Originally posted by retrospectic

I can't imagine how tough it is to create an MMORPG in our economic climate.  Posts like this one just show how insensative our community can be.  It wasn't long ago that our MMORPG selection could be counted on one hand.  I really miss the community back then.  This stuff is just garbage.

I wish the creators of the Stargate MMO much luck on their project.  It is a wonderful IP and has a lot of potential for innovation.

I think two things are wrong with your logic:

1: The entertainment sector (and therefore the games industry specifically) is typically one of the most recession-proof industries around.

2: I personally believe that your nostalgia for "the community back then" is based on the fact that online communities are generally more terrible the larger they get, not less.  But you can't have it both ways.  If you want every Tom, Dick, and Harry MMO development studio to succeed, you have to be prepared for the sewer that the MMO community at large will (has?) become as a result.

In the end, it'd be unfortunate (I guess) if SGW was shelved, but it'd surely be due to things like poor planning and/or management, no?  Plenty of MMOs get (and are getting) made all the time, without succumbing to bankruptcy, so it obviously can be done. Economic climate notwithstanding.

Originally posted by Bekkr

Originally posted by retrospectic

I can't imagine how tough it is to create an MMORPG in our economic climate.  Posts like this one just show how insensative our community can be.  It wasn't long ago that our MMORPG selection could be counted on one hand.  I really miss the community back then.  This stuff is just garbage.

I wish the creators of the Stargate MMO much luck on their project.  It is a wonderful IP and has a lot of potential for innovation.

 

I think two things are wrong with your logic:

1: The entertainment sector (and therefore the games industry specifically) is typically one of the most recession-proof industries around.

2: I personally believe that your nostalgia for "the community back then" is based on the fact that online communities are generally more terrible the larger they get, not less.  But you can't have it both ways.  If you want every Tom, Dick, and Harry MMO development studio to succeed, you have to be prepared for the sewer that the MMO community at large will (has?) become as a result.

In the end, it'd be unfortunate (I guess) if SGW was shelved, but it'd surely be due to things like poor planning and/or management, no?  Plenty of MMOs get (and are getting) made all the time, without succumbing to bankruptcy, so it obviously can be done. Economic climate notwithstanding.

 

 

 

I completely and utterly agree.

I work in the pub game - and I can say, that this poor economic climate is vastly exagerated - business couldn't be better.

MMO's are cheap entertainment, you flip 5% of your average wage a week for a whole month's worth of entertainment. Blizzard's business model has made the MMO market very attractive to investors, especially backed by a successful IP.

And, I'm and old gamer, and I can certainly affirm that the gaming scene today is 20-fold what it was 10 years ago.

The post is by no means insensitive, this is gaming and this is big business; consumer's have every right to demand quality and it's reflected in sales.

Originally posted by minermarc666

Well i know of alot of people that have been waiting for this game to come out it's just now there has been talk that it's dead
well with all the new game right in front of Star gate worlds the new StarWArs Game is going to Take The Cake the is Aion all so
and much more i also hear that the main GM in star gate world left the company really if that doesn't sound like FAiled Game i don't know what does to bad to i was look forward to the game too :( What Do you guys Think Will it launch?

Talk from what ? A guy who makes accusations, has not one bit of documentation to back it up, and hates Mormons. I mean this guy hates Mormons more than he loves grammar. Find me some docs to back this up and then I'll buy it, untli then, it's some guy who got fired for eating snickers and surfing porn on the web instead of designing instance # 1424b.

Who cares if they are mormons, jews, muslims, etc.  It don't matter, what we want to know is whats happening with the game, not all the crap that has been going on.

We want backed up facts, we wants real info not hearsay, and we really want SGW to make it out the door, can it be simplified any more than that ?

People just bitching at each other, mudslinging is just muddying up the facts with whats going on, on a side note someone having a court case doesn't mean anything and doesnt prove any facts they have stated as wrong, and that goes for both sides of the coin.

Now if you cant back up your accusations and information with qualified proof of the facts, its best just to keep stum.

Originally posted by reaperuk

Money's tight but they're still working on it. Maybe the OP could have taken the trouble to check out their official forums instead of making a pointless and misleading thread here?

lol all these 1 million dollars budget to make the next wow make me laugh they should just make a new chess game online lol they would at least have the budget to finish the game

wow costed around 300 to 400 million since the start of the adventure

so next game maker if you dont have have say 10 % of that per year to put in the next gen mmo game then stick to console game (non-mmo)at least you ll have enough money to finish that

most company salivate when they see how mutch wow does a month but they fail to understand that blizzard was lucky if it

had failed in the beginning of wow like aoc,or war  blizzard would be dead today

thats f2p is so popular you can have a mediocre game and still make money

p2p isnt like that ,people arent dum enough to shell from 40 to 90$ + 15$monthly on a bad game

if you count all f2p player and all p2p player i bet there are more f2p player and f2p make a lot more money /player then any p2p

game out there

Originally posted by drbaltazar

 

wow costed around 300 to 400 million since the start of the adventure

so next game maker if you dont have have say 10 % of that per year to put in the next gen mmo game then stick to console game (non-mmo)at least you ll have enough money to finish that

Cost dear, cost.

Blizzard put the original WOW on shelves and servers with 60 million. CME had 50 million. Blizzard had to work from the ground up with that money. CME is using canned apps and can't do it.

Originally posted by ariccaron

Cost dear, cost.

Blizzard put the original WOW on shelves and servers with 60 million. CME had 50 million. Blizzard had to work from the ground up with that money. CME is using canned apps and can't do it.

Just a reminder that CME didn’t burn the 50 million in development of Stargate Worlds.  Over half went to other studios (handcranked, superstition, mass illusions, firesky), investments in the CEO's company (Knowledge Relay), investments in other friends’ companies or business ventures, that lame racing game for their iSnap portal of games (which morphed into MMOGULS), outfitting that swank lobby, a building for all studios that was never finished, and of course the few million that was just missing from the books.  

Last year’s budget for CME was less than the 4 studios named above. Had they spent the 50 million on Stargate alone, it would be on store shelves today.
 

Did the investors know they were investing in other things, or were they pulled in thinking it was just SGW?

Its really annoying to see things falling apart like they are due to bad management by the person controlling the purse strings.

Hopefully they can pull through, the only problem now is, they need to consolodate all there current manpower into one project, splitting up into multiple project is what is killing them I think.

Originally posted by yellowperil

Did the investors know they were investing in other things, or were they pulled in thinking it was just SGW?

Its really annoying to see things falling apart like they are due to bad management by the person controlling the purse strings.

Hopefully they can pull through, the only problem now is, they need to consolodate all there current manpower into one project, splitting up into multiple project is what is killing them I think.

That is a good question. The original investors were only in SGW. When they were starting up the other studios, at first I heard they were looking for individual investors, but nobody wanted to invest in those, only SGW. I later heard that the CEO told employees that investors didn’t want to invest in SGW alone. /shrug

Oh, they have consolidated what they can, even moving everyone into the same office now instead of the other little studios  in a different area, the place continues to be a ghost town and there are still not enough bodies to fill the holes in the dam. They’ll need a significant funding infusion to get anyone still in the area back from leave of absence.

Heh, it looks like Renfail over at the SGW forums got banned for hurting Khestral's feelings :)

I can't see why  else otherwise. He's a bit acerbic, but not terribly so, and certainly not more than a lot.

Originally posted by Zhiroc

Heh, it looks like Renfail over at the SGW forums got banned for hurting Khestral's feelings :)

I can't see why  else otherwise. He's a bit acerbic, but not terribly so, and certainly not more than a lot.

It seems that only blind faith FanOri are welcome over there now, he broke no RoC. His only crime was asking when CME will produce the information promised by Khestral over a month ago and requesting an explanation as to why it wasn't coming. Instead of an answer he got banned and those screen shots that went from every two weeks to roughly every two weeks to the old chesnut of "it'll be ready when it's ready" are still MIA over a month later alongside the answers Khestral said he'd provide.

As for myself I wouldn't even bother asking since I know that CME has already gone tits up and SGW isn't going to be released. If an SG MMORPG were released it won't have anything to do with CME and it won't be this side of 2011. On the SGW boards this post would be consider a "negative nancy post" and I'd be banned for it, however I'm just being realistic.

Realism is poison on the SGW official forums.

Renfail was frustrated with game progress, like other banned posters he never broke the TOS, he just told the truth.

Hello Again Everyone... 

Update on CME/FireSky/MMOGULS, the StarGate game and the founders Whiting and Gagon

CME is one step away from bankruptcy.. This will be the best way, in fact the only way, anyone will be able to resurrect the game andf salvage the assets, otherwise a sophistigated investor would never touch this company, who knows what the real liabilities are. Hell,Whiting can't even tell you where all the money has gone, who he got it from...

You can't get a certified list of investors, you cant get a certified list of creditors, the claims against all of the 20 some CME adffiliate LLC's, LP's and Corps are virtually unknown, and the last offical info I had in March 09, over $2.5M in payroll taxes were owed. It just gets worse and worse everyday CME is open.

And who knows how corrupted the game has become, with multiple people writing the same code for a certain aspect of the game, new people coming in, not nearly as experienced as the former employee, it's just a mess..

Then there is MGM, who knows what their position is?? The best place to do this is in a US Bankruptcy Court. Unfortunately all of the unsecured creditors, including investors, will take it in the shorts,

We will soon see if the game can be resurrected and finished, and if so,  Whiting can play the StarGate game from the computer in the prison library...

Originally posted by SemperFiVet

Hello Again Everyone... 

Update on CME/FireSky/MMOGULS, the StarGate game and the founders Whiting and Gagon

CME is one step away from bankruptcy.. This will be the best way, in fact the only way, anyone will be able to resurrect the game andf salvage the assets, otherwise a sophistigated investor would never touch this company, who knows what the real liabilities are. Hell,Whiting can't even tell you where all the money has gone, who he got it from...

You can't get a certified list of investors, you cant get a certified list of creditors, the claims against all of the 20 some CME adffiliate LLC's, LP's and Corps are virtually unknown, and the last offical info I had in March 09, over $2.5M in payroll taxes were owed. It just gets worse and worse everyday CME is open.

And who knows how corrupted the game has become, with multiple people writing the same code for a certain aspect of the game, new people coming in, not nearly as experienced as the former employee, it's just a mess..

Then there is MGM, who knows what their position is?? The best place to do this is in a US Bankruptcy Court. Unfortunately all of the unsecured creditors, including investors, will take it in the shorts,

We will soon see if the game can be resurrected and finished, and if so,  Whiting can play the StarGate game from the computer in the prison library...

 

 Does Sempefivet have a new group of investors to help get this game to market? 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry <Mod edit>, that information would have to remain confidental and will be disclosed only to a Bankruptcy Judge and/or Trustee if and when CME is thrust into involuntary bankruptcy.
I say involuntary because the last place Whiting and Gagon want to be is before a Federal Bankruptcy Judge..
The investors don't want any part either, because they are unsecured investors and will loose everything..
 
 
 
 
 

Basically either sell up (which they wont do CME), or force all current investors in CME not GAVICK to put up more money or they lose everything.  The people invested in Gavick will still have that, they will end up with stock in another company.

Is this how its going to play out?

Man this is so depressing if this is true....Will the other investor come back and re-offer his deal, or is that wishful thinking?

At a guess I would say 6 months to get back upto speed with all the work, and then depending on how fast they can sort stuff out and get it running again, we could be talking about 12 months away.  If it goes bankrupt, then we are talking about liquidation, and people fighting over the remains, and then maybe even longer to get it going if it could be.

I get the feeling the biggest  insight here is stick to what you started of with, SGW and not bother putting your fingers into other pies.  Seems this is one valuable lesson thats been learned here.

If it goes to bankruptcy the judge will be concerned with getting the best return for the creditors, which would probably mean auction to the highest bidder. If that were the case, I could see SOE snapping the game up.

When CME goes officialy bankrupt (since they are bankrupt right now) I doubt anyone would purchase the code, the license yes. Why not the code? Well where are the people who worked on that code? They've long since fled to other jobs and any code remaining has been so screwed up by a succession of interns that it's useless. The only other asset that CME has is the license for the Bigworld engine, depending on the type of license it may be worth something.

Anyone that wants to make an SG MMORPG may want to pick up certain assets but most of that code will be scrapped and they'll have to start fresh.

As a big Stargate fan, i must say i hope SGW does die.

Stargate is my fave franchise and i would love to see it in the MMO market, but it deserves to be done properly. CME cannot give SGW that polished, fun and well deserved introduction into the gaming world.

Stargate is a big IP and im sure somebody else will pick it up when CME loses the rights to it.

Has anyone taken a look at the thread Zhiroc posted? I think CME moderators have now gone to DEFCON 4 click. This post by Feign (moderator) reminded me of the old Julio Torres post years ago in the SWG forums which he ended up apologizing for 2 weeks later,

"Quote:
Originally Posted by aric149
Then he never should have started. Its just another excuse and another broken promise without results. At this point it seems its easier to just ban people that want news than to get that info out.
Lets be real, there aren't many people left to ban.

Feign,

I think you can tell their posting habits compared to others. Sure some people are posting positives, and others not so, but whining, or casting blame, or trolling will not resolve the situation.

If people are truly in fact displeased with what CME is up to, they can leave if they would like. But to post something defamatory is not cool, especially when the topic had been derailed.

I think at some point we as the user base, just have to accept the current predicament - end of story.

People get themselves banned or demerited for whatever defamatory thing they write.

If you guys still want to have a good debate, there is a debate channel on the IRC, as well as a thread on the forum on how to write a good argument."

You gotta love the "If you don't like us shining a light up your butt then get lost!" statement. Then going on to say "But to post something defamatory is not cool", if they actually had anyone left on those forms or even a game this would result in a mass rage quit. Torres did something similar after the NGE resulting in a mass rage quit and him groveling to the community two weeks later saying what he really meant was .......

But I agree with aric149, that it's easier for them to ban community members than have the Director of QA deliver some screenshots he's promised every two weeks. If CME actually had 100 people working hard to get the game out how hard would it be for him to get say 10 screenshots every two weeks? Hell he could get them anytime if they had people working there just walk down to the art department and have them put them on a memory stick. But he can't because there is no one working on the game and he's just shining a light up peoples butts promising screenies and asking for questions to put to the DEVs who've all quit or are sitting at their comp hunting for real jobs as you read this!

I myself wonder what stunt Khestral will pull now to quiet down the boards, the media blackout BS lasted for months, TKsnows announcements lasted a few months, the screenie and DEV questions promise lasted a month what is next this month I wonder? Naked pics of Amanda Tapping and Chris Judge?

I find it sad that so many people really dont seem to understand how business structures work today.  So much effort is going into antogonising some staff at CME, when they are trying there best to provide the community with something.

These staff members have put there neck on the line trying to get information to you, screen shots and dev chats, something happens and they get panned.  Do you really think the person that spent time and effort decided to pan these things, or do you think its more than likely a call from up above.

Some one is making calls on how things are done, and ignoring the expertise below them, the latest screen shots, do you really think that someone with 10 years experience as a QA would possibly allow shots that have been released to have been cleared through him.  I bet the QA guys are crawling under desks shuddering at the total mess the 'Marketing & PR Team' caused. 

This team in my personal opinion must have played PCDOS Doom, to think that the community would go wow at the last several batches of screen shots that were released. I get the feeling that the people in the know are not being used for this sort of stuff, as the TEAM releasing the shots knows more than a game dev or game qa.  To me it seems the people that can do this game justice are ignored, and the people that think they know everything are the ones controlling it.

Personally if the guys above actually wanted to get people to have faith in the game, they should give these people control of the riegns again, instead of saying there's a media blackout and ignore everyone as if there isn't a problem.  Personally I would have more faith in a company that is more upfront,

'Hey we have problems, but we are still working on the game, and our QA team have got some great shots to show you of the game. We cant go into more details about our problems so dont ask, but if you wanna see some screen shots of the current internal builds of the game, visit our Gallery.' 

Now if they did this, I think a lot of people would have a little more faith in SGW coming out, but as it seems the people controlling the purse strings and the flow of information are doing more harm than good. (my opinion).

Yellow, the flaw I see in your opinion is that there are no skilled people left doing any work at CME anymore. They've either left or are looking for new jobs rather than doing any work. In short there is no quality to assure. I agree the wrong people have been making calls, those people are in upper managment. They spent all the money by mid last year and as a result the staff have left or are owed 4 months pay and the community is dead. Khestral and TKKSnow are doing their best smoke and mirrors act they can but when only 10-15 community members actually believe them what's the point?

Khestral said he'd get the screenies in two weeks and didn't, he said he'd put the communities questions to developers and return with answers soon one month ago. An explanation would suffice but instead they ban you for asking for one and tell you to put up or shut up.

How hard could it be for the Director of quality assurance at say CCP or even Aventurine to get five screenshots of anything they're working on to show the public? I reckon even Tasos could deliver on that because there actually are people working at Aventurine, it may only be twenty workers but he could get them posted that day even. Khestral can't because no one is doing any work, FACT!

Therefore Khestral shouldn't promise what he knows he can't deliver. In my opinion it was merely all a red herring to get the community to quiet down for a while and it worked for a month. However all the time he knew there was no way to deliver on it within the time he'd alotted unless he went and did it himself which is probqably what he's been doing. I can see Khestral now shouting and swearing as he tries to learn how to use the Bigworld engine in time for the two week deadline!

I wonder when Khestral was last paid?

That first post was near impossible to understand. What a waste of time.

hmm this place should be called SGW conspiracy theorists forum.

Originally posted by supremeaaron

hmm this place should be called SGW conspiracy theorists forum.

What exactly are you calling a conspiracy theory?

It wasn't so long ago that FanOri were calling MMOGULs a deluded conspiracy theory, or the now fact that no one has been paid in four months. Is it such a stretch to believe that Khestral is just trying to pull a fast one in order to keep the dissent down on the official forums?

I know from your posts on the official forums you want to keep it all on a positive track and that you believe SGW will get released sometime next year whilst secretly hoping it'll be this year. However it's time to face facts Aaron, MMOGULs is collapsing so CMEs last source of funding just went tits up. CME employees (not counting team Whiting) haven't been paid in four months and Khestral cannot deliver.

I believe myself Khestral will deliver eventually though, but those questions you guys gave him to ask developers he'll just make up the answers himself. As to the screenies I'm sure he's been rifiling aroung the vacant workstations looking for something for a while now, the law of averages states he has to come across a few sooner or later.

Sometime this summer I reckon we'll see CME being evicted or just disappearing if team Whiting can evade bankruptcy.