Mike Gillis leaves ArenaNet for WotC

Zinger314

Zinger314

Debbie Downer

Join Date: May 2006

N/Me

21 Aug 2008 at 18:51 - 1
(Or goes back, depending on your perspective. Semantics, semantics.)

WotC article

Quote:
I wanted to take a moment to introduce Mike Gills, our new Community Outreach Manger. Mike will be working as the Community Manager for MtGO as well as Magic the Gathering and other brands as needed. In addition to the duties already in place, the Community Outreach Manager position will now also focus on tournament support.

I, Solice, will be transferring over as the Community Outreach Manager for Dungeons and Dragons, DDI and other brands as needed.
Mike “Gamer Zer0” Lescault has moved on to pursue opportunities outside of Wizards of the Coast.

Now without further ado, here’s Mike Gills!

Hi all. Now that I will be working closely with Solice I’d like to take the time to introduce myself.

After 20+ years of playing 50+ RPGs, MTG since Fallen Empires, and hundreds of video, war, and board games I was clearly a lifestyle gamer. I also had many years of customer support and design experience from working at such diverse companies as Gamestop, Electronic Arts, and Walt Disney World. This, along with some good networking skills, enabled me to begin my career here at WOTC back in 1999.

I started out as an assistant manager in game support, answering detailed questions about 7 card combos for Classic Magic (6th edition) and other Wizard’s games. Once the Pokemon TCG came to WOTC, I moved over to Organized Play where I was known as Master Trainer Mike, the Community and Tournament Manager for it. After 3 years of Pika-fun, I stayed in OP designing various programs for the Harry Potter TCG, D&D minis, Duelmasters, and Avalon Hill games.

I spent my previous last years (2003-2005) at Wizard’s creating the Delegate Program and managing all our fan support programs such as MPR, D-MAX, and the RPGA email newsletters.

I was recruited at the end of 2005 by ArenaNet, the company that makes Guild Wars, to create their organized play programs for them. After two fun years with them I came back to WOTC at the start of 2008 to be the Digital Games Program Manager.

I’ve spent the last few months working with Scott Larabee to take over the event design and management for MOL as well as working closely with the web team on several discontinued (*cough…Gleemax…*cough) initiatives.

Now, as one of the new Community Outreach Managers, I am excited to continue working with all of the various OP, Brand, Marketing, and Web teams here to provide quality Community and Tournament support for Magic Online and other WOTC products.

I look forward to listening to what you all have to say while helping develop Magic Online to become one of the most sparkly online doodads of all time.
Magic: the Gathering Online is basically the only online game I play now that I'm in college, btw.

I hadn't heard of a replacement for Mike Gillis, though.

DreamWind

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E/Mo

21 Aug 2008 at 19:07 - 2
He moves from one company that doesn't know how to run an online game to another. Perfect fit!

Dr Strangelove

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21 Aug 2008 at 19:11 - 3
Magic is the basis for half the RPGs on the market right now, D&D being responsible for the other half.

pigdestroyer

pigdestroyer

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21 Aug 2008 at 19:13 - 4
Mike Gillis is a good person, he was really nice and helpful during the celestial tournament. Best of luck for him.

slowerpoke

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Cuba

21 Aug 2008 at 19:36 - 5
who is Mike Gillis?

Spazzer

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Mo/E

21 Aug 2008 at 19:49 - 6
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove
Magic is the basis for half the RPGs on the market right now, D&D being responsible for the other half.
I have not seen this large denomination of magic-inspired games. That was the quality that originally made me love Guild Wars, and I'd love to play one of these other games.

RedNova88

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21 Aug 2008 at 19:52 - 7
Your opinion is not fact, don't treat it as such. You disliking it doesn't simply make it inferior just because you deem it so, use a little bit of your brain.

Honestly I was expecting some kind of drama thread like "oh noes anet is splitting up!" or some other crap like that. Best of luck to Mike, hope everything goes well for him.

Oh and to those thinking about flaming MTG, you might want to lock your doors and windows first.

RockmanHero

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Mo/

21 Aug 2008 at 19:53 - 8
Magic is tons of fun, but you had better have a lot of money to burn. Making a really good deck can get majorly expensive.

BenjZee

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Mo/

21 Aug 2008 at 20:24 - 9
umm party? Gaile had one...
ha kidding

Big_Iron

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The Edge

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21 Aug 2008 at 20:42 - 10
Just curious and not intended to be a flame, but why do we care?

Aera Lure

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Mo/

21 Aug 2008 at 21:25 - 11
Not sure we do. I wish him luck though.

M:tG is why I came to play Guild Wars, hoping for a skill system that had qualities of M:tG. In the long run, not really sure it did. GW needs more skills actually actively usable and better balance, but Guild Wars is of course still a great game. M:tG, well, I loved M:tG. I just fell out of playing when most of my friends and family folded up with it. Never played it online, having had everything card-based.

Aera Lure

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21 Aug 2008 at 21:33 - 12
Quote:
Originally Posted by drago34
. On topic, GW hasn't been nearly as competitive as it should have been or could have been imho. Maybe with someone else doing the job GW2 will have the chance and take advantage of what GW didn't.
Balance. More skill variety. If they ever sort out how to accomplish that, GW would be back on track. GW PvP was great during Prophecies.

ThunderStruck

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The Arctic Marauders [TAM]

21 Aug 2008 at 21:48 - 13
I used to play MTG... and even just staying in the Type II rotation for Friday Night Magic and low-end tournaments was expensive. I sold all my cards... and there is no way in hell I'm buying "packs" of virtual cards for MTG online.

/end rant I had 3 years ago.

Stockholm

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Censored

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21 Aug 2008 at 21:50 - 14
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aera Lure
Balance. More skill variety. If they ever sort out how to accomplish that, GW would be back on track. GW PvP was great during Prophecies.
Balance and Izzy? Talk about a contradiction.

Striken7

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21 Aug 2008 at 22:01 - 15
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aera Lure
Balance. More skill variety. If they ever sort out how to accomplish that, GW would be back on track. GW PvP was great during Prophecies.
And yet there was even less skill variety?

Skill variety does not make a good PvP game; how many different ways to kill a person are there in Counterstrike?

Balance is needed yes (CS and other FPS's have near perfect balance), but all this talk about skill variety only leads towards the opposite of balance. That's why GW failed as a competitive game, there are too many skills which make it impossible to balance.

That's also why is don't think MtG is a good "PvP" game. If you don't spend lots of money (aka grind) to get the right stack cards (aka skills) out of thousands, you are on a completely un-level playing field. Basing GW on a MtG-style combat system was what turned out to be a fatal flaw for PvP.

around

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21 Aug 2008 at 22:08 - 16
Great thing about GW was that you didn't have a incredibly limited amount of skills at the beginning and then have to pay for random packs of skills, or pay through the nose for chase elites.

I wonder how much Eviscerate would be worth it this happened.

tyrant rex

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Jul 2007

21 Aug 2008 at 22:11 - 17
Quote:
Originally Posted by Striken7

That's also why is don't think MtG is a good "PvP" game. If you don't spend lots of money (aka grind) to get the right stack cards (aka skills) out of thousands, .
what? unlocking skills in gw is incredibly easy wrong comparison what they should have learned from mtg is that a stack of the same overpowered card is bad thats why those power 9 cards are limited to 1 per deck or w/e where as in gw you can stack your "power 9 skills" like a bunch of searing flames for sf spike or a buncha smiters for smiter shit 1 on its own isnt that bad but a stack of em is

Sleeper Service

Sleeper Service

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CULT

21 Aug 2008 at 22:35 - 18
MTG online is all good and well but theres a free version.

http://www.magicworkstation.com/

and the comment about "you have to spend lots of money" to be good at mtg...no, just no. outside tourneys you can print cards, you can play common decks... MTG is the prime example of where knowing the rules, your cards and the meta (REAL meta not "carebear spoonfed lets change the way skills work every week cause players boohoo Izzy meta") > cash.

now if you want to be a "pro" player, then the same applies except you buy the cards one by one (no its not that expensive).

where MTG gets you is that it hits the "gotta catch em all" nerve. it also plays on that gambling side a lot of us have (oooh maybe this booster will have that tasty double land...) but if you play smart then its peanuts.

Its a shame Gleemax failed so hard, i was really looking forward to playing some of the table top games on my pc, Gameplay > Graphics and all that.

Snow Bunny

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21 Aug 2008 at 22:45 - 19
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sleeper Service
and the comment about "you have to spend lots of money" to be good at mtg...no, just no. outside tourneys you can print cards, you can play common decks... MTG is the prime example of where knowing the rules, your cards and the meta (REAL meta not "carebear spoonfed lets change the way skills work every week cause players boohoo Izzy meta") > cash.

now if you want to be a "pro" player, then the same applies except you buy the cards one by one (no its not that expensive)..
Have you ever played magic to win?

Ravagers, Decree of justice, Wake, Dkstl Colossus, Angel, Mirari were all pretty expensive.

Birds, Sac Lands, and other cards still remain pretty expensive.

And the p9 is expensive and pretty much required for high tournament play. There are enough cards in the $50+ region to make it expensive.

I remember making a Red/Blue reanimator deck with tinkerer, a red mirrodin control deck, and a twiddle desire deck and it costing me substantial amounts of cash,.

around

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21 Aug 2008 at 22:48 - 20
Quote:
Originally Posted by Snow Bunny
Have you ever played magic to win?

Ravagers, Decree of justice, Wake, Dkstl Colossus, Angel, Mirari were all pretty expensive.

Birds, Sac Lands, and other cards still remain pretty expensive.

And the p9 is expensive and pretty much required for high tournament play. There are enough cards in the $50+ region to make it expensive.

I remember making a Red/Blue reanimator deck with tinkerer, a red mirrodin control deck, and a twiddle desire deck and it costing me substantial amounts of cash,.
What gets me though is that currently, the best deck in the format (UB Faeries) is so ridiculously over-the-top expensive it's unbelievable. Every singe card that makes it good is rare.

cthulhu reborn

cthulhu reborn

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21 Aug 2008 at 22:53 - 21
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove
Magic is the basis for half the RPGs on the market right now, D&D being responsible for the other half.
I would think D&D is the grand daddy of all fantasy games including magic. But just for the heck of it, which RPG's do you think are based on magic because all I saw as a result of magic is more card games and not rpg's.

Snow Bunny

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Strong Foreign Policy [sFp]

21 Aug 2008 at 22:54 - 22
Quote:
Originally Posted by around
What gets me though is that currently, the best deck in the format (UB Faeries) is so ridiculously over-the-top expensive it's unbelievable. Every singe card that makes it good is rare.
Do you remember the grand prix, with 'garbage truck' winning because of meddling mage?

I remember my friends took some green Allure deck and blue Tinker deck and both got thrashed by it.

But yeah, UB faeries is nasty. If they don't take the faeries out fasttttttt it's game pretty quicky.

Dr Strangelove

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21 Aug 2008 at 23:02 - 23
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spazzer
I have not seen this large denomination of magic-inspired games. That was the quality that originally made me love Guild Wars, and I'd love to play one of these other games.
The idea of discreet skills acquired over time and balanced in a rock-paper-scissors way comes primarily from Magic. It's in a lot of RPGs to varying degrees

D&D tends to be responsible for the nuts and bolts of games, the endless dice rolls and stat charts are perfectly suited to a computer. D&D is inadvertently responsible for a lot of the dumber concepts in RPGs today.

-The nonintuitive idea of armor decreasing your opponent's ability to hit comes from D&D. Armor decreasing damage is a more recent idea, and it makes a hell of a lot more sense in a video game.

-Endless leveling treadmills come from D&D

-Discreet classes that can't be respecced comes from D&D.

And so on. The more a game emphasizes leveling, character development, and cooperative play, the closer to D&D it is. The more a game emphasizes limited power for characters, balance, and competitive play, the closer to Magic it is.

EDIT: I totally copped out of the question. Diablo 2 and its clones have elements from M:TG, most MMOs have M:TG elements to varying degrees (collecting skills is a great time sink), Pokemon is M:TG for kiddies (really), Starcraft, etc. Come to think of it, you're probably right, D&D is in every damn game under the sun, Magic is in most of the good ones.

Div

Div

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Mo/R

21 Aug 2008 at 23:04 - 24
Magic is amazing, and I'm glad they're putting good talent to make a good game better, instead of letting him rot in a game with terrible infrastructure.

Zinger314

Zinger314

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21 Aug 2008 at 23:30 - 25
Point of comment: MTGO is cheaper than paper MTG, due to lack of redemption. A lot cheaper.

Yawgmoth

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22 Aug 2008 at 04:10 - 26
I'm interested in what he actually did for GW. There weren't much 'organized play' over the years, the game didn't became the e-sport it had great potential to be. It always seemed as the real competetive side was ignored

Oh, and speaking of card games like Mtg, you can't forget about Limited play! Sealed and Drafts - due to come to GW for long years, such a potentially awesome play format, a great use for those hundreds of skills.
They even released official rules for them - http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...Rules-Full.pdf, but they only got used at a few conventions. It could have been so amazing...

Random Scrubinator

Academy Page

Join Date: Feb 2006

22 Aug 2008 at 04:26 - 27
Guild Wars really didn't take enough cues from Magic the Gathering, even though many, like me, quickly drew comparisons between GW and MTG, and liked what we initially saw
MTG had several formats to offset the expenses of playing. Drafts and Sealed deck tournaments put everybody on the same footing by making a deck out of random cards, and cards that were often suboptimal for constructed decks often see play in these formats.
A design philosophy in MTG was that not all cards had to be the same power level, and likewise, accidentally or not, it is the same in GW. This results in cookie cutter decks for both games, but it is more pronounced in GW, which has a much lower number of skill/cards, and does not offer any way to restrict which skills can be used for certain matches
I thought it was a huge shame that they've actually done draft-style matches for GW in conventions, but never actually implemented it in-game

Tlaloc

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W/A

22 Aug 2008 at 04:27 - 28
I remember when MTG started out waaaaaaaaaaay back in the day.

I've still got 1 of each Mox cards + a Black lotus.

Score?

MTG > All.

Yichi

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22 Aug 2008 at 05:08 - 29
Quote:
Originally Posted by holymasamune
Magic is amazing, and I'm glad they're putting good talent to make a good game better, instead of letting him rot in a game with terrible infrastructure.
Shame ArenaNet couldn't make appropriate use of him after the GWFC...

pamelf

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Me/Mo

22 Aug 2008 at 14:21 - 30
Hehe, Magic is just so.....nerdy...

BlueSS

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22 Aug 2008 at 21:53 - 31
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zinger314
(Or goes back, depending on your perspective. Semantics, semantics.)

WotC article

Magic: the Gathering Online is basically the only online game I play now that I'm in college, btw.

I hadn't heard of a replacement for Mike Gillis, though.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10232392


december 2007

RockmanHero

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23 Aug 2008 at 00:24 - 32
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sleeper Service
and the comment about "you have to spend lots of money" to be good at mtg...no, just no. outside tourneys you can print cards, you can play common decks... MTG is the prime example of where knowing the rules, your cards and the meta (REAL meta not "carebear spoonfed lets change the way skills work every week cause players boohoo Izzy meta") > cash.

now if you want to be a "pro" player, then the same applies except you buy the cards one by one (no its not that expensive).
Man, I don't really know what game you're playing, but if you actually wanted to win on a competitive field, you had to shell out the cash. Fifty or more dollars for a single card is not cheap.

I never played on a competitive level because, surprise, I couldn't afford the good cards. Every now and then I'd get good ones in booster packs when I played years ago, but not enough to make a really decent deck.

Of course, you do have a point in that if you bought fakes, it could get pretty cheap; still, a legitimate deck that was a powerhouse is going to touch your bank account probably more than most people want it to.

Sleeper Service

Sleeper Service

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Dec 2005

CULT

23 Aug 2008 at 07:45 - 33
Quote:
Originally Posted by RockmanHero
Man, I don't really know what game you're playing, but if you actually wanted to win on a competitive field, you had to shell out the cash. Fifty or more dollars for a single card is not cheap.

I never played on a competitive level because, surprise, I couldn't afford the good cards. Every now and then I'd get good ones in booster packs when I played years ago, but not enough to make a really decent deck.

Of course, you do have a point in that if you bought fakes, it could get pretty cheap; still, a legitimate deck that was a powerhouse is going to touch your bank account probably more than most people want it to.
why people copy net decks is beyond me. If you are CCing the world champ deck then im sorry but you are not a competitive player, oh sure you might (MIGHT) win a local tourney with that but for what payoff? a couple cards? enough to make back what you spent?

A big part of MTG is coming up with your own deck, good players know this. Bad players on the other hand blame their cards (or lack thereof).

*shrugs* If you buy smart and play smart then its really not that expensive, even in semi pro (REAL semi pro) circles.

you want to play free? you can, want to play for fun? its cheap, want to play semi pro? no need to shell out hundreds of $$$, want to be world champ? dude you shouldn't be copying their decks then, you should be observing and countering meta, not following along.

Bryant Again

Bryant Again

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23 Aug 2008 at 07:50 - 34
Quote:
Originally Posted by pamelf
Hehe, Magic is just so.....nerdy...
Hard to say that posting on a fansite for an online role playing game : \

EPO Bot

EPO Bot

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Mo/N

23 Aug 2008 at 08:26 - 35
Nerdy isn't even an insult anymore. Chicks dig nerds because they know how to make money.

(they still need pricks and psychos to make their babies, but thats another discussion altogether)

Koudelka

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23 Aug 2008 at 08:55 - 36
Quote:
Originally Posted by DreamWind
He moves from one company that doesn't know how to run an online game to another. Perfect fit!
Oh, but you do?

Magic the Gathering, the card game, is legendary. Love it. Also, they say that a lot of GW is based on it... just look for it.

Good luck some arenanet person I didn't know! :l Keep on with the magic xD.

around

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23 Aug 2008 at 15:49 - 37
Mtgo is possibly the worst run online game I have ever played. V3 rollout was just a huge joke.

Abedeus

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23 Aug 2008 at 16:41 - 38
Quote:
Originally Posted by around
Mtgo is possibly the worst run online game I have ever played. V3 rollout was just a huge joke.
You obviously didn't play Fury.

drago34

drago34

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California

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A/

23 Aug 2008 at 17:17 - 39
Since my lost post got deleted... Mtg never was my thing but maybe he will have more success with wizard, anet sure didn't take advantage of him. It had so much potential for e-sport. Like I'm used to saying as a cub fan, there's always next year or in this case the next game.
----------------
Now playing on Windows Media Player: Face to Face - Burden

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23 Aug 2008 at 20:16 - 40
Quote:
Originally Posted by Abedeus
You obviously didn't play Fury.


I heard the horror stories.