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Len/Platbeard/Evil Bill Murray The game severely underperformed after launch when it was still "box price + subscription" based, so they downsized their operations considerably. Also, Ragnar left to run his Dreamfall Chapters studio/Kickstarter which put Joel in charge. The move to "B2P + cash shop" was initially reported to be very profitable but after 13 months of post-B2P output I have my doubts this was true for long.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:36
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Tallgeese posted:Leen? Len, he was one of the last goons to crash and burn on this game. He is known for getting banned from the TSW forums for calling Joel Bylos a twat, tanking a round of drunk dungeon runs, and pissing off pubbies by breaking their immersion with nothing but a horse head and speedo.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:38
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:I know, I ran both the cargo ship and the Bach raid with Machine Tyrant and both of them were LOTS of fun and I'm excited to play through the rest of the base game raids. And now look at what we have. Lazy content requiring one level designer, one modeler, and one texture artist. Not my fault. 
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Feb 15, 2014 20:39
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Supposedly the numbers go up after every Steam sale. Honestly they should have not done the subscription thing period, that probably killed them.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:42
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Tallgeese posted:Supposedly the numbers go up after every Steam sale. Honestly they should have not done the subscription thing period, that probably killed them. Not advertising the game didn't do them any favors either.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:50
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Tallgeese posted:Supposedly the numbers go up after every Steam sale. Honestly they should have not done the subscription thing period, that probably killed them. The original TSW business model supported and made subscriptions worthwhile. The idea was that every month we would see a few new missions, aux weapons, the after character creation customization (hair, clothes, tattoos, poo poo like that), bestiary, black ops, all leading up to Tokyo which was supposed to be released in mid-'13. The first three months on subscription kept to that plan with only a few hiccups, they got into their grove and things looked nice. Then poo poo got real, Ragnar left, down size, first bout of insider trading, etc. One of the problems pre-launch and post launch was the lack of advertising. The game didn't have much competition from new MMO's at the time, Guild Wars 2 released a month later I believe, but there was no TSW presence anywhere. Not to mention that everyone was still bitter about Age of Conan, and TSW was on the modified Conan engine. Bad press hurts.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:55
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Actually, I'm curious: are there links to explanations of all that company drama you mention? The insider trading in particular sounds sort of funny.
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Feb 15, 2014 21:01
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Tallgeese posted:Actually, I'm curious: are there links to explanations of all that company drama you mention? The insider trading in particular sounds sort of funny. 2012 2014 EDIT: 2013 They downsized and consolidated their teams, they moved the majority of the TSW team to the US from Norway, so most of the devs who had a hand in the good poo poo didn't make the move. Variable Haircut fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 21:04
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HughGRect posted:EDIT: 2013 They downsized and consolidated their teams, they moved the majority of the TSW team to the US from Norway, so most of the devs who had a hand in the good poo poo didn't make the move. Actually, most of the team was in Montreal, so a lot of people did make it over. ...a "lot" being however many they have.
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Feb 15, 2014 21:59
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Cheston posted:Actually, most of the team was in Montreal, so a lot of people did make it over. I liked my story better, had more drama to it.
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Feb 16, 2014 00:36
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HughGRect posted:One of the problems pre-launch and post launch was the lack of advertising. The game didn't have much competition from new MMO's at the time, Guild Wars 2 released a month later I believe, but there was no TSW presence anywhere. Not to mention that everyone was still bitter about Age of Conan, and TSW was on the modified Conan engine. Bad press hurts. Actually, both GW2 and Diablo 3 launched within like, a month of TSW, so that was just really bad luck for an MMO from the get-go, and it wasn't something they ever managed to overcome. The lack of advertising hurt them too; it's not like there isn't a place in the market for a game like TSW, this sort of modern fantasy is really popular currently,they're just not really getting a foothold in the market.
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Feb 16, 2014 01:21
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Internet poo poo the bed with 750k left on the raid boss. I wish I could blame Funcom somehow.
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Feb 16, 2014 03:05
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You should blame them for making you still try, somehow.
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Feb 16, 2014 23:35
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orcane posted:You should blame them for making you still try, somehow. If I do this twice a day for a month, I'll have exactly enough for an Astral Fuse 
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Feb 17, 2014 11:26
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Cheston posted:If I do this twice a day for a month, I'll have exactly enough for an Astral Fuse You just know there's at least one pubbie doing it every three hours and doing a big call out that the portal opened. I bet its wrong-way.
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Feb 17, 2014 12:29
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Len posted:You just know there's at least one pubbie doing it every three hours and doing a big call out that the portal opened. I bet its wrong-way. Close, it's Claretta.
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Feb 17, 2014 14:47
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Cleretic posted:Close, it's Claretta. Claretta has to be a Funcom parachute account. I've never seen it say a negative word ever.
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Feb 17, 2014 16:12
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Len posted:Claretta has to be a Funcom parachute account. I've never seen it say a negative word ever. Then you obviously weren't paying attention when they changed a bunch of the leech abilities and she lost her drat mind. Ask Frankie.
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Feb 17, 2014 17:01
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Len posted:Claretta has to be a Funcom parachute account. I've never seen it say a negative word ever. You should find their character and run into it and see if the resulting explosion destroys The Secret World.
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Feb 17, 2014 17:13
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:You should find their character and run into it and see if the resulting explosion destroys The Secret World. I don't think I could. I'm on a lot of ignore lists. Probably more than Mayushii at this point.
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Feb 17, 2014 18:01
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Len posted:Claretta has to be a Funcom parachute account. I've never seen it say a negative word ever. Nah, they live somewhere in eastern Australia (although I live in central Australia, and have noticed a few weird bits in their stories). Plus, they're bitchy enough that if they were a parachute account I would've been punished for my Shakespeare readings at Flappy every day by now. I wouldn't be surprised to find out they're a parachute account or something, but it's far more likely that they're sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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Feb 18, 2014 01:07
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I finally got to log in after that disconnect. I can't be mad at Funcom anymore for that because I signed in to a quest turn in.
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Feb 18, 2014 22:38
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Claretta can't be a Funcom employee. If nothing else, I've played with her and she knows how to play the game.
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Feb 18, 2014 22:47
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Taking a page from Cleretics book I typed out the dialogue of Ghostbusters at them all through a Flappy fight.quote:[General] [The009]: i mean he has done 100 damage to flappy edit: quote:[General] [The009]: I am glad there is an ignore function but there should also be if you do no damage to flappy you get booted out check
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Feb 18, 2014 23:15
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Len posted:Taking a page from Cleretics book I typed out the dialogue of Ghostbusters at them all through a Flappy fight. Hold up, you don't even have to do damage? I'm trying to chart the exact level of ease this event permits.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:01
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Cheston posted:Hold up, you don't even have to do damage? I'm trying to chart the exact level of ease this event permits. I shot Flappy like a dozen times or so. I didn't even enter the combat zone until he was at 5mil.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:03
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Cheston posted:Hold up, you don't even have to do damage? I'm trying to chart the exact level of ease this event permits. You have to be on his hate list. That's why dying right near the end screwed you out of rewards until they fixed that. When I read Shakespeare during a fight, I usually shoot to have the scene done sometime around the halfway-two thirds mark. I'm also one of the first ones in, so the fight I'm in tends to be with the fast, gung-ho players that actually can fight the thing. I haven't had people complaining since the second day of me doing it, and at least that guy had the decency to tell me to stop wasting time in an approximation of Shakespearean English.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:21
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I bet the Samba is Flappys weakness.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:21
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Cleretic posted:You have to be on his hate list. That's why dying right near the end screwed you out of rewards until they fixed that. Only person who complained or even said anything to me was The009. When he was trying to get Agartha to mass file a petition against me they told him there always have and always will be afkers and to just shut up.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:27
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That's exactly like all the extremely epic supergolem bosses worked in the recent past. During Superjack (RIP) me and Rasheed would often hit the boss then sit on a rock for the remaining 10 minutes it took for the dude to die, go down, summon a new one, hit him a few times to make sure you're on his aggro table, then sit on a rock again. And if that client wasn't terrible I'd have memory and CPU cycles left over to alt-tab to something more fun...
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Feb 19, 2014 00:29
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I'm hoping that I get to where Venkman gets slimed during the 8pm raid.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:40
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I couldn't help it! It just popped in there! It's... Flappy the Bird. I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us... Flappy. We used to play his game on our phones by the fire at Camp Lakonda.
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Feb 19, 2014 04:32
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Len posted:Claretta has to be a Funcom parachute account. I've never seen it say a negative word ever. Coming back to this and thinking about it, I think if any of the big names on the official forums are plants, it's Ciritty. Literally never said anything negative (at least Claretta's voiced criticisms, Ciritty supports even the worst ideas), posts with about as much substance as Funcom employees, and is about as poo poo at the game as they are judging by what some cabal-mates of mine have said. It's just as likely she's like Golden Girl back on CoH, though. Know-nothing white noise poster that wants a cult of personality, that's just so goddamn persistent people recognize her instantly.
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Feb 19, 2014 10:09
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alash, I finally register to see if there's still anyone doing anything worthwhile on TSW and find the empire I expected in decay. I'm pretty sure TSW took some major points in Arcane or something, because at launch I couldn't convince people who'd been excited about it for years to try it even on my account. I've goaded a few people into buying it since it went subless, but not a man jack of em made it even through Kingsmouth. it's weird t'me that a game I found so compelling (see the standard brace of comments re lovely endgame) so completely fails to hold so many people I would've thought'd be into it. mummy dust coming through the intertimes, clearly. what's so terrible about Bylos? I only know him through the occasional video and his essential Australianness blinds me to any other problems he may have. I know the game's kind of languished under his stewardship, but I hadn't realized people actually lay blame at his feet. thought it was just more of a "our game did shittily and now we're on a shoestring budget" thing. Dark_Swordmaster posted:I know, I ran both the cargo ship and the Bach raid with Machine Tyrant and both of them were LOTS of fun and I'm excited to play through the rest of the base game raids. And now look at what we have. Lazy content requiring one level designer, one modeler, and one texture artist. don't focus on the live updates! stay centered on the game you're at now! it's gonna get steadily less and less amazing as you progress toward the end, but there's still so much good ahead of you. the 5-mans are pretty much all models of good encounter design, and real light on trash, too. many (most? all? it's been a while) have memorable voiceovers on top of that. the Ankh, man. Doktor Klein! that's your first one in Egypt. crawlkill fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 04:03
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crawlkill posted:what's so terrible about Bylos? I only know him through the occasional video and his essential Australianness blinds me to any other problems he may have. I know the game's kind of languished under his stewardship, but I hadn't realized people actually lay blame at his feet. thought it was just more of a "our game did shittily and now we're on a shoestring budget" thing. It might be that, and we just blame him because he's the guy we can blame. There's also things we can't blame on Funcom's current financial situation, like their insistence on megabosses that the game can't actually handle, and I really can't think to blame anybody for that but him. Any intelligent game director would realize that fights the game literally cannot handle are a bad idea, ergo their insistence on them suggests to me that our game director is not intelligent. Also, there was that time back around the Egypt DLC where he was willingly ignorant of issues where people couldn't even run the game, and he was a massive dick to Len when he started making a big deal of it.
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Feb 20, 2014 04:16
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crawlkill posted:what's so terrible about Bylos? I only know him through the occasional video and his essential Australianness blinds me to any other problems he may have. I know the game's kind of languished under his stewardship, but I hadn't realized people actually lay blame at his feet. thought it was just more of a "our game did shittily and now we're on a shoestring budget" thing. Why I don't like Bylos? He's kind of a prick. Dude goes around actively insulting his player base and the pubbies eat it up. When issue 6 launched and the game literally broke for players he mocked them. Flat out said things like "I don't see any complaints" when the entire first page of the tech support forum was nothing but threads about the game being broke. Then once he realized there was a tech subforum and clicked it he went "oh poo poo there are people who can't play" and that was all that got said for two months. That's just the one that comes to mind first and foremost. But if you read his posts it's quite common for him to openly mock players who disagree with him. If I recall he once had a melt down and posted a big long rant about how the players were making him feel bad. Edit: I can't check my testlive pm's since they disabled my goddamn account but if someone with archives checks the last thread they can pull out the official post by Joel about why Funcom didn't bother to explain anything going on about the Issue 6 bug.
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Feb 20, 2014 04:23
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Len posted:That's just the one that comes to mind first and foremost. But if you read his posts it's quite common for him to openly mock players who disagree with him. If I recall he once had a melt down and posted a big long rant about how the players were making him feel bad. The other bout of that that I can remember was when people were complaining about female characters getting pretty sexist outfits (this was right after the 'cop outfit' which was a cop hat and a shiny minidress) where he argued against the pretty drat big thread full of them with 'my wife doesn't think the outfit shows too much skin, so you're all complaining about nothing'. I've noticed neither he nor any other Funcom employees have posted in any of the threads about the Flappy raid. Probably because they're predominantly negative, and yet have managed to stay far enough away from insulting each other that they can't shut them down for poor conduct. Meanwhile the supporters trying to say good things about the raid devolved into slinging insults for like half the thread before letting it die. EDIT: There's also this massive feeling of 'gently caress You Got Mine' from the raid supporters. Not directly, there's just a distinct feel of 'I don't have problems with this raid, ergo your complaints about it are invalid'. Their complaints about leechers also sound really similar to complaints about welfare queens. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 04:38
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Cleretic posted:The other bout of that that I can remember was when people were complaining about female characters getting pretty sexist outfits (this was right after the 'cop outfit' which was a cop hat and a shiny minidress) where he argued against the pretty drat big thread full of them with 'my wife doesn't think the outfit shows too much skin, so you're all complaining about nothing'. Oh yeah! Where he said something like "there are no slutty costumes" and immediately followed that with "but these types do sell better than what you want." The only thing he's got going is that he has a thicker skin than Funcom_TSW because I can still follow his twitter. I'm blocked from following Funcom_TSW turns out they don't like me tweeting bugs at them under #funcompetence.
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Feb 20, 2014 04:42
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crawlkill posted:Said stuff #FreeEvilBillMurray
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Feb 20, 2014 05:09
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the whole "our engine can't handle 20 people on a screen but we want to make huge raid bosses anyway" thing is a little baffling, yeah. sometimes I think that they developed a huge amount of unfinished issues content pre-release (why is the install so huge) and have been locked into finishing those specific prepped projects 'cause they no longer have the team size to switch gears when things weren't going great. past that, I'll take your word for it that he's a bad forum presence. I wanna keep supporting the game and hoping, but it's hard to imagine it'll still be around a couple years from now.
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Feb 20, 2014 08:43
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