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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."
I for one would pay to see fifty sims battling a gargantuan chromatic dragon, with epic furniture.
Never has that tag been as fitting as now. C&C MMO? Uhm, no thanks.
What would it be? General war zone? From which one of the games? How?
Not to mention how useless MMOs are to begin with.
Supreme Commander (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander) is a great game for MMO. Already large scale, and scalable.
Seriously. Developing an MMO to pay for a new RTS engine is like building a city so you can get your Starbucks fix.
How about they get rid of their DRM, stop treating their customers like theives, and then they might sell some units? I love C&C but I didn't buy the last one because of the DRM (SecuROM I think?)
-SaNo
Good point. And in the spirit of lending a helping hand to the publishers, here is my own list of franchises which have been sadly overlooked when it came to making an MMO.
1. Zorro. Just think about it. For a start, you don't even need to pay the artists for more than one outfit for the players. You just need to figure out a way to need 25 Zorros for the final boss, and you're all set.
2. Tom and Jerry. This could be huge. Just think of the millions of children who have grown up on seeing the cat and mouse (and occasionally dog) hit each other over the head with frying pans, lead pipes, and just about everything except the kitchen sink. Actually, wait, I think they used the kitchen sink too. It could make the perfect PvP MMO. (And you may think that it would be limited to have just two races in an MMO and have it all happen in one house and its yard, but AION launched literally with one race per side and the zones aren't much bigger either.)
I for one can hardly wait to grind for the Epic Frying Pan Of Power, and whack a cat over the head with it. What? You're saying it's just me?
3. Barbie. Well, Mattel already proved that you can make money with Barbie games for little girls. (Mostly because the one buying the game is the father, whose idea of what game would a little girl want is a little fuzzy.) Now imagine the many possibilities in a MMO. Not only you can dress up your Barbie and pretend she's a fashion model, you can sit her together with other people's Barbies and have a tea party. Won't that be fun? Little girls love having tea parties with their dolls. (At this point if you're a father, you're supposed to nod and reach for your wallet.)
4. Debbie Does Dallas. Perfect for the few horny 14 year olds trying to cybersex every female character in sight... and for the many 40 year olds pretending to be a horny 14 year old. 'Nuff said.
5. Harvest Moon. All the fun of watering crops and brushing your pony, except in a massively multi-player setting. And if you get a 40 man group you can brush an epic pony.
6. Dallas. I believe more housewives worldwide have watched that soap opera than nerds have watched Star Trek. If they can make an MMO out of the latter, I don't see why they can't make one out of Dallas.
7. The Bible. Yes, you've heard that right. It sold more copies than all 6 Star Wars episodes and all SW books combined. And if you don't think it has MMO potential, you haven't read it.
E.g., the siege and genocide of Midian (not kidding, read Numbers) would make a great battleground. E.g., imagine the fun of an escort quest to get Lot out of Sodom. For that matter, of trying to get to Lot's house with your sphincter intact ;) E.g., for a FedEx quest, recreate Jeremiah's treck to the Euphrates to bury his loincloth because the Lord told him to. (Again, I'm not kidding.) Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Okay so in the wild speculation list its not that far out to say 'MMO' but its not crazy enough. I mean you could actually see some marketing exec think it was a good idea. The other ideas on the list were
* iPhone app - sod a new platform just port the old one and sell another million copies
* Use the FIFA 10 engine - [Foot|Soccer]balls become grenades and you add some more scenery. Tanks are just "heavy" player right?
* Use the Sims engine "you can be any genocidal maniac or army general you want"
The end result however was to just keep tweaking the current engine as unlike FPS or other games people aren't as interested in the graphics but in the game play.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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.
Uh, most of the "classic" MMOs are 3/4 isometric view.
If EA came up with an MMO, could you really trust them not to make it Pay-to-Play and:
If my previous experience with Online PvP gaming using EA products (Battlefield series on the PC) is any indication of their behavior, I expect them to release the game buggy (yet strangely with great reviews from certain well-known gaming websites), have a 6 month period with a couple of bug-fixes while they "hook as many players as they can into the game" and then proceed to do all the "returns enhancing" ideas listed above.
Tired of the WoW grind? Hop into a Harvester and start gathering Tiberium for a living!
I call Tanya.
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.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
...and my entire objection is based off two letters, E and A.
I've been burned to many times.
...just imagine sweeping vistas of Tiberium-ravaged landscapes or towns and villages inside yellow zones.
If this was being done by the guys of the old Westwood, then I'd say go for it. Because you know if those guys did it, it would be awesome. But EA has done nothing but destroy the C&C franchise, so I don't really want to see them try this.
On the other hand, it would be extremely interesting to see how they would pull off something like that. If done well it could be very good. But it's EA, they don't do anything well.
Translation - they've made a shitload of money with minimal investment and have spent it all on [censored] so have none left to make a new engine.
EA, the CA of gaming.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
A great big tower of NOD! ZZZZzzzzzzzpppppp! Now get what is left of your harvester out of "MY" tiberium!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Same thing for me here.
I'm a a pretty big nut of C&C games, but the DRM on C&C3 (fantastic game) gave me a ton of greif. I actually had to go and download no-cd images and use damen tools + YASU (yet another secure-rom utility) just to RUN my own game.
My dvd drive struggled to read and pass the dvd check at boot because their dvd was non-standard.
Nothing like having to crack your own game, just so you could play it, then worry that your online account will be banned as a result.
Lets not forget how badly EA made C&C3's online lobby system. For a game that aimed to please the mutliplayer base, their online interface was terrible.
You were cramped into rooms labled lobby1, lobby2, etc, so joining a room that matched your timezone/region was impossible.
The networking code for making and establishing connections was the worst i've ever seen. Requiring the following ports be opened:
TCP Ports
80,6667,28910,29900,29920
UDP Ports
432,127,900
What a headake to setup your router with, and have fun if you have 2 machines behind the router you wanted to be able to play online with.
Then came the expantion, which was fantastic in terms of gameplay and story, but online got destroyed. There was a sync bug which caused a lot of players to desync. And any game that desynced would be aborted. 2v2 and 1 player desyncs, game aborts for everyone.
EA told us that a patch would be coming in 2 weeks to fix it. But it took them 4 months to release a patch. 4 months where the mutliplayer desync rate was 30%+ screwed up. (In addition to the lobby being as bad as ever)
I lost all respect in EA as a company over that.
Then they decided with their next release of RA3, they would increase the DRM even more. That you'd only be able to install RA3 5 times. After that you'd be screwed.
It was the first C&C game i never purchased, and i can honestly say i'm thankful for that after watching it at a friends place.
The gameplay was annoying. Every unit had to have a special ability, if only for the sake of it. That C&C feel i'd loved since tha days of starcraft were lost.
You could no longer amass tanks... TANKS (solid bricks that you throw at your opponent), but now units which had to be microed on each unit to work. Building on land or water didn't matter, navies could pack up and become an airforce... Nothing made sence, nothing flowed, and everything was micromanagement intensive. (The plot was also very forgetable and childish)
And this is the company that wants to make an MMORPG?
Failed at understanding how to foster a good mutliplayer experance? Check
Failed at timely patching when critrical game bugs are encountered? Check (just wait for when exploits are found)
Failed at developing a fun gameplay experance? Check.
Failed at development of solid networking code? Check.
I will add this since noone else has mentioned it.
C&C might be lacking a lot of lore to start a MMORPG game, but keep in mind they have a FPS shooter tiberium coming out soonish. If they make it like mass effect they would be able to add a ton of lore into the game and give the most basic foundations to starting an MMO with.
But at the same time, if its a popular game, theres a good chance they could get a new following that would be interested in futher exploiting the world of C&C.
If its another renegade where although its a good game, its not popular. Then i'd say the best they could hope for is is to futher milk the C&C franchise.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
And directly across the street — in the exact same building as that Starbucks — there is another Starbucks.
Both across the street and in the same building? Do buildings in your city typically have streets running through them? I have seen Starbucks across the street from each other, and I find it rather absurd too, but they definitely weren't in the same building.
Dungeon Keeper MMO.
The only problem is the arguments over who geets to be the Horned Reaper and who gets to be the Keeper...
Remember that C&C is based upon the engine created for the game Dune II. If you want an MMO based upon the style of game, go after Dune! It's a hugely rich history, with larger than life chracaters, epic battles, and vast spaces. Remember that the collection of Tiberium was originally the collection of the Spice, Melange, upon which the whole Universe runs on...it allows the Navigators to fold space, and Paul Atreides, aka Muad'Dib, later to see the future. That could be a whole lot of fun! About the only Universe richer than the Dune is Star Wars, which, of course, borrowed from Dune in the first place.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
For DUST 514 the commander plays an RTS version of the FPS game.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Generals had the same "game out of sync" errors - can't remember exactly what they were called, but it soured us on playing it. And my group of friends LOVED the game.
Age of Empires (and Age of Kings) had this set-up to where on a game sync-loss, everyone would automatically save a current snapshot. Then one person could at least re-load their snapshot and continue the game. I never figured out why EA didn't do something like that.
Oh yea, +1 for RA/RA2. Westwood was the SHIT at making these fun.
Karnal
get your Starbucks fix.
Yeah, well I really don't think we have time for a hand job, Joe.
Squirrel!
The introduction of chracaters would get me back into the scene.
Squirrel!
I have not purchased a new game in years, why? Because they are the same old shit, the mechanics and basic rules of the games are all the same, which makes all the units basically the same regardless of whether you call it an Archer, a Musketeer, or a Rifleman.
Not only that but the twitch reflex keeps showing up in this games as well the standard build. In other words, having to time your production clicking while issuing orders like a madman to your combat units. Hell, at what point am I actually enjoying the game? One game I sort of like was Company of Heroes, however, the only thing I could really enjoy much of was the replay, so I could see the battles play out. I cannot enjoy the battles while playing the game because I am so busy doing other things. It is too much like work.
Well then maybe EA shouldn't have killed off some of the other MMO franchises its aquired over decade. R.I.P Earth and Beyond, EA never deserved the fanbase anyway. And economically speaking, I'm sure the upfront cost of walking into a market filled with juggernauts clashing for market share can't honestly look more appealing than making a good RTS for once.
The current cnc games only have like 100 players online at any given time.... where are these online players going to come from? lol
What's a "Classic MMO" ?
As for 3/4, yes.. EA already owns UO.. they could just re-purpose the engine, re-art for {XYZ Franchise} and call it done.
The -bad- tihng about top-down is generally your view distance is severally limited. Good for your frame-rates, bad for looking at the scenic vistas most 3d MMOs do goto some effort to include.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
You, moderating idiots, where else I am supposed to send this?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
So do what FFXI did where you could play First-Person, 3rd-Person trailing, 3/4 isometric, or fully top-down.
We're living in a world where the entire game-scape is rendered in 3-d anyways (at the very least in wire-frame). How difficult is it to have a movable camera?
There are three GameStops near me, one in the mall, and two in shopping centers next to the mall across the street from the Best Buy. They are all within a mile of each other.
Rumor has it that PS2 is in development now. Granted, there wasn't much of a "build base" component to PS, but I'd imagine PS would have to influence an MMO such as the one proposed here. I'd just be afraid that it would be Renegade all over again.
The second M and the O are redundant.
Let's just call them MRPG, MFPS and MRTS.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
It seems that a lot of games get murdered in the name of making things "better"
Previously I had played a lot of "Supreme Commander" (which, if you're a C&C fan and like to LAN, is very fun and the queuing system is awesome).
As finding internet competition became less easy, I bought the expansion (Forged Alliance). The gameplay mechanics got completely screwed up. Instead of a game with 3-4 tech levels and decent-length, semi-intelligent volleys back and forth, the while became "build massive army of basic units, grab resources, overrun enemy). In other words, it's all one big rush, which used to be the plague of C&C.
Seriously, is it too much to hope for that companies won't screw the mechanics of a game to make it a lame noob rushfest? They're called Realtime STRATEGY for a reason.
I think games should come with an upgrade after 4 years to work without CD, and should simply use the registration number for online play identification to weed out keys being shared.
I understand the shops fear piracy, but I'm kind of tired of playing discjockey when I switch games, and tired to fear scratching my cds or buying a drive that is incompatible with copy protection. I think Stardock does that one right.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
The game is tongue in cheek, but I think they've made a pretty neat step towards a style of MMO and RTS. s/massive/many/
It should be possible to make a more serious (and perhaps less chaotic game) in that style that is also a persistent world.
MMO's where the players spend nearly the entire game inside vehicles don't tend to do so hot. Witness AutoAssault and Pirates of the Burning Sea.
I used to be on that forums and site a lot, and that's not a legit source. Its one guys opinion (and the guy is a idiot, to be honest.) If you even say EA, and bad game in the same sentence, he comes after you. Huge EA fan boy. However, I wouldn't be all that surprised if EA did make a C&C MMO, but like most of there recent games, it would be a epic failure.
The problem with Dune is its lack of publicity. People who actually know Dune exists are mostly huge fans, but small in numbers.
...harvested all the Tiberium on my server :-(
The original C&C by Westwood had an AWESOME story line...with Michael Biehn, James Earl Jones & Kari Wuhrer in some of the title roles.
Well, it was a big success with the Sci-Fi Channel, er...Sy-Fi, doing *two* miniseries based upon the books. If it's good enough for that, I am sure it would do well. Add to that, the release of the latest books by Herbert's son...Lots of popularity there!
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
The ones I'm too lazy to list. :D
UO was at the top of my mind, of course. Their new client for Stygian Abyss could make for a decent C&C MMO client, if they ever get it running less than ass.