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Just Posted: Alganon December 2009 Update by David Allen
Hey all. Thought I'd pop in and point you all to our latest MMORPG.com dev blog post: Alganon December 2009 Update by David Allen. Enjoy! -Tork, Alganon Community Manager and Evangelist.
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Although I know David called "The Dawning" an expansion it isn't an "Expansion" in the same way as many other MMOs. The phrase "World Evolution" is really a better moniker for the larger changes in Alganon. "The Dawning" is a world event leading up to a World Evolution. We hope to have world events like this before most major World Evolutions.
The Dawning has been quite fun with special quests and rewards only available during the world event. (I almost have enough Dawning tokens to get my special "Storm Jax" Dawning-only mount. Now I just have to reach 25 to be able to pick up the mount quest.)
Also we have some very dedicated guilds (hey OTG, CL and AtD!) that are really working hard to help complete The Dawning. So far the event is going well (although we always wish for more players joining in and helping out)!
Sorry but I can't help it, I just had to laugh..
It's just hysterically funny how this guy tries to explain obvious things in that article, that it has been compared to other games out for 4 years, Well sure he's right about that..
But from what I have seen he just could have scratched all the other games he mentioned and just say WoW..
And who in hes right mind would ever like to copy a game that is 4-5 years old, a game that looked old when it came out 2004..
2004 Blizzard made a good choice in what they did with WoW(Obviously), but since then even most WoW players has been upgrading their computers(Just a wild guess), and most can certainly run games with a little higher specks than WoW...And to booth who and what is supposedly going to play Alganon with all the competition out there ? I mean if you are tired of WoW, you could be a potential subscriber, but then again you could choose Runes Of Magic that also has this "look alike WoW feeling", but has been out for a year and is a "Free to play MMO"
Unless he thought, what all players want is low poly textures with a cartoon artstyle, if we do this we will get millions with subscribers and if someone complains we can always blame it on "We are a small indie developer"...
Funny..
I truly wish he hadn't have put WoW on the list at all lol.... the irony is to strong, It's hard for me to resist commenting on it and I know some of the more aggressive posters will have a field day with it.
Alganon Dev: Were a small indie developer, why are you compairing us to WoW a game thats been out for 4-5 years and done by a large company?
Anyone with a lick of sense: Er... because you copied WoW as closely as you could it seems... what did you expect to happen?
If you do not want to have your MMO compaired to existing MMO's I have a very novel idea.... are you ready?
TRY TO BE UNIQUE and DON"T COPY EXISTING MMO'S THIS CLOSELY.
That simple! Don't copy existing MMO's that have been out for 4-5 years and try and bank of there path to success and you will be compaired to them less.
People look at DFO and either like it or don't but almost everyone can honestly say it's different. People look at Alganon and either like (I think I have heard of a few that actually do oO) or don't but I can garuntee you almost everyone will agree that it's carbon copy of WoW with a few differences. Alganon is the first MMO I would say tows the line of plagiarism a bit to close.
The game looks and feels like a bad copy of WoW. It's like a boot leg version lol.
Instead of a Rolex you bought a Rolax.
Sorry for the negativity, just really hate seeing MMO's this low in quality thrown out there and dubbed p2p worthy when most gamers are complaining about the quality of MMO's getting lower and lower. MMO's like this just really knock that point home.
I'll echo that sentiment. Trying to make an almost-carbon copy of WoW and expecting people to not compare it to WoW is silly at best. I'll also note that of course WoW and EQ2 and other games were not as polished at launch as they are now. They still launched with 90% of the promised features and all their races and classes. Alganon has far less than half that. Alganon at launch is far less of a game than those other games were at launch. I mean, you cut out six of eight races and three of seven classes. You launched with, evidently, no group content and no instances. At least WoW and EQ2 had dungeons at launch.
Perhaps you guys can turn things around, though. I would be surprised if you could, but hey, stranger things have happened. I don't really fancy your chances. As an indie developer, you need to stand out immediately. EVE and Darkfall were very rough at launch, but they were so unique a lot of people were willing to give the games time. EVE is now a rousing success, and even the oft-maligned Darkfall is doing well. Fallen Earth seems to be in the same boat. Even at the beginning, they offered a new, fresh alternative to existing games. When I log on to Alganon's free server, I wander around for a little while, and then wonder to myself why I'm even bothering, when I could play WoW, which is the exact same game, only with better content, graphics, sound, characters, lore, mechanics, gameplay, etc. or play something completely different. Fallen Earth is another example of a hither-to unheard of, small dev team creating a fresh, new game that, despite its warts, will probably do very well.
Really, when I first heard of Alganon, I thought for sure that it would be F2P. I'm truly astonished that QOL thinks this game is P2P quality in any way. I think if it was F2P with a cash shop, a lot of people wouldn't be so hard on it. Many (myself included) also dislike David Allen's attitude where he acts like he's some crusader, giving gamers what they want, and that we've been hoodwinked by other gaming companies into thinking we wanted different, when what we actually wanted was Alganon. I'm actually rather insulted by that.
It's true that it's unfair, logically, to compare a brand new product to a five year old game. But that's the reality. You have to bring your 'A' game, immediately, or at least have something so unique and so special that people will be willing to grin and bear the initial hardships of the game. Unfortunately, Alganon isn't special enough, and frankly, if this is QOL's 'A' game, then I feel bad for you guys.
"I am the weapon that strikes/In the hearts of men I thrive/Feeding their fear with lies/I will devour/I will divide/I am the god of hellfire/inside every man there lives a liar/before their gods they cower/I will divide/I will devour" - "Divide Devour" by Iced Earth
Are you going to release a video for "The Dawning" similar to your soft launch video, with big mouth quotations and absolutely no citations for those quotes at all?
It really suprises me that you have the nerve to show up in these forums and "brief" us about your game. You started by banning everyone that made a negative comment about the game in your official forums. It seems that you are also trying to do the same in this forum, as we recently received an official warning by the mmorpg.com staff that things in here are getting "out of hand" . Who knows, perhaps you threatened them to withdraw your advertisement and stop paying them money?Or perhaps you did it already?
Let me give you some advice..:
1) Your main problem is that you have a BIG mouth as a company. Shut it up a little. Respect the intelligence of the gaming community.
2)Your marketing approach is plain BAD. Fire your current marketeers and get some new ones. FIX YOUR GAME FIRST.
3) Alganon is currently just TOO UNFINISHED to be a p2p game. The growing trend of luring players paying for betas has finally got to stop. If you want our money, DELIVER A SOLID GAME.
4) Try to be innovative for a change. You declare that you don't want to be WoW but in truth you'd really wish you were!
5) Stop trying to convince people that the Alganon community is a better and a more mature community. Even if thats true (which it isn't, see MugHug posts for example), 1k "mature" accounts will drive you straight to bankruptcy. My point is, you desperately need more accounts to be viable. If you aspire to have a niche market segment of 1k accounts then i simply cannot see how on earth you are going to survive the competition.
6) Try for ONCE to explain to us what differentiates Alganon from its competitors. WHY should a player choose your product over the others?
To conclude, i believe that you have to keep a low profile, stop being arrogant, allow freedom of speech,accept the truth and get to work, and stop trying to convince people about things that you yourselves don't practically believe either. As a company, your main goal is profit. Its plain simple. In order to make profit you need as more accounts as you can get. Otherwise you close your operations. Your game may be bad currently, but your attitude is a lot worse. Keep that in mind.
"The Industry needs this game" you said once....to remind people of examples to avoid...i add.
My brain has 2 sides;Left and right. My left side has nothing right and my right side has nothing left...
Although I know David called "The Dawning" an expansion it isn't an "Expansion" in the same way as many other MMOs. The phrase "World Evolution" is really a better moniker for the larger changes in Alganon. "The Dawning" is a world event leading up to a World Evolution. We hope to have world events like this before most major World Evolutions.
The Dawning has been quite fun with special quests and rewards only available during the world event. (I almost have enough Dawning tokens to get my special "Storm Jax" Dawning-only mount. Now I just have to reach 25 to be able to pick up the mount quest.)
Also we have some very dedicated guilds (hey OTG, CL and AtD!) that are really working hard to help complete The Dawning. So far the event is going well (although we always wish for more players joining in and helping out)!
Actually its level 35 for the Mount Quest, and 100 Tokens of the Dawn.
The guild you listed must be on the other server. And by the way, If they combined the 2 servers together, there still ISNT enough people to complete the dawning event.They will have to tone down the event if they ever want us to kill the 4 World bosses after we unlock them.
QOL should not act surprised about the backlash. You've ripped off WoW wholesale lookling for a piece of the pie. Noone should be supporting this kind of rip-off.
This game looks so much and play so much like WoW you almost think you're playing WoW on a new continents and this was an expansion. I cannot believe just how similar a lot of this games mechanics look like they have been literally ripped from WoW. For David Allen to try to shadow that fact makes a reader think that maybe the guy is a bit of a nut case.
The best way I can describe how Alganon vs WoW would be this..
techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20090711/172891/
One thing I don't understand about how they run this game. Instead of fixing all the existing bugs and add whatever was planned. They plan on adding 36 players dungeon. Seriously, I think they should FIX whatever is wrong before creating more problems on top of problems. Read the official forum, there are plenty of people who pays for the game and can not even log in to play. It is fine if they want to post all the shiny glittering "future" out look. The fact is, the game remain a small population. One has to question why it remain such a small sub even with the trial server up. They also just reduced trial from 30 days to 7 days. Even if you sub to the game as trial account, you can only transfer ONE character over. I don't know who is in charge of this, but all I can say is they are shooting themselves in the foot day in and day out.
"We need a bit of patience from the community as we work to refine Alganon into the great game it will become."
Bull... you act as if your game just came out... it has been played and commented on for the last year. Including, open and closed beta, and the soft launch. Throughout that entire time -- and including the previous 3 years of game development you haven't been able to refine anything. You make it seem like this is a new game... it's already 4 years old. FOUR YEARS of game development, and one of those years was beta which included a lot of people telling you that the game was simply a WoW clone as it was.
Lets be 100% honest, the game is running out of money, and this probably the last desperate hurrah before David Allen leaves and blames everyone else for his failings again. A lot of promises in hopes to gain some subscribers, but the reality is that your game, right now, the game you want people to pay for is void of all the essential things needed to make an MMO compete.
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Are you going to release a video for "The Dawning" similar to your soft launch video, with big mouth quotations and absolutely no citations for those quotes at all?
It really suprises me that you have the nerve to show up in these forums and "brief" us about your game. You started by banning everyone that made a negative comment about the game in your official forums. It seems that you are also trying to do the same in this forum, as we recently received an official warning by the mmorpg.com staff that things in here are getting "out of hand" . Who knows, perhaps you threatened them to withdraw your advertisement and stop paying them money?Or perhaps you did it already?
Let me give you some advice..:
1) Your main problem is that you have a BIG mouth as a company. Shut it up a little. Respect the intelligence of the gaming community.
2)Your marketing approach is plain BAD. Fire your current marketeers and get some new ones. FIX YOUR GAME FIRST.
3) Alganon is currently just TOO UNFINISHED to be a p2p game. The growing trend of luring players paying for betas has finally got to stop. If you want our money, DELIVER A SOLID GAME.
4) Try to be innovative for a change. You declare that you don't want to be WoW but in truth you'd really wish you were!
5) Stop trying to convince people that the Alganon community is a better and a more mature community. Even if thats true (which it isn't, see MugHug posts for example), 1k "mature" accounts will drive you straight to bankruptcy. My point is, you desperately need more accounts to be viable. If you aspire to have a niche market segment of 1k accounts then i simply cannot see how on earth you are going to survive the competition.
6) Try for ONCE to explain to us what differentiates Alganon from its competitors. WHY should a player choose your product over the others?
To conclude, i believe that you have to keep a low profile, stop being arrogant, allow freedom of speech,accept the truth and get to work, and stop trying to convince people about things that you yourselves don't practically believe either. As a company, your main goal is profit. Its plain simple. In order to make profit you need as more accounts as you can get. Otherwise you close your operations. Your game may be bad currently, but your attitude is a lot worse. Keep that in mind.
"The Industry needs this game" you said once....to remind people of examples to avoid...i add.
QFE!
The game is a bootleg version of WoW, period.
QoL needs to address it instead of acting like they don't know what people are talking about, own it, then move forward making their game one people want to play by fixing it. Their marketing approach thus far has been nearly as bad as the game itself which I would surmise has actually lost you customers if the happenings around here are any evidence.
Finally as the poster I quoted stated, Alganon is not a P2P quality game. If QoL wants this game to survive they really need to consider the F2P/cash shop model.
Good luck to Alganon, they're gonna need it if someone doesn't change the direction of their ship soon.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Uhmm that read more like a puff piece! Was there any new stuff in there? To me it reads like a rehash of existing info that players knew. Sure it'll please the rose-coloured spectacle adorned individuals but it has nothing enticing for us who originally got captivated by similarly themed posts by David Allen.
I was gonna post a point by point summary of the puff piece to show why and when existing players like me learned the info in the past. It'll become a TLDR post if I do that. Some tangible info pwetty pwease?
Now your reaching. Its not 4 yrs old. Its been launched soft or not for a month or so now. I am not in disagreement that the game is a poor one but when you try to reach and say from day one started its aging you are really just looking for a reason to get a second ban here. Your obsession with trashing this game is borderline vreepy at this point. Most posters here post in other forums and on different topics but you seem to have a fixation on this only which you didnt seem to have a passion for anyways.
It is a 4 year old game, simply because you want to say the game is a month into launch, doesn't mean the game hasn't been around longer. Assume this -- the soft launch is essentially a paid beta, will you then say the game is new when it has a hard launch? When do you date a game? If you create a game, and you spend 4 years developing it, that is still 4 years of time the game has existed in one form or another, whether as concept or solid code.
The game was created as I said -- 4 years ago. Was it not? Is that not what David Allen has said in the past? Now all of the games problems are because it's only a month old? This isn't a month old game. How long have people been able to play in closed Beta? About a year. So even at that, lets say the game has already had a years worth of player commenting. That is still enough time to change things and add things.
Now, if you are telling me that in 4 years of development, this game wasn't able to add things like PvP, more than 2 races, and 4 classes, then why should anyone believe the game developers will be capable of adding all the nice fancy ideas David Allen listed?
But, you are correct about my obsession with Alganon. So, I guess I will just have to stop posting on here for a bit. Lets see if the Devs actually can clean things up or if they will let the whole thing slip into the abyss.
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an expansion!!! This game plays just like it did when I was in beta, I cant even believe it is live, fix this damn thing.
playing eq2 and two worlds
Come on now, folks, the expansions were no doubt long-planned and developed before the "soft launch" and any issues that developed as a result. It makes no sense to scrap something that was months in development (although one could argue that those resources would have been put to better use on developing the core of the game, but that's a different question), just to deploy a few extra resources towards bug fixing.
All that being said, as much as I'm trying to leave Alganon alone and allow it to wallow in it's own crapulence, this puff PR piece almost forced me to comment.
When you release a game that is technically barely out of Alpha and charge AAA prices for it (which they initially did), you send a message about your company and what you think of the people who want to play your game. Releasing this kind of PR about how Alganon was like "X" games at release when it sure as hell wasn't anywhere close to those games reinforces that same message.
Rather than trying to win gamers back by improving the game and earning their trust, they're opting to spin. It has been famously said "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining". That's the feeling I get reading this article "This game is really awesome, despite what your lying eyes and ears are telling you. Are you too stupid to see, you moronic consumers?"
I was willing to come back and maybe check out Alganon in six months to see if they'd gotten their shit together. Now they've got me thinking that it's going to take this Allen character's departure to make me reconsider it.
I've got a nasty taste in my mouth now from Alganon... or is it Mr. Allen that's causing it?
Although I know David called "The Dawning" an expansion it isn't an "Expansion" in the same way as many other MMOs. The phrase "World Evolution" is really a better moniker for the larger changes in Alganon. "The Dawning" is a world event leading up to a World Evolution. We hope to have world events like this before most major World Evolutions.
The Dawning has been quite fun with special quests and rewards only available during the world event. (I almost have enough Dawning tokens to get my special "Storm Jax" Dawning-only mount. Now I just have to reach 25 to be able to pick up the mount quest.)
Also we have some very dedicated guilds (hey OTG, CL and AtD!) that are really working hard to help complete The Dawning. So far the event is going well (although we always wish for more players joining in and helping out)!
Actually its level 35 for the Mount Quest, and 100 Tokens of the Dawn.
You are correct it is 35 (and I'm only 20 >.<). (I'm a pretty terrible typist sometimes as anyone who hears me chat in-game can attest.)
When your game follows world of warcraft so closely that the UIs can actually overlap, you cant really then ask people to wait around until stuff is fixed (but keep giving us your money!). You dont have to worry about games that have been out for 5+ years as youre going up against Allods which not only has much more polish, but is also free. And the mobs dont teleport behind you!
Don't forget that in an interview not long ago - I think a few weeks or so - he spun the whole idea of being "compared to the most successful MMO on the market" thing as a positive, also obviously alluding to WoW.
Eventually I guess he realized the comparisons weren't intended as flattering... so now he's spinning the other way with "it's not fair to compare us to a 5 year old game!" - still alluding to WoW.
Funny, but oh so predictable, how he can take the same exact comparison and spin it two different ways, entirely dependent on context.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Don't forget that in an interview not long ago - I think a few weeks or so - he spun the whole idea of being "compared to the most successful MMO on the market" thing as a positive, also obviously alluding to WoW.
Eventually I guess he realized the comparisons weren't intended as flattering... so now he's spinning the other way with "it's not fair to compare us to a 5 year old game!" - still alluding to WoW.
Funny, but oh so predictable, how he can take the same exact comparison and spin it two different ways, entirely dependent on context.
And yet:
MMOsite: How would you describe Alganon in your own words? What is the most fun gameplay available in Alganon? And how will it set itself apart from other fantasy MMORPGs out there on the market?
David Allen: When people ask for a single sentence describing Alganon, my response is "the first viable alternative to World of Warcraft." Being an avid gamer myself, I wanted to build a MMOG that took the best of the successful games out there and enhanced a few of the systems players have been asking for awhile now. Alganon isn't a revolutionary MMOG, instead it's a new, fun, and enhanced MMOG experience for those who play any type of MMORPG.
http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-02-17/20090217234707164,1.shtml
Talk about mixed messages. Its flattering to be compared to wow, but wows 5+ years old so its not a fair comparison, however its the first viable alternative.
Don't forget that in an interview not long ago - I think a few weeks or so - he spun the whole idea of being "compared to the most successful MMO on the market" thing as a positive, also obviously alluding to WoW.
Eventually I guess he realized the comparisons weren't intended as flattering... so now he's spinning the other way with "it's not fair to compare us to a 5 year old game!" - still alluding to WoW.
Funny, but oh so predictable, how he can take the same exact comparison and spin it two different ways, entirely dependent on context.
And yet:
MMOsite: How would you describe Alganon in your own words? What is the most fun gameplay available in Alganon? And how will it set itself apart from other fantasy MMORPGs out there on the market?
David Allen: When people ask for a single sentence describing Alganon, my response is "the first viable alternative to World of Warcraft." Being an avid gamer myself, I wanted to build a MMOG that took the best of the successful games out there and enhanced a few of the systems players have been asking for awhile now. Alganon isn't a revolutionary MMOG, instead it's a new, fun, and enhanced MMOG experience for those who play any type of MMORPG.
http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-02-17/20090217234707164,1.shtml
Talk about mixed messages. Its flattering to be compared to wow, but wows 5+ years old so its not a fair comparison, however its the first viable alternative.
And to take it even a step *further*... his whole "not revolutionary, but a collection of enhanced systems..." bit is practically a paraphrase of what Blizzard had always described WoW as.
The guy obviously designed the entire game with WoW in mind, there's no denying that with any amount of intellectual honesty. He's made that bed, and now he's stuck lying in it. Sooo... he's done the only thing he can... Gone into full-on spin mode, changing the story as the weather dictates. When it suits Alganon, he'll compare it to WoW. When it doesn't suit Alganon, he'll scoff at the comparisons.
He's trying to play all sides of the same situation and, sadly, seems to think it's working. It isn't.
I honestly empathized with DA after hearing his side of the whole Horizons mess; how he was back-stabbed, had his game taken away from him and was kicked from the company, etc. etc. However, with the way he's been carrying on with this game, all empathy is gone and I have no trouble believing, at all, that he was at least *equally* responsible for the mess that Horizons became and that his being ousted was very possibly warranted.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops