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General: Eight Games Fit For Resurrection
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
In the wake of the recent announcement of Gods & Heroes' rise from the grave, MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy put together this list of either other canceled gems that could stand to walk in the daylight once again.
While writing up a recent article on the history of Science Fiction MMOs, it occurred to me how many games we've seen shut down in recent years. It also occurred to me how many games we've seen vanish before even seeing the light of day. For players of now defunct offerings, or fans of games that never were, the disappointment felt is not at all unlike actually paying to see either of the Matrix sequels. Then, with the recent announcement that Gods & Heroes would be seeing the light of day after being put on hiatus over two years ago I thought about games that I'd like to see get a similar treatment.
Here, then are the eight games that were cancelled either in infancy or in development that I think might be fit for a Gods & Heroes-like resurrection. Keep in mind this is all wishful thinking, and there are probably a dozen more games to add to the list, especially considering how many titles never make it out of development limbo. Still, these are the ones that stand out in my mind.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Grate list but if it was me making it shadowbane would be in the top spot. Lucky ShadowBane cant be be killed all hail ShadowBane Emu.
AC2... dude... William "Wound Opener" Murphy
You hit the nail on the head, though. We already know what kind of a hit it would be if it was renamed, given a different theme and rereleased - it's called LOTRO.
Auto Assault, EnB, Shadowbane... would really like to see any of those revived. Now... let's see how many people post that your opinion is wrong, that you have them in the wrong order or that you should've listed others.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Regarding WISH:
The following is a post I made on the Istaria forums, back in 2008, regarding WISH and why it just vanished one day...
Yeah. That RackSaver setup they bought was pretty nice: 176 Xeons, 176 Gigs of ram and a mere 5.2 Terabytes of storage...
I can't imagine spending that much for a 'beta' server.
Wish's design was similar to Eve Online, where everyone would play on the same server, so the hardware costs were huge... If you ask me, that's why they cancelled - in beta 2 they got some numbers that showed how many of those RackSaver setups they'd have to buy to support their target 250,000 subscibers.
MR had stated that due to the huge beta2 turnout they would have to let people into the game in stages. Here's the email they sent out just prior to beta2:
“Because of the enormous number of beta applications that we have received (more than 60,000 at the time of this writing), we will not enable all beta accounts on January 1 at once. Instead, we will only enable a number of randomly chosen beta accounts every day, starting January 1.”
Two weeks later the game was gone, the forums were shut down, and the server was on ebay...
The reason I figure it the way I do is mostly because of knowing what kind of hardware it takes to run an MMO 'server' that supports 30,000 concurrent users...
Tranquility, CCPs big glowy supercomputer, a year ago was exactly 70 IBM LS20 blades, and each LS20 has 2-2.4Ghz 64-bit Opterons on it and a minimum of 2 gigs of ram (some had 4 gigs). That's 10 Blade centers of 14 blades each for 140 processors and 300+ gigs of ram, all running multiple 1Gbit pipes between BladeCenters - and all for 30,000 concurrent users...
And, CCP moved up to the LS20 Opteron blades because each LS20 replaced 3 of their 2.8 Ghz XEON systems - which is what MR's RackSaver system was comprised of... So, technically, it is taking about 3 times the hardware and twice the ram to handle one half of MR's 60,000 beta2 users.
Aditionally, a year ago, Tranquility was running two TMS RamSan 4000's... Thats over 3000 MBytes a second and 400,000 I/Os per second of SQL munching power...
I think CCP has added some more hardware in the last year so my numbers are probably on the low side now.
Anyways, this is why I look the 'Wish' story the way I do... I can only imagine MR getting about 5000 people into the server and thinking to themselves "We're screwed".
Cancellation of Wish was shock to all betatesters. The game was light on content but it was just about 100% bug free. The gameplay was fun and graphics was decent and good majority of the testers were having a blast. The common theory with its cancellation was that the CEO pretty much just lost the nerve and chickened out.
Shadowbane died for its main flaw, all servers got taken over by super zergs and other guilds were simply left sitting inside the npc cities unable to advance at all as just about everything required a player city and if you tried building one, it would get annihilated before first wall was up.
UO2...one word: EA.
EA turns anything and everything it touches in to poop, if it cant turn it in to poop, it will cancel it...just wait till it's finished destroying Bioware.
DDO has proven that games can switch payment models and be a success.
The game sthat you listed that were closed down like TR and SB can easily be profitable for the companies owning them if done with the right model.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I only played tabula and frankly the entire way it was handled it can stay dead unless they move it to another mmo company.
The rest I don't know enough about.
Now one that should be on the list is SWG clasic server. I did not see it anywhere. I know folks are going to say swg is alive, but I am talking clasis pre cu server, and not the emu either.
Oh well.
Oh how I wish Tabula Rasa would see the light of day again...
Everytime I quit a current MMO, I always go looking through all my old games, and i always find the TR case.
I flip through the big ass manual for it, and look at the game discs and pack it away again.
Its the only game I can honestly say I would still jump in and play for a month here or there if I could. TR wasnt the best game ever, in fact it had a shit load of problems. But It was one of the best gaming experiances I ever had.
RIP TR and SWG.
DDO is nowadays a success? Interesting.
Anyway, Lotro is ressurected Asheron's Call 2 as someone else already pointed out, but without the deep crafting, character customization and meaningful PvP.
REALITY CHECK
If you want MMORPG gamers to notice you, create a sequel/resurrection of the genre's best:
Make a:
UO 2
AC 2 (a better representation of the first)
DAoC 2
EQ 3
Anything Blizzard
If anyone here see's one of the above being made, it'll get their attention due to the respect thier predecessors have gained.
I just wanted to point out that Tabula Rasa is Garriott's third MMO: Ultima Online, Lineage and Tabula Rasa.
DDO is nowadays a success? Interesting.
Anyway, Lotro is ressurected Asheron's Call 2 as someone else already pointed out, but without the deep crafting, character customization and meaningful PvP.
Wait, what, LOTRO resurrected? It never died.
DDO is nowadays a success? Interesting.
Anyway, Lotro is ressurected Asheron's Call 2 as someone else already pointed out, but without the deep crafting, character customization and meaningful PvP.
Wait, what, LOTRO resurrected? It never died.
He said that LOTRO is the resurrection of AC2.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Richard Garriot didnt develop lineage. He moved to work for NCSoft before forming Destination Games and played as Lord British in Lineage1 while participating on running it.
what no Dragon Empires? Man i was so looking forward to that game, and then poof the plug was pulled.
There was also another game several years back called Charr: the Grimm Fate. It was probably nothing more then vaporware but the concepts and the lore was amazing.
the missing link in a chain of destruction.
All spelling and typographical errors are based soely on the fact that i just dont care. If you must point out my lack of atention to detail, please do it with a smile.
Make AC2 again, make it more like the original game and i'd play this game for a long, very long time.
Earth and Beyond, absolutly loved that game, we really need that game back, it had an awesome game mechanic.
I had completely forgotten about that! Yeah, I think that one was, in several ways, a spiritual successor to DAoC.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I would love to see Auto Assault back or even Tabula Rasa, I was in Beta for both and they had tons of potential. >.< I miss them!
Owner/Admin of GodlessGamer.com - Gaming news and reviews for the godless.
well tabula rasa was a bit of a self fullfilling prophecy. the active subscriptions became a blank slate
the missing link in a chain of destruction.
All spelling and typographical errors are based soely on the fact that i just dont care. If you must point out my lack of atention to detail, please do it with a smile.
AC2 and SB failed for a reason.
Why should they be resurrected without some major changes? They would just fail again.
AC2 was god awful. I was super hyped about it, and bought it on day one. I cancelled a few weeks later. SB had some great ideas, but failed to implement them properly.
Do I know the secret formula to fix them? No. I do know they failed, because not many people found the games worth playing.
Personal favorite or not, you need to leave auto assault off the list. The game had no redeeming value and struggled to provide any kind of interest of players to keep playing. Some themes just do not fit the MMO genre, this was one of them.
The others all have possibilities, although I think AC2 should remain dead. It offered very little new in the genre and basically was trying to provide a EQ like experience for an audience that did not like EQ.
DDO is nowadays a success? Interesting.
Anyway, Lotro is ressurected Asheron's Call 2 as someone else already pointed out, but without the deep crafting, character customization and meaningful PvP.
HUH? I played AC2 and Lotro is nothing like it. Where in the world did you people come up with that idea? They were about as different as night and day.
A really interesting read. I'd have to assume the list is good considering I haven't played most of the games, but I did play Tabula Rasa and I thought it was really cool. TB had an interesting combat mechanic and it was diferrent from all the high fantasy games I had played. Also one of my friends played Shadowbane and raves about it any time we talk about MMO's, I'm sorry I missed out on that title.
I'm also curious if Hellgate: London was considered for the list? It's kind of debateable if it was an MMO in a way, and I guess with rumors of it being picked up by another publisher it may not qualify for this list. But I'm just curious I guess.
Originally posted by GTwander:
How are you an MMO? Or any of us for that matter?
I say we strike all users from the site for not being MMOs.
I would really like to see something new from the Ultima franchise. Even moreso if RG and EA got together.
If Shadowbane is to be resurrected, one thing would make it popular: optional PvP. Forcing PvP is not what people want, as having been proven time and again.
"Of all the things wrong with today's RPGs, 2D characters on a 3D background is the worst."