Originally posted by checkthis500 Please tell me about all of the "great games" that EA has cancelled. People keep saying that they cancelled all these "great games" yet none have been mentioned except Earth and Beyond..... While it had it's following, I would hardly say it was a "great game." And the part that I refer to as naive is assuming that EA is going to absorb and destroy Mythic just because they've done that in the past. Yes be wary, and even be worried, but to say it's definitely going to happen like most have said and saying "goodbye mythic" like others have said is naive, because in truth you don't know. I'm just being optimistic about this, and if others can post about doom then I can post about hope. And considering that the press release directly says that Mythic is going to be their link to MMOs I don't see how that was naive of me to say? From the press release: "Upon completion of the acquisition, Mythic Entertainment will become EA Mythic, a wholly-owned studio dedicated to developing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)."
Then you need to read abit deeper then one thread. EA has cancelled UO2, UOX, and also the already RELEASED game called Earth and Beyond.
I beleive there is a 4th but I can't recall it at the moment.
- 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 checkthis500 Please tell me about all of the "great games" that EA has cancelled. People keep saying that they cancelled all these "great games" yet none have been mentioned except Earth and Beyond..... While it had it's following, I would hardly say it was a "great game." And the part that I refer to as naive is assuming that EA is going to absorb and destroy Mythic just because they've done that in the past. Yes be wary, and even be worried, but to say it's definitely going to happen like most have said and saying "goodbye mythic" like others have said is naive, because in truth you don't know. I'm just being optimistic about this, and if others can post about doom then I can post about hope. And considering that the press release directly says that Mythic is going to be their link to MMOs I don't see how that was naive of me to say? From the press release: "Upon completion of the acquisition, Mythic Entertainment will become EA Mythic, a wholly-owned studio dedicated to developing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)."
Then you need to read abit deeper then one thread. EA has cancelled UO2, UOX, and also the already RELEASED game called Earth and Beyond.
I beleive there is a 4th but I can't recall it at the moment.
I remember UO2 when it was being developed, and me and some friends followed it until they showed some screenshots of it and all of us were severely dissapointed. Kudos to EA for cancelling that rather than losing money on it.
Since I only vaguely remember Ultima X I looked into it, and again, it looked and sounded horrible. Kudos again to EA for cancelling that game as well.
I did like Earth and Beyond, but as far as I can tell it wouldn't survive nowadays anyway. Not with something like EVE out there.
All in all, I don't see a single great or even very good game that has been cancelled by EA. And like I qutoed above from the press release. If EA is looking at Mythic to be dedicated to developing Massively Multiplayer online games, then I highly doubt that Mythic will go bye bye.
But if Mythic does get absorbed and destroyed and WAR is no more and DAoC is no more then I will come back and necro this thread and say that I was wrong and fooled by EA.
--------------------------------------------- I live to fight, and fight to live.
Interesting perspectives. Here is my breakdown of EA, and I might want to clarify my thoughts on Mythic, and the one player we haven't mentioned, Games Workshop.
Electronic Arts:
We all know about Electronic Arts and MMOs. We argue that they gobbled them up, ran them into the ground, and did not give them the care they deserved. I mean, look at the three MMOs we know about:
Ultima Online: Everything good about this game came from Origin, and many who played under Origin's stewardship claim that EA has not really made the game any better. It still has a suprising amount of loyalty, but it has to compete with new titles from people who actually understand the genre a lot better than EA. With the cancellation of the "second generation" UO in "Ultima X," EA showed us that it really didn't want to get into the online business.
The Sims Online: The game that showed how little EA knew about MMO design, and a game that showed typical "big box seller" thinking. Create a version of The Sims you could charge monthly for on a common server, and all of the sudden, millions of The Sims players will start paying monthly. Unfortunately, what they never considered was that the appeal of The Sims was "being in charge of your own fishbowl," while in The Sims Online, players were fish in a fishbowl that was not their own. A game that not only failed to attract MMO players, but also, failed to attract The Sims players.
Earth and Beyond: Like Ultima Online, Earth and Beyond was a product of someone else's studio. Like World of Warcraft, Earth and Beyond was made by a legendary studio in RTS computer gaming. The reason why E&B got cancelled, and WoW has 7 million subscribers, is that EA treated E&B like a box game with LAN multiplayer, and not as a project requiring constant developer care. Post launch development was not encouraged, subscribers were not cared for, and the game was scrapped as a failure, when it really never had a chance to prove itself in a fair way.
So yes, EA has made some mistakes, and big mistakes at that. I do not think that this is because EA is wicked, but that at the time of all these decisions, Electronic Arts was looking at the industry through the eyes of five years ago, and five years ago, that was how the entertainment software business worked. The big "mega publishers" like EA and Interplay sold boxes filled with hard code. That is what they did, because that is the way most of us entertained ourselves.
That all changed when Titus Interactive, the parent company of Interplay, filed for bankruptcy. And if a big seller of boxes like Interplay can go under, EA could go under too.
You see, Interplay sold a lot of boxes from a lot of franchise acquisitions, but Interplay wasn't online. And while Interplay had all its boxes on the shelf ready to be purchased, people like us here would just buy one box, and play that for months on end, and never need another. We would even bypass the retailers altogether, and just download entertainment software. The products we bought upgraded themselves, and provided months of gameplay. Interplay and EA could survive if people bought 7 million copies of Warcraft III, because they would simply buy something else a week or a month later. But now, if people buy 7 million copies of World of Warcraft, those gamers are not buying games in a week or a month. They are too busy playing World of Warcraft to care.
I believe that the failure of Interplay and the success of WoW has caused EA to "get serious" about online development in a way they might not have needed to before. Because you cannot sell Madden every year, if Madden can be upgraded every year with new players, and enhancements for a fraction of the price needed to get it to the retailer, and purchase it as a consumer. There is evidence too that EA is creating new studios, and recognizing the need for creativity, and innovation.
In short, I think that the EA of today cannot be compared to the EA of before. Before, EA was under the impression that a publisher's success was measured in the number of "boxes of hard code" they could sell. But since that time, EA has discovered that while they were busy doing things the old way, they were quickly losing computer entertainment to companies like Sony, NCSoft, and others who took online seriously.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I believe that the failure of Interplay and the success of WoW has caused EA to "get serious" about online development in a way they might not have needed to before. Because you cannot sell Madden every year, if Madden can be upgraded every year with new players, and enhancements for a fraction of the price needed to get it to the retailer, and purchase it as a consumer. There is evidence too that EA is creating new studios, and recognizing the need for creativity, and innovation. In short, I think that the EA of today cannot be compared to the EA of before. Before, EA was under the impression that a publisher's success was measured in the number of "boxes of hard code" they could sell. But since that time, EA has discovered that while they were busy doing things the old way, they were quickly losing computer entertainment to companies like Sony, NCSoft, and others who took online seriously.
Thanks for writting that, since I enjoyed reading it. This has been my views (similiar at least) of EA's stance. It's no secret now since with the success of WoW that EA wants in more than ever of this MMO market. They know that they can't do this buy just tanking WAR like they did with Earth and Beyond because of sales, and the fact that Mythic and EA just aren't stupid, they managed to survive the way they did. EA survived the industry market crash in the 80s, that doesn't happen from being stupid. Mythic, a small company still has managed to keep Dark Age of Camelot alive the way they did, they released it on an industry that was dominated by Everquest back in those days.
I understand the doom saying here. I too am guilty of hating EA, but EA's supremecy is sadly a symbol of the entire industry and where its going. Making video games, especially on a professional level takes a lot of money and time, companies like EA will continue to swallow up smaller companies and force them to close their doors. Essentially this is slowly going to be more of a "Necessary Evil." I pray for WAR to be the game it promises to be, I will still try the game and hope for the best in terms of playing the game for the long term. I still want to see these terms of aquisition since I don't think any official docuement has been released yet on it. But right now, all we can do is speculate and hope that the final product is going to be what Mythic has promised WAR is going to be.
Another point about Earth & Beyond is it got very little if any advertising money to make people aware of it. I did beta test it and before it went live I went to buy it at the local Gamestop, the clerk didn't know about it and had to look for it.
They had 4 copies total. No more on order. That tells me that EA really wasn't putting effort into getting E&B into the sights of gamers.
If it came out today I think it would do very well vs EVE Online. Why? For one, many people want a magic/elves/fantasy alternative. Second, EVE is very pvp intensive which I'm sure puts off some of the more casual players. E&B would satisfy a scifi urge without having to worry about getting ganked by another player vastly better equipped than you while you're mining ore in space.
Comments
Then you need to read abit deeper then one thread. EA has cancelled UO2, UOX, and also the already RELEASED game called Earth and Beyond.
I beleive there is a 4th but I can't recall it at the moment.
- 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
Then you need to read abit deeper then one thread. EA has cancelled UO2, UOX, and also the already RELEASED game called Earth and Beyond.
I beleive there is a 4th but I can't recall it at the moment.
I remember UO2 when it was being developed, and me and some friends followed it until they showed some screenshots of it and all of us were severely dissapointed. Kudos to EA for cancelling that rather than losing money on it.
Since I only vaguely remember Ultima X I looked into it, and again, it looked and sounded horrible. Kudos again to EA for cancelling that game as well.
I did like Earth and Beyond, but as far as I can tell it wouldn't survive nowadays anyway. Not with something like EVE out there.
All in all, I don't see a single great or even very good game that has been cancelled by EA. And like I qutoed above from the press release. If EA is looking at Mythic to be dedicated to developing Massively Multiplayer online games, then I highly doubt that Mythic will go bye bye.
But if Mythic does get absorbed and destroyed and WAR is no more and DAoC is no more then I will come back and necro this thread and say that I was wrong and fooled by EA.
---------------------------------------------
I live to fight, and fight to live.
Interesting perspectives. Here is my breakdown of EA, and I might want to clarify my thoughts on Mythic, and the one player we haven't mentioned, Games Workshop.
Electronic Arts:
We all know about Electronic Arts and MMOs. We argue that they gobbled them up, ran them into the ground, and did not give them the care they deserved. I mean, look at the three MMOs we know about:
Ultima Online: Everything good about this game came from Origin, and many who played under Origin's stewardship claim that EA has not really made the game any better. It still has a suprising amount of loyalty, but it has to compete with new titles from people who actually understand the genre a lot better than EA. With the cancellation of the "second generation" UO in "Ultima X," EA showed us that it really didn't want to get into the online business.
The Sims Online: The game that showed how little EA knew about MMO design, and a game that showed typical "big box seller" thinking. Create a version of The Sims you could charge monthly for on a common server, and all of the sudden, millions of The Sims players will start paying monthly. Unfortunately, what they never considered was that the appeal of The Sims was "being in charge of your own fishbowl," while in The Sims Online, players were fish in a fishbowl that was not their own. A game that not only failed to attract MMO players, but also, failed to attract The Sims players.
Earth and Beyond: Like Ultima Online, Earth and Beyond was a product of someone else's studio. Like World of Warcraft, Earth and Beyond was made by a legendary studio in RTS computer gaming. The reason why E&B got cancelled, and WoW has 7 million subscribers, is that EA treated E&B like a box game with LAN multiplayer, and not as a project requiring constant developer care. Post launch development was not encouraged, subscribers were not cared for, and the game was scrapped as a failure, when it really never had a chance to prove itself in a fair way.
So yes, EA has made some mistakes, and big mistakes at that. I do not think that this is because EA is wicked, but that at the time of all these decisions, Electronic Arts was looking at the industry through the eyes of five years ago, and five years ago, that was how the entertainment software business worked. The big "mega publishers" like EA and Interplay sold boxes filled with hard code. That is what they did, because that is the way most of us entertained ourselves.
That all changed when Titus Interactive, the parent company of Interplay, filed for bankruptcy. And if a big seller of boxes like Interplay can go under, EA could go under too.
You see, Interplay sold a lot of boxes from a lot of franchise acquisitions, but Interplay wasn't online. And while Interplay had all its boxes on the shelf ready to be purchased, people like us here would just buy one box, and play that for months on end, and never need another. We would even bypass the retailers altogether, and just download entertainment software. The products we bought upgraded themselves, and provided months of gameplay. Interplay and EA could survive if people bought 7 million copies of Warcraft III, because they would simply buy something else a week or a month later. But now, if people buy 7 million copies of World of Warcraft, those gamers are not buying games in a week or a month. They are too busy playing World of Warcraft to care.
I believe that the failure of Interplay and the success of WoW has caused EA to "get serious" about online development in a way they might not have needed to before. Because you cannot sell Madden every year, if Madden can be upgraded every year with new players, and enhancements for a fraction of the price needed to get it to the retailer, and purchase it as a consumer. There is evidence too that EA is creating new studios, and recognizing the need for creativity, and innovation.
In short, I think that the EA of today cannot be compared to the EA of before. Before, EA was under the impression that a publisher's success was measured in the number of "boxes of hard code" they could sell. But since that time, EA has discovered that while they were busy doing things the old way, they were quickly losing computer entertainment to companies like Sony, NCSoft, and others who took online seriously.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I understand the doom saying here. I too am guilty of hating EA, but EA's supremecy is sadly a symbol of the entire industry and where its going. Making video games, especially on a professional level takes a lot of money and time, companies like EA will continue to swallow up smaller companies and force them to close their doors. Essentially this is slowly going to be more of a "Necessary Evil." I pray for WAR to be the game it promises to be, I will still try the game and hope for the best in terms of playing the game for the long term. I still want to see these terms of aquisition since I don't think any official docuement has been released yet on it. But right now, all we can do is speculate and hope that the final product is going to be what Mythic has promised WAR is going to be.
Another point about Earth & Beyond is it got very little if any advertising money to make people aware of it. I did beta test it and before it went live I went to buy it at the local Gamestop, the clerk didn't know about it and had to look for it.
They had 4 copies total. No more on order. That tells me that EA really wasn't putting effort into getting E&B into the sights of gamers.
If it came out today I think it would do very well vs EVE Online. Why? For one, many people want a magic/elves/fantasy alternative. Second, EVE is very pvp intensive which I'm sure puts off some of the more casual players. E&B would satisfy a scifi urge without having to worry about getting ganked by another player vastly better equipped than you while you're mining ore in space.