As usual for this Sunday feature, a whole bunch of quick thoughts:
1) The J-E-T-S are not looking good right now. A really disappointing showing against the ‘Skins, Calvin Pace hurt (and it looks like a minimum of 4 weeks according to published reports) and his replacement, Jason Taylor, taking more contact in Dancing With The Stars than he has had in the preseason. Not what RR wanted to see from his team, I’m sure (this week’s episode of Hard Knocks should be full of more colorful language I’m sure). OTOH, still no reason to push the panic button but not a great way to essentially end the preseason. I’m hoping that when the season starts the offense (once it starts using its real game plan) will step up and the defense’s prodigal son will return.
2) The Jets cut Laveranues Coles today. When they drafted him it was considered by many to be a controversial pick as he had some issues in college. Once he got to the pros, he was a hell of a football player, a great teammate (by all accounts) and a standup guy. Smart pick, smart guy and if his career is really over (and I hope it’s not and that the Jets pick him up after the season starts), a most excellent career. Best of luck to him.
3) I’m intrigued to see how Guild Wars 2 Dynamic Event System works. I’ve seen some stuff on the ‘Net where people have said it is just Public Quests renamed or just improved upon and the GW2 guys have been criticized by some people. In interviews I did regarding PQs during WAR’s development, I said I expected it to be one of the most important features in WAR and I also expected it to be used/improved on by developers more than any other feature of the game. All of our games are derivative from what went before us at some level anyway, so if other devs use and improve upon PQs, fabulous. If the DES is derived in any way from PQs, I’m thrilled and I hope more devs use PQ/DES/etc. going forward. If it isn’t derived from PQs, that’s great too and I hope it brings a new element to the MMO periodic table. Gaming (MMO or otherwise) needs all the innovation it can get so wherever it comes from, I hope it works out great for them.
4) Here’s to GW2 and Final Fantasy XIV both being smash hits. The MMO industry (and especially PC gaming) could use some good news other than Cataclysm (which will sell a ton of copies obviously). Hopefully there will be some real spacing between the release of these titles otherwise, well, it will be interesting to see what happens.
5) What an awful summer movie season it has been. I go to the movies a lot but this summer there seemed to be far fewer interesting/enjoyable movies to see. Hopefully the Fall/Winter season will have some surprise hits and the big films that are scheduled to be released then won’t disappoint.
6) More pain resulting from the NYC WTC mosque controversy with a recent stabbing and destruction of property inside a mosque. What didn’t get enough attention, at least on the national level, is how long it has taken all the parties involved to agree what to do with the WTC site itself. The NY papers have taken the usual suspects to task over it as the years have gone by but the fact that it took almost ten years to get something moving there is ridiculous (story here). Now even though it seems everyone is in agreement, the real question is how long will it take to get done. At the pace they are going we may have flown to Mars and back by the time the new WTC site is finished. I’m reminded of the wonderful, though historically inaccurate, portrayal of the NY legislature in the play/film 1776. The delegate from NY were always abstaining because, according to the film, that in the New York legislature “They speak very fast and very loud, and nobody listens to anybody else, with the result that nothing ever gets done.” Ten years, unbelievable.
Mark
Aug 29, 2010 @ 23:39:45
Mark,
It’s good to see you back. I was wondering how you were doing since you fell off the radar. I’ve always loved how involved you were with the community, but at times I wondered – were you TOO involved? One thing Blizzard does well is make you feel like you are yelling into an abyss. People don’t really know where to direct their anger there. I kind of felt like you stepped into the line of fire unnecessarily. At least your CMs can honestly say, “It’s not my fault!” and people will agree. I think it will be better for your health in any future endeavors LOL
I hope you stick with the RvR theme for your upcoming games. In a lot of ways, I think you saw the future of online gaming; look at Modern Warfare 2! I hope you find the right project, because there are a lot of us DAoC players who are still looking forward to your magnum opus.
All The Best,
Aikau
Widespread Panic [Warhammer], ex-GM
Aug 29, 2010 @ 23:43:01
The preseason has not been a lot of fun for many teams! My team, the Chicago Bears are looking absolutely miserable on all sides of the ball. Our oline still is looking abysmal and not showing any positive signs they’ll be able to protect Cutler. Cutler is in a shell shocked mode, where he is getting sacked and chased all over the field so much he panics on every play. Our defensive schemes are showing the same issues as last year, we can’t get off the field ever on a 3rd and long, and the players are not getting any pressure and are missing tackles quite a bit. Even Mr automatic Robbie Gould can’t even get a field goal in preseason! Only positive sign is the Patriots, Jets, and Indy look very poor in preseason, so hopefully we are worried about nothing.
As far as Guild Wars 2, I love how they are setting the game up to be one big PQ, where events dynamically change, and don’t reset instantly. Of course it will be compared to WAR’s PQ’s, but this is a big leap forward in their implentation. The fact that no quest in the game is given by a guy with a exclamation mark above his head is another huge innovation. I loved the one quest they talked about where you can use dynamic sound to find a quest, like a lady crying for help, or being attacked by a mob in an alleyway. It’ll be interesting to see how it all works, but Arenanet is definitely pushing MMO’s to the next level more than anyone else.
As for FFXIV, open beta will have a lot to prove to convince people to send their dollars to Square-Enix. Closed beta was absolutely atrocious, and I have never seen so much negativity come out of a closed beta before. If they fix the UI and mouse issues, and unlock the missing content, I do believe there might be enough there to convince people to preorder, but they have a lot to prove. I do want to see it succeed, it may have a rough start, but has great potential for the future if FFXI was any indication.
I’m curious what you think about Rift so far from what we have seen in video and the long list of features? Do you think this game could be a sleeper hit, or are you worried it will be forgotten once GW2 and SWTOR arrive next year?