I don't like being misquoted or misunderstood. That's terribly annoying.
Regarding the interview I spoke about in my last
Edgewise posting, a few people are making assumptions based on out-of-context quotes, and taking it to mean that the
AO storyline is bust, and that I'm not dedicated to making it work. It's probably fair to say that I could have been clearer in my original statements. But here goes (keep in mind that I speak as an individual, not for Funcom; this is a private website).
My role on the
AO story-team is to try and shape the "top-level" story, and history, of the
Anarchy Online universe. This work began with a novel that describes what happened prior to the colonisation of Rubi-Ka. It continued with an animated series revealing the lives of certain key characters on the planet. And it continues with the constant development of more history, more NPCs, more dungeons, missions, monsters, and playfields that will be introduced in the future, all of which (hopefully) add to the overall story. In addition to myself, there are system designers, world designers, NPC and monster designers, and events-coordinators who feed on bits and pieces of the big story to create smaller stories. The purpose of all this is to make a world that feels real and substantial to the players, encouraging role-playing, encouraging participation in events, encouraging inclusion into the various stories -- big and small -- that occur in the game-world. This is something we intend to continue in the future; the story isn't dead. It's still in its infancy.
As for
Midgard, that game was never intended to have a story-arc like
AO's. In
Midgard, players would form tribes, build villages, and then trade, ally, or compete with neighbouring villages, with an emphasis on the constructive rather than the destructive: i.e. not the player-versus-player driven conflict of the clans versus Omni-Tek. Each separate Midgard-world would be very, very different -- in a sense, each world would have its own story, but not a story in the traditional sense, not a story-arc. Not like
AO.
Midgard never robbed any ideas from
AO, because they are, in every way, two very, very different games.
Midgard is about life in 11th Century Scandinavia, with an emphasis on resource-management and village life.
AO is about the wild frontier on a distant planet in the far future, with an emphasis on sci-fi concepts, a PvP-driven conflict, and a four-year story-arc. We designed the two games specifically to cater to different core audiences.
I believe that we have a cool story for
AO. We've spent a long time coming up with the history for the world, and while that hasn't been consistently communicated to the players, we'll try to find ways to improve that. We're sticking with our plans to implement and run the story -- and that also means allowing the players to interact and contribute wherever possible -- and we constantly learn from our mistakes and successes.
AO is the perfect game for the story that we have planned for it.
Midgard is a completely different game, with a completely different type of story that was never intended to take anything away from
AO...and it won't.
Feel free to complain about the story in
AO; it won't appeal to everyone, that's a given. Feel free to demand that I'm replaced with someone who can actually construct a decent story; I'm certainly not the greatest storyteller in this business. Feel free to be honest and forthright; that's something we all need. But I am, believe it or not, trying to do the best job I can within the confines of the game.
AO is coming along very nicely. It's improving with every patch. I believe in this story, and I believe that it'll get a lot better once we understand how this works, because no one's really done it before. Not like this.
And if you still think I'm full of shit...fair enough.
