38 Studios
- Thread starter Tmac
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Utnayan
F16 patrolling Rajaah until he plays DS3
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Unfortunately it would have still used my Bandwidth.
It wouldn't be worth that to download judged from that video. If I wanted to play WoW, I would play WoW.
Tearofsoul
Ancient MMO noob
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How tragic that Curt really did give up his "kingdom" for a shitty WoW clone. I can see throwing caution to the wind for something you truly believe to be special, but for a copycat? Wow...
Tmac
Adventurer
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In my entire life, I've played one game because of its lore (SWG) and it wasn't much more than a blip in my MMO history. So, yeah, making an argument that good lord = good game is vapid and insulting. It's the only thing that bugs me about Moorgard's posts.
"Play my game! It's got a good story!"
"No thanks bro, I got this book thingy over here..."
Soygen
The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
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Well at least we know why they didn't want to show anything to us. We'd already seen it several times for the last 9 years.
Tmac
Adventurer
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Utnayan
F16 patrolling Rajaah until he plays DS3
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I totally agree.
You know what the catcher is too, is if there is a game with a lot of lore and history, the IP itself has usually been around for ages. I think the only time this happened from a different angle was with EverQuest, and even then, the lore was just an after thought but after a small period of time it * Really * caught on. I am not so sure that the best Lore can even be planned out like that any more in the MMORPG space. Give the players a giant sand box, set the frame work, and let the players run with it. If it gets too far out of whack, bring it back to where that imaginary box is with an expansion.
I would love to read an interview with the original CEO (Brett Close) to find out what he saw and why he left but he seemed like one of the "Good CEO's" and probably wouldn't talk shit about his former position.
I think LOTRO, SWTOR, and Warhammer Online have all proven that having a rich and killer lore background does not equate to a very good game.
Warhammer Online especially pisses me off as all they had to do is make the game dark and gothic from the perspective of Gotrek and Felix and it'd have been awesome fun. Instead they opted for the PG-13 vanilla version, which we already have since Warcraft is essentially cut and pasted from Warhammer.
As many good, struggling indy writers as there are on Amazon and other venues, I think it'd be fairly easy to hire one, vet his work, and just pay him pennies with future book rights to create your backstory and lore *after* your game has been designed, built, and tested with a generic fantasy foundation on top. Writing is the easiest part of the equation.
Warhammer Online especially pisses me off as all they had to do is make the game dark and gothic from the perspective of Gotrek and Felix and it'd have been awesome fun. Instead they opted for the PG-13 vanilla version, which we already have since Warcraft is essentially cut and pasted from Warhammer.
As many good, struggling indy writers as there are on Amazon and other venues, I think it'd be fairly easy to hire one, vet his work, and just pay him pennies with future book rights to create your backstory and lore *after* your game has been designed, built, and tested with a generic fantasy foundation on top. Writing is the easiest part of the equation.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Lotro is a decent game (that also is profitable) that does a pretty good job of telling stories and tying it to the existing lore. I'm not even a Tolkien fan and I enjoy it. WAR's lore was one of it's best points, loved the orcs and goblins, it was the game itself that screwed up. Same with SWTOR.
What good lore (established previously in other media) does is help sell more boxes to players that wouldn't normally give the game a second look. Gameplay is the most important thing, but if you also have established lore, then you can bring people to the game that normally wouldn't play.
The Star Trek mmo has a ton of players who like that game that have never played any other mmo. That helps them be successful, if they had to rely strictly on their gameplay it might have shut down by now. Personally, I thought the game was garbage at release, but I hear it is better now. The game has a fanbase that helps carry it in spite of it's issues, the lore has a lot to do with that.
KoA's lore didn't have an established audience before the game launched, so it really had no value except maybe in the long term.
What good lore (established previously in other media) does is help sell more boxes to players that wouldn't normally give the game a second look. Gameplay is the most important thing, but if you also have established lore, then you can bring people to the game that normally wouldn't play.
The Star Trek mmo has a ton of players who like that game that have never played any other mmo. That helps them be successful, if they had to rely strictly on their gameplay it might have shut down by now. Personally, I thought the game was garbage at release, but I hear it is better now. The game has a fanbase that helps carry it in spite of it's issues, the lore has a lot to do with that.
KoA's lore didn't have an established audience before the game launched, so it really had no value except maybe in the long term.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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People like to get hyperbolic. Almost all the "failed" mmos, both made decent cash, and often have at least a few groundbreaking game features that could/should be explored more.
I mean if Cryptic wasn't making money, they wouldn't keep releasing these games. Sure, "failed to meet projections" happens alot.
I can only really think of like 2 or 3 really truly failed mmos. APB and this.
And yes writing is by far the easiest thing. Although, implementing it INTO the game is another matter entirely. Look at Rift. somehow that game seems to have failed at connecting the lore with the player largely.
I wonder, do the players still playing, now feel like the story has resonated, and connected with them?
I mean if Cryptic wasn't making money, they wouldn't keep releasing these games. Sure, "failed to meet projections" happens alot.
I can only really think of like 2 or 3 really truly failed mmos. APB and this.
And yes writing is by far the easiest thing. Although, implementing it INTO the game is another matter entirely. Look at Rift. somehow that game seems to have failed at connecting the lore with the player largely.
I wonder, do the players still playing, now feel like the story has resonated, and connected with them?
Randin
Trakanon Raider
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What really depresses me about warhammer, is that what you describe was basically what the previous Warhammer Online developer was trying to make, before the license got yanked and given to Mythic. They were making this dark gritty sandbox game, that basically read as though they were trying to translate the pen and paper WHRPG into an MMO; then it got canceled, and we got Mythic's lackluster take on it. The character art kinda sucked, but I still would've loved to have seen that one see the light of day.
Anyone know how the licensing works on the Warhammer fantasy setting? Can someone else make a Warhammer fastasy MMO or is that off the table now thanks to Mythic? Warhammer 40k I imagine is different since someone else was doing that.
The what-ifs about Warhammer Online can drive you insane. It's insane that they fucked it up in the first place. An aquarium full of manatees couldn't fuck up a Warhammer MMO.
moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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Are you kidding? Any MMO that has to completely scrap their subscription model because they can't compete with an almost 10 year old game is a failed MMO. I highly doubt that DCUO, WAR, LOTRO, SWTOR, TERA, TSW and whatever else planned to do as horribly as they did in their long-term subscription numbers. I don't think WAR, LOTRO, DCUO and SWTOR were approved just to make "decent cash", they were intended to be cash cows because investors saw what WoW did and assumed that popular IP's could do even better.
Except for Rift, Rift wanted to be a mediocre game from the start.
Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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Well to begin with, most of us don't have the same definition of failure that Studios or Investors do. It might be acceptable to investors to release, lose most/all of their subs, go F2P after shitting bricks and then maybe (maybe!) breaking even years down the road...but I don't think that it is for most of us. Being completely unable to stick to a subscription model post-release when your game was designed with that in mind and having to change to F2P out of desperation does, to me, indicate a failed MMO. I don't really care if a game then is capable of limping around for several years and is successful enough (lol) that they don't have to pull the plug outright.
I find it somewhat sad for the genre as a whole that studios can actually keep churning out crappy unfinished games and that so many players throw money at them blindly. Is it any wonder that we're inundated with mediocre MMO after mediocre MMO?
As far as making money goes, what is their revenue versus profit? Take Cryptic for example: they had 2 years (at least) of reported losses in the millions before Atari sold them off. I'm sure Atari ate some amount of loss, and PW is taking a risk with backing them for NW. And PW is a great example, as is a company like EA: they can probably eat more loss than 38S ever could have and stomach some bad games, all while gambling that some of them will make a profit.
Tabula Rasa? AC2? Hellgate? (arguable by genre I suppose) D&L? Games like Stargate Worlds that never got out of development? WHO, what aren't they like down to 3 servers or something now? The Matrix Online?