Tag Archives: Paul Barnett

Ultima Forever creative director Paul Barnett has said the team at BioWare chose to remake Ultima 4 due to the team’s affection of for the original, and the fact that resources were limited.

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Irrational Games boss Ken Levine and Mythic creative director Paul Barnett have both defended developers’ creative right to tell stories as they choose – regardless of community backlash.

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BioWare Mythic senior creative director Paul Barnett will keynote GDC China next month. Barnett’s talk at the Shanghai-based event is called, “Global Reach and Local Limits – Paul’s Personal Truths about Online Game Development,” and will see him, according to GameSpot, detail how “online play has affected game design in terms of geographic proximity and focusing on culture.”

More details at the link. The show takes place between November 12 to 14.

EA has issues a cease and desist order to fan site Ultima Aiera, informing the site and others hosting Ultima IV, as well as Flash-based remakes, to pull any files pertaining to it.

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Following a comment yesterday from WAR creative director Paul Barnett regarding EA knowing “nothing about launching MMOs in Europe,” Mythic boss Mark Jacobs has clarified the situation by calling Barnett “sarcastic” and “irreverent.”

“Well first you’ve got to understand that Paul is Paul,” Jacobs told Eurogamer. “He’s very sarcastic. He tries to be very funny – he usually is. He can be a bit irreverent. And so you need to look at anything he said in the interview from that perspective.

“Second, in terms of GOA: we had done a deal with GOA before EA bought us. So the idea that we went with GOA because supposedly EA doesn’t know anything about doing online games is just not true. There was no EA in the picture. So that was one part of it.

“What Paul said about EA not knowing anything about launching MMOs: you know, Paul likes to exaggerate – of course EA knows things about launching MMOs. EA is responsible, certainly, for one of the most important MMOs of all time, and that was Ultima [Online]. And that had people in Europe playing, people in Japan playing – it was really the first MMO to have any success in Japan. And it was the first one to break 100,000 subs.”

Loads more through there. WAR launches tomorrow. Order or Destruction? The million dollar question.

Bloody hell, Paul. Don’t hold back. In WAR’s launch week, the MMO’s creative director has launched a stinging attack on EA, saying the firm simply “knows nothing” about bring an MMO to market in Europe.

WAR is being published by GOA in Europe.

“GOA did it with Dark Age of Camelot and they’ve done it really well. They’ve done it in a very European way, but they’ve done it very well, and it’s more of the same,” Barnett said.

“EA couldn’t have done it, what the hell would EA know about it? They know nothing about launching MMOs in Europe, unless it’s spending lots of money closing them down I suppose.”

The quotes are from a Eurogamer interview. Knock yourself out.

Warhammer Online creative director Paul Barnett has told Gametrailers in a video interview that WoW is like The Beatles, “and if you try and be like the Beatles, you’ll and end up like The Monkees. We don’t want to be The Monkees,” he said. “We’re Led Zeppelin.”

Quite. More down below.

By Mike Bowden

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Warhammer Online creative director Paul Barnett has said that it will be “very sad” if Funcom’s Age of Conan collapses, and that the game’s “rhythm, longevity, gameplay and style” may not connect with the market in general.

“I think it will be very sad if they don’t have enough users to maintain the critical mass, because we need more successful MMOs in the world, not more failures,” Barnett told VG247.

“Whether they’ve hit the right rhythm, longevity, gameplay and style depends on the vagaries of the market. I know they worked really, really hard on it, and I know they tried really, really hard on it, and if they don’t make it that’s a real shame, because that’s people’s mortgages.”

Age of Conan has been beset with issues since it launched in May, with many questioning the longevity of the MMO’s content and its ability to hold a significant user-base.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is tipped to release in September.

Speaking to Eurogamer at Develop today, Mythic’s Paul Barnett gave a reasonably good reason for Warhammer Online’s persistent delays.

“When we launch these games, we can’t schedule for shit,” he said.

“We’re nearly there, God help us, the fifth time we schedule it it’s going to work. Lesson one: don’t trust your schedulers. Add more time.”

The MMO is heavily tipped to be releasing in September. Barnett told us earlier that the game is essential done and ready to go.

Speaking to VG247 at Develop in Brighton today, Mythic’s Paul Barnett confirmed the news hundreds of thousands of pre-orderers will be thrilled to hear: Warhammer Online is finished and ready to ship.

“The game’s finished,” said the developer. “It’s just being polished and cooked.

“We’re in a position now where every day we get to polish it it polishes a little nicer. At some point you say, ‘That’s polished enough now. See you later.’”

Barnett wouldn’t be drawn on a specific release date, but said he would be comfortable if the game shipped now.

“We just won Game of the Show from IGN, G4 and GameSpy from E3 and they all said the same thing: they’ve never seen an MMO prior to launch that’s as polished and slick and ready to go as our game is. Our game looks great, feels great, plays great.

“Is it in a shippable state? Yeah, we could ship it now.”

Paul also gave us the longest answer to a single question we’ve ever heard. Hopefully we’ll get time to transcribe it later.

EA CEO John Riccitiello and Bioware have both visited Warhammer Online developer Mythic Entertainment to view metrics of the ongoing beta, according to the game’s creative director, Paul Barnett.

“One of the great things we’ve got is tons of metrics that run in the background,” he said in a video interview you can watch after the link below. “They do all sort of clever things with metrics – things what I do not understand – but I do know that Bioware came and had a look at them because they were very excited about them, and John Riccitiello came and visited… He was very excited about them.”

Bioware is known to be working on an MMO – thought to be Star Wars-based – but has yet to reveal the identity of the game.

Barnett refused to give a release date for Warhammer Online, saying only it’ll be released “whenever it is”. After a bit of a scuffle on the subject of release date last month, Mythic issued a statement saying the project would make retail in the second quarter.

Paul has to be the most enthusiastic man in games – his video diaries of WO’s development last year are the stuff of legend – but it looks as though creating the MMO has drilled it out of him somewhat.

“I miss my children terribly,” he said.

Keep going, son. Almost there. Watch him speak, two parts, after the link. The stuff about Riccitiello and Bioware is in the second bit.

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