Originally posted by Rusque Just for a frame of reference, Columbus Nova is playing with about three times the assets that EA has. I'm really not gonna believe an investment firm just had a random inkling to jump into the MMO genre. EA is a game publisher and still doesn't have a stellar reputation, but who knows maybe these professional money counters are secret MMO fans and really want a great game to be made even if it is a niche product with just 500k players. lol
Columbus Nova is a small American "investment firm" owned and run by a much larger Russian concern that owns several other companies and banks but nothing gaming related. So yes, it is interesting that suddenly there's this sale, although there is money to be made in gaming if you're not a struggling indie group.
Also very interesting that the EQ franchise and PS2 were both basically gutted. Community service managers thrown to the side. The first thing that happened on the public side of things in Landmark was the international forums disappeared. Smedly and his pet zombie project seems to be safe for now.
EQN will most likely be either put on ice - or changed in drastic ways.
My guess - Storybricks is out - just my hunch, I seriously doubt that DGC will continue to pursue storybricks now.
I would tend to agree.
I would even go further and speculate that the "voxel" features are going to be scaled back. All the risky "next gen" features will be headed for the chopping block. EQ:Next will become EQ3...
Basically: "Forget the fancy stuff, take what you have and get it out the door ASAP !"
No one knows what SOE agreed to in order to license these technologies (Voxel and StoryBricks) (and possibly others). If, for instance, these tools were going to demand 30+% of the gross revenue? That would almost guarantee a dead-on-delivery product. (I don't have any idea what the actual cost numbers on these licenses are, 30% is only an extreme example).
This entire argument also assumes that CN / Daybreak is even interested in producing a new MMORPG, as opposed to mobile games. Since they are moving so fast, I now speculate that all products that aren't finished and operational are, for now, suspended, with everyone and everything focused on the bottom line. It may be that retained staff are now busy on packaging their portfolio into modules that can be easily sold. (There have been lots of rumors of shared code, that could be problematic when selling off a functional product). Let's see how quickly they announce a new product, I think that will be the first big public announcement from Daybreak.
Maybe one day soon, we will have a clearer insight into how CN/Daybreak intends to proceed. I'm afraid that the community will be left to piece together the reasons, motives and ideas behind this acquisition from evaluation of events.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
You can't fire the people that are beloved by the community and expect smiles and flowers.
SmokeJumper is an EQ legend. Many people love the guy and looked at him as the face of the franchise. Now, he's gone. What are we suppose to assume? EQN will no longer be under his vision so it won't be nearly as good a game.
Sometimes you must let the old legends go so that new ones might have a chance to become legends.
There's a lot of young talented devs out there - lots!
The future of games is in the hands of devs we don't know yet.
A bunch of kids who grew up playing Mortal Kombat and console hallway and bosses games. Not exactly my idea of the next great MMO. Nothing Epic is going to come out for the PC from people influenced by the gameplay of console games and smartphones.
There is not much else to say, it was good while it lasted.
People are so naive, to think there is still chance for EQ. (or even other games)
You can not simply fire the whole expert team from the game.
Just look at the list. They simply fired every essential person that worked on the project.
Its not like ColumbusNova are Blizzard, and they know the knowledge of making succesful games and have ready replacements... No, this is just bunch of bankers and mafia guys buying and selling various investments.
Even if they wanted to continue developing EQ:N they could not do it anymore. It would take them year to replace top experts. And who will teach the new people the technology ?
Trust me, I work in high tech and gaming industry. Its impossible at this point.
What happened is that they fired top earners. To prevent leaking funds while they are trying to figure how to butcher and sell what can be sold , and turn the profit. Its well known investment strategy to buy for cheap bankrupting buisnesses and than re-sell them in higher priced pieces.
RIP EQ:N
RIP last MMO that had potential to change something in this dark ages of MMO.
This is all damage control and blue eyed naivity - nothing else...
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
You can't fire the people that are beloved by the community and expect smiles and flowers.
SmokeJumper is an EQ legend. Many people love the guy and looked at him as the face of the franchise. Now, he's gone. What are we suppose to assume? EQN will no longer be under his vision so it won't be nearly as good a game.
I find it funny that people call Dave a EQ Legend, he was hired in 2010 to turn EQ2 to F2P. We are only in 2015, he haven't been 5 years with the company.
He is a amazing "used car salesman" though.
I agree. Honestly, EQN is a great example of why community-driven development doesn't work. If you contrast EQN with something like, say, H1Z1, it's really interesting to see the "hype curve". H1Z1 was like a year from announcement to release, and it seems like they've done a pretty good job riding the hype train to this point. EQN, on the other hand, was announced in like 2012 and we still don't have any real idea about when it's going to be released. Unfortunately I view it as a failure of the project management team. Seems that they were more interested in talking about how awesome it was going to be than delivering. Not saying that was their intention but the optics of it are not good. Hype train is officially slowed to an idle, in my opinion.
Seems like you are saying that because H1Z1 released quickly, that community driven development simply slows games down.
And I absolutely agree with that.
But does that mean developers should not listen to the community, when designing their games? Should we all take our lunchboxes and go home now, because no listens? ( I know, they are really only pretending to listen anyway )
No, I think community development is really important. However, if you don't have any clue what you should be developing for the next installment of a franchise that's like 15 years old, then you've got some serious community problems and probably want to address that first.
Community-driven development works best when you have the ability to be responsive. 9 out of 10 people probably have no clue what's involved with developing a feature or how long it takes. It's the job of the developer to create the illusion that it's "simple". If you don't have the infrastructure in place to do that, then you're in big trouble.
You can't fire the people that are beloved by the community and expect smiles and flowers.
SmokeJumper is an EQ legend. Many people love the guy and looked at him as the face of the franchise. Now, he's gone. What are we suppose to assume? EQN will no longer be under his vision so it won't be nearly as good a game.
Sometimes you must let the old legends go so that new ones might have a chance to become legends.
There's a lot of young talented devs out there - lots!
The future of games is in the hands of devs we don't know yet.
It's a blow to those of us who are NOT interested in console / mobile style gaming. I know you're dancing a jig over this, but many of us are not and you should respect that we deserve to have our style of games too.
I think they promised too much stuff and bit off more than they could chew. It seems like they can't or don't know how to get eqn to do what they want. I do not think it's looking good for the game either way
How does Smedley continue to keep his job? He must have one heck of a golden parachute if he can survive though the new owners. If you feel the company needs changed, why not change the person who was in charge? The person who created the mess you are trying to clean up.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
i agree with this reddit post especially about H1z1
"and you still released this product to the public? trust me even though your fanboys are downvoting every post that is negative right now, the majority of people would NOT have bought into this alpha had they known you guys at SOE (Now DGC) were being bought out.
you flat out deceived people all around the world who bought into this alpha thinking a strong solidified development team was behind it. only to find out not even a fucking month later that layoffs were happening.
You can't assume EQN is dead from that list. The majority of those positions were all managerial type positions or player community liasons. And alot of those positions served no real purpose to the daily development of the games. I don't see but 1-2 programmers/developers or artists being let go, and EQN had a huge amount of them for development compared to what the other game departments have.
Its safe to assume they plan on taking EQN to a whole new direction, since all the visionary positions are gone for the most part, thank goodness. I wish they had done the same for EQ1 but guess they are bringing in to much money from EQ1 to let anyone really go.
Right a chance to survive as a shell of their former self. Attempting to laud any game from this studio will now be met with intense ridicule on these forums now.
The genre pretty much died today with the death of the Everquest franchise. Business men with no care for gaming run the industry now. The last old school mmo development company is now dead.
Now it's up to the remaining staff to keep costs under control and hit their goals if they want to grow again - it can happen - again look at Funcom, Trion and other companies who have gone through this - they are in a better place now - but it does take at least a year or 2 of PAIN before things get better.
Funcom stopped making mmorpg's and work on Lego minifigures online instead. Trion made a minecraft game in Trove for minimal costs. Turbine killed their mmorpg development and made a moba that turned into a huge flop. I have no idea what CCP works on after killing WoD and making big cuts but I doubt they will ever make an mmorpg again.
The only western studio that has said that they are working on an mmorpg is Cryptic Studios, but there are no more details on that.
There are plenty of MMOs on the market....MMOs that fit into every playstyle.....I couldn't care less if another MMO is ever made, as long as the one or two i'm investing myself into, stay online
People need to stop waiting for that "next best thing"....pick an MMO, and invest yourself in it....
Sorry Susan, console and applet gaming is not anything I'm looking forward to, neither is any direction toward action gaming with no virtual world, lack of complexity, community or anything that doesn't necessitate a concerted effort of brain cells.
EQ:N is officialy DEAD. Yeah, I am positively FURIOUS now. FURIOUS BECAUSE WHAT EVIL INVESTMENT SCUMBAGS KEEP DOING TO US ORDINARY PEOPLE
edit: Sorry about that. I am very passionate about the fight vs corporations, see. And why? Because money is literally the last thing I think about yet it's the very first they think about. Conflict probability? ~100% .
Again, sorry for that outburst.
How polite of you to apologize.
You should see my posts about this scumbag corporation :
Reading Mr. Dave Carey's statement above it seems those let go of got a nice severance pay package. Mr. Smedley stating that DayBreak would have more resources with Columbus Nova. I guess that's true now by cutting payroll of 20+ employees, some of which were the movers and shakers of middle management.
From the line-up it also appears like the total community relations department got blown away. A lot of legacy knowledge of how to run a game studio was just erased especially with customer interaction. If SOE was top heavy the way DB communicated it with us their customers has scared us senseless. Our confidence in CB is already like walking through a mine field.
Apparently, people here do not understand how VC firms work: they are in it for the cash in the shortest term possible.
The want payback on their investments, this quarter, this year, not 3 years from now. (It is a question of "opportunity cost", why put their money into buying SOE, if they could make more some where else?)
And they are certainly not going to keep laying out the cash, by the millions, until then, for some unknown amount of revenue down the line.
They bought SOE for the revenue H1Z1 is going to generate, and whatever they can squeeze from the rest of the "headed for glue factory" MMOs SOE has left.
I am having to join the crowd expecting very little in the terms of long term development on EQN or anything else that was not almost done, that is just how VC guys work.
Comments
Columbus Nova is a small American "investment firm" owned and run by a much larger Russian concern that owns several other companies and banks but nothing gaming related. So yes, it is interesting that suddenly there's this sale, although there is money to be made in gaming if you're not a struggling indie group.
Also very interesting that the EQ franchise and PS2 were both basically gutted. Community service managers thrown to the side. The first thing that happened on the public side of things in Landmark was the international forums disappeared. Smedly and his pet zombie project seems to be safe for now.
No one knows what SOE agreed to in order to license these technologies (Voxel and StoryBricks) (and possibly others). If, for instance, these tools were going to demand 30+% of the gross revenue? That would almost guarantee a dead-on-delivery product. (I don't have any idea what the actual cost numbers on these licenses are, 30% is only an extreme example).
This entire argument also assumes that CN / Daybreak is even interested in producing a new MMORPG, as opposed to mobile games. Since they are moving so fast, I now speculate that all products that aren't finished and operational are, for now, suspended, with everyone and everything focused on the bottom line. It may be that retained staff are now busy on packaging their portfolio into modules that can be easily sold. (There have been lots of rumors of shared code, that could be problematic when selling off a functional product). Let's see how quickly they announce a new product, I think that will be the first big public announcement from Daybreak.
Maybe one day soon, we will have a clearer insight into how CN/Daybreak intends to proceed. I'm afraid that the community will be left to piece together the reasons, motives and ideas behind this acquisition from evaluation of events.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
A bunch of kids who grew up playing Mortal Kombat and console hallway and bosses games. Not exactly my idea of the next great MMO. Nothing Epic is going to come out for the PC from people influenced by the gameplay of console games and smartphones.
People are so naive, to think there is still chance for EQ. (or even other games)
You can not simply fire the whole expert team from the game.
Just look at the list. They simply fired every essential person that worked on the project.
Its not like ColumbusNova are Blizzard, and they know the knowledge of making succesful games and have ready replacements... No, this is just bunch of bankers and mafia guys buying and selling various investments.
Even if they wanted to continue developing EQ:N they could not do it anymore. It would take them year to replace top experts. And who will teach the new people the technology ?
Trust me, I work in high tech and gaming industry. Its impossible at this point.
What happened is that they fired top earners. To prevent leaking funds while they are trying to figure how to butcher and sell what can be sold , and turn the profit. Its well known investment strategy to buy for cheap bankrupting buisnesses and than re-sell them in higher priced pieces.
RIP EQ:N
RIP last MMO that had potential to change something in this dark ages of MMO.
This is all damage control and blue eyed naivity - nothing else...
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2vm5nl/dont_hate_on_columbus_novadaybreak/
This should be added to the OP, its the same subject as the title of the thread.
No, I think community development is really important. However, if you don't have any clue what you should be developing for the next installment of a franchise that's like 15 years old, then you've got some serious community problems and probably want to address that first.
Community-driven development works best when you have the ability to be responsive. 9 out of 10 people probably have no clue what's involved with developing a feature or how long it takes. It's the job of the developer to create the illusion that it's "simple". If you don't have the infrastructure in place to do that, then you're in big trouble.
Crazkanuk
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Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
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Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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It's a blow to those of us who are NOT interested in console / mobile style gaming. I know you're dancing a jig over this, but many of us are not and you should respect that we deserve to have our style of games too.
i agree with this reddit post especially about H1z1
"and you still released this product to the public? trust me even though your fanboys are downvoting every post that is negative right now, the majority of people would NOT have bought into this alpha had they known you guys at SOE (Now DGC) were being bought out.
you flat out deceived people all around the world who bought into this alpha thinking a strong solidified development team was behind it. only to find out not even a fucking month later that layoffs were happening.
Shame on you."
http://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/2vlh5z/it_was_less_than_a_month_ago_that_this_game_was/
Web & Graphic Design - www.xdrac.com
You can't assume EQN is dead from that list. The majority of those positions were all managerial type positions or player community liasons. And alot of those positions served no real purpose to the daily development of the games. I don't see but 1-2 programmers/developers or artists being let go, and EQN had a huge amount of them for development compared to what the other game departments have.
Its safe to assume they plan on taking EQN to a whole new direction, since all the visionary positions are gone for the most part, thank goodness. I wish they had done the same for EQ1 but guess they are bringing in to much money from EQ1 to let anyone really go.
Meh, the company has sucked bad ever since they made the jump to P2W microtransaction vampires.
Its a GOOD thing that these companies who are turing MMOs into slot machines are doing poorly.
Haha I love it! Nothing like getting your nuts chopped off to bring out your inner pacifist.
There are plenty of MMOs on the market....MMOs that fit into every playstyle.....I couldn't care less if another MMO is ever made, as long as the one or two i'm investing myself into, stay online
People need to stop waiting for that "next best thing"....pick an MMO, and invest yourself in it....
How polite of you to apologize.
You should see my posts about this scumbag corporation :
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/6579522#6579522
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/6579556#6579556
Hi Guys,
Reading Mr. Dave Carey's statement above it seems those let go of got a nice severance pay package. Mr. Smedley stating that DayBreak would have more resources with Columbus Nova. I guess that's true now by cutting payroll of 20+ employees, some of which were the movers and shakers of middle management.
From the line-up it also appears like the total community relations department got blown away. A lot of legacy knowledge of how to run a game studio was just erased especially with customer interaction. If SOE was top heavy the way DB communicated it with us their customers has scared us senseless. Our confidence in CB is already like walking through a mine field.
----------------------
The Older Gamers
So all those people who said EQN was gonna be vaporware were right.
Who'da thunk we would hear a gaming prophecy on MMORPG.com
I luv this site.
Apparently, people here do not understand how VC firms work: they are in it for the cash in the shortest term possible.
The want payback on their investments, this quarter, this year, not 3 years from now. (It is a question of "opportunity cost", why put their money into buying SOE, if they could make more some where else?)
And they are certainly not going to keep laying out the cash, by the millions, until then, for some unknown amount of revenue down the line.
They bought SOE for the revenue H1Z1 is going to generate, and whatever they can squeeze from the rest of the "headed for glue factory" MMOs SOE has left.
I am having to join the crowd expecting very little in the terms of long term development on EQN or anything else that was not almost done, that is just how VC guys work.