Mike O'Brien Leaving ArenaNet To Form New Studio - MMORPG.com

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Mike O'Brien Leaving ArenaNet To Form New Studio - MMORPG.com

Mike O'Brien, President of ArenaNet, announced this afternoon via a post on the Guild Wars 2 website that he will be leaving ArenaNet to start a new studio with "some of [his] friends." While the post doesn't mention who will be stepping into O'Brien's role as President, it does mention Game Direction Mike Zadorojny will take one a "larger leadership role."

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winghaven1

Everybody is abandoning ship. How many presidents have come and gone now?

Asch126

Sometimes you gotta get out of the sinking ship when it becomes very clear it lost its course.

Aeander

winghaven1 said:

Everybody is abandoning ship. How many presidents have come and gone now?

That's the last of the three original founders. It's the end of an era, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned.

Asch126

Aeander said:

winghaven1 said:

Everybody is abandoning ship. How many presidents have come and gone now?

That's the last of the three original founders. It's the end of an era, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned.

Here's hoping ManaWorks will do well at least, the members shown on their site are almost all developers that worked in GW1 and 2

Aeander

Asch126 said:

Aeander said:

winghaven1 said:

Everybody is abandoning ship. How many presidents have come and gone now?

That's the last of the three original founders. It's the end of an era, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned.

Here's hoping ManaWorks will do well at least, the members shown on their site are almost all developers that worked in GW1 and 2

Here's hoping they lean more towards the Guild Wars 1.

But considering how much Guild Wars 1 development talent moved over to Undead Labs and made the concentrated mediocrity that is State of Decay.... I won't hold my breath.

Nepheth

Mike is not the only one who left the company. 8 original Guild Wars developers left at the same time. And like it says on the op , they created their own company called ManaWorks. I'm quite excited for this new company tbh. I hope they can develop a new corpg or mmorpg that can live up to the original Guild Wars legacy.

Utinni

Guess we'll be seeing a new kickstarter in 6 months! woo.

Kyleran

Sounds like NCSoft may be dropping the hammer soon.

GeezerGamer

Wasn't this the game to re write the paradigm?

Rockard

It all makes sense now!

If MO'Bran was leaving alone it would be bad.

Having so many senior developers leaving Anet to join him is fubar.

Of course NCShaft is renown for sharing the same philosophy and values as Anet with regards to ethics and all things money.So what could go wrong?

There goes your GW3.Probably a optional sub sometime within the next 12 months and maintenance mode within 24 to 28 months.It's still a lot of time and there's a whole saga yet to be played so no need to panic.

Aren't we even more excited about Saga now?

From what I understand,and I still may be wrong,the "beef" with NCboss that lead to half the company getting  fired,had much to do with Anet wanting to develop new technology in order to advance the GW series and also build new games,while the bank wanted to milk the current version of GW2 for as much as possible and invest little to nothing on new tech or anything as radical and anarchistic  as that.

Time to finish up all the uncompleted alts and stories and achivos and slowly start packing. NCSaga is too much $$$$$ for my remaining intellect's composure.

Arthasm

I'm amazed this game is still around, just like Runes of Magic. Undead MMORPGs. Wow killer of 2012... How stupid I was. GG Anet, let me avoid every shit wherever names of your devs appear.

Swanea

I still enjoy playing GW1 over GW2 any day.

Wizardry

This is becoming an epidemic,employees leaving to start new studios.
I knew a long time ago why but seeing it so often now really says it must be too easy and too cheap to just throw a game together and pan a A game off as AA or AAA.

FlyByKnight

Still waiting for this game to release. Good luck though.

Renoaku

Guild Wars, the original was still the best Guild Wars 2 to me is just a game i've tried many times to get into, just can't get into it the game doesn't seem at all like it could be, though there are amazing aspects such as music, and stuff it just doesn't have the feeling GW1 had to me.

gelraen

Well... not disappointed to see the usual forum salt!

I can give another perspective though. I worked for over a decade at a game company which was/is producing one of the big console franchises on the market.  We also had a bit of a crisis at one point, where many of the top people - including the CEO, one director, and several leads - all left at the same time.  Things had been going badly with the new version of the game, and it was part of a larger shakeup.

I was also quite pessimistic about things, and left as well (which I don't regret). I was bitter, and was sure that the game and the future of the studio was in jeopardy.

To my surprise a year later though, the game released with some big changes, and started doing very well. The studio started growing, and then a couple years later the next release was even better.

I've thought about this a lot, and feel that in this case, and maybe in the case of GW2, it can be very healthy to get some of the old developers out of the company and get fresh perspectives on things. When you work on a game series for a long time, certain things get stuck in your mind as unchangeable, and perhaps now is the time for people within Anet who have a fresh take on things to get their chance.

I'm optimistic, I guess is what I'm saying. It's very likely this could be a healthy change.

kitarad

I too loved Guildwars 1 much more than 2 although they are very different games but I would have preferred if they had made 2 like 1.

dekkion1

winghaven1 said:

Everybody is abandoning ship. How many presidents have come and gone now?

nothing good last 4eva.......so it is what it is i guess

Thane

Arthasm said:

I'm amazed this game is still around, just like Runes of Magic. Undead MMORPGs. Wow killer of 2012... How stupid I was. GG Anet, let me avoid every shit wherever names of your devs appear.

yea, but then, it wasn't arena net who claimed they will kill WoW. that was... let's say "your kind"...

anemo

This is just normal game dev patterns though.

Publishers have set themselves up with a system where they keep developers overworked and unpaid... to the point that developers are likely to get fed up enough to quit and start their own companies.  That experiment to make new IP, that eventually ends up getting bought out by publishers to repeat the pattern.  (That have the end result of the risk of creating new IP is a burden that developers pay for).

Asch126

GeezerGamer said:

Wasn't this the game to re write the paradigm?

No trinity! No raids! No mounts! All skill!!!

*adds healers, tankier builds, raids, mounts and reduce the skill so much you could do everything asleep*

Oops.

Lobotomist

Nepheth said:

Mike is not the only one who left the company. 8 original Guild Wars developers left at the same time. And like it says on the op , they created their own company called ManaWorks. I'm quite excited for this new company tbh. I hope they can develop a new corpg or mmorpg that can live up to the original Guild Wars legacy.

Honestly. What is Guild Wars legacy ?
Guild Wars 1, was fantastic groundbreaking game. Guild Wars 2 promised to revolutionize MMO, and it did in a way - by simplifying and trivializing it to the point it was unrecognizable. And than for years it did nothing to improve, but kept pushing mediocrity

If this was the trajectory. I really dont want to see their next project...

Asch126

"

Rockard said:

It all makes sense now!

If MO'Bran was leaving alone it would be bad.

Having so many senior developers leaving Anet to join him is fubar.

Of course NCShaft is renown for sharing the same philosophy and values as Anet with regards to ethics and all things money.So what could go wrong?

There goes your GW3.Probably a optional sub sometime within the next 12 months and maintenance mode within 24 to 28 months.It's still a lot of time and there's a whole saga yet to be played so no need to panic.

Aren't we even more excited about Saga now?

From what I understand,and I still may be wrong,the "beef" with NCboss that lead to half the company getting  fired,had much to do with Anet wanting to develop new technology in order to advance the GW series and also build new games,while the bank wanted to milk the current version of GW2 for as much as possible and invest little to nothing on new tech or anything as radical and anarchistic  as that.

Time to finish up all the uncompleted alts and stories and achivos and slowly start packing. NCSaga is too much $$$$$ for my remaining intellect's composure.

Stop reading clickbaity articles from Kotaku and actually research what happened.

Aeander

Lobotomist said:

Nepheth said:

Mike is not the only one who left the company. 8 original Guild Wars developers left at the same time. And like it says on the op , they created their own company called ManaWorks. I'm quite excited for this new company tbh. I hope they can develop a new corpg or mmorpg that can live up to the original Guild Wars legacy.

Honestly. What is Guild Wars legacy ?
Guild Wars 1, was fantastic groundbreaking game. Guild Wars 2 promised to revolutionize MMO, and it did in a way - by simplifying and trivializing it to the point it was unrecognizable. And than for years it did nothing to improve, but kept pushing mediocrity

If this was the trajectory. I really dont want to see their next project...

Guild Wars 1 was, in my opinion, the greatest and most unique online game ever made.

But to say it had a legacy might be... factually inaccurate, because nothing else (not even its own sequel) emulates it.

And I think that the reason for that is that everything that made Guild Wars work was only possible in a fully instanced world. And because of mediocre grinders like Vindictus, Dragon Nest, Soulworker, etc., instances have an unfortunate dirty connotation. Words like "instanced" and "linear," despite being associated with some serious masterpieces, have become the game design equivalent of racial slurs as we move further into repetitive, vapid open worlds full of busywork and not much else.

Scellow

he is responsible of the death of GW2

manawork? another studio to blacklist