Talal's Saturday Night Conversation - The New Man in Charge!
You can find the original conversation here.
His handle on Discord is eldariian. I'll copy/paste the crux of what he said so that it's easy to link to as I'm sure people will want to read it who don't have discord. If you'd like to join Discord (which you should as it's filled with great information and announcements about the Twitch stream prizes) follow this link. There is also another new Dev in Discord who has joined Broadsword, Mogrothir. Personally, I'm extremely optimistic for the future of DAoC.
eldariian —
I'm not one to be dramatic, but DAoC is an extraordinary part of my life. it's a part of me.
For more than 15 years, I've served - and I don't see an end in sight
I hope, therefore, that you may extend to me a bit of your trust, and - over time, a small glimmer of hope
So I'll say this. There are reasons that you'll not have heard from John - and they have nothing to do with his character or honor
DAoC is more than a game to us, but it operates within the confines of 'business'. In business, we are often not at liberty to do or say the things we wish to do or say.
John is family. He will always be family. We wouldn't be here were it not for him bearing a tremendous weight for much longer than just about anyone realizes
Amurdora —
it's frustrating that he bailed how he did though, without even a word
cause i do know he did a lot, especially when BS took over
eldariian —
You assume that his wordless-ness was a choice
Whether it was or wasn't - not my business to disclose
However, John was, is, and will always be someone with real honor. He's my brother, and he loves this game and this community more than you'll know
Amurdora —
part of why its more than well know though was his silence
silence is devestating
you talking now is like, wow, all ears perked up
eldariian —
Understandable, man. truly it is
Transitions are not easy, nor are they predictable.
Your frustration. Your irritation. All of those nagging impulses that crop up in the backs of the mind
I ask you to direct them to me
Amurdora —
i personally feel like john never understood how vital it is to talk, even if all you're saying is, we have done this micro thing this month
so then is it safe to assume that well get an update about what's happened and what's going to happen sometime soon? like for real soon, not soon™️ soon
we dont want to see the game die
that's the only frustration, cause it feels like it is
eldariian —
Nor do we, old bean
Nor will we.
Mix equal parts timing and - call it the strictures of all of the parts of game development that aren't fun
and sometimes you get a crappy result.
something for which I'll stand up and assume responsibility
I'll stop the cryptic nonsense and say this
We are forging ahead.
We would love to talk about that direction, and we will
not soon (TM). but soon
Amurdora —
do you think well get a producers letter this month?
eldariian —
We would love to talk about that direction, and we will
Amurdora —
who is running the game now that johns gone? can you tell us now or do we have to wait?
eldariian —
I'm an EP at Broadsword, and DAoC is the reason that we formed this studio.
It's the flame at the center of it all
See, Beib. This. This is why I love this community with all of my ❤️
There is much prep, and for my part - I'm very grateful for your patience as we set the board and prep for the near-to-mid future
It's more heartwarming than you know to be back home. Everything we do at Broadsword comes down to keeping our games alive as long as there is a hint of a spark. To some it's UO. To others - other products. I have the DAoC knot literally tatooed over my heart.
His handle on Discord is eldariian. I'll copy/paste the crux of what he said so that it's easy to link to as I'm sure people will want to read it who don't have discord. If you'd like to join Discord (which you should as it's filled with great information and announcements about the Twitch stream prizes) follow this link. There is also another new Dev in Discord who has joined Broadsword, Mogrothir. Personally, I'm extremely optimistic for the future of DAoC.
eldariian —
I'm not one to be dramatic, but DAoC is an extraordinary part of my life. it's a part of me.
For more than 15 years, I've served - and I don't see an end in sight
I hope, therefore, that you may extend to me a bit of your trust, and - over time, a small glimmer of hope
So I'll say this. There are reasons that you'll not have heard from John - and they have nothing to do with his character or honor
DAoC is more than a game to us, but it operates within the confines of 'business'. In business, we are often not at liberty to do or say the things we wish to do or say.
John is family. He will always be family. We wouldn't be here were it not for him bearing a tremendous weight for much longer than just about anyone realizes
Amurdora —
it's frustrating that he bailed how he did though, without even a word
cause i do know he did a lot, especially when BS took over
eldariian —
You assume that his wordless-ness was a choice
Whether it was or wasn't - not my business to disclose
However, John was, is, and will always be someone with real honor. He's my brother, and he loves this game and this community more than you'll know
Amurdora —
part of why its more than well know though was his silence
silence is devestating
you talking now is like, wow, all ears perked up
eldariian —
Understandable, man. truly it is
Transitions are not easy, nor are they predictable.
Your frustration. Your irritation. All of those nagging impulses that crop up in the backs of the mind
I ask you to direct them to me
Amurdora —
i personally feel like john never understood how vital it is to talk, even if all you're saying is, we have done this micro thing this month
so then is it safe to assume that well get an update about what's happened and what's going to happen sometime soon? like for real soon, not soon™️ soon
we dont want to see the game die
that's the only frustration, cause it feels like it is
eldariian —
Nor do we, old bean
Nor will we.
Mix equal parts timing and - call it the strictures of all of the parts of game development that aren't fun
and sometimes you get a crappy result.
something for which I'll stand up and assume responsibility
I'll stop the cryptic nonsense and say this
We are forging ahead.
We would love to talk about that direction, and we will
not soon (TM). but soon
Amurdora —
do you think well get a producers letter this month?
eldariian —
We would love to talk about that direction, and we will
Amurdora —
who is running the game now that johns gone? can you tell us now or do we have to wait?
eldariian —
I'm an EP at Broadsword, and DAoC is the reason that we formed this studio.
It's the flame at the center of it all
See, Beib. This. This is why I love this community with all of my ❤️
There is much prep, and for my part - I'm very grateful for your patience as we set the board and prep for the near-to-mid future
It's more heartwarming than you know to be back home. Everything we do at Broadsword comes down to keeping our games alive as long as there is a hint of a spark. To some it's UO. To others - other products. I have the DAoC knot literally tatooed over my heart.
Post edited by Amurdora on
Comments
I do think it's sad that John didn't inform the community that he was leaving. I think people would of liked to of show their appreciation of the work he did. Unfortunately we don't know the reasons but maybe he just felt going quitely was the best approach on handing the reins over to someone else.
For the future of the game. I think Broadsword need to work on the population and creating some fresh ideas to the game. Right now, so many won't come back because it's so stale. There needs to be something that will infuse people to come back. I know a new server was on the cards but that possibly isn't happening now due to the change of leadership but who knows. I just hope the new leadership can bring DAoC back to life again.
Going forward, I suspect Broadsword will focus on Ywain. They will probably *say* that a new server is still a possibility, but that's what any business would say, regardless of intentions. A new official server will not happen.
There is so meany die hard daoc fans(3400 in discord right now) that whoud pay your 15 dollers if John or bs had a clue. Thx for Renard 50% rp scrolls and bowtown. Great job
Da fly family - 4501 4502 4503 4504 4506 4508 4509
Da spider family - 441 442 443 444 445 447
Ywain 1 Mid - Carlingford Hib - Tullamore Alb - Dalton
https://divoxutils.com/user-characters
John also failed to listen to the DAoC community. After ASKING for input from said community, John plowed ahead and pushed a total revamp of PvP and class abilities. This pissed off the people who had been long accustomed to their class. He also created OPd classes that had to be nerfed later on, further pissing off the players who had invested time and effort into those classes.
Then, after nerfing old PvE content, John went on to create new PvE content that was necessary to compete in RvR. These mis-steps were just the tip of the iceberg and finally led to the mass exodus out of DAoC. Once PvP became intolerable because of the lack of population, it was the death knell for the game. Lack of population in PvP was the only thing that could kill DAoC.
Did John do some good? Yes. But the negatives overwhelmingly outweighed the positives.
The last few years under John have been a disaster and the game has been brought to the brink of death for sure. John definitely bears responsibility for that as one of the biggest problems was his silence.
But I remember well when BS took over and where the game was. John did save DAoC when he took over. The Kuji changes, which get more hate and vitriol than they deserve, were as much about changing a stale meta as anything. We can reasonably debate about the balance issues that were created, how classes become so OP, etc. But looking at the broader perspective, the game wasn't as bad as it is today between 2011-2013, but it was on auto pilot and it was failing.
John took over and the population rose substantially. The changes brought by BS pre-Kuji people forget about, but they were excellent. Ironically given the silence that's characterized the last few years, BS's takeover issues in a new era of interaction between the players and Devs, highlighted by the queen herself, Beibhinn. Compare Beibs to Sonya and it's quite clear the difference in styles.
For whatever reason though in the aftermath of Kuji John went silent. Some of it was probably because people were unreasonably harsh on the guy. Some was also his own decisions with some of the class changes that were, so far as I know, universally despised yet forced in anyway as you mentioned. It's no reason to attack the guy personally and I'm willing to bet that those attacks are part of why he withdrew in his communication. But he does bear responsibility for promising things then failing to even update us on how they were going much less deliver on them.
I think it's best if as a community it's recognized that we won't always get what we want, but what we absolutely cannot abide by is silence. So we can't be doing things that make it easier for Talal or the other Dev's to go radio silent. I hope for big changes in the upcoming future. The game's awesome and shouldn't be allowed to die off. But to do that it needs to be reinvented, which will automatically make it despised by people as, fundamentally, we play the same game for 20 years because we don't like change.
It's important for Talal and BS to know that they can't be radio silent on us. But it's important for us players to remember that fundamentally, we determine whether the game is enjoyable or not for ourselves and each other. One of the easiest things to do is to attack the ideas that the Devs try, not the Devs themselves.
This is how a lot of BS's balance changes feel. Well meaning but overly clever attempts to improve group utility that no one asked for and that everyone but BS can see won't end up having the intended effect. How many changes has BS made over the years that they had to then go back and revert in the very next update or two? Hopefully there's more meaningful communication and discussion in the future over what changes are even worth the time and effort in the first place.
But there were good changes. The new player questing revamp really surprised me at the time, I never expected that level of new player experience revamp and had me really excited for the game's future. I wish we could get back to those sorts of changes and revamp some old systems like the starter guilds, mentors, even the outdated popup help text, and do a better job of taking the few new players this game sees and getting them introduced to established players and active guilds. I also wish we could get some really meaningful UI overhaul, including support for higher resolutions. The siege reward revamp, for all of its flaws, clearly required a lot of work and were something else I never though we would see from BS.
For what it's worth, a fairly simple change that would bring me personally back at least is just returning removed content back to the game. Being able to run through Catacombs for nostalgia's sake would get a few months' subscription out of me at least. Bring back all of those old Aurulite dungeons and have them drop a nominal amount of BP or whatever. Bring back task dungeons and let me grind out that way if I want, removing them with the hope that it will get more people to group for the 1-30 quests didn't make sense then and it definitely doesn't make sense today.
Have someone take a few days to make a simple set of rotating daily/weekly/monthly BP quests that send us places other than the same 3 ToA camps would go a long way. There's so much unused content in this game, and it would take very little effort to add some BP quests that make it worthwhile to visit these places and then you would literally never need to touch anything PvE related ever again. I know putting any effort at all in anything PvE related at all isn't popular, but it should really require very little effort at all to make that old content relevant again and give people something to do when the frontiers are dead.
Many of us (including myself), disagree with you. When the Hallowed instance was up (at the end of last year), I led many groups, and everyone had alot of fun (on all 3 realms).
Now the mindless grinding of killing easy mobs is PvE is boring, yes, but challenging PvE still has a place in this game. There just needs to be a reason to do it.
Da fly family - 4501 4502 4503 4504 4506 4508 4509
Da spider family - 441 442 443 444 445 447
Ywain 1 Mid - Carlingford Hib - Tullamore Alb - Dalton
https://divoxutils.com/user-characters
I have to agree with some of the above posts. The communication has been pretty poor and I think weekly or monthly posts from the devs to the community would of been great. I know grab bag kind of gives some of that information out but it was very very limited information. What the community need is a timeframe, a plan on what exactly you are working on. Sharing these ideas with the community would make us feel more involved and infused on the next chapter of DAoC. Sadly, this didn't happen and the secrecy just got more and more until a lot of us just gave up because we felt the game wasn't going anywhere. You need to take us with you on this journey, if not you lose it and that's when things fall apart.
To sum it up:
Better communication, a plan for the future of DAoC, Timeframe of when stuff will be introduced not the typical (it will be soon), Work on the population (advertisement possibly), Use the existing content in the worlds we have at the moment (players like nostalgia, look into old pve content rather than making new)
I have to agree, not all pve is stupid.
Funny enough, people like PvE because it's something else to do rather than RvR 24/7. Personally I would just get sick of just doing RvR all the time, you got to change it up once in a while and do some PvE. That's why DAoC was so unique because you could do both. PvE was always part of DAoC, I mean how did we create our toons and understand them (through pve levelling 1-50), how did we get gear (through pve), how did we understand the game (through pve). These things are important and just saying.... Oh pve stupid and should be removed from the game would hurt it massively because a lot of the new players wouldn't understand how to RvR nor understand what the game is about.
We were all there once going through 1-50 on understand what each spell does or combat style etc.
So no, I don't think PvE is stupid.
GL
https://divoxutils.com/users/user_2ZTPHy8tjVF9LWMgujSZfCY9Mos/characters
For those of you who don't remember, Talal was the producer for a little over a year once mythic/broadsword was transitioning. He handed the reigns to John later in 2014 to focus on some bigger picture things, but said he would remain involved. https://darkageofcamelot.com/article/passing-torch If memory serves he had joined the staff maybe 3-4 years prior, and had worked his way up quickly.
DAOC would not be around but for these, and other passionate gamers. I expect we will see some announcement in the next 2-3 months once they get their cards in a row.
I haven’t posted on these forums for a very long time because of a disagreement between my self and beihbahn.
But I’ve decided to post because I have hope maybe unfounded in a change in culture.
The small man random 8 man pug part of the game is dead.
It’s dominated by one Zerg and a couple of 8 mans with regular players.
Any idea or thought on what’s wrong with the game is shouted down by a small group on this forum.
Many people have left the game because of the direction the game took it catered for a very small part of the population and various patches and game direction reflected that.
The game needs a reboot back to when people first started leaving the game which was when the ruined keeps were introduced and maze towers removed.
The devs have to realise that this game is about the majority and unfortunetly they are silent they rarely post so that voice is not heard.
I don’t think anyone has any malice towards John I just think he was influenced by the wrong people.
If the devs need any idea how daoc should be run they should have checked out the professional way the bird was run maybe even hire those guys.
You felt you had a chance to compete on that server because cheating was taken seriously stuff worked and made sense.
The only problem I had with it was the grind and the patch level I prefer the modern patch system with a retrograde back to pre ruined keeps and a concentration on Rock Paper Scissors rather than just nerfing a toon because it was too good as a solo.
If talal can feed into that culture and move the game in that direction we might just have a chance of regaining people.
Putting it on steam would help as well .
I hope it happens earlier otherwise it's honestly no different than Soon (TM). By the way, Talal only wrote in Discord after a player posted John's LinkedIn profile revealing he had left Broadsword. I suspect nothing would have been said unless elicited. This apparent lack of transparency is discouraging, although I remain hopeful it will not perpetuate as it has in previous years.
There were many other mistakes that were made, which I detailed also, but the ZERG pays the bills. Zerg fights were no longer fun after BS's changes and zerg leaders started leaving, resulting in the exodus of their followers as well. That had a trickle down effect of destroying the ability of 8 mans to recruit players. This spiraled into the current state of the game where there is NO 8 man action.
I know John had the best intentions but his TOTAL and COMPLETE failure to listen to the (wider) playerbase was what has led to the current dead state of DAoC. I still have my account opened, but it is painful to log in and see what was and what is now, DAoC.
Unfortunately, those who liked the pve aspect of the game were the minority. So many just wanted to go i50 and not bother with the pve side of things and if they did add PvE content it was badly implemented. You only had to look at the Otherworldly and Dragon Curse Campaigns that just made PvE look ugly and frustrating to do. There was just not logic to it. I get it they wanted to stop people afking reason they added an NPC to every zone that you teleported to stop this but it was a dinosaur. No one wants to keep checking they got the quest 100 times, no bg leader wants to go through 100 times with the bg, people trying to work out what items they wanted in Otherworldly while the raid was in progress, asking players to do you have the quest (lots PMed saying they didn't and wanted me to go back and redo). On top of that Broadsword decided to put group encounters in the middle of Otherworlds which I never understood. It was just a mess and there was no logic to it. If you ask me it was a disaster!! The best thing to of done is update the old encounters and bring some of that to life rather than bringing new content that didn't work. I mean why did they copy and paste half the content in Otherworldy, why did they close Catacombs for Dragon Curse Campaign which was another flop of a campaign. I mean DC looked half cooked and all those quests was just ridiculous!
I think what frustrates me is lack of understanding of what DAoC pve is and trying to implement WoW on DAoC really backfired. All they needed to do is make things simple where we updated Sidi, the Dragon, ML 10 or any epic bosses and say you got 5000 bounty points for killing them all or whatever then players had the option to either get it quickly in PvE or gradually make it in RvR. Instead players had to go through awful content that I don't ever want to lead again!