Richard Garriott praises Guild Wars' beta system

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=16490
Although not completely true (there were 6 beta weekends in 5 months and the skill acquisition system was changed completely) it's nice to hear some kind words about GW from Lord British.
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Well, actually i think his brother Robert Garriott (the boss of NCSoft.us) told him to stop drooling about the non-success that Tabula Rasa turned out to be and to thank Anet for paying his salary

Yea Tabula Rasa is terribad. He should take some notes.

What is it about some video game producers which gives them such big egos that they are able to say "This game will change gaming forever?" (I'm taking to you, Moleyneux.)

Yeah Tabula Rasa has to be the worst Lord British has done. He should have stuck with Ultima and the Avatar stories. I never liked any of his stuff after that. Ultima IV is the best ever.

I expected so much from Tabula that by the time the Beta came, i was really disappointed. Dont know if it had to do with me over expecting or the game just sucking too bad.

anyways, hurray for Anet?

He thinks he's good because 'created' Fable and he thinks Fable is very good rpg.
That's why he's baed.

God damn moron-ish, strawman-ish troll. If you don't have anything to backup your silly crap, GTFO, idiot

Peter Molyneux has created some of my favorite games ever: Populous, Magic Carpet, Syndicate & Dungeon Keeper (yeah, i'm old). He deserves his lunacy

Lord British though... better let Yahtzee explain it -> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...on-Tabula-Rasa

In the article General British sounds like he is looking for excuses blaming too many beta testers having the wrong impression. Maybe he's just sulking, because he can't pay for his space flight (again).

What does this mean for Guild Wars? Besides Aion and CoX NCSoft will most definitely pay more attention on GW2's progress (and maybe some investment to keep GW1 players happy).

The idea and gameplay behind Tabula Rasa wasn't not bad at all. I quite enjoy beta testing for Tabula Rasa - Well i played, and let my roommate report all bugs we found since we shared a beta account. But thats not the point, in reality Tabula Rasa tried to offer a rolling beta, in which they gave the players access to essentially the full game and then tried to fix bugs as players game across them. Theres good and bad things to that but its not really the point here. But what it came down to in my opinion is that the character and skill system were way to narrow. 1 character broken down into 2 classes which then got broken into another 2 classes and then again into another 2 classes. So in the end when you got to lvl 50, you could be one of 8 or so different classes. As well each class had give or take 5 different skills, to which you could normally spec to 2 and not be spread to thin attribute-wise. As well many of the skills were not balanced right and failed to work right in pvp. I think that the designers had big ideas for the game, but the incorporation of their ideas into the game just were too small.

Well, they did have Ultima X planned, but it got cancelled. They were also going to make an expansion to Ultima VIII, but it also got cancelled. But altogether, there were 15 games in the Ultima universe, and I think that's plenty. I have to disagree with you though. Ultima VII is the best ever

What is it with people knocking Molyneux? So Fable sucked, so what...Black and White rocked out with the **** out; so much so that one semi-bad game is certainly forgivable. <3 to Lionhead.

edit: I got ahead of myself, have you people ever even played the liquid sex that is Dungeon Keeper, Populous, or Theme Park? Probably not. Do us all a favor and do so immediately before your 13th birthday. Oh yeah, Lord British does suck.

At least some of us have our heads on straight

LOL that review was spot on. I played that game for about a week before I completely lost interest in it. Paying $15 a month for that crap is much like what Yahtzee said, 'taking money and throwing it off a bridge'.

You are talking about this man….

IGN E3 press conference on Fable 2.

Yeah his ego has yet to change, even though he admits to the some of the his mistakes.

Anyways his bashing in the present time is well deserved. Considering how Black and White 2 turned out to be okay, Fable turned out to be a huge disappointment (for all it’s hype), and even The Movies turned out to be sub-par game. He hyped these games up to no end and they all fell flat on their face. There is a key to ambition and that’s not just in saying something but never delivering on it.

As for Garriott I think he’s nothing but a hypocrite after bashing GW and now praising it.

Your math is a bit off. There are people who are 21 now who were 2 when Populous was released. It is hardly just the under 13 year old kiddie crowd who has never heard of those games.
You just don't want to admit you're getting a bit old Perfectly understandable though.

fable was a hugely succesful game which still holds many fans. it was short but sweet.
for the time it was a magical experience.....i really loved it.
tabula rasa is over 14$ a month to play....no thanks

Diminutive intelligent little creatures? Oh yeah, WoW definitely has a copyright on those.

Anthropomorphic animals? OMG! Who has ever heard of such a thing?

If you look at any fictional world at all, you'll see similarities. The difference is that WoW took all of their races directly from mythology, whereas GW made their own. Sure, they may share some characteristics of races from other works, but they have their own unique twist added to them.

But I do agree that Tabula Rasa was an original concept. I never got to play it during the beta, so I don't actually know how it turned out. But the idea certainly was very interesting.

LOLLLLLLL

gnomes were invented by blizzard right? lol
orcs (=charr) too maybe? lol


gw and wow were in development at the same time btw......and they all take from the same fantasy literature, previous moorpgs,d&d etc etc....
wow didn't introduce anything new to the fantasy world not to mmorpgs
gw came out witha pvp game.....wow didn't even have proper pvp when it came out. they were a different thing.....and wow played catch up on the pvp front introducing battlegrounds and arenas just in the past year.

Outside the gnome / asura thing, I disagree.

Your comparision of Illidan / Shiro is weak.. I mean.. dual wielding? If he was a caster you would say he is copying Kael right? In design, "cool" villains dual wield because it shows they are daring and offensive.

And people who find a old artifact and turn nuts aren't exactly new. Some stories just repeat itself over and over.

That Yahtzee review was nice.
He doesn't hold back ever.
I'm pleased he thinks grinding is loathsome and sad.

Lol sigh. Again, why must we talk about world of warcraft? Go start ragewars somewhere else please.

EDIT: Just because of similar ideas, it doesn't mean Guild Wars copied World of Warcraft. Why don't YOU accept the truth that you're wrong?

D&D Gnomes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome_%...%26_Dragons%29
LoL. Same skin... right. Again, anthropomorphism wasn't created by Blizzard.
Dual wielding betrayer?
http://uk.games-workshop.com/chaosspacemarines/kharn/1/
Khârn the Betrayer.
Wow... ancient artifacts and evil magic. Never heard of that plot device before.
And to finish: GTFO

QFT
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Alright, they are very similar. But at least Anet created the appearance of the Asura. WoW just took Gnomes straight out of every other source that had the generic gnome.

Uhh... exact same skin? I see no similarities between a huge bull-human hybrid and a cat-human hybrid, just like I see no similarity between a cat and a cow in reality. Also, the Charr are nothing like the Tauren (from what I saw when I played the WoW trial my brother gave me as a joke). The Charr are quite cunning, malicious, very fast, and devastating. The Tauren are slow and stupid. They are nothing alike.

I don't know who Illidan is, so I can't really say anything about him. However, Shiro was corrupted by the Fortune Teller, when she told him that the Emporer was planning to kill him, unless he acted first.

Slight Spoiler follows

In a Nightfall side quest, you track down the Fortune Teller, and you find out that she is actually a servant of Abaddon, which is why she corrupted Shiro.

Again, I know nothing about Arthas, but Vizier Khilbron was not changed by any ancient artifact. He originally was the advisor to the King of Orr, and he caused the Cataclysm that destroyed Orr to stop the Charr from advancing. The way I see it, he only became the Lich afterward, when he was also corrupted by a servant of Abaddon (as suggested in a quest in the Realm of Torment... forgot its name. The one where you help that guy save the souls of the Orrians). The scepter of Orr never did anything to Vizier Khilbron. It was just a very powerful artifact that he wanted to wield to take over the world. (That is just my interpretation of the events. But I think it's pretty certain that Vizier Khilbron was the Lich before he ever got his hands on the Scepter of Orr).

Call me a fan boy if you like, but I prefer to look at all the facts before I make a judgement about similarities between two things. Yes, there are similarities, but as I said in a previous post, there always will be if you look long and hard enough. People borrow ideas all the time. WoW definitely "borrows" a lot of ideas, and so does GW. But from what I have seen, GW has a lot more in it that is original in terms of lore than WoW has.

Ultima IV = best ever
Ultima V = second best ever

Is there any way I can run those games these days?

Try DOSbox, it is an DOS emulator.

Yeah, dosbox would run them perfectly. However, there are a lot of more specific programs in development that you can use to play the ultima games. One to run Ultima IV is xu4, which is cool because you can choose VGA graphics as an option, which is pretty. I'm not sure if it's been properly released yet, or whether it is still in testing. But I think it is fully playable in its current state. I'll just find the URL.

http://xu4.sourceforge.net/

And the URL for dosbox is

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

Zero Punctuation owns all

Holy crap, thanks so much for that link!

I think I'll go and watch everything this guy's ever done now...

So the savage fire worshipping lion like charr resemble the nature loving, balance preserving nomadic tauren?


Someone has some analytical issues....

hahahaha

am I the only one who's not reading the article, instead looking at RG's pictures and think he's very cute? :P

LOL. Trying to insult people by calling them GW fanboys when you yourself are posting on a GW fan site... just LOL

He was bad-mouthing GW's non-subscription formula once.

Stitch from Lilo and Stitch says hi.

Oh, so we're still on that topic.

Well. Everything is stolen (er, sorry, "borrowed") from something. Period.

OK, next topic?

Apparently it was miscommunication.

I don't believe it was...

he was just trying to save face. "Lord British" strikes me as a very conceited man, who probably thinks his ideas are better than anyone elses.

Even this "praise" of GW's beta is criticism in disguise: "It's not fair because their beta was finished!"

Cry me a river...

It beats being a WoW fanboy at a GW fansite.

I am so tired of these GW stole from WoW posts. What's you point anyway clown? Its just a game, not a work of art. All that matters if whether its fun. And here's a news flash for you: WoW is not exactly the most original game out there.

I'm guessing you're the only one.

ok -.- this took me fore ever to find because I forgot how they named it, but I think it totaly appropriate for that GW vs WoW debate going on here

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10

Since GW is made from people who worked at Blizzard, is it really that big a surprise there are similarities in a fanstasy based MMORPG?

I think WoW posters here are just jealous or something that all the top Blizzard designers packed up and founded Anet.

I loved that comic. Of course, it's not like Games Workshop doesn't steal stuff....

as I said earlier, everything evolves from something else.

Perfect discussion closer.

We just have to live with the deluded 14 year olds who believe fantasy starts and ends with Warcraft.