It is almost impossible to say.  You would have to enter negotiations.  It could be that everything could be had for a song ($200K) or it could be that they would want to break things down and sell them separately.  I would guess that they view it as a low value asset, and if someone approached them with reasonable offer they'd jump on it.

Or maybe they are using the tools to make a Gummy Bears MMO, in which case they may sell the IP (basically worthless IMO) and want to retain the rights to to the development tools.

Originally posted by Isasis

Originally posted by laokoko

ya i like skyrim.  I have fun for 60 hours. 

but for mmorpg i expect it to give me thousands of hours of fun

and you know skyrim map is smaller than the typical themepark mmorpg map.  I don't know how you fit 50,000 concurrent player in it.

User error

 

reason: missed point of thread

User error

Reason: Ignorance.

The first successful MMO was a sand box MMO.

Originally posted by Jakdstripper

yes i would play a medieval themed mmo with absolutely no magic as long as the melee combat was fun. something along the lines of Mount & Blade.

there are also sci-fi mmos which dont have magic like EvE and many people play them.

i would definately give it a try.

There's all sorts of magic in Eve, it's just not called "magic".

I'd be cool with a MMO without magic.  Gameplay is king, you don't need magic for good gameplay.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Teh_Axi

Originally posted by Sovrath

It's not arguable at all. 

Yeah I got it with your first post man, you love L2 and think its the best thing since sliced bread.

I really don't care and was only making a comparsion in terms of how the game functions.

ok, ok, sorry. Didn't mean to shove it down your throat. It's just that these types of games really shine when you are plopped down into a world and you seek to make your own destiny. They are not theme park games where you experience the world like one would experience rides.

There's a lot of depth there if you can sign into the idea.

If you ever play a game like this I just suggest shifting your paradigm, that's all.

And ya know, sliced bread is pretty cool. Especially the fancy stuff

I don't know, I still see ? and !

Originally posted by OBK1

I was interested until I read that quote about how they placed pve mobs. How boring and non-sandbox. I want my sandbox to try and get the feel of a living fantasy world. Just bunching mobs together in small dense areas to make pvp hotspots out of them sounds like the opposite and much more themepark in design philosophy.

I'll keep playing Swtor until a good sandbox pops up, please please Darkfall 2.0 materialize soon!

You know, in the real world, African Elephants, hunted by poachers who are in turn hunted by rangers are not all over the place, right? 

Originally posted by MacroHard

Originally posted by drachehexe

 

I'm not sure what you think "alternative" means... of course if someone is suggesting an alternative to something... it's not that thing.. it's in fact different.  It's either your logic or English comprehension that is scaring me.

A new definition of  "Irony":  Someone who is scared by an internet poster's misuse of quotation marks.

There are a handful of permadeath guilds in DDO, I've played some of it and enjoy it.  I used to be driven crazy by spiraling corpse runs in Everquest, but there definitely is an appeal to games with more challenge.  In MMO's, harsher death penalties, especially perma-death, can be one tool to add to the challenge level.  It's important not to make it the only tool, however.

Originally posted by Drakxii

Originally posted by Lidane

Originally posted by Drakxii
 

They produced the boxes, they sold the online copies(and limited them), they picked where guilds went and they picked how many they wanted to go with each wave.  There is NO reason that they would have to "guess" on the number of servers they would need.  There are technical reasons that you don't want to just tell 2 million people to simultaneously "have at" a couple of server farms.   Read the recap of the EQ launch from the other day to learn about some of them.  Even if they knew exactly how many games they would have sold, that doesn't mean they knew exactly how many people would be logging in, and at what time, and how long they would play, etc.  You seem to be operating under the impression that every sale means that a person will  log in at 17:43 on December 22nd, and play for exactly 3.1 hours, and then 2.7 hours on the 23rd at 18:11.

Also the shard instancing makes the servers ghosts towns regardless. "ghost town" means there's no one on the server, not that you can't see anyone on it.  Instancing puts the people together, it's not like they make 20 instances for 50 players.  They  make 1 instance for 50 players (or whatever) and 20 instances for 1000 players.

Originally posted by sanosukex

Originally posted by DannyGlover

---

 

You can convince yourself that convenience = better communities but in my experiences it breeds complacency. Agree to disagree I guess.

read what I wrote to stealthbr it has nothing to do with convienence the games themselves were designed to develop this sort of anti-social community. Has nothing at all to do with LFD tool.. but I still can't see how you guys can sit there with a straight face and say people spamming LFG in general chat or a LFG channel is community building.

It's called negative reinforcement.  They want you to make and group with in-game friends.  In WoW you can get to level 50, playing all the instances without talking to anyone.  You can do the same thing in TOR, but it's much more difficult.  What would be easier would to find a group of like minded players, and group with them when you log on.

I think a more straightforward question is "skills versus classes".   Why are you asking the question though?  Are you asking as a player or as a game designer?  A game where a player chooses a single class, is probably easier to implement and balance.  A system where the player chooses from a list of skills, gives the player more control over their character development, but is more difficult to implement and balance.

Originally posted by EvilestTwin

I feel like FFA PvP for sandboxes really need some kind of killing rule system, partially enforced by the players and partially enforced by the game itself.

Basically, by default, killing someone in PvP flags you a criminal, which causes town guards to attack you and allows other people to kill you for bounties.

However, you are allowed to kill other people by doing the following:

1.  Requesting a duel, if accepted, both parties can kill each other without any negative repurcussions.  

This is consensual PVP, not FFA.

2.  Guild Wars, if two guilds declare war on each other, then members with each guild can kill the members of the other guild without fear of being labelled a criminal.

Same, it's consensual.

3.  Control of towns.   If a guild controls a town, they are able to bribe all the guards within the town's influence, allowing Guild Members to kill non-guild members without repercussion.    However, each kill will need to be paid to be covered up, and the more killings a person does the more it costs to bribe, which then creates a dillema for a guild on whether or not to keep protecting a notorious griefer, since the costs of upkeep on bribing the guards would be incredibly high.

Interesting, though you'd probably spend so much time fighting exploits it would become unworkable, or the gankers will just avoid the towns.

4.   Killing in designated combat zones or lawless regions.    Some areas can be declared combat zones by guilds, which allow for indescriminate killing.   There will also be vast stretches of areas far away from towns and outposts that are considered 'lawless', where people and roam and kill without affecting their status.

Not really FFA if it's only in designated areas.  Again, that makes it consensual.

5.  Becomming a criminal.   If someone doesn't care about being permanenly the target of town guard sand bounty hunters, they can just keep on killing.   They can still travel to cities and talk with NPCs if they don disguises (some kind of skill).    The disguise will be a skill that can be leveled and you'd need to have a high enough disguise level depending on what kind of NPCs you're trying to fool.   Player characters can also learn a tracking skill that can see through disguises, creating the option of becoming a bounty hunter and hunting down criminal players.    There of course will be areas and missions that only criminals have access too (think Dark Brotherhood).

Basically UO tried this 15 years ago.  Didn't work.  The disguise skill is a bad idea.  It just means that the gankers would need to spend an hour a week honing their disguise skill.  Games have tried the bounty hunter system before.  Doesn't work.  Players just simply won't police themselves.  You sure as hell wouldn't want to add extra reward for gankers.  They gank without any rewards at all, why would you want to encourage it?

Most of your suggestions there preclude the game from actually being FFA PVP.

I don't know.  Unlike everyone else, I have a month to decide.

Whatever the number of registered users is, it will double by this time next week.  Ever think there's a reason they release games before Christmas?

Originally posted by Diovidius

Originally posted by grimfall

I guess the poin of the videos is to make each of the classes seem powerful... but they all make the PVE content look extremely easy, which detracts from the appeal of the game for me.

So look at actual gameplay videos instead of skill demonstrations?

As a potential customer I shouldn't really have to search around the internet looking for reasons to buy a product.  I am much more likely to do the reverse.

Originally posted by korent1991

I don't get it what graphics has to do with game mechanics... It's like comparing roses to condoms... Graphic depends mostly on the graphic engine which is used and how well they can make the textures when the core of the game (it's mechanics) has to be developed as in any game. The relationship between those 2 isn't strictly determined or somehting.

But to a certain degree that are related, because the more money you spend on graphics, the less money you spend on creating and honing gameplay.

Eve and WoW are both  pretty good examples of graphically limited games that have game mechanics which people seem to like.

I guess the poin of the videos is to make each of the classes seem powerful... but they all make the PVE content look extremely easy, which detracts from the appeal of the game for me.

The content seems OK, even if she's trying a little too hard to sound like an experienced gaming journalist... the incessant audio popping and the short-tape loop background music make it so I can't get through it with the volume on though.

Originally posted by FragManDan

 Koreans Westernizing... This should be entertaining.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.  It's a huge "we don't know what the fuck we're doing" red flag.  You can't say a game is for a world wide market, and then feature lock based only on input from people in one (and in this case not terribly large) market.

Originally posted by GreenWidow

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

For the reviewer i must say please do not encourage people to build wizard/paladins. While you might feel that it is your time and money, which is fine if you solo, do not start whining when high level groups do not take you because your level split makes you a bad caster, bad fighter and bad character. Even a great player can build a character that is not much use.

 

You do not have to follow the "munchkin" group, oddly 5+ years of DDo and I never heard them refered that way let alone to the amount you claim they are. Might be a server specific term. But you should never tell people to build horrible characters that do waste that persons time and money.

 Have to agree with everything said here.  The best character builds are on the forums.  People have listed exactly what they took and more importantly, if you do a little reading, they explain WHY they made the choices they did.

With a small time investment of reading and educating yourself on the game you can make a character not only accepted by  groups but also be much happier with the character you play.

DDO is set using the 3.0 ruleset...partially.  But it is VASTLY different from pen and paper play.  There are reasons for this which only reading and learning the game will help you better understand. 

Barring that, come to the Orien server and ask for Heliotrope and if I'm online I'll be happy to hop in a dungeon with you and explain as much as you'd like.

I have to totally disagree with this post.

The best thing about the game is the character customization... by letting other, lazy and basically stupid players dictate to you how you should create your character makes the game just vanilla crap.

There are guilds without mindless drones seeking the easiest way to do everything creating characters and parties, but you'll need to find them to enjoy the game to the fullest.

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by misles

Originally posted by elminses

I just want the servers up by saturday. I have 48 hours off of work and am looking forward to some EQ2 play time. Honestly if its not up this weekend I'll prolly start a different game and not return to EQ2. They need to fix or get the games going again or are going to start loosing customers to different games. Or atleast put out an actual time table. Knowing when to look forward to it is better then being completely in the dark.

 

 According to a letter from SOE, the services probably (note probably) won't be up until the end of May.

According to the letter from SOE, the services are down "temporarily".  That's all it said.

Well I wouldn't be suprised one single bit.

1.) They are now under federal investigation. Which can take a long time.

Except they're not under federal investigation, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the hackers, not SOE.

2.) They are dependend on when Sony fixes and finishes their mess with PSN network.

There was only one worm-hole.  There weren't two separate attacks.  Sony isn't going to to develop two entirely separate security systems for what is essentially the same data.  Doing things like that is what leads to poor security.

3.) It takes a very long time to upgrade their entire infrastructre of outdated software, have it tested both functionally for all their services and then security wise tested and validated by the hired external security agency.

Where did you get the  information that they have an entire infrastructure of outdated software and that they were going to upgrade it?  They're going to updgrade their front-end security and add some redundancies.

With the above in mind, I would actually take my hat off if they even manage to get back online before the end of may.

That may be true, but you're making some bad, poorly informed assumptions here.  Also, they probably started the process three weeks ago.

Originally posted by TUX426

Originally posted by duelkore

I dont think anyone hacked into a SOE database.  Those servers are not accessible to the internet or any exterior means.

Im not sure why everyone thinks the world is like the movie hackers where u call some guard for a MAC adress and hack into the mainframe and then screw angelina jolie.

Please tell me how its possible for an external hacker to access a computer that is not hooked up to the internet. Please someone, anyone, tell me. Please

The only logical explanation is that the hack came from a vendor error.  A vendor could be considered a 3rd party that, IN THIS CASE, handles credit card and account information for billing purposes.  That is where the information was compromised.  Kinda like the company that might handle the credit card transactions and ensures that the credit cards are authentic when you sign up for EQ. That same company (vendor application) or even another vendor application might be in charge of charging your credit card when the next 30 days hits.  Another company might be in charge of ensuring your accounts are paid in full.  That is where the information was stolen.

Inside job. There were rumors of the mass layoffs 2 months prior to them being announced. If "I" heard about it 2 months ahead of time, every employee knew.

Um, you guys may not have noticed this, but the information stolen included names and passwords,used on the internet.  Now, say you are trying to log into PSN or an SOE game.... you enter your user name and password... how do you think that information is verified, with a Oujia board?  At some point, the database has to be connected to the same world wide web where you go for account management... unless you think someone is manually checking a database on an internal network for 100 MILLION PEOPLE every time they log on, and then allowing them to log on.

Now good database design would not include the customer information in the same table, but it was most likely kept on the same database, primarily so you could log in faster.  In retrospect, it would probably have been a good idea to have the personal inforrmation kept in another database - even if it took an extra five seconds for users to log in.