akzo

The West and Zampella article made my jaw drop. I obviously don't know Activision's side of the story, but this looks pretty convincing. Being set up and fired because they don't want to pay you what they owe must be... I can't imagine how betrayed and angry they must feel. Sounds like they have a good case, but a lot of damage has already been done. How much of their energy these past few years has gone towards Respawn vs their legal issues.

@Dagbiker: I feel sorry for the guys who are still there. A couple mid level managers and a small team of low-paid designers (who called out sick to play D3). You thought the E3 deadlines were tough, imagine the governor calling you and saying a demo needs to be on his desk in 24 hours.

A company's first responsibility (after paying taxes) is paying their employees. This is a law and state agencies would take it very seriously. Say "wage claim" in front of your HR representative / bankruptcy administrator and see their reaction.

In 2007 '38 probably seemed like a good bet. No financial crisis and WOW was pulling in more money than they could count. Gaming was booming and a number of new studios were over funded and given too much freedom. Flagship comes to mind, but the new Bungie and Respawn seem like similar arrangements.

I have been an active fan of Big Huge for some time. Rise of Nations and it's expansion were exceptional. The Titan Quest Expansion as well as Rise of Legends were very, very good. They have been prolific for a long time and will land on their feet (or at least it's employees). KOA:R was disappointing for me, and that was apparently an appetizer for the MMO main coarse.

Maybe that dream job in the gaming industry isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Blizzard isn't a charity, they should have the bandwidth (and expertise) to launch the game with fewer issues. I'm not having an issue now, but they were frustrating when they happened.

Has Drew ever reviewed a game? Jeff, Brad and Alex do the vast majority of the reviews. I think Brad would be a safe bet but I like all three.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

@Seppli said:

I guess class-specific tutorial quests could alleviate that. Then again, MMOs iterate and iterate, and what's true now now might not be true tomorrow, so tutorial quests kinda don't make much sense - and after proper release, there's ample time to learn the ins and outs of any profession anyways...

They really do need to revamp the game's tutorials. I would say that's my biggest problem at this point. That someone like me, who has read essentially everything about this game so far, can forget entirely about a couple of basic gameplay systems during the BWE does not bode well for newcomers. It also doubles as a kind of "shut the fuck up" to people who start playing and don't immediately see anything different from a typical MMO.

I agree 100%. My time in the BWE was simply mass confusion. Great ideas abound in GW2, but they need to ease us into this new way of thinking about things. Hopefully, they stripped out a good chunk of tutorial stuff like they do in most Beta events.

On a side note, All of the Dynamic events I participated in during the BWE were "running to the guy with the red title and killing him". I hope I'm wrong about this, but it seems if you are not in the exact right place at the right time all context is lost.

They need to revive the Cut & Paste franchise.

It shouldn't have taken the developers this long to put out a game of this scale. They most likely lost out on my purchase (at full price, might pick it up at a steam sale if I'm bored).

Are these the guys who did Hellgate London? Similar situation but I'm sure the end product will be better.

I logged in at 2:45 est (I think that's 15 minutes before the beta was supposed to begin). It's very playable but my framerate was poor. Went into an instanced event and when I zoned back to the server (Yak's Bend) it said it was full and put me in an overflow server. I didn't know it was going to be used that way.

Not a lot of direction in the early going. Tutorial's are lacking and they just throw you in. The dynamic events are very much like the public quest in WAR (not a bad thing), the framerate and glut of people didn't help I'm sure. It's going to take a while to get used to the interface, but overall first impression was positive. I can see it becoming great as I progress and learn more about the game.

Good luck to everyone.

@SlightConfuse said:

@ArbitraryWater: ninja warrior is really awesome but yea G4 has been cops, cheaters 24/7

This is true.

I read news last year that Direct TV was dropping G4. Direct TV doesn't ever drop channels, that's why you get Direct TV. The network appears to be in serious trouble and every time I turn it on it's reruns of COPS.

As a Video Game Enthusiast I liked X-Play, it was stupid but somewhat charming. I didn't watch it regularly. Adam knows what he's doing and I'm sure he'll be fine. Game content on TV appears to be near death however.