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Brenelael
 Elite Member
Joined: 10/19/06
Pointing out the Obvious to the Oblivious since 2006 |
11/24/08 9:47:03 AM#61
Originally posted by Bladin So I take it your honeymoon with WAR is over? Not to long ago you were talking it up like it was the cure for cancer or something like that. You want to point the "fanboy" finger at others you should be careful as I and I'm sure a lot of others remember not to long ago when you were the biggest WAR fanboy on this site. Not trying to insult you just stating my opinion on the subject. Nothing you say or do is going to stop rampant fanboyism as it's been around longer than games have. You better just get used to it as it's not going anywhere.
Bren while(horse==dead) |
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11/24/08 10:35:38 AM#62
Hm, Bren's right don't give out advice if you're not going to follow it yourself. I forgot; you were a huge WAR fan. |
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Originally posted by PatchDay
The problem with WAR, is not the game, it's nothing that could have been predicted. Empty servers. Barren Areas. Quiet community.
Beta was more populated, than release. That's what killed the game for me. I'll say it again, the reason i quit war, and why the community is generally leaving WAR, is because the game was designed for more people in each area, than what the servers upon release can support. And to add insult to injury, there were too many servers. It's a server/launch problem, admittedly a major major one. But the actual game was fun enough(i played in beta btw, and it's why i was so surprised it was like it was at release)
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11/24/08 12:52:51 PM#64
just like to say: prior to wow you had UO, EQ1, SWG, and a few other games. EQ1 boasted almost 500k players, SWG 350k. hardly desolate in the mmorpg world prior to wow, and not all asians.
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Wizardry
 Advanced Member
Joined: 8/27/04
Remove quests,bosses and trigger them back in is called Dynamic events now?lol..i think not. |
11/25/08 5:00:27 PM#65
Originally posted by Bladin Heres the thing. Theres a big difference between having a few bugs, and being broken/empty. Let's look at wow. Servers were overcrowded, not a issue with the game The server system wasn't setup for that many people, a issue with the servers. A few bugged quests, to be expected A few bugged abilities, again to be expected.
Then let's look at AoC Servers crashed a lot, but since they instanced zones each instance crashed seperately hence leaving a illusion of solidarity. It's a release problem. Completely worthless classes, and almost every feat in the "talent trees" broken. Not acceptable. BArren levels which required grinding to get through. COMPLETELY UNTESTED/BALANCED CRAFTING SYSTEM. Utterly trashy and shitty itemization system. Bugged instances Terrible respawn times on quest mobs. No PvP systems in place(acceptable with wow, since it had a decent pve system). But AoCs PvE was terrible and broken also. Terrible world design. Huge Memory leaks.
Can you honestly say that AoC was okay to release like that? Just because of patches. It's understandable to release with some bugs, perhaps server issues. But the game itself should be whole and playable, with the majority in and working.(as wow was, again judging by the current mmorpg population, nobody expected wow to be as big of a hit as it was).
I'll say it again. Us as gamers don't have to accept crappy releases, and poor games. If developers can't cut the game on their budget. It's not our fault, and they deserve to fail. We don't NEED to put up with it. And look at WAR and AoCs floundering, Vanguards failure, etc etc. It's all proof of this. Well first of all you can not compare a VERY low tech game like WOW that copied Everquest to the tee.Therefore they had the game template no thinking there,then they used low tech,they would be total noobs to mess that up,so they had no excuses if they did botch it up. AOC tried a slightly different approach and designed there own game template ,they did not outright copy another game.They have a much higher tech,that means tweaking to get it runnable for many. I think the fact that so many players ripped through 50-60 levels so fast shows the game was ready,there is no doubt about it.First of all if it was not, then why the heck did so many power level so fast?would they not just leave the game if it was in such bad shape? Other factors are that WOW had only ONE game to compete with at there release unlike nowadays there are players that have a lot more gaming knowledge and far too many games to choose from.Also when mentioning about the WOW ordeal,you seem to forget that you already paid them once so adding it in later and charging you again is not good.It would not have hurt them back in the day because fans were not crying for more content in games and different types of games,they were all happy with the EQ clones.
It is a MUCH different world out there amongst MMORPG gamers than when WOW launched,it is like night and day.If WOW released today,everyone would be saying "WTF another Everquest clone"we need that like we need a hole in the head.They were lucky to get away with that back in the day. http://www.youtube.com/user/Napolianboo#p/u/15/rCYLLQCNc1w |
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11/25/08 6:51:00 PM#66
Originally posted by Bladin
The problem with WAR, is not the game, it's nothing that could have been predicted. Empty servers. Barren Areas. Quiet community.
Beta was more populated, than release. That's what killed the game for me. I'll say it again, the reason i quit war, and why the community is generally leaving WAR, is because the game was designed for more people in each area, than what the servers upon release can support. And to add insult to injury, there were too many servers. It's a server/launch problem, admittedly a major major one. But the actual game was fun enough(i played in beta btw, and it's why i was so surprised it was like it was at release)
Okay fair enough. I think I'm clear now on that part of the topic. I thought you were saying fanboi's shouldnt even try WAR to begin with. It appears I was not clear on that point at all
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Originally posted by Wizardry
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Zorgo
 Hard Core Member
Joined: 12/05/05
Who did wrong? The advertiser hired to sell the game or the consumer who put faith in advertising? |
11/25/08 7:39:34 PM#68
Here's my take. In this climate of mmo's I think reality will be the continued cycle of unfinished games. Why? The fact is that a development team generally speaking is not holding the purse strings. This means that the developers have to continually politic and shmooz the accountants to get more money to finish their game before release. This is a very very difficult sale. Let's say, taking an arbitrary number, that you know it will take 30 million dollars to fully polish your game. Would it be easier to convince the money holders 30 million now, all now. Or 15 million now, release game, game does well, invest more + the added bonus of sub $. If you were investing in a game, would you be more willing to lose 30 million or 15 million? That's the question. The profit margin is potentially the same. A fully polished game on release is a huge huge huge amount of money to gamble. No one knows what subscription numbers will be on release no matter how polished the game is. IMO, WAR is every bit as polished as WoW was on release, and judging by the hype and fanboism, it would have been very difficult for an investor to NOT see $$$$$ around the corner. Although WAR is doing well, it certainly isn't anywhere near the numbers hype would have had us believe it would be. How does that make an investor feel the next time they are asked for all the money up front? A little itchy to say the least. And it isn't just money it is also TIME. How much time has been invested in developing these 'unfinished' games? Vanguard was like 5 years. WAR like 3 years. AoC, what 3 to 5 years? dunno. Each of these games should have had more time to finish. Some say another 6 months or year, in VG's case it probably could have taken 2 or 3 years more, as it is still got huge big holes in it. So you also have to convince them to give you more money and that it could be 6, 7 years, maybe even a decade before they see any return on that initial investment. Tell me, what do you think the gaming business atmosphere will be like in 2018. If you think you can predict business trends in 'luxury' sales that far into the future you'd be crazy. And the investor would think you would be too. Therefore: Developers have a different tact. It is much easier to get enough money to get the game started, release it and then you have not only revenue coming in, but you can use those sub numbers (if they are good - and face it; the devs all think their game will do well) to get more financing. This is a golden solution for the people gambling their money on an unknown. They can invest a little money with the possibility of high returns while lowering the risk of losing the entire sum. --------- Now that being said; what investors have to become convinced of is that their risk of the game failing exponentially rises in relation to how polished the game is at release. But apparently, this isn't panning out in reality. The bean counters rarely care whether the devs are producing quality work. They are concerned with profitable work. So...from the gamers perspective? AoC and WAR may be a huge let down. But from the bean counters perspective, they have hundreds of thousands of people giving them 15 bucks a month. Gamers know that those could be millions of subs each month, if only the games were polished. But how do you convince the person giving up the cash that they are 'guarenteed' millions of subs if they just put up more money up front. If I had someone walk into my office and say, "I know for a fact that if you give me 30 million dollars now, I can capture as many subs as WoW", oh yeah, but youll have to wait 10 years". I would laugh them out of the office or they'd have to show me some EXTREMELY good data to prove their case. On the other hand, if they said, "I believe we have a game that could capture wow sub numbers, give me 10 million now, in 2 years we will release the 'core' game, and then you can see what you are investing in". MUCH easier to swallow. But I tell you what, if you are willing, give ME 30 million dollars. I guarentee you that in 10 years I will give you a fully polished game that will capture WoW subs. PM me your email and we can get the ball rolling. Not convinced? Now you know why we get unfinished games on release.
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11/25/08 7:39:55 PM#69
yeah but if you were around of the WoW launch it wasnt the best launch, they still have to put out alot of patches and updates to improve there mistakes. if you look at the popuation of WoW in its first months it was quite small compared to now but after the first few patches the population increased. Played: Archlord, GW, RFO, Knight Online, Silkroad, WoW, Rappelz, shaiya, Flyff, Fury, Space Cowboy, Perfect World Beta, Rakion, sword of the new world, Linage 1 and 2, Savage 1
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Originally posted by skychain
The thing about wows release, was the servers were terribly laggy, but the actual game was there, it worked, it was A LOT of FUN. Despite the lag situation. The actual game itself was able to hold the population despite the lag issues. Why are there games with tons less lag on release, but hold far less retention?
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11/25/08 8:47:02 PM#71
I think the most important thing to consider here as to why MMOs launch the way they do is RETURN ON INVESTMENT. MMOs naturally have a much longer development cycle than any single player title (unless you're Valve). Five years is about the average development time when you consider the pre-production stage; this is the stage no one ever hears about, because usually the title wont be announced until a quarter of the way into production (Pre-alpha - Alpha) and sometimes later. At the very least, it costs about 20 million dollars (and usually much more than that) to fund an entire MMO development cycle, unless of course you're an independent company who has very few employees with very few expenses. Game development companies are either funded through a publisher, (usually publisher, or both) a 3rd party investor (Venture Capital, Seed, Angel), and in combination with bits of revenue generated from previous games(if previous games exist). When thinking about revenue generated from previous games, we have to take into account for the publisher or investor (or both) cut on profits; this usually leaves the developer with a lot less than you would think.
So, to sum this up -- developers usually don't have a choice of when to release their game; the people who paid upfront to have this game developed want their return on investment as soon as possible. So why don't these influence pedallers (investors publishers) allow developers to continue developing until the game is content and feature complete? It's likely that waiting until the game is complete will increase profits gained over time, but they've (the investors, publishers) already spent millions of dollars on the project, and likely don't want to cough up more than they absolutely need to, so they rely on the ability to patch the game; the game launches, people buy it, and some people resubscribe = revenue generated. This eases the pain on the money suppliers, and even if the game releases too early and a portion of consumers decide not to resubscribe due to imperfections, the game in most cases will still sustain a decently sized player base to where eventually, profit is made. Examples: AoC Warhammer HellGate London EQ2 WoW
and the list goes on, just try not to jump to conclusions that it's always the developers fault, because in most cases it's not at all.
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Zorgo
Hard Core Member
Joined: 12/05/05
Who did wrong? The advertiser hired to sell the game or the consumer who put faith in advertising? |
11/26/08 1:05:53 PM#72
Originally posted by Bladin
Exactly. I had a brand new Porche. It was a great car. It didn't have a steering wheel though. But just because it was undrivable didn't make it a bad car. The car was all still there, you just couldn't drive it. I see all these other people driving their cars the day they bought them, but not me - who cares though the car is still great. -------------------- This is simply ludicrous. Who cares which part of the Blizzard operation screwed up. Just because the game was there and 'finished' as you say didn't make the game any more playable between the queue and server issues. It is still a failure on the part of the business that brought you the game - just as you say 'unfinished' games are. If you can split hairs when it comes to WoW, then you see why fans of other games allow themselves to 'split hairs'. And just because your issue pisses you off, it doesn't mean you should gain control to decide what should piss off other gamers. They will split their hairs the way they choose, just as you have done. Its a free country. I'm sorry, I don't mind the 'unfinishedness' of games nearly as much as you do. Nothing you can say will ever convince me of it. I simply don't feel sorry enough for your bad experience to change the way I spend money and enjoy my time off. And you even point out that these 'unfinished' games are playable day 1 without the same server issues and queue issues WoW had. Y'know why? Because these companies learned from Blizzard's huge FAILURE at launch. I couldn't play WoW for 2 and a half weeks after release. And I had just paid them 50 bucks for the game and put my credit card in for 15 more bucks after my first month. I did not receive services I had paid for until 2 and a half weeks after I was suppose to get them. That is every single bit as valid an argument as yours. You don't just pay for a finished product, you pay for a playable product. Your paying for their servers too. And btw, I told you to wire me 30 million dollars and in ten years development time I'd give you a polished finished mmo. Haven't heard from you. Are you still skeptical you'd get your money back? It'd be polished. It'd be finished. So give me 30 million dollars. Or are you starting to understand why developers are having a hard time convincing their bean counters? |
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11/26/08 5:43:40 PM#73
I agree with the OP. I wish these new mmo's would quit shooting themselves in the foot. It's like the people at the top are completely clueless at the crap condition they are releasing their games. Either that or they know it's crap and are just hoping to sell boxes.
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Originally posted by Zorgo
Exactly. I had a brand new Porche. It was a great car. It didn't have a steering wheel though. But just because it was undrivable didn't make it a bad car. The car was all still there, you just couldn't drive it. I see all these other people driving their cars the day they bought them, but not me - who cares though the car is still great. -------------------- This is simply ludicrous. Who cares which part of the Blizzard operation screwed up. Just because the game was there and 'finished' as you say didn't make the game any more playable between the queue and server issues. It is still a failure on the part of the business that brought you the game - just as you say 'unfinished' games are. If you can split hairs when it comes to WoW, then you see why fans of other games allow themselves to 'split hairs'. And just because your issue pisses you off, it doesn't mean you should gain control to decide what should piss off other gamers. They will split their hairs the way they choose, just as you have done. Its a free country. I'm sorry, I don't mind the 'unfinishedness' of games nearly as much as you do. Nothing you can say will ever convince me of it. I simply don't feel sorry enough for your bad experience to change the way I spend money and enjoy my time off. And you even point out that these 'unfinished' games are playable day 1 without the same server issues and queue issues WoW had. Y'know why? Because these companies learned from Blizzard's huge FAILURE at launch. I couldn't play WoW for 2 and a half weeks after release. And I had just paid them 50 bucks for the game and put my credit card in for 15 more bucks after my first month. I did not receive services I had paid for until 2 and a half weeks after I was suppose to get them. That is every single bit as valid an argument as yours. You don't just pay for a finished product, you pay for a playable product. Your paying for their servers too. And btw, I told you to wire me 30 million dollars and in ten years development time I'd give you a polished finished mmo. Haven't heard from you. Are you still skeptical you'd get your money back? It'd be polished. It'd be finished. So give me 30 million dollars. Or are you starting to understand why developers are having a hard time convincing their bean counters? Then why don't they retain/grow from release? But rather lose more then 70-80% of their box sales in subscribers and then never grow?
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11/26/08 11:06:14 PM#75
I agree. Its all hype hype hype until it releases and then all fanbois defend their game. They spend so many years developing and the simplest things go wrong. See WAR.. world of scenarios online. No anti aliasing by default and horrible performance. |
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11/27/08 3:25:09 AM#76
Originally posted by Bladin
so what's your point? |
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