Gromnir

repost from bioware boards: most consumers not know or care who or what obsidian is. the geeks who post here know who uncle fergie and chris a is, but the average purchaser will not. working on such a huge title as first project gives obsidian exposure. even if obsidian deal were for almost no money it would still be a deal worth selling fergie's soul over 'cause regardless of what obsidian does, kotor 2 will sell HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of copies. ... if fergie pulled this deal off, and obsidian is in fact working on kotor 2, we think that he deserves some kinda special award. for a new development company to get a shot at doing what is guaranteed to be one of the most anticipated crpg sequels ever is without precedent. we recently had to reevaluate our opinion of james ohlen, and now it looks like we might have to do the same with fergie. what is next? will martin lawrence give an oscar caliber performance this year? will vis start writing reviews that is intelligent, objective, witty? *shrug* as we becomes older and more set in our ways, we becomes more and more disturbed by such unexpected and unlikely changes in things we believed was immutable. HA! Good Fun! p.s. on a more serious side, we does observe that while we not like vis reviews, he has attempted to remain objective and rational... abandoning much of his board fanaticism when he does such reviews. end repost 'cause we had to admit saying such things eventually. HA! Good Fun!

as a fencer of some two and a half decades, we mumbles "coup fourre" in our sleep and at work and during sex even... which is no doubt disconcerting, but point taken. we just love that we would be using a bis developer's post in such a way... never get tired of appreciating the irony. HA! Good Fun!

so, ps:t success or failure is a valid topic to be discussing after all? *shrug* as recently as during jefferson development, we was still hearing that while there would be loads of character development and interaction, it wouldn't have as much of that stuff as in ps:t. this was not stated as a condemnation of jefferson, but rather as a way to reassure folks, potential customers, that mistakes made in ps:t would not be repeated in future games. even bis developers who liked ps:t and thought it was great, was still recognizing its value as a cautionary tale for future developers and publishers... a cautionary tale which bioware largely ignored. we can speculate on how much word of mouth might possibly have created an additional market or how many of those sales was disappointed folks much like original purchasers often seemed to be. though we do not that it is not like the ip/bis ps:t boards became ever more increasingly popular. is lots of speculation going on, but what is a known is that ps:t did not sell very well initially, and it took many years to finally break even... by which time it had already done ip more harm than good. would ps:t2 be different? it might, but if setting not matter, as you suggest, then why would you take a risk on such a title... obsidian folks might like another crack at ps, but how many publishers is gonna wanna take that risk? once obsidian gets some dough, maybe they can do as irrational is doing with freedom force 2

josh ain't at obsidian, and neither will you see bri or puuk posting with obsidian tag. darren and dave occasionally posted at ip/bis, and fergie would post when it looked like things was melting down, but if the guys at obsidian post as frequent as they did on other boards, we won't have near as much fan/developer interaction as maybe some has come to expect. 'course, maybe the more taciturn folks at obsidian has become real chatterboxes over the last few months... HA! Good Fun!

oh come now. is you saying that if ps:t had sold as well as BG or even iwd it might not have gotten a sequel? btw, "a) It wasn't successful in their opinion... but successful enough to rerelease it," the costs to release a game that has already been developed, and then to sell at $9 a pop is hardly indicative of the title

well, considering the fact that bis never made a sequel when they had the license, we expect that reasons for ps:t failure is a valid issue indeed when somebody talks 'bout resurrecting the title. HA! Good Fun! p.s. as the link will take you to nma, please know ahead of time that you is gonna get some profanity n' such. http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic...ighlight=#23414 bri is a former bis developer now working at pandemic.

repost:

"except in the "i want to be a mod" thread, the athmosphere here was good" am not sure that the obsidians would agree. as they said already, they want a teen rating. please note the following: "Golden rule: Be nice, stay on topic, and everything will be fine." am not sure what board you has been watching, but seraphim has been following this one it seems, "Point taken regarding the 'old english', however I don't feel they're too restrictive. In fact, I don't think they're restrictive enough based on this weekend's activity, but that's not my call." *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

as we noted elsewhere, it ain't the rules that matter, but how you enforce 'em. ever seen the constitution for the people's republic of china? if you was some alien and you look at u.s. constitution and you look at china's constitution you would probably think that a citizen of china gots lots more freedom. *shrug* as long as you is reasonable and apply rules fairly and predictably, we doubt any but a few nuts and vulgarians will complain. HA! Good Fun!

hmmm we not have many problems with the bis board before merger. there was some occasional situations that gives one pause, and occasionally the moderation seemed to have all the predictability of a lightning strike (e.g. the mysterious man banning, and the fallout that ensued,) but for the most part, as long as people maintained the board pg rating and avoided direct insults of ip/bis folks, things ran smooth 'nuff. good luck... you seem to have work cut out for you following this weekend test run. HA! Good Fun!

to give us some perspective, which old boards do you reference... seeing as how these is the first obsidian boards? there was the old ip boards that had many incarnations, and then there was the bis boards... and then a return to ip. personally, we thought that slyle and decamber did a pretty good job of things, but each board incarnation seemed to be treated different. HA! Good Fun!

only takes 3 things to makes games... far as we seen. 1) an indefinite number of creative folks that did not score well 'nuff on their gmat/gre/lsat/mcat to go on and get real education/job. 2) a lever (a person or otherwise,) to motivate folks that is, by their nature or upbringing, slackers. 3) money. money can buy you training and gives you time to develop a product and it makes available all sort of resources you need for developing games, but regardless of the money you got, you still need talented folks and you need a way to motivate them on a project that will inevitably last longer than the 2 hours that RotK runs... which is probably the average game geeks max attention span. HA! Good Fun!

curiosity HA! Good Fun!

well, most people here either see FO or PS:T as their favorite RPG. So in some ways, you can't get around comparing the two, if only by the games they eventually release. if obsidian announces that the game they is working on is kotor2, we suspect that the favorite game of most obsidian posters will be kotor... and many of those kotor fans won't know or care 'bout bis. just a little perspective. HA! Good Fun!

when others make good points we will concede... and sammy accusing us of circular logic is kinda amusing. nevertheless, we admit that we probably won't last long on fergie's board. HA! Good Fun!

if kotor2 is the game they is working on, then they won't be publishing under the atari or ea label, will they? not see how your complaints 'bout working on kotor2 would be significantly different than if obsidian were working on some other license... 'specially with microsoft. again, is not impossible that microsoft and obsidian would team up

microsoft owns the rights to shadowrun. this is not to say that obsidian and microsoft could not work together, but... HA! Good Fun!

which was why we was pleased to see it continue. HA! Good Fun!

excellent http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?sh...st=60entry773 would be funny if you were successful

uncle fergie might agree with you. we will have to see. maybe you should send an email... let us know what kinda response you get. HA! Good Fun! p.s. the guildmaster is present, so now would be a perfect time to pm/email him/her. give it a shot.

is always funny how Gromnir gets called "troll," but when you look at threads like this, it is Gromnir discussing issues, and other folks who end up wanting to discuss Gromnir. we discuss why mods are needed at obsidian... and now we talks 'bout Gromnir. we discuss problems with rules, and sure 'nuff, debate turns to Gromnir. http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=72&st=0 *shrug* we not mind when such things happen... means that folks generally recognize that they not have no substantive argument. k3, don

oh please. "Actually, I NEVER said that the rules clearly distinguish between the two, so don't put those words in my mouth. I was just pointing out that I think there's a difference, and I think that difference is what they meant." you said that there is a "big" difference. now maybe you thinks we is putting words in your mouth by suggesting that if you thinks there is a "big" difference that such a difference would be salient, but we not see room for you to complain. honest. "Regardless, think what you will. The only point I was making, right from the get go, is that I don't see how these rules are 'too restrictive' as many have implied." sure you do. you has tacitly admitted that the difference 'tween arguing and debating is, at best, a subjective distinction. so the rules can be too restrictive if the moderator applies them in a manner you find inappropriate. am not seeing the issue here... you can say you re-learned some lesson 'bout Gromnir, but so far the only thing we has done is point out that your own manner for distinguishing debate and argument is precisely the reason why some people can view the rule as being potentially too restrictive. the choice 'tween argument and debate is a subjective one, with a significant grey area, that we place in the hands of an equally subjective moderator who has no real enumerated guidelines to make choices to censure or not save his own opinions. all rules that is so subjective has the potential to be overly restrictive... which was why sam was asking for the rules to be more clear. *shrug* you can complain

Your not helping! You helped make it a self fulfilling prophecy. Hence, it doesn't count. this thread is actually less in need of moderation than the one we linked above. 'least we not got any real profanity in this thread, and the personal attacks has been pretty weak. things was getting bad 'fore we got to obsidian boards, and no doubt they would get worse w/o us poking exit.

considering the fact that we got so many non english speaking posters on these boards, it would be mighty amusing to see some sorta grammar standard applied. no doubt the mods obsidian chooses will need a masters degree in English. wonder how many folks got the requisite creds? actually, we do know of one person who would be so qualified. and k, we ain't arguing with exit 'bout why he should or should not be a mod no more... we thought we was debating with the nma/dac/rpg codex crowd 'bout grammar standards. HA! Good Fun! p.s. we did say that folks would bring their baggage with them to obsidian, did we not?