"Stop that! It's silly!"

Enough with the politics and sillyness. It was a fun detour, but it's time to get back down to business. The irony with this post is that it again focuses on Paul Barnett - if not the key driving force behind WAR, certainly it's most widely recognized (and humorous) developer. As highlighted on Warhammer Alliance, Paul sat down with MMOG Nation for a multi-part interview. Here's a little sampling:

MG: Excellent. The reaction to the move-back was pretty resoundingly positive. Do you think that people have had their expectations changed by the level of quality in games like WoW and LOTRO?

Paul: Well, the difficulty with our bloody game industry is that people keep spending more money and getting more talented people to work on them. As a result they keep getting irritatingly better. It’s really really unfair. And those bloody people who make the graphics cards won’t stop! They keep putting in bloom effects, and more MIPS, and better resolution! And the monitor people! The monitor people, for god’s sake! Will they not just leave it alone? Enormous clarity monitors. Bastards! So, you have that and then you add in the WoW factor. You know: hundreds of millions of dollars, five years in development, all they did was get 8 Million subscribers. You’d think they’d come up with a clever idea. And all of a sudden everybody realized you’ve got to do a lot better. It’s sort of like when movies moved to color with sound. All of a sudden the old ways are no longer acceptable. And so, yeah, of course you’ve got to try harder. You’ve got to try better. It’s not good enough to ‘get away with it’ any more. The customer - irritatingly - learns things!

:: MG and PR Guy laugh ::

There's nothing in there about the Warrior Priest (or any class info for that matter), but it's still an amusing and informative read. I especially like the bottom line for the staff working on WAR: FUN! Fun, you F***ERS! Ah, if only Blizzard had held to this in their Paladin design philosophy.

As an added bonus, I just found out Paul has a MySpace. Naturally, a friend request submission immediately followed this discovery.