You know what the saddest thing about Warhammer Online is?

The original game that got shut down because Games Workshop thought it wasn't "economically viable" was going to be akin to a sandbox game, as it was based off the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game. Thing SWGs system in a fantasy setting and you're pretty damn close.

So, yeah...

It's pretty much GW's fault that we don't have a very nice sandbox game sitting on the market right now.

( Well, other than Wish, which also got shut down due to the fact it cost too much. I'm seeing a pattern, here. )

Video of original Warhammer Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQvPQJ1_Dk

damn man, they were gonna have skaven in that one too. UGGGH!

I don't know.

Do you really have any idea how small the group of players are that would rather a open ended sandbox game?

The sandboxy type mmos are coming out now and imo its not really a good thing we have a small community and to streach us across too many games is bad imo.

UO is still going, Eve, Ryzom, Wurm, DF and now with games like MO, ER and FE how many more could we really ask for.

These open endged games are awesome to us but we are a very small minority, to blame investors and devs houses because they actually want to make money instead of catering to a extremely small niche isn't fair imo.

MMOs are a business and our tiny playerbase in the next year or so will have more then enough games to mess with we don;t need WAR to be a sandbox.

Originally posted by JGMIII

I don't know.

Do you really have any idea how small the group of players are that would rather a open ended sandbox game?

The sandboxy type mmos are coming out now and imo its not really a good thing we have a small community and to streach us across too many games is bad imo.

UO is still going, Eve, Ryzom, Wurm, DF and now with games like MO, ER and FE how many more could we really ask for.

These open endged games are awesome to us but we are a very small minority, to blame investors and devs houses because they actually want to make money instead of catering to a extremely small niche isn't fair imo.

MMOs are a business and our tiny playerbase in the next year or so will have more then enough games to mess with we don;t need WAR to be a sandbox.

 

 

Yeah but I'm sure there are people out there like me who haven't seen a sandbox MMO that could really grab them. Warhammer might have been the game to do that. I mean obviously there's no way of knowing that for sure. But I do know that it most likely would have been atleast 50 times better than Darkfail.

Originally posted by redhands123

damn man, they were gonna have skaven in that one too. UGGGH!

What's wrong with skaven? They're some of the best villains in the P&P!

Also, to the other guy, the point is that it would've been a FAIRLY high quality sandbox, instead of the crap we're getting nowadays.

Originally posted by redhands123

Originally posted by JGMIII

I don't know.

Do you really have any idea how small the group of players are that would rather a open ended sandbox game?

The sandboxy type mmos are coming out now and imo its not really a good thing we have a small community and to streach us across too many games is bad imo.

UO is still going, Eve, Ryzom, Wurm, DF and now with games like MO, ER and FE how many more could we really ask for.

These open endged games are awesome to us but we are a very small minority, to blame investors and devs houses because they actually want to make money instead of catering to a extremely small niche isn't fair imo.

MMOs are a business and our tiny playerbase in the next year or so will have more then enough games to mess with we don;t need WAR to be a sandbox.

 

 

Yeah but I'm sure there are people out there like me who haven't seen a sandbox MMO that could really grab them. Warhammer might have been the game to do that. I mean obviously there's no way of knowing that for sure. But I do know that it most likely would have been atleast 50 times better than Darkfail.

Oh of course!

New players to that type of MMO could always be introduced but to bank on that isnt a smart business decision.

Think about it. UO has 30-75k subs, Eve has 300k+, Ryzom has like 10k, Wurm has like 5k, DF has 15k and we have three more sandbox games coming soon.

All the sandbox games are pulling from eachother.

Hell my Guild in Ryzom basically all migrated to DF I have about 20 active members out of the 210 players in my guild.

There's just not enough of us.

Edit: it's basically an entire sub genre of MMO fighting over 500k hardcore mmo fans lol

I'm not so sure it was the nature of sandbox games that led to their decline in popularity, but rather how well developers like Blizzard have done with their theme park-like (for lack of a more illustrative phrase) games coupled with the fact that sandbox MMOs of the past came out during a period of rapid technological progression - they found themselves rather obsolete in comparison quickly. It must be tough to retain customers when the New Shiny Stuff is hitting the market every year.

I'm still holding out hope that a developer with adequate funding and man power brings a game to the market that has many sandbox elements while still offering the solid "on rails" experience of WoW. I think it can be done, it doesn't sound difficult when the layman (me) brainstorms on the subject, but we'll see.

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

Originally posted by Devour

Originally posted by redhands123

damn man, they were gonna have skaven in that one too. UGGGH!

 

What's wrong with skaven? They're some of the best villains in the P&P!

Also, to the other guy, the point is that it would've been a FAIRLY high quality sandbox, instead of the crap we're getting nowadays.

No, no, no, you misunderstood. I was saying they were gonna have skaven as a playable race AND THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE COOLEST SHIT EVER!

Originally posted by sacdeep

I'm not so sure it was the nature of sandbox games that led to their decline in popularity, but rather how well developers like Blizzard have done with their theme park-like (for lack of a more illustrative phrase) games coupled with the fact that sandbox MMOs of the past came out during a period of rapid technological progression - they found themselves rather obsolete in comparison quickly. It must be tough to retain customers when the New Shiny Stuff is hitting the market every year.

I'm still holding out hope that a developer with adequate funding and man power brings a game to the market that has many sandbox elements while still offering the solid "on rails" experience of WoW. I think it can be done, it doesn't sound difficult when the layman (me) brainstorms on the subject, but we'll see.

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

I think the answer to your problems will be MO.

Yeah so I'm waiting for MO and WoDO

Originally posted by redhands123

Originally posted by sacdeep

I'm not so sure it was the nature of sandbox games that led to their decline in popularity, but rather how well developers like Blizzard have done with their theme park-like (for lack of a more illustrative phrase) games coupled with the fact that sandbox MMOs of the past came out during a period of rapid technological progression - they found themselves rather obsolete in comparison quickly. It must be tough to retain customers when the New Shiny Stuff is hitting the market every year.

I'm still holding out hope that a developer with adequate funding and man power brings a game to the market that has many sandbox elements while still offering the solid "on rails" experience of WoW. I think it can be done, it doesn't sound difficult when the layman (me) brainstorms on the subject, but we'll see.

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

 

I think the answer to your problems will be MO.

Yeah so I'm waiting for MO and WoDO

It's way too early to tell.

I've learned to not be to optimistic when it comes to new MMOs with the way the genre has been going the last 4+ years.

What do we know about MO? It's going to be First person view only, Right there we already know it will be a niche product because the majority of the mmorpg playerbase like over the shoulder 3rd person view. We know MO will be a twitch combat game (another Niche) and we know that it will have tons of freedom and have FFApvp with player looting ( A massive Niche!).

Imo from what I typed alone MO will be a small niche and not a game targetted toward the MMO players of today.

We have no idea what CCP is doing with WoD so i wont comment on that.

Originally posted by sacdeep

I'm not so sure it was the nature of sandbox games that led to their decline in popularity, but rather how well developers like Blizzard have done with their theme park-like (for lack of a more illustrative phrase) games coupled with the fact that sandbox MMOs of the past came out during a period of rapid technological progression - they found themselves rather obsolete in comparison quickly. It must be tough to retain customers when the New Shiny Stuff is hitting the market every year.

I'm still holding out hope that a developer with adequate funding and man power brings a game to the market that has many sandbox elements while still offering the solid "on rails" experience of WoW. I think it can be done, it doesn't sound difficult when the layman (me) brainstorms on the subject, but we'll see.

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

You know, for someone named sacdeep that has only posted 31 times in four years of being registered, that is a very well written and insightful post. I agree!

Originally posted by Devour

Originally posted by redhands123

damn man, they were gonna have skaven in that one too. UGGGH!

 

What's wrong with skaven? They're some of the best villains in the P&P!

Also, to the other guy, the point is that it would've been a FAIRLY high quality sandbox, instead of the crap we're getting nowadays.

What would lead you to beleave that it would be high quality???????

They could not even get a cookie cutter theme park WoW knock off right and you think they could have gotten a sandbox right??

The really sad part is I am playing War ATM this is my 3rd try at playing it and has been my longest run yet at just over a month, I have alot of friends playing it so I am really trying to give it a chance but after the first 2 weeks I started getting bored with it and I dont see that changing any time soon, but I do see me dropping this game at the 1st chance I get.

Originally posted by sacdeep

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

I always thought Northrend should've been like that, with the Lich King sending out armies to attack, etc. Would've been a nice idea.

Well, to those that followed WAR's development and finally got their hands of the final product, it is a sad story. The game was bad, very bad. What the fans imagined, and hyped by that silly dude they got was not what the fans got. What we got was a watered-down wow-copy with incredibly bad pvp mechanics. Written WAR off as a failure, atleast in my eyes. It looked so damn nice in development though. Now that is the real sad thing about WAR.

Originally posted by JGMIII

Hell my Guild in Ryzom basically all migrated to DF I have about 20 active members out of the 210 players in my guild.

There's just not enough of us.

 

Edit: it's basically an entire sub genre of MMO fighting over 500k hardcore mmo fans lol

Why would you need a guild of 210 to play Ryzom? I haven't seen anything worth doing in that game yoiu can't do solo. It actively discourages grouping at the lower levels. Obviously if they left Ryzom they were looking for something the game wasn't providing. The biggest problem is the majority of the games being labled as sandbox suck. You can build a game with less directed content that's fun but no one is doing it. Mainly because they are very difficult and costly to build and half the people who would play those games spend more time squabbling about what is and isn't a sandbox and saying things like "I'll never play a game with feature X that isn't sandbox." Instead of saying "I want a game where I can do X."

It's been generally accepted that Mythic did a lot of mistakes during the development of WAR.

For one, they tried to directly compete with WoW. This became sadly obvious when you started reading Mark Jacobs rants about his own game. Instead of trying to make a good game and utilize the skills and knowledge they had from DAoC, they manufactured a grindy WoW PvE clone with watered down PvP features.

Secondly, they didn't listen to beta player feedback. The players who actually spoke negatively (but constructively) got banned from the beta forums. Beta players addressed all of WAR's current issues as early as the first release of closed beta, and they could have all been avoided had Mythic bothered to take the advice of its playerbase. Instead they're trying to remedy the flaws today, unfortunately some would say, a bit too late.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by JGMIII

Hell my Guild in Ryzom basically all migrated to DF I have about 20 active members out of the 210 players in my guild.

There's just not enough of us.

 

Edit: it's basically an entire sub genre of MMO fighting over 500k hardcore mmo fans lol

 

Why would you need a guild of 210 to play Ryzom? I haven't seen anything worth doing in that game yoiu can't do solo. It actively discourages grouping at the lower levels. Obviously if they left Ryzom they were looking for something the game wasn't providing.

You obviously never played Ryzom, the Entire game has a heavy group focus. Even early on its alot easier to level digging and combat in a team.

Once on main land solo ryzom could be a big grind if you dont team from hunts and if you dont team for treks your stuck in one location for a long time.

So yeah you need a active guild.

Most of the guys I know left Ryzom due to lack of hardcore Pvp they chose a simpler game because they like player looting. the sad part about it atleast half of those guys moved to Eve from DF LOL!

So much for that hardcore play DF offers huh?

Originally posted by JGMIII

Originally posted by redhands123

Originally posted by sacdeep

I'm not so sure it was the nature of sandbox games that led to their decline in popularity, but rather how well developers like Blizzard have done with their theme park-like (for lack of a more illustrative phrase) games coupled with the fact that sandbox MMOs of the past came out during a period of rapid technological progression - they found themselves rather obsolete in comparison quickly. It must be tough to retain customers when the New Shiny Stuff is hitting the market every year.

I'm still holding out hope that a developer with adequate funding and man power brings a game to the market that has many sandbox elements while still offering the solid "on rails" experience of WoW. I think it can be done, it doesn't sound difficult when the layman (me) brainstorms on the subject, but we'll see.

I mean just imagine if WoW had a true, massive, frontier zone akin to old-school UO. Not just mini-games set within a zone that resets itself every several hours (Wintergrasp) and doesn't allow long term development by the community. That would be pretty amazing.

 

I think the answer to your problems will be MO.

Yeah so I'm waiting for MO and WoDO

It's way too early to tell.

I've learned to not be to optimistic when it comes to new MMOs with the way the genre has been going the last 4+ years.

What do we know about MO? It's going to be First person view only, Right there we already know it will be a niche product because the majority of the mmorpg playerbase like over the shoulder 3rd person view. We know MO will be a twitch combat game (another Niche) and we know that it will have tons of freedom and have FFApvp with player looting ( A massive Niche!).

Imo from what I typed alone MO will be a small niche and not a game targetted toward the MMO players of today.

We have no idea what CCP is doing with WoD so i wont comment on that.

Yeah but I am sure atleast most of the people on this site are going to try out MO i know i am.

and WoD is going to be a 3D Vampire MMO thats like my dream MMO right there, so yeah im ready for that.

Originally posted by Devour

It's pretty much GW's fault that we don't have a very nice sandbox game sitting on the market right now.

and its Mythic's fault that the themepark product they made is HORRIBLE.doubt GW has nothing to do with the way they deal with career balance (good ol' clueless idiotic shifts of power), the way the client performance is pathetic beyong human comprehension considering the craptastic gfx it offers, or the way the bad endgame design at release has gone to TERRIBLE patch after patch

Mythic havent done 1 single good decition after release. not.one.single

It's worth noting here that Games Workshop has a long history of questionable decisions regarding their IP's.

I have a closet full of GW games that were released, hyped to the heavens in their "White Dwarf" magazine, pushed on me by their sales associates everytime I walked into a store, and then were promptly abandoned.

Space Hulk, Blood Bowl, Dark Future, Advanced HeroQuest, Man o'War, Mordheim, and more. Sadly, some of those are still great games with a devoted fanbase but GW won't support them because they're not "The Big Three":  Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40K, and Lord of the Rings. A lot of good ideas have fallen by the wayside due to GW's desire to cash in on their LotR license before the bloom from the movies wears off.  (Yeah, they're pushing it at this point)

GW goes where they think they can make a quick buck. They dabbled in Collectible Card Games, now it's MMO's. They don't give a crap if WAR sinks or swims. They get their money from the licensing and move on. If they were interested in WAR's success, they'd be selling it in their retail shops.

tl;dr - A game company known for milking it's IP's gets on the MMO bandwagon with a developer trying to snare part of the WOW market = Fail.