Lens on Wednesday(!?) Quickies!

Yeah, yeah, I know, I do my quick-hitting stuff on Fridays...but this week I'll be live-blogging the GW2 headstart launch Friday night/Saturday morning, so I bumped the quickies up a couple days.  So sue me!

Also, a slightly smaller number of quickies because, well, fewer days since Friday.

ONLIVE/ONDEAD/ONALIVEAGAIN--I remember seeing them unveil their technology at a Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco a few years back and thinking "Very clever idea...for everybody who has fiber.  The latency and bandwidth requirements for this thing are going to be brutal..."

I remember seeing OnLive's CEO, Steve Perlman make presentations when I was at Apple.  I worked at General Magic shortly after he'd left and heard a great deal about him.  A friend worked under him at Web TV.

I got the impression that he was a fairly technical guy who could really "sell" an idea...even if the idea itself wasn't all that great.  In the case of OnLive it seems that what he was selling hasn't been up to snuff with reports of a maximum of 1800 concurrent users.  Whether it's the product or how they've monetized it, it appears to be a failure.

And so they sold themselves...to themselves.  In essence, firing everybody, restarting the company, rehiring half the people, and managing to negate much or all of the outstanding debt and shares (yes, I'm handwaving the legal niceties involved here).  HTC's $40 million investment?  Poof!  Options owed to (former) employees?  Poof!

This whole deal stinks...  It will be interesting to see where everything falls out in this case.  Of special interest to me is whether Steve Perlman is another victim of the legal hopscotch we've seen so far, or one of the perpetrators.

It's always more interesting when I know one of the parties involved, even if it's only peripherally.

"I know, let's call it 'Girlfriend Mode!'  Awesome idea, right?  Guys?"--I enjoyed the hell out of Borderlands.  I liked the gameplay, loved the weapons, adored the living crap out of Claptrap.  The fact that the smartass robot in their game is voiced (brilliantly) by the company's VP of Business Development just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all over.

It was a blast.  And I've seen some of the promo stuff for Borderlands 2, and it seems to be in full-on sequel mode so I'm expecting more fun of the same, but turned up to 11.

And then the lead designer talks about what he called "for lack of a better word", "girlfriend mode".  Look, a lot is made of the casual sexism in gaming (and often active sexism, along with occasional outright misogyny), with good cause.  Now this dumb-ass comment doesn't come close to my outrage threshold, and I mostly do understand what he meant by it...

But dude...seriously...you are a well-compensated spokesman (or spokes-tool in this case) for your game and company...

Think before you open your pie hole and say something this needlessly stupid.  The game shouldn't need this sort of pub, and you do yourself no favors either.

On the old 10-scale, this registers a 2 for sexism, a 4 for stupid, and an 8 for needlessly stupid.

IS WoW SCARED OF GW2?--Short answer, probably a little.  It'll certainly hit them...even with "Mists of Pandaria" in a month or so, I'm sure their numbers will suffer a big (if temporary) hit with the release of GW2.

In the long run, it's hard to know, as making predictions in the MMO field is a sure way of being wrong.  A lot.  If GW2 is the success I expect it to be, it will take a sizeable chunk of WoW's longterm audience away, but that seems to be happening anyway.  WoW is, in market terms, an old game, so it's going to suffer losses over time regardless of competition.

But are they scared?

Well they did go out of their way to launch the pre-MoP patch on GW2's launch day.  This will include some of the MoP content and changes and such, so it certainly looks like a naked attempt to steal some of the GW2 thunder.  There was a time where companies chose their launch days based on WoW and it seems that the worm has turned.

Upon further consideration, given that WoW is so desperate that they are including Pokemon-inspired pet fighting and FarmVille inspired farming mini-game in MoP...maybe they should be afraid of GW2.

IT'S NOT RIFT...IT'S RIFTASTIC!--I believe I commented before on the videos we saw of Rift's new "dimensions", their take on housing, and how omgwtfAWESOME it looks.

So to take advantage of that, and general enthusiasm for tripling the size of the gameworld, more souls to choose from, level cap raise, and so on, the clever folks at Trion also are offering a 12 pre-pay sub option that includes a title, a beefy-looking mount, free "Storm Legion" expansion and discount price.

SOLD!

I dropped the bucks, so I've been putzing around in Rift again, and probably will for the next couple of days until we get the GW2 launch.  I don't assume I'll play Rift for several months after that (wonder why), but I'm glad I dropped the money.  The guys at Rift earn that money more than most sub fees I've paid even while playing other games.  I look forward to reading more about Storm Legion over the next few months.  When it launches, I may even be ready for a week's vacation from GW2.

Two great games to choose from, neither of which I'm paying for...sounds just fine to me.

SERVER WARS IN GUILD WARS 2--So one slightly distressing bit of news on the GW2 front this week...it seems that "guesting" won't be in-game at launch.  Guesting is a feature that allows people to play with friends on other servers, in essence temporarily transferring to another server to group up.  It's a great idea, and it's one they've talked up only to sort of slip in at the last minute that it won't be in-game when we launch on Friday.

It's not a huge deal, let alone any kind of game-breaker, but it's disappointing that it won't be in and more disappointing that the news was just sort of slipped in.  This wasn't a feature "we expect will be ready" or "we're fairly sure it'll be available at launch", it was a listed feature right up until it wasn't.

They handled it in a very sleazy manner, frankly.  I would have expected, given what we've seen so far from the ArenaNet team, something more along the lines of "We're sorry to announce that the guesting feature will not be functioning at launch.  We are still perfecting the technology and hope to have it ready for prime-time shortly after launch.  We apologize and know it's important to our community and it is definitely a priority for us."  People would be disappointed, but feel very involved.  I haven't seen any great upswing in discontent, but my opinion of ANet dropped a couple points and they could have avoided the whole thing.

Another thing I think they've done...inelegantly...was the entire process for naming servers.  They took too long to get the comprehensive list out, and as a result various communities have been scrambling to try to find appropriate places to call home.  The APAC players, the RPers, the various website communities have all been looking around, asking around, wondering where everybody was going.  It will work itself out, but after the way SW:TOR handled the pre-launch-to-launch transition so well (more about that in a future blog!), I'd hoped for more from ANet to streamline the process for the players.

It took my guild quite a while to finally decide on a server because we spent so much time going "That one looks too hot..." and "That one looks too cold..." before we finally found one that looked just right.

DIABLO III LEAD DESIGNER IS A POO-HEAD, PASS IT ON!--So the latest in "adults acting like children", the lead designer for D3 is a complete tool.

Unsurprisingly, somebody asked the lead designer for D1 and D2 his opinion of D3.  His response was pretty measured, I thought.  A lot of "they did this and that really well", some "I would have done this differently", a couple of mild reproaches, but all in all, quite tame.  The response of the lead designer for D3 on Facebook?

"Fuck that loser".

Seriously, congratulations on taking your professionalism out in public and shooting it in the head.

Given all of the Internet monkeys flinging excrement at D3 and its design team (much of it deserved, btw), you choose to blow your top at some lukewarm comments by the guy who created what you just spent years trying (and failing) to perfect?

Adding to the PR disaster, a bunch of other people in the D3 credits pipe up on FB supporting this tool without ever noting that they worked on the project too!  Awesome display of even more professionalism!

My fave was one Blizzard employee telling the D3 lead not to worry because "you created the fastest-selling PC game of all time...he created Hellgate: London".

Yes, he created Hellgate: London.  He also took a team and budget a tiny fraction of D3's team and budget, and in 3 years he improved Diablo and made Diablo II.  In comparison, with TWELVE YEARS and the endless money provided by WoW, you clowns managed to produce Diablo III.  What's your excuse?

Y'know, I'd be more proud of "Hellgate: London" in comparison.  New studio, new IP, unfriendly corporate overlords, some poor high-level decision-making...and Hellgate was the result.  It underachieved, to be sure.

You idiots had an established studio with endless resources, one of the most beloved IPs in gaming (created by...oh yeah, that Hellgate guy), free reign...and D3 was the result.  One of the greatest disappointments in gaming history.  It's not terrible...it's even pretty good.  But after 12 years you have produced a less compelling game than D2.

So, to paraphrase your lead designer...the Diablo III team?  Fuck those losers.