Catchup and BioWAAAAGH

Ok; so haven't posted in a while... been kind of busy I guess? My last post was near a month ago, and I mean a lots happened in a month. Transformers 2, Work stuff ( Die Deltacom), Life Stuff (Church & School)... I can't even begin to catch up I don't think; but I'll try and sumarize.

1) DeltaCom sucks - I really think it's more policy there to *NOT* call customers back. Over 91 phone calls since the 17th, and 7 call backs (I've kept a log to give to our account rep when I ask for a months bills for free tommorrow). I don't see how they stay in business like this; I asked the Tier 2 Super today.. what sets them aside from the big kids, like AT&T? Generally, smaller customers offer either a) better quality or b) better Customer Care. For point A; it's bandwidth, there is no 'quality' per'se... just uptime, and there they all suck. For point B; 91 calls since the 17th and 5 tickets opened since then... of which all 4 have been escalated to a V.P or higher. ex-nay on the ustomer-cay ervice-say.

2) I've got two conferences I get to speak at this summer; one I'm going to be talking to the general Administrative Support staff for Georgia CU's on how to put together clear and concise powerpoints and executive presentations. The second is going to be talking about the finer points of putting together RFP's and Project Change log requests; the latter of which I really suck at so I'm gonna have to wing it.... basically those two amount to: who can feed enough BS into a packet that no one will read it, but will simply agree to it just so they don't have to sit down and read everything... apparently I'm good at that.

3) Church - I love 2nd graders and I'm sad Mark Henry is leaving. I'm glad that he's willing to take the chance / leap of faith required to uproot a family over something he believes. Trip has a really good 'prayer' if you will concerning this... but the words escape me at the moment. It's something along the lines of God grant me the strength to accept the things I can't change, the wisdom to recognize doors you've closed, and the faith to walk thru doors that you've opened. I think I probably botched it; but he's said it one time around me and I think about it a lot of times I'm presented with a decision. But I'm really glad that Mark is taking the intiative and faith to step out on something he believes in. Good luck to him at his new church, he'll be missed.

4) Life - I love my wife more than anything in the whole world. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm not that great of a husband; I mean really I'm just a big kid who likes video games, Italian food, and harassing 2 innocent dogs. So I've really tried to 'step up the game' around the house and with being a good husband. She's such a good wife, I just wanna be the best person that I can for her; cause that what she deserves. I've tried starting to cook more, to help with laundry, cleaning and straightening the house, buying her suprises, and keeping her filled in with the random stuff that passes between my ears (North Korea passes thru a lot).

5) Speaking of - How bout those North Koreans? Some scary folks that direction (points north-westish). I think the world is a little afraid of them; cause they don't play by the old 'gentlemen's' rules of the Cold War and Post WWII era. They're like the world's Dirty Harry, just might be crazy enough to pull that trigger and deal with the ramifications. If you don't think so, then how do you explain the world's foremost superpower being to afraid to board a cargo ship suspected of carrying nuclear proliferation materials? Cause we're scared those crazy korean sons of... just might shoot us.

6) BIOWAAAGH!! Two subitems under this

a) Mark Jacobs Leaves EA Mythic - This is bittersweet. The man founded and funded Mythic Entertainment, was the lead developer for DAoC, introduced the MMO world to meaningful PvP, RvR and a 3-realm system of checks and balances. Jacobs really was one of the industries elite 'dreamers'; he was a champion of conceptual MMO development in the late 90's and early 2000's. However, Mr. Jacobs was unable to adapt to the corporate jungle that is Electronic Arts... and also had a temper and authority problem. Once his mouth starting writing checks that his butt couldn't catch... well, he's now "flying a cargo plane full of rubber dogsh*t outa Hong Kong" (Top Gun Reference FTW!). Still, despite WAR's "downfalls", I don't think Jacobs should be ousted from MMO history... however, after a year off I bet we see him heading another studio soon. These types of people don't sit around or retire.

B) Bioware - Mythic under the same 'MMO' umbrella headed by Bioware GM - Could be good for WAR, potentially; however looking at 'mergers' historically (thats what it is, I don't care what you wanna call it) they go one way: the head studio absorbs the premier talent while the sub-studio puddles along with a skeleton crew in maintainence mode.Bioware has no MMO experience (but a slew of isnta-classic RPG's and FPS's), but has an avid fanbase who will fanboi follow them anywhere. Mythic is a tried and true MMO developer, and has the scars, broken bones and broken pride to prove it. With Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO on the horizon for Bioware, and EA admitantly offering them a blank check for it's development; it won't be long before we start seeing talent move from Mythic to Bioware. The same thing happened with the Mythic EA aquisition... talent moved from the DAoC content team over to WAR development; leaving UO and DAoC with skeleton crews to maintainence release minor patches and keep the servers up while they maintain equity and a 'black' line on the income sheet.

I'm going to make a post at some point, once I gather my thoughts, with what really went wrong with Warhammer. Conceptually, the game is simply amazing... however, I think greed, personal ambition and pride are the ultimate downfalls of Warhammer. Thats for another post though. Despite the word "failure" tossed around in conjunction with Warhammer, it still has somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 active subscribers; which equates to roughly $4,122,250.00 monthly from subscription payments. EQ in it's hayday only reached 450,000 subscribers. Dark Age of Camelot, Mythic's previous flagship title, achieved a maximum of 268,000 subscribers to put perspective on Warhammer's "Failure".

However... Dark Age of Camelot was developed by 23 people on a 3.1 million dollar budget.

Warhammer - roughly $140 million development, un-realized marketting costs, 350 person development staff.

Dark Age - Profitable after 1.5 months @ 175,000 subscribers

Warhammer - Profitable after 41 months @ 300,000 subscribers (assuming $30 mil marketting budget.. which is under-shooting it. Typical Marketting strategy is 40% of development dollars).

41 Months is too long, there's too many variables (Blizzards next MMO IP, Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, V13 Project, Aion (fly in the ointment IMO)).

Anyways, enough figures and number ramblings on warhammer. It's bedtime.

I didn't proofread this at all; it's been a long, long day.. so please excuse any spelling, terrible grammer or rambling, incomplete thoughts.