Does anyone have Chris Longpre's email?

[Nyarlathotep]

I don't think it's really fair to ask Chris questions about Westwood now that he left the company.

my 2cnts anyway..

[Terror]

what the? I'm not sure if I have to believe this... we're just discussing about westwood employees and blam 2 ex employees pop up and post a message here. They even registered one after the other. It makes me suspicious.

Anyway, if I could ask anything, it would be: What do you ppl think of Blizzard, as lots of Westwood fans hate Blizzard and the other way around (not me btw)

[Nyarlathotep]

what the? I'm not sure if I have to believe this... we're just discussing about westwood employees and blam 2 ex employees pop up and post a message here. They even registered one after the other. It makes me suspicious.

Anyway, if I could ask anything, it would be: What do you ppl think of Blizzard, as lots of Westwood fans hate Blizzard and the other way around (not me btw)

Well, although suspicious, their stories seem to match with what I last heard of. If you want to check out if this is the real Dev, just go over to the Sims forum and ask him :)

As for Blizzard and Westwood.. I hate neither company. I do tend to like Blizzard better though. This mainly the way they still support Diablo. They are devloping a new patch and releasing software to the servers to prevent hacking/crashes. If I look at Westwood, they dropped EBFD pretty quick. I don't know how EBFD sold compared to Diablo, but the support time shows a big difference between both companies. I have to admit though that they surprised me with a new patch for Renegade (one needs to give credit when due :)).

The above can lead to long discussions, which are old news. There are people like me who like both companies and you have people who dislike either one of the companies (for whatever reason). That discussion will never end.

Game wise I think both companies are just as good. That discussion is a matter of personal opinion and hardly can be discussed.

[Terror]

yes but the question was asked toward the Westwood employees. I mean. do they respect their concurents? Or is it more of a hostile fight to who makes the best games

[Nyarlathotep]

yes but the question was asked toward the Westwood employees. I mean. do they respect their concurents? Or is it more of a hostile fight to who makes the best games

My bad. I thought it was asked in general :)

[Fuzi0n]

Wow and all of a sudden their all back.

Well y'all are just in time to see emperor die. :'(

But their is 1 thing, what legend asked; what did westwood expect from Emperor?

This game is just sooo damn great it could've been on of the biggest RTS hits..

[Chris Longpre]

Actually, Blizzard & Westwood have a very high level of mutual respect for each other. The press like to portray them like bitter rivals, but they are actually very respectfull & impressed with their competitors.

Each company will watch, study & research each others games, even lifting a good idea from here & there. Afterall, they do have to be competitive in the same market. The overall quality of games goes up because of this. Good for the players!

As for Emperor and marketing, promotion & support.. well, that is a very complex issue, and I'll not delve too deeply therin. Just consider that Red Alert 2 released before it, at Xmas, and sold a jizzillion copies. It is not wise to compete within your own company, in the same genre. And Yuri's Revenge followed Emperor, again for Xmas. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Peace all,

--Chris

[Devinoch]

Family and friends are important in live, I've had to learn that the hard way :-

I never figured you as a comic writer ! What kind of comics are they ?

Our first submission is sort of a post-modern monster hunter story that's intriguing, but we'll see how it takes. Think Buffy The Vampire Slayer meets Clerks and you're on the right track. That one's in the middle of everyone working on it right now. The second proposal I'm scripting as we speak, and it's high fantasy. (I'd tell you what it's a mix of, but that spoils some of the fun...)

~d.

[Nyarlathotep]

Sounds good Dev. Be sure to let us know if there's a preview we can see online :)

[Devinoch]

what the? I'm not sure if I have to believe this... we're just discussing about westwood employees and blam 2 ex employees pop up and post a message here. They even registered one after the other. It makes me suspicious.

Anyway, if I could ask anything, it would be: What do you ppl think of Blizzard, as lots of Westwood fans hate Blizzard and the other way around (not me btw)

Well, Gobalopper probably paged both of us down. I know he flagged me down online. I'm not that hard to find and Gob's an old friend.

As for my opinions on Blizzard, I like their games and I've met several of the people who work for the company, including Bill Roper himself (who's a great guy). I think people like to percieve rivalries because it makes it easier to understand. But I think you'll find the guys at Epic and id have a mutal respect for one another, rather than some shared animosity. Bill and I chatted for nearly an hour at E3 (with our friends Greg and Erin there too) and we had a blast. I'm looking forward to seeing Worlds of warcraft (although I'm still not hooked on any of these MMORPGs) and I just finished Warcraft 3's single player campaign last week (been very busy, obviously) and it was loads of fun.

~d.

[undsputed]

Hmm......let's see...we wished for them to appear and they appeared. Okay, I wish a Lexus would appear in front of my house. Let's see if it works :)

[Terror]

Well, Gobalopper probably paged both of us down. I know he flagged me down online. I'm not that hard to find and Gob's an old friend.

As for my opinions on Blizzard, I like their games and I've met several of the people who work for the company, including Bill Roper himself (who's a great guy). I think people like to percieve rivalries because it makes it easier to understand. But I think you'll find the guys at Epic and id have a mutal respect for one another, rather than some shared animosity. Bill and I chatted for nearly an hour at E3 (with our friends Greg and Erin there too) and we had a blast. I'm looking forward to seeing Worlds of warcraft (although I'm still not hooked on any of these MMORPGs) and I just finished Warcraft 3's single player campaign last week (been very busy, obviously) and it was loads of fun.

~d.

Well i'm glad to hear that. I myself lost a bit of interest in Westwood after Red Alert because many ppl like me had high expectation about Tiberian Sun but eventually it was a bit of a flop. It sold well cuz many persons thrusted for 100% that westwood would again release a classic. And then. after 5 years of waiting it was not what everyone expected it to be and I returned to Starcraft.

Since then they made funny games like RA2 but not classics like they used to be. Emperor was cool because it was more serious once again and was ofcourse set in the Dune universe.

Blizzard created Diablo2 and with that also beated Westwood's Nox. Even though I admit Warcraft 3 was not as good as the other Blizzard products it is still entertaining. I hope that Westwood stops pumping out games constantly based on the same aspect. Red Alert was not realy fun online because it was all about building as much tanks ASAP and rush your enemy. Starcraft required strategically placing of tactical units like siege tanks and defending them, spreading our your hydralisks for psionic storms and lockdowning enemy battlecruisers.

Well anyway that was a bit of my complaint on Westwood since Tiberian Sun.

BTW this may sound like a strange question, but do you people know what happened to Cavedog? They created 2 great games (Total Annihilation and Total Annihilation Kingdoms) but they are no more. I don't know if they went bankrupt because Kingdoms didn't sell too well. The primary reason for that would be the high system requirements for the computers at that time, but I don't realy know.

oh and eh.. could you get me a ticket to the E3? ;)

[Will]

Well i'm glad to hear that. I myself lost a bit of interest in Westwood after Red Alert because many ppl like me had high expectation about Tiberian Sun but eventually it was a bit of a flop. It sold well cuz many persons thrusted for 100% that westwood would again release a classic. And then. after 5 years of waiting it was not what everyone expected it to be and I returned to Starcraft.

Since then they made funny games like RA2 but not classics like they used to be. Emperor was cool because it was more serious once again and was ofcourse set in the Dune universe.

Blizzard created Diablo2 and with that also beated Westwood's Nox. Even though I admit Warcraft 3 was not as good as the other Blizzard products it is still entertaining. I hope that Westwood stops pumping out games constantly based on the same aspect. Red Alert was not realy fun online because it was all about building as much tanks ASAP and rush your enemy. Starcraft required strategically placing of tactical units like siege tanks and defending them, spreading our your hydralisks for psionic storms and lockdowning enemy battlecruisers.

Well anyway that was a bit of my complaint on Westwood since Tiberian Sun.

BTW this may sound like a strange question, but do you people know what happened to Cavedog? They created 2 great games (Total Annihilation and Total Annihilation Kingdoms) but they are no more. I don't know if they went bankrupt because Kingdoms didn't sell too well. The primary reason for that would be the high system requirements for the computers at that time, but I don't realy know.

I absolutely LOVED Tiberian Sun...the atmosphere was great, just like playing Tiberian Dawn for the first time all over again. The pacing of the game, the balancing (AFTER the patch I might add), it was all great. I think it's the most strategic Westwood game yet.

Anyway enough TS-fanboy'age.

On cavedog: Cavedog was working on too many projects at once (Amen, some other game, TA2, and yet another game). Amen was 60% finished when they dropped it; the company that owned Cavedog (Infogrames) decided that Cavedog wasn't going to make any money soon, which they needed BADLY at the time, and closed them down. Total Annihilation sold very well, Kingdoms supposedly sold very well too, but not as well as the original Total Annihiliation.

[Terror]

On cavedog: Cavedog was working on too many projects at once (Amen, some other game, TA2, and yet another game). Amen was 60% finished when they dropped it; the company that owned Cavedog (Infogrames) decided that Cavedog wasn't going to make any money soon, which they needed BADLY at the time, and closed them down. Total Annihilation sold very well, Kingdoms supposedly sold very well too, but not as well as the original Total Annihiliation.

Well, i'm glad that that is cleared up but i'm totally pissed that Infogrames dropped them. Total Annihilation was way ahead of it's time and it looked absolutely gorgeous, and the ingame physics are still better than any RTS i know (and i know most of them)

TA Kingdoms is one of my favo's of all time even though it's sys req's were way too high in the beginning. The 3.0 patch helped alot but unfortunately didn't save it. However, i'm glad that before Cavedog was dropped they released all the patches TA Kingdoms needed, 16 additional units and removal of any possible bugs.

Cavedog, i want you back! :'(