My god this looks so unprofessional when everyone's post has no spaces .../sigh.
NOBODY is about to search through for HTML commands,c;mon now this looks like amateur hour.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Funcom has always designed amazing games, but their insistance on thier own in house garbage engines, and thier abysmal character modelers and animations effect artists ruined what would have been unbeleivbly amazing titles.
Look at SWG:CU ... community never asked for those changes and look at what happened.... Look at Vanguard SOH, anthoer arrognat selfish developer ignoring ciommunity requests.. game died... if one does not see the pattern , specially if they are a developer, they will ultimatly learn the hard way, no matte rhow long they have in the game industry, hence Funcom.
SWG:CU happened because the game was failing, and this was an attempt to save it.
Listening to the community is fine, but what is much more important is tracking/watching the community. It is only relevant to listen to what they are saying, as it relates to what is observed. More often than naught, most feedback is not useful, as it does not relate to actual, tangible behavior... and this is what counts.
people always complain that there are no innovators in the mmo space, but then, all the innovators are not succesfull....shame
I've said this for years. A company releases a new MMORPG and people throws a fit, "We want something new, something different!!!".
A company releases something new, something different and it's "Why did you give us this? Why didn't you stick with what we're all used to!!!!!!!".
I wouldn't really call TSW or AOC Innovations of the genre, solid ideas, but nothing that we hadn't seen before. Just really good concepts badly managed. I remember buying a brand new rig ready to play AOC which was going to be my "escape" from the tedium WoW was starting to give me.
They had so much going for that title, being a fan of the books and the fantasy/lore I was already invested, half the work for them had been done, they just needed to not mess it up. Then I get into CBT and I am like "yay this is the best thing ever" and Tortage was fantastic.
Sadly, once the game was out it had no end of issues, riddled and I mean RIDDLED with bugs, Graphical issues that gave me BSOD, dungeons and animations not completed, quests not completed, heck some of the zones were completely empty, with just monsters in the fields.
Sadly I stopped playing when I saw that the game wasnt getting "fixed" anytime soon. Their free model is a bit rubbish too. I went back to my character to try it out, to find I couldnt play it as locked behind a pay wall. I had already bought the bloody game darn it and I couldn't even play my character to see if worth coming back. So, I made a new one, then in the tutorial island I couldn't even pick up all the loot. Just everything about that game to me is hostile and not in the good way. But, it was a good concept and heck when all fixed I imagined the game to be great, just hated how their pay service went.
Now, with TSW I only knew about it as I signed up for the newsletter, they would tease it now and then.But other than that there was no real "buzz" about it until their CBT and the marketting about it was diabolical.
This is why I say their games are poorly managed. If I was an investor I would of called for a new vote for leadership and that's for sure. Don't get me wrong, all friendly enough to the community, but they really needed someone to take control and bring it back from the brink.
All the money given and borrowed was never going to change anything as their internal management was just rubbish in my view.
Its so sad, to see things going down the path that it is, but realistically speaking if they intend to move forward they really need a miracle.
Concerning TSW, can we all agree now that level-less progression is a massive turn off for most players?
It really shows the bad side of the MMO genre in that all you do is grind away the same content and don't feel any more powerful than you did 3 months ago.
I wouldn't really call TSW or AOC Innovations of the genre, solid ideas, but nothing that we hadn't seen before. Just really good concepts badly managed. I remember buying a brand new rig ready to play AOC which was going to be my "escape" from the tedium WoW was starting to give me.
They had so much going for that title, being a fan of the books and the fantasy/lore I was already invested, half the work for them had been done, they just needed to not mess it up. Then I get into CBT and I am like "yay this is the best thing ever" and Tortage was fantastic.
Sadly, once the game was out it had no end of issues, riddled and I mean RIDDLED with bugs, Graphical issues that gave me BSOD, dungeons and animations not completed, quests not completed, heck some of the zones were completely empty, with just monsters in the fields.
Sadly I stopped playing when I saw that the game wasnt getting "fixed" anytime soon. Their free model is a bit rubbish too. I went back to my character to try it out, to find I couldnt play it as locked behind a pay wall. I had already bought the bloody game darn it and I couldn't even play my character to see if worth coming back. So, I made a new one, then in the tutorial island I couldn't even pick up all the loot. Just everything about that game to me is hostile and not in the good way. But, it was a good concept and heck when all fixed I imagined the game to be great, just hated how their pay service went.
Now, with TSW I only knew about it as I signed up for the newsletter, they would tease it now and then.But other than that there was no real "buzz" about it until their CBT and the marketting about it was diabolical.
This is why I say their games are poorly managed. If I was an investor I would of called for a new vote for leadership and that's for sure. Don't get me wrong, all friendly enough to the community, but they really needed someone to take control and bring it back from the brink.
All the money given and borrowed was never going to change anything as their internal management was just rubbish in my view.
Its so sad, to see things going down the path that it is, but realistically speaking if they intend to move forward they really need a miracle.
AoC had some innovations. It had great half-action combat (combos, spellweaving). It had probably the best classes i ever played in a mmo (Herald of Xotli for example). And it had great open world PvP (thats not an innovation though, but for me AoC had it almost all AND innovation). Tortage was a great tutorial island and there were great maps. You didnt have to level the same maps over and over as you do for example in swtor (on rails). Graphics are still ok for a game from 2008.
my thought is, WoW and the popularity of it ruined a lot of also good games in that time area because WoW sucked up the customers.
SWG was probably also ruined because of WoW, and SWG was the last real MMORPG sandbox.
TSW was also very innovative. Quest designs. Skill wheel (bad),....
What I am saying is that little changes such as merging all of the servers and changing some combat issues will not draw in players. They need to market their game to get more players.
Are you kidding me right now, do you even play Age of Conan ? The merger created an exudos of over 2000 North American ... you know what, I'm done trying to make a point to someone who obviously doesn't play the games and thnks the developer is the one who pays the bills.
Good luck with your theory, my theory has been proven over the length of the mmorpg genre.
It sounds like you and I obviously have different opinions about the subject matter, which is fine. I wouldn't go as far as saying your 'theory' is proven. In fact, a proven theory is an oxymoron.
To close this on my end, some games fail and some live on. UO didn't listen to their players, yet they still are going strong after 17 years is it? They have new vets now that have played the game since the fallout. Some games age better than others and I believe it has way more to do with the marketing than we think.
Hahahahha UO still going strong? UO started a dramatic downward trend after EA introduced consensual PvP/Trammel and fell apart dramatically after Age of Empires and Samurai Empire.
Whilst it is true that something needed to be done to curb the rampant griefing, none of the changes were done with any braggable degree of community consultation with the EA overlords...
EA have now sold it off and a small company called Broadsword has it on a life support skeleton team. That being said, the unapproved servers that exist have significant populations in comparison and are quite healthy in comparison.
Funcom has everything it takes to make a succesful game, except for good Game Designers...
They make amazing game worlds then screw it up with bad combat systems. Its the main reason their games fail. TSW world would have be great in Blizzards hands. Scrap Funcoms lousy combat systems should be the first thing any new company does for all the games.
Lets hope a decent company purchase Funcom, but something tells me that if they get purchased it would be by either PWE or Nexon. Probably PWE.
/sigh
As for Neverwinter, still waiting for a PS4 release.
If PWE does,i hope they make AO a completely f2p game since its older than dirt and hasn't had an content update in years.
I have no way apart from here of notifying the site that I can't use the forums anymore. Been like that for days now. I can use forum menus, but once in thread the page freezes and I have to close it with Task Manager.
For some months now I have not been able to do PM's a message comes up saying Please Complete The Message Field. I cannot get rid of this box to actually type anything in.
So this is the only way I can communicate to MMORPG.com my problem. Help!
Look at SWG:CU ... community never asked for those changes and look at what happened.... Look at Vanguard SOH, anthoer arrognat selfish developer ignoring ciommunity requests.. game died... if one does not see the pattern , specially if they are a developer, they will ultimatly learn the hard way, no matte rhow long they have in the game industry, hence Funcom.
SWG:CU happened because the game was failing, and this was an attempt to save it.
Listening to the community is fine, but what is much more important is tracking/watching the community. It is only relevant to listen to what they are saying, as it relates to what is observed. More often than naught, most feedback is not useful, as it does not relate to actual, tangible behavior... and this is what counts.
Every game was failing when WoW launched. Lineage 2 , Shadowbane, SWG , Asherons call.. ect ect. WoW caused the shift to casual friendly mmorpg's.
Hard to track something that doesnt exist, I.E. a community....
WoW shifted all the goal posts effectively, SWG wasn't failing, and that wasn't the reason for the CU and all the garbage that came with it, that was purely SOE trying to modify the game so that it could compete with WoW, which was of course, impossible, and the foolishness that followed was just continued poor management, just look at what happened with EQ2 developed around the same time, but after WoW, the game suffered from extreme identity crisis, and since then has continuously circled the drain, even going F2P didn't really help, if they could have just accepted that being a niche game was good enough instead of chasing WoW numbers, they would have been far more successful, and SWG would probably still be there today, poking fun at SW;TOR, even if the player base was no larger than the one in Eve Online.
TSW, so much potential, great concept, if they would have listened to their player base and revamped the combat to at least be a little bit exciting it could have been one of the best mmorpg's ever. Too bad.
The combat in the game has so much potential, so many unique and interesting abilities...but such poor implementation. I -love- the game, but i cant stand the combat.
I feel it would be a shame if we lose Funcom. I enjoyed AoC and TSW to a degree but unfortunately there was always something lacking.
Tortage was a great experience in AoC, I even enjoyed Whitesands PvP but the rest of the game did not match the quality of Tortage. The combat was great and soundtrack was brilliant, which I still listen to every now and again, it's just a shame the game turned in to a generic themepark after Tortage. Mainly the PvP was poorly thought out and implemented; I lost count of the times I died due to being ganked whilst I was in a cutscene. The PvP died due to it being one big gankfest due to the rewards for killing others without a proper deterrent to limit some of the unrestrained ganking. It appeared the whole server was roleplaying mass murderers.
TSW had great quests and I very much appreciated the freedom the game gave me towards progression but unfortunately I agree with others in this thread the combat was abysmal, which IMO was the downfall of the game. I also feel the character/npc models and animations were bottom of the barrel quality (this is more of a western developer problem. Western devs need to take a look at are asian brethren to see how to do it properly).
If Funcom could merge the positives of AoC and TSW together instead of bothering with lego I feel they would have a hit on their hands. This is why I would like them to survive.
Look at SWG:CU ... community never asked for those changes and look at what happened.... Look at Vanguard SOH, anthoer arrognat selfish developer ignoring ciommunity requests.. game died... if one does not see the pattern , specially if they are a developer, they will ultimatly learn the hard way, no matte rhow long they have in the game industry, hence Funcom.
SWG:CU happened because the game was failing, and this was an attempt to save it.
Listening to the community is fine, but what is much more important is tracking/watching the community. It is only relevant to listen to what they are saying, as it relates to what is observed. More often than naught, most feedback is not useful, as it does not relate to actual, tangible behavior... and this is what counts.
Every game was failing when WoW launched. Lineage 2 , Shadowbane, SWG , Asherons call.. ect ect. WoW caused the shift to casual friendly mmorpg's.
Hard to track something that doesnt exist, I.E. a community....
Actually, if you look at the CCU graphs at the time, WoW didnt really have much effect on the previous MMORPG's. The players that created the WoW userbase were not primarily from the other operating MMORPG's. This caused other companies to try to change their games to appeal to this new audience....
WoW shifted all the goal posts effectively, SWG wasn't failing, and that wasn't the reason for the CU and all the garbage that came with it, that was purely SOE trying to modify the game so that it could compete with WoW, which was of course, impossible, and the foolishness that followed was just continued poor management, just look at what happened with EQ2 developed around the same time, but after WoW, the game suffered from extreme identity crisis, and since then has continuously circled the drain, even going F2P didn't really help, if they could have just accepted that being a niche game was good enough instead of chasing WoW numbers, they would have been far more successful, and SWG would probably still be there today, poking fun at SW;TOR, even if the player base was no larger than the one in Eve Online.
You can check the posts made by Raph Koster, where he lays out the details. This didnt have anything to do with WoW.
Comments
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Listening to the community is fine, but what is much more important is tracking/watching the community. It is only relevant to listen to what they are saying, as it relates to what is observed. More often than naught, most feedback is not useful, as it does not relate to actual, tangible behavior... and this is what counts.
It really shows the bad side of the MMO genre in that all you do is grind away the same content and don't feel any more powerful than you did 3 months ago.
my thought is, WoW and the popularity of it ruined a lot of also good games in that time area because WoW sucked up the customers.
SWG was probably also ruined because of WoW, and SWG was the last real MMORPG sandbox.
TSW was also very innovative. Quest designs. Skill wheel (bad),....
Tortage was a great experience in AoC, I even enjoyed Whitesands PvP but the rest of the game did not match the quality of Tortage. The combat was great and soundtrack was brilliant, which I still listen to every now and again, it's just a shame the game turned in to a generic themepark after Tortage. Mainly the PvP was poorly thought out and implemented; I lost count of the times I died due to being ganked whilst I was in a cutscene. The PvP died due to it being one big gankfest due to the rewards for killing others without a proper deterrent to limit some of the unrestrained ganking. It appeared the whole server was roleplaying mass murderers.
TSW had great quests and I very much appreciated the freedom the game gave me towards progression but unfortunately I agree with others in this thread the combat was abysmal, which IMO was the downfall of the game. I also feel the character/npc models and animations were bottom of the barrel quality (this is more of a western developer problem. Western devs need to take a look at are asian brethren to see how to do it properly).
If Funcom could merge the positives of AoC and TSW together instead of bothering with lego I feel they would have a hit on their hands. This is why I would like them to survive.
Link Added: http://www.raphkoster.com/2015/04/27/did-star-wars-galaxies-fail/