Strangely enough through MMORPG.com i was able to get access to some beta play from Perpetual entertainments titles, well specifically G&H. I have to say, Im glad that game never saw the light of day...horribly designed is one way to put it. It was clearly a boring rehash of everything thats been done before. I cant really comment on any of the other titles, but i would have liked to see another UO, and WISH seemed to have some promise in regards to innovation.
I can tell you with authority as I had an inside sources in Mutable Realms - Wish was canceled due to lack of interest from the potential subscribers. Not enough people signed up for the beta. Those people who were invited into the beta didn't stick around long, - some only played a couple of days. I think the writing was on the wall. If people wouldn't play for free, they wouldn't pay to play. While promising, it didn't have the word of mouth buzz and hype needed to get a large number of people to come and try it. It was determined the game would likely not be profitable, and the plug was pulled.
Must be nice to have sources on the inside... Turns out, I was actually on the dev team for that one when it was cancelled and I don't recall getting a reason.
I don't remember exactly how many people signed up for beta, but I DO know that it was quite a large number for an indie company at the time, and I remember that people were pretty pleased with it
Guess your sources must have been better than mine. In the office I worked in. I'm not saying that wasn't the reason, I'm just saying.
Well, get to work Jon!!
I was one of the ones looking forward to WISH. Would be cool if it could be revived.
Gods and Heroes a "near-complete game"? Far from it...
I was in the beta the last 2 months or so. Lots, and I mean LOTS, was unfinished. The game had more bugs than anyone could count. It often crashed. There was hardly any polish at all. Itemisation was a joke. Etc.
I often had the feeling that they weren't developing or fixing the game at all. For example, there was a bugged mob, a Stygian Creeper in Alba Longa (lvl ~10 area), that could be any extremely high lvl, and it was not just a "number error", it always one-shot ppl. According to others it was bugged long before I joined the beta, it still was when the game was closed. I have a screenie of it where it appeared as a lvl 146... There were many such small issues that they never fixed, this was just an example.
There really wasn't anything "new" in this game. Well, the minions was something new, but they really just replaced some buffs and spells compared to other games. You didn't control them like other toons or pets, they acted automatically, possibly after you made some choices. I think I remember something about formations, and maybe some choice to set them active/passive/whatever. You chose what type you wanted (up to 4 minions depending on your lvl). Iirc, the choices were healer, melee and ranged, and it was up to you what each minion would be. If you for whatever reason wanted 4 healers, then you could have it. Grouping when everyone had a couple of minions, was a nightmare. Worst lagfest I've ever experienced, and the whole screen filled with minions, become annoying in the long run.
The game was in many ways a WoW copy in a different setting. And it even felt "simpler", especially the first 10 lvls or so, mostly because you didn't have many skills to use. The game was also extremely linear. The only "big" variation if you chose to lvl a new toon, was the option at some early point to go to a different zone and proceed from there instead. But both paths merged later.
Some of the features were very well done. For example combat animations, at least some of them. Like when my gladiator used a "jump and spin once around, then slash" attack.
Even with all it's flaws, I really loved this game. Too bad it ended that way.
I can tell you with authority as I had an inside sources in Mutable Realms - Wish was canceled due to lack of interest from the potential subscribers. Not enough people signed up for the beta. Those people who were invited into the beta didn't stick around long, - some only played a couple of days. I think the writing was on the wall. If people wouldn't play for free, they wouldn't pay to play. While promising, it didn't have the word of mouth buzz and hype needed to get a large number of people to come and try it. It was determined the game would likely not be profitable, and the plug was pulled.
Must be nice to have sources on the inside... Turns out, I was actually on the dev team for that one when it was cancelled and I don't recall getting a reason.
I don't remember exactly how many people signed up for beta, but I DO know that it was quite a large number for an indie company at the time, and I remember that people were pretty pleased with it
Guess your sources must have been better than mine. In the office I worked in. I'm not saying that wasn't the reason, I'm just saying.
Well, get to work Jon!!
I was one of the ones looking forward to WISH. Would be cool if it could be revived.
I did try to revive Wish, for 4 years, until a couple months ago, that is. I got interested in other things, and so did my other devs. It's hard to do that thing as a hobby, although I think I worked on our version almost as much as MR did on theirs (no disrespect intended Dana/Jon, I know you guys worked hard too). We have since done some different things with the site, but you can still follow our history:
Excellent article, all too often we look at games that fail just post launch as you stated but rarely those that are cancelled. Would be nice to have a separate tab game list that lists those that have been cancelled, or shutdown after launch (just a listing, not really forums, and if they are already on here I cant seem to find them)
Some of those games looked like great ideas. hopefully we dont get alot more of cancellations down the road.
Playing: Not much actively. Games played: to many to list, been playing MMO's since 2001 --------------------------
" at least it can be said that when EA announced that they were throwing their full support behind Ultima Online, they must have meant it."
Thanks for that last sentence, I needed a good laugh
UO:X was cancelled because EA did one of their regular office consolidations and majority of their most experienced UO/MMO dev's who were working on the project choose to quit instead of lifting up sticks and moving across the country.
This set the whole project so far behind they dropped the whole thing and spun their tale about dedicating their efforts to UO instead, when in reality they continued to treat UO as little more than ailing cash cow more than ever
EA have never and will never "get" online MMO's (even they admitted it years ago), their corporate / conglomerate culture is just not compatible to the live and ongoing nature of the genre
I need a new MMO world to call home as Tom Chilton keeps destroying them
I think this is very unfair, if you'd have just waited a couple of months SGW would've taken the top spot easily. I hope they do the MMOWTF awards this year (unlike 2008), then maybe SGW can get the recognition it deserves?
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
People dont seem to learn, when u take a movie or TV series and attempt to make a game from it (be it mmo or single player) it generally fails, with few exceptions.
To prove my point a few failed mmos: Matrix, Star Wars Galaxys... and most probably Star Trek...
But dont get me wrong, i'm looking forward to the new Star wars MMO, Old republic... hopefully it will be an exception to the rule ^^
Another interesting MMO would've been Trials of Ascension. Full sandbox pvp MMO with permadeath and an "inheritence" system to pass a few things onto your next character, plus the ability to play as real dragons as well as other races, of course.
Not the flying puppy dog "dragons" you see in Horizons.
I actually got to play Gods and Heroes in Alpha Phase. When we, the original 50 alpha testers went into the game it was very polished. It wasn't until a few updates and a shift over to their permanent servers that it suddenly becaame extremely buggy. The game had a lot of potential. We ran several dungeon crawls with a full group and all our minions and it was fun. I hope someone else picks it up and fixes it. The potential to add Egypt and the Egyptian gods and other the Norse and so on was an original concept.
I didn't think it was a Wow clone. I swear thats everyones broken arguement for every game. It had a lot of original ideas aside from its progression charts. Anyway just my two cents.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees,"
In 1997, Monoilth announced they were picking up development of a MMO remake of the 1980's RPG series Alternate Reality. ARO, as it was known, was to be helmed by the producers of the original series, Philip Price and Gary Gilbertson, and would be a fully 3D world in a time when Ultima Online was still doing the isometric view and EQ was still two years away.
According to their press release: "With characters they create themselves, players may explore cities and dungeons, battle computer-controlled monsters and other players, or even hold a day job at a local tavern. "We don’t want to limit players," Gilbertson says. "Not everybody is interested in fighting. Lots of people just want a place to meet and hang out. In that respect, Alternate Reality Online will accommodate everybody.
Unfortunately the money dried up and the game was cancelled. I really wish this one had gotten a chance to see daylight -- the concept art on the original ARO.com website was very exciting for it's time, and I still haven't found an MMO that combines the combat, exploration, and social elements quite like these guys envisioned.
People dont seem to learn, when u take a movie or TV series and attempt to make a game from it (be it mmo or single player) it generally fails, with few exceptions.
To prove my point a few failed mmos: Matrix, Star Wars Galaxys... and most probably Star Trek...
But dont get me wrong, i'm looking forward to the new Star wars MMO, Old republic... hopefully it will be an exception to the rule ^^
Star Wars Galaxies was the exception. The ONLY reason it failed was the NGE. If it were not for that, the game would still probably be blistering and bustling with activity.
Comments
Tbh, Imperator looks like a straight-up Warhammer 40K rip off.
And considering how Mythic bastardized the Warhammer Fantasy IP, thank God they didn't get a chance to pinch this one off.
Strangely enough through MMORPG.com i was able to get access to some beta play from Perpetual entertainments titles, well specifically G&H. I have to say, Im glad that game never saw the light of day...horribly designed is one way to put it. It was clearly a boring rehash of everything thats been done before. I cant really comment on any of the other titles, but i would have liked to see another UO, and WISH seemed to have some promise in regards to innovation.
Must be nice to have sources on the inside... Turns out, I was actually on the dev team for that one when it was cancelled and I don't recall getting a reason.
I don't remember exactly how many people signed up for beta, but I DO know that it was quite a large number for an indie company at the time, and I remember that people were pretty pleased with it
Guess your sources must have been better than mine. In the office I worked in. I'm not saying that wasn't the reason, I'm just saying.
Well, get to work Jon!!
I was one of the ones looking forward to WISH. Would be cool if it could be revived.
Well, get to work Jon!!
I was one of the ones looking forward to WISH. Would be cool if it could be revived.
It seems just about every major feature of WISH is alive and well in Darkfall.
Darkfall Travelogues!
Gods and Heroes a "near-complete game"? Far from it...
I was in the beta the last 2 months or so. Lots, and I mean LOTS, was unfinished. The game had more bugs than anyone could count. It often crashed. There was hardly any polish at all. Itemisation was a joke. Etc.
I often had the feeling that they weren't developing or fixing the game at all. For example, there was a bugged mob, a Stygian Creeper in Alba Longa (lvl ~10 area), that could be any extremely high lvl, and it was not just a "number error", it always one-shot ppl. According to others it was bugged long before I joined the beta, it still was when the game was closed. I have a screenie of it where it appeared as a lvl 146... There were many such small issues that they never fixed, this was just an example.
There really wasn't anything "new" in this game. Well, the minions was something new, but they really just replaced some buffs and spells compared to other games. You didn't control them like other toons or pets, they acted automatically, possibly after you made some choices. I think I remember something about formations, and maybe some choice to set them active/passive/whatever. You chose what type you wanted (up to 4 minions depending on your lvl). Iirc, the choices were healer, melee and ranged, and it was up to you what each minion would be. If you for whatever reason wanted 4 healers, then you could have it. Grouping when everyone had a couple of minions, was a nightmare. Worst lagfest I've ever experienced, and the whole screen filled with minions, become annoying in the long run.
The game was in many ways a WoW copy in a different setting. And it even felt "simpler", especially the first 10 lvls or so, mostly because you didn't have many skills to use. The game was also extremely linear. The only "big" variation if you chose to lvl a new toon, was the option at some early point to go to a different zone and proceed from there instead. But both paths merged later.
Some of the features were very well done. For example combat animations, at least some of them. Like when my gladiator used a "jump and spin once around, then slash" attack.
Even with all it's flaws, I really loved this game. Too bad it ended that way.
Let me add some of my Favorites :
Dune : Origins ( i tryed to buy the Sources of this already Gold MMO, but they got lost due the Crash of Cryo well ages back )
Mankind 2
Mythica
Sigonyth
Seed ... well went Live for a very short Time
Atriarch ( i know its in Development, longer then Duke Nukem Forever now )
and many more
Must be nice to have sources on the inside... Turns out, I was actually on the dev team for that one when it was cancelled and I don't recall getting a reason.
I don't remember exactly how many people signed up for beta, but I DO know that it was quite a large number for an indie company at the time, and I remember that people were pretty pleased with it
Guess your sources must have been better than mine. In the office I worked in. I'm not saying that wasn't the reason, I'm just saying.
Well, get to work Jon!!
I was one of the ones looking forward to WISH. Would be cool if it could be revived.
I did try to revive Wish, for 4 years, until a couple months ago, that is. I got interested in other things, and so did my other devs. It's hard to do that thing as a hobby, although I think I worked on our version almost as much as MR did on theirs (no disrespect intended Dana/Jon, I know you guys worked hard too). We have since done some different things with the site, but you can still follow our history:
http://www.projectwish.com
I recently announced our haulting and releasing of all our code. If someone wants to start it up again, let me know. I'd be happy to pass the torch.
-Jerky
Erik Briggs (Jerky)
Project Manager - Project Wish
http://www.projectwish.com
My New Blog: http://erikbriggs.me
I really enjoyed the article.
I had the pleasure of being in the beta tests for both WISH and Gods and Heros.
Gods and Heros was interesting with it's squad play and walking around Rome was a thrill.
WISH though, is the game that I to this day miss more than any other mmorpg Ive ever encountered and it never even went live.
Excellent article, all too often we look at games that fail just post launch as you stated but rarely those that are cancelled. Would be nice to have a separate tab game list that lists those that have been cancelled, or shutdown after launch (just a listing, not really forums, and if they are already on here I cant seem to find them)
Some of those games looked like great ideas. hopefully we dont get alot more of cancellations down the road.
Playing: Not much actively.
Games played: to many to list, been playing MMO's since 2001
--------------------------
" at least it can be said that when EA announced that they were throwing their full support behind Ultima Online, they must have meant it."
Thanks for that last sentence, I needed a good laugh
UO:X was cancelled because EA did one of their regular office consolidations and majority of their most experienced UO/MMO dev's who were working on the project choose to quit instead of lifting up sticks and moving across the country.
This set the whole project so far behind they dropped the whole thing and spun their tale about dedicating their efforts to UO instead, when in reality they continued to treat UO as little more than ailing cash cow more than ever
EA have never and will never "get" online MMO's (even they admitted it years ago), their corporate / conglomerate culture is just not compatible to the live and ongoing nature of the genre
I need a new MMO world to call home as Tom Chilton keeps destroying them
No
I need a new MMO world to call home as Tom Chilton keeps destroying them
They got canceled cause they were crap.
I played Gods and Heroes beta and it was pure crap.
I think this is very unfair, if you'd have just waited a couple of months SGW would've taken the top spot easily. I hope they do the MMOWTF awards this year (unlike 2008), then maybe SGW can get the recognition it deserves?
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Citizen Zero anyone?
People dont seem to learn, when u take a movie or TV series and attempt to make a game from it (be it mmo or single player) it generally fails, with few exceptions.
To prove my point a few failed mmos: Matrix, Star Wars Galaxys... and most probably Star Trek...
But dont get me wrong, i'm looking forward to the new Star wars MMO, Old republic... hopefully it will be an exception to the rule ^^
Well, get to work Jon!!
I was one of the ones looking forward to WISH. Would be cool if it could be revived.
It seems just about every major feature of WISH is alive and well in Darkfall.
I'd rather skin myself with dull tweezers.
Another interesting MMO would've been Trials of Ascension. Full sandbox pvp MMO with permadeath and an "inheritence" system to pass a few things onto your next character, plus the ability to play as real dragons as well as other races, of course.
Not the flying puppy dog "dragons" you see in Horizons.
I actually got to play Gods and Heroes in Alpha Phase. When we, the original 50 alpha testers went into the game it was very polished. It wasn't until a few updates and a shift over to their permanent servers that it suddenly becaame extremely buggy. The game had a lot of potential. We ran several dungeon crawls with a full group and all our minions and it was fun. I hope someone else picks it up and fixes it. The potential to add Egypt and the Egyptian gods and other the Norse and so on was an original concept.
I didn't think it was a Wow clone. I swear thats everyones broken arguement for every game. It had a lot of original ideas aside from its progression charts. Anyway just my two cents.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees,"
Excellent article! Thanks!
Having played UO since beta (still do) I would have loved to see the next version of UO.
As it stands UO will release it's new client sometime this year, still supporting 2 clients, the original 2d view and the newer KR/SA client
I als oenjoyed Wish. It was a bit too buggy and didnt enjoy th epoint + click system that much, but was pretty promising.
Also what was that game's name that collected money for beta? I think it was canned 2 or 3 times.
Of course UO2 UOX cancellation was a big let down, cause it was so promising.
Ahhhh Wish, the live events were so much fun. It had some performance issues but the game was so much fun.
Great article, but i think you missed one off.
There was this one game announced in September 2001 - World of Witchcraft or something, (my memories not what it used to be).
As i recall, it took place in a land called Astroth (named after that guy from Soul calibur, i think).
You could be on one of two sides: Whores or A Giant (sounds weird i know).
Ah memories. I wonder what ever became of it?
Oh well, guess i'd better get back to playing Hello Kitty: Island Adventure.
In 1997, Monoilth announced they were picking up development of a MMO remake of the 1980's RPG series Alternate Reality. ARO, as it was known, was to be helmed by the producers of the original series, Philip Price and Gary Gilbertson, and would be a fully 3D world in a time when Ultima Online was still doing the isometric view and EQ was still two years away.
According to their press release: "With characters they create themselves, players may explore cities and dungeons, battle computer-controlled monsters and other players, or even hold a day job at a local tavern. "We don’t want to limit players," Gilbertson says. "Not everybody is interested in fighting. Lots of people just want a place to meet and hang out. In that respect, Alternate Reality Online will accommodate everybody.
Unfortunately the money dried up and the game was cancelled. I really wish this one had gotten a chance to see daylight -- the concept art on the original ARO.com website was very exciting for it's time, and I still haven't found an MMO that combines the combat, exploration, and social elements quite like these guys envisioned.
Star Wars Galaxies was the exception. The ONLY reason it failed was the NGE. If it were not for that, the game would still probably be blistering and bustling with activity.
Not sure if its been posted but in the WISH sectio, i found a typo in the "advancement was base don doing" sentence!
woot..