Command & Conquer MMO a Possibility?

TheProphet92 sends along a speculative piece about the future of EA's popular RTS franchise, writing: "EA's real-time strategy games don't have the luxury of extensive funding the way some other franchises do. EA has been milking their game engines for all they're worth and then some. They have been using various versions of the 'Sage' engine for the past half-dozen or so RTS games, and they need money to make a new one. Perhaps an MMO is the way to go for EA, using none other than their famous Command & Conquer franchise."

Comments

Re:donotwant

[HNS-I]

I would love to see that happen. Imagine you can pick any class and evolve in it. There must be a mechanism that gives you an incentive to keep playing the same class. You get rewarded with specialised weapons, e.g. an improved tank or mechinfantry. Not only do you get rewarded for frags but also for following orders and pre-battlefield instructions. Over time you can become higher in rank which actually gives you authority over other players.

Basically this would be the perfect balance between the excitement of arcade and the lawfulness and realism of simulation. This would take out a lot of annoying game elements that are solely produced by game-developers creating instant gratification to children, whoring for frags.

Admittedly we need a lot more work done on communication and control. But I'm seeing this become reality.

Eh?

[ledow]

The article makes no sense at all. Using one game-type to fund another is okay but hell, an MMO is a company in itself, not just a product. It's also complete speculation.

And, the C&C series went downhill after Red Alert (and, as others have pointed out, EA's purchase of Westwood). I can hardly bring myself to play anything after that at all. I wanted to have a look at Red Alert 3 but wasn't going to buy without a demo. By the time a demo came out that I could actually find and download, it was 1.8Gb and I had lost interest. And the min specs looked scary for something quite benign in terms of gameplay.

The best way for EA to make money on that franchise would be to stick the entire C&C / RA back-catalogue on Steam, with a new system for multiplayer lobbies... I know I'd buy it and compared to even the demo of Red Alert, it'd be small to download. I know RA itself is "freeware" now but just the hassle of keeping the CD images around and the multiplayer, plus the various expansion packs, has got to be worth a little bit. A lot of people times a little bit is quite a chunk.

Choice of /. imagery

[otter42]

How fitting that the /. icon for this article should be a warcraft picture. God, I miss the time when there were two types of gamers in this world: C&C and Warcraft II.