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[Column] General: Has Obsidian's Future Become Brighter or Darker?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Last week, Obsidian Entertainment of Neverwinter Nights 2 fame, announced that it had entered into a partnership with Mail.ru and the Allods Online team to bring Skyforge to the MMO space. In today's Free Zone, we opine as to whether or not that was a good decision. See what we think before leaving your thoughts in the comments.
For some time now, I've also been curious if Obsidian would get involved in the MMOG space. That was answered last Friday by the announcement that it will work on one called Skyforge. While I've yet to see any specifics as to what duties are involved, I've been aware of the title since was revealed around two years ago. The developer is the studio that created Allods Online. Originally part of Nival, it went through a couple of ownership changes and is now part of Mail.Ru, the leading provider of Internet services in the Russian-speaking region. The latter is one of the top online game publishers there, but apparently not with the dominant position it had a few years ago when it laid claim to half the market.
Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: Has Obsidian's Future Become Brighter or Darker?
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Comments
Steam: Neph
Total MMOs played: 274|Enjoyed: 9. >:|
I've played many MMOs, but way to jump to conclusions. What's unique is the ships and the fact that you can fly them around. The fact that you compared it to WoW is laughable. The theme is very old-style Russian feeling (I'm Russian though so i'd actually know this).
Vorthanion hate to break it to you but the graphics look nothing like TERA. They look way better. I think you need to look again.
Smile
What is so unique about Allods? You probably never played any other MMORPG before Allods but its as standard as it gets. Really, what is unique?
- The combat is standard, just like EQ, WoW, SWToR, etc, etc.
-The graphics? Nope pretty much standard cartoonishy like WoW and countless of F2P MMO's.
- How about the quests? Your avarage kill x of that, then kill a little more o and do collect 20 of that please.
Okay there are two things rather unique:
- The theme is rather nice, seeing old ships flying in space and such.
- It has a rather unique stupid, insane BUY STUFF FOR A LOT OF MONEY OR YOU CAN'T DO A DAMN THING mentality. You hardly get experience from killing mobs. Really it took for ever to just reach a new level once you are out of the introduction level onboard the ship. Doing quests and killings mobs hardly was a reward. Wanted to do a instance? You had to buy a potion for 6 freaking euro's or you wouldn't be able to defeat the instance boss. Yeah you got 5 potions but 6 euro's is still half the price of a sub based game where i get access to every damn thing in the game. Where i can do instances limitless. The game indeed is unique as its the worst P2W i personally played.
To see Obsidian working with these people is just asking for your MMO going to be ignored by the greater part of MMO players. How do you want to compete with other F2P games if you get a insane P2W cash shop that goes out of proportions?
Mail.ru has VERY bad reputation here in Russia. Everything they do is just some MMO cashgrabs. I now really regret i haven't pledged more to Obsidian's Project Eternity... But I promise to pledge more to their next Kickstarter project
))
I just hope that Obsidian stays clear of Mail.ru at it is one of the worst publishers imaginable, and focus on crowdfunding which seems to be on the rise.
Obsidian has a tendency to kill off most of what they touch. Take Neverwinter 2, or Kotor 2.
Both had strong storys and intersting NPC's as Suzie noted in her article however as the game progress the story gets weaker till in the ends Obsidian buries the the player under a ton of rocks never to be seen again or exiles them off into the center of the universe alone and friendless for no reason then they couldn't think of a decent ending. Genrally to add insult to injury Obsidian also ends the story with a poorly done sketch ending with monotone voice acting.
There are no Neverwinter 3's or Kotor 3"s planned simply because Obsidian bungled Kotor II and Neverwinter II so badly. (Rushed out with tons of bugs and poor editing where content just hits a wall because it was edited.) Seriouly I'm not sure I remember when last time Obsidian was able to make a game that was good all the way through
Agreed, but then everyone has different tastes and opinions.
You're beyond wrong. First of all this isn't my first MMO. I've played basically every MMO out there so way to be annoying by just assuming untrue things. Also, Allods is unique with it's ship system and it's theme. The fact that you mentioned combat just shows you're one of the annoying people who are obsessed with every MMO needing to have action combat when a lot of player still prefer tab targeting. Get over it. Tab targeting isn't going anywhere.
Smile
blame KOTOR II LucasArts forcing obsidian to release it way too early. Despite that KOTOR II trumphed KOTOR I in terms of story and characters.
Also let's not forget obsidian released Fallout: New Vegas - which was far closer to what Fallout should be than bethesda's FO3 would ever be.
# A GRIM, ODD, ARCANE SKY
# ANY GOD, I MARK SACRED
# A MASKED CRY ADORING
# A DREAMY, SICK DRAGON
I have never been impressed with anything Obsidian has done. Mediocre games are us should be their motto. mail.ru just puts out cash grab games. It does not seem like a good match in any shape or form.
Trying to put a good face on Allods is a waste of time as it is with any pay-to-win game. Just another cash grab that is pointless to play.
I'd rather blame Obsidian for making subpar games. Kotor 2 was acceptable, just. NWN2 was awful. New Vegas... Personal preference aside, it was an abomination at launch. Largely unplayable thanks to a host of impressive bugs. Which took a long time for them to fix. They merely took a host of popular FO3 mods and bundled them into a poorly made package in a new area, which lacked the depth of FO3. In one playthrough I had seen and done most of it. I still return to FO3 and still find new places. I suppose they were rushed into releasing that too early as well, eh? Has it never occurred to you that they take too long making a game and even then manage to make a mess of things?
Obsidian wont sell, if they can get over 4 mill dollars simply out of good will towards them why would they sell everything they have and are for a bit more than 10 times that?
Obsidian is my favorite game dev, their games may be buggy but they make them from the fucking heart, its all about depth with them and i believe that cant be acomplished in an mmo, because its not the devs that need to write the story there, its the players.