The latest from John Romero’s exercise in REAL ULTIMATE MMO POWER is this:
Are you interested in joining our amazingly talented and highly motivated superstar game development team? Are you supercore enough to survive our hyperdimensional environment???!!
It’s good to see that Romero has learned humility and the perils of overly hyping projects that don’t exist yet. Otherwise I might have to make a new topic icon. JUST FOR HIM.
His project’s been announced for what, 2 days? And already:
What ever you guys do with the game, just make it so you can loot bodies, and pk without the BS. Kinda like Ultima Online back in the days.
And so, it begins.
I miss Shadowbane, don’t you?
{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }
If my background was in game development and not huge database development, I’d … RUN! Run far far away from this project.
Also: “The avalanche has started; it is too late for the pebbles to vote.”
No matter how things change, they always stay the same…
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/25
Wow PA has come a long way since 1998 lol…
Although the comics weren’t so hot, at least back then their site worked for more than 20 minutes per week.
Are you interested in joining our amazingly talented and highly motivated superstar game development team? Are you supercore enough to survive our hyperdimensional environment???!!
Is it just me, or does that sound like something from a South Park script?
Supercore???? WTF?!
I remember downloading Doom from a BBS at 1200 baud…
Just saying, Romero is old. His ideas and attitudes are stuck in 1988.
Hey, it can’t be any worse than Dawn or Rune Conquest.
10 Hey Look! It’s Romero!
20 Hey Look! It’s Someone Bashing Romero!
30 Hey Look! It’s Romero saying something stupid justifying the Bashers!
40 GOTO 10
*sigh*
void idiocyRomero() \{Romero(latest_project);
Romero.show();
Romero.dance();
blogosphere.notice(Romero);
blogosphere.laugh(Romero);
Romero.post_message(INDIGNANT_REACTION);
Romero.post_message(random_stupid_thing());
Romero.close;
Romero.free;
\}
Note: previous versions of idiocyRomero failed to free the Romero object resulting in memory leaks.
i’m sorry, i know the guy has done some great things in his career, but whenever i think of him now, the first things that come to mind are…
1) all the times he has put his foot in his mouth saying stupid crap
2) daikatana
Supercilious men and women
Call me superficial – me,
Who so superbly learned to swim in
Supercolossality.
(with all due respect to Updike, who surely doesn’t deserve to show up in a thread about Romero)
supercore, hyperdimensional?
sounds all too much like Super Greg performing inside a battered blue police box.
actually his statements remind me of the manic side of a manic deppressive.
Well, you know, at least some people love John Romero. But only in hyperdimensional environments.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the supar-sekrit MMO project was set in the Babylon 5 universe?
I hate Romero as much as the next guy, but considering the shit-nugget choices for PVP in MMO’s right now, I’m willing to give anything new on the horizon a good look.
p.s. What’s wrong with Shadowbane? It’s probably the best PVP out there right now.
p.s. What\’e2\’80\’99s wrong with Shadowbane? It\’e2\’80\’99s probably the best PVP out there right now.
I think it’s just great. And so well supported, they have a full dev team on it….
You know, for all the crap people gave it, Daikatana wasn’t really a bad game. It was just an average game with a lot of public dirty laundry.
I’ll say this: If Romero actually has a hand in the development of the game, rather than saying, “I’ve paid my dues, do my work!”, it might turn out OK. Above all, Romero has a desire to look at his project and ask, “Is this fun?” If it’s not, he makes it so it is, storyline or whatever be damned. And maybe only he and his development think it’s fun, but that’s still better than, say, McQuaid looking at a development decision and saying, “Hey, it’s not fun, but it’s realistic!”
-Rip
I literally threw up after playing Daikatana for about 20 minutes.
I don’t usually get motion sickness, especially not from a simple FPS game on my monitor, but something about the crappy way it was rendered caused me to spew.
John Romero stole my cookies.
Stfu, carebear Lum. You and your kind ruined MMOs.
I agree.
Vleskoe, I’d call you retarded, but that’s because of my perspective.
I played sb in late alpha and all through beta. I was on the goddamned box. The game died, and is dead because most people love the warmth and fun of a carebear world. At the end of the day, people prefer to have a shiney object, because as a general rule so many of them couldn’t grab the brass ring in the game of life. Work, despite the adreneline involved in raids, scares them.
Ubi will pull their support when it costs them money, if it isn’t already. WP is dead. Play them a dirge. Shadowbane, perhaps my favorite game next to UO is empty and static.
I’ll wait and see what else we get.
Screw Romero, that B5 tie in further cements your super geek status!
Galt, I’d call you retarded, but that’s because you called me retarded first.
I agree, the days of SB are numbered. But I do believe that it has made great improvements since the early days of release. I don’t think it is too little, but it is definitely too late.
I also agree that Shadowbane is my favorite game next to UO.
EMBRACE THE SUPERCORE AMAZINGNESS!
“Who are you?”
“What do you want?”
“Where are you going?”
As posed by the Vorlons, the Shadow, and the First One. Romero should be asking himself these things.
Worth pointing out that Romero’s old partner at Ion Storm, Tom Hall, is in Austin working at http://www.kingsisle.com/ — co-founded by Wolfpack co-founders Todd Coleman and Josef Hall.
And they’re in the old Origin Systems building.
Isn’t that sort of the corporate equivalent of building a house on an old Indian burial ground?
galt – SB died because it was buggy as hell. I remember quite a few played it when it came out, but word of mouth was “stay out untill they fix sb.exe” and they took to long about it.
A game like that might not get the market of WOW, but it sure should be able to stay afloat and make money.
In my mind, WOW prooved polish and ease of use pays of, alot more than it prooved people like yet more of the Diku design.
Truth be told, I’m glad Romero is back. I’d much rather have a wild card leading the charge than a Mark Jacobs / Rob Pardo suit. Guys like Romero and even Garriott get excited about their projects and want to talk about them all the time – sure this lead to over hype but it beats the Jacobs / Pardo cold, calculated, timed press releases. Romero and Garriott in their time have defined a genre – Jacobs and Pardo have only picked a genre. Sure not even game will be a groundbreaking event, but at least they are willing to take the chance.
I do find it funny, that when gathered around the table with my MMO friends, my tales are always of Shadowbane and UO – two of the buggiest MMOs I ever played. AC / Daoc / Wow tales never really compare. SB and UO felt like rough, dangerous worlds where anything could happen; AC, Daoc, Wow just felt too safe to really connect with – I could only connect with them like I connect with Mario on Nintendo.
Oh, as an aside, if you are worried about job security, you should avoid game companies all together. Working for a game company then complaining about job security is like moving next to an airport and complaining about the noise
“His ideas and attitudes are stuck in 1988.”
So’s his hair.
“because as a general rule so many of them couldn\’e2\’80\’99t grab the brass ring in the game of life. Work, despite the adreneline involved in raids, scares them.”
Perhaps they are trying to grab some of those brass rings actually. The amount of hard work one aspires to achieve in an MMO is generally directly and inversely proportional to the amount of hard work one could achieve in RL. Creating both an oxymoron and a conundrum.
Working for a game company then complaining about job security is like moving next to an airport and complaining about the noise
Or moving to castro and complaining about all the gay porn shops apparently.
I just remembered what it was that turned me off from a career in games… apart from a lack of any obvious talent.
John Romero’s newly founded and funded MMO game company in the Bay Area is developing a Super Secret Mystery Project that will be revealed to only the most qualified candidates!
My executive cabal and I are very excited to build an amazing development team and create something truly unique. Our offices are located near Redwood City, California. Apply now and prepare to enter the reality distortion field!
slipg8
I hate ‘enthusiastic’ people.
You would rather have someone like Ramaro instead of Mark Jacobs? Fucking christ what is this world coming too? Jacobs at least can see things coming in the market and keep ahead of them. Doesn’t mean he builds a game around them, but makes sure his game isn’t going to run into the ground because of them.
Next Jacobs doesn’t hype his game before he even has a god damned team to build it! The only hit against MJ is the whole EA bullshit… he should of just admitted it was possible instead of lieing flat out about it. I didn’t even come here to defend MJ because of his numerous “This is the future of DAoC” letters only to turn around and give us Trials of Atlantis… /puke. But I can’t sit and watch him get shit on by being compared to Romero. /double puke
Last I checked history is our best teacher. If you know anything about Doom and Quake you know the all brilliant Romero had little to nothing to do within them outside of shit talking and wasting loads of cash before getting fired. He was only around for Quake because Carmack didn’t have the balls to fire his dead weight ass.
About the only thing Romero brought to the FPS is shit talk in online death matches. If anything succesful comes out of his MMO project its from the team he builds… not from his leadership or design choices.
My guess though is Romero’s style will conflict GREATLY with a mainstream title. His ideas are in the M-rated category which immeadiately shrinks your playerbase. Everyone is expecting him to make a hardcore PvP MMORPG also… which is shrinking the playerbase even more. How does anyone buy into this bullshit?
He even says he is doing something that no one is even thinking about right now. Sorry to inform ya, but I’ve played MUDs that are light years ahead in ideas than the MMORPG market. Trust me… any idea out there has been tried already. The reason they aren’t being made into AAA titles is because THEY ARE NICHE ideas and there isn’t enough players to support 100 million dollar budgets.
Jacobs at least can see things coming in the market and keep ahead of them.
Next Jacobs doesn\’e2\’80\’99t hype his game before he even has a god damned team to build it!
*cough*Imperator*cough*
=P
I’m looking forward to the marketing campaign more than the actual game. People got more entertainment from the train wreck of the “be my bitch” campaign than they did from the game.
Has Big John done anything noteworthy since his work on Quake?
Please pass the Kool-Aid this way!
What’s wrong with looting and PKing without all the BS like Ultima Online?
Oh yeah. The suits who say Emo = good say PKing = bad. I forgot.
Timing based combat ftw.
“Stfu, carebear Lum. You and your kind ruined MMOs. “
I’m assuming that the above comment was made in jest or as some kind of a joke or something? Or is this an obtuse Superman joke? Kinda like the “Composite Superman” there’s a “carebear Lum”. Now if regular Lum can just get carebear Lum to go back to his square planet where everyone is a superhero, then regular Lum could get back to that story that he has to finish at the Daily Planet….err, that code he has to finish at NCSoft Austin.
I’m assuming these things because the only other option is that you’re somehow serious and you think that a bunch of “carebears” managed to ruin MMO’s. How would that be, exactly, by getting tired of getting PKed by the “Covetous Crew” every single time they stepped their butts outside of Trinsic or Minoc or wherever, so they cancelled their subscriptions and joined a little game called Everquest when it came out?
Or maybe it was the freakin’ out of control PKers in UO that caused the majority of the gaming population to say “screw this”.
The weed of rampant PKing in UO bears bitter fruit…for the PKers.
But then, I suppose that my above response hasn’t been in the proper format, and I should have instead said something like “crymorenewb thats just part of teh game”?
Whatever…
38 posts and no one posted anything humorous about John Romero making you his bitch. Wow, gotta be a record.
Don’t expect me to start, either.
You missed post #35…
I’m curious. How many folks fondly remembering SB still have an active account?
I remember having great fun in SB. It really showed the potential of a PvP game. I also remember why I quit, and it was all about bugs and design flaws.
If you think not wanting to play bug infested games is carebear, I have some swampland you’re gonna love.
I tried to think of something hilarious to post, something that mocked all that Romero is, and that I hate.
I was stuck. So I Google Imaged him. That was all I needed for a good laugh/cry…
Daym Bruce, I guess I did. My eyes started to glaze around #30….
I loved SB until one crash, rollback and ‘sploit too many made me cancel as well, nonetheless that’s not to say a GOOD hardcore PVP MMOG couldn’t find a decent sized market in this brave new MMOG world, but the key word is GOOD in execution, not just theory.
Can John do it? Can there be quality bitch-making on a massively multiplayer scale? Is this even part of his plan? Check back in 2012 or so and see!
Did I read it wrong or do you have to be stuck up to join Romero’s team? I kind of wonder how many new employee’s he ends up dropping when it turns out they think better of themselves than they can perform.
As far as missing Shadowbane.. no, I don’t miss any game, only the friends I made there. I tend to look forward hoping that one of the ones in development will be THE game I want to play.. so far they tend to end up as the lowest common denominator for that time (when their development cycle started). I worry that I will grow up and realize all computer games suck and always will.
This is vaporware.
As for the folks defending MJ, the guy is an idiot.
As for the folks discussing Romero, he’s yesterday’s news. Who really gives a fuck.
As for the comments by the lum detractors, they are more right than wrong.
Shadowbane died because it was not worthy enough to survive. Bad launch, bad coding, slow fixes and bad implementation doomed it. Neither the open pvp environment or the ‘carebears’ did.
When I think about “John Romero’s Team” I picture an eclectic mix of larger than life characters all standing there like the cover of a street fighter game. With Romero in the background sort of with his arms outstretched over all of them. And like.. one of them is in a mexican luchadore mask, and hes like “El Coder GRANDE!” and theres another guy in camo pants with a huge sword who does the artwork or something.
my take: The design documents will kick ASS, but the game will be released half finished if at all, and eventually die a flaming death. Despite the best efforts of “El Coder GRANDE!”
Double points for Gawain.
So when are Derek Smart and Romero hooking up to do a megasuperhardcore game?