Final Word on Brad

Was reading Darren's blog Ok...Time to Leave Brad Alone and was pretty much feeling the same way. I've always liked Brad; I think he's well-intentioned and his heart is in the right place. Some posts I've seen aren't just critical, they are just plain nasty and uncalled for.

But Brad posts so frequently and says things that leave me scratching my head, that it's hard not to have a gut response sometimes. After following link after link from blog to forum to blog again, I inevitably found myself at the FOH boards (yeah I know....*smacks hand* shame on Aspen!)

First I came across a post that included the following "I don't think either the EQ 1 or EQ 2 launch suffered significantly from their hardware specs and the tech level they used."

Say what? So I kept reading on to see if anyone might have caught that one and Cuppy came to the rescue with:

"I can't speak much about EQ1 because I was not around when it launched. I will say that I definitely disagree with you on EQ2. EQ2 was complete @$%& optimization-wise when it launched. I built a brand new computer in 2004 that couldn't play EQ2 for @$%&. Everyone I know who was excited about migrating from EQ1 to EQ2 upon release decided against it when they couldn't run the game enough to enjoy it.

EQ2 was up against the release of WoW. We had two games coming out that were perhaps close to each other in anticipation, both with strong fanbases coming from previous games. WoW completely smashed EQ2 in subscription numbers and I accurately remember reading tons of posts from people who couldn't run EQ2 or thought it stuttered too much and were suckered into the feeling of polish in WoW with its 70 fps in major cities with older machines. I tried my hardest to get friends to play EQ2 with me but no one would because their machines were too old and therefore suited for WoW. Granted, EQ2 had issues with the gameplay, combat, and class balance upon release as well.

Now you've got VG that's released the same month as The Burning Crusade. Also have LOTRO in the future along with a few other games that are running smoother in beta than VG is in retail (due to their graphic style no doubt.) Once again, you have a game that runs for @$%& on computers that run every other game on the market fine. Couple that with the fact that VG (not unlike EQ2) did has issues with gameplay, combat and class balance.....you're setting yourself up to perform poorly when up against the competitors."

Further along I came across a post "How is it possible you watched EQ2 launch with hardware specs too high for its time and followed right behind it and made the exact same mistake?"

To which Brad responded "I've posted now several times that I wish we could have launched a bit later, but that it was out our hands. Financial realities, being what they were, made that decision for us."

I was going to comment here on that one, but someone else summed it up well.

"You were hoping to hold out for another 3 years until computers required to run VG on 'fun' settings were even remotely commonplace? Well, VG might have been done by that point I guess."

Ok and now I'm done. No more Brad posts!