Originally posted by randomt

Hum.. well if we consider neverwinter and gemstone as mmo's.. then likely most people's first mmo was diablo 2's online play.  Technically that qualifies :D

Most people think of the singleplayer / multiplayer NWN from bioware when it's mentioned.   That's a completely separate game that was NOT an MMO.  Though some persistant worlds did get big enough to get closer to an MMO than Diablo 2 for sure.

Originally posted by sassoonss

Quote as mentioned

 

NCSoft's chief financial officer, Lee Jae-ho, has told The Korean Times that Tabula Rasa has proven to be a financial disaster.

Featuring heavy involvement from Richard Garriott, the sci-fi MMO was supposed to rattle the genre and take it to the next evolutionary step courtesy of the game's real-time combat and battlefield strategy. But it's gone down like a cup of cold sick.



Apparently Tabula Rasa made around £2.7 million (or five billion won) in revenue last year, and NCSoft then projected that it'd make around £8 million (15 billion won) this year. That's nowhere near enough cash though. It's estimated the game's cost NCSoft over £54 million to date.

"Half a year ago I communicated with investors and analysts we had very high expectations for Tabula Rasa", Lee continued. "After six months, I just put down 15 billion won as an annual revenue target and that's very disappointing. But I should admit that the actual result of Tabula Rasa has been disappointing.

"If you talk about our development cost we spent in the past several years, probably we are not making any money from this Tabula Rasa project. That should be the reality."

It's not confirmed how many staff at NCSoft Austin will get the boot, but the Austin studio will retain a workforce large enough to continue to support Tabula Rasa and will continue to develop other projects as well.

 

 

 

The CEO himself admits the game is well below what they had expected and a financial disaster .

4 months is more than enough to evaluate the situation

Richard G and his brand logo cost them a fortune

 

So honestly due to think we are going to see millions of people joining up this game so that the game can be called a financial success

1) They trusted in Garriott way too much

2) They opted to narrow the scope of the game down so much it was a kiddie game...then didn't even implement that without bugs or issues.

If you are going to release an MMO with such a narrow scope, at least do it well!  Look at WoW for examples.  They followed the game up with more features over the years, but if you remember the game as it launched, it was almost as narrow scoped as TR.  BUT they did it well.

Yes it worries me too.  The last 2 betas I've been in were disasters.  People either wanted crap and the devs accomodated them, or there were tons of good ideas and suggestions and the devs refused to comment or address the real issues and only worked on the tiny issues and bugs we could have looked past.

One game game bombed, and the other took off.  Though I see people complaining about the bigger one alot, it is still considered a success.

So who knows.  It really comes down to the quality and resolve of the devs, not the beta testers.  If the devs know what makes their product special and what can be changed, beta testers will be a good sounding board.  If they devs are clueless, they will look for direct input from the beta testers and we will end up with another WoW clone.

Originally posted by Suvroc

 

Originally posted by oronisi

Originally posted by Suvroc

 

Originally posted by oronisi

SOE will never open a pre-cu server.  The 'many' you refer to as crying out for a pre-cu server have mostly moved on.  I hate the term 'vocal minority' but in this case, it is very much true.  As you have pointed out, Pre-CU wasn't perfect either.  Its also got an older graphics engine and the game engine itself is extremely limited (no real Z axis! what MMO out now doesn't have a jump??)

Well, if we can speculate on what a full server is then we can go from there. I personally believe that a full server would be anywhere between 6000 and 9000 people.

 

Of the numerous people that left you don't think that 6000-9000 people would return?

BTW, I bet you could probably pull those numbers off the current game alone.

True enough, I would agree that you could populate 1 pre-cu server to more than the average of current NGE servers.  But I don't believe SOE would do that.  They aren't the 'special interest' kind of company that would reward a small amount of loyal fans.

 

Then the next question inevitably will arise. Theoretically what happens if the pre-CU servers become more populated then the NGE servers?

The SWG community has been fractured and split in two so many times it's sick.  I'm surprised there is even a community left.  I don't think SOE will do it because it doesn't server their own best interest. Giving the customer what they want means splitting their already fragile community and turns them against one another.

Originally posted by mindspat

Currently Playing DDO And I Don’t Like <insert>

 

 

Roll Play – eh? Very poorly implemented due to lack of /emotes.  Star Wars Galaxies did it right and if DDO had a sliver of the emotes from SWG it would give more players a casual approach to roll-playing without having to talk in silly voices that we’re embarrassed to use around friends and family. DDO suffers from the virtual absence of emotes, gestures and animations which would apply to character based roll-playing while enhancing the environment to make it feel more expansive.  Dammit, we can’t even sit at a bar stool or table within the Inns = lame!

 

I think DDO supports ROLL playing quite well, with the die on the side of the screen.  If however you mean Role Play, well then, since most people don't know what it is or how to spell it, I don't see many games supporting this game mechanic in the future.  Even if MMOs came from MMORPGs, as in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.

Originally posted by Sevenwind

Oh Waterworks on Elite when you drop down that one pipe down into the water and soon as you come out the kobolds start nailing you with bombs and magic missle.

As said by others, you can feather fall to the ledge, OR you can hit sneak before dropping down.

Isn't that every MMO nowadays?

Originally posted by Suvroc

 

Originally posted by oronisi

SOE will never open a pre-cu server.  The 'many' you refer to as crying out for a pre-cu server have mostly moved on.  I hate the term 'vocal minority' but in this case, it is very much true.  As you have pointed out, Pre-CU wasn't perfect either.  Its also got an older graphics engine and the game engine itself is extremely limited (no real Z axis! what MMO out now doesn't have a jump??)

Well, if we can speculate on what a full server is then we can go from there. I personally believe that a full server would be anywhere between 6000 and 9000 people.

 

Of the numerous people that left you don't think that 6000-9000 people would return?

BTW, I bet you could probably pull those numbers off the current game alone.

True enough, I would agree that you could populate 1 pre-cu server to more than the average of current NGE servers.  But I don't believe SOE would do that.  They aren't the 'special interest' kind of company that would reward a small amount of loyal fans.

Originally posted by rejad

Originally posted by oronisi

And to whomever cited dumpster diving...come on.  All companies have shred-boxes now.  Nobody throws anything away in a normal garbage bin anymore if their company works with anything that would ever have competition.

Keep in mind that sometimes hospitals amputate the wrong limb.  Irregardless of procedure and general competence of the firm, every now and then someone farks up.  I'm not saying its legit, I'm just saying it could happen.

Good point.

Wow OP, I'm not so sure you have a firm grasp on what the general populous wants.  I haven't heard many complain over the idea of a non-KOTOR mmo.  Most were so excited at the idea because they know KOTOR works and they like the SW universe.

SOE will never open a pre-cu server.  The 'many' you refer to as crying out for a pre-cu server have mostly moved on.  I hate the term 'vocal minority' but in this case, it is very much true.  As you have pointed out, Pre-CU wasn't perfect either.  Its also got an older graphics engine and the game engine itself is extremely limited (no real Z axis! what MMO out now doesn't have a jump??)

Last, I also think you completely miss the general sentiment when you say you think people will pay for 2 SW games, simply due to their timeline.  People want lightsabers, a sci-fi game, familiar names, spaceships, and some more lightsabers.  If a new SW mmo comes out, SWG is done.  A large portion of the remaining subscribers do it because it's one of the only sci-fi MMOs or because it's specifically in the SW universe.

And to whomever cited dumpster diving...come on.  All companies have shred-boxes now.  Nobody throws anything away in a normal garbage bin anymore if their company works with anything that would ever have competition.

If you want to talk false advertising, see if they still claim you can talk to Yoda, or if the main site still has that 360 degree shot of a bothan with a pistol holster on his hip.  THAT'S false advertising from day 1.

Originally posted by woges

There is some talk around about blocking seems there is an active block mode on the ctrl key but that's not the only block system in place.

I always pointed to DDO and said 'they can do it, it has latency issues, its still better than no blocking'.

Originally posted by xPaladin

 

Originally posted by Suvroc

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=608797

 

 

Just reposting here:

Originally posted by HeadGM-Moonlite via SWG official boards:

As you may or may not know, Customer Service has recently changed our policy regarding going AFK while in combat. The sad truth here is that CS has been giving hundreds of warnings, and dozens of suspensions daily for people doing this, and yet the issue continues to grow. A very large portion of the SWG community feels it is ok to AFK level pets, or AFK grind junk loot for reverse engineering. This can be seen by the huge number of players who do it on a daily basis, regardless of the repercussions.  At this point, the CS team can not honestly police the issue any longer. The daily sweeps of the common areas for this consume an enormous amount of time, time that we could be spending helping players. While we do not condone this in anyway, it is much like base busting in the fact that the issue is too large for us to oversee and correct one person at a time.

Two important side notes to this are the following:

Game disruption - If a player is disrupting game play, we will remove them. Disrupting game play is not defined as a group of players out in the middle of nowhere AFK killing random mobs at their spawn point. Game disruption only applies to players who are making it impossible to continue a quest line and things of that manner.

Previous Warnings - If a player has been previously warned, suspended, or had their account terminated for this we will not remove those warnings, or reactivate that account. This simply comes down to breaking the rule while it was in place. 

And also:

I dunno about this one. I did play the NGE and didn't see much opportunity to go AFK during combat without getting chewed up, so they're obviously using some macro assist proggies out there. I thought the point of the NGE was to get rid of the macroing, particularly since pre-CU had macroing functions built into the game.

All in all it's poor design plus poor moderation.

Also, nature of the forums here, insert obligatory joke about how NGE is so boring that players want to spend their playtime AFK...

 

Follow up posted by HeadGM-Moonlite via SWG official boards:

One addition this to this clarify some confusion:-

Customer Service will continue with vigour to catch and ban anyone caught selling or buying credits, items, powerleveling services or the like for real world money.

I've played Pre-CU, CU, and NGE.  You can afk grind at any point in SWG's life.  It's just a matter of how savy the macro-maker is, how many people you have, and where you chose to do your business.

That said, I would have rather had them disable recursive macro calls and even /attack if needed rather than make it acceptable behavior.  That is, if I still played.

It went the way all rumors about SWG do...fade into nothingness.

Originally posted by greenstumps

personally I hardly ever visited the boards before 2005 but I do remember whenever I went there it was full of people moaning constantly like it is now and just think to myself we didn't realise how great this game was until we lost it with the CU and then the NGE. I remember everyone moaning constantly about not having Jedi and all the SOE scandal surrounding that but noone ever thought about how Jedi would hurt the game. I remember people moaning about having nothing to do and having no quests and being fed up of grinding all the time and just looking back things wern't all roses. So lots of people were slowly quiting specially after Jump to Light speed as that was a big big disappointment to alot of people seeing as it was complete crap and when you think Star Wars and Space you'd expect things like Death Stars and that lol.

For me the game started to go down hill and improve at the same time which is hard to pinpoint the best time in SWG. I remember the cities patch which I think the vehicles came with it too and it's bitter sweet because Cities were great but vehicles ruined the social game for me. I remember all the creature handlers standing around the cities and had all their pets out showing them off to sell to people as mounts. It was sooo amazing back in the day to see all those creatures and their idle animations and sounds and everyone chatting in one place outside the star port............ suddenly after vehicles all that stopped and creature handlers went away because mounts were sooo much slower than vehicles. I wish I took some videos of back in those days and what was sad is mounts came in a patch not too long ago from this if I'm remembering correctly.

Soooo many people were moaning and that's why I never visited the boards because I got fedup of people moaning about features that I loved in the game which yeah waiting 10 mins at the star port may be annoying sometimes, however that's part of the social game and made it fun for me cause I could chat to random people and do some duels and was sooo nice having that social aspect in the game. Now it's all gone and the only place to go and chat to people about the game is on these boards lol.

It's just such a shame because you kinda feel like your to blame for not saying anything back then but SOE saying about the vocal minority.......... what about the silent majority who loed the game the way it is but just never said anything on the boards?

I don't know how the official forums are now, but I'm pretty sure they aren't whining because they see untapped potential.

I was so willing to believe this rumor until you said 'LA knows that kids do not have money'.  LA as built its entire franchise post original-3 movies on children.  Children - tweens make up one of the largest most powerful markets that exist.  It doesn't matter if they don't have jobs, their parents will buy it for them.  Do you think the need to sub with a credit card (read 18) has stopped the minors from subbing to WoW?

Muahahahahah!

This thread is so rich I just had to respond.  What's that old saying, 'Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it' ?  Its so funny that the new players are doomed to relive the vets' experience with SWG.  Well, it's funny to me because I'm not one of those people that are currently playing.

What's next, a Beastmaster nerf because they are too powerful?  Ooh then defense stacker nerf.  Oh yea, they did that again recently didn't they?

Originally posted by Devildog1

It sounds toooooo good to be true and more than likely is! That and to have a video game tied to a TV show to me sounds very cheesy at the very least and sounds like they are grapsing at straws! Also everyone thinks SWG was/is kinda screwed because it was put in during an established time line that did not have Jedi running around in broad daylight, well this will be more of the same IMO.  Don't get me wrong I'm a huge fan of the IP and SWG Pre-CU, but this sounds like all they are gonna do is rehash the NGE.  And if SOE has thier hands on this in any way, it will flop badly, because they have already destroyed the trust of a couple hundred thousand of us vets.

But everything else is solid gold.  Why waste animator time trying to code in huge fight scenes when you can just record a beautiful mmo?  Why not re-use a storyline on TV and in an mmo?  It really is a great premise, I'm just scared shitless that it will be toontown in a SW skin.

"Now World of Warcraft was launched in 2004, and predicted to last ten years by Blizzard."

I stopped reading here.  You do know that EQ is still up and running, right?  Actually, some text-based MUDs are still up and running 20+ years later.  WoW will last for well over a decade, and will probably remain top dog for over a decade.  Even if it loses 90% of it's subs, it will still be top dog.

Otherwise, nice long rant.

Originally posted by elvenangel

You dont have to do the raids for anything..just the Pre Raids and the Pre Raids are normal 6 person groups & you dont have to wait 2 to 3 days to repeat them either.

 

It does say you have to do raids for energy cells but that those same energy cells are available from a vendor.   I think they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they required you to do the actual Raid to Make these items.

If you want to make the good craftable items, you will have to raid.  If you want to 'craft' tier 2 components and sell them, or add minor effects to your current items like increasing the hardness, you can do that without raiding.

I'd suggest going to the official DDO forums and posting under the Ghallanda forums.  You will probably get a better response.  DDO is a tight-knit community so most guilds are always looking for more good people.