At first, the division of Europe is key: Don't include the UK in the release plan, don't put any efforts into Scandinavia. Germany and France will have their own servers, so you make sure that nobody is left to inhabit the "international server". The few Benelux players will drop the game soon. You also remove all release momentum with this strategy and it creates a nice initial release atmosphere as a plus.

If the game would just not appear on the shelves, that's one thing. But you can do better. Combine this strategy with digital distribution to maximize the effect. Use the international, free, global internet and even make the game free to download and play (the first few levels). Just be sure to prevent the free playing by using extensive IP-Blocks. Now people cannot play the game with their friends and you prevent international guilds to pick up the game. 

For the finishing move tell the few remaining players that they can play with the release of the game in their territory, whatever that is -- since you know, you made sure that you even divided Europe. Keep the confusion on a maximum level so you make sure the players lose motivation soon. The release of Wrath of the Lich King will also help a lot.

Then go into another beta for the new territory. It doesn't make sense, but remember: confusion is king. It also buys you time. Because in the meantime the developers are still releasing decent content updates and some players just won't go away. You can't have that. Claim that you will do marketing to keep them quiet. Time is on your side.

  At some point just post a memo somewhere that the game is now considered "live" in the rest of the world. Since players have complained all the time, drop the IP as well. That's right. There is no need for it anymore anyway and you need to maintain good face. Just make sure that you don't do marketing with the good news or something, keep a low profile with that. Just continue with the confusion strategy: employ marketing terms such as Freemium to make sure that you neither the subscriber audience nor the free 2 play audience understands anything. Remaining players are effectively scared off by not updating news and with lazy community management. And when developers do to much: fire them. You can't have counterproductive developers.

Originally posted by Matt_UK

'Very sad' is when something happens that is beyond the control of most people, was unavoidable even with the effort of most. This was a car crash waiting to happen from launch and Acclaim did nothing to save this game, they let it die. It's not very sad in my opinion that a badly developed and badly promoted game has gone crashing down. Let this be a lesson to lazy developers everywhere, all mmorpgs aren't a pot of cash in the making. I feel sorry for all the people who payed to play this, the Devs who lose their jobs deserve to pay for their poor work.

That game got decent reviews.You are entitled to have your super negative opinion, but saying that someone deserves to lose his job is way over the top of what is okay to say.  It wasn't really my cup of tea, but I liked it better than some other recent releases and I have sympathy for indie devs. The game itself had lot of potential and certainly could have its fair share of players. It is very apparent that the people in charge of making the publisher deals totally screwed that up, big time. I would say this was easily the worst launch in the history of MMOs, so horribly wrong that it actually killed the game.

Originally posted by vesavius

btw, it may not be the game for you, and thats fine, SB will NOT be for everyone (nothing unique ever is), but there is nothing to be gained from hating a indie dev following it's vision just for the sake of hating. We all need individual indies to triumph if we want to see change in this genre right? Not asking to give it 'leeway', but just asking for rationality, objectivity, and maturity. Thx.

There are some things I really do not agree with (missing quest tracker etc.). But then they aren't funcom or mythic and they seem to get a lot done with their patches. 

Originally posted by Umbral

 

 Within Temptation is one of the less original bands of its style, it was unoriginal when they started and still is unoriginal, but I understand some people really like the band, unfortunately the video is very, very cheesy.

 I dont know why they decided to use ingame scenes, it will look dated soon and the video just lost its artistic appeal and look like just a cheap marketing movie, in my opinion, the prerendered parts aren´t that bad, but the ingame/fight scenes are totally unnecessary.

 Movies and games should avoid Metal as soundtrack, even in this case where it is not the ingame soundtrack but just a promo. Metal and pop songs will always evoke a teen "aura" and the time when the game/movie was maded, while real soundtracks will just make the atmosphere/feeling of the game/movie grow.

 In my opinion, AION and Age of Conan videos with their original soundtracks are much more impactant, expressive and somehow "universal" than a TCoS video with a metal band.

 TCoS soundtrack is good, less expressive and well produced than AION, Age of Conan and Everques2 soundtrack (not talking about personal musical taste), but in my opinion, this TCoS/Metal promo is weak.

 Think about all movie teasers you saw, the ones with the movie original theme will always sound and look more expressive and unique than a teaser with a pop/rock (especially rock/metal) song in the background

..

 

Also, why do you need some random metal band when you have Jesper Kyd. ;)

No issues here with GG. A lot of games use it, so what is the problem?

AFAIK, the game was planned to be niche from the start and that is good. A niche can be quite large still, see EVE.

Does anyone else just hate suggestive question? Yes, they're lame.

Originally posted by Honkie

Originally posted by ZoOoO

We should give some credit to the Dev's, honest, it is a Indy company, there was not EA or SOE or one for those giants behind them all this time throwing money at them.

They had to find someone to publish the game,period, and probably, Acclaim was the only one willing to to do so, and to be honest with you, it is nor surprising since we can actually feel the way new MMO`s usually end up on the bin, think about TR, Vanguard, AoC, even WAR is getting a huge hit, and all those, they had a big company developing them

The devs are the ones who are going through with IP blocked forums.  That's not the publishers, that's them.  They're taking down their current forums to put up the IP blocked ones.  Once I saw that, it became apparent that more than a little bit of the IP blocking is directly due to them, at the very least they're endorsing it by their actions.
 

I originally had a viewpoint much like yours...till the world-first forum IP blocks.

Tell me Mister Wiseguy, why would a single party (i.e. developers) would want to block something? Why do developers publish, when they have plenty of publishers!? 

Couldn't it be, that contracts were made and everyone abides by its terms? Just a thought, not that I want to challenge your unparalleled wisdom. And why would Chewbacca want to live on Endor? That doesn't make sense.

Originally posted by Wolfenpride

Well I keep hearing the game is going to be "twitch" based and such and it just turns me off, I play singe player games for that.

Im more into an rpg, developing a character, earning and developing gear, raising skills and stats, stuff like in DDO, but it doesn't sound like this game is going that route.

Also it sounds like the game supports/caters to solo players, which just isn't my tastes at all, looking forward to group friendly games.

Dude, there are virtually hundreds of games like what you ask for. There are plenty of clones just a few clicks away.

Reading posts in this forums gave me some insights: primary schools should have their internet connections revoked. 

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

please don't insult smart people by calling them quests, but I also have completed all Quarterstone tasks available to me. Currently I am collecting X amount of crystals in lower level mines off statue zone in Quarterstone. It's a lvl 20 task.

I have had PeP as high as rank 3 and the point I made is valid, that losing PeP is not a significant death penalty, and without a significant death penalty you don't care about dying which ruins a major portion of the game and immersion. Fighting and battles just don't mean anything when there is no risk vs reward. You can go and farm PeP in a safe non PvP zone anytime you want it back.

When a game has marked taskgivers and most items and NPCs in the chain are marked on the minimap, there is no reason to read most of the text that a NPC offers, so the lore means nothing. I like a real quest system like classic EQ where no questgivers or items were marked, no minimaps existed, so if you didn't read the text, you were truly lost. In Spellborn you just skip to the last page and it tells you everything in painful detail so even the braindead know what to do. Sadly Spellborn is not unique in this dummy down task experience design which everyone seems to copy from WoW.

Can't wait til Darkfall.

Please don't use the word smart. You mention Darkfall in every post and prove that you are totally clueless. I mean totally. As in 100%. Pure.

PEP is a HUGE bonus. More attack speed, faster attacks, more damage, increased stats -- it already became a status symbol in the beta to have high PEP level. I think dying hurts quite a lot, compared to other REAL mmoprgs (vaporware pipe dream games excluded).

Of course you can always pull another niche game out of the drawer and claim that it's more awesome in this aspect and another mmorpg is better there blabla. But this is only your negative attitude, because you are a Darkfall Fanboy.

what hype? I must have missed it. yeah, "Mortal Online" and "Darkfall". Got the message.

TCoS seems like the same ol run of the mill MMO thats on todays shelf like WoW or Warhammer ... what makes this game good

It has real real time combat unlike the total failure AOC and has demonstrated this, unlike the titles you advertised.

@vesavius

Whats so difficult? in cs you have to aim and you have guns that do the damage. Now you can make the gun deal some more damage you still have to aim yourself.

There is no "nomination" as companies pay to get recognized in such trade shows. Warhammer was depicted several times in the GC Magazine, so I guess they paid the most to get the title. WotlK got much more attention on the show and their queue was longer, Spellborn was more innovative, Runes of Magic received better coverage and AION and many other titles AFAIK weren't even nominated ;)

If you like the good old stuff, Warhammer is right there for you and it is raw. Combat is like as it was ten years ago and it's raw as in half-baked. That doesn't prevent them from hyping it to the max. And there is Age of Conan, the even more hype title. The most people probably still believe it has the features, it aggressivly agitated daily for ages, because they missed the meek statements that their action combat won't have that much action because of technical problems and such. You get more some more blood, but no drunken brawling. Both games have been delayed several times. And then you have Spellborn. The comparing is almost odd. Two big hype gorillaz with hordes of fans and the puny arty game from europe in between. It indeed looks suspicious that they always seem to push the date back, when the release day comes closer. But, they also announce that they found publishers and such, so they seem to grow everytime, where the gorilla titles always have worldwide partners built-in anyway.

Its apparently true, people stick to heavy advertisement of even scapped features and extolments of how great and über-next-gen their game is, especially when there is the US label sticking somewhere (IP or company). If a game ramps up, without that much false promises and vapour features, like TCOS, it has to make its way first. People = Dumb Sheep. Devs learn: lie, manipulate, hype, announce vapour features. People gonna buy that.

How many skills do you have in your average MMORPG? There are certainly more than 5 in your toolbar, right? In Spellborn you see only 5 at a time, use one, then the next 5. Its up to you, how you arrange your skill. You can certainly make your entire deck with 5 same skills, if you like to. Shouldnt be too difficult.

I think the hype meter is a good way to see the buzz generated by marketing, (mostly) announcing bogus features in interviews, give wrong impressions of the state of the game. The current hype meter leader Age of Conan for example fed us with interviews explaining features that didn't made into the game (like drunken brawling), endlessly bragging with a new combat system that was scapped due to technical difficulties and some other things that somehow made it through the NDA barrier. If you know how Warhammer actually looks in game, you know why they generally prefer to show concept arts.

the hype meter is perfect, as it does not care about judgement. Unfortunately, a meter is not invented yet to show the actual quality and anticipation of a product, like honest features, honest screenshots from the game and such ;)

Knight armor was effective on horsebacks versus other warriors at some point. The historical context matters here. With other weapons and fighting styles and other social developments this became obsolete. Naked vs Armored is therefore a wrong approach, moreso that it has little to do with games or Spellborn especially.

Originally posted by Alboin

to MetaSeven: good points indeed. Although as I see  it  they're not improving anything, but just simulating some activity to keep at least current subscription base paying. Doubtfully they can come up and say: "Thats it, folks, we're pulling the plug next year". They will be simulating some activity and re-packaging old features selling them as new - very very cheap way to keep customers paying. At some point - will it be SWG2, KOTOR or whaever onlinestarwarsy - current swg will be down, cause probably the best franshise in the entertainment business was treated like a dock hooker.

What I don't understand is if there is any confirned knowledge about SOE's license being exclusive or not. I tried googling only fan speculations founded.

I know very well where you are coming from and I agree that they do not 'really' improve the game from our point of view, as one can see quite easily that they reboil the same things for years. They just ressurrected Aurellia and pimped it with some attrite assets they haven't already overused a thousand times. They introduced some more grind what they euphemistically call 'collections', which is in nothing more than, in fact, a highscore (whoohoo) so that the folks can get overexcited that they killed a few hundreds of quenkers and see their name displayed on a website. To be fair, they also added new instances. In one you can earn a bullhead as a backpack. True story.

With all polemics, they do not 'simulate activity'. They in fact add things to the game. Nothing to write home about it for us, although there are some people who like it. There are people who even play monotonous asia grinder games which jumped the shark years ago - each to his own.

The exclusive license or non-exclusive license was some informed speculation. Mister Smedley and the Jake Neri have said they will continue with SWG and exclusive/non-exclusive license stuff is much more reasonable than 'pulling the plug'.

Ok, they didn't mention KOTOR … well …

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LucasArts and BioWare Corp. to Create Ground-Breaking Interactive Entertainment Product

SAN FRANCISCO, CA and EDMONTON, CANADA -- October 30, 2007 -- LucasArts and BioWare Corp. today announced that they have entered into an agreement to create an interactive entertainment product. The product, details of which will be unveiled at a later date, will be developed and published by BioWare and LucasArts, and will push the boundaries of the gaming market by utilizing the strengths of both companies to deliver an innovative, high-quality experience. [Read More]

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Wall of Text has hit for 235000 damage.

It's likely that LucasArts grants a temporary exclusive license for the companies they work with, so that not two identical games are released (e.g. two Star Wars RPGs at the same time). Yet, exclusive licenses will be temporary and after a given period of time translated to simple non-exclusive licenses.

Therefore, John Smedley and Jake Neri can talk about long-time commitment with Star Wars Galaxies for another ten years or more but that doesn't prevent LucasArts (with another company) from producing a second Star Wars MMO title. Star Wars Galaxies is over four years old. It was just around five years between the two EverQuest titles.

In case LucasArts wants to stay in the MMO market, they probably produce another MMO and in fact, they were approached several times (but declined officially). Star Wars Galaxies was always discussed controversially and was never as successful as it should have been, yet was still successful from the business perspective.

Finally, both companies cooperatively produce and work on Star Wars Galaxies. Any change and addition needs approvement from LucasArts. It's entirely wrong to blame SOE alone. So when LucasArts decides to work with someone else (like Bioware), it's probably not based on incompetence on SOEs part, but probably to exploit the highly successful KOTOR brand (which is partially Biowares franchise!).

I think it is likely due to a number of reasons:

1. Nancy McIntyre (LucasArts marketing) hinted in the infamous NGE interviews that they like to have a »SWG2« at the end of the decade (look it up, I am not sure if she even talked about 2008/2009). Of course, a lot will have changed since then (especially due the the NGE debacle), but that indicates the willingness to continue in the MMO market.
2. The MMO market is dominated by large brands and franchises. Part of World of Warcrafts success is the known and acclaimed Warcraft brand, established years before. KOTOR is similar in this regard, as that it created a known and acclaimed franchise known among PC gamers (unlike Star Wars for itself). The KOTOR franchise belongs partially to Bioware (as George Lucas himself has noted that he maybe wants to take the franchise someday to make something out if it, e.g. TV).
3. There is the likelihood that the exlcusive license is translated into a non-exclusive license after a couple of years, so that Star Wars Galaxies cannot be the reason that prevents another Star Wars related MMO. Five years of an exclusive lifespan seems reasonable (see EverQuests). SWG is more than four years old. Another Star Wars MMO game till the end of the decate and the KOTOR rumor fits that schedule perfectly.

A final sentence on topic. The lack of Expansions and the relatively long interval between chapters as well as the known and visible lack of new art and content are no good omens, not the fact that it is available as Direct Download only. Star Wars Galaxies improves somehow (just into another direction than many of us would like to see).