Pumping Irony

To paraphrase Bill Murray from Ghostbusters: “I came, I yawned, I canceled it’s ass.”

I hopefully won’t turn this into one of those drawn-out hate-filled rants when people quit a game in a glorious explosion of bile and vitriol. I’ve been pretty up-front here and on other blogs about my issues with the game. Most of the technical issues Mythic will deal with, they’ve been pretty quick to jump on the more outstanding bugs this past month. Balance issues will be dealt with, I’m sure. Will they manage to balance the content so more people are playing the game rather than scenario grinding? I hope they do. If all I wanted to do was play the same instanced battle ad nauseum I could re-sub to WoW. Or better yet, I could play any number of FPS’ for free.

Bottom line: I was not having fun. At all. I’d be chatting on Ventrilo with my LOTRO kinship leader and his girlfriend who are both playing WAR on a different server and he’d joke that I needed anger management therapy every time I logged into WAR.

The promise for fun is there. I can see it. It’s just on the cusp of the horizon. But right now I’m so lonely and miserable every moment in the game, I cannot justify continuing the subscription at the present time.

I want to say I’ll be back, but I may be removed from Casualties of WAR by that time which will also remove the majority of any remaining motivation to return someday. The game is absolutely the most anti-social and lonely MMOG I have ever encountered in my life, which is probably the #1 reason that I’m having such a lousy time. The other smaller issues could be ignored oh so easily if there were other players chatting, adventuring and engaging in war. But they’re not. They’re all hiding and grinding the same scenarios over and over. Mythic could just as well remove the extremely laggy chat server; it isn’t being used much. No groups to Open Group with. No Public to Public Quest with. No one to chat with. I’d almost even settle for Barrens Chat and Chuck Norris jokes at this point. But there’s none of that.

If I start reading that all of the game is improving, that population is improving during all hours of the day, that people are actually being social and that I can re-join Casualties, I’ll certainly come back. I bought into the slogan that “WAR is everywhere!” Right now it isn’t, it’s only in a handful of instanced scenarios. That isn’t what I signed up for. When all aspects of the game are being utilized and I can jump into real battles in the open world on a massive scale with players who are having fun and being social… I am soooooo there! I look forward to that day…

Tonight was the follow-up to last week’s raid into the Rift of Nurz Ghashu to attempt to defeat the balrog Thaurlach, Glathirel’s Bane before our raid locks expire.

Our first try something went wrong in Group #1’s switch room, and several Ever-seers and darklings came out to help the balrog party with us. An unscripted hope wipe triggered in the midst of this and someone panicked and popped their hope token out of turn. Wipe.

Tuesdays several kinships do Balrog-only runs, so we all went to Rivendell to wait out the hope token cooldown as well as waiting for one of the kinships to turn the chain in to Glorfindel, where everyone in the area gets an unwipeable +4 hope buff for 3 hours. I think it was Meaning of Haste who turned theirs in tonight, then we headed back into the Rift to confront the Balrog once again.

This time things went much smoother, everyone kept their cool in tight situations, and we used our hope tokens in order. I think we only had one unscripted hope wipe that I can remember and it was dealt with just fine. All the switch rooms went as planned, I even managed to root all but one of the mobs in my group’s switch room and locked them inside so they were taken out of the equation. That brought both groups back outside to tackle Thaulach himself!

The group has been through the fight several times, and the leader has taken plenty of notes and was calling what to expect and when to expect it. Very calmly, very friendly, very patiently. However, they’ve never actually killed the Balrog in all this time. I love that not only have I stumbled upon such a friendly group, but one who, like myself, prefers to get the strategies on their own instead of Raiding By Numbers and following someone else’s strategy. They’ve been working on this for a long time and tonight, it all paid off.

Thaulach has been defeated!

I haven’t been in a raid that was this excited and happy over a boss kill since my raid group finally downed Nefarion for the first time in WoW’s Blackwing Lair raid back in pre-TBC days. The raid leader was literally shaking; everyone was in such a great mood! Goddamn I miss raiding! Stuff like this makes it so easy to relapse into that hardcore raiding routine… You guys will help keep me centered, right? Right? *knock knock, is this thing on?* Anyway I am so, so happy for the guys who have worked so hard doing this, and I am honored to have been there for their first balrog kill.

BioWare and LucasArts delivered on their promise to officially unveil the worst-kept secret in the genre: Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Set 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic — roughly 3,500 years prior to the movies — SW:TOR will allow players to become a Jedi, a Sith, or “a variety of other Star Wars roles” in what BioWare claims will be a highly story-driven MMOG. Their FAQ specifically says it’s a MMOG rather than using the full MMORPG acronym, so take from that what you may.

Also mentioned at least twice so far are “companion characters who will fight at your side or possibly betray you based on your actions.” Sounds like BioWare might be taking the Hero (Guild Wars) or Hireling (DDO) concept and injecting it with some single-player RPG style where companions are more meaningful than mere pets to be ordered about like units in an RTS.

The FAQ also states that the majority of the game can be completed solo, while certain content will require a group. No surprise there, most developers with even a few remaining neurons firing in their grey matter will allow for a great deal of solo play. On top of that, BioWare has been quite complimentary in their admiration of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. That, in and of itself, I don’t mind at all. If BioWare pulls a WoW-style bait-and-switch on their end-game, however, I do mind. Damion Schubert gave an Elder Game presentation at GDC Austin going over the importance of end-game and the continued focus on that versus always providing mid-game content — again, which Blizzard has been (in)famous for doing. I don’t necessarily envision SW:TOR as a “raiding game” but then again I don’t work for BioWare so that’s pure speculation on my part. If nothing else, the Missions from Guild Wars and Epic Books from Lord of the Rings Online have shown that it’s certainly possible to have repeatable content and also focus heavily on story, something WoW always failed miserably at accomplishing. PvP? The IP and setting certainly provide plenty of opportunities for conflicts of small and massive scale, which is something SWG failed at providing. But if there’s a heavily story-influenced leveling process which dumps you into a PvP-focused end-game, that’s still a bait-and-switch.

I will keep a wary eye on the title’s development, but I will in no way, shape, or form go fanboi over it anytime soon. What I do look forward to reading is the forum flames from the bitter and misguided fools who just knew that BioWare would provide them with a true sandbox set in the Star Wars universe to make up for SOE’s atrocities with Star Wars Galaxies. Get over it, people. BioWare owes former SOE customers nothing. Sandbox and a heavy focus on storyline are mutually exclusive — stories are by their nature linear. BioWare’s single-player offerings were also linear — while offering certain latitudes of freedom — because again, they’re telling a story. The site does mention “telling your own personal story” but then so does practically every other completely linear MMORPG. Those of you looking for a sandbox, my Jedi insight tells me you’d be better served looking elsewhere.

I completed Book 14 last night, which effectively means I have completed the Volume I story line and am waiting on Volume II: Mines of Moria to continue the story. Rumor has it that a Book 15 is coming, though I haven’t seen certainties on that nor details on whether it will be a normal content update or included with the Moria expansion.

The final chapter to the book, Chapter 15: The Doom of the North, is by far the longest and probably most challenging of the epic book instances. We took shortcuts and snuck by mobs rather than clearing every single mob in the place, and it probably still took an hour or so. The final boss before we could enter the ring-forges seemed like she took 30 minutes, but that’s because she’s a scripted encounter just like a good dungeon or raid boss would be, and it took us awhile to figure out a strategy that would work. My lore-master’s mezzes and roots, as well as the burglar’s mezz, were resisted quite often which caused the battle to last longer than it might have otherwise.

Spoiler Alert: Book 14 did a great job bringing the past 4-7 books full-circle. We’ve been running quests for an elf, Laerdan, whose daughter Narmaleth was responsible for Amarthiel’s downfall in the Fornost dungeon. We gradually learn that Amarthiel possessed Narmaleth and the loss of his daughter took a terrible toll on Laerdan’s mind. Amarthiel poses as Narmaleth to manipulate Laerdan, as well as taking the form of her keeper to manipulate the players and other characters involved in the story arch. Amarthiel is seeking to reforge Narchuil, a Ring of Power, and that story takes us into Forochel (which was the Book 13 update) and finally into the small portion of Eregion included in Book 14 that is the location of the ring-forges. Mordirith arrives on a fell beast and challenges Amarthiel, however, and with the full power of the Witch-King behind him, defeats her and his servant Mordrambor takes Narchuil for himself. Laerdan seems to have been slain in the fight while a gravely wounded Amarthiel (or is she Narmaleth once more?) weeps over him before being taken prisoner by the Free Peoples.

Book 14 also serves to show where Turbine is taking some of the technology they’ve implemented over the past year.

Session play, for example. It started with “chicken play” where we can go to Sandson’s Farm in the Shire and temporarily become a chicken, perform some chicken quests or just attempt to travel around the more dangerous world. Later session play was added to the PvMP game in the form of Rangers for the freeps and Trolls for the creeps. Book 14 has two instances that make full use of session play.

In the first, we play an Angmarim Bloodletter in charge of preparing Sammath Baul, a tower in Carn Dum where Laerdan has been imprisoned, prior to Amarthiel’s arrival. After we clear up some rabble and wake up the lazy guards, Amarthiel arrives, interrogates Laerdan and leaves. Suddenly Laerdan’s allies arrive and we rally to attack, knowing it will be our deaths. Fade to black. Savvy players will add 2+2 and remember that in Book 12 it was a player fellowship who stormed Sammath Baul to rescue Laerdan. So this first use of session play for an epic book quest gave us additional insight as to what happened during that encounter from within the dungeon and from the enemy’s point of view.

In the second session play instance, we play Laerdan himself who has tracked his daughter Narmaleth into Eregion and seeks to save her with the power of Narchuil, which is in two pieces. In fact, it’s Amarthiel once more posing as Narmaleth to guide Laerdan along and claim Narchuil for herself.

Some players whine that they’re not playing, or advancing, their own character in these session play instances. That depends on your perspective. Are you not furthering the story, thereby advancing your character into new places, new encounters and being rewarded with new gear? The characters we portray during session play certainly aren’t receiving those rewards. It’s a story-telling technique many authors use to give the reader the full story by providing glimpses of all the characters’ motivations, both protagonists and antagonists. Rather than making us read a wall of text quest dialogue that players like myself will forget in quick fashion, we get to actually play through the events. I could liken it to the Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack where you play as a character from various stories in Guild Wars’ lore rather than playing your own character. But in the end, it’s your character who receives the reward for doing so.

Session play is here to stay in LOTRO, and will be further improved upon as the game progresses. We know the encounter with the balrog Durin’s Bane in Mines of Moria will be a session play instance, for example.

In yet another comparison to Guild Wars, the finale to Book 14 also makes use of a new cinematic camera technique in similar fashion to the cut-scenes in the Guild Wars missions. In this case, the story and interaction is purely between the NPC’s. It will be interesting to see if future cinematics give the player characters any dialogue like Guild Wars does, or if Turbine decides they’d be better off not putting words in our mouths. Regardless, the emphasis on story and utilizing various techniques to tell those stories are one of my main attractions to Guild Wars and LOTRO, so personally I couldn’t be happier that Turbine is trying new ways to bring us into the story in a traditional MMORPG.

Good times, and am eagerly anticipating the continuation into Moria and beyond!

A third Developer Diary went up today linking to the level 50+ advancement schemes for the Captain, Guardian and Warden classes.

Of the three, I only have a captain who’s level 35 and mostly parked other than doing a bit of jeweller work every now and then. I’ll probably be dragging him out of semi-retirement soon but I won’t be in any huge hurry to level him. I do plan on creating a Warden at some point, and I’ve already mentioned my Guardian dilemma so I won’t go there.

I did give the captain advancement a read-through, and it all sounds like great additions to a very versatile class. Since I am not actively playing a captain, however, I won’t bother compiling a list of my favorites for this post.

So I went on my first real raid into The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu tonight! I’d signed up last weekend with a new raid alliance on Arkenstone that sounded conceptually similar to my raid coalition from World of Warcraft. I’ve actually been slowly in the process of building up a base of trusted and skilled players to form the core of a raid group myself before I’d heard about this group. If this works out — and so far this week in chat and in tonight’s raid, they were an unbelievably friendly, talented, and welcoming bunch of players — it will save me from having full-time leadership dumped in my lap.

Apparently their weekly routine is to go in the day before and take down the first two bosses to to set those raid locks for the leader for the real raid the next night. Tonight we went straight into the Rift and ran to where the giant NPC was captured and into the next section.

It’s after 2am now because I’ve spent a few hours working through Book 12 (yes, I’ve slacked on my Book quests…) and I wouldn’t expect to be remembering every detail and every boss name from a single time through anyway, but I’ll say that it’s a fantastic raid! The layout, the design, the atmosphere, the events… everything is incredibly well done! Bravo, Turbine, bravo!

I did get a lot of compliments from the people in the raid that it was nice having a competent Lore-master for a change! Hey, I try!

We blitzed through every encounter and every boss without a single issue. The guys knew what to do in each and the leader very patiently explained and gave instructions. Only once did one of the champions come close to defeat. Not sure what was going on, but I was able to quickly get within range and fire off a spot heal to keep him up until his minstrel got to him, then ran back to keep my guardian immune from stuns and cured of diseases during one of the dual-boss encounters.

Finally — the balrog, Thaulach! I’ll be the first to admit that when I saw screenshots of the balrog I was a little “meh” about it. Sure, you’re not going to get ILM or Weta Digital-quality graphics in an MMORPG just yet, but still. As usual, still images don’t even come close to doing justice to the real experience. The animations, effects and sounds are so cinematic; so engaging. I was smiling ear-to-ear the whole damned time! Of course, as with all things LOTRO, there’s even a story behind the encounter which is told to as you play.

Glathlirel, an elf from the first age (I suppose one of these days I should brush up on my Tolkien so I’d know what that means) who fought and imprisoned this balrog tells the story over chat and voiceovers as she aids the players in their various tasks to defeat Thaurlach. We did fine on the first few tasks. Once we got to the point where the raid splits into two groups to go into two separate chambers with a wheel-lock level puzzle, things went downhill. I walked into the chamber where a World-Eater or two were running around with some darklings. I managed to fire off a single mez before being defeated from what seemed to be too much dread combined with the Ever-seer’s damaging shadow aura. My captain gave me a combat-rez but I was defeated again within a couple minutes. Note to self: work on improving Arwellyn’s Will attribute! 

I’m not sure how the other group was doing in their chamber, but obviously we weren’t doing great in ours. Then it happened. Thaurlach broke free of his mystical binds before we had finished in those chambers. First, I just have to say: holy shit was that cool! Just like in the movie where the balrog summons his whip into existence with a sort of cascading flame effect, Thaurlach brings a massive sword into being and puts it to good use! Then, he comes rushing into the chamber my group in! I was chatting with some friends who’d done the Rift last year and they were like “Huh? He came into the room? I don’t think he’s supposed to move around.” Well, he moves around just fine now!

One of his oh-so-special abilities is a shadow attack that also wipes the raid’s hope, which is nothing short of devastating, and he managed to do it more times tonight than the guys said they’d ever seen before. We did brief one minor change in strategy they wanted to try (again, it was my first time so I wouldn’t know what they’re talking about yet) and they didn’t know if that was allowing the more frequent hope-wipes or not, but everyone’s hope tokens were on cooldown and at least three more known hope-wipes were still coming as part of the final fight with Thaurlach.

Needless to say, the balrog’s hope-wipes did us in. It’s a five-day cooldown on the raid though, and the guys said they definitely wanted me back to give it another shot on Tuesday! Looking forward to it!

I wasn’t going to mention the class-specific articles at all, preferring to focus on class advancement in the post-Moria game, but I do plan on giving the Warden a shot at some point.

This week Turbine has posted two Developer Diaries on the Warden. The first showed us the designer’s view on how to create a new class in the game and where the inspiration for its abilities and roles came from. I love those types of designer articles very much, just as I enjoyed the articles about the design and content of Forochel, the icy northern area included in the Book 13 content update. The second Warden article delves briefly into describing in layman’s terms the roles of the class and a description of how to read the Gambit UI.

I do enjoy tanking, though I’m not actively doing it in any MMO right now. My only character in Vanguard is a Dread Knight, who specializes in two-handed tanking, but I’m not playing Vanguard at the moment. I’ve really wanted to make a Guardian in LOTRO but I still persist in this far-fetched fantasy that someday I could get my girlfriend to play her first MMO (very nearly her first video game ever for that matter) and we could be a Guardian/Minstrel duo. Or something, but me as a Guardian nonetheless. I probably have a better chance of being struck by lightning twice while handing in a winning lottery ticket than getting her to play a game, but if nothing else, I am stubbornly persistent with my fantasies. So the Warden will give me a shot at having a tank-ish role, but not stepping full-fledged into the Guardian’s role as the Rock Star Tank. The Warden is more of a medium tank, who can be main tank in quests and the small-group content but would the off-tank or dps in the content with bigger groups. Hybrid. Versatility. Right up my alley.

The Warden’s visuals and concepts strike me as intriguing as well. First is the primary use of spears and javelins. Off-hand I can’t come up with an MMO who had a spear-wielding class, other than the Paragon from Guild Wars. In PvP, my monk also wields a spear and shield (spear for 1pt of damage to waste an enemy’s protection spell and a shield for… duh… armor) except when he needs to switch to his faster-casting and enhanced-healing weapons. Monks and Paragons are classy, so to see a spear-wielding warrior come to a traditional MMO without being part of some primitive jungle tribe is immediately appealing. Then we have his tanking philosophy. Usually when we think “tank class” we think heavy armor, high stamina, high health or hit-points, and maximizing his damage mitigation since he’s in the front line taking most of the damage for the group. By contrast, the Warden tanks by avoiding the hits rather than taking and mitigating them. Like all the movies where the bad guy tries to hit the martial arts expert hero who moves out of the way or deflects the blows, pissing off the bad guy into trying to hit him again. There’s your aggro management!

Finally, the Gambit system. Most of LOTRO’s classes have a combat system unique to that class alone. The Warden gets a combo system, called gambits, which will have it’s own UI pane for the player to setup which combos he wants depending on the situation. In some ways it sounds vaguely reminiscent of Age of Conan’s melee combos, at least in concept, though I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out. Hopefully the gambits themselves will have a degree of interactivity; the primary failing of AoC’s combos in late beta and its first month live where the combos were always the same keystrokes and could be simply set to a macro. AoC’s philosophy of interactive combat was “push a lot of buttons and push them often!” I’d rather be able to make decisions mid-swing and change my combo to something else instead of being hard-locked into it, so here’s hoping the Warden can deliver that.

Turbine published another Developer Diary today with links to the latest articles on class advancement in the Mines of Moria expansion, this time for the Champion, Minstrel and the new Rune-Keeper class.

My primary alt is a minstrel so of these three articles, that’s the one of interest to me.

Highlights (for myself anyway) include:

• Three new trait sets for each corresponding sphere of the class: dps, heals, and buffs.
  • Warrior-Skald: more traits focusing on War Speech and dps. Many minstrels who focus their efforts into dps keep the medium armour trait, but I’ve noticed all of the minstrel-specific end-game sets are light armour. It will be interesting to see if Turbine ever makes a medium minstrel set for those warrior-minstrels. Traits within the Warrior-Skald set will improve morale, further increasing the class’ solo ability, as well as increasing crit chances.
  • Watcher of Resolve: in addition to important new threat-management abilities, the minstrel gets its first Heal over Time! In Shadows of Angmar, HoT’s were solely the realm of captains who could trigger a HoT only after a critical hit or upon the death of an enemy. The new rune-keeper class also has at least one HoT (though I get the impression that it is further up the heal-attunement line and not immediately available), and now the minstrel will be getting a single light HoT ability which can be used from the beginning of a fight.
  • Protector of Song: new buff-oriented traits focus on power conservation as well as improving the duration of the minstrel’s buffs. A fellowship frost mitigation buff is a new ability, and a legendary trait will allow the minstrel to combine tales to have the effects of two tales at the same time.
• Legendary weapons and songbooks! I mentioned in the previous article my disappointment that (it seems) lore-masters only get a legendary staff with no option of also having a legendary sword even though most of us dual-wield sword and staff. Minstrels will have both legendary weapons available to them as well as songbooks which will probably function similar to the various lore-master books to affect certain abilities and cooldowns.

As with the lore-master advancement, I am very much looking forward to taking my minstrel to level 60 and into the depths of Moria and beyond. I’ve been delighted with the class’ design and truly having a blast with it and have developed my own personal play styles. While solo, I am primarily in War Speech with a drum for increased dps at the expense of higher power use and half-strength heals. In a pinch I can switch to a harp for reduced power usage, or if I’m overwhelmed I can drop out of War Speech for full heals to keep myself alive, though doing less dps. In groups I typically stay out of War Speech and use a theorbo for reduced healing threat unless I foresee a power issue then I’ll equip a harp. I’m always examining the situation to see if I think I’d be able to fire off some buffs or not, which means I have to fight. The way I’m currently traited, the first fellowship-wide buffs come from Ballads (tier 3) then Anthems (tier 4), so I have to decide if I can afford to time — and power — to get through the first two tiers in order to trigger a Ballad. Usually I’ll go for Ballad of War which gives the group a buff to melee damage, though if we’re fighting drakes I’ll use a fire mitigation buff or a fear resistance buff when fighting undead. If I’m able to get to tier 4 Anthems my two favorites are Anthem of the Free Peoples which gives the group increased in-combat morale regeneration (which thereby allows me to work less at constant healing) and Anthem of Compassion to further reduce threat from healing. Sometimes I am able to get the ballads and anthems to help the group, other times I have to forego them for a bit and just heal if the group is getting beaten upon. Still other times I’ll start the sequence to attempt a ballad and anthem but the mobs will resist enough times that I’m in need of power and the group is in need of heals so I have to change tactics. I also have to keep in mind that if I do trigger an Anthem, it resets my ballad progression all the way back down to tier 1.

I find it a refreshing change of pace from other games where healers just stand in the back and heal while everyone else has fun. To help the group with buffs (and even some dps anthems), I have to fight, so in that sense it’s similar to how Warhammer has their healers fight in order to rank up their next heal, even though the mechanics themselves differ greatly between the two games.

After nearly two years since I left World of Warcraft, where I swore I’d never do the hardcore raiding thing again — and I won’t — I set foot into my first raid instance in Middle Earth, The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu a couple days ago. Unfortunately it was the Canadian Thanksgiving and several core members of my kinship are Canadian so it was myself and one other kin-mate, a few friends from other kinships, then a few PUG players.

The intention was just to poke around, have a look at the place. Nothing serious. For a few of us, it was our first time ever in the Rift. Others hadn’t been there in 8 months or longer. I briefed everyone my feelings on the matter, that I’m just here to have a good time with everyone, have a few fights, and I fully expected to die several times. I figure it’s good to be up-front with things like that, especially in mixed company where PUG strangers are concerned.

The overall experience was very slow going, and we did indeed die several times. In fact, several party wipes. All said and done, it was Arwellyn’s record high repair bill, a whopping 325 silver! Of course, she’s a light armour wearing Lore-master. The heavy armour guys had bills from 800 silver and higher, so they weren’t exactly sympathetic to Arwellyn’s paltry 325 silver.

Typically after every wipe or near-wipe, one of the PUG players would leave, but at least they let us know and were cordial about it. Finding replacements every few fights was the main factor in the slowness of the raid.

However, we were successful in killing the first boss, the troll Barz! That was actually a very fun fight! Arwellyn and the other lore-master were busy with crowd control and sharing power along with the occasional spot heal. From my short experience in the Rift, it would seem that Turbine gives all their raid bosses (and even a friendly giant NPC) voiceovers that not only up the entertainment value but also serve as a warning for an imminent special attack.

We successfully made it to the next boss, another troll Zurm but our guardian main tank had left earlier and we were unable to find a replacement. We pretty much knew it would be suicide to attempt Zurm with one player down and no real main tank character, but we were just about finished for the night so we engaged him. It was chaotic and hectic fun while it lasted, but with no guardian, Zurm just tore through everyone on his threat list and beat us down painfully.

I’ve made enough new friends and allies that I can probably get into a raid most times I’m in the mood. Right now I’m sorta-kinda going hardcore-ish just because I’m trying to play catch-up on the instances before Moria arrives, but after that if I can do a raid just a few times per month that would suit me fine, so I’m actually looking forward to raiding again — but raiding on my terms.

An official announcement from Turbine today announces a new West Coast studio as well as who’s running it…

TURBINE EXPANDS WITH OPENING OF WEST COAST STUDIO

Online Entertainment Veteran Opens New Studio to Support Rapid Growth

WESTWOOD, MA – October 13, 2008 — Turbine, Inc., a premier creator and operator of massive, persistent online worlds, today announced the opening of a new studio located in Redwood City, CA. The new studio will help drive Turbine’s rapid growth and further accelerate Turbine’s goal of becoming a global leader in online entertainment. Turbine also announced the hiring of Dave Brevik as Creative Director, Jeff Lind as Engineering Director and Matt McKnight as Studio Director of its new California studio. The new studio will be a vital part of Turbine’s corporate vision as it brings new titles to market, expands the platforms it supports and introduces new technologies to expand and grow the communities that are the foundation of online games.

“The opening of our West coast studio is a major milestone in Turbine’s long-term growth plans as it allows us to complement the outstanding talent we have on the East coast with the pool of extraordinary talent available on the West coast,” said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. “Turbine is fast becoming the place to be for those looking to create the new generation of cross platform MMOs. We are delighted that Dave, Jeff and Matt have joined us in this effort and we look forward to further announcements as we continue to expand this team.”

Dave Brevik is Turbine’s newest Creative Director having most recently served as the Chief Visionary Officer at Flagship Studios. Prior to co-founding Flagship Studios, he spent seven years as both president for Blizzard North and as a Director of Blizzard Entertainment. As a member of numerous internal and external project oversight teams, he brought a unique vision and understanding of design and technology to Blizzard’s games, especially the Diablo series. Dave also played an important role in the initial and iterative structural design of Blizzard’s free online gaming service, Battle.net, which launched with the original Diablo.

Jeff Lind brings over ten years of experience working on online, console and handheld games to his new role as Director of Engineering at Turbine. Prior to joining Turbine, he led a team at Ping0 that built the online platform for Flagship Studios. Jeff also worked at Electronic Arts, on a range of titles from The Sims to The Lord of the Rings, to the experimental online game Majestic.

Matt McKnight, Turbine’s new West coast Studio Director, has spent over a decade entrenched in various aspects of game development. Prior to joining Turbine, Matt served as CEO and President of Sniper Studios where he helped forge strategic alliances with key players in the industry. Matt also worked at Electronic Arts where he played key roles in the game development organization working on the Madden and Bond franchises.

Source

So, two of the three named thus far at the new Turbine West were associated in one way or another with Flagship Studios… I’m just waiting for this to hit the flamer forums, this could get ugly. I must admit though, I like Brevik’s former job title. Chief Visionary Officer. I think I could do that — just chill in my office, poke my head out every so often and yell “hey, I have a great visionary idea! You coder guys make it happen, m’kay!”

I did catch yet another mention of “cross platform” in there, so could Turbine West be in charge of console titles while the PC team will remain in Boston? Or is Turbine actually getting big enough to handle two studios in charge of their own independent projects?