...if they deleiver 90% and the game isn't full of bugs at launch - there will be a few people over here with egg on their faces.
On the other hand, you better make your face ready for the egg facial. Just in case...you know...Starvault keeps up with its track record Upto Date, and overhypes and underdelivers. Wasnt it the general consensus that this patch would be out by April, or was it taking for granted since SV dint hold the customer's pinky finger and make a promise? Either way, the albumen is just starting to drip over your face since SV defaulted on the release date already.
ginally posted by CroniteLore
MO has been improving for a long time, bit by bit. Even some of the die-hards over here accept that. If not all.
Game is finally entering a state thats close to Open Beta, 2 years after release. Time for mass celebrations! LONG TIME and BIT by BIT indeed.
inally posted by CroniteLore
*IF* The Awakening comes off
Better stay quiet till the IF part is resolved. We all know how IFs have worked in the past for SV, why do you want to risk another IF and more eggs on face? For ex. IF Epic Patch worked, IF Dawn Patch came through, IF Epic Patch 2 dint tank, IF TC worked as intended, heck IF the game downloaded and ran without crashing...Get the point?
Originally posted by CroniteLore
OFC according to many SV should have been out of business 2 years ago. Which confuses me as SV seem to be on a slow-burn pathway so it kinda feels normal to be at this point if oh so slow.
Im not one to use analogies, but gotta put one down here. Think of SV's current situation as someone who is starving to death. Do you die if you skip a meal? Ofcourse not. Do you die if you dont eat for a day or two? No, you dont die. But you continue starving for more than a couple of days then you start to lose weight as your body starts to cannibalize itself (first the fat layers go, then the muscle atrophies away, then...) and finally when you have turned into a husk of a person with skin clinging to the bones, barely able to do anything more than merely struggle to breathe on, that is when starving will actually kill you.
Look at SV, initially started with daddy's monetary blessings and got bloated with a huge number of box purchases. After the initial surge of profits, has been losing money constantly and without fail for around 2 years. A company might not die after a year or two after profits have flatlined as long as someone's daddy is pumping in bailouts through a IV tube. But SV have started cannibalizing themselves from months back. People were laid off em mass. Office furniture was sold off for quick bucks. CEO gets down to begging people to buy stocks. And now that SV has turned into a skeleton crew, barely able to keep up with anything more than putting out patches once in 6 months, the situation does look very dire in need.
As far as Im concerned, SV has died already. Months back even. A couple of drinking buddehs, fanmodding from rich son's getaway apartment doesnt equate to what a company is, IMHO. I seriously dont give a flying duck what any fanboy thinks, even if its that SV is thriving and population is BOOOOOMING. But to me, and any investor out there, this company is laid buried that even money-grub publishers dont want any part of it anymore, ie like that China publisher, remember that?
Originally posted by CroniteLore
All I know for sure is that I'm not sure. We will see soon enough I guess.
I Would have agreed with you, but Im surer now and sure too that we will see this later rather than sooner. This xpatch is a dud and the blatantly useless hype, as per the opening post of this thread, proves it so. Good luck wishing for greener pastures in MO, but if you ever bring up any talks of faces and eggs all I got to say any SV fanboy and not just you is to keep your face ready.
Oh I'm almost sure it will be overhyped and will underdeliver. That is how it is in this industry.
I'm also prepeared for shitton of bugs, possibly crashes etc. That is how it works when you have a "sceleton" crew.
Still after a week or two of fixing the game will be improved, so another step forward, and however ou'd like to spin it, that can only be good.
As for the company dying- what if? I'll just say It was a good try. I had fun for 2 years. Better to have fun for a while, than never know fun at all. :P
Shame there is no other game like MO on the market
How can anyone really believe a word that Henrik says after all the failed promises over the last few years? Remember when Theia said we would get Veteran Rewards 3 months ago? He said it would be a few days. How about the gene system? I could go on and on.
This company has one of the worst track records at delivering their promises.
Ever since when have you been a hater? You were one of the biggest fanboys from what I can remember.
Nether the less, I completely agree with you and I will never believe anything Henrik says until I see it. If something is too good to be true, it never is. In this case, a bug free expansion with a decent amount of content is just ridiculous. I would be overjoyed if I was completely wrong and this "expansion" (adding and fixing basic and required features) made the game playable, but I highly doubt it at this stage.
How can anyone really believe a word that Henrik says after all the failed promises over the last few years? Remember when Theia said we would get Veteran Rewards 3 months ago? He said it would be a few days. How about the gene system? I could go on and on.
This company has one of the worst track records at delivering their promises.
Ever since when have you been a hater? You were one of the biggest fanboys from what I can remember.
I think the real PrinceReaper mentioned on MO forums that this guy is not real him.
Ever since when have you been a hater? You were one of the biggest fanboys from what I can remember.
Nether the less, I completely agree with you and I will never believe anything Henrik says until I see it. If something is too good to be true, it never is. In this case, a bug free expansion with a decent amount of content is just ridiculous. I would be overjoyed if I was completely wrong and this "expansion" (adding and fixing basic and required features) made the game playable, but I highly doubt it at this stage.
He's not princey ^^
Just another hater on a crusade.
Anyway- why would anyone expect a bug free patch is beyond me. Far larger companies with huge resources do not manage that.
As long as it's fixed in few weeks time it's ok in my book. No one will die (IRL that is) if the game isn't working like a charm for a moment.
Ever since when have you been a hater? You were one of the biggest fanboys from what I can remember.
Nether the less, I completely agree with you and I will never believe anything Henrik says until I see it. If something is too good to be true, it never is. In this case, a bug free expansion with a decent amount of content is just ridiculous. I would be overjoyed if I was completely wrong and this "expansion" (adding and fixing basic and required features) made the game playable, but I highly doubt it at this stage.
He's not princey ^^
Just another hater on a crusade.
Anyway- why would anyone expect a bug free patch is beyond me. Far larger companies with huge resources do not manage that.
As long as it's fixed in few weeks time it's ok in my book. No one will die (IRL that is) if the game isn't working like a charm for a moment.
Hundreds if not thousands of players that periodically tried out MO after all the failed so called "expansions" doesnt share your opinion since they came, saw and left in a heartbeat. Lets be honest here: if the case was that SV would iron out the bugs after expansions in a timeline manner of few weeks, more players would tolerate the frustration. But there arent weeks, there are months after the releases that bugs keep on buging playerbase, SV dont say a word on them and we all have several examples of bugs that will not be iron out. Never that is.
Far larger companies do release games or expansions with bugs but they do focus on fixing them. My greater example is AoC. Funcom screwed up royaly at release but bug fixing was in their agenda in a daily basis. Unexpected downtimes may happen aswell but with SV's way, which is no word about them, no estimated times, and in general attitudes like "it will be up when it will be up" (words typed by Discord, SV's lead game manager in IRC) interractions with the game and with that screwed up kindergarden who pretends to be a company, only lead to frustration and sadness.
It's ok. I don't really care about hundreds, or even thousands. I know what I enjoy, what I can tolerate and why. Thousands like Britney Spears or Justin Biber.
That does not mean I should like it as well right. Similarly Thousands will never enjoy progressive rock, does that mean I am wrong for liking it?
Remember reasons for quiting a game vary. For many it was stuff like bugs and desync (that was a killer ), for others it's the very nature of a full loot game. Some may get dizzy when trying to play an FPV game, or get offended by nudity.
As for "expansions", we had only one thus far. The rest was just patches.
Fixes after the last one (TC) were quick, and the patch it self didn't introduce gamebreaking bugs into the old content, definately improvement over how SV used to do it. Hopefully this will be a new standard for them and not just a lucky 1 timer.
You see I perfectly am aware of all the bugs and issues. MO is in bad shape (although far from the unplayable state it was in earlier, so progres is being made), but sadly there is no alternative if someone wants a modern fantasy sandbox, specially if that persons enjoys the immersion brought by FPV.
MO is a set of features not covered by any game released up to date.
If there was anything like MO out there, but with more polish, naturally I would switch. Reality is though this industry sucks :P
I have to agree in many things you said but the analogy between players that playing MO or not and followers/ listeners of Britney Spears or whoever is fundamentaly wrong. You see the first one is a matter of patience since no one can deny that MO has terrible issues and SV fails badly in many levels. But the second one is a matter of taste. And no i m not talking about thousands of people that left MO cause they simply dont like the sandbox/ full loot/ first person view aspect of the game. I m talking about the thousands of people that do desperately seek for a title with all those aspects combined but they couldnt stand all the crap that MO comes with and a company that cant walk from a room to another without destroying half of the furniture. Those people are the majority and i share their opinion not because they are many but just cause its my opinion and thats how i see things.
I will agree also that TC didnt came with terrible gamebreaking bugs but still it came with bugs, annoying ones, it was a half assed feature non functional, worthless and not remotely close to what playerbase was expecting it to be. And not only that but those bugs where not fixed in 5 weeks i was in game after release. Which is ridiculous if you ask me. Same with Dawn.Two months later after release bugs where still in game, features where turned off and SV was talking about the future without even saying a word about fixing their own mess.
Tbh i do hope as you said that "success" of territory control wasnt a one timer and a lucky strike. But still releasing a patch/ expansion with non gamebreaking bugs shouldnt be considered a success and SV should be focusing on delivering patches with non gamebreaking bugs but also functional, well designed. Thats what improvement commands. For some reasons though i highly doubt they can. If they cant cause they lack funds, stuff, talent, knowledge is a different discussion and we can only speculate on that. But the main thing is that they cant and at this point this will not going to change for several reasons unless drastic changes will happen which i highly doubt it aswell.
I do hope they prove me wrong when Awakening hits live and we will be around to discuss it with more facts and less speculations but allow me to be sceptical if not pessimist.
Originally posted by argirop I have to agree in many things you said but the analogy between players that playing MO or not and followers/ listeners of Britney Spears or whoever is fundamentaly wrong. You see the first one is a matter of patience since no one can deny that MO has terrible issues and SV fails badly in many levels. But the second one is a matter of taste. And no i m not talking about thousands of people that left MO cause they simply dont like the sandbox/ full loot/ first person view aspect of the game. I m talking about the thousands of people that do desperately seek for a title with all those aspects combined but they couldnt stand all the crap that MO comes with and a company that cant walk from a room to another without destroying half of the furniture. Those people are the majority and i share their opinion not because they are many but just cause its my opinion and thats how i see things. I will agree also that TC didnt came with terrible gamebreaking bugs but still it came with bugs, annoying ones, it was a half assed feature non functional, worthless and not remotely close to what playerbase was expecting it to be. And not only that but those bugs where not fixed in 5 weeks i was in game after release. Which is ridiculous if you ask me. Same with Dawn.Two months later after release bugs where still in game, features where turned off and SV was talking about the future without even saying a word about fixing their own mess. Tbh i do hope as you said that "success" of territory control wasnt a one timer and a lucky strike. But still releasing a patch/ expansion with non gamebreaking bugs shouldnt be considered a success and SV should be focusing on delivering patches with non gamebreaking bugs but also functional, well designed. Thats what improvement commands. For some reasons though i highly doubt they can. If they cant cause they lack funds, stuff, talent, knowledge is a different discussion and we can only speculate on that. But the main thing is that they cant and at this point this will not going to change for several reasons unless drastic changes will happen which i highly doubt it aswell. I do hope they prove me wrong when Awakening hits live and we will be around to discuss it with more facts and less speculations but allow me to be sceptical if not pessimist.
Not only patience, but also taste, and that makes the analogy maybe not perfect, but good enough. Because you see, if someone just can't stand what is offered by competition, most often he will choose the lesser evil, even though MO has "underground quality" (yeah I know it's an understatement, no need to point it out ) While I might have agreed it's more a matter of patience than taste some time ago, I do enjoy MO now, so there is no real need for me to be patient, is there? It is still the only thing remotely resembling the game I would like to play. Thousands of people not liking it wont change the fact that many have fun with it. That is what my comparison was aiming at. Anyway- Game has drastically improved over the time, and most rage-quits took place during the dreadful desync era (which lasted way to long, dealing major damage to MOs reputation). Will the game ever heal from that? We will see. I hope it will. That being said, if MO had released in current state I really believe the outcome would be far from the disaster we had.
I get your points but try to see mine aswell. Yea theres no other game like MO atm but honestly cba to support a half assed game and a joke of a company behind it just because there arent any similar titles out there. I m a client, a buyer and a supporter. I dont have to invest on a game or on a gaming company. The company has to found ways to keep me satisfied, entertained and lets face it SV is terrible at that among many other things. You mentioned earlier that sandbox industry is limited and i m sure we will agree on the fact that also sandbox lovers and audience is limited aswell. Maybe not to small audience but still limited. SV and MO doesnt help in any way to change that nor to add something in the sandbox industry. They simply set a bad example for the genre, for sandbox playerbase and for industry in general. The many people you mentioned enjoying the game arent so many after all and they are not suficient to support a game nor deliver enough money in the drawers that will make a company viable.
If you look closely at current playerbase you will see that there are several differences between reasons that do play MO:
1) Children or immature grown ups that do like to enlarge their e-peen, act cool and tone up their ego by being recognized in an imaginary world for their acomplishments. That part of the community usualy exploits every possible bug and grabs any given opportunity to drive around features and get a slight or not advantage against others. I do believe that this one is the biggest part of the community and if i m mistaken and its not, they surely are the loudest part of the community ingame and in forums. They do enjoy the game cause it gives them the oportunity to do all that and they are by far the non healthy in any way part of the community simply cause they are the reason for a bigger part of the community to leave.
2) People that havent particular experience in many games and casual players that can take easily the crap around MO since they are not getting involved with it very often. I will not say those people have low standards neither can judge them for enjoying playing MO once in a while but i ve meet in MO a lot of people that havent actualy played any other games, where intrigued by the early advertisement and the vision behind MO and they are currently playing it but without having a yardstick.
3) Newer adds to the game that will eventualy got burned by MO and SV once excitement runs off and they face the reality regarding how SV deals in general OR they will keep on playing and will be moved into one of the other teams i m mentioning.
4) Decent people that are able to see the problems but they are staying around either cause they hoping that things will change, SV will make a turn and MO will shine or cause simply there isnt any other similar alternative out there either cause they have fun with certain people that playing the game with or with the rest of the community if you preffer.
Thats it and i tried to include most of the people that do play MO. Bottom line is that groups of people like the ones above you can find in any other game out there but the main problem in MO is exactly that the unhealthy parts are way more than the somehow healthy and given the fact that MO's population is pretty low or limited one can come to the conclution that the majority of the playerbase do play the game for non healthy reasons.
From my point of view its not ideal or healthy to sustain a non healthy situation unless theres a possibility for a cure or at least an improvement. Untill now there arent any clues that lead to a conclution that SV will make MO a decent game and that MO will be eventualy a healthy game that can gather a somehow healthy playerbase that will get fun without frustration and they from their side will sustain the game and the company behind it. But as i said again we are again making speculations and we will have more food for thinking and discussing after Awakening. Me from my side i do hope again that Henrik proves me wrong, makes a 180 degrees turn and proves to everyone that he and his team can deliver a decent patch and that he decided to take serious MO and make it the game that many people w8ting for it to play. Again its hard for me to believe that a CEO whos telephone number is at the hands of players currently playing his game for calling him each time they re getting banned, troubled ingame and blackmail him that they will stop paying him 15 Euros per month if he doesnt act, he is rather a mindless kid that is playing with his friends hide and seek and he cant reach goals other than gets a very good hiding spot for his friends not being able to find him.
The sandbox nature of the game and focus on PVP by SV had set the environment to one which encourages an unfavorable community.
My guild is bucking that trend with adding in-guild and out-of-guild events of an RP-ish nature.
Player created content is something that is talked about alot but it doesnt show its head enough. The combination of features in "Awakening" being utilized and the emergence of RP-ish type groups in my opinion will help the MO community.
I am making in my personal 'crusade' to set an example for player created content (that is fun and not too hoaky), thus giving the community a much needed boost towards a positive outlook.
xDayx talking about focus on pvp at the same time when prediction makes pvp a total mess for months is just a joke. The specific part of the community is encouraged by the mere fact that they can exploit their ass and be someone in a digital world in which only purpose for the ones around should be to have fun. Lack of punishment, the fact that devs, gm's, councilors and even CEO interracts with eachother with no restriction and they certainly have affiliations are all factors for the unhealthy community that its being active atm in MO.
WSX always tried to do positive things that would definetelly benefit community, newbies and MO at the end but still theres a limitation on how much crap one person can gets before he raises his hands and gives up. Jacen was always a very positive person in wsx and he was always helpful and was trying to host events and many other cool things. I ve noticed in MO forums that he is back for more. Why dont you ask him and share with the rest how many crap from SV he had to take right in the face and which one was the last one that made him quit the game several months ago.
Player made events should be encouraged and those are cool things for everyone but unless SV opens an eye and starts doing things for their own game no one else can.
"xDayx talking about focus on pvp at the same time when prediction makes pvp a total mess for months is just a joke."
That is the plague of MO. For months they have been battling prediction with small to no effects, adding only small balancing changes, or combat system changes (archery/magic revamps for instance) leaving the development of non-combat features long overdue.
That definitely scared away a large portion of the population described by you as "healthy".
The fact we didn't have working pvp doesn't mean they were not focusing on it. :P
Still this is clearly no scheme to undermine sandbox games. Come on. MO barely had any hype to it. SV never really invested in marketing, and till this day no one interested in main stream mmos really knows what is MO. The fall of this title and SVs shut down will change nothing on the sandbox market.
On a side note:
Sometimes reading your posts I get a feel you think Henrik did all that on purpose, which naturally makes no sense. We both know that MO has enough potential, that if finally finished, it would make a man rich. The demand is there.
So did he act like a professional? Rarely if ever.
Did he make mistakes? Plenty.
But what Henrik also did was being quite transparent to what's going on, and kept in touch with the community which was quite refreshing in the era of serious business plans and gaming corporations.
Before beta- prepare for a bumpy ride.
After open Beta he clearly stated- we have no money, so we have to release an unfinished product. etc.
Of course some will prefer the sterile way of Blizzard and co. I like the way of "from gamers for gamers", even with all the BS I have to take for that as a paying customer.
Maybe It's just I, as someone that creates stuff from time to time, kind of can relate to teh obvious passion he has and personal atachment to MO, instead of a cold calculation of what features would bring in more people.
Well screwing up whatever they re focusing at its definetely not promissing. And tbh i dont think that its a matter of lack of funds or knowledge but pure slappyness and lazyness. But when i called Sebastian unprofessional and lazy people jumped on me to call me "mindless buffon" or something similar.
Sorry, but you did come of as one, so easily judging people without really knowing the internal affairs or other inner-workings of the company and any difficulties they might have encountered :P
Well screwing up whatever they re focusing at its definetely not promissing. <-true, but they finally managed to tame the beast enough to finnaly do something for those that would like to build for a change. Let's hope they won't take as long with developing this part.
Anyway to get back to the lazyness part: the main problem is they bought an experimental platform and based the game on that with such a limited crew.
It's hard to immagine a better way to get in trouble, but I'm sure I wouldn't predict it before hand as well. It's easy to be the smart ass once everything is known :P
I think it would be easier to deal with the bugs and everything if SV didn't hype the new expansions so much. I mean, they hype features that never get delivered, hype features that get delivered but are broken, and manage to introduce lots of new unexpected bugs every patch. I know that it might not create as much of a short-term revenue bump if they were honest, but it would be a healthier long-term solution than causing their most dedicated fans to get frustrated and angry, feeling like fools for believing the hype.
It's just not a professional company. It really feels like a cool hobby project from a few friends thrown together in someone's basement...but one where they charge a lot from their customers to try it out. They need to start being open and honest about their business, stop hyping stuff that they can't deliver, and have a very serious focus on testing and quality.
Especially if they stripped the company down, it means that there is a lot of code whose authors are gone now. They need to commit to a few months of cleanup, code refactoring, and building up test suites around everything. Without this QA infrastructure in place, things will only get worse.
Originally posted by sakkdaddy I think it would be easier to deal with the bugs and everything if SV didn't hype the new expansions so much. I mean, they hype features that never get delivered, hype features that get delivered but are broken, and manage to introduce lots of new unexpected bugs every patch. I know that it might not create as much of a short-term revenue bump if they were honest, but it would be a healthier long-term solution than causing their most dedicated fans to get frustrated and angry, feeling like fools for believing the hype. It's just not a professional company. It really feels like a cool hobby project from a few friends thrown together in someone's basement...but one where they charge a lot from their customers to try it out. They need to start being open and honest about their business, stop hyping stuff that they can't deliver, and have a very serious focus on testing and quality. Especially if they stripped the company down, it means that there is a lot of code whose authors are gone now. They need to commit to a few months of cleanup, code refactoring, and building up test suites around everything. Without this QA infrastructure in place, things will only get worse.
Agreed on most, with the only exception being the part with honesty. They are unprofessional, and generally act like just a bunch of guys trying too make a game they'd like to play- true. Some are bothered by this, I personally find it refreshing and fun (although it naturally sometimes kicks me in the face as a paying customer :P Well...nothing is perfect) So it all boils down not to them being dishonest when hyping, because it's not to generate quick buck. If that was the case they would spend their money, or what's left of it, on actual hype generating, not keeping it just to the small group of followers, of which most already probably play. What IS happening in my opinion, is them being authentically just hopeful, optimistic and generally hyped them selves. Guess sharing that emotional bond with the community is a shitty idea from a business perspective Specially when it's so easy in the software development to encounter restrictions you would not dream of earlier. Oh well. By now any sane person should be used to that and be able to adjust expectations correctly, according to SVs track record.
In February he said it is taking longer than he had hoped. Enough for me since I don't care about that really, and since the reward has to be done by the same people that are doing awakening, I am glad it's not their focus. Tindrem is the only really major fuck-up on their part, when it comes to unkept promises.
Totally disagree. They are blatently untruthful all the time. Remember when they promised us Veterans Rewards? Theia said they would be in game in a few days. It's now been like 3 months and he hasn't even had the courtesy to tell us what happened.
Hell we know what happened, they decided that they would tie it into Awakening so they can HYPE it when it launches. If that's what they decided at least come and be honest.
That is just one, small example. I could go on for hours if we wanted to go down that path.
There are untruths, and times when people deliberately misrepresent themselves.
Then, there are legitimate changes that just happen in life. Thinking that change will never happen isn't being realistic.
As opposed to the somewhat misleading statements being made here, they did let us know what's going on a few months ago, as seen here:
I would like a 300 outfit. if its just the cape. I would be fine with that 2. I can always streak around moh ki naked with a cape, hehe.
I think something like a cape would be good, it could say vet on the back, I don't think it should be lootable, as long as it doesn't affect gameplay.
I think giving people vet reward based on activity vs timeframe is ok, I don't mind which one since I know i get both lol.
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Last edited by princereaper : 6th February 2012 at 14:04.
Of course, more information would be good. I think the assumption is that this has been delayed for launch with Awakening, but I don't think that has been specifically stated anywhere. I could be wrong.
SV and Henrik have lied many times, directly and knowingly as a way to promote the game and generate money. That is their sole focus - hyping and lying to make money.
As an example or two -
Fishing -
Henrik said part 2, that would make it like UO fishing, was ready to go and be implemented a few weeks after the initial fishing patch, as players were underwhelmed by the original "part 1 version". That was a long, long time ago and since then .... nothing. The mythical part 2 that Henrik said was ready to go never existed and it was a lie.
AI -
The "AI patch" was coded and ready to go, and would be implemented soon. It would be "ground breaking". That was Epic patch era, and it is still not in game. Again, it was never working and never ready for implementation. They lied in order to keep customers.
SV is a company that has shown repeatedly it cannot be trusted, and will directly lie to their customers in order to generate income and publicity.
Comments
On the other hand, you better make your face ready for the egg facial. Just in case...you know...Starvault keeps up with its track record Upto Date, and overhypes and underdelivers. Wasnt it the general consensus that this patch would be out by April, or was it taking for granted since SV dint hold the customer's pinky finger and make a promise? Either way, the albumen is just starting to drip over your face since SV defaulted on the release date already.
Game is finally entering a state thats close to Open Beta, 2 years after release. Time for mass celebrations! LONG TIME and BIT by BIT indeed.
Better stay quiet till the IF part is resolved. We all know how IFs have worked in the past for SV, why do you want to risk another IF and more eggs on face? For ex. IF Epic Patch worked, IF Dawn Patch came through, IF Epic Patch 2 dint tank, IF TC worked as intended, heck IF the game downloaded and ran without crashing...Get the point?
Im not one to use analogies, but gotta put one down here. Think of SV's current situation as someone who is starving to death. Do you die if you skip a meal? Ofcourse not. Do you die if you dont eat for a day or two? No, you dont die. But you continue starving for more than a couple of days then you start to lose weight as your body starts to cannibalize itself (first the fat layers go, then the muscle atrophies away, then...) and finally when you have turned into a husk of a person with skin clinging to the bones, barely able to do anything more than merely struggle to breathe on, that is when starving will actually kill you.Look at SV, initially started with daddy's monetary blessings and got bloated with a huge number of box purchases. After the initial surge of profits, has been losing money constantly and without fail for around 2 years. A company might not die after a year or two after profits have flatlined as long as someone's daddy is pumping in bailouts through a IV tube. But SV have started cannibalizing themselves from months back. People were laid off em mass. Office furniture was sold off for quick bucks. CEO gets down to begging people to buy stocks. And now that SV has turned into a skeleton crew, barely able to keep up with anything more than putting out patches once in 6 months, the situation does look very dire in need.
As far as Im concerned, SV has died already. Months back even. A couple of drinking buddehs, fanmodding from rich son's getaway apartment doesnt equate to what a company is, IMHO. I seriously dont give a flying duck what any fanboy thinks, even if its that SV is thriving and population is BOOOOOMING. But to me, and any investor out there, this company is laid buried that even money-grub publishers dont want any part of it anymore, ie like that China publisher, remember that?
I Would have agreed with you, but Im surer now and sure too that we will see this later rather than sooner. This xpatch is a dud and the blatantly useless hype, as per the opening post of this thread, proves it so. Good luck wishing for greener pastures in MO, but if you ever bring up any talks of faces and eggs all I got to say any SV fanboy and not just you is to keep your face ready.Oh I'm almost sure it will be overhyped and will underdeliver. That is how it is in this industry.
I'm also prepeared for shitton of bugs, possibly crashes etc. That is how it works when you have a "sceleton" crew.
Still after a week or two of fixing the game will be improved, so another step forward, and however ou'd like to spin it, that can only be good.
As for the company dying- what if? I'll just say It was a good try. I had fun for 2 years. Better to have fun for a while, than never know fun at all. :P
Shame there is no other game like MO on the market
Ever since when have you been a hater? You were one of the biggest fanboys from what I can remember.
Nether the less, I completely agree with you and I will never believe anything Henrik says until I see it. If something is too good to be true, it never is. In this case, a bug free expansion with a decent amount of content is just ridiculous. I would be overjoyed if I was completely wrong and this "expansion" (adding and fixing basic and required features) made the game playable, but I highly doubt it at this stage.
I think the real PrinceReaper mentioned on MO forums that this guy is not real him.
He's not princey ^^
Just another hater on a crusade.
Anyway- why would anyone expect a bug free patch is beyond me. Far larger companies with huge resources do not manage that.
As long as it's fixed in few weeks time it's ok in my book. No one will die (IRL that is) if the game isn't working like a charm for a moment.
Hundreds if not thousands of players that periodically tried out MO after all the failed so called "expansions" doesnt share your opinion since they came, saw and left in a heartbeat. Lets be honest here: if the case was that SV would iron out the bugs after expansions in a timeline manner of few weeks, more players would tolerate the frustration. But there arent weeks, there are months after the releases that bugs keep on buging playerbase, SV dont say a word on them and we all have several examples of bugs that will not be iron out. Never that is.
Far larger companies do release games or expansions with bugs but they do focus on fixing them. My greater example is AoC. Funcom screwed up royaly at release but bug fixing was in their agenda in a daily basis. Unexpected downtimes may happen aswell but with SV's way, which is no word about them, no estimated times, and in general attitudes like "it will be up when it will be up" (words typed by Discord, SV's lead game manager in IRC) interractions with the game and with that screwed up kindergarden who pretends to be a company, only lead to frustration and sadness.
It's ok. I don't really care about hundreds, or even thousands. I know what I enjoy, what I can tolerate and why. Thousands like Britney Spears or Justin Biber.
That does not mean I should like it as well right. Similarly Thousands will never enjoy progressive rock, does that mean I am wrong for liking it?
Remember reasons for quiting a game vary. For many it was stuff like bugs and desync (that was a killer
), for others it's the very nature of a full loot game. Some may get dizzy when trying to play an FPV game, or get offended by nudity.
As for "expansions", we had only one thus far. The rest was just patches.
Fixes after the last one (TC) were quick, and the patch it self didn't introduce gamebreaking bugs into the old content, definately improvement over how SV used to do it. Hopefully this will be a new standard for them and not just a lucky 1 timer.
You see I perfectly am aware of all the bugs and issues. MO is in bad shape (although far from the unplayable state it was in earlier, so progres is being made), but sadly there is no alternative if someone wants a modern fantasy sandbox, specially if that persons enjoys the immersion brought by FPV.
MO is a set of features not covered by any game released up to date.
If there was anything like MO out there, but with more polish, naturally I would switch. Reality is though this industry sucks :P
I have to agree in many things you said but the analogy between players that playing MO or not and followers/ listeners of Britney Spears or whoever is fundamentaly wrong. You see the first one is a matter of patience since no one can deny that MO has terrible issues and SV fails badly in many levels. But the second one is a matter of taste. And no i m not talking about thousands of people that left MO cause they simply dont like the sandbox/ full loot/ first person view aspect of the game. I m talking about the thousands of people that do desperately seek for a title with all those aspects combined but they couldnt stand all the crap that MO comes with and a company that cant walk from a room to another without destroying half of the furniture. Those people are the majority and i share their opinion not because they are many but just cause its my opinion and thats how i see things.
I will agree also that TC didnt came with terrible gamebreaking bugs but still it came with bugs, annoying ones, it was a half assed feature non functional, worthless and not remotely close to what playerbase was expecting it to be. And not only that but those bugs where not fixed in 5 weeks i was in game after release. Which is ridiculous if you ask me. Same with Dawn.Two months later after release bugs where still in game, features where turned off and SV was talking about the future without even saying a word about fixing their own mess.
Tbh i do hope as you said that "success" of territory control wasnt a one timer and a lucky strike. But still releasing a patch/ expansion with non gamebreaking bugs shouldnt be considered a success and SV should be focusing on delivering patches with non gamebreaking bugs but also functional, well designed. Thats what improvement commands. For some reasons though i highly doubt they can. If they cant cause they lack funds, stuff, talent, knowledge is a different discussion and we can only speculate on that. But the main thing is that they cant and at this point this will not going to change for several reasons unless drastic changes will happen which i highly doubt it aswell.
I do hope they prove me wrong when Awakening hits live and we will be around to discuss it with more facts and less speculations but allow me to be sceptical if not pessimist.
It is still the only thing remotely resembling the game I would like to play. Thousands of people not liking it wont change the fact that many have fun with it. That is what my comparison was aiming at.
Anyway- Game has drastically improved over the time, and most rage-quits took place during the dreadful desync era (which lasted way to long, dealing major damage to MOs reputation). Will the game ever heal from that? We will see. I hope it will. That being said, if MO had released in current state I really believe the outcome would be far from the disaster we had.
I get your points but try to see mine aswell. Yea theres no other game like MO atm but honestly cba to support a half assed game and a joke of a company behind it just because there arent any similar titles out there. I m a client, a buyer and a supporter. I dont have to invest on a game or on a gaming company. The company has to found ways to keep me satisfied, entertained and lets face it SV is terrible at that among many other things. You mentioned earlier that sandbox industry is limited and i m sure we will agree on the fact that also sandbox lovers and audience is limited aswell. Maybe not to small audience but still limited. SV and MO doesnt help in any way to change that nor to add something in the sandbox industry. They simply set a bad example for the genre, for sandbox playerbase and for industry in general. The many people you mentioned enjoying the game arent so many after all and they are not suficient to support a game nor deliver enough money in the drawers that will make a company viable.
If you look closely at current playerbase you will see that there are several differences between reasons that do play MO:
1) Children or immature grown ups that do like to enlarge their e-peen, act cool and tone up their ego by being recognized in an imaginary world for their acomplishments. That part of the community usualy exploits every possible bug and grabs any given opportunity to drive around features and get a slight or not advantage against others. I do believe that this one is the biggest part of the community and if i m mistaken and its not, they surely are the loudest part of the community ingame and in forums. They do enjoy the game cause it gives them the oportunity to do all that and they are by far the non healthy in any way part of the community simply cause they are the reason for a bigger part of the community to leave.
2) People that havent particular experience in many games and casual players that can take easily the crap around MO since they are not getting involved with it very often. I will not say those people have low standards neither can judge them for enjoying playing MO once in a while but i ve meet in MO a lot of people that havent actualy played any other games, where intrigued by the early advertisement and the vision behind MO and they are currently playing it but without having a yardstick.
3) Newer adds to the game that will eventualy got burned by MO and SV once excitement runs off and they face the reality regarding how SV deals in general OR they will keep on playing and will be moved into one of the other teams i m mentioning.
4) Decent people that are able to see the problems but they are staying around either cause they hoping that things will change, SV will make a turn and MO will shine or cause simply there isnt any other similar alternative out there either cause they have fun with certain people that playing the game with or with the rest of the community if you preffer.
Thats it and i tried to include most of the people that do play MO. Bottom line is that groups of people like the ones above you can find in any other game out there but the main problem in MO is exactly that the unhealthy parts are way more than the somehow healthy and given the fact that MO's population is pretty low or limited one can come to the conclution that the majority of the playerbase do play the game for non healthy reasons.
From my point of view its not ideal or healthy to sustain a non healthy situation unless theres a possibility for a cure or at least an improvement. Untill now there arent any clues that lead to a conclution that SV will make MO a decent game and that MO will be eventualy a healthy game that can gather a somehow healthy playerbase that will get fun without frustration and they from their side will sustain the game and the company behind it. But as i said again we are again making speculations and we will have more food for thinking and discussing after Awakening. Me from my side i do hope again that Henrik proves me wrong, makes a 180 degrees turn and proves to everyone that he and his team can deliver a decent patch and that he decided to take serious MO and make it the game that many people w8ting for it to play. Again its hard for me to believe that a CEO whos telephone number is at the hands of players currently playing his game for calling him each time they re getting banned, troubled ingame and blackmail him that they will stop paying him 15 Euros per month if he doesnt act, he is rather a mindless kid that is playing with his friends hide and seek and he cant reach goals other than gets a very good hiding spot for his friends not being able to find him.
The sandbox nature of the game and focus on PVP by SV had set the environment to one which encourages an unfavorable community.
My guild is bucking that trend with adding in-guild and out-of-guild events of an RP-ish nature.
Player created content is something that is talked about alot but it doesnt show its head enough. The combination of features in "Awakening" being utilized and the emergence of RP-ish type groups in my opinion will help the MO community.
I am making in my personal 'crusade' to set an example for player created content (that is fun and not too hoaky), thus giving the community a much needed boost towards a positive outlook.
xDayx talking about focus on pvp at the same time when prediction makes pvp a total mess for months is just a joke. The specific part of the community is encouraged by the mere fact that they can exploit their ass and be someone in a digital world in which only purpose for the ones around should be to have fun. Lack of punishment, the fact that devs, gm's, councilors and even CEO interracts with eachother with no restriction and they certainly have affiliations are all factors for the unhealthy community that its being active atm in MO.
WSX always tried to do positive things that would definetelly benefit community, newbies and MO at the end but still theres a limitation on how much crap one person can gets before he raises his hands and gives up. Jacen was always a very positive person in wsx and he was always helpful and was trying to host events and many other cool things. I ve noticed in MO forums that he is back for more. Why dont you ask him and share with the rest how many crap from SV he had to take right in the face and which one was the last one that made him quit the game several months ago.
Player made events should be encouraged and those are cool things for everyone but unless SV opens an eye and starts doing things for their own game no one else can.
That is the plague of MO. For months they have been battling prediction with small to no effects, adding only small balancing changes, or combat system changes (archery/magic revamps for instance) leaving the development of non-combat features long overdue.
That definitely scared away a large portion of the population described by you as "healthy".
The fact we didn't have working pvp doesn't mean they were not focusing on it. :P
Still this is clearly no scheme to undermine sandbox games. Come on. MO barely had any hype to it. SV never really invested in marketing, and till this day no one interested in main stream mmos really knows what is MO. The fall of this title and SVs shut down will change nothing on the sandbox market.
On a side note:
Sometimes reading your posts I get a feel you think Henrik did all that on purpose, which naturally makes no sense. We both know that MO has enough potential, that if finally finished, it would make a man rich. The demand is there.
So did he act like a professional? Rarely if ever.
Did he make mistakes? Plenty.
But what Henrik also did was being quite transparent to what's going on, and kept in touch with the community which was quite refreshing in the era of serious business plans and gaming corporations.
Before beta- prepare for a bumpy ride.
After open Beta he clearly stated- we have no money, so we have to release an unfinished product. etc.
Of course some will prefer the sterile way of Blizzard and co. I like the way of "from gamers for gamers", even with all the BS I have to take for that as a paying customer.
Maybe It's just I, as someone that creates stuff from time to time, kind of can relate to teh obvious passion he has and personal atachment to MO, instead of a cold calculation of what features would bring in more people.
Arrogant ^^
Sorry, but you did come of as one, so easily judging people without really knowing the internal affairs or other inner-workings of the company and any difficulties they might have encountered :P
Well screwing up whatever they re focusing at its definetely not promissing. <-true, but they finally managed to tame the beast enough to finnaly do something for those that would like to build for a change. Let's hope they won't take as long with developing this part.
Anyway to get back to the lazyness part: the main problem is they bought an experimental platform and based the game on that with such a limited crew.
It's hard to immagine a better way to get in trouble, but I'm sure I wouldn't predict it before hand as well. It's easy to be the smart ass once everything is known :P
"In MO, even the haters are hardcore!" - ltank
I think it would be easier to deal with the bugs and everything if SV didn't hype the new expansions so much. I mean, they hype features that never get delivered, hype features that get delivered but are broken, and manage to introduce lots of new unexpected bugs every patch. I know that it might not create as much of a short-term revenue bump if they were honest, but it would be a healthier long-term solution than causing their most dedicated fans to get frustrated and angry, feeling like fools for believing the hype.
It's just not a professional company. It really feels like a cool hobby project from a few friends thrown together in someone's basement...but one where they charge a lot from their customers to try it out. They need to start being open and honest about their business, stop hyping stuff that they can't deliver, and have a very serious focus on testing and quality.
Especially if they stripped the company down, it means that there is a lot of code whose authors are gone now. They need to commit to a few months of cleanup, code refactoring, and building up test suites around everything. Without this QA infrastructure in place, things will only get worse.
Agreed on most, with the only exception being the part with honesty. They are unprofessional, and generally act like just a bunch of guys trying too make a game they'd like to play- true. Some are bothered by this, I personally find it refreshing and fun (although it naturally sometimes kicks me in the face as a paying customer :P Well...nothing is perfect)
So it all boils down not to them being dishonest when hyping, because it's not to generate quick buck. If that was the case they would spend their money, or what's left of it, on actual hype generating, not keeping it just to the small group of followers, of which most already probably play.
What IS happening in my opinion, is them being authentically just hopeful, optimistic and generally hyped them selves. Guess sharing that emotional bond with the community is a shitty idea from a business perspective
Specially when it's so easy in the software development to encounter restrictions you would not dream of earlier.
Oh well. By now any sane person should be used to that and be able to adjust expectations correctly, according to SVs track record.
In February he said it is taking longer than he had hoped. Enough for me since I don't care about that really, and since the reward has to be done by the same people that are doing awakening, I am glad it's not their focus.
Tindrem is the only really major fuck-up on their part, when it comes to unkept promises.
There are untruths, and times when people deliberately misrepresent themselves.
Then, there are legitimate changes that just happen in life. Thinking that change will never happen isn't being realistic.
As opposed to the somewhat misleading statements being made here, they did let us know what's going on a few months ago, as seen here:
http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/71780-feedback-needed-veteran-rewards.html
This is one of my favorite suggestions from that thread:
#27 (permalink)
princereaper
Veteran Member
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Hell
Posts: 7,517
Infractions: 2/1 (1)
Rep Power: 4
I would like a 300 outfit. if its just the cape. I would be fine with that 2. I can always streak around moh ki naked with a cape, hehe.
I think something like a cape would be good, it could say vet on the back, I don't think it should be lootable, as long as it doesn't affect gameplay.
I think giving people vet reward based on activity vs timeframe is ok, I don't mind which one since I know i get both lol.
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Last edited by princereaper : 6th February 2012 at 14:04.
Of course, more information would be good. I think the assumption is that this has been delayed for launch with Awakening, but I don't think that has been specifically stated anywhere. I could be wrong.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
LoL Seriously?
There are people that are still hoping?
Time to face facts. This company does not have enough resources to make such big game good enough.
This is simply not possible. Similarly like DFO and few other small indie mmorpg projects.
Problem is that they want to start big , provide this big , feature rich virtual world game.
That kind of thing need ALOT of money & very skilled coders , artists , game system designers, etc
Those are small companies that are unable to provide that and that in case of MO will NEVER change.
You just cannot make game like they are promising with funds coming from such small playerbase.
Many features won't be implemented again , many implemented will be bugged. Expansion will break many things, etc
it is unavoidable when doing game of this magnitude with so small resources.
You have a lot of truth in that post.
Please get back to the thread topic, which is not other posters.
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