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The only people making money in the "virtual economy" of Entropia are MindArk employees. The company has made MANY inflated claims about the game, such as 500,000 - 1,000,000 players when at most there are a couple thousand playing at any given time. (Hey, MindArk, a million accounts that signed up and played for an hour is not a player base.) They recently claimed that the A-3 Justifier Mk II SGA edition would have a real world value of $20000.00US. It's current value in the game is about 25-30 dollars (250-300 PED). Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs, the guy that "bought" the space station turns out to be an employee... Mindark could not make money if players were withdrawing $3000.00US per month as this Mercury guy claims, it's just not possible because no matter how much the "virtual economy" generates the only way they get real money is for people to deposit. If you play smart, meaning you do everything the extremely hard way, you might get 75% return but the bottom line is that to continue playing you have to deposit. To play at any level near a normal MMORPG you have to deposit roughly 10X-20X what it would cost to play a mainstream MMO due to item decay and cost of supplies (weapons, ammunition, crafting supplies, etc). In Entropia if you deposit $15.00 per month, the standard mainstream MMO fee, you can play hard for a couple hours, or very soft for a few days, per month and then wander around and chat the rest of the time until your next deposit. Entropia has some attractive qualities if you have deposited and can spend, but if you are looking for a true "free" mmorpg where your progression is not based on real world money then Entropia is not going to do anything more than waste your download time.
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Originally posted by DoktorTeufel
Unfortunately, for me anyway, the fantasy genre is far more popular than Science Fiction. I'm in the same bitter boat as you, wanted/craved a great sci-fi game and got a fist full of manure instead...
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Originally posted by _Shadowmage
Let's be realistic, Garriott was coding when it was done in languages like Pascal... I doubt he could write a code block in C++ if his lazy butt depended on it. He was rich by the time the object oriented languages became popular, he had no reason to learn them. He stood back and tried to be the "idea guy" on Tabula Rasa and the fanboys that comprised Destination Failure Games didn't have the abilities to pull it off. Garriott's treatment of the Tabula Rasa title gives the impression that he pranced into the DG work areas once in a while, waved his scarf and made pompous declarations, and then scurried off to have pajama parties and plan his little space trip. I have no respect left for the guy, at all, and I sincerely hope he quietly retires and stays away from the gaming industry.
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Originally posted by markyturnip
This made me laugh:
"They should build something out of it. Like a wall of failure. "
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Originally posted by _Shadowmage
LOL, one thing is for certain: Whatever he had in the Ultima days got lost somewhere along the line because he sure didn't bring any of it to Tabula Rasa. { Mod Edit } |
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Originally posted by Chlodwig
That's exactly the problem... Everyone expected a great story, Tabula Rasa had a shallow story that made little sense and the crapified end game of clan vs clan human vs human PvP made no sense at all. Everyone expected moral decisions like Ultima, Tabula Rasa tried that but it was tacked on rather than integral to the game. Everyone expected character development that went beyond "level up and get tougher, etc...", Tabula Rasa was pure leveling up with absolutely NOTHING to look forward to at the end of the leveling. Tabula Rasa didn't deliver on any of the counts that you listed as "old school gaming", it was a shallow single player game that was cobbled together to try and justify the huge amount of money the producers foolishly dumped into the project.
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Originally posted by kinglee
I agree completely, after what I have seen of Garriott in recent years I believe he never had any real talent but was always in a position to take a hefty chunk of the credit. He may have made large storyline contributions to the Ultima series but when it came down to the actual work I'm pretty sure he wasn't any kind of driving force or source of pivotal code blocks. Richard Garriott has ridden on the Ultima fame far too long and I sincerely hope that any producer out there thinks long and hard before even considering giving him a dime.
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Originally posted by AngelBurst
ok lets clear some stuff up. There is tons of thing you guys are assuming here. For one RG father was an astronaught which is why RG was going in to space in the first place. His father got him interested in the space tourism industry.The payment for his ride was to help fund the space tourism industry, of which he also is invested in. He paid out of his own pocket for the space ride to fund his own company. Basically all he did is take the money out of his bank account and put it in to his own compnay. It was a majority of his money, around 30 million. He's been involved in the space industry for a long time. IThe planed flight was something that was in the workd long before anyone had even thought of Tabula Rasa. I think even before he formed Destination Games. The timing was right, and he took the oppertunity to go, and publicize it, and they did big time btw! NCsoft had booths at all the conventions having people sign up for the contest. They even produced and haded out swag for it. NCsoft NA was his company Destination Games. He sold it to NCsoft and stayed on to finish working on his game which then just had a code name. I think the plan has always been to the just stay on long enough to finish the game. He already had stakes in another venture and industry. He did the space flight to both promote his old venture, and his new venture. He got some publicity for the game, and his new company. He didnt have to do anything for Tabula Rasa, but he did, because NCsoft had proven that they were not behind the game. Everything that has happened was beneficial for NCsoft. They got their north american hq, and a game development company established all in one shot. They called it a partnership, but that isn't really what it looked like to a lot of people. There is no loss for NCsoft, so I have no idea where this speculation comes from. I think NCsoft only really wanted to establish the north amarican office. I don't think they cared to much about the game in the first place. I imagine it was kind of a bastard child/contractual obligation for the deal. So when RG left, they cut the funding. I don't think it was a suprise to NCsoft that he left, or RG that they cut the funding. Personally I think it was very arrogant of NCsoft to do it, and it makes it obvious what there intentions were all along.
I went blind trying to read this wall of text, could someone format this and translate it to braille so that I can read it now ?
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Originally posted by corpusc
Neither. In the early Beta I still had the Auto Assault game installed (though it was long dead) and it was easy to look and see that some of the assets in TR still had the original names from Auto Assault. They cobbled that crap together so quickly that they didn't even change most of the fonts.
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Dear pajama partying Diva, AKA RIchard Garriott, No producer in their right mind will give you another dime after the sickening thievery that you and your brother perpetrated on NCSoft. Tabula Rasa sent a 100 million dollar message to everyone in the gaming industry that whatever magic you had in the Ultima series is long gone. You thought that pulling together a "dream team" for Tabula Rasa was going to allow you to sit back and have your pajama parties while they did all the work. They realized what a sack you are so they took their paychecks and walked. After the "dream team" walked out, taking all the engine code with them, all you had were fanboys like that fruity little turd Starr Long so you tried to use those fanboys and the Auto Assault engine to cobble together a product to cover all the time and money you had wasted. And once they got the crappy game onto the market you turned your back on everything and played cosmonaut on NCsoft's money... You are a disgusting piece of work, Richard, and I hope that you fade from the gaming industry never to return. Or better yet, get the Russians to send you to space permanently.
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Originally posted by Mischiff That's pretty funny. In the beginning of the beta PvP was played way down, Garriott made it sound like PvP wasn't the focus of the game but by the time they realized that there was no end game, at all, they hastily tacked on clan vs clan PvP which made ZERO sense to the storyline. Tabula Rasa was a half assed effort, Garriott's name was on it but after the "dream team" told him to stuff it and walked away with their paychecks he ended up relying on meathead fanboy-worshipers like Starr Long to carry the ball and make him look good.
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Looks like NCSoft is facing some possible legal trouble: www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/692073/NCsoft_Getting_Sued_Over_MMO_Patent.html
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Originally posted by Aildrik
I hope it marks his exit from the solar system.
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Originally posted by kinglee
That's not quite right, bro, Jake Song lives in Korea he wasn't part of the dev team for TR. What happened was that Song heard about the HUGE amount of money and stock options that Kim Taek-jin (NCsoft CEO) had given to the Garriotts just to get them to come on board with NCSoft North America and he got so pissed that he walked out. They lost a tremendous asset in Jake Song and all they got in return for that loss was a pair of fruits that tore the guts out of NCsoft in the North American gaming market and left them looking like fools.
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Originally posted by indiramourn
NCsoft North America started a downhill slide a few years ago thanks to the Garriott brothers and I finally reached the end of my rope with the way we got treated in the TR beta so I am done with them. Frankly, NCsoft North America has nothing left to offer in the gaming market outside of the CoX franchise so unless they come up with some miraculously enjoyable game they can fall off the map completely and I won't miss them a bit.
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Originally posted by Antarious
Some of us out there really wanted TR to be a good game and we were counting on a big name like Garriott to make that happen. When the doors opened up to people in the closed beta those that weren't drawing their lifeforce from being fanbois to the devs were asking solid questions like "where is the end game ?" only to be rebuffed by the Garriott worshippers and that disgusting little troll CJ. Some of us, many of whom used to be strong NCSoft supporters, begged them to rethink what they were doing and hold off on an open beta... Most of us got banned for trying to convince the devs that it was just too empty and that it was destined to fail if they brought it out as-is. But the underlying truth was that it was too late because Garriott had blown all the money and NCSoft finally pulled the plug forcing them to release a half assed video game that some of us had waited YEARS to see come to fruition. In closing I did my ultimate to convince the people that mattered they were making a titanic mistake and I got kicked in the balls for my efforts, my vindication comes in that I was correct and they have gotten what they deserved which is a miserably failed product and enough egg on their faces that they will be scraping it off for years. The only thing that would make it sweeter for me is if NCSoft found some way to sue the crap out of the Garriott brothers and bankrupt their sorry asses.
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Originally posted by Cynthe
What a sophomoric comment. Your comment is as bad as Garriott trying to blame the beta testers for the game's failure. Tabula Rasa failed because the Garriotts were too busy hosting pajama parties instead of spending the money they ripped off from NCSoft on making a decent video game. Tabula Rasa failed because it was an empty shell, built on the Auto Assault engine, quickly thrown together when the NCSoft stockholders finally tightened the noose around that pair of pansies necks. The only players that hold any responsibility for that piece of trash are the ones that were blowing smoke up the devs posteriors as opposed to telling them the truth.
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All space sims suffer from low player counts. They require too much skill for the average gamer. Eve has a decent playerbase because it is a no skill point and click game that can be played while doing multiple other things. Space is a big lonely place and space games that require skill exemplify that all too well. With that said, Vendetta is a very decent game if you like to fly space ships (Joystick is well supported).
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Even free this game is just not worth the time and trouble to download. Let me amend that, download this if you are 8-11 years of age (but cannot play fps games), bored out of your mind and have exhausted every possible avenue of entertainment... Downloading Tabula Rasa is like picking up a turd and bringing it inside the house: It stinks and you wish you hadn't done it.
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Originally posted by chryses
I did play for 12 months and I had some amazing memories.
LOL @ "amazing"...
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