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agreed, servers are completely dead in the EU ........

man.. Seriously another failed mmo? It looked so fresh on paper though!

Originally posted by Vyeth

man.. Seriously another failed mmo? It looked so fresh on paper though!

Yup. But sad fact is that the OP is right.

I live in the EU territory where this game is now released and the servers are in fact dead.

I actually liked the game and it had some refreshing gameplay and some decent quests. Especially the mob AI was also very refreshing.

A game that had build up a pretty large fanbase over the years during development. A game wich had a good chance in making a good dent in the Niche market.

But screwed itself and the entire fanbase with the most horrendous and idiotic Publisher deals and IP ban schemes I have ever witnessed.

They completely obliterated the entire fanbase with that publisher deal announcement end last year.

And the current dead servers gives pretty much a clear sign what interest there is left in this game. As mind you that their own country (The Netherlands) is in this current released region as well.

I agree.

But I think "stillborn" would have been better than "failborn". Especially since the devs killed it at birth.

Originally posted by Neverknow

I agree.

But I think "stillborn" would have been better than "failborn". Especially since the devs killed it at birth.

No, the OP is clearly a genius when it comes to making up funny new names for things. Just look at his user name!

According to the forums, every MMOG has failed so I don't see how TCoS should be any different. All I ever play are 'failed' MMOG's.

Originally posted by Aganazer

Originally posted by Neverknow

I agree.

But I think "stillborn" would have been better than "failborn". Especially since the devs killed it at birth.

 

No, the OP is clearly a genius when it comes to making up funny new names for things. Just look at his user name!

According to the forums, every MMOG has failed so I don't see how TCoS should be any different. All I ever play are 'failed' MMOG's.

There's failure and then there's failure. Spellborn has successfully shot themselves in their own feet for years now.

Every release? Please. Only if you measure any recent release to WoW is it a failure which way too many people do. LotrO, WAR and even Conan are either doing great or filling it's niche. Tabula Rasa is only a failure in the apple of NCsoft's eye..

But anyway the point being Spellborn was and still is a tough sell. Nobody wants to sell it and nobody wants to play it, for long. I can't pinpoint why exactly.

Basically, it goes a bit like this:

New Player logs on, sees virtually no people. After the recent years, this rings a ton of alarm bells.... too many have died, too many games never got out of their release.

New Player tries the game a bit, stumbles a bit initially at the rather complex combat, which puts him or her slightly out of their comfort zone. Its something new alright... and its somewhat dead...

Then New Player finds out large parts of the game are the same old same old. Which is comforting on one hand, as New Player can play the game similar to their old questgrinder, but is somewhat boring.

Conclusion: New Player wonders why he should play an empty game that he or she would have to invest a modicum of effort in order to grasp fully... when it may not survive the next year at all.

People do not want to get "stuck" with stillborn games. A lot of people are afraid or discomforted by the prospect of playing a game that "dies".

So they go back to their old one for a sense of security.

TCoS has done nothing to raise interest much, it has done a lot of crappy publishing decisions, and without a minimum critical mass of players, people will leave even if the game is great, because its already dead.

People go where people are. Thats why some game has 12 Million, and this one probably barely 12k.

Originally posted by Khaunshar

TCoS has done nothing to raise interest much, it has done a lot of crappy publishing decisions, and without a minimum critical mass of players, people will leave even if the game is great, because its already dead.

That has been the course of this game in Europe thusfar. The game still has to be launched in North America, Korea and Japan. When for some reason the game does well in any of those territories and the game survives its first year there might be hope for a relaunch of the game over here. So I wont completely loose sight of this game and will check in a year or so.

P.S. the title of this thread sucks.

lol this game launched? i totally forgot it existed

Originally posted by Delanor

 

P.S. the title of this thread sucks.

I find it rather humorous considering the circumstances. 

A bit of a shame, too many damn games are failing limiting the market that we all want to play in (MMOs). I had some interest in the game until the IP debacle. I laughed when I saw that and thought, hmm that may kill the game.  However its still a shame that so many games are going down in flames due to the ignorance of either the developing company's decisions or the fact that these idiotic publishing companies think they can work insanely good deals and expect a game to survive.

Originally posted by Sortran

However its still a shame that so many games are going down in flames due to the ignorance of either the developing company's decisions or the fact that these idiotic publishing companies think they can work insanely good deals and expect a game to survive.

Or both. It is as usually in IT business, management has no idea about the product they are supposed to sell, probably half of them haven't been playing any game since they were still in diapers. Either that, or they are really stupid to come up with things like this IP ban decision - if they asked community, most people would have told them it is very bad idea.

The shame with Spellborn is that they actually had a good niche product, with an interesting combat system, that ofc wouldn't be good for everyone, but offers a good fresh approach, and the game WORKS ...  there are bugs and all just like in every other game, but the game is something that could be released as a rather solid niche product.

And then they go and shoot themselves in the foot with crappy business decisions.

Screwing up something that could be good is even worse than screwing up something that has no perspective anyway.

Yeah, its a real tragedy to see so many good MMOs, in principle, go down in flames because they make stupid, utterly avoidable mistakes or get shot to hell by outside sources (publisher, marketing or external pressure to make bad cuts).

By now, I think at least 500k WoW players just play it because there frankly are no alternatives left that arent a total clusterfuck, or in the process of getting ruined by their own developers trying to scramble as much cash as they can due to having failed in the first place.

Conan, Chronicles, Warhammer, to a lesser degree Mines of Moria, Tabula Rasa , Vanguard and some more, the last years were full of promising games.

And people dont go back to EQ2 or even further back in time in this business. Somebody just make a decent game already, and dont get all afraid because WoW is announcing another expansion in 2 years. As WotLK shows, they fail too.

Originally posted by Alengwan 

Or both. It is as usually in IT business, management has no idea about the product they are supposed to sell, probably half of them haven't been playing any game since they were still in diapers. Either that, or they are really stupid to come up with things like this IP ban decision - if they asked community, most people would have told them it is very bad idea.

Actually, a few months before anything was know about any IP blocking the communinity forewarned them not to do anything stupid like that, but of course the deals were already made and SIL just kept silent about it till about a month before release.

As they also kept silent about what deals they had actually made with the publishers till a week before release when the community had to find out the game was not going to be released to the whole of Europe and Acclaim had received distribution rights to more than half of European countries, thus splitting the community even further than anticipated.

As they also kept silent when a few months before release some fans petitioned not to use GG. Fans had to find out during OB that suddenly GG was installed on their PC.

To me that proves they knew damned well what they were doing. But what were they thinking?

I respect all of your opinions that there should not be an IP block but I have 2 comments and I hope they get rid of it.

1.) There is a whole world out there so you can make new guildie friends until fiscal reality hits.

2.) The free market is a very powerful thing and if there is not a big enough group playing in Germany and the enviorns then what will eventually happen is that it will not be profitable and there will HAVE to be mergers between companies. Then there will not be anymore blocks. I am reasonably certain us Americans will hold down the fort until (and if) that  happens.

The Free Market works about as reliably as anarchy.

As we have seen in the past years, MMOs can just die and be shut down actually quite easily. You dont seem to realize that its far more likely for a company with a single game, which goes bust, to just go down the drain and the game with them, than it is they get their act together... because frankly, there are virtually no examples in the market of such a thing making sense at all.

There is one single shining example of a bad game turning it around, that is Anarchy Online. All others that didnt go down the drain barely managed to hold on and stop the player hemorrhaging, but no game really was able, as far as I know, to turn things around into a success.

If TCoS does not succeed, more likely than not, its gone. Which, if I may say so, would be a shame.

Originally posted by Khaunshar

As we have seen in the past years, MMOs can just die and be shut down actually quite easily.

Besides Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa (both NCSoft games) what other MMOG's have been shut down?

Originally posted by Aganazer

Originally posted by Khaunshar

As we have seen in the past years, MMOs can just die and be shut down actually quite easily.

 

Besides Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa (both NCSoft games) what other MMOG's have been shut down?

i bet he thought that every mmo that is flamed by the few 2k people on this forum are doomed to die lol noobs these days sigh sigh the forum community of a mmo is not even 90-95% of most mmos

Originally posted by Aganazer

Originally posted by Khaunshar

As we have seen in the past years, MMOs can just die and be shut down actually quite easily.

 

Besides Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa (both NCSoft games) what other MMOG's have been shut down?

Asherons Call2 comes to mind. Good game, doomed from the start by Turbine and Microsofts continued blunders.  I seriously doubt there will be an Asherons Call 3 at this point.

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by Aganazer

Originally posted by Khaunshar

As we have seen in the past years, MMOs can just die and be shut down actually quite easily.

 

Besides Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa (both NCSoft games) what other MMOG's have been shut down?

 

Asherons Call2 comes to mind. Good game, doomed from the start by Turbine and Microsofts continued blunders.  I seriously doubt there will be an Asherons Call 3 at this point.

Add EnB and DnL

Motor City Online

I guess there are quite a few.

Originally posted by Aganazer

Originally posted by Khaunshar

As we have seen in the past years, MMOs can just die and be shut down actually quite easily.

 

Besides Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa (both NCSoft games) what other MMOG's have been shut down?

Too many for me to list, but I'll do one better.  Here's a page dedicated to dead mmog's:

http://www.gameogre.com/mmograveyard.htm

There used to be a string of cancelled games listed on the game list here on this site, but the new format isn't displaying properly for me.

As the people above me (minus the "smart" guy only knowing of AA and TR) have helpfully pointed out, there have been more.

Additionally, some games were just left alone (SotNW, 9Dragons) by their western publishers and stopped getting any further development, leading to a de facto death since people left, or migrated to different publishers to get new patches, content etc.

Basically, they arent technically dead, but in stasis since not deemed worthy of any further resources, which is pretty much the same as shutting down servers in my opinion.

Its not just NCSoft, I am afraid. And TCoS is just another of these relatively unknown, small-scale games not high on anyone importants priority list (unlike for example WAR, which ll probably get funded right onto its death day simply because its small change for EA)