Originally posted by Kem0sabe In my view any cancelation of an Ultima franchise game is a tragedy of global proportions Im still waiting after all these years for a new ultima single player rpg, ultima 9 didnt count, i bet that game still lags as hell on one of todays gfx cards, it was pretty mch unplayable, not to mention the game design itself *sigh*
Oh I dunno. Lord British left over UO2 and really didn't like the direction they were headed with UXO either. Somehow I don't think, even if they did successfully release them, that they'd have felt much like the Ultima Games we all came to know and love over the decades.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Originally posted by Elnator Has nothing to do with how I define a beta or whether it's a product or not so much as how much customer impact your decision has. Basically I don't mind a company cancelling a product if they don't feel it's worthwhile as long as the customer impact has been assessed beforehand. Cancelling things before you let the public have access to them is a companies pure perogative. Once you put it out in a public beta, or even a closed beta really, you have customers (whether they are paying or not) and customer impact needs to be assessed. However, only after releasing a game, is there actual financial impact to customers so, naturally, I feel a lot more strongly about games that are released then cancelled. Just look at all the players who spent over a year playing Earth & Beyond when it was announced it would be cancelled. All the time and money they'd invested in the game had been wasted. I would have been FURIOUS if I were still playing when the game had been cancelled. Fortunately I had left the game long before because I found it boring. But cancelling prior to beta, while yah it's still a 'product' it's the companies right to do so. Cancelling during beta yes it's still a product but there isn't any tangible customer impact other than image. Cancelling after release has tremendous customer impact and can negatively impact future products your company produces in a very real and tangible way.Hope that makes more sense.
Yes its their perogative. However that doesn't mean as a consumer and fan I won't be angry with them as a company or their practices. And it also is why there is so little faith in EA titles now which is key. I had alot of hesitation before starting TSO because it was an EA MMO product. And I probably won't ever start another MMO with them due to their MMO retention record.
Also UO was a different animal. There was ALOT of people banking UO 2 because the genre was still so young then and UO 2 was UO 1 and Everquest all wrapped up together in one harmonious package. It was bad business for them then and they continue to put products on the chopping block AFTER they advertise them to the public.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Originally posted by Fadeus Originally posted by Elnator Has nothing to do with how I define a beta or whether it's a product or not so much as how much customer impact your decision has. Basically I don't mind a company cancelling a product if they don't feel it's worthwhile as long as the customer impact has been assessed beforehand. Cancelling things before you let the public have access to them is a companies pure perogative. Once you put it out in a public beta, or even a closed beta really, you have customers (whether they are paying or not) and customer impact needs to be assessed. However, only after releasing a game, is there actual financial impact to customers so, naturally, I feel a lot more strongly about games that are released then cancelled. Just look at all the players who spent over a year playing Earth & Beyond when it was announced it would be cancelled. All the time and money they'd invested in the game had been wasted. I would have been FURIOUS if I were still playing when the game had been cancelled. Fortunately I had left the game long before because I found it boring. But cancelling prior to beta, while yah it's still a 'product' it's the companies right to do so. Cancelling during beta yes it's still a product but there isn't any tangible customer impact other than image. Cancelling after release has tremendous customer impact and can negatively impact future products your company produces in a very real and tangible way.Hope that makes more sense.
Yes its their perogative. However that doesn't mean as a consumer and fan I won't be angry with them as a company or their practices. And it also is why there is so little faith in EA titles now which is key. I had alot of hesitation before starting TSO because it was an EA MMO product. And I probably won't ever start another MMO with them due to their MMO retention record.
Also UO was a different animal. There was ALOT of people banking UO 2 because the genre was still so young then and UO 2 was UO 1 and Everquest all wrapped up together in one harmonious package. It was bad business for them then and they continue to put products on the chopping block AFTER they advertise them to the public.
Oh I absolutely agree. EA has made major blunders in the MMORPG market. Which is why I will personally never buy an MMO produced by them because I know I cant trust them not to plant an Axe in it even if it's been out over a year. (I believe Earth & Beyond was nearing it's 2 year anniversary when they axed it). The ONLY reason that they haven't nuked UO, in my opinion, is because it's just a pure money machine that they don't have to invest any effort in since it's long long long since paid off it's development costs. That and, as a gaming company, pissing off 150,000 Ultima Fans would REALLY hurt their customer base, a LOT more than cancelling a couple titles that never made it out of development.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
If they put a shut down date on UO the skies would turn black and cats and dogs would be sleeping together...
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Over the years i have come to dismiss EA as a serious game company, their games quality is nowhere near what it was in the early-mid 90´s. Since then we get yearly mediocre instalments of sports games with a few sims games thrown in there, i still cant believe how sims consistently stays on top of the game sale charts.
I think SEGA was going down the same path with their sports games but they have turned up some quality titles these last few years, but overall i prefer japonese developed games when it comes to sports, cant go wrong with the pro evolution/winning eleven series.
Back on topic, i see this recent trend of project cancelations to be quite disturbing, these days many mmorpg´s are either canceled or change development teams, it makes for some very messed up products. I think the major fault in this lies with sucessfull titles like lineage 2, WoW or EQ, they have set such high population values that it makes other companies question their capacity to chalange them, mostly i see developers lacking faith in their abilities or over hyping their product so much because their trying to gather an online following with absurd and unrealistic lists of features.
Originally posted by Fadeus OK, you really do have too much time on your hands Kem0sabe!
I can confirm those UO 2 shots, that was it. I remember thinking how badass those graphics were then. Its a shame that game got canned. So then they started working on UXO later and canned it too.
I thought UO2 was changed and renamed to UXO... my mistake. For some reason I was thinking they were the same project.
But neither made it to a Beta phase so it doesn't bother me. Others it obviously does, however. don't even have major problems with games getting cancelled before beta is over really but it is dissapointing when that happens. But if it goes gold I do get grumpy about cancelled games because people have invested time and, more importantly, money into the game and have formed an attachment to their assets in the game.
Usually I agree with you on things El, but as another programmer I really have to disagree with your concepts of beta. Just becaue it didn't make beta yet doesn't mean it wasn't a very healthy and near done project. Beta is a very subjective term, especially to the type of software your dealing with. Many applications are near complete when they go into beta and the beta IS just for shaking bugs. A company can declare it beta anytime they want, regardless of what state the software is in. By the time its in beta however 95% of the foundational code should be complete. That sounds like a product too me wether it be ready for consumer consumption or not. And consider the scope of developing an MMO thats a few years of labor. I think UO II can be counted as a canned product, beta or not.
Not my point. If it doesn't make it to Beta and people haven't even played it yet then I don't have any issues whatsoever with a company cancelling a game. After all, it never got out of the development stages into public testing stages. Call it whatever you like, the public hasn't had a chance to play with it so there's no major attachment and cancelling is fairly painless other than expectations. If it makes it to beta then depending how long it's been in beta the decision should be much harder because you have a sector of the public that has likely formed an attachment and strong expectations of being able to use the product. If it makes it to release you're actually harming people who spent money on the product when you cancel.
Has nothing to do with how I define a beta or whether it's a product or not so much as how much customer impact your decision has. Basically I don't mind a company cancelling a product if they don't feel it's worthwhile as long as the customer impact has been assessed beforehand. Cancelling things before you let the public have access to them is a companies pure perogative. Once you put it out in a public beta, or even a closed beta really, you have customers (whether they are paying or not) and customer impact needs to be assessed. However, only after releasing a game, is there actual financial impact to customers so, naturally, I feel a lot more strongly about games that are released then cancelled. Just look at all the players who spent over a year playing Earth & Beyond when it was announced it would be cancelled. All the time and money they'd invested in the game had been wasted. I would have been FURIOUS if I were still playing when the game had been cancelled. Fortunately I had left the game long before because I found it boring.
But cancelling prior to beta, while yah it's still a 'product' it's the companies right to do so. Cancelling during beta yes it's still a product but there isn't any tangible customer impact other than image. Cancelling after release has tremendous customer impact and can negatively impact future products your company produces in a very real and tangible way.
Hope that makes more sense.
Your point doesn't hold much weight because you're coming from a position of ignorance. The shockwaves of UO2 being canceled are still felt by a lot of people who were around waiting for it. It was the product to get excited about at the time. I still have the demo footage. It was hotter than the sun and every fan knew most if not all of the production details.
Consider that a number of years ago games weren't openned to public beta testing and you may imagine the atmosphere that surrounded UO2.
If you actually want a taste of what UO2 was going to involve in lore you can research UO when EA started to call big patches "content publishes." It was at that time that they started to take UO2 assets and ideas and funnel them into the older UO. Such as the cats. Everyone groaned when they brought the cats into regular UO lore. Like a bitter spit in the face.
Elnator, I also really don't understand what sort of grounds you're basing your comments of UXO on. I can't imagine why Lord British would at all be consulted about the game since he was already well into development of his new IPs for NCSoft when UXO was started. When UXO was started, EA and LB had split already.
Originally posted by Elnator Look guys thee are some very basic facts available to you: 1) DAOC wasn't exactly "agressively" marketted: It has 5 times the subscriber base of AC 2) EVE isn't advertized or marketted at ALL... has it even BEEN on store shelves? I've never seen it on a shelf: Nearly 3 times the number of subscribers that AC has. 3) CoH: Not agressively marketted. Haven't seen it on shelves in a while: 4-5x the subscriber base. 4) UO: Been out longer, hasn't been advertized in ages, older technology, not even 3D graphics: 3x the subscriber base 5) Runescape: I never once saw this advertized and haven't ever seen it on the shelf at EB or BestBuy. 7x the subscriber base...
DAOC, EVE, COH, and UO have all been heavly advertised. Not just this site but on gamespot.com, fileplanet.com and gamespy.com i've seen each of these games constantly advertised as well as the EQ and WoW of course. UO is advertising their new Samurai Empires expansion and COH is starting their advertisement for their City of Villians expansion.
The one aspect about all those games is that each time they come out with an expansion they Adverstise.
AC on the other hand has always made it a point to give free updated content over it's span and has stayed hard to that course. But it has hurt them more-so than anything, because with each expansion could have been coupled with more advertisement. But yet they decided only to release an "expansion" when it was going to require a huge update. Even then they didn't advertise all that much with Dark Majesty. I can't remember one time that a single banner add has been displayed on this site or any other until this latest expansion for Thrown of Destiny. Of course the original came out just before EQ and of course neither got much exposure at the time. Except i did see EQ in a number of magazines, i only found out about AC because i knew a guy that worked at the local EB games store and he was playing it also.
Lineage and Lineage 2 have gotten a lot more advertisement than AC, shoot even EVE has had more advertisement than AC. Because AC has had little to absolutely NO advertisement. Plus those subscriber numbers for EVE has to be off, because i tried it for a month and thought it was OK, and i never once seen more than 12500 online people at the same time. that's hardly 1.5 times the concurrent players of AC.
But of course with the amount of advertisement i've seen for AC: Throne of Destiny there will hopefully be a jump in subscriber base.
Originally posted by Crabby Originally posted by ElnatorOriginally posted by Fadeus Originally posted by Elnator Originally posted by FadeusOK, you really do have too much time on your hands Kem0sabe! I can confirm those UO 2 shots, that was it. I remember thinking how badass those graphics were then. Its a shame that game got canned. So then they started working on UXO later and canned it too. I thought UO2 was changed and renamed to UXO... my mistake. For some reason I was thinking they were the same project. But neither made it to a Beta phase so it doesn't bother me. Others it obviously does, however. don't even have major problems with games getting cancelled before beta is over really but it is dissapointing when that happens. But if it goes gold I do get grumpy about cancelled games because people have invested time and, more importantly, money into the game and have formed an attachment to their assets in the game. Usually I agree with you on things El, but as another programmer I really have to disagree with your concepts of beta. Just becaue it didn't make beta yet doesn't mean it wasn't a very healthy and near done project. Beta is a very subjective term, especially to the type of software your dealing with. Many applications are near complete when they go into beta and the beta IS just for shaking bugs. A company can declare it beta anytime they want, regardless of what state the software is in. By the time its in beta however 95% of the foundational code should be complete. That sounds like a product too me wether it be ready for consumer consumption or not. And consider the scope of developing an MMO thats a few years of labor. I think UO II can be counted as a canned product, beta or not.Not my point. If it doesn't make it to Beta and people haven't even played it yet then I don't have any issues whatsoever with a company cancelling a game. After all, it never got out of the development stages into public testing stages. Call it whatever you like, the public hasn't had a chance to play with it so there's no major attachment and cancelling is fairly painless other than expectations. If it makes it to beta then depending how long it's been in beta the decision should be much harder because you have a sector of the public that has likely formed an attachment and strong expectations of being able to use the product. If it makes it to release you're actually harming people who spent money on the product when you cancel. Has nothing to do with how I define a beta or whether it's a product or not so much as how much customer impact your decision has. Basically I don't mind a company cancelling a product if they don't feel it's worthwhile as long as the customer impact has been assessed beforehand. Cancelling things before you let the public have access to them is a companies pure perogative. Once you put it out in a public beta, or even a closed beta really, you have customers (whether they are paying or not) and customer impact needs to be assessed. However, only after releasing a game, is there actual financial impact to customers so, naturally, I feel a lot more strongly about games that are released then cancelled. Just look at all the players who spent over a year playing Earth & Beyond when it was announced it would be cancelled. All the time and money they'd invested in the game had been wasted. I would have been FURIOUS if I were still playing when the game had been cancelled. Fortunately I had left the game long before because I found it boring. But cancelling prior to beta, while yah it's still a 'product' it's the companies right to do so. Cancelling during beta yes it's still a product but there isn't any tangible customer impact other than image. Cancelling after release has tremendous customer impact and can negatively impact future products your company produces in a very real and tangible way. Hope that makes more sense. Your point doesn't hold much weight because you're coming from a position of ignorance. The shockwaves of UO2 being canceled are still felt by a lot of people who were around waiting for it. It was the product to get excited about at the time. I still have the demo footage. It was hotter than the sun and every fan knew most if not all of the production details. Consider that a number of years ago games weren't openned to public beta testing and you may imagine the atmosphere that surrounded UO2. If you actually want a taste of what UO2 was going to involve in lore you can research UO when EA started to call big patches "content publishes." It was at that time that they started to take UO2 assets and ideas and funnel them into the older UO. Such as the cats. Everyone groaned when they brought the cats into regular UO lore. Like a bitter spit in the face. Elnator, I also really don't understand what sort of grounds you're basing your comments of UXO on. I can't imagine why Lord British would at all be consulted about the game since he was already well into development of his new IPs for NCSoft when UXO was started. When UXO was started, EA and LB had split already.
Ok it's obvious that I'm not gettin my point across, that or you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. I'm not arguing that UO2 was anticipated or not or that it would have been a hot title or not... I remember looking forward to it as well but I wasn't dying to see it the way some obviously were because I was pretty happy with old UO at the time and really didn't care one way or another about UO2 until I could get my grubby paws on it. I guess that's the big difference. I have NEVER put any faith in developers statements until I can actually touch the product and play with it. Maybe that's why it didn't bother me as much as it did some others.
My point is this: A game cancelled while in development is less disturbing and, again I will reiterate this: to me than a game that's in beta or, worse, a game that's been released. And my comment about LB wasn't that he was involved with EA when UXO was announced but someone did ask him about it, I forget which gaming mag talked to him, and he was pretty disgusted with what EA was planning to do with the Ultima name. Didn't he try to sue them at one point to get the name back? I thought I remembered a rumor about that?
Anyway my point was simple: While it irked me that UO2 got cancelled and that UXO got cancelled (Remember I was mis-remembering the sequence and I thought UO2 was renamed to UXO while in development at some point) it didn't bother me as much as it would have if the games had gone into Beta before being cancelled.
That's all I was saying.
I swear you people argue for the sake of arguing.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Originally posted by Jamkull Originally posted by Elnator Look guys thee are some very basic facts available to you:1) DAOC wasn't exactly "agressively" marketted: It has 5 times the subscriber base of AC2) EVE isn't advertized or marketted at ALL... has it even BEEN on store shelves? I've never seen it on a shelf: Nearly 3 times the number of subscribers that AC has.3) CoH: Not agressively marketted. Haven't seen it on shelves in a while: 4-5x the subscriber base.4) UO: Been out longer, hasn't been advertized in ages, older technology, not even 3D graphics: 3x the subscriber base5) Runescape: I never once saw this advertized and haven't ever seen it on the shelf at EB or BestBuy. 7x the subscriber base... DAOC, EVE, COH, and UO have all been heavly advertised. Not just this site but on gamespot.com, fileplanet.com and gamespy.com i've seen each of these games constantly advertised as well as the EQ and WoW of course. UO is advertising their new Samurai Empires expansion and COH is starting their advertisement for their City of Villians expansion. The one aspect about all those games is that each time they come out with an expansion they Adverstise. AC on the other hand has always made it a point to give free updated content over it's span and has stayed hard to that course. But it has hurt them more-so than anything, because with each expansion could have been coupled with more advertisement. But yet they decided only to release an "expansion" when it was going to require a huge update. Even then they didn't advertise all that much with Dark Majesty. I can't remember one time that a single banner add has been displayed on this site or any other until this latest expansion for Thrown of Destiny. Of course the original came out just before EQ and of course neither got much exposure at the time. Except i did see EQ in a number of magazines, i only found out about AC because i knew a guy that worked at the local EB games store and he was playing it also. Lineage and Lineage 2 have gotten a lot more advertisement than AC, shoot even EVE has had more advertisement than AC. Because AC has had little to absolutely NO advertisement. Plus those subscriber numbers for EVE has to be off, because i tried it for a month and thought it was OK, and i never once seen more than 12500 online people at the same time. that's hardly 1.5 times the concurrent players of AC. But of course with the amount of advertisement i've seen for AC: Throne of Destiny there will hopefully be a jump in subscriber base.
Uh this discussion was done about 2 pages back. Not getting back into it again. But your timeline is fubar. EQ was out way before AC.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Originally posted by Elnator Not that I'm a big fan of EA or anything but E&B was dead weight. They were pretty smart to axe that one. And they did take care of their players by working with EVE to move their players there. Which was fairly cool for CCP and the players themselves since EVE is a far superior game than E&B ever was.MPBT kind of irked me but since Micro$oft wasn't playing nice when EA needed to renew the liscence the fault isn't entirely on EA for that one.Those are the only two MMO's I know of that EA has cancelled? What was the 3rd? Don't say UO because it hasn't been cancelled..... UO is just flat out a cash cow. 150,000 paying customers and THAT title recouped it's development costs eons ago.
Do I care if EA was making slighlty lower profits? No. If a company like Turbine can keep AC2 and AC1 going with similar amounts of subscribers as E&B and MCO then EA certainly could with their larger resources. The fact that they killed those game tells me several things:
- EA can't make a game worth a crap. - EA doesn't care to market the game or update it to fix flaws. - They are very much a "business" more so than Turbine at this point, which is back to my original thought. There were like 20,000 people who played their now canned MMO's. That is a relatively small number compared to other games but taken by themselves, 20,000 is still a large number of people who bought, played, and enjoyed the product EA was so quick to cancel. I realize business tough and Turbine will turn the same over time if they become a big success like EA. However, I like to hope for the best and even if an MMORPG had 1 player, I'd like to see it kept alive so that person could have their fun. So, it still stands Turbine has a nicer image to me.
And this post is getting way off. The I don't think the original topic said only updating the graphics would make AC a big hit like EQ. If it did I disagree. Graphics do not make a game it's obvious. UO has more subscribers but that doesn't make UO or any game with more subscribers better. UO was the first of it's kind and EQ always shoved AC out of the light.
There are numerous reason why AC is not a big hit. Some of it is the gameplay but that can be said about any game. More of it is marketing, availability and just the timing of the release. AC is a solid good game worthy of more players. This whole graphics topic is pretty moot, a simple graphics update will not fix everything but it would help a little.
AC1 retailed in Nov 1999, during the DX6 era, w98, 450MHz PIII or 500MHz Athlon cpu, Voodoo3 (2GB/s bandwidth) and Riva128 (1GB/s) / GF256 (4GB/s)gpu. A time where they were just getting into combined 2D and 3D gpu!
AC2 retailed in Nov 2002, during the DX8 era, Wxp, +2GHz PIV or +2GHz Athlon xp, GF4 Ti (10GB/s) and Radeon 9700 ( 8GB/s.)
Modern graphics engines ( UE2x or UE3 ) used in modern games like Sigil's Saga of Heroes demand a bit more programing expertise... "We will and have been using tidbits of 3.0 where applicable, and I imagine we'll continue to do so, even after launch. We have to keep the engine up to date for a variety of reasons. A complete overhaul though is not necessary and would also set the game back to an unacceptable degree.
Future projects will likely use 3.0 or 3.whatever as we are very happy with the technology in general and have a great relationship with Epic." Brad McQuaid
Considering modern gpu are doing 30 (x800) and 40GB/s (x850xt or GF7800) bandwidth including 6Gt/s vertex and 6Gp/s pixel shaders @ 80*C (110Watts power) on 1600x1200res and 32 bit colour; you can see where coding all the dynamic spell effects and photo realistic monsters have tremendously raised the bar from AC1-2 that were such an improvement over Mortal Kombat and Ms Pacman.
So... to compete in the nich (+100k retail sales and subscription) mmorpg market vs huge (MILLIONS retail CD sales) consol fps / sims gaming, they have to offer more than great display, interesting monster AI, and complicated tradeskills. The game has to be fun. It has to offer something 'subscribers' will continue to support for years, not the 20 to 50 hrs it takes to "beat" the current retail console game. The jaded gamer that thinks "done that, time to move on," will be on the never ending quest for more 'new' content and the 'next best thing.'
Today's 3 to 8GB client is a far cry from yesterday's 10MB game. Especially when one adds broadband connection to the equation.
Got it across fine too me El, thats when I shut up.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I wouldn't say AC2 recieves a lot more advertising than AC1. They do offer a trial and that is a good point. They had AC2 trial ads on the net. That is about the extent of the extra advertising for AC2. The actual games themselvesg seem to recieve the same amount of advertising. Turbine advertised Legions at the same places they are now advertising ToD. The Legions ads weren't up for very long and I suspect the same will be true for these ToD ads.
You are free to say what you wish. You are also free to not live in reality.
AC2's advertising blows away AC's advertising. Sit up straight and take in some mmorpg history:
1. AC2 recieved a coverstory in Computer Gamer Magazine. Coverstory = the game was displayed on the front cover of the magazine, on every single newstand.
2. Inside it recieved a 4 page story. As well as 2 page magazine ads. Talk about major coverage! Multiple pages of interviews with the game devs!
3. In other computer magazines AC2 ran a 2 page ad. (the ad was poorly put together, but it still took up 2 pages.). Not even SWG ran 2 page ads! EQ for the most part also only runs 1 page ads.
4. On the internet, there were AC2 ads everywhere. At this here site MMORPG.com
(sit up straight now, and re-read this part..)
There was a contest about AC2. There was also free download offers. Free trial offers. All of this took place over months, and for a solid year.
5. AC2 also included a free CD in a major computer game magazine. It had on it a free trial.
Now list what AC has done? "Same amount of advertising"... really? Then please list 5 different advertising/marketing projects done for AC?
AC2 isn't going to be shutting down anytime soon.
It is unofficially shut down. Everyone knows it has between 2k - 6k accounts. This means AC2 has no chance in heaven or hell of ever, ever, re-couping the 25 million it cost to make it. If a product cannot, does not, re-coup its own investment money, then it is a failure. It is dead. Why is AC2 still around, limping on life support? Because of the profits from AC (AC1). The fact that AC2 cannot support its ownself proves it is a failure and is "shut down". Like a 40 year old who still lives with their parents, and never works. Yes, they are still alive, but in a way they are dead since they have never supported their ownself.
They just released an expansion a couple months ago.
Just because a MMORPG releases an expansion does not automatically mean it is a hit, it is not in danger of dying, it is making a profit, or it is a nice game.
Also AC2 is the example for DDO and LotRO (the graphics engine and just as a sample of the kind of gameplay Turbine puts out), shutting it down would look bad. It could put some fear into future DDO and LotRO players. "Is Turbine shutting down? Should I really play DDO or LotRO if they are going to shut them down?"
Yes, it is true the game engine for AC2 is being used in both DDO and MEO/LotRO. And sorry but the fear of Turbine shutting down, the fear of DDO and LotRO failing is already out. It is a hardcore fact, and well known fact, that AC2 has not re-couped its own investment. That AC2 has/had some servers with a peak of 200 players. That AC2 is a horrible failure. That AC2's total subscribers is between 2,000 to 6,000 players.
I actually applaud Turbine for not jumping the gun and closing AC2 quickly.
You have never owned, operated, or ran a buisness then. You have never studied buisness in school. If you had/have done any of this, you would not be applauding Turbine, but would be scratching your head wondering why they are still investing in a dead cow. AC2 has been out for more than 2 years! And it currently has between 2k - 6k total players.
If say EA ran the game I bet AC2 would be gone already if not very soon. For that reason I will almost never play an EA MMORPG. They closed 3 MMO's and that's unacceptable to me for such a major company. It makes EA look like they don't care at all about the players.
The current company EA in many ways has an even worse track record than Turbine. EA has 2 failed MMORPGs. Turbine has 1 failed MMORPG. (It will soon have 3 after DDO and MEO/LotRO fail later on.) EA has failed for different reasons than Turbine. Again, EA has 2 failed mmorpgs, not 3. And yes, if EA (or any other company, including MicroSoft which also has 2 failed mmorpgs) were running AC2 you are darn right they would have close AC2 LOL! But again, EA failed for different reasons than Turbine is failing.
--------------------------------------
Back to the main topic of this thread:
If Turbine revamped the graphics and advertised AC would AC do better? Yes. AC has a very loyal core following. Would AC reach 500k players? IMHO no. But it would have a chance to re-reach 100k players again. What are the chances of this ever happening? None. Why? Because that was the whole reason for making AC2 - to be the ultra-new-modern-AC.
I never buy or read magazines. I was aware of the AC2 ads in them and the free trial. But that's a lot more advertising? A few occurances in a magazine or two isn't that major. I'll grant you AC2 has more advertising, which I already did in my original post. The ads all over the internet were more? I don't remember being ever particularly impressed with the amount of AC2 or AC1 ads (I'm not refering to the original AC1, just ToD and DM). I have no online advertising data and unless you can actually present any I will continue to disagree with you.
"It is unofficially shut down."
What the does that mean? Nothing. The game is still around and still being updated. People still play.
"Just because a MMORPG releases an expansion does not automatically mean it is a hit, it is not in danger of dying, it is making a profit, or it is a nice game."
Did I say that? No. They just released an expansion and my point was that it would be strange to close AC2 so soon after just having invested in an expansion and some advertising. Even if it failing financially, if Turbine was really concerned about finances they would have shut AC2 down already. So, I stick to my statement that it's not going anywhere.
"Yes, it is true the game engine for AC2 is being used in both DDO and MEO/LotRO. And sorry but the fear of Turbine shutting down, the fear of DDO and LotRO failing is already out."
Opinion. I've not gotten this feeling from anybody nor do I suspect they are in any danger at this time with all of their loans and such big name games.
"It is a hardcore fact, and well known fact, that AC2 has not re-couped its own investment. That AC2 has/had some servers with a peak of 200 players. That AC2 is a horrible failure. That AC2's total subscribers is between 2,000 to 6,000 players."
You love to bring up AC2 is a failure. I fail to see any point to this statement. It had little to do with my paragraph. AC2 is still around and will continue to be around. You have a strong personal vendetta against AC2, great for you.
"You have never owned, operated, or ran a buisness then. You have never studied buisness in school. If you had/have done any of this, you would not be applauding Turbine, but would be scratching your head wondering why they are still investing in a dead cow. AC2 has been out for more than 2 years! And it currently has between 2k - 6k total players."
Yes, I'm a complete moron xplororor. Thank you for pointing it out. Again I say I don't care about the business aspect. I don't invest in Turbine. My whole point was that they are being nice to the AC2 players whether intentional or unintentional. I'm sure it will hurt them in the long run and could potentially bring AC1 to a close sooner because it does indeed leech of its funds. However, I'll wait and see what happens with DDO and LotRO before I start demanding AC2 be shut down to keep more popular AC1 open. You fail to credit AC2 on the one thing it helped do, which was gain the licenses for DDO and LotRO. That also brought in money, which is presumably helping AC1 and AC2 in some way.
You really just used my post to bring up AC2 being a flop and show dislike for Turbine. I can understand if you have anger and wish Turbine would kill it and put more effort into AC1. I somewhat agree but even your fictional number of 2,000 to 6,000 players is still a good deal of people to me. You just want to shut down their game. Nice guy I don't see it happening because of the reasons I already stated with DDO and LotRO.
Originally posted by -Jaguar- If almost all of the players have to resort to third party apps and to a lesser extent bots, the game is flawed. We're not talking about a few people here who are altering the game for their own enjoyment, almost everyone in AC1 has to resort to third party content to make it fun. A smart developer would implement the features those things provide since obviously players want or need them and the developers are failing to meet demands. Yes, it is impossible to fully meet the players needs . However, Turbine with AC1 fails to do so far more than any other game I've played. I've come to really dislike AC2 lately because of the engine issue. I've always had a grudge against the engine but I hadn't played any games that were as good or better looking than AC2. So, I let it slide thinking I might be over reacting or other newer game engines might have some slight issues like AC2. I was wrong I've been playing more MMORPG's lately and I realize AC2's engine really is crap. I feel extremely insulted Turbine hasn't fixed the issue in 2 years. I have made several posts on the AC2 forums complaining and there's never any response. I feel like Turbine doesn't care and at this point I don't expect them to because AC2 is DONE. There are no more subscribers to gain unless something drastic is done and an awesome marketing campaign is put to work (like with TV ads). The content being added will continue to grow smaller as will the player base. I hope AC1 and AC2 go on for a long time. They are just not games I will invest anymore time into at this point. I've lost faith in Turbine. They make good efforts but always fail to meet MY expectations and needs. The games may be everything you want but not for me.
Ilove ac2 but becouse engine still sucks and pops are daytime mostly 10peeps darktide and 25 dawnsong and night times 40peeps darktide and dawnsong avarage 80peeps ac2 is death death death.
I can say this becouse ive played ac2 for 14months then played others mmorpgs came back month ago and try again after absents of 8months and with new expansion its still dead server i quit after 8 days even with my 30days free its DEAD:(
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77 CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now)) MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB PSU:Corsair AX1200i OS:Windows 10 64bit
In all the time that ive played ac2 ive seen 2 times pops above 800 peeps in januari 2004 1008 peeps online and hero1 patchday 875 peeps online hehe reast avarage 200 and now its 50avarage:P
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77 CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now)) MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB PSU:Corsair AX1200i OS:Windows 10 64bit
AC2... i dont know how the game has survived with its populations for so long, they be so low that its not even funny how turbine manages to make a profit with the game, then again its not like they have many servers or heavy server loads and with the lag the game still has... i would not be surprised its running on a server in someones basement
What 2 UO titles? The only UO title I know of that was cancelled was UXO (which was also named UO2),
1. Ultima Online II
2. Ultima X Online
UXO was never named UO2. EA was adamant that UXO was not UO 2. It was a big mess. Ultimatly it showed the stupidity, and gross ineptness of EA management. They ended up with all their major game DEVs resigning LOL!!!
which was cancelled long before they even got it into beta testing. Matter of fact I don't think they were even alpha testing it.
UO2 was past alpha test. And kind of into beta. Maybe beta 0.1 heheh. UXO was in alpha test. UXO was not "canned". Litterally within a few hours of announcing new features and updates in UXO at their official site, a few hours later their game DEVs resigned. Then EA finally posted they were cancelling the game.
The biggest pr oblem with UO was the loss of Richard Garriot (Lord Brittish) and the rest of the original UO team. (Most of whom designed the original concepts for SWG)
They never lost Lord British. They fired him! Again, more proof of the ineptness of EA LOL! Like I said, EA currently is acting like Turbine is acting right now. Destroying a major MMORPG that is a classic and a hit.
The only MMO that they cancelled during a Beta that I'm aware of was MPBT 3025 And the only released MMO that they cancelled was E&B (which was unprofitable).
I temporarily forgot about EnB. Thank you for reminding us. That makes 3 failed mmorpgs for EA. They are now tied and maybe surpassed ...... MicroSoft for most failed MMORPGs.
I never buy or read magazines. I was aware of the AC2 ads in them and the free trial. But that's a lot more advertising? A few occurances in a magazine or two isn't that major. I'll grant you AC2 has more advertising, which I already did in my original post. The ads all over the internet were more? I don't remember being ever particularly impressed with the amount of AC2 or AC1 ads (I'm not refering to the original AC1, just ToD and DM). I have no online advertising data and unless you can actually present any I will continue to disagree with you.
"It is unofficially shut down."
What the does that mean? Nothing. The game is still around and still being updated. People still play.
What do I mean by this? There is what is known as unofficial news and official news. For example, back when Dawn went 1 year with no new updates on its game developement is was unofficially a dead game, a failure, vaporware. Just because its makers, and game DEVs did not officially make an announcement, does not mean that anyone with common sense, or even real life buisness experience, could not see that it was officially dead. Same with UXO. Heck, my posts are still on their forums when I told everyone UXO was officially vaporware and a dead game, before it was officially announced.
Just because AC2 has not been officially shut down, or declared dead, does not mean unofficially it is dead. 2k-6k total players? When a hit mmorpg needs 50k to 100k players? It is like someone who gets straight "F's" from 9th grade to 12th grade all the way to May of the year they are graduating in. Graduation is still 1 month away in June, so they have not officially failed High School yet. But unofficially, they have failed High Schoo.
"Just because a MMORPG releases an expansion does not automatically mean it is a hit, it is not in danger of dying, it is making a profit, or it is a nice game."
Did I say that? No. They just released an expansion and my point was that it would be strange to close AC2 so soon after just having invested in an expansion and some advertising. Even if it failing financially, if Turbine was really concerned about finances they would have shut AC2 down already. So, I stick to my statement that it's not going anywhere.
There are many examples of companies refusing to shut down, ignoring finances, even in the face of irrefutable evidence that Mr. Reality will soon be paying them a visit and forcing them to shut down. Some examples.... DAWN, UXO, and more. AC2 needs to gain 300% more subscribers for it to have a chance of supporting its own self. So far the actual numbers have shown no signifigant upward trend.
"Yes, it is true the game engine for AC2 is being used in both DDO and MEO/LotRO. And sorry but the fear of Turbine shutting down, the fear of DDO and LotRO failing is already out."
Opinion. I've not gotten this feeling from anybody nor do I suspect they are in any danger at this time with all of their loans and such big name games.
1. AC2 has not re-couped its investment money.
2. Turbine then takes out a loan to make 2 more new MMORPGs?
Do I need to say more? The fact that Turbine needs to take out a loan is proof itself it is in danger of shutting down LOL! OMG... and to make not 1, but 2 new mmorpgs at the same time? Both which will be competing vs each other? OMG!
"It is a hardcore fact, and well known fact, that AC2 has not re-couped its own investment. That AC2 has/had some servers with a peak of 200 players. That AC2 is a horrible failure. That AC2's total subscribers is between 2,000 to 6,000 players."
You love to bring up AC2 is a failure. I fail to see any point to this statement. It had little to do with my paragraph. AC2 is still around and will continue to be around. You have a strong personal vendetta against AC2, great for you.
I have no vendetta. I simply state the facts, and play by them. A product that does not re-coup its investment money is the definition of a failure. Thus AC2 is a failure. It has nothing to do with me liking or disliking it. It is simply a fact.
"You have never owned, operated, or ran a buisness then. You have never studied buisness in school. If you had/have done any of this, you would not be applauding Turbine, but would be scratching your head wondering why they are still investing in a dead cow. AC2 has been out for more than 2 years! And it currently has between 2k - 6k total players."
Yes, I'm a complete moron xplororor. Thank you for pointing it out.
Whoah! Slow down! I pride myself on not name calling anyone. You are not a moron! Repeat after me! You are not a moron!
Again I say I don't care about the business aspect.
There you go. You have proven my point. You do not want to think about the buisness end. You do not want to think about the numbers, investments, re-couping investments, being in the red, being in the black, turning a true profit, etc... etc... the ins and outs of running a buisness no matter what the product.
I am looking at AC2 from the buisness aspect.
I don't invest in Turbine. My whole point was that they are being nice to the AC2 players whether intentional or unintentional. I'm sure it will hurt them in the long run and could potentially bring AC1 to a close sooner because it does indeed leech of its funds.
I fully agree with you here! You see my point perfectly! This is why AC2 needs to be officially declared dead so that Turbine can officially pool more resources behind AC.
However, I'll wait and see what happens with DDO and LotRO before I start demanding AC2 be shut down to keep more popular AC1 open. You fail to credit AC2 on the one thing it helped do, which was gain the licenses for DDO and LotRO. That also brought in money, which is presumably helping AC1 and AC2 in some way.
I will make a little wager with you here.
I hereby state that DDO will never survive past 1 year after release aka will never re-coup its investment money.
I hereby state MEO/LotRO (Middle Earth Online .... its first name. Lord of the Rings Online, its currently name.) will never survive past 1 year after release aka will never re-coup its investment money.
I arrive at these conclusions based purely on the history of Trubine, and the mess Turbine is currently in. Nothing to do with me disliking AC2, or any of their games. I simply dislike the way their management is running things, and I feel their management is inept.
You really just used my post to bring up AC2 being a flop and show dislike for Turbine. I can understand if you have anger and wish Turbine would kill it and put more effort into AC1. I somewhat agree but even your fictional number of 2,000 to 6,000 players is still a good deal of people to me. You just want to shut down their game. Nice guy I don't see it happening because of the reasons I already stated with DDO and LotRO.
I have no anger. Just sadness, and disbelief over how Turbine is currently being managed. Come on... attempting to make 2 new mmorpgs at the same time? And both will be competing vs each other?
My numbers of AC2 players are from the current AC2 players theirselves. Please check the AC2 forums at this site, and pages 1-25 you will see tons of posts by AC2 super-fans claiming my numbers were fake, fictional, then how I silenced them when AC2 players started admitting they read the server numbers that the AC2 game itself shows.
2k-6k players is absolutly nothing when a new next generation MMORPG is suppose to have 50k players minimum. And more of an avarage of 100k players.
Actually, now that I think of it, DDO and MEO/LotRO might be the final nails in the coffin for AC2. Hopefully not for AC,
Do you know for a fact they took out a loan? Are you an employee there? If not, then stop spreading BS. I think it's very clear you dislike AC2 for some unknown reason.
Actually I remember the annoucement of new investers that was going too allow them to develop both games. I don't know the terms of the agreement but I do remember the accouncement. It was at the same time that turbine got ac1 and ac2 from microsoft.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
AC had the most potential in only ONE facet. PvP. Other than that it's just like every other MMO. Unfortunately, people like Jessica Mulligan think that PvP is only for Fringe characters in real life...
This lead to UNCREATIVE and IGNORANT fixes for PvP and Timers that ensued... Portalling in combat was my favourite tactic for City Defense... Low health, last portal recall, heal and run back into the fray.
As it stands now... people understand AC too well now and XP amounts were increased to keep the population hooked so they could level new chars easily. People level too fast now. The game of PvP was at it's peak when level 60 was considered High level, because even a group of low levels could still hurt the level 60. It's when PvP was the most interesting.
AC as a PvE game was boring... PvE had no impact on the environment whatsoever... AC is dying, it should be laid to rest... Come out with a new and improved asheron's call like game with more emphasis on pvp and I'd be interested.
Comments
Oh I dunno. Lord British left over UO2 and really didn't like the direction they were headed with UXO either. Somehow I don't think, even if they did successfully release them, that they'd have felt much like the Ultima Games we all came to know and love over the decades.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Still in: A couple Betas
Yes its their perogative. However that doesn't mean as a consumer and fan I won't be angry with them as a company or their practices. And it also is why there is so little faith in EA titles now which is key. I had alot of hesitation before starting TSO because it was an EA MMO product. And I probably won't ever start another MMO with them due to their MMO retention record.
Also UO was a different animal. There was ALOT of people banking UO 2 because the genre was still so young then and UO 2 was UO 1 and Everquest all wrapped up together in one harmonious package. It was bad business for them then and they continue to put products on the chopping block AFTER they advertise them to the public.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Yes its their perogative. However that doesn't mean as a consumer and fan I won't be angry with them as a company or their practices. And it also is why there is so little faith in EA titles now which is key. I had alot of hesitation before starting TSO because it was an EA MMO product. And I probably won't ever start another MMO with them due to their MMO retention record.
Also UO was a different animal. There was ALOT of people banking UO 2 because the genre was still so young then and UO 2 was UO 1 and Everquest all wrapped up together in one harmonious package. It was bad business for them then and they continue to put products on the chopping block AFTER they advertise them to the public.
Oh I absolutely agree. EA has made major blunders in the MMORPG market. Which is why I will personally never buy an MMO produced by them because I know I cant trust them not to plant an Axe in it even if it's been out over a year. (I believe Earth & Beyond was nearing it's 2 year anniversary when they axed it). The ONLY reason that they haven't nuked UO, in my opinion, is because it's just a pure money machine that they don't have to invest any effort in since it's long long long since paid off it's development costs. That and, as a gaming company, pissing off 150,000 Ultima Fans would REALLY hurt their customer base, a LOT more than cancelling a couple titles that never made it out of development.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
If they put a shut down date on UO the skies would turn black and cats and dogs would be sleeping together...
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Over the years i have come to dismiss EA as a serious game company, their games quality is nowhere near what it was in the early-mid 90´s. Since then we get yearly mediocre instalments of sports games with a few sims games thrown in there, i still cant believe how sims consistently stays on top of the game sale charts.
I think SEGA was going down the same path with their sports games but they have turned up some quality titles these last few years, but overall i prefer japonese developed games when it comes to sports, cant go wrong with the pro evolution/winning eleven series.
Back on topic, i see this recent trend of project cancelations to be quite disturbing, these days many mmorpg´s are either canceled or change development teams, it makes for some very messed up products.
I think the major fault in this lies with sucessfull titles like lineage 2, WoW or EQ, they have set such high population values that it makes other companies question their capacity to chalange them, mostly i see developers lacking faith in their abilities or over hyping their product so much because their trying to gather an online following with absurd and unrealistic lists of features.
All ur Mountain Dew is belong to me.
I thought UO2 was changed and renamed to UXO... my mistake. For some reason I was thinking they were the same project.
But neither made it to a Beta phase so it doesn't bother me. Others it obviously does, however. don't even have major problems with games getting cancelled before beta is over really but it is dissapointing when that happens. But if it goes gold I do get grumpy about cancelled games because people have invested time and, more importantly, money into the game and have formed an attachment to their assets in the game.
Usually I agree with you on things El, but as another programmer I really have to disagree with your concepts of beta. Just becaue it didn't make beta yet doesn't mean it wasn't a very healthy and near done project. Beta is a very subjective term, especially to the type of software your dealing with. Many applications are near complete when they go into beta and the beta IS just for shaking bugs. A company can declare it beta anytime they want, regardless of what state the software is in. By the time its in beta however 95% of the foundational code should be complete. That sounds like a product too me wether it be ready for consumer consumption or not. And consider the scope of developing an MMO thats a few years of labor. I think UO II can be counted as a canned product, beta or not.
Not my point. If it doesn't make it to Beta and people haven't even played it yet then I don't have any issues whatsoever with a company cancelling a game. After all, it never got out of the development stages into public testing stages. Call it whatever you like, the public hasn't had a chance to play with it so there's no major attachment and cancelling is fairly painless other than expectations. If it makes it to beta then depending how long it's been in beta the decision should be much harder because you have a sector of the public that has likely formed an attachment and strong expectations of being able to use the product. If it makes it to release you're actually harming people who spent money on the product when you cancel.
Has nothing to do with how I define a beta or whether it's a product or not so much as how much customer impact your decision has. Basically I don't mind a company cancelling a product if they don't feel it's worthwhile as long as the customer impact has been assessed beforehand. Cancelling things before you let the public have access to them is a companies pure perogative. Once you put it out in a public beta, or even a closed beta really, you have customers (whether they are paying or not) and customer impact needs to be assessed. However, only after releasing a game, is there actual financial impact to customers so, naturally, I feel a lot more strongly about games that are released then cancelled. Just look at all the players who spent over a year playing Earth & Beyond when it was announced it would be cancelled. All the time and money they'd invested in the game had been wasted. I would have been FURIOUS if I were still playing when the game had been cancelled. Fortunately I had left the game long before because I found it boring.
But cancelling prior to beta, while yah it's still a 'product' it's the companies right to do so. Cancelling during beta yes it's still a product but there isn't any tangible customer impact other than image. Cancelling after release has tremendous customer impact and can negatively impact future products your company produces in a very real and tangible way.
Hope that makes more sense.
Your point doesn't hold much weight because you're coming from a position of ignorance. The shockwaves of UO2 being canceled are still felt by a lot of people who were around waiting for it. It was the product to get excited about at the time. I still have the demo footage. It was hotter than the sun and every fan knew most if not all of the production details.
Consider that a number of years ago games weren't openned to public beta testing and you may imagine the atmosphere that surrounded UO2.
If you actually want a taste of what UO2 was going to involve in lore you can research UO when EA started to call big patches "content publishes." It was at that time that they started to take UO2 assets and ideas and funnel them into the older UO. Such as the cats. Everyone groaned when they brought the cats into regular UO lore. Like a bitter spit in the face.
Elnator, I also really don't understand what sort of grounds you're basing your comments of UXO on. I can't imagine why Lord British would at all be consulted about the game since he was already well into development of his new IPs for NCSoft when UXO was started. When UXO was started, EA and LB had split already.
DAOC, EVE, COH, and UO have all been heavly advertised. Not just this site but on gamespot.com, fileplanet.com and gamespy.com i've seen each of these games constantly advertised as well as the EQ and WoW of course. UO is advertising their new Samurai Empires expansion and COH is starting their advertisement for their City of Villians expansion.
The one aspect about all those games is that each time they come out with an expansion they Adverstise.
AC on the other hand has always made it a point to give free updated content over it's span and has stayed hard to that course. But it has hurt them more-so than anything, because with each expansion could have been coupled with more advertisement. But yet they decided only to release an "expansion" when it was going to require a huge update. Even then they didn't advertise all that much with Dark Majesty. I can't remember one time that a single banner add has been displayed on this site or any other until this latest expansion for Thrown of Destiny. Of course the original came out just before EQ and of course neither got much exposure at the time. Except i did see EQ in a number of magazines, i only found out about AC because i knew a guy that worked at the local EB games store and he was playing it also.
Lineage and Lineage 2 have gotten a lot more advertisement than AC, shoot even EVE has had more advertisement than AC. Because AC has had little to absolutely NO advertisement. Plus those subscriber numbers for EVE has to be off, because i tried it for a month and thought it was OK, and i never once seen more than 12500 online people at the same time. that's hardly 1.5 times the concurrent players of AC.
But of course with the amount of advertisement i've seen for AC: Throne of Destiny there will hopefully be a jump in subscriber base.
Ok it's obvious that I'm not gettin my point across, that or you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. I'm not arguing that UO2 was anticipated or not or that it would have been a hot title or not... I remember looking forward to it as well but I wasn't dying to see it the way some obviously were because I was pretty happy with old UO at the time and really didn't care one way or another about UO2 until I could get my grubby paws on it. I guess that's the big difference. I have NEVER put any faith in developers statements until I can actually touch the product and play with it. Maybe that's why it didn't bother me as much as it did some others.
My point is this: A game cancelled while in development is less disturbing and, again I will reiterate this: to me than a game that's in beta or, worse, a game that's been released. And my comment about LB wasn't that he was involved with EA when UXO was announced but someone did ask him about it, I forget which gaming mag talked to him, and he was pretty disgusted with what EA was planning to do with the Ultima name. Didn't he try to sue them at one point to get the name back? I thought I remembered a rumor about that?
Anyway my point was simple: While it irked me that UO2 got cancelled and that UXO got cancelled (Remember I was mis-remembering the sequence and I thought UO2 was renamed to UXO while in development at some point) it didn't bother me as much as it would have if the games had gone into Beta before being cancelled.
That's all I was saying.
I swear you people argue for the sake of arguing.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Still in: A couple Betas
Uh this discussion was done about 2 pages back. Not getting back into it again. But your timeline is fubar. EQ was out way before AC.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Still in: A couple Betas
Do I care if EA was making slighlty lower profits? No. If a company like Turbine can keep AC2 and AC1 going with similar amounts of subscribers as E&B and MCO then EA certainly could with their larger resources. The fact that they killed those game tells me several things:
- EA can't make a game worth a crap.
- EA doesn't care to market the game or update it to fix flaws.
- They are very much a "business" more so than Turbine at this point, which is back to my original thought. There were like 20,000 people who played their now canned MMO's. That is a relatively small number compared to other games but taken by themselves, 20,000 is still a large number of people who bought, played, and enjoyed the product EA was so quick to cancel. I realize business tough and Turbine will turn the same over time if they become a big success like EA. However, I like to hope for the best and even if an MMORPG had 1 player, I'd like to see it kept alive so that person could have their fun. So, it still stands Turbine has a nicer image to me.
And this post is getting way off. The I don't think the original topic said only updating the graphics would make AC a big hit like EQ. If it did I disagree. Graphics do not make a game it's obvious. UO has more subscribers but that doesn't make UO or any game with more subscribers better. UO was the first of it's kind and EQ always shoved AC out of the light.
There are numerous reason why AC is not a big hit. Some of it is the gameplay but that can be said about any game. More of it is marketing, availability and just the timing of the release. AC is a solid good game worthy of more players. This whole graphics topic is pretty moot, a simple graphics update will not fix everything but it would help a little.
05.07.25
AC1 retailed in Nov 1999, during the DX6 era, w98, 450MHz PIII or 500MHz Athlon cpu, Voodoo3 (2GB/s bandwidth) and Riva128 (1GB/s) / GF256 (4GB/s)gpu. A time where they were just getting into combined 2D and 3D gpu!
AC2 retailed in Nov 2002, during the DX8 era, Wxp, +2GHz PIV or +2GHz Athlon xp, GF4 Ti (10GB/s) and Radeon 9700 ( 8GB/s.)
Modern graphics engines ( UE2x or UE3 ) used in modern games like Sigil's Saga of Heroes demand a bit more programing expertise... "We will and have been using tidbits of 3.0 where applicable, and I imagine we'll continue to do so, even after launch. We have to keep the engine up to date for a variety of reasons. A complete overhaul though is not necessary and would also set the game back to an unacceptable degree.
Future projects will likely use 3.0 or 3.whatever as we are very happy with the technology in general and have a great relationship with Epic." Brad McQuaid
Considering modern gpu are doing 30 (x800) and 40GB/s (x850xt or GF7800) bandwidth including 6Gt/s vertex and 6Gp/s pixel shaders @ 80*C (110Watts power) on 1600x1200res and 32 bit colour; you can see where coding all the dynamic spell effects and photo realistic monsters have tremendously raised the bar from AC1-2 that were such an improvement over Mortal Kombat and Ms Pacman.
So... to compete in the nich (+100k retail sales and subscription) mmorpg market vs huge (MILLIONS retail CD sales) consol fps / sims gaming, they have to offer more than great display, interesting monster AI, and complicated tradeskills. The game has to be fun. It has to offer something 'subscribers' will continue to support for years, not the 20 to 50 hrs it takes to "beat" the current retail console game. The jaded gamer that thinks "done that, time to move on," will be on the never ending quest for more 'new' content and the 'next best thing.'
Today's 3 to 8GB client is a far cry from yesterday's 10MB game. Especially when one adds broadband connection to the equation.
edit #s.
Got it across fine too me El, thats when I shut up.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
The current company EA in many ways has an even worse track record than Turbine. EA has 2 failed MMORPGs. Turbine has 1 failed MMORPG. (It will soon have 3 after DDO and MEO/LotRO fail later on.) EA has failed for different reasons than Turbine. Again, EA has 2 failed mmorpgs, not 3. And yes, if EA (or any other company, including MicroSoft which also has 2 failed mmorpgs) were running AC2 you are darn right they would have close AC2 LOL! But again, EA failed for different reasons than Turbine is failing.
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Back to the main topic of this thread:
If Turbine revamped the graphics and advertised AC would AC do better? Yes. AC has a very loyal core following. Would AC reach 500k players? IMHO no. But it would have a chance to re-reach 100k players again. What are the chances of this ever happening? None. Why? Because that was the whole reason for making AC2 - to be the ultra-new-modern-AC.
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I never buy or read magazines. I was aware of the AC2 ads in them and the free trial. But that's a lot more advertising? A few occurances in a magazine or two isn't that major. I'll grant you AC2 has more advertising, which I already did in my original post. The ads all over the internet were more? I don't remember being ever particularly impressed with the amount of AC2 or AC1 ads (I'm not refering to the original AC1, just ToD and DM). I have no online advertising data and unless you can actually present any I will continue to disagree with you.
What the does that mean? Nothing. The game is still around and still being updated. People still play. Did I say that? No. They just released an expansion and my point was that it would be strange to close AC2 so soon after just having invested in an expansion and some advertising. Even if it failing financially, if Turbine was really concerned about finances they would have shut AC2 down already. So, I stick to my statement that it's not going anywhere. Opinion. I've not gotten this feeling from anybody nor do I suspect they are in any danger at this time with all of their loans and such big name games. You love to bring up AC2 is a failure. I fail to see any point to this statement. It had little to do with my paragraph. AC2 is still around and will continue to be around. You have a strong personal vendetta against AC2, great for you. Yes, I'm a complete moron xplororor. Thank you for pointing it out. Again I say I don't care about the business aspect. I don't invest in Turbine. My whole point was that they are being nice to the AC2 players whether intentional or unintentional. I'm sure it will hurt them in the long run and could potentially bring AC1 to a close sooner because it does indeed leech of its funds. However, I'll wait and see what happens with DDO and LotRO before I start demanding AC2 be shut down to keep more popular AC1 open. You fail to credit AC2 on the one thing it helped do, which was gain the licenses for DDO and LotRO. That also brought in money, which is presumably helping AC1 and AC2 in some way.You really just used my post to bring up AC2 being a flop and show dislike for Turbine. I can understand if you have anger and wish Turbine would kill it and put more effort into AC1. I somewhat agree but even your fictional number of 2,000 to 6,000 players is still a good deal of people to me. You just want to shut down their game. Nice guy
I don't see it happening because of the reasons I already stated with DDO and LotRO.
Ilove ac2 but becouse engine still sucks and pops are daytime mostly 10peeps darktide and 25 dawnsong and night times 40peeps darktide and dawnsong avarage 80peeps ac2 is death death death.
I can say this becouse ive played ac2 for 14months then played others mmorpgs came back month ago and try again after absents of 8months and with new expansion its still dead server i quit after 8 days even with my 30days free its DEAD:(
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
In all the time that ive played ac2 ive seen 2 times pops above 800 peeps in januari 2004 1008 peeps online and hero1 patchday 875 peeps online hehe reast avarage 200 and now its 50avarage:P
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
AC2... i dont know how the game has survived with its populations for so long, they be so low that its not even funny how turbine manages to make a profit with the game, then again its not like they have many servers or heavy server loads and with the lag the game still has... i would not be surprised its running on a server in someones basement
All ur Mountain Dew is belong to me.
I have no anger. Just sadness, and disbelief over how Turbine is currently being managed. Come on... attempting to make 2 new mmorpgs at the same time? And both will be competing vs each other?
My numbers of AC2 players are from the current AC2 players theirselves. Please check the AC2 forums at this site, and pages 1-25 you will see tons of posts by AC2 super-fans claiming my numbers were fake, fictional, then how I silenced them when AC2 players started admitting they read the server numbers that the AC2 game itself shows.
2k-6k players is absolutly nothing when a new next generation MMORPG is suppose to have 50k players minimum. And more of an avarage of 100k players.
Actually, now that I think of it, DDO and MEO/LotRO might be the final nails in the coffin for AC2.
Hopefully not for AC, 
Do you know for a fact they took out a loan? Are you an employee there? If not, then stop spreading BS. I think it's very clear you dislike AC2 for some unknown reason.
I seem to recall news they got a 30 million investment. Ah yes here it says. http://www.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=20&pagebuilder[module]=sitearticle&pagebuilder[display_item]=25
AC2 may be dead to you, but for the rest of the world and me it's still very much alive.
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Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.
Actually I remember the annoucement of new investers that was going too allow them to develop both games. I don't know the terms of the agreement but I do remember the accouncement. It was at the same time that turbine got ac1 and ac2 from microsoft.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
AC is gone... And it should STAY there.
AC had the most potential in only ONE facet. PvP. Other than that it's just like every other MMO. Unfortunately, people like Jessica Mulligan think that PvP is only for Fringe characters in real life...
This lead to UNCREATIVE and IGNORANT fixes for PvP and Timers that ensued... Portalling in combat was my favourite tactic for City Defense... Low health, last portal recall, heal and run back into the fray.
As it stands now... people understand AC too well now and XP amounts were increased to keep the population hooked so they could level new chars easily. People level too fast now. The game of PvP was at it's peak when level 60 was considered High level, because even a group of low levels could still hurt the level 60. It's when PvP was the most interesting.
AC as a PvE game was boring... PvE had no impact on the environment whatsoever... AC is dying, it should be laid to rest... Come out with a new and improved asheron's call like game with more emphasis on pvp and I'd be interested.