The fate of the WoW killers... [Archive] - Unofficial World of Warcraft Forums

Twoflower

30-11-2008, 03:58 AM

So, i heared tabula rasa will shut down its serves next January. Hellgate London gets sold to a Korean company because Flagship studios will close for good. Lotro has 100k players. War had 400k, but that decreased to half of it in the duration of one month. And does anyone here still play Age of Conan ?

I guess most of you know this allready :) The news about hellgate being sold and tabula rasa closing down the servers just reached me today, though.

Makes me wonder what will happen if Blizzard ever decides to make a shooter game. Will there be a future where we only play Blizzard games ? ^^

winterfever

30-11-2008, 04:42 AM

i'm down for playing all blizzard games and only blizzard games.

starcraft ghost was scrapped... and i thought hat would be a pretty intense shooter.

blizzard has yet to fail me.

Mazhulsage

30-11-2008, 05:18 AM

I heard Hellgate was perma-closing, but apparently they were sold after I heard that news? That's good to hear I guess. Tabula Rasa, thank God it's closing, IMO that was far far far too advertised everywhere for how crappy it was.

Warhammer is still at or above 400K, it's just that the news you heard was that "47% of WoW players that said they moved to Warhammer came back to WoW." so... I'm sure that number isn't that large. It was in the first week they were at 400K I believe, then after that they lost about 50K then went back up, AFAIK. In the place I work they had Warhammer constantly stocked, as in, as soon as it went down from 10 to less than 5, they re-stocked it. It was rare that I didn't see at least one person buying it. Still see a few people every now and then.

MrBCorp

30-11-2008, 10:52 AM

Makes me wonder what will happen if Blizzard ever decides to make a shooter game. Will there be a future where we only play Blizzard games ? ^^

Perhaps just a future where only the big games are Blizzard-quality games. There will always be smaller indie games to play.

Mollymog

30-11-2008, 11:00 AM

i'm down for playing all blizzard games and only blizzard games.

starcraft ghost was scrapped... and i thought hat would be a pretty intense shooter.

blizzard has yet to fail me.

I was a Blizzard-only gamer for a while until I got Fallout 3. The first bits are a bit tedious, but from then on it's every bit as good as the first two, really true to the whole storyline of the thing and well worth trying (although not available as an online game).

snowieken

30-11-2008, 12:21 PM

I was a Blizzard-only gamer for a while until I got Fallout 3. The first bits are a bit tedious, but from then on it's every bit as good as the first two, really true to the whole storyline of the thing and well worth trying (although not available as an online game).Fallout 3 is indeed a wonderful game.

The only companies I would sorely miss if they ever went byebye are Bioware and well... Blizzard. Bethesda (Fallout 3 and Oblivion) and Obsidian Entertainment (Neverwinter Nights 2) deserve a special mention, but if for some reason two companies could survive I would vote for Blizzard and Bioware.

If it's just one, Bioware will have to go, though. :)

Mollymog

30-11-2008, 01:14 PM

Fallout 3 is indeed a wonderful game.

The only companies I would sorely miss if they ever went byebye are Bioware and well... Blizzard. Bethesda (Fallout 3 and Oblivion) and Obsidian Entertainment (Neverwinter Nights 2) deserve a special mention, but if for some reason two companies could survive I would vote for Blizzard and Bioware.

If it's just one, Bioware will have to go, though. :)

I installed Fallout 3 with some trepidation, recalling how so many great game series went wrong (I remember the latter Might and Magic ones with a shudder). But it really has stayed true to its origins and what a pleasure it is to be once more wandering the wilderness amongst the mutants and opportunists. :smiley:

I always liked EA, mostly for their early simulation games. But....... I think they're another lot that have pretty well sold out to popular taste and forgotten quality.

Mazhulsage

30-11-2008, 10:29 PM

Glurin

01-12-2008, 05:57 AM

So, i heared tabula rasa will shut down its serves next January. Hellgate London gets sold to a Korean company because Flagship studios will close for good. Lotro has 100k players. War had 400k, but that decreased to half of it in the duration of one month. And does anyone here still play Age of Conan ?

I canceled my Age of Conan account not to long ago. It had real potential, and I would have liked to see it succeed, but it just hasn't lived up to what it could have been.

I think the same thing can be said for a lot of these guys. Some had potential to be great, but somewhere along the line, they just fell flat. Such is the nature of the entertainment industry I suppose.

Mollymog

01-12-2008, 09:39 AM

Once EA took over Westwood Studios (Command and Conquer) I lost my faith in C&C... Red Alert 2+Yuri's Revenge, top quality, very enjoyable. Generals, new idea I suppose, decent.

EA let one of my favorite games of all time pretty much die... Along with the fact that they stopped it's sequel... Renegade. When I heard about Renegade 2, it was just before I heard that it was scrapped... Have you ever seen someone who literally spent all summer playing a game killing "F'ING SNIPERS. F'ING ENGI REPAIRING THAT VEHICLE, I COULD'VE KILLED IT IF IT WEREN'T FOR HIM!" people like that, pissed off? That destroyed EA for me... That and all these stupid Sims games etc etc...

Well, EA for me was simulation games. Not the Sims particularly - it was a kids' game, I think. But their earlier, better simulations that required real thought and care to advance and which were ingeniously done and quite entertaining. I've never been a fan of shooters - I think the only one I tried was the Fallout shooter (the one that came after the first two) that failed to win fans. It was not particularly good at all. CRPGs and simulations for me, not flight sims (how boring!).

Different tastes for all of us, of course. And a good thing, too, or there'd be no point for these companies in varying their creations. I'm sorry to see much of the competition dying or being absorbed. It limits creativity, I think, and in some ways spoils things for gamers.

WatcherZero

01-12-2008, 11:47 AM

Bring back Wing Commander!

Origin, Westwood, Bullfrog I miss you so

jschild

01-12-2008, 12:09 PM

Amen to that WatcherZero!

I need my Christopher Blair fix! And not that stupid Casey!

Mazhulsage

01-12-2008, 12:31 PM

Westwood was easily one of the main starters for PC gaming, who can deny some C&C on the computer when it first came out? Then... Tiberian Sun =P. Shortly after, Renegade had me for a good year, I got fat simply because of that ONE game. I seriously went from about 130 to 180 from it in a summer... Pretty pathetic, but totally worth it.

Mollymog

01-12-2008, 03:54 PM

Bring back Wing Commander!

Origin, Westwood, Bullfrog I miss you so

Oh, yes, Westwood and Bullfrog for sure. I still have all my old games dating from the 80's onward here and those two are prominently featured in the collection. I don't play them: somehow I'm afraid in a way that even after fiddling things to get them to run they might not be as good as I remember. Things have a way of looking better in hindsight. But I can't bring myself to chuck them.

elsegundo

01-12-2008, 06:48 PM

so now that companies have learned what NOT to do.... i wonder if they've figured out what TO do instead... hmmm....

WatcherZero

02-12-2008, 11:24 AM

Mollymog

02-12-2008, 01:21 PM

I started thinking about Bullfrog again last evening. Who could forget Theme Hospital and its endless 'Doctah to the Inflator Room'. Or the original Theme Park, which was real fun and surprisingly difficult to get right.

Twoflower

02-12-2008, 02:04 PM

More and more companies seem to be following the EA model unfortunatley.

1. Find a sucessful developer about to bring out a major release
2. Buy them
3. Market the game more than that company could have ever done
4. Sell the game
5. Shut down the studio before any patches and cancelling all in development titles.
6. License the IP the company owned to independant developers for a lot of money and less risk on the condition you get publishing rights.

i find another pattern

1 : produce a new game
2 : look at the competition and how they did it
3 : realise that your product will never be as finished as that of the competition
4 : release whatever you have at this moment, hipe it, laugh at the idiots who buy it

realy... after WoW, how could anyone release a unfinished wannabe-mmo like Age of Conan ? Did they even start to do quality tests and compare it with existing games ( WoW ) ? WoW does so many things right, how on earth can they release a game which does thousands of little mistakes that noone can get away with any more after gamers have seen a game which does it better ?

MrBCorp

02-12-2008, 04:01 PM

I find another pattern:

1: produce a new game
2: look at the competition and how they did it
3: realise that your product will never be as finished as that of the competition
4: release whatever you have at this moment, hype it, laugh at the idiots who buy it

really... after WoW, how could anyone release a unfinished wannabe-MMO like Age of Conan ? Did they even start to do quality tests and compare it with existing games (WoW) ? WoW does so many things right, how on earth can they release a game which does thousands of little mistakes that no-one can get away with any more after gamers have seen a game which does it better?

Perhaps they were banking on the old model of release it and hope it sells enough to recover your costs plus profit before people realise it sucks. Of course, with an MMO, this strategy is quite flawed. Silly little companies. Maybe the others will learn something.

(fixed your spelling and stuff :smiley:)

Twoflower

02-12-2008, 04:23 PM

(fixed your spelling and stuff :smiley:)

could you do this with "highlight" tags next time ? ^^ so that it is easier for me to learn :)

Valas Azuviir

02-12-2008, 11:37 PM

Amen to that WatcherZero!

I need my Christopher Blair fix! And not that stupid Casey!

If, you'd said Bluehair as opposed to Blair, then I would've been a lot more in agreement.

Felt it was a bit of a letdown when they went the full fmv route and made Mark Hamill/Christopher "Maverick" Blair the main lead. Felt it lessened the self-identification that one had with the character in the earlier games (What do you mean my Callsign is Maverick? I've been using XXXXXX for the past two games and 4 expansions).

So by that light, whether it be Casey or Blair becomes fairly the same in that sense.

Mazhulsage

03-12-2008, 09:41 AM

Mollymog

03-12-2008, 09:45 AM

IMO, if EA doesn't start fixing their games, as in possibly making a game correctly before releasing it, I'm gonna think that it's going to drop a bit, and start losing customers... I mean, they've already lost most of my family by ruining C&C and I'll be sure to tell anyone who's around that tries to buy games not to buy EA so...

I've been warned off Spore by several people. Apparently it's generally poor and in addition has some sort of complex security system that's driving people mad. Too bad, because the whole thing sounded at one time like an interesting premise.

Clavina

03-12-2008, 11:27 AM

realy... after WoW, how could anyone release a unfinished wannabe-mmo like Age of Conan ? Did they even start to do quality tests and compare it with existing games ( WoW ) ? WoW does so many things right, how on earth can they release a game which does thousands of little mistakes that noone can get away with any more after gamers have seen a game which does it better ?

Umm wow was pretty unfinished at release. Some classes were completely and thoroughly broken for example and whole zones were empty. Our perceptions are skewed by comparing a mature 4 year old game to a release game. If you compared release wow to release <insert mmo here> they probably wouldn't be much different.

I'm also shocked that people can bandy around the names of Westwood and Bullfrog without mentioning Dune 2 and Dungeon Keeper. Two of the greatest games of all time.

jschild

03-12-2008, 01:14 PM

I've been warned off Spore by several people. Apparently it's generally poor and in addition has some sort of complex security system that's driving people mad. Too bad, because the whole thing sounded at one time like an interesting premise.

Spore I've actually found to be a really fun casual game. It's not deep, don't expect civ complexity or anything. I disable the securerom protection so I'm not worried about that. The game itself is really fun as long as you expect a simple and fairly fast paced casual game (along the Sims in difficulty).

elsegundo

03-12-2008, 09:40 PM

Many of the games that i've actually avoided were due to Securerom and StarForce. there are some good games out there and i guess the notion is that, if the game is good enough, we'd risk our computer's well-being just to play it. i dont think so. i spent 10x more money at least on my computer than on the game. i heard many good things about spore too. but well... not gonna buy it ever.

Mazhulsage

03-12-2008, 11:59 PM

I simply won't buy it because it doesn't look appealing in the least to me. That, along with the fact that I'm not really much up for creating stuff in a lab or whatever... Give me a dog and I'll raise it, but I'm not creating mutants or people in a lab or anything for that matter.

Shellar

04-12-2008, 04:02 PM

Origin, Westwood, Bullfrog I miss you so
Add Sierra to the list, and you've basically summed up my feelings on the subject.

Mollymog

04-12-2008, 05:31 PM

Umm wow was pretty unfinished at release. Some classes were completely and thoroughly broken for example and whole zones were empty. Our perceptions are skewed by comparing a mature 4 year old game to a release game. If you compared release wow to release <insert mmo here> they probably wouldn't be much different.

I'm also shocked that people can bandy around the names of Westwood and Bullfrog without mentioning Dune 2 and Dungeon Keeper. Two of the greatest games of all time.

Dungeon Keeper, yes, yes!!! I still play DK2 sometimes just for fun. It was brilliant. And one I recall well from Westwood was (I think) Throne of Chaos. OK, there was a lot of slogging along killing Orcs, but the graphics were brilliant for their time and oh, how very real the characters looked.

ptarn

06-12-2008, 07:54 PM

Dungeon Keeper, yes! I was so sad to learn that Bullfrog was going down and that there wouldn't be a Dungeon Keeper 3... And yes, I agree that quite a few companies have disappeared, either by going bankrupt, closing or being bought by a bigger company and then gradually disappearing.

I have played Spore and I like it, but, as said, don't expect a lot of complexity. The 'universe'-stage is of course by far the largest and longest, but even though most tasks revolve around retrieving stuff, terraforming planets, fighting off enemies or helping allies by killing diseased animals, I still have lots of fun playing it.

And, in contradiction to someone who posted earlier, I still like C&C. I've played every game from the first Tiberium game and I still enjoy every game they create! Sure, sometimes I feel they could've done something differently and sometimes the differences in easy/normal/hard mode are quite severe. But that doesn't take away the joy I have in playing them. I'm gonna buy Fallout 3 soon, never played a Fallout game before but I keep hearing very positive stuff about it.

And yes, Might of Magic, well... that's taken a dive off the deep end. They still haven't hit rock bottom, I think, but they're not far off.

By the way, I keep wondering about something: Will there ever be either a WoW 2 or a huge improvement in the WoW-graphics? I love the fact that you can play WoW with lots of different configurations, but even on the highest settings, the graphic engine is starting to look a bit dated in some areas. Don't get me wrong, I still LOVE playing WoW and I enjoy the new scenery in Northrend, but I'm just wondering, as a fan, if the engine can't do with a (minor?) update or something.

elsegundo

08-12-2008, 07:26 PM

ptarn, like it or not, the "minor update or something" you're asking for came with 3.0. so perhaps you're asking for more than what blizz actually gave you.

clevins

08-12-2008, 08:50 PM

And they've said they will continue to hike up the graphics, but they can't go too fast or they will leave a lot of people unable to play the game... but history has shown that very few people play games just because they have great graphics (AoC for example) so the subscriber hit is assymetrical. You'd leave a lot of people behind, unable to play (and thus they'd lose those subscribers), plus some would leave because their play would be so bad that it would be annoying. Yet very few people who don't play WoW now would start playing due to great graphics.

TLDR? The graphics won't cause people to play, the lack won't cause them to quit.

jschild

08-12-2008, 09:29 PM

Spore, great art design, does not require a top line machine to run or enjoy. For example, top sellers for first week of November

1. Fallout 3 - Uses Oblivion Engine - Mid Spec.
2. Spore - Mid spec
3. C&C Red Alert - Mid spec requirements.
4. WoW: Battle Chest- Low to Mid spec
5. Far Cry 2 - High Mid to Very High spec
6. Sims 2 - Low to Mid spec
7. Sims expansion - Low to Mid spec
8. Nancy Drew - Low spec
9. Crysis - High Mid to Very High spec
10. WoW - Low to Mid spec.

As you can see, only 2 games have high specs and thats how it almost always is, rarely are the top sellers high specs, except for very popular FPS. Otherwise, it's lower spec games that top the chart. If you want to sell a game to as many people as possible, you want a game that can run on as many people's computers as possible and still look good.

WatcherZero

09-12-2008, 04:59 PM

The publisher of Crysis recognised this fact too, they made a very demanding game with the belief that most people could play it to some degree (debatable in reality) but that people wouldnt use the higher graphics modes till later as technology advanced, that way the game would stay looking good. In reality everyone sets it to max graphics straight off and complains of only 15 fps. They rectified this a lot with crysis warhead, visually improved but running on lower spec machines.

jschild

09-12-2008, 05:38 PM

Yes, it's much more forgiving. The problem is when even at forgiving settings something will not run smoothly, which was the originals problem.

You can make a game too realistic and great looking if the engine isn't properly optimized (which was the flaw of the original). I much prefer optimized engines that offer great graphics at lower cost than the latest "OMG DID YOU SEE THOSE GRAFIX ON MY QUAD SLI RIG!!!!" that cannot run on any non gamer machine.

I think most PC developers would do far better if they focused on quality gameplay, good art direction (not the same thing as the most realistic graphics - See the quality in the Orange Box for that) and fun games, they would greatly widen their market instead of trying to "win" the graphics battle.

clevins

09-12-2008, 08:24 PM

Not only do I agree with jschild's last paragraph, I'll go further.... I wonder if incredibly realistic graphics would hurt a game like WoW even if we could all run them at high settings. Not because the graphics are better, but because art directors would use that a lot. I'm thinking of the AoC gameplay vids I saw with reaslistic blood spatter, etc. I get that t here's a 14 year old segment that goes "Cool!" at that... but can you see the wide variety of people who play WoW now, playing if that was the case? I can't. So some separation of fantasy and reality via the look is actually good IMO.