Hero's Journey

Ok seriously folks. Enough with the vaporware discussion. On the official forums they've said they will likely resume marketing later this year. In another thread on here, there was a statement by Colony on their HeroEngine based MMO.  Unless Colony is LIEING, HeroEngine is completed in its entirety, and the GMs at Simu are working on the game itself now.

Now ask yourself this. Do you know anything about the Bioware or Colony mmos? No, you don't. You don't even have their titles. But you do know they've been planning these since they licensed the HeroEngine. Companies like that don't just sit around twiddling their thumbs until their engine is done, they do plan beforehand what they'll do with the game.  So they're just as late as Simu is. Nobody has a HeroEngine based game yet. Simu isn't late until they've been beaten to the punch. So you can just shut up.

Of course I don't know why I bothered writing this since most of you vaporware touters simply have an irrational hatred for the company, but this board looks really bad right now, when it shouldn't.

I don't think anyone has in "irrational" hatred of anyone. Maybe disappointment with these jokers is more like it. The game was suppose to release in 2005 and delayed and delayed. In an interview in PCGamer Jan 2007 they said they would be launching in late 07. The Simu guys said that, not anyone else.

So.....doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why there might be some backlash.

I have no vested interest in this game, I own no stocks in the company so I could care less when it launches, what bothers me is the outright dishonesty of the company. If they just say "guys we are launching in 2011", everything is fine in that case. But every year its the same thing, at the beginning they put out a brief article about how they will be launching that year, then fall off the radar for another year.

Really by the time they get around to launching, how interested is the market going to be in yet another fantasy based, level grinder anyway? They are missing or have missed their window of opportunity IMHO anyway. Thats why they shifted focus to marketing the engine instead. Anyone can plainly see the MMO market is over saturated and has one product dominating it.  As long as WoW sits on top of the MMO market like a gorilla sitting on a fly, its a bad time to launch an MMO.

They're concentrating more of the engine rather than the game, no news in over a year, nothing new.

Originally posted by Torak

I don't think anyone has in "irrational" hatred of anyone. Maybe disappointment with these jokers is more like it. The game was suppose to release in 2005 and delayed and delayed. In an interview in PCGamer Jan 2007 they said they would be launching in late 07. The Simu guys said that, not anyone else.

So.....doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why there might be some backlash.

I have no vested interest in this game, I own no stocks in the company so I could care less when it launches, what bothers me is the outright dishonesty of the company. If they just say "guys we are launching in 2011", everything is fine in that case. But every year its the same thing, at the beginning they put out a brief article about how they will be launching that year, then fall off the radar for another year.

Really by the time they get around to launching, how interested is the market going to be in yet another fantasy based, level grinder anyway? They are missing or have missed their window of opportunity IMHO anyway. Thats why they shifted focus to marketing the engine instead. Anyone can plainly see the MMO market is over saturated and has one product dominating it.  As long as WoW sits on top of the MMO market like a gorilla sitting on a fly, its a bad time to launch an MMO.

 

 

If you know Simmutronics then their approach will not be a surprise to yourself, the game will be released and is not vaporware. And yes they have delayed the programme around HJ as sometimes when in a business priorities change... But we can all understand that can't we !!

WoW is a good game pleasant and all that but it is basic in concept does not have that great a depth... lots of content no depth. The HJ franchise will still be fresh and based on the depth Simmu have implemented into their other products there will always be a market for their games.

Their is a need for challenging well designed games within the market and some of the excessive features within current MMOs make the genre un rewarding to play. A step back to move forward will show some of the upcoming sandbox releases garner enough of a user base to make them profitable.

A lot of the generic MMOs being released will eat away at WOWs user base as well as the fact that people are now running up their own WOW servers and playing for free in their thousands , I can see its slow demise.

All in all HJ will always have a market.

Yes it is. And how many more years of nothing will it take to convince you?

Dishonesty? If you payed attention to the official forums you'd see they've been pleanty honest. They said right out that their schedule was pushed back a good 6 months by the HeroEngine licensing (which, again, if you pay attention to the official forums, is DONE. They're working on the game itself now)

Delays aren't lies. Delays are just that, delays. Was Working Designs lieing when they delayed Lunar for a year and a half? No, they were kicking ass and reducing the save time/memory usage by 90%. Was Nintendo lieing when they delayed Twilight Princess? No. They announced their delays. Simu announced their delays too, but only to the people who actually pay attention to what they have to say. They aren't going to hold a press conference over it since we already know about it. Be reasonable.

They've missed their window? How so? Name one good MMO that's come out in the past 2 years.  Seriously, the best I can find is Dream of Mirror Online and that's an asian import so I'm bound to get bored of that real soon.

Edit: I've looked at every MMO in development on this site. HJ has no competition at all. Warhammer Online is WoW 2.0. Age of Conan looks like a MUD, complete with MUD classes and MUD races. Chronicles of Spellborn has some of the worst ideas I've ever seen. The rest are either complete crap, Korean, or both. The "Window of opportunity" is wide open. Hell, it's not even a window. It's a massive gaping HOLE that only they can fill and they know it.

They jumped the gun on marketing. That's all.

And Amathe, do you really think anyone takes you seriously? Come on. (By the way, Age of Conan was originally scheduled for 2006. Go troll over there.)

Where's my animated gif of the dead horse being beaten..... This'll have to do!

this is the crysis of mmorpgs

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Originally posted by HJ-DEZORIN
Where's my animated gif of the dead horse being beaten..... This'll have to do!

 
 
 
 

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See - even the HJ staff admit the game is a dead horse :)

Okay all kidding aside - will HJ release before any of the other companies using the engine?

Amathe - so they missed their targetted release date - it happens. If the game never gets released - whats the worst consequence - my hopes get dashed. Big deal - I think your crusade to save us from ourselves is completely pointless and a waste of time you could be using to make an actual contribution to something meaningful.

Simu could have prevented the whole vaporware debate by refusing to give a release date and just saying it will be done when its ready.