Thanks for clarifying for me there everybody…sorry if I was being a bit dense.
It’s funny how perceptions tend to influence these borderline MMOGs.
If people think it’s not going to do well and possibly be shut down after a year, they might tend to stay away. Consequently, the game doesn’t do well and it shuts down.
The negative feedback loop downside for MMOGs is pretty bad. On the other hand, the positive feedback loop for eagerly awaited games like TSO is pretty staggering.
I’ve noticed.
My advice? Do what I do: just be of the mindset that you’re king of your realm, top of your game etc and all the fockers coming up with nonsensical and inconsequential crap, are just clueless peons who wish they actually did have a pot to piss in (which in itself, would be quite a feat). :roll:
As long as you are prepared to stand by what you post and believe in the opinions therein, you shouldn’t give a toss what anyone thinks, let alone writes. You’ll live longer.
Exactly. And thats the point I was making in refering to MCO still being online.
Well, the money has to come from somewhere. And using the revenue from one title to fund another (thats losing) is an age-old industry strategy. Which is why companies like Infogrames can afford to have over 120+ SKUs (and thats just this period alone) and still lose money, hand over fist. Heck, they [publishers] give away products to retailers just to get them to pick up something else.
Which is probably what they’re going to end up doing. Unless they want to keep pumping money into that EA.COM blackhole.
AFAICT, the assaults have never been about your intelligence, Dave, which is more than adequately demonstrated by the post that Derek commented on.
Me too.
The problem with these boards is that everyone wants to rag on folks where they are wrong and/or try to be the most clever and smarmy kid on the block. Any good points, thoughtful posts and informative game analysis get nothing.
I think I have made multiple pointless snide comments about Derek’s and Dave’s posts in good fun and without adding much to the discussion. The many times I have read your posts (Dave: the above and AoM comments/Derek: Multiple game industry posts) which were intelligently written and chock full 'o creamy goodness, I think, 'Hmmmm, cool. Didn’t know that. That Nintendo fanboy and egomaniacal hermit really know their shit."
And to bring it back on topic:
Nope. :)
LOL!! I think that pretty much sums it up nicely :D
“I could see EA bundling all the online titles together under a single $20-25 fee – UO, E&B, MCO, Sims Online, and whatever else they have. Players might go for that if they would otherwise pay $13 a month just for The Sims Online.”
I don’t know if this would work. I’ve said before every person online and offline that I’ve talked to who’s into these games, gets into one game and thats it. Its the nature of these games as they are designed now. Their big time sinks that require the full attention of the player to keep the character moving forward. So outside of the occasional overlap when trying a new game out, they don’t seem to want to take away time from leveling their EQ,DAOC, or UO character among others.
Also has any online MM game just folded yet? Besides Meridian59 awhile ago. I mean AO is still going even with its horrible launch. I think Jumpgate is still up. Now whether thats because the people behind them have the cash to keep the game going or they somehow have been able to break even with their user base I don’t know. Maybe its still to early to see this happening yet.
When I talked with the EA online game people earlier this year, we discussed the ill-starred “platinum” plan they had tried to implement. That would have bundled all of the EA online stuff into one fat payment. The trouble was, they didn’t have enough content. UO and…what? UO 2? Cancelled. Motor City? Um, yeah. E&B and The Sims Online are supposed to, among other things, give them the content they need to consider the platinum plan once more. The thinking seems to be that UO will make money, being old, paid-for technology, The Sims will rake in cash like nobody’s business, and the others will hold their own or at least attract enough people who, while interested mainly in cars or space stuff, won’t mind spending an additional five bucks or whatever to have access to it all.
That’s the real goal: to get lots of people paying for games they won’t play. Fewer players (within limits, of course) means less server load, less need for expensive updates and monitoring, etc. So if you can get a bunch of people to, say, spend $20/month and only play one of the four or five games they get access to, you’re doing pretty well.
10six folded. Majestic folded, though it wasn’t really an MMOG. There are a bunch of first gen games either gone or hard to find, like Kingdom of Drakkar and the first Neverwinter Nights.
AO didn’t fold, but Funcom has had to lay off people and I believe they cancelled their second MMOG.
I guess to some extent the expense of running these games scales downward as the player base shrinks – you’re paying for less bandwidth, you can turn off a server or two, you need less customer support, etc. If it’s a small publisher behind the game, they may be willing to keep the game going even if there are only 10-20,000 players.
Fighting Legends folded. But then, unfortunately, it never really unfolded.
From various recent posts by Dave Long:
Well, clearly Jason, your mind is made up. You’d just ruin your own opinion by actually playing it. So keep that flame alive! Don’t play Age of Mythology! Stay in the know!
I just don’t get you, Mark. You complain about the fundamentals of just about every game or genre you play.
Your point (if you have one) isn’t a good one.
I don’t know why I bother, it’s like talking to a brick wall. . . . [I]t gets harder and harder to take the discussion seriously when you clearly have no idea whether the game in question really contains a ton of micromanagement of villagers or not.
Your posts show you’re more confident to sit behind your veil of righteousness.
Kevin Perry’s comment:
Dave Long wrote:
Thanks Derek. With the assault I’ve been under on these boards lately, you don’t know how much that one simple post meant to me.–Dave
AFAICT, the assaults have never been about your intelligence, Dave, which is more than adequately demonstrated by the post that Derek commented on.
Dave, you are one of the most intelligent, knowledgeable, and thoughtful posters on this board. Your posts are invariably worth reading, so keep up the good work. On the other hand, as indicated above, you don’t resist making personal attacks on other posters. In both of these respects, you are similar to, but not as bad as, the inimitable wumpus. You would probably feel less assaulted if you weren’t constantly firing shots across the bow yourself.
May I respectfully suggest: Any time you want to make a comment that could be construed as a personal attack, even if you believe you have been personally attacked first, think about it real hard. If you still want to make it, think about it some more. And if you still want to do it, think about how you love your children, think about how you wish there was peace and harmony in the world, don’t do it, and chalk it up as your boy scout deed for the day. Life is too short to spend it trading insults.
Group hug time, everyone…all together, now…
…STOP touching me, you freak! :D :D :D
Just wanted to add… if EA stuck with Ultima Online 2… they would have most likely had a hit moreso than with EnB. uhm…
etc
And, it seems to be more and more apparent that EA is still gearing up for that platinum package since I see where they are still adding content to Motor City online.
Maybe now they can finally release the Majestic GOTY edition for which I have been waiting with baited breath.
The flopping of Majestic put a real crimp in the platinum plan I think; that left them content-shy at a bad time. But it seems they are recovering from that fiasco.
I really hope games like E&B “stick,” because there is a niche for non-fantasy online games like this. Though it’s not the most scintillating thing out there most of the time, E&B has a big comfort zone and includes many of the “classic” MMORPG features without many of the ookie bits that so plague EverQuest IMO.
I found something interesting on their website. They have a character and ship creator that you can download. Apparently this lets you play with the character and ship creation process without buying the game. (obviously) I think this is an interesting way to pique people’s interest and try to get them to buy the game without resorting to having the client be a free download and having trial periods (like Jumpgate and Anarchy Online).
Well, the download completed while I wrote this, time to see how good a marketing tool it is…
[Update] - I created a character. Not bad, the voice-over that tells you what you can do and how to do it is pretty well done. There were two major things that I thought were lacking as far as functionality go: 1. There was no “Match the color of X component to the color of Y component” for either the character clothing or the ship painting, which made it kinda hard to create a consistent color scheme. 2. There was no temporary save function that you could use to have a restore point while painting things. (Kinda like the stats rolling save slot in Baldur’s Gate.) The way it is now, if you fubar something, you have to manually try to get it back the way it was.
As far as the how it stands up as a marketing tool, I think it falls a little bit short. It would have helped immensely to give some info about your character’s stats, such as starting money, basic ship configurations, etc. As it is, there’s not much compelling about what you end up with when you’re done other than “Hehe, my guy has purple eyes” or something like that. The ability to automatically export your character to the full version when you get it is a very nice touch though.
Either you’ve been eating worms and not brushing your teeth, or you meant “bated” breath.
Either you’ve been eating worms and not brushing your teeth, or you meant “bated” breath.[/quote]
Actually, both. Thanks for the correction. :)
I gave the Character/Ship creator a shot too. At 42MB is pretty darn hefty for what it lets you do…I was distinctly underwhelmed by it.
On the one hand, the characters look very cool once you create them, and you do get a fair number of different options, but not really enough options to ensure that you won’t look pretty darn similar to everybody else of your char type.
As far as the ship configurator goes, I was kind of shocked at how few options you really get.
Oh well.
Not like my wife and baby would be very happy if I was playin a MMORPG right now.
Agreed. You’re especially right about the d/l size and the rather low number of options. Oh well…