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Above and Beyond Sells Sandbox MMORPG to Idea Fabrik - The Repopulation - MMORPG.com
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
Above and Beyond Sells Sandbox MMORPG to Idea Fabrik - The Repopulation - MMORPG.com
The Repopulation News - In a surprising move, we've learned via MMOGames that Repopulation's developer Above and Beyond Technologies has sold the entirety of The Repopulation to HERO Engine developer Idea Fabrik. The Repopulation will be re-opened and development will begin again soon, while Above and Beyond focuses on Fractured as their main project.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
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I'm happy to give it another go under Idea Fabrik as its a mmo brought back from the bin, hopefully they do a good job and pull it off, if not I will just move on.
Playing: FFXIV
Future: wishing for SWG 2, World of Warcraft Classic
Played: Most current and extinct MMO's - 18 Years in....
Interesting Fact - I own 27 Tarantula's
SNIP
https://www.therepopulation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12567&start=30#p120949
"Fragmented was our means to generating money because we didn't feel that going back to Kickstarter would go over well. We had a pretty high overhead when fully staffed, and we didn't have nearly enough money to port to a new engine without generating money as it would take some time. Fragmented was our means to generate that. It let us get acquainted with Unreal Engine and it was forming the base code that we would need to reuse for Repop. The basic idea was to get Fragmented with a small team (we couldn't afford to have the full staff for that length of time) and then to use that money to restaff, build up the new client as we went, basing it on the Fragmented code but adding in the MMORPG specific bits (quests, networking, abilities, etc) based on top of that to become Repop. Give Fragmented to all Repop players for free as some type of a compensation for the downtime because we knew it would take us a year or more to port to Unreal Engine and get things into a ready enough state for testing. This also gave us a chance to test code during the process because we were unfamiliar with UE4. It allowed us to use the same graphical assets that we had used in Repop which allowed us to get it to the market quickly. Most of the people who worked on Fragmented were doing so on a percentage (minus support staff who was on salary). We allotted a portion of the money to go into the company (which covered server costs and the money that went towards servers and Repop).
The problem we ran into is that we overestimated the amount of money it would generate. And we also underestimated how angry some players would be to see this happening, when our move was intended to get Repop to a launch and we felt that was the best chance of doing so at the time. In our timeline we would have been fully restaffed last summer and we expected to be able to be back into testing by the end of the year. Fragmented did not generate enough money to ever get there though. Originally it was doing okay, but not as well as we had hoped. This set us back but it was recoverable. We began to develop the Repop specific bits of code while developing Fragmented, but never got back to fully staffed.
Repop players understandably began growing irritated by the downtime, and applying pressure in the form of negative reviews, and that coincided with Steam moving to a Recent review system instead of the overall review system. This wound up slamming us down to mostly negative reviews on the Recent Reviews and Mixed on the overall reviews, and at that point sales basically died. People's checks got far too small to survive on (below minimum wage) and some staff members needed to start looking for ways to make ends meet and splitting time, which was further setting us back. Once you get into that kind of cycle it's tough to recover. So we set our hopes on the console release for Fragmented as the means to turn things around. So the situation was spirally into a dangerous direction and we began to become very concerned. Players also began to become concerned and the negative reviews and comments became more and more common.
So at that point our hopes were entirely pinned on the console release doing well enough that it could get us back on track so we could restaff, but we knew that even after we got to that point it would take probably around six months to get the content where it needed to be. While splitting time between the two games we were able to get most of the gameplay systems into various stages of completion, but content was a different story due to the staffing issues. We were doing everything we could to turn things around while making next to nothing over the past few months but we had to start facing the reality that if Fragmented did not go well on console, we may not be able to complete it. And meanwhile players just got angrier and angrier and we felt that it was unfair to them to put them into this situation. We had to find a way to get the game launched.
This is where Idea Fabrik entered back into the picture. A lot of things had changed for both of us since our paths had split last January. This was a move that made sense for both them and us. It ensured that the game would get back online soon and at this point their financial situation was much better than our own, which will allow them give the game the staffing that it deserves. After opening conversations back up with them we felt that they were the best bet for the games survival and success. They have a lot of reason to want the game to be successful. Not only financially, but as a showcase for the engine. In speaking with them we felt they would work hard to make the game a success. It's certainly hard for us to give up control of a game that we spent years developing. That was a hard choice. But when we looked at the possibly future scenarios we just felt this was the best play to make. And I believe Idea Fabrik is going to do right by players in this scenario. We're also going to be involved to an extent, as well.
We understand the criticism here. If we've let you down, all we can do at this point is apologize. Things haven't go according to script. But you own all own a copy of the game. Servers will be going back online soon. There will be quite a bit of new content in the pipeline. The 15.10.2 patch was massive ( viewtopic.php?f=28&t=11137 ) and never saw the light of day as its launch date coincided with when these issues first began. Idea Fabrik is adding new content as well. I hope to see a lot of players giving it a chance when the servers go back online."
But the acronym MMMORPG now currently means Microscopic Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Kappa.
We'll see in the near future how things go, but Repop was struggling on the Hero Engine when development was suspended in 2015. The engine was not handling the open world zone transitions very well at all.
If you read between the lines, I think it was either that or no TR for (at least) a very long time. IF had them in a hard spot, they were out of funds and had lost almost all their staff.
EA/Bioware bought the Hero source code that existed in 2006. The engine wasn't even a completed product at that point. That was the beginning and end of their association with the Hero Engine developers, it was a one-time purchase, not a licensing agreement.
EA/BW have been modifying that code for 10 years, including the development of parts of the engine code that had not even been written yet in 2006.
I get that I really do, but if we start playing again now so much time has passed, feelings running high etc do we then play yet another load of time in testing and never getting to keep our characters and stats or just ends in another wipe down the road before a "possible" launch... Having the game now just beacause we can on a not so great optimized engine and then hammering out testing and character development for it to get it all gone again with still no real certainty here about if it will be released is a lot to swallow.
It's a tough game to check everything as there is so much in it skill wise. We need solid info on what the path is for this game and a reasonable guess given to us by the the new devs for when a release time is feasable. Or at the very least when effort into the game wont be a wasted factor as if the engine was to change with the new devs then that would once again mean more time on the testing bed.
If I remember correctly doesn't ESO also run on a modified version of HE?
sad, it was a very good idea for an MMO, just at the wrong hands
So What Now?
The game itself was built on in-house engine.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
A: The repopulation will be for sale once the transfer is complete and Repopulation servers are brought back up. Stay tuned for that announcement.
The game was in a very early access state. Features were not fully implemented yet and crafting was not set in stone. And there were loads of bugs and a severe lack of content.
Also, this is a different team, with possibly a very different vision for the game.
Oh and Hero Engine. The Engine that supposedly was giving the original team so much trouble in creating what they wanted.
So I expect something like when Gearworks bought Fallen Earth only to leave the game in an unfinished state (they never added anything significant), add a cashshop and lootboxes.
The entire fiasco of The Repopulation has been a total scam (or shady at very least).
early access. okay fine, pretty ordinary
VERY SOON after release "after years of working on this, within weeks we came to the conclusion of needing a new engine"...wtf? SCAM. They knew full well after 1+ year of working what the engine could and could not do. And within weeks of release, maybe 2-3 months at most...they realized they couldn't use the engine? Or is it actually they heavily rushed the game within months of developing it without any clue about the game and engine? Both equally bad.
Release Fragmented to support The Repopulation. Support on it quickly drops, not like The Repopulation at all...quick cash in with survival craze. Funny it came out when survival games were all super hyped up...AND must have been in development for longer than before The Repopulation released. Since Fragmented didn't come out very long after Repopulation shut down.
Now sold to another company, a no name company I never heard of. Maybe its known, dunno. Probably another indie company, which didn't help Repopulation.
This game is a bigger scam than Dark and Light was years ago. The only game I ever kickstarted where I heavily regretted doing so.
Don't buy this game, at all. Its run by complete con artists that full well knew they were releasing an early alpha that they couldn't support on the engine, making fragmented as an escape or more cash in, when Fragmented released soon after. They also knew the engine far longer than the games release, and suddenly "didn't know it couldn't work properly with what we wanted"? and they had many months/years of work on the engine AND game? NOPE! Doesn't work like that.
Within a year, you'd know if the engine works or not...and if it doesn't, and you still try to make it work...then its a bunch of idiots trying to make a game who didn't do research of the engine properly (or wanting a quick buck, dunno)
The first and only game I kickstarted or went into early access that I wish I never did back. I thought even Dark And Light was worth my money more than this junk.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Not really much of a surprise.
It is becoming clear that crowdfunding and MMO/MMORPGs do not mix: simply too much time and money is needed to bring a game to launch.
(I personally played the Repop on a friend's acct, and this end/result was easily foreseeable: the game was very unfinished, few people were playing it, and then they announced they were revamping the game with a different engine. Ideas, and designs, and plans all mean nothing without the cash to bring them into being. That is what happened here.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
But the acronym MMMORPG now currently means Microscopic Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Kappa.
It still means that code base can updated and evolved into something better, eh? IF wants to see TR be successful so they have their own MMO to showcase the engine. And they've just hired a team to do that. There's nothing to say they won't be able to evolve it the right way, too.
You mean when it went from HE to UE4? That was because IF had financial woes and couldn't support the development and active patching of the TR servers at the time. The game went many months without patching and when ABT saw that there was no clear end in sight, they had to make a decision to try and save whatever was left with the funds they had.
JC discussed what happened afterwards here : https://www.therepopulation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12567&start=30#p120939
Elite Dangerous, Shroud of the Avatar, Camelot Unchained...
And this, here, is actually the game, The Repopulation, REVIVING in it's original form, not folding over. Moreso, it wasn't due to crowdfunding issue that they originally had to take the servers offline.
I get what you're saying though, there have been numerous failures, but so was there in AAA / large studios ventures. Not all is doom and gloom in crowdfunding land, but not all is rosey, either.
How is that a scam, the fact they're relaunching the servers not asking anyone for more money and honouring all pledges since 2012, while having still given another game to all those backers for free? All the while maintaining open communications and discussions on the forums?
I think you're confused in your definition of scam. I think the word you were looking for is "less than ideal situation".