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  • ozy1ozy1 Member Posts: 309
    Originally posted by Zorvan01

    Originally posted by -Zeno-


    Darkfall isn't going anywhere.  They just moved to a bigger office for the second time and have expanded their development team.  The population of the game is growing and its only one server, not 20.  They know its a niche game and they accomplished their own goals and then some.



     

    Darkfall is like the movie Escape from New York. All the undesirables are sent there to kill each other.

     

    This made me LOL for real.

    Playing Darkfall EU1 Server

  • djazzydjazzy Member Posts: 3,578
    Originally posted by tro44_1


    Warhammer aint going anywhere. They already have a X-pac in development



     

    And what Xpac would this be?

    Maybe you have it confused with AoC.

  • dhayes68dhayes68 Member UncommonPosts: 1,388
    Originally posted by tro44_1


    Warhammer aint going anywhere. They already have a X-pac in development

     

    Games always have something in development, up to the point they get shuttered.

  • GameboyMarcGameboyMarc Member UncommonPosts: 395

    For Warhammer, the only thing I found related to an expansion was this link:

    http://warhammervault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=39644

    image
  • djazzydjazzy Member Posts: 3,578

    Heh, check the date of that post in that link ;-p

  • GameboyMarcGameboyMarc Member UncommonPosts: 395

    Tuesday, 1 Apr, 2008 is was the only thing I found about an expansion pack.

    image
  • djazzydjazzy Member Posts: 3,578

    Yeah, April 1st.

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    .

    .

    .

    .

    April Fools?

  • GameboyMarcGameboyMarc Member UncommonPosts: 395

    I'm tired,  Didn't even think about that.

    image
  • ericbelserericbelser Member Posts: 783

    First off, not going to include the asian/f2p games in the list since (despite the continuing efforts of some here), I just don't care ;)

    Secondly, it would not "surprise" me if any of the small / indy games closed down. Not because of any real performance trend or market conditions, but just because they are much more volatile by nature. SOE / EA deciding to close a game is a matter of long discussions, large meetings etc...Tasos could close Darkfall because he woke up with a hangover, got religion and decided to move to Nepal to work on his chakras.

    Medium+ sized games that I think have a serious chance of closing:

    Pirates of the Burning Sea - been on life support forever already

    Star Wars Galaxies - walking dead for a while, probably depends on launch of SWTOR for exact time of death. (Given SOE's recent trend, this might also go F2P or "freemium")

    Champions Online - likely to be sold off or closed as soon as STO launches if not sooner

    Vanguard might well get the axe or go to a F2P/hybrid model as well.

    Warhammer Online - I don't think it is likely, but this one wouldn't be a real surprise

     

    Not leaving anytime soon:

    AoC - FC will milk this on life support until their next game launches at bare minimum (Same with AO, costs them next to nothing I'm sure)

    Eq/EQ2 - too iconic for SOE to shut down

    WoW - well duh

    CoX / LotRO / EVE - doing fine

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • championsFanchampionsFan Member Posts: 419
    Originally posted by PatchDay

    Originally posted by championsFan


    It is doubtful that Champions Online will close unless Cryptic folds entirely.  It's possible that Champions will change its business model, but it is unlikely for the game to close down entirely.  If Cryptic was not heavily interested in the success of Champions then they would have used a Star Trek game engine to build a superhero game, not the other way around.  They have really dropped the ball on marketing and PR, so much so that if someone says the game is "just awful" then even people who have never played it are unsure whether that person is a troll.
    The game has it's flaws, but CO also brings a lot of new ideas to a stale genre.  I wouldn't recommend Champions to everybody, obviously there is the superhero genre issue, and hardcore players may run out of endgame content.  But casual players can get more done in this MMO then they can in most others, both in terms of overall progression being fast and in terms of each session getting you to the action quickly.  Moderately serious RPG players like myself find another appeal in Champions that sets it apart: the open build classless system.   The number and variety of different builds I can make is much larger than in City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, or any other game that uses the trinity which I find stale.  I am already sad that I will have to give up the creativity and satisfaction of an open build system when I play through SW: TOR.   
    I'm sorry for the rant, I just am surprised to see people not calling "just awful" for what it is: trolling.  "Just awful" means awfulness with no redeeming qualities.  While you may have found CO to be awful, in terms of technology it is a cutting edge MMO, and it's problems all have more to do with it's newness and lack of polish then with it not having any redeeming features. Lets reserve the term "just awful" for games that are no fun, have no potential and do nothing new.
    Also the (paid subscriber) population is way up lately since the free trial and since xmas.  The server population has at least tripled and the zone chats are full of new players like no time since launch.  I think this has to do with CO's core demographic being under 18 (this was true in CoH as well), meaning they get games at xmas and they often need to try before they buy due to limited gaming funds.  There are lots of things in CO which can appeal to mature adults, but the demographic to which I can most confidently recommend the game is teenage males.  
     
     

     

    What new idea did Champions bring to the genre?  

     

    To be clear, the genre I'm talking about is "WoW type games" i.e. $15/month themepark (level based) 3rd person MMOs with real-time (not turned based) auto-targeting style combat.   I am curious about other games (viable in 2009) in this category (a big category) that have any of these features that CO has:

    Open Build System (classless)

    Blocking/shields for all characters

    @account system allowing your toons to have any name you want

     

    single server that allows me to create as many alts as I want without having to go leave my friends, guilds, etc and start over on a new server.

    no mana potions (since all characters can build mana)

    the majority (over %60) of the attack powers do not have a cooldown, and activation times are generally less than one sec.  How many MMOs allow my characters to spontaneously execute two significant actions (e.g. different attack skills) per second?  CO does, and that is a measure of the speed of its combat, and given how many MMOs promise action combat this is clearly desirable.  I have played AoC, and it is not as fast as CO, and games like War and WoW are not even close to as fast.  

    In summary, the most innovative things about CO are the fast combat with blocking (what other MMO has that?) and the open build system.   I also think that the @account system and the unified server are the way of the future (for many games, not all), and at the very least show an attempt to innovate rather than just copy.

     

     

    On snap- I know! 

    These criticisms are generally rife with exaggeration, hyperbole, and opinion (the last one is ok, but not if it is conflated with an objective description).  

    * Make Melee players sit in one place and charge an attack for 10 secs giving the NPC plenty of time to run away

    There are no attacks that take 10 seconds to charge, there are no attacks that take even 5 seconds to charge.  The slowest melee attack takes 3 seconds to charge, and it can be tapped instead of charged for an instant effect.

     

    More importantly, you had to exaggerate because the combat in other games is so slow in comparison

    * Nerf the crap of all the player base on Launch day pissing off all your fans and game reviewers (more than one game review trashed the Launch Day Hell-nerf patch)

     

    Ancient history, and misinformative: lots of players like myself and my friends didn't give a rip about the launch patch.  We were playing around the clock, and all we said about it on vent was me saying "either I am exhausted or the game is harder than it was yesterday" and we all laughed.  It wasn't until later that I saw the shit storm on the forums.  Granted, I have been effected by a nerf or two since launch, but it is nothing unusual if you play MMOs.  

    * Make a single player MMO

    I guess you did not see all the 5 man lairs, there are over a dozen of them.  This is in addition to the usual dungeon crawling with friends that I do every time I play: doesn't sound like a singleplayer game to me.  Maybe you meant to say "it is possible and fun to solo" which I agree is a innovative feature in CO.

    * Release an MMO with no Playable Villain / opposing side and yet- you still try to include PVP so you have it on your box

    You must be an MMO noob if you think that all PvP is faction vs faction.  

    * Add a superjump travel power that hurts the crap out of players with every jump cause the lazy programmers made us take falling damage. LOL

     

    Now you are just making that up, or not playing the game.  Normally superjump does not cause fall damage.  If however your travel power is disabled in mid air, then you take damage after falling.  Makes sense huh?

    * Give PVPers the ability to Teleport away at first sign of danger.

    True, the game is designed for PvE and in the Free-For-All pvp mode TP is permanently out of balance (unless it was unrecognizably nerfed).   But the team based PvP modes are much more popular, where TP is nowhere as good as you say.  For experts TP is not best pvp travel power anyway (both acrobatics + versatility or any type of flight are more effective in the hands of a good player), but noobs do still cling to TP for dear life

    * Release an MMO that gives nearly ziltch XP for mobs. And not release enough Quests and thus forcing your players to farm crappy mobs for XP

    Ancient history about a content gap that I never saw and everyone had long since acknowledges has been solved.   The reason mobs give low XP is so that players do questing instead of grinding/farming to level up, it is the basic style that WoW uses.  

    * Cap zones to what- just 90 players? Barely more than Guild Wars, a game we can all play for free

     The zone cap is 100 players.  The instancing debate is genre wide, and not unique to CO.  CO is neither the most nor the least instanced MMO.

    It just goes on and on. They added so many original and creative ideas it's no wonder its such a hit and sells for $10 now on Steam

    Popularity is not always correlated with quality, and my theory is that Cryptic really botched the marketing for CO. For example, the launch day patch was a non-event in game (I would have noticed people talking about in zone chat), and yet some how (maybe it was the high concentration of Aion fans at the time) it is still talked about.  That is a complete failure to manage PR.  I am not even critizing the timing of the actual patch, just their failure to contain the explosion of bad publicity that was "based on" that patch.

    Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.

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