The Other Side of the Looking Glass - February 14, 2006

Regulus · 02/14/2006 20:23:34

sigh....

Message Edited by ReguIus on 02-14-200608:23 PM

**CPT_Starschwar**

I'm really dissapointed by this. I've always been the LAST person to blame soe. Heck, I've loved every single thing that's happened so far EXCEPT THIS.

The whole plot since the death of the assasin has been leading up to:

A. Cypherites becoming an established org.

B. Plubris Neo becoming a splinter group of zion, dedicated to morpheu's ideals

C. The General securing power as the new major Exile

D. The Merovingian loosing power, perhaps being deleted.

The fact that these will NOT effect player orgs is sad. A LOT of Zionites are split on wether they are of the MIlitants (niobe, etc) or Neonites (The Kid et al). And there are a lot of players who are geninuely interested in being cypherites (The former masked agenda, interis (sp?), and more.)

I'm not leaving MXO over this, but I am very, very dissapointed in this decision.

**Rarebit**

I'm gonna go ahead and jump in here, since I probably can't make things much worse anyway. Well, maybe I can. We'll see. Call this fuel for the fire.

The decision not to start splitting orgs was made before launch. That means it was made before SOE was even a glint in anyone's eye. The decision was made by our lead designers. We realized that we did not have the resources, even back at the height of the team size at Monolith, to cover missions, events, etc for six orgs. It just couldn't happen, even given all the devs we had at the time.

It's not just that you're doubling the number of critical missions that have to be written each update, and org-specific events that have to be run; it's also that you're profoundly increasing the number of story elements that have to be prepared and tracked in order to keep the relationships between the orgs straight, and moving along in a dynamic fashion.

Yes, there was agonizing and hair-pulling over it. But that couldn't change the hard reality of the situation.

There were other considerations as well. Not that I want to spoil much of Paul's story here...but some of those new orgs were not written to be permanent. This would have meant opening up an org, then closing it, or drastically realigning it, based on a plot twist in the story. Upon review, it was pretty obvious that something like that would not fly with players.

We don't expect people to be thrilled with this situation, and yes, we do read the boards, and we do know that there were plenty of players looking forward to going to one of these other orgs. I don't think anyone on the dev or publisher side has said since launch that the orgs were going to split, but obviously you guys had that perception from info leaked in beta, found hinted at in game resource files, etc.

The reason Walrus felt that he had to take the bullet for this now was because we saw a large increase in the speculation over these orgs in the past few weeks, particularly since the revelations about the Kid's group.

Just to summarize what many have known for a while, and to stick it in a tidy little timeline that you can all wave angrily at us forevermore, here's how the org break-down was originally drawn up by Paul:

***SORTA-SPOILERS HERE!***

Okay.

Chapter 1.3
Niobe's Organization was to be playable
Leader: Niobe
Controller: Anome

Chapter 4.2
E Pluribus Neo was to be playable
Leader: The Kid
Controller: Shimada

Chapter 4.3
The Cypherites were to be playable
Leader: Cryptos
Controller: Veil

SilentW · 02/14/2006 20:43:12

Being a beta-tester who quit about a month after the release of the game, and recently rejoined, I've seen what the Monolith team could do, and I've already seen SOE's way of dealing with other games.
I cannot say that I'm surprised by these developments. I trust the Devs to make CR2 something worthy of my time, yes. I do not trust them to do anything else whatsoever until CR2 is rock-solid. I do not trust them to tell us with reliability what we can expect in the future, nor do I expect them to create anything monumentally impressive in the near future. MxO's entire life up until this point has ben a very long, painful growth period. MxO was beta-tested by an optimistic and emotionally-charged set of mentalities and expectations, released to a world that had lost interest and become disillusioned with The Matrix and its ideas, and has been desperately trying to change itself for the better ever since. I have followed this game throughout its life, and I have never given up hope. I think that MxO can realize its dream of becoming a definitive simulation of the world of the Matrix, as envisioned by the fans when they walked out of the first movie. They were stunned, speechless, and thoroughly awed by what they had just seen.
This kind of awesomeness is not easily produced. It requires time, planning, money, manpower, hope, and more than a little luck. SOE's MxO division appears to be stretched on most of those fronts, but the one thing that we cannot take from them is hope. As long as we keep believing in the Devs and giving them hope, we will see the Matrix Online go places that we can only imagine right now. I will see this game through, until it either blossoms into full bloom or explodes into a million pieces. I can only ask others to do the same.

EDIT- Thanks, Fugitiv3, for reminding me. Thank you to Walrus for telling us this, and thank you too to Rarebit for divulging such cloistered developer secrets.

Message Edited by SilentW on 02-14-200608:43 PM

**Fugitiv3**

Rarebit, thanks for taking the time to once again clear things up. And thank Walrus for us, for once again biting the bullet and telling us the lowdown.

Regulus

Rarebit wrote:
I'm gonna go ahead and jump in here, since I probably can't make things much worse anyway. Well, maybe I can. We'll see. Call this fuel for the fire.

The decision not to start splitting orgs was made before launch. That means it was made before SOE was even a glint in anyone's eye. The decision was made by our lead designers. We realized that we did not have the resources, even back at the height of the team size at Monolith, to cover missions, events, etc for six orgs. It just couldn't happen, even given all the devs we had at the time.

It's not just that you're doubling the number of critical missions that have to be written each update, and org-specific events that have to be run; it's also that you're profoundly increasing the number of story elements that have to be prepared and tracked in order to keep the relationships between the orgs straight, and moving along in a dynamic fashion.

Yes, there was agonizing and hair-pulling over it. But that couldn't change the hard reality of the situation.

There were other considerations as well. Not that I want to spoil much of Paul's story here...but some of those new orgs were not written to be permanent. This would have meant opening up an org, then closing it, or drastically realigning it, based on a plot twist in the story. Upon review, it was pretty obvious that something like that would not fly with players.

We don't expect people to be thrilled with this situation, and yes, we do read the boards, and we do know that there were plenty of players looking forward to going to one of these other orgs. I don't think anyone on the dev or publisher side has said since launch that the orgs were going to split, but obviously you guys had that perception from info leaked in beta, found hinted at in game resource files, etc.

The reason Walrus felt that he had to take the bullet for this now was because we saw a large increase in the speculation over these orgs in the past few weeks, particularly since the revelations about the Kid's group.

Just to summarize what many have known for a while, and to stick it in a tidy little timeline that you can all wave angrily at us forevermore, here's how the org break-down was originally drawn up by Paul:

***SORTA-SPOILERS HERE!***

Okay.

Chapter 1.3
Niobe's Organization was to be playable
Leader: Niobe
Controller: Anome

Chapter 4.2
E Pluribus Neo was to be playable
Leader: The Kid
Controller: Shimada

Chapter 4.3
The Cypherites were to be playable
Leader: Cryptos
Controller: Veil

Can't we just get

Regulus-Cypherites
<Viral Humanity>

pleaseeeeeeeeee!!!

And I for one was aware that if there was a cypherite org, it would eventually be destroyed, I even planned for it. I think most of the community would be happy if we could just have the tags, and the pvp option, even if we know that the orgs will one day be gone.

**GamiSB**

ya thanks for posting that rarebit. It didnt add to the fire but put it out for me. So now all I can say is Thank God for Role Play

**Xeros**

Ah...in response to Rarebit's informative post...and sorry if my messages are a bit jumbled, etc...but I for one am kind of extremely angry and in the middle of both ingame and out-of-game conversations.

I'd like to clear up, kind of officially, from my point of view, is this the way it was decided:

It was decided pre-launch not to split up orgs....so no official announcement was attempted to be made regarding the nullification of those events, said to happen by Paul Chadwick in various pre-launch interviews. Thus, ignorance was kind of considered bliss (beautiful Cypherite pun there...), and the storyline was essentially planned as if the orgs were still to split, and the build up would mount until the point that it would happen. Knowing that the orgs would not split, there were no measures taken to satisfy the response to a potential org split even though the developement team knew we would be kind of...stuck none the less.

So, I guess the essential message of the previous paragraph was: There were never to be org splits, so there were never any plans to correct that section of the storyline to be workable within three orgs, causing quite a dilemma that I think we'll be seeing.

What's the dilemma? It's how to work out a seperation of orgs, while being unable to be called the organization. Therefore, no Organization is truely an Organization, since each segment is thus segmented. "I'm a Cypherite...yet you have a Machine tag."

I'd say we at least need the tag, without the reputation system, to differentiate players...because otherwise it is a meshed and confusing little plot hole that is, and was generally unnesscesary.

And personally...about blame. It's no ONE's fault, it should be on behalf of the developement team of both past and present. Walrus isn't going to be hated on for this...and the digust that players feel won't be directed primarily at him...but rather the whole developement.

**Xeros**

I agree to Regulus, the tags alone would solve the major problem caused by this.

**ZaneZavin**

But what about if joining one of those orgs was just part of an event itself. Cypherites could recruit into one Cypherite faction, then when the event was over or the Cypherites fell it would be gone. No crits necessary...
Sure they would be sad when it was gone, but if their revolution failed that is what would happen. I know there is a way you guys can do more with this, you just have to find it.

**Rogue**

Thank you Rarebit, but I must ask... why wait a YEAR since Paul's Interview to let us know that Paul's(and subsequently the community's) "vision" isn't going to happen? Many of us are becoming angry because of this.

Many of us RPers now have to completely re-write our stories, and somehow make it seem like all the events that would lead to an org-switch never happened.

**FAOrien**

Double Sigh...

**Rarebit**

RogueA wrote:
Thank you Rarebit, but I must ask... why wait a YEAR since Paul's Interview to let us know that Paul's(and subsequently the community's) "vision" isn't going to happen? Many of us are becoming angry because of this.

Many of us RPers now have to completely re-write our stories, and somehow make it seem like all the events that would lead to an org-switch never happened.

I don't have a great answer for that. In fact, I'm not even clear on what Paul said way back when. Does anyone have a handy link to whatever interview(s) of his talked about the other orgs coming along?

Kivo

Rarebit wrote:
I'm gonna go ahead and jump in here, since I probably can't make things much worse anyway. Well, maybe I can. We'll see. Call this fuel for the fire.

The decision not to start splitting orgs was made before launch. That means it was made before SOE was even a glint in anyone's eye. The decision was made by our lead designers. We realized that we did not have the resources, even back at the height of the team size at Monolith, to cover missions, events, etc for six orgs. It just couldn't happen, even given all the devs we had at the time.

It's not just that you're doubling the number of critical missions that have to be written each update, and org-specific events that have to be run; it's also that you're profoundly increasing the number of story elements that have to be prepared and tracked in order to keep the relationships between the orgs straight, and moving along in a dynamic fashion.

Yes, there was agonizing and hair-pulling over it. But that couldn't change the hard reality of the situation.

There were other considerations as well. Not that I want to spoil much of Paul's story here...but some of those new orgs were not written to be permanent. This would have meant opening up an org, then closing it, or drastically realigning it, based on a plot twist in the story. Upon review, it was pretty obvious that something like that would not fly with players.

We don't expect people to be thrilled with this situation, and yes, we do read the boards, and we do know that there were plenty of players looking forward to going to one of these other orgs. I don't think anyone on the dev or publisher side has said since launch that the orgs were going to split, but obviously you guys had that perception from info leaked in beta, found hinted at in game resource files, etc.

The reason Walrus felt that he had to take the bullet for this now was because we saw a large increase in the speculation over these orgs in the past few weeks, particularly since the revelations about the Kid's group.

Just to summarize what many have known for a while, and to stick it in a tidy little timeline that you can all wave angrily at us forevermore, here's how the org break-down was originally drawn up by Paul:

***SORTA-SPOILERS HERE!***

Okay.

Chapter 1.3
Niobe's Organization was to be playable
Leader: Niobe
Controller: Anome

Chapter 4.2
E Pluribus Neo was to be playable
Leader: The Kid
Controller: Shimada

Chapter 4.3
The Cypherites were to be playable
Leader: Cryptos
Controller: Veil

I can understand why the decision to not implement these was made, but I cannot understand the storyline given that. The story is flawed as it is, Machine and Zion should not be hostile. I think that originally it should have been a Truce org (Machine and Zion), a Merovingian org, and a pro war/Neo anti truce faction. For some reason, the developement group decided to stray from the storyline of the movies. This could have been fixed by adding even just one more org, a pro Neo one. Now, all of Zion is stuck together. I personally follow Zion, not Neo. The majority of the immature and annoying Zion players would follow Neo. Creating this org would help PvP balance dramatically.

As someone else said, Cypherites should at least be temporarily available. Some sort of event where some players go Cypherite and all the other orgs band together to eliminate this threat to the matrix. No crits, no special LET interaction, just a continuation of the story. A

All the crits, events, and cinematics since Morpheus' death have been leading up to apparent org splits. If the plan was never to make new orgs, why did everything point that way? If CR2.0 is the only content coming I will be very dissappointed. I love CR2.0, but to be honest, the progress on it has been less than speedy. A new patch is released every few weeks. How an entire dev team can be only working on this and not adding the new orgs doesn't make sense. I could understand the slow patches when I believed other conent was being developed, but now :smileyindifferent:

I'm beginning to think the entire dev team consists of Walrus, Rarebit, HCFrog, Oar, and NoRepro. SMILEY

Regulus · 02/14/2006 21:11:22

Rarebit wrote:

RogueA wrote:
Thank you Rarebit, but I must ask... why wait a YEAR since Paul's Interview to let us know that Paul's(and subsequently the community's) "vision" isn't going to happen? Many of us are becoming angry because of this.

Many of us RPers now have to completely re-write our stories, and somehow make it seem like all the events that would lead to an org-switch never happened.

I don't have a great answer for that. In fact, I'm not even clear on what Paul said way back when. Does anyone have a handy link to whatever interview(s) of his talked about the other orgs coming along?

Sorry no visual, but exact quote out of the fanzine in front of me-

"Zion, the Machine Civilization (Agents), and the Merovingian all offer missions. Successfully complete them ,and you gain abilities, guns, tools, and power. As the story develops, more organizations form. Most (not all) offer missions. Some just want to kill you."

Message Edited by ReguIus on 02-14-200609:11 PM