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Buh-bye, Jack Emmert
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Posts: 1,687 Arc User
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
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they're screwed.
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They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
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Well, City of Heroes pretty well demonstrates that level of competence if I might interject before all the "I hate Emmert" tripe takes full swing. Yea, he had no ability to talk, and as public speaker tended to stick his foot in his mouth, but unlike many lead developers I have seen in the past few years, one thing always stuck in my mind; at least the man took responsibility for a massively perceived mess up and blame. Not many lead developers or CEO's will take that type of responsibility, and always just seek to place the blame else where.
Love him or hate him, the man has left a legacy, and honestly, it feels like the end of an era to me now. I can't even say Cryptic even exists anymore, because STO and Neverwinter promo videos don't even say Cryptic on them anymore, they just say Perfect World. So does Cryptic exist beyond just a word now as far as the company is concerned? I really don't know. And let's face it, if it wasn't for Jack and the original founders of Cryptic, the super hero MMO might not have even been more than a foot note in history. Sony might not have even tried to create DCUO and Marvel Heroes probably wouldn't have reached anything beyond just being known as a glorified Diablo clone.
I know people from CoH have these bitter feelings, and personally I think they are misguided, but to say he has done little for the the industry as a whole just seems disingenuous to me. I think the worst thing he can be accused of is the fact he was not very good at communicating with people and tended to come off as jerk at times, but I've also watched plenty of interviews and he has a passion about him for the things he loves and deep respect for other games. He never came off as egotistical as others seem to paint him. After all, he didn't really say much or claim anything about CoH, Champions, Star Trek Online or even Neverwinter, beyond him accepting responsibility when people damned him for the changes in CoH, that later people recanted and said were some of the best things that helped keep CoH afloat.
So yea, its one thing to say you don't like him, it's another to claim he has no clout behind him.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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For Daybreak he'll certainly be better then what they had.
According to the Cryptic Studios page, Rob Overmeyer is the CEO of Cryptic Studios, but as I stated previously, I dunno if that is more than just a grandiose title considering that Neverwinter and STO promo videos (and undoubtedly Champions if they made promo videos) all say Perfect World on them and not a hint of Cryptic anywhere in them.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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And Marvel heroes is more than a glorified Diablo. It's an mmo, mmo hack'n'slash, but a mmo. There is some raids and a lot of content to do in groups with the guildies or pick ups. And there is a lot more content be added to MH or updates even after 3 years than i've never seen on CO since the end of the first year of his release (after VB). Except perhaps the alerts on CO but the same kind of content added on MH are called danger room. Another point is MH have some challenge in the cosmic difficulty level where CO has never had even in his max difficulty level. Therakiel or alerts are a joke in comparaison. This is perhaps why there is X20 more players there than CO. Champions, but the lovers of costumes and costumes contests, the players don't have a lot of things to do and 0 challenge and had quit since a long time.
But, it's sad for Jack Emmert and Cryptic. Without Jack Emmert who was the last known name from Cryptic, i don't know if there is someone who was in the Cryptic team with COX or CO who is again in the actual Cryptic CO skeletic crew team now.
I assume then they don't have to be a lot or to be effective since a long time in the team to do the actual content for CO (wolf's head costumes or some packs or lockboxes almost only) but the Co's future was already disturbing since a long time. Now...
Good chance to Jack Emmert even if he's going to one super heros game competitor. Can he have more chance there with his future project than here. It must be sad to see his 2 "babies" closed for the first one and with less than 500-600 players and almost in maintenance mode for the second.
Cryptic has yet to have a failure mmo. Look at its track record.
City of Heroes, Champions Online, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter. Anyone slightly involved in making any of those have earned the right to smug face.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
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Now read the comments under the article. the first one, was someone seeing a money grab coming. He must be a subbed member because DCUO already has a money grab for silvers
Daybreak studios is owned by an investment company. They are in the business of making money for their investors.
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Ok, no MH is not an MMO. It's an Online game with a lobby system that allows for at most 20 people per instance. It is very gear dependent and once that threshold is met, the challenge practically dies. There are videos of people soloing the raid scene, which, for the most part, cater to weakest link play styles. And a majority of the "hard" content depends heavily on two factors; the gear and the hero you choose. Certain heroes are basically classified as do not bother, while a select number are pretty much guaranteed to walk all over things. I hardly call it a challenge when the majority of the challenge is just having the right gear and hero for the content, not so much your ability to move, and set up a proper spec.
As for Rob Overmeyer, i am going by the official Cryptic Studios page, which appears to have been updated since it also has an updated copyright logo at the bottom of the page. Not to mention his Twitter says he is working for Cryptic. His Linkedin says he is working for Cryptic. I mean so far everything I find about Rob Overmeyer says he works for Cryptic. He might have left but like past devs he can return.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
In either event, Rob Overmeyer being supposedly gone/fired seems greatly exaggerated.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Formerly @Seschat pre PWEmerger. @Seschat on the Titan boards.
Supporter of the Titan Project.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/08/cryptic-messages-emmert-talks-neverwinter/#more-38242
In a nutshell: "We dun goofed with CO and STO, but hey we'll do better with NWO! Look to the future!"
This guy was our CEO? Eh, I feel indifferent about him leaving.
And what context is that? He was right. Like it or not, he wasn't throwing CO or STO under the bus, he was being to the point. Unfortunately, Champions doesn't make the money that STO does to have a turn around like it did. And you can hate that point, out of context as you made it, but he is correct. They goofed up with Champions and STO. And unfortunately, no matter what Jack may have wanted to do, if Champions doesn't make the money, the bean counters won't see justifying giving CO a large staff. We can hop up and down all day long about what they need to do, and we can say that the other games owe us this and that, but you still have to justify the budget to the bean counters at the end.
That's always been one of Jack's qualities I respected. People may not like hearing it at times, but at least he was honest and claimed responsibility for screw ups. I prefer direct honesty over people that just keep saying things like "I need to check into that" or "Things are going great" even though the house is burning down around you.
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Anyway it's in the past. He's gone. Things are better now. Still doesn't change my opinion of the guy. Still indifferent towards his departure.
Actually, that was quite the opposite, and the constant negative reviews and people leaving didn't help, especially since they launched Vibora Bay, despite the majority of players believed a bitter ex employee that they hated, no less, and tried to venerate as a saint later saying he spoke the truth despite no evidence of this, and then after said release, people still kept leaving and bashing the game.
It's one thing to say Champions was in a healthy position at the time, but I seriously doubt it was when I know they were considering going F2P before the end of the year was out since I use to talk with the original dev team regularly. And furthermore, the whole financial situation was actually beyond Cryptic's control since Atari actually expected Champions to just poor money in with no updating beyond its initial launch. And by the time PWE had acquired Cryptic, the damage had already been done to Champions. So while Jack will do something most CEO's won't do, and claim responsibility for the issues, in this case, I think Champions condition as a whole is settled on both Atari and a player base that just gave up on Champions before it really had a chance to wind up and get going.
And regardless of your feelings of how things were handled, if this were any other company, Champions would have long since been closed down. I think they've had more than a few ample reasons to do it over Champions life time the past 7 years, so saying they don't care about the project and just treat it like a red-headed stepchild just seems to be a disingenuous assumption and not looking at the real facts of the matter. Do i wish they could do more and realize all those dreams of a game I use to hear about since alpha. You betcha, but to keep it alive and appease bean counters, guess what happened. And they have to justify the pay rolls of developers they put on this game.
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Or maybe Daybreak Austin is starting a new game, and they want Jack because they think he's the MMO equivalent of go-to TV drama pilot episode director David Nutter.
Edit: Am I the only one having problems with blockquotes? Vanilla just made a hash of Spar's comment and mine.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Anywho, I think people forget that Jack, ultimately, signed off on things like:
- Releasing the game with 40 hours of content
- Charging for content in a game that was content lite (I likened it to charging for bug fixes since the lack of content was the game's largest fault)
- Releasing poorly implemented systems under the false hope that players would stick around to see the systems get fixed
- Moving staff to STO which helped start a death spiral of the players leaving because little was being developed for the game; management not allocating resources to develop the game since players were leaving
It's funny to see people still say that, ultimately, CO would've been better had the players stuck around as if it's all our fault. Yeah, look, it isn't. In interviews post-CO, pre-STO Jack actually owned up to the fact that he, personally, had misread the market. Cryptic couldn't keep on re-releasing CoH.* Instead, WoW happened which, almost overnight, caused gamers' expectations of MMOs to expand.Anyway ... I'm totally not here to bash Jack. In fact, I think he did something very, very interesting for a gaming exec: he learned from his mistakes. He realized that he rubs players the wrong way and quit interacting with us. He saw that players aren't willing to pay it forward in MMOs anymore, with the result that STO and NW released in FAR better shape than CO.
* Actually, in some ways, CO topped CoH. CoH didn't have at release: crafting; a market; PvP; global chat; world events. And CO threw in the Nemesis system. Unfortunately ... many of these systems were released in a horrible state which gave the game a raw and unfinished feel compared to competition. Again, why pay it forward when, for the same sub and a lower cost of entry (remember, CO, was priced as a AAA box), you could get, well, more? And, no, this isn't a dig at people who love this game. It's mostly that its appeal is very, very narrow.
I am wondering what you are considering charging for what content in game? Vibora Bay was free, and for all this time, Cryptic maintains it was always going to be free, so that seems a bit of a misnomer. And the only content that was paid for, post F2P, was the adventure packs, which were free to subscribers, and even that eventually went away. So, I am very curious what content you are talking about.
Developing systems and seeing what sticks is nothing new to MMOs. Every MMO does that, from WoW, to CoH to DCUO. It's not an uncommon practice. Unfortunately, CO's player base has an absurd tendency to demand things to be created, and once they are, damn the devs for giving it to them.
Moving staff to STO I doubt was done in spite, but more of a necessity, since it's obvious people don't understand how finances and budgets work. Since Champions was losing players and thus income, bean counters don't care about dedicated fans when they want to see justification for their investment, and just because you paid your $15 that month doesn't say they owe you anything. Secondly, again from Atari, Atari expected that once the game was shipped that no more development was needed and in fact, wanted the game on maintenance mode. By the time PWE got a hold of Champions, well, the damage has been done and considering everyone seems to tell new people to stay away from Champions at this point, well, expecting massive changes now is going to be an uphill slog.
Actually, there was other things involved, but people just abandoning Champions, mostly from negative reviews and attacks from the only competition at the time (aka CoH and pre-Paragon Studios naming) resulted in a lot more damage before Champions could even get their feet under them. Yes, as much as people like to disagree, the players do bear some brunt of this when they constantly tell people to just quit and don't bother.
I find that your statements are the exact opposite in this case, since you seem to misrepresent a lot of what actually went on behind the scenes. While I certainly can understand why people are upset, it's a different scenario when you have to actually look at what led to the situation as it is now. A combination of publisher greed, player apathy, and dwindling resources basically left Champions at a point that is hard to tell if she will ever grow beyond what she is now.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Vibora was supposed to be a paid expansion: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/champions-online-to-get-expansion
That's as good as I can find in the press what with how gaming sites have shuffled around the last few years.
Searching the archived boards is a pain (posts w/o usernames), but here's a page with more evidence:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/comment/1378280 -- reference to Daeke
Searching "Vibora paid expansion" brings up lots of hits, FWIW.
Anyway, my point, such as it is, is that Emmert was able to own up to his mistakes, didn't throw people under the bus for his own mistakes (errr, someone else made that point), and that this game was troubled from the outset.
There was no vast conspiracy, as you imply, of press and other gaming companies trying to take down CO. Emmert actually gave an interview aboutthe poor state, at release, of CO and STO -- http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-24-cryptic-we-need-to-improve-for-neverwinter Apologies -- I misremembered the timing of this article; I thought it came between CO and STO, not STO and NW.
Here's a quote for anyone who doesn't wish to follow the link,
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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they were doing that right up until the day they got removed
I know who said it, and Daeke stated that because he was bitter after being terminated because well, he didn't do his job. Plain and simple. People like to believe he was let go because he let loose that fact, but Cryptic, to this day, has always said Vibora was going to be free. And Daeke was terminated before he said anything about Vibora being paid for. So their word against his, and so far, he's been proven to be just one bitter ex-employee since he's been terminated from multiple other positions in other games. The hilarious part, Daeke was not well liked by this community, but when he tried that little stunt everyone tried to venerate him as a saint.
Again, bitter ex-employee and while people will always latch onto conspiracy theories, it's their word against his, and so far Cryptic seems to be the ones that were right all along at this point.
You aren't going to really prove anything to me, I've been here a very long time, and the fact of the matter is, Daeke was an awful and spiteful community manager. There is a very good reason this community didn't like him, since he rarely bothered to post updates or information about the game even when a major patch came down, and would often start community endeavors and never deliver on them, let alone he was suppose to communicate to us what the dev team could talk about and never did nor did he deliver much of our grievances. It's always hilarious with that track record how fast people latched onto his bitter post after he was fired.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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If CO was as fun to replay as MH is, new players wouldn't try and quit so soon.
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I mean, in the end, it doesn't mean much. So there's that.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
The only people assuming Vibora was paid for was those that listened to Daeke after he was terminated. And Cryptic, again, to this day has continuously stated that Vibora was to be a free expansion. And the evidence is the fact that Daeke was terminated before he even posted that, considering it was the first thing he had posted in several months to the Champions forums to begin with. The conspiracy, of course, was that he was terminated because "he told everyone Vibora would be paid for" despite the fact, again, he was already terminated before then.
And as far as community manager jobs, he was later community manager over at BioWare for SWTOR, and was later terminated from that as well for basically the same reasons; dereliction of duty basically, or not doing his job he was hired to do. And funnily enough, Daeke is the only ex-employee to make that claim as well, I've talked to and still talk to, and the most that had been discussed was it was talked about a few times but ultimately decided they weren't going to do it, and this was before Daeke was terminated.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Links to what? If you think I am digging through old archives that don't say names of who said what you are crazy. When you link an outdated article that the game even disproves you are kind of not helping your argument. Nothing had been said, except by Daeke, who again was terminated before he said anything, and the only thing was said was by Bill Roper and a few other leads after the whole thing. Again, what link are you looking for since your link doesn't hold true at all either.
Again their word against his, and Daeke doesn't exactly have the best track record.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Are you sure you are where you think you are and are talking about what you think you are talking about?
Quotes around "posing as a Cryptic employee" because, unless somebody got a screenshot, we'll probably never know if the mods for the forum (before the forum before this one) failed to lower all of his privileges after he was fired, or if it was just that nobody noticed that the name "Daeke" was no longer highlighted as a CM.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
I wasn't aware it was ever mentioned that he was let go prior to the message. Though does highlight one of Cryptic's biggest weakness (*atleast back then*) communication has never been their strong suit. We will likely never know the truth of what happened or in what order those events happened.
That's because companies aren't suppose to talk about the status of employees, due to confidentiality agreements with the public. It only became known that Daeke was let go before his blabbering and that his mod status was not removed due to an over sight and other such issues. Unfortunate, to say the least, as outside of a former rival game at the time, he went out of his way to do more damage to the game and people still continue to trumpet that Vibora Bay was paid for, even though it was free.
As far as communication, the ironic thing was Daeke was suppose to be the one doing the communicating. But instead, he tried to kick over a hornets nest on his way out of the door.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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