New efforts!

[Arcana]

However, there was worse than that in Issue 7.  There was a bug introduced with knockback and destroyable mission objectives, where the first KB hit tweaked their position or state somehow that meant the objective was now invulnerable to further damage.

I'm fairly certain there wasn't a bug like that.  I can't recall one, and it is a bug I would have remembered since my three main alts all had unavoidable knockback back then.

Also, 'stop this NPC for running away' objectives being hit with KB instafailed the mission, IIRC (although that may have been a different bug).

I do recall a weird failure condition on the NPC one, but it wasn't KB.  In fact, quite the opposite because for some missions KB was practically the only way to prevent them from escaping - they wouldn't aggro on you and would just take off for the exit.  KB and repel was the only way to stop them unless you had hard mez (air superiority was very useful here).  I think there was a bug involving masterminds, though, where for some reason the presence of pets on the map caused the NPC to immediately alert and start running away, as in before you even reached them, making it all but impossible to stop them from escaping.  Masterminds would enter the mission, start playing, and like a minute later the mission would seem to fail for no apparent reason.

[Azrael]

I'm playing WoW at the moment.

It only makes me miss CoH more.

Azrael.

[slickriptide]

Speaking of WoW - https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2016/06/07/jamie-lee-curtis-cosplayed-as-an-orc-shaman-at-the-warcraft-premiere-yelled-leeroy-jenkins/

Celebrity MMO players turn up in the most unlikely places.

[Vee]

All those probiotics are really wreaking havoc on her skin tone.

[Brigadine]

I'm playing WoW at the moment.

It only makes me miss CoH more.

Azrael.

What? How does that even make sense.

[LateNights]

What? How does that even make sense.

Makes plenty of sense to me - the combat in WoW is nothing like CoH, which makes one miss CoH...

I love WoW for the lore and whatnot, but at any moment in combat I feel like I'm battling the game to move, while in CoH however I never had that issue, at least not once I had taken combat jumping - which I had on EVERY toon I made.

I know personally when I played CoH I felt like a pinball bouncing from mob to mob like a madman - that's what I miss most about the game - losing myself completely for a while because I was so caught up in feeling like a hero.

[Azrael]

Makes plenty of sense to me - the combat in WoW is nothing like CoH, which makes one miss CoH...

Amen.

Azrael.

[Thunder Glove]

The thing that makes WoW tough to play for me these days is just the characters' basic running speed.  They move so slowly and jump so low that it feels like they're constantly running through mud.  (Or caltrops)

I'm sure I could have put together "close enough" versions of most of the WoW character classes in CoH, too (not all, but most), and they probably would have been more fun to play.

[Ulysses Dare]

WoW gave me great appreciation for CoH's "cottage rule". After the second time they completely overhauled how one of my character's played I concluded the CoH devs definitely had the better design philosophy.  ???

[Ultimate15]

http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/jack-emmert-appointed-ceo-daybreak-austin/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=newsarticles

Jack Emmert appointed new CEO of Daybreak Austin. These are the guys who do DCUO.

Interesting...

[Canine]

I'm fairly certain there wasn't a bug like that.  I can't recall one, and it is a bug I would have remembered since my three main alts all had unavoidable knockback back then.

I'm just as certain that it was there <shrug>  I repeatedly had to reset missions with 'destroy these glowies' objectives as they tweaked themselves 5 degrees out of phase with the rest of the world on being hit with any knockback.  The one that springs to mind is the generators on a Longbow island base (can't recall the name of the mission, overall objective or contact).  I've been skimming the patch notes on the wiki, but I can't seem to find anything about it.

I do recall a weird failure condition on the NPC one, but it wasn't KB.  In fact, quite the opposite because for some missions KB was practically the only way to prevent them from escaping - they wouldn't aggro on you and would just take off for the exit.  KB and repel was the only way to stop them unless you had hard mez (air superiority was very useful here).  I think there was a bug involving masterminds, though, where for some reason the presence of pets on the map caused the NPC to immediately alert and start running away, as in before you even reached them, making it all but impossible to stop them from escaping.  Masterminds would enter the mission, start playing, and like a minute later the mission would seem to fail for no apparent reason.

It was KB or Immobilisation, fixed in  https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Patch_Notes/2006-06-27.

Which was a  complete swine as a Bots/Traps who spammed webnade and web evelope constantly as their primary means of crowd control.  Pets did KB, I did immob...  Oh joy.

Of course there's always the possibility that we're talking about different problems that sound similar...

[LaughingAlex]

http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/jack-emmert-appointed-ceo-daybreak-austin/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=newsarticles

Jack Emmert appointed new CEO of Daybreak Austin. These are the guys who do DCUO.

Interesting...

It worries me somewhat, but at the same time DCUO became very dull for me after a certain point due to it's tendency to bare minimum it for bases/hideouts(not as bad as CO and bad as CO in some ways), and tendency towards nothing but raids, raids and more raids with the same basic holy trinity strategy everyone loves to hate.  I would have loved more solo and small-team content that didn't depend on the holy trinity, and better and wider variety of support besides "heal people or charge peoples energy up".

But I think a lot of people remember Jacks tendency to also dislike crowd control/buffs/debuffs and general tendency towards "play it this specific way" design that, once he left, CoH actually improved drastically.  He ran CO into the ground before abandoning it for STO and NWO, and while I sometimes hear good things about those games, how he handled CO still stings me.

[slickriptide]

Wow. A little boggled at the moment.

Jack Emmert is going to be in charge of Everquest.

http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/jack-emmert-appointed-ceo-daybreak-austin/

Maybe this means that Daybreak sees DCUO as their actual flagship product these days and EQ/EQ2 as the secondary line.

I shouldn't be that surprised, though. Looking at the industry, Jack seems like someone who's "not John Smedley" who still philosophically has a lot in common with John Smedley. (I still remember writing to John Smedley on a Sunday evening about SOE buying CoH, expecting the email to be ashcanned on Monday morning by whoever pre-handled his email for him. Instead, he personally wrote me back within an hour, expressing his disappointment about the fate of CoH and his condolences that SOE was not in a position to do anything about it. Say what you want about Smedley as a manager; he was a fellow gamer through and through.)

I'm going to be very curious what happens to Landmark now, as well as what direction Daybreak will take with new game development going forward.

[Kelltick]

Wow. A little boggled at the moment.

Jack Emmert is going to be in charge of Everquest.

http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/jack-emmert-appointed-ceo-daybreak-austin/

Maybe this means that Daybreak sees DCUO as their actual flagship product these days and EQ/EQ2 as the secondary line.

I shouldn't be that surprised, though. Looking at the industry, Jack seems like someone who's "not John Smedley" who still philosophically has a lot in common with John Smedley. (I still remember writing to John Smedley on a Sunday evening about SOE buying CoH, expecting the email to be ashcanned on Monday morning by whoever pre-handled his email for him. Instead, he personally wrote me back within an hour, expressing his disappointment about the fate of CoH and his condolences that SOE was not in a position to do anything about it. Say what you want about Smedley as a manager; he was a fellow gamer through and through.)

I'm going to be very curious what happens to Landmark now, as well as what direction Daybreak will take with new game development going forward.

Not sure where you're coming up with Emmert in charge of EQ. From the very article you linked:
"Cryptic Studios co-founder Jack Emmert is leaving Cryptic to become the CEO of Daybreak Studios in Austin. The studio is in charge of Daybreak's Superhero MMO DC Universe Online." (emphasis mine)

[slickriptide]

Not sure where you're coming up with Emmert in charge of EQ. From the very article you linked:
"Cryptic Studios co-founder Jack Emmert is leaving Cryptic to become the CEO of Daybreak Studios in Austin. The studio is in charge of Daybreak's Superhero MMO DC Universe Online." (emphasis mine)

He's the CEO of Daybreak Games. Everquest is their flagship product. The DCUO connection is just the most obvious line to draw because of the superhero connection to Champions and City of Heroes.

DCUO may well be their most important product now, but the company has many games in the market from fantasy, to superhero, to zombie apocalypse, to trading card game and voxel world-building.

From a historical standpoint, Everquest is one of the most historically important games around today. Without EQ, there'd be no WoW or City of Heroes. Without Verant/SOE/Daybreak, we'd all be playing Ultima or Kesmai or Meridian54. (Yes, I'm ignoring that technology has marched very far on since those days.)

Having Jack Emmert in charge of Daybreak is way more interesting than just what it means for DCUO.

As CEO of the company, he's going to be responsible for all of them, from the standpoint of making the company into a leader in the industry again.

[Surelle]

He's the CEO of Daybreak Games. Everquest is their flagship product. The DCUO connection is just the most obvious line to draw because of the superhero connection to Champions and City of Heroes.

DCUO may well be their most important product now, but the company has many games in the market from fantasy, to superhero, to zombie apocalypse, to trading card game and voxel world-building.

From a historical standpoint, Everquest is one of the most historically important games around today. Without EQ, there'd be no WoW or City of Heroes. Without Verant/SOE/Daybreak, we'd all be playing Ultima or Kesmai or Meridian54. (Yes, I'm ignoring that technology has marched very far on since those days.)

Having Jack Emmert in charge of Daybreak is way more interesting than just what it means for DCUO.

As CEO of the company, he's going to be responsible for all of them, from the standpoint of making the company into a leader in the industry again.

As a hardcore EQ2 player who has been there since launch day, I can tell you with 100% accuracy that Daybreak has publicly announced that their flagship franchise is H1Z1.  This was right around the time that EQNext was publicly cancelled (I say that only because it appeared to have been actually cancelled-- including the complete shutdown of its official General EQNext forums and the transfer of some of its key devs, like Domino, off of EQNext and back onto EQ2-- over a year before that).  We on the EQ2 boards were pretty upset, but there really aren't too many of us left, unfortunately.  Daybreak's entire EQ team consists of 15 devs, 10 of whom work on EQ2, and the other 5 on EQ1.  Sorry.

[Kelltick]

He's the CEO of Daybreak Games. Everquest is their flagship product. The DCUO connection is just the most obvious line to draw because of the superhero connection to Champions and City of Heroes.

No, he's not. He's the CEO of Daybreak Austin. Not of Daybreak. Daybreak as a whole is run by Russell Shanks (former COO), who replaced Smedley as Pres/CEO when he left. Source/link

Here's another source on todays announcement: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/274541/Cryptic_Games_cofounder_appointed_CEO_of_Daybreak_Austin.php

Again, "DC Universe Online and PlanetSide 2 developer Daybreak has made Cryptic Studios co-founder, Jack Emmert, CEO of its Texas-based studio.

Working out of the company's Austin office, Emmert will manage the team responsible for the DC Universe Online MMO, overseeing all aspects of development and reporting to Daybreak's San Diego HQ."  (emphasis mine)


He's only running the Austin offices overseeing DCUO. All other DBG titles are run out of their main shop in San Diego, CA.

Check out their career/job postings: https://www.daybreakgames.com/careers

Any title not DCUO that has an opening is out of SD, and the only title with openings in Austin is DCUO. Even administrative postings are in SD. Jack is there only for DCUO, not EQ, H1Z1, PS2, et al.

[slickriptide]

Yep, I read too much into it. I didn't realize that Austin was a subsidiary with it's own CEO.

Well, that's not as interesting then.

Russel Shanks has, I suppose, had his hands full keeping the company afloat but from a game perspective about all that's happened is the closing of one game and the launch (today, actually) of another that is only questionably a game at all. I was kind of hoping that if Jack was taking over as head honcho it meant better times ahead for Daybreak. C'est le vie.

I suppose I should take a closer look at H1Z1. It's not really my cup of tea but if they're acknowledging *that* as their headliner game now then I should at least see what they're doing with it. Last I heard, the business of separating it into two games wasn't going over well with the playerbase, but that was several months ago now.

[Ultimate15]

In the interview that Back Alley Brawler did last month w/ MMOGames, he was asked about what he thought of the supposed 'current negotiations' that were going on between these unidentified financial backers and NCSoft - did he think that they were valid, did he think it was wishful thinking, etc. Part of his response was:

"...Pretty sure Cryptic approached NCSoft about re-acquiring City of Heroes when they shuttered Paragon as well. I have no specifics about it, but clearly nothing came of that."

I wonder if Jack would ever re-approach NCSoft about these negotiations now that he is the CEO of another company? I don't know how much money Daybreak Austin has, or if that would even work in his favor with something like this...and I know people have their opinions of whether his impact on the game was good/bad or whatever, but I honestly wouldn't care who the hell was driving the ship at this point. Just getting the ship back out in the sea again is all I care about.

[slickriptide]

I wonder if Jack would ever re-approach NCSoft about these negotiations now that he is the CEO of another company?

I'd find that unlikely. Cryptic, the company, had a special interest in CoH. Daybreak does not, even if Jack himself might. He has to answer to his investors and to San Diego. As a new CEO, they'd want him looking to the future rather than the past.