The only company to have $1 billion in revenue is Blizzard. At $15 a month it would take 5.5 million subscribers to take in that much money.
EA does sell a lot of boxed games. This means that people want to play those boxed games. This means the developers they own can put out a product that people want to play. If EA was such a crap company that ruins everything, then they would never be able to get out games that people would want to play. Then they would go out of buisness.
I have no idea what went on with UO, nor do I care. People may want to blame EA for it, but there is no reason to assume that even if EA did not do what they did that UO would still not have fallen apart. It is all conjecture. What is a fact is that people complain about EA and give credit to everyone else. Origin is a EA company. UO become most popular well after 1999. They make a lot of money as a company. The other games besides UO were shit so you can't really blame EA for them not being a success.
As for SWG being designed by UO developers, then I know how why I hate SWG. As a sand box game it was good, as a Star Wars game it sucked and it had nothing to do with bugs. Clones are outlawed so I should not have a clone. I should not be forced to watch a dancing Wookie after I die. Dancing Wookies has to be the worst game design concept ever. Blasters take down StormTroopers in one hit, so why do I need to shoot a bunny 20 times for it to die? WTF???
SWG biggest problem is that it was set between Episodes IV and V. You cannot affect the war so PvP become meaningless. You know what side is going to win. Maybe if the PvP was fun then it would compensate, but it wasn't for me. It needed to be in either the Knights of the Old Republic or after Return of the Jedi. It needed to be a PvP game and not a PvE centric game. Then you would have had a good game.
But that is just me. If it did not say Star Wars then I might have liked the game. I did like the skill system. I liked many of the character options. I like the detail of the world. But, it is not a good Star Wars game. But that is for the SWG forum and not here. Just felt like venting because I would like to see SWG closed down, given to a good company, and relaunched as a quality game.
Originally posted by JulianDracos The only company to have $1 billion in revenue is Blizzard. At $15 a month it would take 5.5 million subscribers to take in that much money. EA does sell a lot of boxed games. This means that people want to play those boxed games. This means the developers they own can put out a product that people want to play. If EA was such a crap company that ruins everything, then they would never be able to get out games that people would want to play. Then they would go out of buisness.
I fine point HOWEVER alot of those box sales are from the title and not anything EA has put into them. EA has bought out alot of very quality titles and been riding on their fame for years now.
Yes EA is a successful gaming company, however they have canceled 2 or 3 other MMO's already. One of them they cancelled ONLY because it wasn't doing well enough and that is a bad bad thing to do to an MMO. The player base was well enough that the game was not costing them money to run, they just lost interest in the game and pulled the plug. They have done it before and they WILL do it again and THAT is what has alot of people concerned about the aquisition.
Just as SOE has shown that they will fundamentally change a game if the subscriptions arent' high enough EA is showing as has gone a step farther by cancelling an MMO that didn't make their target numbers. I think everyone who is looking at it that way has a justified concern about this merger.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
EA isn't a GOOD company... they're basically the Micro$oft of Gaming.
They see a successful product/company and buy them out. Take their game, make it their own, market the hell out of it. It doesn't really improve much over the years but every year they pump out a new version,with a pretty new box and ship it as a new game. The lemmings buy the game because "ooh it's a new version" and go home happy.
Case in point: Madden NFL.... Pretty much ALL the EA Sports games....
Matter of fact if you look at where EA is most successful: Sports Video Games
Why?
Because they can crank a new one out every year, stick the new player data in it, charge full price for it, even though it's only got like 1 new feature, and the lemmings will buy it because they're too stupid to know better. Madden '05 and Madden '06 had 1 different gameplay feature and a few database tweaks. WHEE. But if you bought both you basically gave EA $100.
It's called: Great marketting strategy but no real innovation.
And Fad's statements about their track record in the MMO industry are 100% spot-on. And E&B wasn't a BAD MMORPG it was a DIFFERENT MMORPG. Matter of fact it had more players than EVE does when it was shut down. Frankly I found it a lot more fun and engaging than I did EVE, as did many other people. And, it was growing when it was shut down. UO went under almost immediately after EA canned the original Devs for the game and moved their own people in and re-designed it as a PVE style game. Not saying UO wouldn't have eventually died anyway... EA just sped that process up because they didn't understand the existing playerbase. Yes, Origin, at the time, was a subsidiary of EA. However they ran pretty much independantly up till EA started firing people and moving them to other projects. Richard Garriott didn't leave because EA wanted him to leave, he left because he was pissed a the Direction EA was going with HIS creation. Ultima was his baby, always has been. He built it as a friggin teenager with UO1 and founded Origin to publish III and on....
MPBT:3025 was a great MMORPG in it's own right and would have been a huge hit. NOBODY knows why EA canned the game. Some say it was a license problem. Some say they didn't think they could hit their projected numbers. Personally I think it was the license dispute because BattleTech titles have ALWAYS done well. There's a HUGE 'Mecha community in the PC Gaming market. EA failed there as well.
Their track record is simple: If they grow tired of a game they cancel it. They do NOT have the mindset to properly run an MMORPG unless it's a huge success like UO. My concern for WAR isn't that it won't be a good game because EA is part of the team. I don't think they'll really impact THAT aspect at all (at least not initially). My concern is that if WAR doesn't get the numbers EA wants it to get, no matter how unreasonable those numbers may or may not be, they WILL shut it down.
That's everyones concern: EA's track record in the MMORPG side of the house. Nobody is disputing that they're a hugely successful company. They are, that's a given. But their track record in the MMORPG industry is worse than any other MMORPG maker I can think of. Period, end of story. They don't have a SINGLE MMO to their credit that's worth discussing except UO (which they didn't even make and, fair or not, they are generally credited with 'ruining').
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Comments
EA does sell a lot of boxed games. This means that people want to play those boxed games. This means the developers they own can put out a product that people want to play. If EA was such a crap company that ruins everything, then they would never be able to get out games that people would want to play. Then they would go out of buisness.
I have no idea what went on with UO, nor do I care. People may want to blame EA for it, but there is no reason to assume that even if EA did not do what they did that UO would still not have fallen apart. It is all conjecture. What is a fact is that people complain about EA and give credit to everyone else. Origin is a EA company. UO become most popular well after 1999. They make a lot of money as a company. The other games besides UO were shit so you can't really blame EA for them not being a success.
As for SWG being designed by UO developers, then I know how why I hate SWG. As a sand box game it was good, as a Star Wars game it sucked and it had nothing to do with bugs. Clones are outlawed so I should not have a clone. I should not be forced to watch a dancing Wookie after I die. Dancing Wookies has to be the worst game design concept ever. Blasters take down StormTroopers in one hit, so why do I need to shoot a bunny 20 times for it to die? WTF???
SWG biggest problem is that it was set between Episodes IV and V. You cannot affect the war so PvP become meaningless. You know what side is going to win. Maybe if the PvP was fun then it would compensate, but it wasn't for me. It needed to be in either the Knights of the Old Republic or after Return of the Jedi. It needed to be a PvP game and not a PvE centric game. Then you would have had a good game.
But that is just me. If it did not say Star Wars then I might have liked the game. I did like the skill system. I liked many of the character options. I like the detail of the world. But, it is not a good Star Wars game. But that is for the SWG forum and not here. Just felt like venting because I would like to see SWG closed down, given to a good company, and relaunched as a quality game.
I fine point HOWEVER alot of those box sales are from the title and not anything EA has put into them. EA has bought out alot of very quality titles and been riding on their fame for years now.
Yes EA is a successful gaming company, however they have canceled 2 or 3 other MMO's already. One of them they cancelled ONLY because it wasn't doing well enough and that is a bad bad thing to do to an MMO. The player base was well enough that the game was not costing them money to run, they just lost interest in the game and pulled the plug. They have done it before and they WILL do it again and THAT is what has alot of people concerned about the aquisition.
Just as SOE has shown that they will fundamentally change a game if the subscriptions arent' high enough EA is showing as has gone a step farther by cancelling an MMO that didn't make their target numbers. I think everyone who is looking at it that way has a justified concern about this merger.
- 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
Agree with Fadeus pretty much 100% here.
EA isn't a GOOD company... they're basically the Micro$oft of Gaming.
They see a successful product/company and buy them out. Take their game, make it their own, market the hell out of it. It doesn't really improve much over the years but every year they pump out a new version,with a pretty new box and ship it as a new game. The lemmings buy the game because "ooh it's a new version" and go home happy.
Case in point: Madden NFL.... Pretty much ALL the EA Sports games....
Matter of fact if you look at where EA is most successful: Sports Video Games
Why?
Because they can crank a new one out every year, stick the new player data in it, charge full price for it, even though it's only got like 1 new feature, and the lemmings will buy it because they're too stupid to know better. Madden '05 and Madden '06 had 1 different gameplay feature and a few database tweaks. WHEE. But if you bought both you basically gave EA $100.
It's called: Great marketting strategy but no real innovation.
And Fad's statements about their track record in the MMO industry are 100% spot-on. And E&B wasn't a BAD MMORPG it was a DIFFERENT MMORPG. Matter of fact it had more players than EVE does when it was shut down. Frankly I found it a lot more fun and engaging than I did EVE, as did many other people. And, it was growing when it was shut down. UO went under almost immediately after EA canned the original Devs for the game and moved their own people in and re-designed it as a PVE style game. Not saying UO wouldn't have eventually died anyway... EA just sped that process up because they didn't understand the existing playerbase. Yes, Origin, at the time, was a subsidiary of EA. However they ran pretty much independantly up till EA started firing people and moving them to other projects. Richard Garriott didn't leave because EA wanted him to leave, he left because he was pissed a the Direction EA was going with HIS creation. Ultima was his baby, always has been. He built it as a friggin teenager with UO1 and founded Origin to publish III and on....
MPBT:3025 was a great MMORPG in it's own right and would have been a huge hit. NOBODY knows why EA canned the game. Some say it was a license problem. Some say they didn't think they could hit their projected numbers. Personally I think it was the license dispute because BattleTech titles have ALWAYS done well. There's a HUGE 'Mecha community in the PC Gaming market. EA failed there as well.
Their track record is simple: If they grow tired of a game they cancel it. They do NOT have the mindset to properly run an MMORPG unless it's a huge success like UO. My concern for WAR isn't that it won't be a good game because EA is part of the team. I don't think they'll really impact THAT aspect at all (at least not initially). My concern is that if WAR doesn't get the numbers EA wants it to get, no matter how unreasonable those numbers may or may not be, they WILL shut it down.
That's everyones concern: EA's track record in the MMORPG side of the house. Nobody is disputing that they're a hugely successful company. They are, that's a given. But their track record in the MMORPG industry is worse than any other MMORPG maker I can think of. Period, end of story. They don't have a SINGLE MMO to their credit that's worth discussing except UO (which they didn't even make and, fair or not, they are generally credited with 'ruining').
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas