People put too much faith in Richard Garriott. Sure, I enjoyed Ultima games and Ultima Online is still one of my all time favorites, however, can anyone honestly name one recent RG project that actually did well? His last big production MMO failed and now he's on a social media kick making what looks like Zynga-type games.
I don't have any issues with mobile phone gaming. I actually wish that more developers took it seriously and started releasing real games, instead of little 5 minute puzzle and gimmicky touch games. I just don't think that it's a good market for a proper MMOs. Who the hell is going to spend hours on their phone doing raids or some shit?
Whether you like or hate what Richar Garriott is doing now...I really think you have to respect the man.
I'm a little appalled at how many people think he is a "hack" or whatever in this thread. What you guys have to realize is that if UO never came out, Richard Garriott would still be an incredibly influential industry icon.
Ultima was an SPRPG series LONG before it was an MMORPG. In fact, Ultima I came out in 1980..1980! And there were probably over 14 Ultima games in total. The fact of the matter is that Garriott's Ultima series was a tremendous influence on ALL computer RPGs, and probably played a large part in shaping their direction.
Trying to dismiss all of Garriott's accomplishments simply because you don't like what he is doing now is ridiculous. Show some respect people .
No respect for him at all. He used Tabula Rasa to help him raise money to get into space then shut the game down when he landed, or was it announced during his trip to space. I bet all the games he has his name on were maybe 10% created by him. The other 90% were the talent he had working for him. No respectr for him at all. TR was fun the first time through, but the way it ended was very underhanded in my book and my book is not your book.
Ultima was definitely Garriott's brainchild, and he was heavily involved in just about every Ultima game back in the "golden era" of the series.
Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with the criticism Garriott gets for TR or his more recent social gaming stuff, and he may very well never come out with another decent thing in his life. But calling him a "hack" is ridiculous. The man helped shape the RPG genre into what it is today. It is completely reasonable to say that if not for Richard Garriott, CRPGs may be very different.
I mean, if Leonardo Davinci decided to do only fingerpaintings after he painted the Mona Lisa, would that somehow diminish his accomplishment? The fact is that Garriott accomplished more with the Ultima series than the VAST majority of game developers will EVER accomplish in their lives.
If you don't like his current stuff, then that's fine. But don't try to act like your dislike for his current stuff somehow invalidates all his other accomplishments.
Whether you like or hate what Richar Garriott is doing now...I really think you have to respect the man.
I'm a little appalled at how many people think he is a "hack" or whatever in this thread. What you guys have to realize is that if UO never came out, Richard Garriott would still be an incredibly influential industry icon.
Ultima was an SPRPG series LONG before it was an MMORPG. In fact, Ultima I came out in 1980..1980! And there were probably over 14 Ultima games in total. The fact of the matter is that Garriott's Ultima series was a tremendous influence on ALL computer RPGs, and probably played a large part in shaping their direction.
Trying to dismiss all of Garriott's accomplishments simply because you don't like what he is doing now is ridiculous. Show some respect people .
No respect for him at all. He used Tabula Rasa to help him raise money to get into space then shut the game down when he landed, or was it announced during his trip to space. I bet all the games he has his name on were maybe 10% created by him. The other 90% were the talent he had working for him. No respectr for him at all. TR was fun the first time through, but the way it ended was very underhanded in my book and my book is not your book.
Ultima was definitely Garriott's brainchild, and he was heavily involved in just about every Ultima game back in the "golden era" of the series.
Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with the criticism Garriott gets for TR or his more recent social gaming stuff, and he may very well never come out with another decent thing in his life. But calling him a "hack" is ridiculous. The man helped shape the RPG genre into what it is today. It is completely reasonable to say that if not for Richard Garriott, CRPGs may be very different.
I mean, if Leonardo Davinci decided to do only fingerpaintings after he painted the Mona Lisa, would that somehow diminish his accomplishment? The fact is that Garriott accomplished more with the Ultima series than the VAST majority of game developers will EVER accomplish in their lives.
If you don't like his current stuff, then that's fine. But don't try to act like your dislike for his current stuff somehow invalidates all his other accomplishments.
Some of these comments are just pretty far fetched. He catches a lot of flak for the game, but Garriott was pulled from the lead on Tabula Rasa well before it came out, and as released it was a hodge podge of original concepts and later developments by a couple of managers brought in by NCSoft. Some of the early ideas for TR eventually ended up being recast in Aion. At the end Garriott was nothing more than a figurehead for Tabula Rasa.
But he was also a right-time right-place guy with the early Ultimas. More of an idea man, as the games got more complicated he had less nuts and bolts connection to how they were developed. Garriott is a poor project manager, unable to get games out on time and under budget. Distractable and far too fond of feature creep. Much of what was released under the Ultima line benefitted from a strong cadre of creative people who assembled at Origin Systems.
But I guess too much credit and too much blame are par for the course.
No idea what his new MMOrpg project will be like, tho I hope it will include playstyles appropriate to the level of the hardware you are using. If you are on your phone, you won't be raiding away, but you might be working on something like crafting things that you could use later, when you get home and are on your computer. Scaled properly, something that could be useful with whatever device you happen to have would be kinda cool.
The Leonardo da Vinci comparison doesn't cut it for me. da Vinci was a poly-Genius. If he had just painted the Mona Lisa, he would have been far less than really he was. The guy invented ball bearings! He had designs for parachutes, flying vehicles, renaissance tanks, automatons, musical instruments, was a noted sculptor, wrote treatises, was centuries ahead on the understanding of anatomy, and could write upside down and backwards. You should probably re-work that part of your argument.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
No respect for him at all. He used Tabula Rasa to help him raise money to get into space then shut the game down when he landed, or was it announced during his trip to space. I bet all the games he has his name on were maybe 10% created by him. The other 90% were the talent he had working for him. No respectr for him at all. TR was fun the first time through, but the way it ended was very underhanded in my book and my book is not your book.
Ultima was definitely Garriott's brainchild, and he was heavily involved in just about every Ultima game back in the "golden era" of the series.
Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with the criticism Garriott gets for TR or his more recent social gaming stuff, and he may very well never come out with another decent thing in his life. But calling him a "hack" is ridiculous. The man helped shape the RPG genre into what it is today. It is completely reasonable to say that if not for Richard Garriott, CRPGs may be very different.
I mean, if Leonardo Davinci decided to do only fingerpaintings after he painted the Mona Lisa, would that somehow diminish his accomplishment? The fact is that Garriott accomplished more with the Ultima series than the VAST majority of game developers will EVER accomplish in their lives.
If you don't like his current stuff, then that's fine. But don't try to act like your dislike for his current stuff somehow invalidates all his other accomplishments.
Some of these comments are just pretty far fetched. He catches a lot of flak for the game, but Garriott was pulled from the lead on Tabula Rasa well before it came out, and as released it was a hodge podge of original concepts and later developments by a couple of managers brought in by NCSoft. Some of the early ideas for TR eventually ended up being recast in Aion. At the end Garriott was nothing more than a figurehead for Tabula Rasa.
But he was also a right-time right-place guy with the early Ultimas. More of an idea man, as the games got more complicated he had less nuts and bolts connection to how they were developed. Garriott is a poor project manager, unable to get games out on time and under budget. Distractable and far too fond of feature creep. Much of what was released under the Ultima line benefitted from a strong cadre of creative people who assembled at Origin Systems.
But I guess too much credit and too much blame are par for the course.
No idea what his new MMOrpg project will be like, tho I hope it will include playstyles appropriate to the level of the hardware you are using. If you are on your phone, you won't be raiding away, but you might be working on something like crafting things that you could use later, when you get home and are on your computer. Scaled properly, something that could be useful with whatever device you happen to have would be kinda cool.
The Leonardo da Vinci comparison doesn't cut it for me. da Vinci was a poly-Genius. If he had just painted the Mona Lisa, he would have been far less than really he was. The guy invented ball bearings! He had designs for parachutes, flying vehicles, renaissance tanks, automatons, musical instruments, was a noted sculptor, wrote treatises, was centuries ahead on the understanding of anatomy, and could write upside down and backwards. You should probably re-work that part of your argument.
I did some research on Garriott, and I really believe that he was the primary driving force behind the Ultimas. He wasn't just an "idea man." In fact, he developed the predecessor to Ultima Aklabeth and Ultima I, almost completely by himself. And he had probably the most major role (Designer and Project Director) in all of the early Ultimas. This includes Ultima 3 Exodus which is credited as a game that laid the foundation for the CRPG genre, influencing games like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy.
And mind you, he developed these games in the 80's when it was much harder to develop video games. I honestly don't see how you can't have respect for Richard Garriott after knowing all this.
And as for the da Vinci thing, I'm obviously not trying to say that Richard Garriott is comparable with da Vinci. I'm just saying that you shouldn't disregard the accomplishments of someone simply because you don't like their later work. This point could be made with any famous person in history.
Would you be happy if I replaced "da Vinci" with "Hironobu Sakaguchi," the "Mona Lisa" with "The Final Fantasy Series," and "Finger Painting" with "Social Games?"
uh ho...Lord British is making contradictory claims.
" The game will have personal ethics, social events, and be founded on a very strong STORY system."
but to start the next paragraph;
"The best part of the interview was that Richard said the game has SANDBOX interaction at its core."
Clear vision my tuckus, a strong story frames out much sandbox interaction.
He should have a grasp on that concept, but then again his "era's" of gaming pay no homage to the real old school before computers.
The pen and paper RPG's started as a hodge podge of existing game mechanichs, mostly minatures warfare battles and campaigns, combined with new concepts to extend greater "individuality" to individual figures.
By the late 70's it was all about the "character" who improved by gaining experience and wealth which was spent to improve the PC so they could gain more experience and wealth which was spent...
And of course all that experience and wealth was gained from fighting.
That's how it became possible to "wing it" as a GM... just know your Monster Manual and your dice well enough to throw almost enough at the players each encounter and spout any old halfarsed reason for tying each encounter together, much like the movie 'Milo and Otis'.
Here's the dog down a pit with a badger, here's the cat up a tree with a snake...
From an imaginative standpoint it had become advanced cowboys and indians with d20's to settle the "BANG! Got you!", "UH UH, You missed!" argument.
The focus on individual combat neglected pretty much all the rest of the sandbox to the point that a simple statement of action from a player like "I start digging" became very problamatic.
That's when "story" realy started picking up steam as a RPG idea.
The "story" became a way of framing out the full range of possibilities by implying limiting factors, most often using time by placing a deadline on successful completion and making actions requiring a long duration of time to impliment pretty much moot.
By its very nature story is structured and to set that structure means there are things player choice and actions can't effect.
The stronger the story the more limited the players actions become.
Sandbox play creates the story over the course of player actions rather than the story dictating the course of player actions.
It's position or momentum, pick one because you can't have both.
I'm a big fan of Garriotts (Just had his first child, Kinga!), and what he says in his interviews always makes sense.
I will hold judgement to see what he and the team at Portelarium actually deliver
He's always talked a real good game, yas. Kinda stumbled on that second part, a few times.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I'm a huge fan of Garriott's, but there is no way, however good the game may be, will I ever log onto Facebook to play it. Facebook is a joke to gaming and no matter how much he stresses about pleasing hardcore fans, theres no way casual and hardcore fans can cohabitate...
If it involves Facebook, it's softcore and will never please or be a true game.
Richard Garriot, the once admired developer is now doing FB games? Oh the humanity. WTF? really? Look where his last big game ended up....closed down. So now he is investing a reportedly 7 million into a game that will play in a browser, ipad, FB. Whatever....true MMORPG's for the computer hardcore gamer will continue to decline since nobody has the B****s to invest that kind of money anymore. It's a shame....I miss the good old days.
No facebook account (their security is awful) therefore no interest
I used to visit this site a lot however in recent years it has become the home of negative forum posts, illogical opinions and tantrums so I visit less often.
Played or Beta'd: UO / DAOC / Horizons / EQ2 / DDO / EVE / Archlord / PirateKingsOnline / Tabula Rasa / LOTRO / AOC / Champions / Darkfall / Mortal Online / DCUO / Rift / STO / SWTOR / TSW
While I do enjoy some facebook games, I find them to be pretty short-term. I want a game I can dig into and play for more than hours, but rather days. I don't want to be stopped by ENERGY requirements and all the little ask your friend requests that are required. Simply put, I want to PLAY as long as I wish and do as much as I wish in one sitting. These social games are semi-fun when they are new, but they wear out quickly.
I would MUCH rather pay for a full-sized game, than constantly be whittled off a few few bucks to have this or that FEATURE opened up to me. I really want full-sized PC games back. And NOT shooters, geez the market is flooded with those. Give me some story, some building/crafting, some strategy and a way to connect with friends (not on facebook) and I will be happy.
There are people WAITING to spend money on good games. Where are the games for the PC? Quit rewashing them as facebook games or giving us more console shooters. We want the guts of games back, the LONG term playability and variety!
I do like his vision of game distribution, but is the platform e.g. facebook and ipads really capable of delivering a game for dedicated mmo players? hmmm... I fear not.
will it be successful?... sure... angry birds is successful right? just about anything on facebook is... that in itself doesn't make it good games, and I dont really want to go back 20, 10 or even 5 years in graphics capacity just to play the game in Facebook.
Ah well, one would hope for a new and improved ultima online, but we get this....a glorified FB game? 3rd era of gaming, bah, I'd hoped new era with better PCs and new technologies would go forward...not backwards to late 90's graphics and probably simplified gameplay (no matter what Garriot says, if they want to make FB kind of game, it can in no way be even near complex as a good AAA game).
Good concept to appeal to masses though, prolly good profit in it too. But 3rd era...yeh, lolilol, 3rd era in squeezing money from ppl.
Dont get your hopes up, people, this is going to be a massive flop of a game. Its like this, Garriott doesnt have the balls anymore to make a world like UO again. Hes been indoctrinated by the siren's song that is the social game. This is going to be a Facebook game.... A FACEBOOK GAME. That right there tells you its going to suck donkey balls and will bilk you for as much cash as it can while providing lame, repetitive content that will get stale very quickly.
Also, its not going to be open world sandbox like UO was. In interviews, he has stated that players will have their own little world that they can invite friends to play in with them. Sounds like a Halo Forge Custom game to me. That isnt an MMORPG, its a single player game that you can invite player 2 and player 3 to come in and play with you.
MMORPG players are the farthest things from his mind and are certainly not his target audience here. If MMOs were still his goal, he'd be making one right now, not this social game crap.
So, set expectations to unimpressed and be prepared for the end of a legend. Garriott, you had a good run, but you are going to end things on one lame ass note.
Comments
Yeah, well, wait for me on that empty server, I'll be right there. Promise. Just keep waiting.
Once upon a time....
People put too much faith in Richard Garriott. Sure, I enjoyed Ultima games and Ultima Online is still one of my all time favorites, however, can anyone honestly name one recent RG project that actually did well? His last big production MMO failed and now he's on a social media kick making what looks like Zynga-type games.
I don't have any issues with mobile phone gaming. I actually wish that more developers took it seriously and started releasing real games, instead of little 5 minute puzzle and gimmicky touch games. I just don't think that it's a good market for a proper MMOs. Who the hell is going to spend hours on their phone doing raids or some shit?
You would be wrong...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott
Ultima was definitely Garriott's brainchild, and he was heavily involved in just about every Ultima game back in the "golden era" of the series.
Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with the criticism Garriott gets for TR or his more recent social gaming stuff, and he may very well never come out with another decent thing in his life. But calling him a "hack" is ridiculous. The man helped shape the RPG genre into what it is today. It is completely reasonable to say that if not for Richard Garriott, CRPGs may be very different.
I mean, if Leonardo Davinci decided to do only fingerpaintings after he painted the Mona Lisa, would that somehow diminish his accomplishment? The fact is that Garriott accomplished more with the Ultima series than the VAST majority of game developers will EVER accomplish in their lives.
If you don't like his current stuff, then that's fine. But don't try to act like your dislike for his current stuff somehow invalidates all his other accomplishments.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Some of these comments are just pretty far fetched. He catches a lot of flak for the game, but Garriott was pulled from the lead on Tabula Rasa well before it came out, and as released it was a hodge podge of original concepts and later developments by a couple of managers brought in by NCSoft. Some of the early ideas for TR eventually ended up being recast in Aion. At the end Garriott was nothing more than a figurehead for Tabula Rasa.
But he was also a right-time right-place guy with the early Ultimas. More of an idea man, as the games got more complicated he had less nuts and bolts connection to how they were developed. Garriott is a poor project manager, unable to get games out on time and under budget. Distractable and far too fond of feature creep. Much of what was released under the Ultima line benefitted from a strong cadre of creative people who assembled at Origin Systems.
But I guess too much credit and too much blame are par for the course.
No idea what his new MMOrpg project will be like, tho I hope it will include playstyles appropriate to the level of the hardware you are using. If you are on your phone, you won't be raiding away, but you might be working on something like crafting things that you could use later, when you get home and are on your computer. Scaled properly, something that could be useful with whatever device you happen to have would be kinda cool.
The Leonardo da Vinci comparison doesn't cut it for me. da Vinci was a poly-Genius. If he had just painted the Mona Lisa, he would have been far less than really he was. The guy invented ball bearings! He had designs for parachutes, flying vehicles, renaissance tanks, automatons, musical instruments, was a noted sculptor, wrote treatises, was centuries ahead on the understanding of anatomy, and could write upside down and backwards. You should probably re-work that part of your argument.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I did some research on Garriott, and I really believe that he was the primary driving force behind the Ultimas. He wasn't just an "idea man." In fact, he developed the predecessor to Ultima Aklabeth and Ultima I, almost completely by himself. And he had probably the most major role (Designer and Project Director) in all of the early Ultimas. This includes Ultima 3 Exodus which is credited as a game that laid the foundation for the CRPG genre, influencing games like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy.
And mind you, he developed these games in the 80's when it was much harder to develop video games. I honestly don't see how you can't have respect for Richard Garriott after knowing all this.
And as for the da Vinci thing, I'm obviously not trying to say that Richard Garriott is comparable with da Vinci. I'm just saying that you shouldn't disregard the accomplishments of someone simply because you don't like their later work. This point could be made with any famous person in history.
Would you be happy if I replaced "da Vinci" with "Hironobu Sakaguchi," the "Mona Lisa" with "The Final Fantasy Series," and "Finger Painting" with "Social Games?"
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I think people give garriott way too much credit when it comes to UO
and I think they dont give Raph Koster enough credit....
Let's face it. UO was rad because of Koster's work, not "lord british's".
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
uh ho...Lord British is making contradictory claims.
" The game will have personal ethics, social events, and be founded on a very strong STORY system."
but to start the next paragraph;
"The best part of the interview was that Richard said the game has SANDBOX interaction at its core."
Clear vision my tuckus, a strong story frames out much sandbox interaction.
He should have a grasp on that concept, but then again his "era's" of gaming pay no homage to the real old school before computers.
The pen and paper RPG's started as a hodge podge of existing game mechanichs, mostly minatures warfare battles and campaigns, combined with new concepts to extend greater "individuality" to individual figures.
By the late 70's it was all about the "character" who improved by gaining experience and wealth which was spent to improve the PC so they could gain more experience and wealth which was spent...
And of course all that experience and wealth was gained from fighting.
That's how it became possible to "wing it" as a GM... just know your Monster Manual and your dice well enough to throw almost enough at the players each encounter and spout any old halfarsed reason for tying each encounter together, much like the movie 'Milo and Otis'.
Here's the dog down a pit with a badger, here's the cat up a tree with a snake...
From an imaginative standpoint it had become advanced cowboys and indians with d20's to settle the "BANG! Got you!", "UH UH, You missed!" argument.
The focus on individual combat neglected pretty much all the rest of the sandbox to the point that a simple statement of action from a player like "I start digging" became very problamatic.
That's when "story" realy started picking up steam as a RPG idea.
The "story" became a way of framing out the full range of possibilities by implying limiting factors, most often using time by placing a deadline on successful completion and making actions requiring a long duration of time to impliment pretty much moot.
By its very nature story is structured and to set that structure means there are things player choice and actions can't effect.
The stronger the story the more limited the players actions become.
Sandbox play creates the story over the course of player actions rather than the story dictating the course of player actions.
It's position or momentum, pick one because you can't have both.
He's always talked a real good game, yas. Kinda stumbled on that second part, a few times.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I'm a huge fan of Garriott's, but there is no way, however good the game may be, will I ever log onto Facebook to play it. Facebook is a joke to gaming and no matter how much he stresses about pleasing hardcore fans, theres no way casual and hardcore fans can cohabitate...
If it involves Facebook, it's softcore and will never please or be a true game.
Richard Garriot, the once admired developer is now doing FB games? Oh the humanity. WTF? really? Look where his last big game ended up....closed down. So now he is investing a reportedly 7 million into a game that will play in a browser, ipad, FB. Whatever....true MMORPG's for the computer hardcore gamer will continue to decline since nobody has the B****s to invest that kind of money anymore. It's a shame....I miss the good old days.
No facebook account (their security is awful) therefore no interest
I used to visit this site a lot however in recent years it has become the home of negative forum posts, illogical opinions and tantrums so I visit less often.
Played or Beta'd: UO / DAOC / Horizons / EQ2 / DDO / EVE / Archlord / PirateKingsOnline / Tabula Rasa / LOTRO / AOC / Champions / Darkfall / Mortal Online / DCUO / Rift / STO / SWTOR / TSW
While I do enjoy some facebook games, I find them to be pretty short-term. I want a game I can dig into and play for more than hours, but rather days. I don't want to be stopped by ENERGY requirements and all the little ask your friend requests that are required. Simply put, I want to PLAY as long as I wish and do as much as I wish in one sitting. These social games are semi-fun when they are new, but they wear out quickly.
I would MUCH rather pay for a full-sized game, than constantly be whittled off a few few bucks to have this or that FEATURE opened up to me. I really want full-sized PC games back. And NOT shooters, geez the market is flooded with those. Give me some story, some building/crafting, some strategy and a way to connect with friends (not on facebook) and I will be happy.
There are people WAITING to spend money on good games. Where are the games for the PC? Quit rewashing them as facebook games or giving us more console shooters. We want the guts of games back, the LONG term playability and variety!
I do like his vision of game distribution, but is the platform e.g. facebook and ipads really capable of delivering a game for dedicated mmo players? hmmm... I fear not.
will it be successful?... sure... angry birds is successful right? just about anything on facebook is... that in itself doesn't make it good games, and I dont really want to go back 20, 10 or even 5 years in graphics capacity just to play the game in Facebook.
Could not have said it better
Hit it right on the nail
Dont get your hopes up, people, this is going to be a massive flop of a game. Its like this, Garriott doesnt have the balls anymore to make a world like UO again. Hes been indoctrinated by the siren's song that is the social game. This is going to be a Facebook game.... A FACEBOOK GAME. That right there tells you its going to suck donkey balls and will bilk you for as much cash as it can while providing lame, repetitive content that will get stale very quickly.
Also, its not going to be open world sandbox like UO was. In interviews, he has stated that players will have their own little world that they can invite friends to play in with them. Sounds like a Halo Forge Custom game to me. That isnt an MMORPG, its a single player game that you can invite player 2 and player 3 to come in and play with you.
MMORPG players are the farthest things from his mind and are certainly not his target audience here. If MMOs were still his goal, he'd be making one right now, not this social game crap.
So, set expectations to unimpressed and be prepared for the end of a legend. Garriott, you had a good run, but you are going to end things on one lame ass note.