Originally posted by BlackUhuru


The reason why in the last 8 years no one can seem to make a good sandbox game is because they have no idea what there doing.
 

This is true, yes on the creative side, but even more so on the business side.  It's like all the would-be developers don't realize just how difficult, time-consuming, and costly MMO's are to make.  In this case, the vision and scope of the game far outreached whats its business and finances could provide and there's no one to blame for that but themselves.

Saddened, but highly expected.  I was fortunate enough to play this in beta without purchasing it, and man did it run poorly.  It was so poorly optimized and just seemed to be in such a pre-release state, even very close to actual release.  The concept was good, however once you actually played the game you quicly realized that concept was not properly developed.  There was one thing about the game, and I even saved the files; the music was great.  I had read the music was made by local Bulgarian drum and bass producers, it was good and actually fit the game well.  I hope the developers learned from this and wish them the best in future endeavors.

Originally posted by reignjuste

That game had the worst beta i had ever played.

Im not surprised they are shutting down the servers the game was pure garbage.

Pretty harsh way of putting it, when the issue was that it was severely underfunded.  Least they tried, I guess.

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Originally posted by Arquiteto
Bulgarian developer Masthead Studios announced earlier today that they're shutting down the servers for their post-apocalyptic sandbox MMO Earthrise.
 
"There is a huge interest in high quality open world sandbox MMORPGs, unfortunately the big publishers do not show any interest in the genre."

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Huge interest, really?

If you can't treat your game as a business, you do not deserve to be on the market.

Originally posted by Gdemami

 

Huge interest, really?

If you can't treat your game as a business, you do not deserve to be on the market.

Huge interest in a good properly funded sandbox MMO?  Yeah definately.  Obviously.  Not sure why some of you are so against the idea that you can't even see that.

This was predictable sadly to say....i bought the game and play'd it for like a week at most, empty world and very poor client performance ruined this game, even wen they waived the fees teh game was totaly dead, thats to bad cuz the game add the foundations to be a good sandbox. Some other company should pick up this title really, polish the engine and realease it with another name or something =)

Well all EarthRise refugees should now wait for The Repopulation, thats the closest title out there  wich resembles EarthRise...

Originally posted by Vhaln

Originally posted by Gdemami

Huge interest, really?

If you can't treat your game as a business, you do not deserve to be on the market.

Huge interest in a good properly funded sandbox MMO?  Yeah definately.  Obviously.  Not sure why some of you are so against the idea that you can't even see that.

No one said they were against it. However, if you have numbers to support such a statement, then definitely share them because no one else seems willing to.

And to think, these guys were contracted to help make the Interplay Fallout MMO....

i predicted this when the game was 1 month out, i was right, haha

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Vhaln

Originally posted by Gdemami

Huge interest, really?

If you can't treat your game as a business, you do not deserve to be on the market.

Huge interest in a good properly funded sandbox MMO?  Yeah definately.  Obviously.  Not sure why some of you are so against the idea that you can't even see that.

No one said they were against it. However, if you have numbers to support such a statement, then definitely share them because no one else seems willing to.

What kind of numbers could I possibly have?  Just an overwhelming amount of evidence, from people talking on forums, to the popularity of singleplayer sandbox games.  It might be debatable exactly how well they'd do, compared to most themeparks - possibly even better, but who knows, since not a single AAA sandbox MMO has been made, since WoW - but the idea that such a game couldn't even be popular at all just strikes me as absurd.

Quite a sad and heartfelt statement from Masthead, and so poignant too. Its so sad to see these daring devs fall flat on their ass, even if they had no right charging money for their 'product'. Despite how buggy Earthrise was, i spent a good month having actual FUN in the game with my guild, working towards basic goals and EXPLORING an open sandbox world. I cannot name one other MMO in the last 5 years i spent more than a month playing. So, another one bites the dust, and many more to come so long as this market is dominated by 13 year old turds and their parents credit cards (although that isn't fair, i was about 13 when i fell in love with my first sandbox RPG). 

Ah that is too bad. . I was sort of hoping to hear some good things about Earthrise. . it was one that had a lot of elements that I love.  The implementation didn't seem right though.  Sad to see.

Originally posted by Vhaln

 

 

What kind of numbers could I possibly have?  Just an overwhelming amount of evidence, from people talking on forums, to the popularity of singleplayer sandbox games.  It might be debatable exactly how well they'd do, compared to most themeparks - possibly even better, but who knows, since not a single AAA sandbox MMO has been made, since WoW - but the idea that such a game couldn't even be popular at all just strikes me as absurd.

 

LOL .. so you have nothing but guesses. Forums? That represents a very small minority of the market.

Until a) there is a marketing report (like those from newzoo) which quantities the numbers, or b) a successful sandbox games selling millions, it is just a lot of empty talk.

If you look at the past, UO .. first sandbox, wasn't that successful and got blew away in terms of sub the first PvE content based game came along (EQ). Eve has been there for year without breaking even 400k subs.

There is NO evidence that a AAA sandbox game will sell millions.

Originally posted by Vyeth

Hey, but look at the bright side.. We still have Rift, SWTOR, EQ2, LoTRO and WoW to play!!!

Who needs indie when you've got heavily industrialized standardized profit powerhouses like those??

SWTOR --  Bad MMO and it's bright spot of 'stories' was a joke.   When I was in college writing garbage like that in English 280 (Creative Writing) I never got better than a B on the story...   Sure, for an accounting major a B was an accomplishment...    But for the supposed #1 story CRPG company in computer gaming...  (Which is complete BS as far as I'm concerned.)   These stories were derritivie, palagerized, MacGuffin/Trope/Cliche'd crap...

And, uUnlike college,  the market generaly doesn't give extra credit and grades with their feet...

RIft -- Played two days.   Level 9.   Getting bored.  

EQ2 -- Played that for about two months between my LOTRO burn-out and my joining SWTOR.   Having played it for a long-time, a long-time ago...    I enjoyed my stay, but I just can't do it again...

LOTRO  -- Burned out after 2 years.   Tried to go back after SWTOR failure.   Just couldn't do it...

WoW --  Honestly, I may be that desperate...    I've always not wanted to play WoW for various reasons...   But I'm getting desperate for a game that has MMO features like crafting, a robust community, variety,  etc. and so far nothing has done that since LOTRO.

A shame really.  I remember when it was very anticipated by many including me.  It didn't live up to expectations, but here's looking at you kid.

Originally posted by Vhaln

 

 

What kind of numbers could I possibly have?  Just an overwhelming amount of evidence, from people talking on forums, to the popularity of singleplayer sandbox games.  It might be debatable exactly how well they'd do, compared to most themeparks - possibly even better, but who knows, since not a single AAA sandbox MMO has been made, since WoW - but the idea that such a game couldn't even be popular at all just strikes me as absurd.

 

 

One has to just look at current state of sandboxes..it is not even about assumptions. The proof is in the pudding you just refuse to see it. How many more failed sandboxes you need before you accept the obvious truth?

Can't say I'm surprised in the slightest.

As an early BETA tester for Earthrise me and additional testers put forth our opinion on the state of the game - abysmal. The developers refused to listen, plowed ahead with an OB orgy only to showcase to the world how unplayable their 'revolutionary' title was. Pressure from the limited investers they had played a massive part in it's downfall.

The graphics and environment in earthrise were truly amazing, too bad the client was a piece of crap. Horrible framerate issues, lagging out as soon as anyone starts shooting, insane network usage of up to 50kb/s (this isn't arma2!) and constant disconnects and crashes. The game was actually very straightforward in terms of game mechanics, so they actually did the right thing to try and keep it simple to develop. Its just to bad their engine and networking was so abysmal.

I also thought the gameworld was amazing.  But yeah, it ran like crap.  Not only that, but I never really saw it as a sandbox.  Just a very pretty shooter with some grind.

Originally posted by Arquiteto

Bulgarian developer Masthead Studios announced earlier today that they're shutting down the servers for their post-apocalyptic sandbox MMO Earthrise.
 

"One year after the launch of the game, we have decided to stop the Earthrise servers. Earthrise was released too early and did not meet the expectations of its fans" said Atanas Atanasov, Director of Masthead Studios. "We did our best to revive the game in 2011, but the time was not enough to keep up with the user requirements. There is a huge interest in high quality open world sandbox MMORPGs, unfortunately the big publishers do not show any interest in the genre. It is unfortunate that low budget companies like ours are trying to bring innovativeness in the already saturated MMO market. I hope that one day an independent studio will be able to release the long anticipated open world sandbox MMO, which everyone is talking about, but no one is making. We tried, but did not succeed. We would like to apologize to those who were disappointed from Earthrise and to thank everyone who supported us during the years."

The studio does mention that the planned free-to-play version for this year may still launch if any investor interest is shown, but there has been no word on this yet.

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/09/earthrise-shutting-down-today/#

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