Gothic 3 - Let the fan patches begin...

@Moriendor:

Let's wait and see - maybe Feuerbarde is on a crusade, but he has a lot of Jowood and PB inside knowledge. Feuerbarde agrees 100% with my post in WoG:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=3776500&#post3776500.

For me Gothic 3 is dead - I have completely played through it - cosmetic fan patches cannot improve the game to Gothic 1 level. Replay is not an option for me.

I hope that PB have learned their lesson and make a new game in the tradition of Gothic 1:
- interesting story
- chapter leveling
- humor / funny dialogues
- different solutions to quests
- rewards for exploring to the last sqare centimeter
- choosing between different guilds/factions
- choices and consequences
- high difficulty level - even for expirienced role players
- tactical challenging combat
- unique items in the remotest places
- a "dense world" -> something happens everywhere -> this world must not be huge
- necessity to return to already visited places and get new quests

Meanwhile I am waiting for "Bioshock" and "The Witcher"

Newest rumor:
Koch Media and Jowood are parting and Koch Media is/will be the new publisher of PB.

HiddenX said:

@Moriendor:

Let's wait and see - maybe Feuerbarde is on a crusade, but he has a lot of Jowood and PB inside knowledge. Feuerbarde agrees 100% with my post in WoG:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=3776500&#post3776500.

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Well, he will agree with anyone who bashes JoWooD and who supports his retarded view that JoWooD is seeking to split the community or to pull people away from WoG. What the hell makes anyone think so? No one is being forced to only post at the JoWooD forums if he joins the small "taskforce" that is granted access to the source material. That Feuerbarde guy is a complete psycho who is so tangled up in his own web of half-truths and pure imagination that he can't see the forest for the trees. Hate makes just as blind as love. Feuerbarde is full of hate. Nothing else.

As far as your list in that post is concerned:

1) Hiring fans/modders for working on the patch.

Is half-true at best. No one is being hired. No one is being forced to work on mods or patches. Anyone who is being "hired" is doing this on their own time and out of their own free will. They are volunteers who can quit at any time. They will even get compensation in one way or another (we don't know what kind).

2) Use the results for an official patch

Is complete speculation on your part.

3) Or maybe drop the next official patch entirely since you don't have to accept any responsibilities for 'fan made' fixes and it doesn't even cost anything

Very true. This will most likely happen. They are supporting an unofficial community patch.

4) Split the community and lure away WoG members to the JoWooD forums

Is -with all due respect, HiddenX - completely pulled out of your ass. Again. No one is forcing anyone to join JoWooD's efforts. No one is forcing anyone to only post at this board or at that board. I can't believe that someone as smart as you would repeat these utterly retarded accusations that have been planted by Feuerbarde. If you were one of the 12 year old WoG folks with their huge JoWooD hate sigs, I'd understand but I know that you are older and more intelligent than that .

5) Discredit PB while they are at it

Ummm how? Why? Who (from JW) has said anything negative about PB? Look, as I said above, it's no one else's fault but PB's if they made up wild stories about even small patches blowing up the patch size to nearly GB size. They have now been proven wrong. It was another lie from PB. Small fixes to quests can be made easily via delivering small patches in the range of kilobytes, not gigabytes. How is that JoWooD's fault again? Sure. PB look a little dumb now. This is actually pretty embarassing for them after what they have said previously. But they have brought this upon themselves instead of anyone else "discrediting" them. Tough.

6) Start hyping Gothic IV

Well, they don't even have a developer yet (most likely) so this will certainly take a while before any real "hype" for Gothic IV is being started. Also, they would be well advised to keep these two topics (G3 community patching and G4) strictly separated. You don't want potential buyers of Gothic IV to think that they will have to fix it on their own as well . JoWooD may be stupid but they are not going to be stupid enough to mix these two subjects in any way.

For me Gothic 3 is dead - I have completely played through it - cosmetic fan patches cannot improve the game to Gothic 1 level. Replay is not an option for me.

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OK, good for you, but a lot of people have not even started the game yet or have only done so very recently since they were waiting for PB's giga patch. Any patch that helps to be able to complete quests should be welcome for those people. Also, people are still buying G3 so whatever is being fixed, it's definitely going to help a lot of people. Besides, the whole idea of JoWooD's effort to open up the source material to some people is to take it beyond "cosmetic" fixes. Wouldn't it be great if the stun-locking would be fixed once and for all? Or if the hit boxes would be fixed? Or collision detection? I sure think so even if it might come too late for myself.

I hope that PB have learned their lesson and make a new game in the tradition of Gothic 1

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Same here though I will be watching any of their future efforts with a great deal of caution and reservation.

Newest rumor:
Koch Media and Jowood are parting and Koch Media is/will be the new publisher of PB.

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The first half, i.e. JoWooD and Koch parting, is not even a rumor. They only had a "strategic partnership" from the beginning. Koch Media saved JoWooD's ass from bankruptcy by buying a lot of their outstanding debits and by taking over certain investments and granting JoWooD credits for liquidity etc. - In exchange, they received JoWooD shares for EUR 1.00. The JoWooD stock is listed at the Vienna stock exchange at about EUR 2.00. Koch Media has (over the last few months) sold almost all of their JoWooD shares. They used to own 46% and they are now rumored to be under 9%. I think they sold approximately 3.5 million shares at over EUR 2.00. Quite a nice profit if you consider that they bought them at EUR 1.00. Other investors are/were not amused obviously because as long as there is one strong seller in the market (Koch), chances of a substantial increase of the stock price are very low naturally .

On the Koch being PB's new publisher rumor... first time I've heard about that. Where is it from? Do you know? Is there any reason to believe it could be true?

to number #4 and #5:

After the Joowood/PB split there is a small number of new trolls with massive posts at WoG that are very likely with Jowood associated - they are bashing PB and defend Jowood whereever they can.
There postings are so 'unnatural' they cannot be 'normal new users' - that's more than evident.

But even if #4 und #5 is not true - if #3 happens an no official patch will be released then Jowood has downright lied at least twice:

Before the release Jowood has said:
lie 1) Gothic 3 has no A bugs and is nearly bug free
lie 2) After patch 1.12 they have guaranteed to release a final big patch

I simply don't trust them anymore.


PS: the rumor:
http://forum.jowood.com/showpost.php?p=2092529&postcount=6

HiddenX said:

to number #4 and #5:

After the Joowood/PB split there is a small number of new trolls with massive posts at WoG that are very likely with Jowood associated - they are bashing PB and defend Jowood whereever they can.
There postings are so 'unnatural' they cannot be 'normal new users' - that's more than evident.

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Ummm... so what? If they are trolls, don't feed them then . Besides, I'm sure that the hyperactive, overzealous mod team of WoG is/has been taking care of these trolls swiftly. I have personally had two troll-free and free of insults (I swear ), PB-critical posts of mine deleted. Depending on their mood and whether they see it or not, they are deleting anything and everything left, right and center that goes against the gods of PB. Then they claim their right that it is a private board for fans and that anyone who doesn't agree with the extremely tight pro-PB moderation can go and f... themselves. Great forum that. Really.

But even if #4 und #5 is not true - if #3 happens an no official patch will be released then Jowood has downright lied at least twice:

Before the release Jowood has said:
lie 1) Gothic 3 has no A bugs and is nearly bug free

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It was not really JoWooD who said that but it was a private matter of Johann Ertl, the Community Manager, who repeatedly said and made it very clear that the "mead bet" (where he bet that G3 will not have any cat A bugs on release) is only a private "fun" thing of his own and that it has nothing to do with JoWooD.

Besides, his bet was based on the promise of PB to have all category A bugs fixed on the day of release (with the release patch). PB did not manage to keep their promise (well, they did in a way... after they -this only a likely rumor though- manually downgraded all cat A bugs to lower category bugs).
Not really Ertl's or even JoWooD's fault, especially since JW had absolutely nothing to do with it.
JW would never ever promise such a thing ("no category A bugs") since it would basically be an invitation for lawsuits and class action if it turned out otherwise. Again, they may be dumb but they are not that dumb .

In summary, it was a pretty stupid bet for Ertl to make since most bugs will only become apparent when the masses start hitting the game but that's Ertl's personal problem and a problem of his purse really. At least he and a few folks who got their mead in the end probably had a few good laughs when they got drunk.

lie 2) After patch 1.12 they have guaranteed to release a final big patch

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Well, whenever they (they = JoWooD community management) were talking about a patch, it was based on the word of PB that they (PB) were working on a patch. Hell, KaiRo and Ralf said it a million times in posts that were mostly made at WoG that there'd be another patch. Why shouldn't the JW CMs Glockenbeat and Ertl believe them? Ertl mailed them repeatedly, too, (he says he still got the copies in his 'sent' folder) and inquired about the patch. He received a "we're working on it" and "we'll be taking care of it" and "give us just a few more weeks" response every time. It was PB who were "guaranteeing" that there'd be another patch. The JW CMs just passed on the info.

Whatever it was that finally led to the separation of PB and JoWooD it must have either come as a surprise for both parties (so the situation just changed and all of their previous statements all of a sudden turned into "lies") or PB were lying about working on a patch for all of these months, i.e. they might have lied to us and also lied to the JoWooD community managers.

The JW CMs passed on PB's lies to the public then. Passing on information (whether the info is true or not... they can't know that and it's not their job to find out either) is their job.
It's not Ertl's or Glockenbeat's fault if they were misinformed by PB. Both parties said that a patch would be coming. One party (JW) said it based on the information they received from the other party (PB). Only PB really knows whether they were ever working on a final patch at all. Their statements are pretty conflicting. "Yes, we did work on it but only in our heads" sounds pure silly though and is hard to believe.

And what Berger (JoWooD marketing) said after the separation is that they are "trying hard" to find a replacement for PB. He never promised or guaranteed that a patch would be made. He's not (completely) stupid.

PS: the rumor:
http://forum.jowood.com/showpost.php?p=2092529&postcount=6

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Ah, the good old "I have insider info" kind of stuff . OK. We'll see about that. It could be true since PB is obviously getting funding in some way from someone or they'd be gone already. It's strange that any such cooperation between PB and Koch isn't prohibited by contract though. Koch was the co-publisher of Gothic III. It can't really be in JW's interest (assuming that JW and not Koch dictated the terms of the contract) to allow PB to switch to their co-publisher just like that. Oh well, I guess we'll find out one day when the new projects of PB are officially announced. Thanks for the link!

Moriendor said:

It was not really JoWooD who said that but it was a private matter of Johann Ertl, the Community Manager, who repeatedly said and made it very clear that the "mead bet" (where he bet that G3 will not have any cat A bugs on release) is only a private "fun" thing of his own and that it has nothing to do with JoWooD.

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"A private matter"? :lol:
There is no "private matter" for a CM trying to calm down the masses. It´s comparable to a retail sales manager who claims "I have the same device at home, and I´m very satisfied with it!". This means nothing, it´s only a trick to influence people.

Moriendor said:

@ Gorath: Couldn't you just have told me to "STFU, n00b!!!" or something? Well, that's what I'll be doing now. We were going in circles anyway and getting caught up in arguments over very small details. I'm a bit tired of the uber long quotes and posts so let's just agree to disagree on whatever we disagreed on .

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Okay so did we agree or disagree on something?!? Anyway, STFU, nOOb!!!111!

Moriendor said:

Ah, the good old "I have insider info" kind of stuff . OK. We'll see about that. It could be true since PB is obviously getting funding in some way from someone or they'd be gone already. It's strange that any such cooperation between PB and Koch isn't prohibited by contract though. Koch was the co-publisher of Gothic III. It can't really be in JW's interest (assuming that JW and not Koch dictated the terms of the contract) to allow PB to switch to their co-publisher just like that. Oh well, I guess we'll find out one day when the new projects of PB are officially announced. Thanks for the link!

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The forum post means nothing but the rumor itself would be quite logical from a certain point of view.
Koch was the stronger party in the negotiations with JoWooD. They certainly would never have signed a noncompete for a studio. Furthermore Koch is mainly a PC publisher, PB´s next game will be way cheaper than G3 because the technology is more or less finished, and PB comes with a huge fan base. I can see Koch assessing the risk as close to zero and signing whatever RPG PB developes.

Update:

It´s official. Deep Silver is the new publisher.

Nice. I would imagine they are still in a quite precarious position though.

Why? Now they have funding.

HiddenX said:

Newest rumor:
Koch Media and Jowood are parting and Koch Media is/will be the new publisher of PB.

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Deep Silver is the new publisher of PB - look at the article here.

That´s not the permalink, Alrik.

What do you mean with "permalink" ?

This one ? http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2048

Gorath said:

Why? Now they have funding.

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But few rights and possibly harmed reputation? I don't know

Alrik Fassbauer said:

What do you mean with "permalink" ?

This one ? http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2048

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The link inside the newsbit. The one on top of the page disappears after a few days.

Didn't know that.

Automatical garbage collection ?