Jack Emmert - 20 most influencial people in MMO's
By
Angry_Citizen,
Posted on: 2009-06-01 22:20 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
You don't have to like someone or agree with their policies to recognize that they're influential. I don't think Jack Emmert handled PR or interaction with players at all well when Cryptic was in charge, but I recognize the influence he's had on this game and give credit where credit is due for that.
I think many of his comments concerning CoX since NCSoft took over, especially vis a vis Champions Online, are pretty much a continuation of his poor approach to PR. I expect this will have the result of fermenting discord with the hardcore CO playerbase in much the same way it did here. To some extent, it already has.
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I saw Hickman on the list!!!
Oh wait, wrong Hickman 
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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I saw Hickman on the list!!!
Oh wait, wrong Hickman
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I DID, however, turn up on the Top Twenty Desi Arnaz Impersonators of the Great Lakes Region...
Troy Hickman - So proud to have contributed to and played in this wonderful CoH universe
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Top 20
It would seem that not everyone agrees he is the plague to end all plagues.
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Hitler and Stalin were easily among the top 20 most influential men in history, but they were still the plague to end all plagues. Not that I'm comparing Jack to murderers of millions upon millions of innocent people, but the point still stands 
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
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Top 20
It would seem that not everyone agrees he is the plague to end all plagues.
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Hitler and Stalin were easily among the top 20 most influential men in history, but they were still the plague to end all plagues. Not that I'm comparing Jack to murderers of millions upon millions of innocent people, but the point still stands
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A_C I find myself agreeing with you more and more lately. I...I don't know what to make of it. 
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I saw Hickman on the list!!!
Oh wait, wrong Hickman
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I DID, however, turn up on the Top Twenty Desi Arnaz Impersonators of the Great Lakes Region...
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That list is bogus, Ditka didn't even appear on it! 
I am confused at why people dislike Emmert so much. I've been playing since CoH started and I never saw anything negative about him.
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Introductions, Obey,
I don't want to give into unwarranted bashing of Jack, but the fact is that the whole world outside of CoH insiders thinks he's a genius for one reason: He has a 100% success rate for the MMOs that he has published.
The problem is that it's the entire outside world which is being profoundly stupid in not realizing that he only published one MMO. They might count it as two because CoV was a 'stanshalone'. But even if they do count CoV as a second MMO, then they're being profoundly stupid because it was not nearly as popular as CoH. We just had Brian Clayton say in an interview that less than 30% of the CoH/V playerbase play villains. With those numbers, if CoV was a true standalone, it would be counted as a failure (WRT number of subs, not WRT the value of the design).
So, Jack is a golden boy simply because he's not had any failures. Despite the fact that he couldn't bring Marvel Universe Online to market. Or that after acquiring the Champions Universe IP so as to be wholly independent, including publishing CO by themselves, they then needed to farm out their production to a third part server-provider. And then had to be bought out by Atari... not the Atari of the past, but some current not-very-respected company that bought the Atari name for branding purposes. Or that CO has been delayed twice and the much touted goal of CO being available via the Xbox console as well as the PC looks very iffy at this point.
The outside world thinks that whatever Cryptic does will be exceptionally good and wildly accepted simply because of that track record of one for one. The majority of MMOs bust. One should expect new ones to bust, just because of the poor odds of succeeding. To expect a new MMO, whether created by Cryptic or Paragon or Blizzard, to succeed just because of their track record in the past is stupid. The best you can say is that the experience of putting out a successful product in the past makes them less likely to fail in the future... not practically guarantee them to succeed.
When there are less then 10 very successful MMOs on the market and you come up with a list of the 20 most influential people in the MMO world, then you're pretty stupid. And if you include Jack because of a streak of one success, then you're pretty stupid.
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Despite the fact that he couldn't bring Marvel Universe Online to market.
[/ QUOTE ] From what I understand that was hardly his fault. Didn't that deal get canceled because Microsoft(I think) wouldn't accept subscriber numbers less than WoW?
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Or that CO has been delayed twice
[/ QUOTE ] In this industry I hardly consider that worth mentioning.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you for the most part. But I don't think those two points are really valid criticisms of him.
I have no idea who the other 19 dudes are.
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Despite the fact that he couldn't bring Marvel Universe Online to market.
[/ QUOTE ] From what I understand that was hardly his fault. Didn't that deal get canceled because Microsoft(I think) wouldn't accept subscriber numbers less than WoW?
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Or that CO has been delayed twice
[/ QUOTE ] In this industry I hardly consider that worth mentioning.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you for the most part. But I don't think those two points are really valid criticisms of him.
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Yeah, neither of those have to do with him. Marvel were being dooshes because of how long it was all taking.
Having at least 2 delays in an MMO is normal for every MMO including CoH, WoW and EQ2.
But anwyays, I ment why do people dislike him when he was at coh? I dont recall him doing anything bad while running coh as Statesman. 
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Storylines:
Introductions, Obey,
It has less to do with what he did and far more to do with how he went about doing it. To a certain extent you had to be here (and by 'here' I mean actively involved in the game's forum community, at least the Dev threads) to really understand, but the crux of it is that he was not good at talking to players, either in posted addresses or here on the forums.
This combined with the way in which the GDN/ED issue was handled (which could easily be viewed as an outright lie to the playerbase - Emmert explained his reasoning and I can kind of see what he meant, but he had to have known or should have known how the players would take his statement) just made it seem like Jack cared nothing at all for what anyone playing the game thought and was determined to remake the game to suit his vision almost at a whim.
In retrospect, it really wasn't like that, but when the Lead Developer is creating that impression in what he's saying, it's an issue. If Statesman is going to outright lie on the forums (and that is indeed the impression many were left with, despite Jack's later clarification), then nothing he said could be trusted and any change (read: nerf) might come at any time. Not exactly fostering an atmosphere of support and adoration among the players.
That's probably the single biggest thing people point to, but there were others. He was part of bringing this game to fruition and therefore part of why it is the great game it is today. I don't hate him. But I do think he was an idiot at times, especially when it came to dealing with his subscribers.
Iscariot's Guide to the Tri-Form Warshade, version 2.1
I'm sorry that math > your paranoid delusions, but them's the breaks -- Nethergoat
P.E.R.C. Rep for Liberty server
I don't have to like Jack Emmert as a person or as a designer to admit that he HAS been incredibly influential to the MMO market. Look at how many people are currently working to rip off City of Heroes, and not all of them developing super-hero MMOs. I firmly believe that City of Heroes has played a role, be it big or small, in moving MMOs away from the dark ages of EQ and its faceless grinds and into a more story-driven, more interactive framework.
City of Heroes did indeed break the mould, and though it was hardly the first to do so, it managed to stick around and leave at least something behind. And much as I may dislike him, Jack DID have a hand in that.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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He did a lot to give the impression that the way he wanted the game to be played was the only way the game should be played. One of the biggest things that sticks out in my mind was the change to bosses that was part of I3... or was it I4? When one of those issues was put on to the test server. It made them about as hard (or maybe harder) than the Elite Bosses that we have now. (Elite Bosses didn't exist back then.) His rationality was that challenging boss fights are fun. That's all well and good, and correct for the most part.
However, he was misconstruing the Boss rank enemies we have in the game with the kind of Boss that you would find in a traditional video game. You run into bosses in City of Heroes practically all the time. Thankfully, he decided to roll back the change.
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Top 20
It would seem that not everyone agrees he is the plague to end all plagues.
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Sigh...
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At launch, CoH brought some very good innovations to the MMO market, with the sidekick system being one of them. I remember during the beta that there were other things that impressed me as well, that helped streamline the game. They further advanced this with CoV.
Was Jack always right? No. Did he handle everything with player base well? No.
But this game deserves some props for altering the MMO genre of games, and Jack was a large part of that.
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At launch, CoH brought some very good innovations to the MMO market, with the sidekick system being one of them. I remember during the beta that there were other things that impressed me as well, that helped streamline the game. They further advanced this with CoV.
Was Jack always right? No. Did he handle everything with player base well? No.
But this game deserves some props for altering the MMO genre of games, and Jack was a large part of that.
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Pretty much this. Whatever Jack may or may not have done post launch does not change the fact that City of Heroes did do a lot to show people there was more to MMOs than EverQuest.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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As long as that list is not in any sort of order, I've got no problem with it.
Mr. Emmert deserves to be on the list. First of all, that's far to large a list for such a small topic, but besides that, Jack did help mold the genre. As for why he catches a lot of hate -- some of it is abandonment issues for a group of people. Statesman was this key figure that was never going to let us down, then he left the project. While I understand it's all a business; others do not share my understanding.
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It would seem that not everyone agrees he is the plague to end all plagues.
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I'm one of those people. He started City of Heroes, and I think that he was right about most of the vision he had for it. I think that people who hate him for whatever reason are either being completely unreasonable or having very selective memories of what he was really like.
When he was in charge, people here treated him pretty much like they treat Matt Miller now. He had a lot of followers, and he had a few vocal detractors screaming for his head on a platter. Of course, it makes zero difference who's in charge or what they do, there will always be such detractors. If you're in charge of a game like City of Heroes, you pretty much have to have a thick skin, do what you're going to do, and hope everything comes out okay in the end. In that respect, Jack and Matt are very similar, and as a result of both, the game is still going strong and getting better every with release.
The only huge difference is that Jack left. It's awful easy to bash someone when they're gone. Even worse, now he's the competition. There are a bunch of people here who assume that MMORPGs are a zero-sum game, that in order for CO to have subscribers, they must come from CoH. (Completely neglecting that CO will have plenty of subscribers that play both games, and probably some new subscribers who don't even know that CoH exists.)
I never agreed 100% with Jack's decisions, just as I don't agree 100% with Matt's. But he was hardly the destroyer of the game that people make him out to be. And like it or not, he was a key player in this game becoming what it is today, both bad and good.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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Top 20
It would seem that not everyone agrees he is the plague to end all plagues.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hitler and Stalin were easily among the top 20 most influential men in history, but they were still the plague to end all plagues. Not that I'm comparing Jack to murderers of millions upon millions of innocent people, but the point still stands
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Wow..........over a video game!.........Some of you people seriously need to get out more often and find yourselves a life. To compare a developer of a video game to those people..........wow.
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Wow..........over a video game!.........Some of you people seriously need to get out more often and find yourselves a life. To compare a developer of a video game to those people..........wow.
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My stock response would be, "So are Jesus Christ (if you believe he existed), Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr." You can argue putting whomever you want into that pantheon.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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I think that people who hate him for whatever reason are either being completely unreasonable or having very selective memories of what he was really like.
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False. There was a mile-long thread about reasons to like him and reasons to dislike him. I posted several long posts there that I don't feel like repeating. Suffice it to say that he made plenty of mistakes and DID NOT do plenty of good things for stupid reasons. Also, the game has become a LOT better under Positron's watch because so many things directly requested were added and Jack's vetos on so many things were lifted.
Please don't insult people's intelligence by claiming they don't know what they're talking about.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Influential doesn't necessarily mean good or bad, just that they had an impact.
And he did... certainly.
I have a kind of love/hate thing going on with Jack "The sun shines out of my bum" Emmert. I love that he started CoH, I love the idea and I think he's got a great imagination, but I despise him as an active lead designer for current games.
He'd be great in terms of thinking ideas up, developing them and launchign them, but after about the first six months he's gotta go before he start breaking stuff.
Brother of Markus
The Lord of Fire and Pain
The Legendary Living Hellfire
Fight my brute!
When people talk of Jack's 'vision' for CoH, what exactly do they mean by that except a Supers-based MMORPG?
Jack comes from a degree in mythological studies and being a comic book fan and the pen and paper RPG world where he was a fan of Champions RPG. He had no background in MMOs. The first attempts at game mechanics which tried to copy the HERO system used by Champions in allowing one to 'buy' disparate powers failed because players couldn't be counted on to not gimp themselves or all create the same min-maxed tank-mage. And so they went with the ArcheType system. His mechanical vision flopped and was reconstructed through trial and error and falling back on class-based (D&D) gaming mechanics.
So, what about the game-world? Well, just as most fantasy based games are a rip-off (or, homage, depending on your point of view) of the Tolkien turned D&D world; CoH is a rip-off/homage of the Champions universe. White all-American super-patriot invulnerable tank as leader of the good guys? Check. Germanic uber-nemesis? Check. World in turmoil being rebuilt from catastrophe? Check. Slap on Greek mythology and you're done.
Once you have a design team and the powers guys and the artists in place, then how much is really Jack's vision being enacted and how much is the work of other game designers, writers, and programmers who are more familiar with the MMO world? Matt Miller came from the EQ world and was much more qualified to lead a MMO team than Jack, just given their backgrounds. No wonder Matt rose so quickly through the ranks to become the lead designer even while Jack was still around.
Just as the outside world assumed Jack was a wunderkind for his successful streak of one hit, they also assume all the good parts for CoH were his idea, rather than possibly the work of a more qualified team that was working on the same project. Those of us who've been around have seen him horribly defend really bad ideas and to implement in a really bad ways some good ideas. Yes, he also enacted well and talked well about and implemented well some good ideas. But we who have seen the dark side laugh at the untarnished lionization of his career made by the outsiders looking in. Thus the immense eye-rolling by some of us at the title of 'most influential' in the MMO world.
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Top 20
It would seem that not everyone agrees he is the plague to end all plagues.