Marzhin Q&A Video

[Kosh]

Thanks Marzhin, a little news is better than no news... but we're at the point now where we require more meat and potatoes about the gameplay itself please and thanks =)

[jeff]

First I did not mind his accent, I’m continually amazed at how well others speak and write English where most of us Americans can barely speak and write our own language correctly. However the whole video was disappointing as what little I found knew really didn’t matter to me. I am hoping for better next time.

[Neidhaart]

For me this was some new information. And i like that there will be som old world references. Do like =)

And i also agree with Kosh, more gameplay information would be nice too.

[hellegennes]

@jeff:



Not that I have nothing with French people, but you rarely see one that can speak distinguishable English, while most other Europeans have no problem even imitating certain English accents. Why is that I have no clue.

[agni]

Heh, i've spent 3.5 years in europe and 20+ years in asia, and Marzhin's accent is actually pretty good for a non-native speaker. and really, it's a shock to find an english speaking frenchman regardless of their accent



as for game info, i was expecting concrete stuff, animations, and semi-game play resembling things... and if it were to be a q&a, i expected questions to have been picked from the forums and answered...

[Marzhin]

Hey agni, thanks for the kind words

About the content, we actually have answered real questions. Questions like "what are the mounts?", "are there female heroes?", "are specializations in?" and "where are Crag Hack and Sandro?" are among the ones that were asked the greatest number of time on all the communities...

Of course there were other questions, but for those the answers were "embargoed" until the end of February, since the press will have the "scoop".
Edited on Thu, Feb 10 2011, 09:35 by Marzhin

[Angelspit]

Not that I have nothing with French people, but you rarely see one that can speak distinguishable English, while most other Europeans have no problem even imitating certain English accents. Why is that I have no clue.

The latin-derived languages are farther away from English than the Germanic languages. The different tones and pronunciation of these languages make it more difficult to speak English without any noticeable accent. It's not just French, but Spanish and Italian as well. The situation is similar for Greek too.

[Calmisto]

I don't read the forums all that much but for me the news of customisable heroes is nice! Just hope there will be enough variety on that front.

[King Imp]

About the content, we actually have answered real questions. Questions like "what are the mounts?", "are there female heroes?", "are specializations in?" and "where are Crag Hack and Sandro?" are among the ones that were asked the greatest number of time on all the communities...

The thing is Marzhin is that we knew those things already. Please tell me you guys realize that, otherwise there is a serious communication barrier here if you and the rest of the devs can't remember what info has already been given out. That's my major beef with all this info is you guys keep rehashing the same stuff.

Just like Avonu pointed out, aside from the unlockable heroes, we knew about everything else in that video.

[Kosh]

So Marzhin, can we then look forward to the end of February for NDA/embargoes to end and a whole bunch of new gameplay info to be released by 'the press'?

[hellegennes]

The latin-derived languages are farther away from English than the Germanic languages. The different tones and pronunciation of these languages make it more difficult to speak English without any noticeable accent. It's not just French, but Spanish and Italian as well. The situation is similar for Greek too.





I am not sure what you mean by your last two sentences, Angelspit. Yes, English is a West Germanic language but I don't think people from the Mediterranean have any problem speaking clearly distinguishable English. Sure, they tend to show their mother-tongue accents but that's just habit. I don't understand why is it more difficult for a French to correctly pronounce "instruction" than a Greek. English is descendant of both Protogermanic and Latin (and there is also a sub-base of Celtic as well), since Modern English have more in common with Anglo-Norman than Old English. Even pronunciation has a lot of French elements; e.g. we say det (debt) and dout (doubt) and much of the English spelling system is derived from French (e.g. programme instead of program). It shouldn't be that difficult.

[parcaleste]

This is having so much to do with the topic...


I am starting to think that Ubi did made great move by letting Marzhin do this Q&A, knowing everybody here will concentrate on debating about his accent, than what he is saying (which, is basically nothing (no offense!)).

[hellegennes]

It's exactly because what he says is of little to no interest at all. Who cares what the mounts are or how the hero models are different depending on class etc? He didn't say anything about gameplay that we missed, did he?

[parcaleste]

And that is way you have to discuss his accent?

[ThunderTitan]

>>Not that I have nothing with French people, but you rarely see one that can speak distinguishable English, while most other Europeans have no problem even imitating certain English accents. Why is that I have no clue.<<

It's because frenchies find H's too damn delicious...

>>English is descendant of both Protogermanic and Latin (and there is also a sub-base of Celtic as well), since Modern English have more in common with Anglo-Norman than Old English. >>

Grammatically English is still a germanic language, even if a lot of words come from french and other romance tongues... so it's not that easy.

That and the french happen to have a somewhat thicker accent then other european nations (when it comes to the mainstream speech, even native speakers like the scots and other regional accents speak english you can barely understand if you know only Received Pronunciation).

[rdeford]

Regarding content: Not much new, but with more details, e.g., the pictures are appreciated. Actually, in contrast to the major opinion trend in this chain, I agree with the policy of not letting much leak out prior to an official full press release comparable to the one given by GameInformer for Skyrim.



Regarding Marzhin accent: Unlike many non-native speakers, his grammar and vocabulary are superb, and his pronunciation is acceptable. I would aspire to be his equal in any language other than my native English.

[hellegennes]

I would aspire to be his equal in any language other than my native English.





Well, we all know British suck in foreign languages. Although Americans are probably worse. I still find that there is no excuse for someone speaking an IE language not being able to be a good speaker of another language of the same family.

[Angelspit]

It shouldn't be that difficult.

Your knowledge of linguistic far surpasses mine, so I won't even try to argue.

[ThunderTitan]

Seriously, germanic and latin derived languages might not be as different as one of the to chinese but that doesn't mean they're easily interchangeable like italian and spanish would be...


And that's not even Marzhin's problem, what you're all hearing is an accent, and that can be way harder to lose then to learn another language... even within the same language accents can make one nigh unintelligible (and dialects even sound like a foreign language).

[Marzhin]

@parcaleste, Kimp Imp, Avonu, etc.:

I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of Q&A videos. In the Q&A we'll answer as many questions as possible, as long as it doesn't overlap stuff that is part of the PR plan.

So if you are looking for big news and big announcements, you probably won't find it in the Q&A videos, but in the press releases. However if you want more details and additional info about things that have been hinted at or not elaborated upon yet, I (or whoever appears in future videos) will do our best to say as much as we can.
Edited on Fri, Feb 11 2011, 17:04 by Marzhin