WotC Chris Cao has left WotC

[aiouh]

I finished offloading almost all my MtG last year, unless you are all sitting on Power or Duals, it's a volatile scene these days, mostly EDH driven it seemed.

I'm in the process of offloading my Revised Duals myself because the game is being printed into the ground and people thankfully started becoming very proxy friendly.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Rumor is that Cao was not an RPG gamer and really thought building digital RPG content was no different than video games. He also supposedly was pro-Sigil and anti-maps and anti-DNDBeyond with the latter two being far more successful and liked by the customer base.

He also allegedly said he did not need to know anything about RPGs to make Sigil, that it was just like any other video game.

Given my personal experience with Sigil, I find these rumors easy to believe and given the failure of Sigil, it was probably time for him to move on.

Waaaaiit was he the guy who was against them even buying Beyond in the first place? Because he regarded it as a pointless competitor to the 3D VTT (later Sigil)? On the wrong side of history there if so!

To me it seems like a direct mechanic and aesthetic borrowed from the FANTASTIC Guild Wars 1 by ArenaNet, without understanding why the 8 skill limitation worked so well in a game about flexible builds, skill inter- and counterplay and instanced format.

GW1 to this day, 20 years later, remains a high-water mark of skill//class/build design in so many way it's kind of horrifying. I honestly cannot offhand think of a single game as well-designed in that department. Some really cool class ideas (particularly Paragon, your screenshot really takes me back!) and also cultural/ethnic diversity done well and long before it was cool, too.

Borrowing without understanding is what I'd call "cargo cult design" was just really disturbingly common in the 2000s and even a lot of the 2010s (it is a bit rarer now), where some very senior people in game design were just routinely copying gameplay elements from other games without really understanding the "why" of them, or really the costs/benefits. It seems to be a bit less common now - I think indie games have really caused the entire industry to think about actual game design more, and a lot of talentless people who previously got to be game directors either got out of the industry, or promoted to levels where they no longer impact design much.

 

[tetrasodium]

View attachment 401908

To me it seems like a direct mechanic and aesthetic borrowed from the FANTASTIC Guild Wars 1 by ArenaNet, without understanding why the 8 skill limitation worked so well in a game about flexible builds, skill inter- and counterplay and instanced format.

You are talking about something different. I never played it, so won't get into if it was a good choice or not, but the short term memory 7+/-2 that Miller's law covers is an entirely different thing because the functionality of player abilities cease to be short term working memory very quickly as they acclimate to playing it

 

[aiouh]

I know Miller's Law, I am positing that maybe GW1 maybe also had something to do with the retooling of DC from Cao, because GW1 only let you use 8 skills at a time also.

 

[SkidAce]

I wish I still had my screen shots from Guild Wars I.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wish I still had my screen shots from Guild Wars I.

Yeah me too. I actually had a bunch on Steam, and I was like "Wow, cool!" when I saw them a couple of years ago, and then I checked again like a year later, intending them to upload them to my newly-made grand screenshot backup (in Google Drive), having made absolutely no changes to my PC, and no changes to Steam beyond letting it update, and suddenly GW1 has no screenshots...

On a more positive note I did manage to find some fairly early WoW screenshots and a bunch of Dark Age of Camelot ones.

 

[SkidAce]

Yeah me too. I actually had a bunch on Steam, and I was like "Wow, cool!" when I saw them a couple of years ago, and then I checked again like a year later, intending them to upload them to my newly-made grand screenshot backup (in Google Drive), having made absolutely no changes to my PC, and no changes to Steam beyond letting it update, and suddenly GW1 has no screenshots...

On a more positive note I did manage to find some fairly early WoW screenshots and a bunch of Dark Age of Camelot ones.

If i can find any older shots, im going to make a old game show and tell thread.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If i can find any older shots, im going to make a old game show and tell thread.

Please do!

 

[TorgoTheWhite]

I finished offloading almost all my MtG last year, unless you are all sitting on Power or Duals, it's a volatile scene these days, mostly EDH driven it seemed.

Yeah, I sold about $800.00 worth a year ago. I am probably back to another $1k worth of stuff that I know I am not going to be interested in, otherwise I have my couple of decks that are designed to be solid, but high variance, so I can kick off games in the odd-event that I actually want to play MtG again. Budgetwise (& I am a DM on a VTT even), but DnD has been a drop-in-the-bucket compared to MtG. The price volatility on that game makes me think we have got to be nearing the "collector's bubble" that MtG players always assure me that the game is "bubble-proof", even though all the signs show an imminent collapse IMO.

Thing is, I am a story-driven & social-driven person. At best, I would make pet-commanders & give them hilarious nicknames & try to shoehorn a game of MtG into a story anyway... Then spend most my real walking-money on snacks & cognac - which combines better with DnD anyway.

 

[TorgoTheWhite]

You are talking about something different. I never played it, so won't get into if it was a good choice or not, but the short term memory 7+/-2 that Miller's law covers is an entirely different thing because the functionality of player abilities cease to be short term working memory very quickly as they acclimate to playing it

It sounds like a variance of "cognitive loading" or "materials retention" in education