Meh.

Like toast without butter. Read part of this rant I threw up over at MMORPG.com...

~

It's called talent. You either have it or you don't

Above all else, where I take the most issue with Mr. Knaack’s essays, lies in the fact that he totally overlooks plain, old-fashioned, God-given talent. As MMORPG’s grow in popularity and acceptance this will become a huge priority for anyone thinking about designing and marketing one.

Take a step back from gaming for a moment. Stop thinking about games, as we have a tendency to do, in cold and rational terms. Think about something else which is much more emotionally accessible and interpretive. Think about music.

Let’s pick a band that almost everyone can agree is a “Good Band” even though there’s no accounting for taste. Consider the Beatles. Most people like The Beatles music. Even for those people who don’t, they will recognize a Beatles song almost immediately. It’s hard to argue that Lennon and McCartney didn’t have talent.

Now lets pick a band that most people would think sucks – the Back Street Boys for instance. Sure they can hold a tune – but talent? On the level of Lennon and McCartney? Nope. Not a chance.

From this point on Talent will be one of the biggest determining factors in the success of any given MMORPG. When you see a screenshot from WoW you know it’s WoW. When you see a screenshot from Eve Online you know it’s Eve Online. When you see a screenshot from Chronicles of Spellborn you know it’s Chronicles of Spellborn. You can’t create the artistic talent reflected in those games with polygons, pixel count, or realism. You can’t replace the musical talent in those games with a movie soundtrack. You can’t substitute the depth and beauty of the lore created for these games with player created events. In order for a MMORPG to be a true success it has to have genuinely talented and inspiring artists working together to bring it to life – just like in any other artistic endeavor.

And that’s exactly what MMORG’s are to a huge degree – artistic endeavors. Where Mr. Knaack’s editorials fail most miserably is in the fact that they ignore this completely. Blizzard makes good games because they have God-given, genuine, creative talent. In the same way The Beatles made great music, Blizzard makes great games.
 

That is why I'm always careful to judge a game before I played it. You can't see talent in a preview movie. WoW is a great game, but before people had a chance to play it, many complained about the cartoonish graphics they saw in preview screenshots / trailers.

The "feature list" of MMORPG are all nearly identical on paper. It is very hard to describe in words why the quest system in WoW is better than the quest system in EQ2, it just *plays* better. WoW is full of the talent you mentioned, but you need to play the game to realize it, just seeing a screenshot and reading a features list isn't enough.

Darkfall I can't say yet whether it was made with or without talent. I quite liked the look of the horses in the video, for example. I liked the combat animations less, but that's the subject for my next post. :)
 

Haters... why didn't I get contacted? :(

Anyways this brings up the whole Pennay Arcade vs. Everquest 2 graphic debate. EQ2 graphics are the result of a manufacturing process. Here is the deadline... get the art done by then. The level of detail just eliminates any artistic freedom of the artists.

WoW is the opposite. The lack of detail let the artists fit everything into a single unifying style.

Its taste, but it would be hard to convince me EQ2's graphics have some sort of uniform look. For example... the barbie doll look of certain races.
 

Have to say this video was better than I expected, given that the game is rather "off-radar" and it's being done by "indie" developers. Hadn't paid the title a great deal of attention given the likelihood of disappointment, so to see something "concrete" after so much vapourwear came as bit of a surprise. That said, the next time I check it out is likely to be when a beta invite turns up. They definitely need to hire some PR/piblicity folk to raise their profile.