*sniff* Rest in peace, Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa. You shall be avenged!
EA have never been afraid of pulling the plug, they've actually got form after all... Earth & Beyond yet another game killed off for under performance.. sadly SciFi games are just not as popular as they should be.. i dont think its because of a lack of options in the genre either
4. Tabula Rasa – Destination Games and Blackstar - Spacetime Studios
5. Middle-Earth Online - Sierra
Is this list purposely mostly SF MMO’s or does that just tell us something about the genre? SF is a love of mine and so is Tolkein, but at least we got Lotro in the end. Do we get a prize, a gravestone with their names on or something?
4. Tabula Rasa – Destination Games and Blackstar - Spacetime Studios
5. Middle-Earth Online - Sierra
Is this list purposely mostly SF MMO’s or does that just tell us something about the genre? SF is a love of mine and so is Tolkein, but at least we got Lotro in the end. Do we get a prize, a gravestone with their names on or something?
R.I.P, you took some of our dreams with you.
unfortunately it does say something about the genre.. there are very few successful SciFi games.. the most popular is Eve, which at 350k subs is ... a drop in the WoW bucket... Fantasy games are more popular by far.. its a shame really.. because it makes the bar for success much higher for those types of games due to a more limited possible player base..
4. Tabula Rasa – Destination Games and Blackstar - Spacetime Studios
5. Middle-Earth Online - Sierra
Is this list purposely mostly SF MMO’s or does that just tell us something about the genre? SF is a love of mine and so is Tolkein, but at least we got Lotro in the end. Do we get a prize, a gravestone with their names on or something?
R.I.P, you took some of our dreams with you.
unfortunately it does say something about the genre.. there are very few successful SciFi games.. the most popular is Eve, which at 350k subs is ... a drop in the WoW bucket... Fantasy games are more popular by far.. its a shame really.. because it makes the bar for success much higher for those types of games due to a more limited possible player base..
No disrespect meant to WoW, but if you discount it due to all of the non-MMO gaming related factors that have attributed to it's subscription success and then compare Eve to to the other AAA P2P MMOs out there EvE is right up there with them sub wise. Makes me believe a solid put together sci-fi MMO would have just as good of a chance as a fantasy one. I agree that the bar to consider a game solid is high (higher than it was in 2003/2004) now which makes it hard for any game, sci-fi or fantasy, to make it these days. But, that's what happens when the CEOs, Marketing department and shareholders are driving development instead of the actual people hands on making the game. *shrug*
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
thought lotro was still doing well and wouldnt be closing anytime soon at all? or has it kinda crapped out in the past 8mths?
Some others that were not mention was the Ultima Online(had another word in the title, however cannot remember it. at a guess i would say Odyssey or something) new version that was cancelled in early stage beta, one that i cannot remember that was being done by codemasters and gods and heroes rome rising that was canned in beta stage.
I didn't have the privilege of getting to play TR during the betas. But I enjoyed the game. I really did. God knows there were things wrong with the game, things missing, but the game was there, it was... awesome, really. I have played many MMO's and either it's nostalgy but TR simply... was above the rest. Every MMO that is out now is... *sigh* I play a week, then I take a break for two. Even things such as Fallne Earth only drwe me enought o play a week or two straight before finding something else to do.
The irony of TR, is that JUST when the closing announcement came (a mere week after the devs told us the game wasn't going anywhere), the game was, what you'd consider, complete. The craved for features were implemented, some NEW ones were put in. Weapon and class balance was starting to look more or less complete (the medics still owned PvP, but before there were the engineers). Even high level repeatable content was being implemented, rumors and numbers went around of people coming back and members rising and then the announcement... swish! Bye bye...
I did WISH's beta and I was floored when it was cancelled, the player events were great fun and I loved the RVR (town vs town pvp). The dueling arena was fun, 2 players stood in a corale in the middle of town and duked it out.
in calmest breeze, in tornadoes blast, no evil shall escape my gas let those who are an evil fink fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
thought lotro was still doing well and wouldnt be closing anytime soon at all? or has it kinda crapped out in the past 8mths?
Some others that were not mention was the Ultima Online(had another word in the title, however cannot remember it. at a guess i would say Odyssey or something) new version that was cancelled in early stage beta, one that i cannot remember that was being done by codemasters and gods and heroes rome rising that was canned in beta stage.
The game has went to hell in an handbasket since SOM. The updates roll out slower and slower and slower.
No real dev interaction the dev diaries have all but quit, I am very sure that they have been moved to other projects even Oroin wrote a blog 4 months back that his pet revamp projectt had been put on hold to go work on other things.
We got one book update that was run here run there. Meanwhile ddo is going like ganbusters. It is obvous to anybody with half a brain that LOTRO is now on standby (actually become the red haired step child to DDO), and all the resources have been moved to DDO, and whatever the new MMO project is.
Interesting quiz. Didn't know most of the answer. Didn't even know that there was another company that worked on a Warhammer MMO. Who knows, maybe they would have done it better than Mythic xD Only one I partially knew was about Middle-Earth Online, but I didn't know Sierra was producing it. I do know I loved most of the games Sierra released, wonder how it would have been like.
*sniff* Rest in peace, Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa. You shall be avenged!
EA have never been afraid of pulling the plug, they've actually got form after all... Earth & Beyond yet another game killed off for under performance.. sadly SciFi games are just not as popular as they should be.. i dont think its because of a lack of options in the genre either
From what i have seen to have a truely good sci fi mmo you really have to balance laser pistol combat with Hand to hand combat. because a sci fi mmo imo is a lot a bout, well at least combat wise, laser guns/phasers and the sort. and not to mention (no jab at females by this coment just genearlization of genrea) to my knowledge and information out there, women tend to like fantasy more than sci fi...lol again im not picking on yall at all . just a general statement of semi fact. but there is more to it than that ,and thats a whole other thread lol
Thanks for this quiz as I have been trying to remember the name of the company that originally was charged with making Warhammer Online. Their artistic direction, and gameplay direction, was so much more appropriate than what WAR turned out to be under Mythic in my view. It was a truly dark, Sleepy Hollow type world.
Ah, if only they were allowed to finish it and Sierra was allowed to complete MEO. One thing's for sure: I'd actually be subscribed to an MMO right now!
Lets hope THQ/vigil does a better job at the 40k MMO,and hope it gets out of the gate. WAR would have been better to with a 3rd faction too.
I didn't have the privilege of getting to play TR during the betas. But I enjoyed the game. I really did. God knows there were things wrong with the game, things missing, but the game was there, it was... awesome, really. I have played many MMO's and either it's nostalgy but TR simply... was above the rest. Every MMO that is out now is... *sigh* I play a week, then I take a break for two. Even things such as Fallne Earth only drwe me enought o play a week or two straight before finding something else to do.
The irony of TR, is that JUST when the closing announcement came (a mere week after the devs told us the game wasn't going anywhere), the game was, what you'd consider, complete. The craved for features were implemented, some NEW ones were put in. Weapon and class balance was starting to look more or less complete (the medics still owned PvP, but before there were the engineers). Even high level repeatable content was being implemented, rumors and numbers went around of people coming back and members rising and then the announcement... swish! Bye bye...
I actually wish they would make Tabula Rasa open source so that those who DID enjoy it can make it in to the something it could have been. Granted, it had an insane amount of problems, flaws, bugs, blah blah blah, but it actually tapped something fun for a while. Given the chance, TR would have become something good, in my opinion. Unfortunately, they destroyed it with a premature release.
MMO's played: Ragnarok Online (For years), WoW (for a few weeks only), Guild Wars, Lineage 2, Eve, Allods, Shattered Galaxy, 9 Dragons, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Star Trek Online (Got someone ELSE to pay for it), Champions Online (Someone else paid), Dofus, Dragonica, LOTRO, DDO and more... A LOT more. I've played good AND bad. The bad didn't last long. :P
thought lotro was still doing well and wouldnt be closing anytime soon at all? or has it kinda crapped out in the past 8mths?
Some others that were not mention was the Ultima Online(had another word in the title, however cannot remember it. at a guess i would say Odyssey or something) new version that was cancelled in early stage beta, one that i cannot remember that was being done by codemasters and gods and heroes rome rising that was canned in beta stage.
The game has went to hell in an handbasket since SOM. The updates roll out slower and slower and slower.
No real dev interaction the dev diaries have all but quit, I am very sure that they have been moved to other projects even Oroin wrote a blog 4 months back that his pet revamp projectt had been put on hold to go work on other things.
We got one book update that was run here run there. Meanwhile ddo is going like ganbusters. It is obvous to anybody with half a brain that LOTRO is now on standby (actually become the red haired step child to DDO), and all the resources have been moved to DDO, and whatever the new MMO project is.
As a rabid MMO follower, that quiz was cake for me. Very fun tho, more plz. You might be able to stump me on eastern MMOGs, no way on western. Bring it!
thought lotro was still doing well and wouldnt be closing anytime soon at all? or has it kinda crapped out in the past 8mths?
Some others that were not mention was the Ultima Online(had another word in the title, however cannot remember it. at a guess i would say Odyssey or something) new version that was cancelled in early stage beta, one that i cannot remember that was being done by codemasters and gods and heroes rome rising that was canned in beta stage.
The game has went to hell in an handbasket since SOM. The updates roll out slower and slower and slower.
No real dev interaction the dev diaries have all but quit, I am very sure that they have been moved to other projects even Oroin wrote a blog 4 months back that his pet revamp projectt had been put on hold to go work on other things.
We got one book update that was run here run there. Meanwhile ddo is going like ganbusters. It is obvous to anybody with half a brain that LOTRO is now on standby (actually become the red haired step child to DDO), and all the resources have been moved to DDO, and whatever the new MMO project is.
LOTRO isn't going to end anytime soon.
Honestly though I dont consider DDO truely free to play. IF you are a f2p player 70-90% of all the content is locked,that to me is not free to play whenyou have to buy adv. packs/xpacs.and the instancing and small outside worlds are ok,being in a dungeon all day is not my cup of tea. MMOers are getting to anal these days,what happened to just enjoying a game and not picking it apart like movie critics do with well movies. :P
The Matrix Online eventually failed due to some pretty bad design decisions. Letting anyone be anything, with only 1 character slot meant no rerolling. That is one thing that helps keep mmos active is people playing alts. Plus the melee combat was done poorly. You go from a 3D virtual world but when pulled into melee it goes into a side scrolling "street fighter" type scenario.
I wonder how Warhammer Online would of been had EA not finished it up. Don't tell me "no Mythic did it" because there is no Mythic anymore since they were absorbed into the EA collective. Heck, EA even fired Mythic's founder and head Mark Jacobs.
Auto Assault had potential, I just think that "Twisted Metal Online" was not something that the mass public was really asking for.
Tabula Rasa's failure I pin squarely on Richard Garriott. It had his name on it but shortly after release he went MIA from it to live out his fantasy of going into space. Apparently he asked for more time off, so NCSoft gave him all the time he wanted.
The only one I couldnt remember the name of was WISH, which is funny because its the only one I participated in the beta of besides MxO.
The saddest of those I would say was Middle Earth online. Like a lot of LOTR fans, I wanted to become immersed in Middle Earth and feel like I have a life there. A linear game just cannot offer that, although IMO LOTRo is very good for such a game, it just isnt anything like MEO was going to be, and I remember being so excited about it, and having a sinking feeling when I read about changes being made to it, and the disappointment as I played in the final beta and realized that it doesnt give me that same amazing feeling I hoped for and that MEO would probably give me (something more akin to SWG)... Despite being a decent game (I especially enjoyed /music command).
I find it interesting when people say "Oh, this game would have been so much better if X company had gotten a chance to finish it instead of Y." Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, LotRo vs. MEO peeps. There is absolutely no conceivable way you could know that you "would be subscribed to an MMO" right now if MEO had been finished. Seriously. None. Well, not unless you are the Doctor and have a TARDIS hiding in your backyard and travel to some alternate time when the game was finished, played it for the duration of it's natural life, and then came back to our world to share with us the great news. That's the thing about history. Sure, we can look back and say, "If this had happened, then this would have resulted." But the fact is that history has flown forth in one direction. MEO may have been a great game...and it may have gone the way of so many other MMOs out there that started off with promise and hype and ended up in the toilet.
I think the point people are trying to convey is that they would have rather had a sandbox Middle-earth world, like MEO, rather than a themepark Middle-earth world like LotRO.
Me, I'm OVERJOYED that we did not get any incarnation of MEO. I love LOTRO the way it is, with only a couple tiny issues; the location of Dol Goldur, and radiance-gated content.
And I don't need a dimension jumping device to say that.
Honestly though I dont consider DDO truely free to play. IF you are a f2p player 70-90% of all the content is locked,that to me is not free to play whenyou have to buy adv. packs/xpacs.and the instancing and small outside worlds are ok,being in a dungeon all day is not my cup of tea. MMOers are getting to anal these days,what happened to just enjoying a game and not picking it apart like movie critics do with well movies. :P
Honestly though I dont consider DDO truely free to play. IF you are a f2p player 70-90% of all the content is locked,that to me is not free to play whenyou have to buy adv. packs/xpacs.and the instancing and small outside worlds are ok,being in a dungeon all day is not my cup of tea. MMOers are getting to anal these days,what happened to just enjoying a game and not picking it apart like movie critics do with well movies. :P
Sorry, you're wrong. Nothing is "locked". You don't want to pay, you don't have to. You use favor earned ingame to buy the content you want. You want to play free, you earn it. Too lazy or have extra cash burning your pocket, you pay.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Honestly though I dont consider DDO truely free to play. IF you are a f2p player 70-90% of all the content is locked,that to me is not free to play whenyou have to buy adv. packs/xpacs.and the instancing and small outside worlds are ok,being in a dungeon all day is not my cup of tea. MMOers are getting to anal these days,what happened to just enjoying a game and not picking it apart like movie critics do with well movies. :P
Sorry, you're wrong. Nothing is "locked". You don't want to pay, you don't have to. You use favor earned ingame to buy the content you want. You want to play free, you earn it. Too lazy or have extra cash burning your pocket, you pay.
When I said "locked" i pretty much ment having to buy/open with a LOT of questing to earn favor. and again a true f2p mmo has no/should have no content (or should not have the content) locked, game enviroment wise anyway,i played RoM for a couple of months THAT was f2p, hell i even droped more than a sub would cost in a month. Im a subscriber atm to an mmo,not unwilling to drop $$. just making an observation.
Comments
EA have never been afraid of pulling the plug, they've actually got form after all... Earth & Beyond yet another game killed off for under performance.. sadly SciFi games are just not as popular as they should be.. i dont think its because of a lack of options in the genre either
1. Matrix Online
2. Wish
3. Warhammer Online
4. Tabula Rasa – Destination Games and Blackstar - Spacetime Studios
5. Middle-Earth Online - Sierra
Is this list purposely mostly SF MMO’s or does that just tell us something about the genre? SF is a love of mine and so is Tolkein, but at least we got Lotro in the end. Do we get a prize, a gravestone with their names on or something?
R.I.P, you took some of our dreams with you.
unfortunately it does say something about the genre.. there are very few successful SciFi games.. the most popular is Eve, which at 350k subs is ... a drop in the WoW bucket... Fantasy games are more popular by far.. its a shame really.. because it makes the bar for success much higher for those types of games due to a more limited possible player base..
What! no mention of the cancelled Battletech MMO?
That would have been truely awesome too!
No disrespect meant to WoW, but if you discount it due to all of the non-MMO gaming related factors that have attributed to it's subscription success and then compare Eve to to the other AAA P2P MMOs out there EvE is right up there with them sub wise. Makes me believe a solid put together sci-fi MMO would have just as good of a chance as a fantasy one. I agree that the bar to consider a game solid is high (higher than it was in 2003/2004) now which makes it hard for any game, sci-fi or fantasy, to make it these days. But, that's what happens when the CEOs, Marketing department and shareholders are driving development instead of the actual people hands on making the game. *shrug*
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
It is a sad state of affairs not to mention all those game studios depleting their funds before the completion of the game.
I think that all game studios should have atleast one accountant.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Yep old news. However your gong to be adding LOTRO to the list soon.
thought lotro was still doing well and wouldnt be closing anytime soon at all? or has it kinda crapped out in the past 8mths?
Some others that were not mention was the Ultima Online(had another word in the title, however cannot remember it. at a guess i would say Odyssey or something) new version that was cancelled in early stage beta, one that i cannot remember that was being done by codemasters and gods and heroes rome rising that was canned in beta stage.
I didn't get any right, but most of them were 'oh yeah, I remember' moments after I revealed the answer.
So my defence isn't a lack of knowledge, but rather a mind like a sieve!
Current MMO: None
Previous MMOs: WoW, Guild Wars, SWG, EQ2, LotrO, Vanguard, Matrix Online, AoC, Ultima Online, Fallen Earth, D&D Online, Champions Online, Aion, Rift.
I didn't have the privilege of getting to play TR during the betas. But I enjoyed the game. I really did. God knows there were things wrong with the game, things missing, but the game was there, it was... awesome, really. I have played many MMO's and either it's nostalgy but TR simply... was above the rest. Every MMO that is out now is... *sigh* I play a week, then I take a break for two. Even things such as Fallne Earth only drwe me enought o play a week or two straight before finding something else to do.
The irony of TR, is that JUST when the closing announcement came (a mere week after the devs told us the game wasn't going anywhere), the game was, what you'd consider, complete. The craved for features were implemented, some NEW ones were put in. Weapon and class balance was starting to look more or less complete (the medics still owned PvP, but before there were the engineers). Even high level repeatable content was being implemented, rumors and numbers went around of people coming back and members rising and then the announcement... swish! Bye bye...
I did WISH's beta and I was floored when it was cancelled, the player events were great fun and I loved the RVR (town vs town pvp). The dueling arena was fun, 2 players stood in a corale in the middle of town and duked it out.
in calmest breeze,
in tornadoes blast,
no evil shall escape my gas
let those who are an evil fink
fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
The game has went to hell in an handbasket since SOM. The updates roll out slower and slower and slower.
No real dev interaction the dev diaries have all but quit, I am very sure that they have been moved to other projects even Oroin wrote a blog 4 months back that his pet revamp projectt had been put on hold to go work on other things.
We got one book update that was run here run there. Meanwhile ddo is going like ganbusters. It is obvous to anybody with half a brain that LOTRO is now on standby (actually become the red haired step child to DDO), and all the resources have been moved to DDO, and whatever the new MMO project is.
Interesting quiz. Didn't know most of the answer. Didn't even know that there was another company that worked on a Warhammer MMO. Who knows, maybe they would have done it better than Mythic xD Only one I partially knew was about Middle-Earth Online, but I didn't know Sierra was producing it. I do know I loved most of the games Sierra released, wonder how it would have been like.
From what i have seen to have a truely good sci fi mmo you really have to balance laser pistol combat with Hand to hand combat. because a sci fi mmo imo is a lot a bout, well at least combat wise, laser guns/phasers and the sort. and not to mention (no jab at females by this coment just genearlization of genrea) to my knowledge and information out there, women tend to like fantasy more than sci fi...lol again im not picking on yall at all
. just a general statement of semi fact. but there is more to it than that ,and thats a whole other thread lol 
Lets hope THQ/vigil does a better job at the 40k MMO,and hope it gets out of the gate. WAR would have been better to with a 3rd faction too.
I actually wish they would make Tabula Rasa open source so that those who DID enjoy it can make it in to the something it could have been. Granted, it had an insane amount of problems, flaws, bugs, blah blah blah, but it actually tapped something fun for a while. Given the chance, TR would have become something good, in my opinion. Unfortunately, they destroyed it with a premature release.
MMO's played: Ragnarok Online (For years), WoW (for a few weeks only), Guild Wars, Lineage 2, Eve, Allods, Shattered Galaxy, 9 Dragons, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Star Trek Online (Got someone ELSE to pay for it), Champions Online (Someone else paid), Dofus, Dragonica, LOTRO, DDO and more... A LOT more. I've played good AND bad. The bad didn't last long. :P
LOTRO isn't going to end anytime soon.
As a rabid MMO follower, that quiz was cake for me. Very fun tho, more plz. You might be able to stump me on eastern MMOGs, no way on western. Bring it!
Honestly though I dont consider DDO truely free to play. IF you are a f2p player 70-90% of all the content is locked,that to me is not free to play whenyou have to buy adv. packs/xpacs.and the instancing and small outside worlds are ok,being in a dungeon all day is not my cup of tea. MMOers are getting to anal these days,what happened to just enjoying a game and not picking it apart like movie critics do with well movies. :P
Nice post. /signed and agree with all of it
The only one I couldnt remember the name of was WISH, which is funny because its the only one I participated in the beta of besides MxO.
The saddest of those I would say was Middle Earth online. Like a lot of LOTR fans, I wanted to become immersed in Middle Earth and feel like I have a life there. A linear game just cannot offer that, although IMO LOTRo is very good for such a game, it just isnt anything like MEO was going to be, and I remember being so excited about it, and having a sinking feeling when I read about changes being made to it, and the disappointment as I played in the final beta and realized that it doesnt give me that same amazing feeling I hoped for and that MEO would probably give me (something more akin to SWG)... Despite being a decent game (I especially enjoyed /music command).
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Me, I'm OVERJOYED that we did not get any incarnation of MEO. I love LOTRO the way it is, with only a couple tiny issues; the location of Dol Goldur, and radiance-gated content.
And I don't need a dimension jumping device to say that.
Um.. did you just criticize your criticism?
Sorry, you're wrong. Nothing is "locked". You don't want to pay, you don't have to. You use favor earned ingame to buy the content you want. You want to play free, you earn it. Too lazy or have extra cash burning your pocket, you pay.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
When I said "locked" i pretty much ment having to buy/open with a LOT of questing to earn favor. and again a true f2p mmo has no/should have no content (or should not have the content) locked, game enviroment wise anyway,i played RoM for a couple of months THAT was f2p, hell i even droped more than a sub would cost in a month. Im a subscriber atm to an mmo,not unwilling to drop $$. just making an observation.