Jack Emmert?

He was ok. He used to send me e-mails on my other account responding to some forum jokes he laughed at and he responded to some topics knowing that whatever they did some people would be unhappy.

Well, being able to laugh at yourself is a good trait to have.

"The players" also argued strongly against having loot in the game, aka the invention system. Many argued against even *having* a "City of Villains." Power proliferation was controversial at one time. Its easy to remember all the times the players asked for something that in retrospect most people now agree is a good thing, and forget all the times the players either asked for something that we'd now consider ridiculous, or asked the devs to prevent something we now all take for granted.


I wouldn't say that exactly. I think they have a wider sense of what's reasonable than Jack did, but they have their own internal compasses too. I think the reason theirs is more aligned with ours at least in broad terms is the simple fact that they've had *years* to get to know us, whereas Jack did not. And Jack was trying to build a game whereas the current developers are trying to support and enhance an existing game. I think the trickiest part of MMO game development is that in the beginning, you really need someone like Jack that can listen to external feedback, but isn't dominated by it, and has a singular game design vision. You have to, or you get, well, Champions Online. But after it launches and it builds a strong core playerbase, you have to switch gears and slowly shift from targeting what you want and hoping to attract players to that vision, and recognizing that you now have that core audience and now you need to incrementally build on it.

For all the crap that Jack gets from the CoX playerbase then and now, it has to be said that CoX is almost certainly better for having him in the early days, even if it is better off without him now. Every game seems to need someone like Jack just to get it out the door, and it seems every game eventually needs to kill someone like Jack to allow it to grow beyond that point. And that's why I think Jack is happier launching games than supporting them.

Sam, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. While Babs, Posi, and Castle haven't had the sheer amount of hate Jack did/does they've had their share of abuse, especially Castle. Case in point Psychic Blasters. Shortly after it was announced Psychic Blast would be proliferated to Blasters Castle was virtually crucified on the boards over the decision. The Blaster version wasn't on test, heck we didn't even know what powers it would get yet, but group of posters already "knew" it would imbalnce the game and began making highly personal, petty attacks on Castle. I think the reason you no longer see as much hate for Castle, Babs, and Posi is because the posters that hate them have either left or been banned.

Complete codswallop. City didn't break it at all, and WoW thrives on it. All of the real activity in WoW is centered on PvP and raiding, both of which require social networks (i.e. guilds). The easy PvE game only exists to level up characters for the group/raid game. City has the former but not the latter, and that's why WoW has 100 times as many subscribers.

Emmert was someone who tried to do what was right for the game. Anyone who's sat in the GM's chair more than once in tabletop gaming knows that players are like children and starship captains: you can't give them what they want, only what they really need. That's hard enough when you're dealing with a small groups of players across the dinner table. Online, as history has shown, it's sure to generate hatedom and nerdrage.

Have the current developers avoided that? Sure, but only by giving the extremely vocal player base what it wants, not what's best for the game. City's stewards have elected for bread and circuses, abandoning even the pretense of any effort to correct the flaws that are holding the game back in favor of desperately trying to hold on to the players they already have. That's a world that's only going to get smaller.

It's fair to say, Castle, BaBs, War Witch, Positron, even some of the other red names get a fair amount of heat. That's always going to happen. It is the job of these people to change and grow the game. Any time something changes, there are always people upset that it's changing at all, always people upset it's not changing the right way and always people upset it's not changing more. So any redname is going to get at least some heat over the years.

But no developer or red name, has gotten nearly the amount of heat Jack Emert has, ever. Not when he was making the game, not since he has left the game. Jack got so much more heat than any of the current Devs, there are only 3 possible solutions.

1.) A giant chunk of the forum going "City of" player base has left the game and left a lot of nicer, quieter forum going players to stay and treat the Devs nicely on the forums. And this Exodus just happened to coincide with NCsoft purchasing the game and Jack leaving.

2.) A giant chunk of the forum going "City of" player base all took anger management courses at once and And this mass movement to therapy just happened to coincide with NCsoft purchasing the game and Jack leaving.

3.) Jack deserved\provoked a lot more anger and bile than any of the other developers have.


You can decide which option fits you.

Honestly, I was playing the game when Jack was still around, I came in right before Villains released, but I wasn't nearly as active on the forums. That said, I did read a bit of Dev's corner because I figured that was a good way to get a handle on some of the stuff going on in the game.

Jack always struck me as rude or rather uncaring in general. I can't say ever "hated" him but I never had any direct interaction with him on the forums or otherwise and I've never been one to hate or anger easily.

That being said, I understand why he gets the bile he does, and I can't say I think much of him as a game designer. Video games are products, they are sold to people to make money. The entire point of games is to make them appealing to the masses so people want to buy them. Making a video game you like, then telling other people they should like it to, or just not play it, would be akin to a Baskin Robins exec creating spinach and tuna flavored ice cream, which he loves, and making it the only option at ever Baskin Robins. Then when people complain saying "Tough luck, this is fantastic ice cream , eat it and be quiet"

It's not the way to run a business or make money, and it more or less seemed like Jack's take on things.

Honestly I felt this game got better the moment NCSoft bought it out, gave use a prestige grant, gave people who had either Villains or Heroes, access to both, and promised us a better tomorrow. This game was good, it has become fantastic IMO.

I honestly believe this game succeeded in spite of Jack and Cryptic, not because of them.

You have those words backwards sir, unless you are actually trying to say CoH is centered around PvP and raiding, in which case you'd be wrong.

Holding it back from what?

And what is this great and all-mighty goal that CoH should be aiming for instead of catering to the fans?

It's a game, the game works when people subscribe, and giving the subscribers what they want, keeps them paying to play more. CoH may not be the "perfect" game, but it is fun and the Devs do keep giving us things we want, and I don't know what these flaws are you allude to, but I have a hard time seeing any flaws in this game, that could be fixed on a 6 year old engine.

Or they have been shamed into silence by not uber Psychic Blasters are... just on par with the others.

A lot of the devs just have good track records. Castle has shown he cares about the game, thinks his decisions through, and is willing (to a reasonable extent) to discuss them with players. He doesn't have a "my way or the highway" approach, and most people respond to that pretty well.

To bring it back to what this thread is about, the problem with Jack wasn't any one thing... it was a whole lot of things that he kept doing. With the current set, I know we disagree about things and they may not do things we want sometimes, but they do overall have a good track record. And that helps.

Complete BS. If this statement were true, there would be other MMOs with a subscriber base close to WOWs.

Anyone who has sat in a GMs chair and tried to force their players to play their way when they hate it quickly finds themselves without players. You are correct when you say you can't give them what they want, only what they need, but, if you do not listen to your players and apply your reason to it, which Jack failed to do, then you are not giving them what they need. You're giving them what you want. That was Jack's problem.

This is so unbelievably arrogant that there is no way to respond to it. Are you sure you're not Jack's brother? You seem to have the same flaws.

He could be a clone.
I head that before Jack's death, he had himself cloned, to seccure his presence on the forums for all eternity.

Wow, I hate to pick the scab off of that wound.

Capsule summary: there were many things that players demanded that Emmert change about the game. Some were good changes. Some were bad changes. Emmert didn't judge them on "good or bad," though; he judged them on "consistent with my vision of the game" or "not consistent with my vision of the game." Emmert also had his own vision of how the game should be played. If he caught you playing the game in a way that wasn't consistent with his vision of how the game was supposed to be played, he would nerf whatever it was you were doing into oblivion.

This approach had its virtues and its vices. I think Emmert is an ambiguous figure in MMO history. If it weren't for him, City of Heroes would have been exactly what the forum cartel demanded: Everquest in Tights, where you farm one ideal mission for uber loot for your whole career. On the other hand, it wasn't until he left the team to go work on two newer MMOs that City of Heroes got several things that just didn't fit his vision of the game, most notably powerset proliferation, that were just plain good for the game. So if it had never been for him, this game would have totally sucked. But now that he's gone, it sucks even less.

LMAO, your post for some reason reminds me of Mordin Solus's dialog from ME2

While fairly accurate in the terms of Positron's positive as lead. He also had the rather big ill-recieved moment of being the dev to break ED.

However, will say that the Witch's promotion did make it alot easier for me to justify reactivating my account .

Yes. Then he tied the old version of the game to the railroad tracks. No one was able to save it.

Actually, he paid a large white furry to kick Organica's puppy.

It was a good youtube video.

Either you didn't understand what I wrote, or you are having one of your mental malfunctions. There's absolutely no question whatsoever that of the twelve million playes in WoW, the vast overwhelming majority are not high level raiders or hard core PvPers. Most are relatively casual players, and most play the game not because of any esoteric game design or mechanical reasons, but because their friends play it. WoW has virtues and vices, but its biggest virtue was that that it took the natural momentum it had by having a very large development budget and the Blizzard name and reputation, and targeted the game at pretty much everyone capable of using a keyboard. The result is millions of players of all types, most of which do not conform to the typical MMO profile. If WoW actually targeted the hard core MMO player, all the money in the universe wouldn't net them a tenth of the playerbase they currently have.

WoW has a large PvP population and a large raiding population because they have so many players, they also have a large sock-puppet collecting population, and a large left-handed purple keyboard Bahai population. But to say that "all" the activity is in raiding and PvP is an incredibly skewed perspective. I'd bet hard currency that the majority of the player population has never done either even *once*.

I'm not a WoW authority per se, but I can speak authoritatively on this game. This game was not, is not, and has never been anything but ultimately attractive to a more casual player, and for both deliberate reasons *and* especially dumb-luck accidental ones it has targeted them over what the original typical MMO player profile was. It never forced teaming for most things. It used more instancing to prevent resource contention. It pumped resources into the more superficial parts of the game (i.e. the costume creator) and was lauded for it. And the game didn't wither and die on the vine like the classic MMO theory predicted it would do so. You can insinuate all sorts of "the game is dying" assertions all you want, but the simple fact is that even if it was dying, classic MMO theory suggested back then that an MMO that does everything this one did should be *dead*. It rings extremely hollow to say that, hah, see I told you so, because Jack didn't get to implement his vision the game only has ten years, max.


I talk to the developers often. I don't get the sense of desperation typically ascribed to them. And while I often defend Jack's motives - he always played straight with me if sometimes in his own way - even by the standards of classic, by the book MMO design he made a lot of critical judgment errors.

Portraying this as a question of Jack giving the players what they need and the current dev team surrendering control to the players is quite frankly naive.

A lot of what I saw in my brief trial of CO very much gave me the impression he's trying what I generally call "to prove he was right the first time" -- IE, he's doing the exact same things that didn't work out because if he can make them work /this/ time he'll be vindicated and can blame the fact that they didn't work the first time on the people who called him off of it.

... But IIRC, at or around launch day they had to slap certain defensive powers with the nerf hammer so hard people's ears are still ringing...