Hi Guys,

I think that the Hype around BP has attracted many people to the idea of a nice looking space game with some good mechanics, However i think few people have spent any time researching the company who made it or their relationship with the community..

Reakktor (or KK) is a Small german based company with an unknown number of staff, though most seem to belive fewer than 10 who previously developed a game Called Neocron.

Neocron was a beautifuly simple FFA PVP game that focused on twitch combat, Skill, Setups with a little bit of crafting and economics thrown in too.

The game was rather alot of fun but wasnt really developed on at all after release, Few of the bugs were fixed and rather than fixing exploitable issues they prefered just to ban players reported for exploiting.... Hmmm. Another problem was that many game ruining issues were never fixed ( such as FATAL Errors) which shut the game randomly at any time due to a mem leak... Sigh...

All in all Reakktor often come up with great ideas they just dont care about the community, Shut any forum thread that doesnt suit them, Ban from forums without warning, Ban from ingame without warning, and unfortunatly dont have the reasources to develop the quality projects many other companies are...

BP will not have the scope or complexity of eve, nor the money that JGE has either. Hopefully it will be a good game none the less but u must remember it will be low budget and low staffed :) 

Anyone who wants to know what Reakktor has put out in terms of games can look here.

As to the bannings, most people who get banned are doing something in violation of established rules. Usually, bannings are a good sign. Rather than meaning that the company doesn't care about the community, it seems, at least in my opinion, to be an indication of the exact opposite.

As to the development issues of Neocron, I never played, so I can't comment. Was this just opinion stated as fact, or are there published sources people can look to for verification of those allegations?

I highly doubt there is any published sources regarding Reakktors development issues since Neocron maybe had a few thousand subscribers at is peak at launch. It was an extremely small market niche market game making Eve look like WoW.

I will say though that I agree with the OP in every way. I played Neocron during beta and after launch for about a year or so total.

I won't slam BP as a game until I play it but I will warn people to be very cautious of Reakktor. Go look at the Neocron screenshots on their website and I promise you those are all photoshopped, the game does not and never will look like those screenshots.

I have to give Reakktor a chance with BP. One because I like what they have done so far with BP and two because of the recent issues with 10tacle if they don't have a hit or a good enough base to support further efforts I believe this will be the last of Reakktor. As far as I know this is there only project and if they don't support the MMO then it will die and that is a fact. Support and new content is a huge plus to any MMO and if they supply it and listen to the community it will do well.

I never played Neocron only because it isn't my type of game, I hope they are not false advertising their games. But with the in-game videos of BP it looks legit :) But I will hold any major critisms to myself until I play it.

God I hope Reaktor does a nice job with BP.

I wanna play it so bad i been crosseyed for months.

They should be able to get the job done on this one. Right now they are ready for beta its just they are waiting on a publisher. To me BP looks more complete in videos than JGE.

I think the OP brings up a good point. There is no doubt that Reakktor is a small studio and Black Prophecy is an indie project. I played Neocron for 18 months and can agree with him that there were a whole lot of technical issues that were never resolved. But I could also say that of many triple-A titles.

Neocron was flawed but still a whole lot of fun, extremely atmospheric, innovative in many respects, and generally ahead of its time. I’m definitely willing to give BP a chance and hope it attracts a larger playerbase than NC did which presumable would support a larger staff and greater attention to new content and bug squashing.
 

Originally posted by bmdevine

Anyone who wants to know what Reakktor has put out in terms of games can look here.

As to the bannings, most people who get banned are doing something in violation of established rules. Usually, bannings are a good sign. Rather than meaning that the company doesn't care about the community, it seems, at least in my opinion, to be an indication of the exact opposite.

As to the development issues of Neocron, I never played, so I can't comment. Was this just opinion stated as fact, or are there published sources people can look to for verification of those allegations?

First off, I wasn't aware that Reakktor had been around prior to Neocron, so I have to give you some credit on pointing out that link.

However I think the link does more to prove that Reakktor is not a very good developer than otherwise. I went to Gamerankings.com to look up reviews of the games Reakktor has made and this is what I found:

Subtrade - No reviews

Bermuda Syndrome - 68%

Piranha - No Reviews

Neocron - 67%

Neocron 2 - No reviews

The other Neocron 'games' - Totally unlisted, never even heard of them

You think banning paying customers is a good thing? Do you work for SoE by any chance? It has been my experience that when a company has to ban people just for criticizing their game it is because they can't find any other way to cope with the huge number of people flooding into their forums to tell them how horrible their game is. This was my experience with Age of Conan, Shadowbane, Dark and Light, pretty much everything made by SoE and several other games as well. Its never a good sign for the game when the developer has to "protect" themselves from their own customers by swinging the ban hammer every 30 seconds.

I have played Neocron and I CAN comment. It was crap. I didn't use the forums so I didn't see the bannings in question or the exploiters or other issues first hand. But I played the game itself long enough to confirm it was crap and came nowhere near to living up to the hype the deverlopers had boasted on their website. To verify this, you can read any of the reviews of the game posted on the net (the 67% rating on game rankings should give you an idea of what those reviews will have to say) or the numerous posts on this forum from people trying to warn others about how shady Reakktor is.

Originally posted by Raltar

You think banning paying customers is a good thing? Do you work for SoE by any chance?

It is when those customers are proven cheats and exploiters. You yourself state that they were.

Being a paying customer dosent give you the right to ignore the stated rules of play or use of the service.

I think abandoned is more accurate than not developed on. I played Neocron 2, 2.1 and 2.2. Best PvP game ever made but KK left it for dead as soon as they got the funds for Black Prophecy. There was no limit to the cheating and exploiting and KK would pick and choose who to ban and who not to. I lost many hundreds of thousands worth of credits and items due to a game flaw that was never mentioned and KKs response was "we are sorry but we cant help you." I had 5 accounts and many capped characters and i quit them all for this reason. I have no faith in KK no matter what the game. They cant even get the payment options figured out after years. Good luck to all who try this game but i will not.

I started play Neocron in September 2002 with Beta4 of Neocron 1, i still got it instaled and log in from time to time [servers for neocron 2.2 are up and free to play for ppl that ever got payed account - last checked like 2 months ago]. For me that was best MMO game ever. Yes it was full of bugs, slowly hammered out [not all of course], Yes engine was crappy and it was zone based not streaming world. Bans ... there were ppl banned from game but afaik for hax [speedhack / aimbot] and xploits [duping etc], but i dont remember any forum rage about someone banned without reason or something like that. In Neocron i experienced best PvP [involving player skill not only toon skills/stats] ever in MMO and near no grind to become "pvp vialable" [it was possible to lvl any class to pvp in less that 2 weeks of not so hardcore playing]. It was fun. I will try BP for sure, dunno if it will deliver i hope so bcuz Darkfall [i play it atm] is dying. For me next game to play is BP or MO [already got account but no comments due to NDA]

Would like to see Reakktor announce they gotten a publisher soon. I will feel pretty good about its chances of making it if it can happen this year.