Guns can only be used by Charr (and possibly Asura) anyway, amirite?

The screenshots look good.... for an iPhone game. Which I hope it is.

Otherwise it would look like cartoonish WoW crap.

"unknown" really sums it up perfectly. Exactly how the game is and what you can expect.

Sword 2 actually is no sequel at all.

They just applied a major patch to Sword of the New World and dubbed it Sword 2 to make it look fresh. Classic marketing move (similar to Neocron 2).

Either WAR or (sadly) Fallen Earth.

You know you are facing a DEAD game if asking a dev about this YEAR's plans yields you the answer "more inventory space".

End of the month the long-promised mass lay-offs will begin. And from the interview it's already apparent that this game is maintenance mode; there are no long-term perspectives. All they think about is "the next patch in 3 months" (with great content like... more inventory space!).

Anyway, long time ago I said that WAR will never see its first expansion. Just a pity. There was so much potential.

As expected a typical blabla-interview with mostly uninteresting lickspittle-questions and ZERO new information.

However, with one exception: Just by the way he mentioned that the Ranger class will be in GW2 as wel. Hope the same holds true for Mesmers...

Only reason I'd want WAR to be shut down is that Mythic could resume work on IMPERATOR...

Free MMORPGs and deep... nice self-contradiction.

Just play Granado Espada (sGE). Constant updates (latest 3.0 expansion just arrived), healthy, and fun.

K2 (NA/EU) version has pretty much been ABANDONED months ago.

WAR.

Tried it right after release (2001?) and didn't like it one bit.

Came back with my bored (back then) SWG guild in 2003, played a lot in Shadowlands and RK alike and I had a BLAST. In fact, I would even say it was the best MMO experience I *ever* had. Unfortunately the people I used to play with mostly quit playing games all along, so at some point I stopped with AO.

Now I am back as a Froob, and I still love the game.

Yea, who knows if Funcom will even survive that long.

2 days ago they just confirmed mass layoffs, TenTonHammer reported something about 70% of the US Staff having been fired.

Just to confirm the current ETA for the new engine:

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Q - Is there any eta on the engine and how is it progressing?

The new engine is coming along well. We are slowly being able to strip out the work done by the old engine and soon all basic/core functions will be provided by the new engine entirely. The removal of the old engine means a complete removal of the old effects system...and the re-creation/improvement of all the effects in game. This is of course a very significant amount of pure time consuming work. At the same time work will be done to improve the look of the game where possible...things like character model alterations, new trees etc are all adding to the time required to get this done...and get this done right. We really want to take our time with this to make sure it lives up to all of our expectations. Our current goal is "Summer 2009". I'd like to promise it will be ready...but all I can really promise is that I will not release it until I am certain it looks amazing and is well optimized to ensure excellent performance on the vast majority of systems.

Source: Friday with Means - Nov 21, 2008

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The fact that it might well take yet another YEAR before the new engine goes live (we all know this is not gonna be last delay, and if they say Summer 2009 it will rather be Christmas 2009) is a bit disappointing, but then again it's nice to hear that they are now planning on improving the character models as well.

Originally they said they would only recode the engine so it would utilize modern GPUs, increasing the performance but NOT changing the looks and textures at all.

Then they stated that they were going to redo the enviromental textures as well and also released some eye candy vids/screenshots.

And now they also plan on improving character graphics - which honestly always has been my major gripe with this awesome game, and probably is needed the most.

Also the fact that they seem to have long-term visions for AO (I mean the game will already be 8 years old when they release a new engine for it) is very reassuring.

It also looks like AC, graphics/engine-wise...

So it's official, NCSoft just decided to shut down Tabula Rasa forever. Similar to Hellgate: London (by the way also hosted by EA) whose servers will  be closed in January '09.
Both games were highly anticipated while still in development, had big names in their dev teams, big companies to host 'em.
And both had very unimpressive launches, gameplay issues *very* similar to WAR (although to be sure WAR at its core probably still is a far superior game) and both hardly survived more than a year before shutting down forever.

We all know the issues WAR has. Pure boredom, lack of communication, an empty world VOID of virtually any living soul (simply because 99% of all players are bunched up in warcamps to queue up for instanced minigame-scenarios), tons of bugs/glitches, and severe population issues (first server merges/mass transfers 1 month after release are anything but glorious, and CLEARLY show that WAR has FAR less subscribers than expected by EA Mythic).

Some argue that WAR needs more time to be a great game. Others rather think that the game design is so poor that it can't be fixed (an engine that simply CANNOT handle 100vs100 battles without giving EVERYONE in the zone a 10 second delay on every action, only 2 instead of 3 factions, an endgame map layout that doesn't really encourage open RvR, mechanics that don't encourage keep defending or realm pride in general, too heavy focus on instanced PvP etc.)

But let's just assume that things *could* be fixed, and the game just needs more time. Isn't it still doubtful that a company like EA would just drop WAR all along?
It was supposed to be the WoW-killer, now it's an army of low/low servers that need to be merged. The population-trend is a steep downward-slope, the pace at which Mythic is implementing counter-measures anything but impressive. What will it be like... 1 year from now? I haven't seen any major MMO that unimpressed players at launch, dropped to a low population as a result, but then miraculously recovered to healthy numbers of players (aside from AO with its froob program, probably).

SOE would just cut down the dev team to 1-20 people and add another game to their Graveyard Of Failed MMOs, which will be funded by the Station Access MMO-socialism.
But what will EA do once revenues hardly (or not at all) excceed the costs for feeding developers and keeping servers up anymore?
I kinda fear they are not the type of company to feed a starving child.

(Hah, I just hope they will sell it to SOE as an addition to their Failyard instead of closing down servers.)

Kinda reminds me of Hellgate: London, where servers will be closed down forever in January 2009, although Tabula Rasa probably will have a few months more than HG:L.

Tough times for MMO(RPG)s. Ever since the WoW era began (which also was the beginning of more and more Asian f2p games flooding the market) I saw one MMO dying after another. Only a few could survive at healthy numbers in the long run (for example GW, because of its business model), but most struggle with low populations.

Some get shut down, others just try to survive. Just look at SOE's graveyard of failed MMOs (as somebody put it so eloquently and fitting). Vanguard, EQ1, EQ2, SWG, MxO, Planetside, PotBS... failure after failure, all pretty much dead (EQ1+2 probably being the strongest brands in the failboat... but still both severely underpopulated).

Once an MMO had a bad start, losing a huge chunk of its population right after launch, it never recovers. No matter how good the game gets afterwards, in the WoW-era you are DONE and out of the business with a bad launch. I have yet to see a game with a dying population recovering.

EQ2 is a perfect example. Very flawed game at launch, developed into one of (if not thee) best MMOs currently on the market, but the users don't and won't come back, neither can they retain their numbers. Sad.

[e] And I think that WAR might be the next victim falling to the monopoly. First server merges 1 month after launch are more than just a bad omen, and Mythic unimpressed a whole lot of people with empty worlds and 99% of the players bunching up in instanced GW-PvP-minigames...

Diablo'esque f2p MMO with item mall, extensive PvP features, and a controversal (but elaborated) ingame-bot.

Might be worth a try: http://mwo.enjoymmo.com/

Actually, you can already play, since there will be no wipe from CB to OB. But (along with a big content patch) they will open a new server on June 20th, so you can have a fresh start if you like.