some reason metacritic has decided to use it when rating darkfall.

Ed Zitron, does not right good, has lots of typos, and has tons of factual errors. If you miss the irony in the last line I think your going to have missed a lot. On top of that he makes statements such as:
"It's the emperor's new clothes of 2009: such a marvellous game that only an idiot wouldn't realise the beauty of the gaping holes in its content, its wonky control system, and its seemingly decade-old engine."
By calling people who enjoy the game idiot's, he seems to believe his argument is made correct. Writers and critics of any kind who make statements like that are idiots. Based on past reviews Ed should have very little credibility with anyone. Sadly a good 80% of gamers do not bother too look beyond 2/10 (thats what he gave guitar hero 2 also....) and simply take his opinion, regardless of whether or not its correct, as being fact.

If theres any left.
telre.etel@gmail.com

Having worked in the computer industry for years, I honestly do have to agree that most likely (not definetly though) you are to blame for mishandling your mobos. I have built computers for years using parts from new egg and only twice have I ever had problems with parts. One was a powersupply (the only thing not working correctly was the fan) and the other was memory. If you don't properly ground yourself (touching a random piece of metal doesnt count) you are basically asking for trouble. In my experience static damage is one of the most common reasons for so called "doa" or unstable parts.

I'd like to start this off with a "Dude where's my brain?"

    Although the claim of patent infringement might seem valid, should the patent be valid? Honestly we are talking about a patent that was approved post Ultimate, The Realm, Everquest, and a large group of multiplayer games, all which are arguably use a "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space". That does not even include games released in the 80's with mulitplayer aspects (yes they DO exist!).

    F this I patented music, Beethoven owes me a shit load. How about I just patent language, by responding to this post you're infringing on my patent. How absurdly broad can a patent honestly be? Yes when the telephone was invented it was patented. They did not patent how you could speak over that telephone.

    What this really is a question of is what should be able to patented. That great grey area known as "intellectual property" is clearly debatable. If I create a method of doing something, that is specific, clearly that is my property and should not be used by other companies. If another company creates a completely separate way of doing the same thing, simply because my patent covers the same type of outcome does not mean it has been infringed upon.

    I patent a teleportation device. I never implement said device very successfully. Another company comes along and they create a device that tears wholes in the space time continuum. It also instantly transports people. Simply because the outcome is the same, the instant transportation of people, does not mean I have any sort of lawsuit or that my "intellectual property" has been stole. Using this example one could assume that there is no reason that the patent isn't valid yet they still do not have a lawsuit.
 

Edit: This cracked me up thinking about it:

WHEREFORE, Worlds demands judgment as follows:
A. An order finding that the '690 Patent is valid and enforceable
B. An order adjudging defendant NCSoft to have infringed the '690 Patent;
C. An order finding that defendant NCSoft's acts in infringing the '690 Patent
were willful and wanton;

Maybe I'm crazy but I don't see how C can apply. I highly doubt they were willfully trying to infringe on this random patent. They would not have been the first company to infringe on the patent, and how would a company be expect to know about a patent that was not enforced before. If anything the worry would have been infringing on the companies who made mmos before them. Clearly they are smart enough to not do that. There are abandoned property laws, why should this not be the same. (This is with the assumption that the lawsuit is valid on all other points which clearly I think we agree  is most likely not the case)