I felt like some folks took things personally this weekend, and I wanted to comment on that. My only bias is techno-happy, really. If there are any luddites on the site, I suppose I could have a fighting words war with them.
As the AC responding to your comment (who was modded down to 0) stated: That was the user's opinion, not mine. User opinions are constantly included in stories posted to Slashdot.
As for disliking the search engine, I use Google an average of about once every 5 minutes. It is like a kitty that I keep by my side, that I lovingly pet and stroke every once in a while to illicit a soft purr or sigh.
I tried to avoid putting an opinion into the writeup, but IMHO Chris had the idea that was most true to the spirit of the design challenge. His lateral thinking was really excellent to hear described, and in my mind conjured up a game that was part Rez, part DDR, part World of Warcraft's crafting aspect, and part slam dance poetry session. Just sitting in the audience I had a real sense of what he was trying to get across and where he wanted to go with it.
I respect Mr. Molyneux's vision a lot, but from other session writeups I've seen it seems like he made the demo to kill more than just the Emily Dickinson bird. Slapping the Dickinson license into your tech demo is cool and all, but not really in my idea of the challenge's spirit.
Will Wright, I think, half came up with USB Emily just to goof around. Even his goofing around (obviously) is good work, but he seemed almost embarrased to recieve the prize for the competition.
A while back we had a 2004 Board Game Gift Guide that linked to some good resources. You might try those folks.
Here are some other games that I have played and enjoyed -
Tikal: One of a set of three board games published by Rio Grande Games, the other two being Mexica and Java. Having played all three, Tikal is probably my favorite. In it you play an archeological team unearning mayan-esque ruins for the win. Lots of fun, 2-4 players and about an hour and a half or so needed. Family Friendly.
Cosmic Encounter: Definately a more "hardcore" title, the best way to think of this is like Pax Imperia or Galactic Civilization in boardgame format. Requires a large table and has *lots* of little pieces, but it's incredibly fun if you have the time and patience. 2-4 players and about 3 hours (or more, depending).
Dos Rios: An incredibly fun game about diverting a pair of rivers such that you have the most plentiful harvest, while avoiding the bandits and your fellow players. Family friendly fun, 2-4 players and about an hour and a half or so.
221-B Baker Street: An oldey, but a good game nonetheless. Each time you play you're solving a different case. You travel from location to location finding clues and trying to stop your fellow players from doing the same. Family Friendly, 2-4 players, 60 minutes or less.
From the article: "A deal between MLB and Take Two wouldn't change EA's plans in the area, though, as EA doesn't use the MLB branding on its baseball title, MVP Baseball - but smaller rivals in the sector would certainly be squeezed out, such as Sony's MLB range, the latest iteration of which is due out in March."
Maybe you, and they, wouldn't be wondering about why it wouldn't hurt EA if you read the article before commenting. Way to totally call me on my summarizing, dude.
Player accountability is something that older MMOG players have wanted for a very, very long time.
I wrote about it a while back. The ideal situation would be for a third party company to create a database where you could have a persistent identity across games. This idendity tag would follow you on all characters made across all games, ensuring that any stupidity on your part had actual repercussions in future online meetings. It would be a boon as well, because much like Ebay feedback good social and or adventuring interactions would be rewarded.
I'll conceed he was originally a construction worker.
However, in my defense: Yo, yo!/ It's the Mario Brothers/ And plumbin's their game/ Found the secret warp zone/ While working on the drain/ Lend the princess a hand/ In the Mushroom Land/ Comin' atcha with the plumbers/ You'll be hooked on the brothers!"
The start of my review says "Read on for my impressions of World of Warcraft as the game stands at Launch." I didn't take into account the lag and server queues when I wrote the review, because they're weren't an issue before launch, and are not going to be an issue six months from now.
As you (and a lot of folks) have said, it's not a flawless launch, but the only one I can think of that's done better is City of Heroes (which had to contend with a *much* smaller initial population rush).
I give the Blizzard techs mad kudos for keeping the game as stable as it is.
I wrestled with what score to give the game for quite a while.
It basically came down to this: I think half scores are copping out. Gamespot gave the game a 9.5 but didn't have a single complaint in the review, as far as I could tell, that would merit half a point being taken off.
I was planning on giving it a 9 until, as I say at the end of the review, I considered the inordinate amount of polish this game has. The polish really brings the game above and beyond basically every other MMOG out there.
Don't take a 10/10 as "perfection". There is no perfect game. I gave it a 10 because to I simply couldn't think of anything to complain about, and I know it's just going to get better as they add more content.
I don't think that 10s should be used regularly, but if any game warrants it it's this one.
Re:I want to, but should I?
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There are no actual *gameplay* elements that you need to have played the first game to understand.
As far as the plot goes, as other folks have commented here, they don't do a great job of recapping what happened in the first game. If you want to be on board from the first chapter a quick play through the first game would probably be a good idea.
You can even buy a partial remake via Steam, if you're so inclined. They just reused all the old textures, so it's not terribly pretty, but the added physics and the pretty water are nice touches.
You are entirely entitled to do whatever you want to what is indeed your property.
However, if you sign up for Xbox Live you're signing a service contract that states somewhere in there that modded machines aren't allowed. MS is perfectly within their rights to make that requirement a part of the deal. In fact, I appreciate it. Knowing that a modded cheater isn't going to be gaming with me is a reassurance.
I get a little frustrated when people decide that just because they bought one piece of a puzzle, they own the whole damn puzzle too.
Buying an Xbox doesn't mean you get to decide how they run the Live service. Buying Diablo 2 doesn't give you the right to run your own Battle.net server. Read the fine print before you sign on the dotted line.
There are indeed lots of folks who play Roleplaying Games that are socially..."special", but I would wager that the vast majority of RPG gamers are socially adept, bathe, and have no problem with the fairer sex.
I wish I could quote you a study here, but I don't have one available. I can only talk from my personal experience.
Among my own circle of gaming friends, nearly every one of them has a girlfriend. Many of the girlfriends game with us. I am happily in a circle of gamers that includes half a dozen women. This is not typical, from what I understand, but it is becoming less rare as the hobby regains popularity thanks to the D&D revival phenomenon. Within the group there is a married couple, an engaged couple (myself and my SO, actually), and a couple that has been together for almost 6 years.
We get together twice a week in two groups of four, with another bunch of folks that I haven't had the chance to game with yet getting together on another night during the week. Everyone shows up bathed, clothed, and no one stares at the women when we game. Of the group, I'm the only one who you'd have to worry about lifting dead weight if I were to fall unconcious. Everyone else in the group is of normal human proportions.
Again, I don't have data so I'm not sure of the general trends.
I do know your odd, cut and pasted reply to this story is a pretty shallow look at a diverse group of people who have a penchant for storytelling.
While I certainly understand the perspective of the offended players, I can understand the point of view of the developers as well.
This is a fascinating example of why, despite what a bunch of people in this thread have stated, Online worlds are every bit as real as the 'real' one because they're inhabited by real people. Events in a MMOG can make you happy, sad, or angry just as easily as real world events. The line between the game world and the real one blurs because of the player's participation in both.
I see the method to Teppy's madness, and it'll be interesting to see what future choices he makes along these lines will be.
Am I really the only other person besides Nick Yee who cares about data-mining MMOG players?
The reason I found this interesting is because of the benefits the project gives to massive game designers. By participating in the survey, gamers clue designers into what we find most important in online massive games. For those folks who are into raiding, the difficulties in running a raid, pinned down and categorized, should allow future and current games to provide tools for raid organization. The social ramifications of bringing together such disperate people of class, race, and gender is fascinating to look at, too. I personally got a kick out of specific raid stories, regardless of their success or failure. The quantification of common experiences amongst gamers makes for good reading, sez I.
Settlers of Catan is a German Board game created by Mayfair Games. In it, you use cardboard tiles to randomly assemble an island (Catan). You then begin the game by placing two settlements on the board. Each tile on the island represents a resource, with a number between 1 and 12. You roll a pair of dice, and the number that shows up dictates what resources "appear" for that round. Resources are used to purchase roads, settlements, and cultural improvements.
It's very simple to learn, but *very* hard to master, and is possibly one of the best board games ever made.
Up until I was hired on as the Slashdot Games editor, I was an editor over at MMORPGDot.com, where I was known as Dialogue. I also recently worked with simoniker on the Gaming Hacks book for O'Reilly Press. I do have a website, located at Randomdialogue.net. I don't keep my editor name linked to it because I'm not sure I could handle the traffic.
It's interesting to compare this situation with that experienced by the developers of City of Heroes. There, the developers blabbed about their pie in the sky ideas to the press years before the game came out. As the launch came closer and massive revisions of the original concept were done, disillusioned fans rose up in arms. A good subsequent design and a successful launch has since made CoH a fan favorite, but even today Jack Emmert (the lead designer) states that that was the biggest mistake the team made in the design phase. Given Mr. Molyneaux's experience in the industry, my tendency is to think that the marketing department may have had something to do with the high expectations for the game. All that said, I think it's very honorable for him to fall on his sword this way for the game. A man with principles, there.
Last year's winners are still very fun to play with. Puzzle Pirates gets daily use around my home by both myself and my fiance, and Bontago got some heavy play at the last LAN party I attended.
In all fairness to the Lucasarts/SOE folks, the community relations folks there (specifically Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl) do a really good job of keeping the troll-pits (the forums) under control and happy.
As is always the case with a MMOG, the forums folks only represents maybe 5% of the playerbase. The folks who are having fun with the game are just out there playing.
At the same time, combat is horribly imbalanced. PvP is a joke and from all the commentary I've seen they're losing players pretty quick. This delay in the combat rebalance seems like a very poor choice on their part.
Their institutional decision to favour new content over making their current content solid is (IMHO) a weekness that SOE has on the whole. If you'll recall, the EQ folks pushed back the Omens of War expansion so that they could take care of their problems from the Gates of Discord expansion. The EQ folks have finally gotten it (after 5 years) and I really have to tip my hat to them. You make players happy by listening to them. The SWG folks should learn a lesson from their brethren.
Agreed. The first game that allows a pay-by-the hour plan, or a pre-paid hours card that allows you to roll over your time from month to month is going to be very well recieved.
> I'm certain that City of Heroes cost NCSoft less money to develop and launch than Valve has spent on Half-life2, for example.
Absolutley true. CoH is rumoured to have been a very quick, efficient and cheap development cycle. The reason for this, of course, is because NCSoft hooked up with Cryptic to do it. Cryptic's relative anonymity actually helped it (I think), because they didn't have egos running the development and production side of things. Hook that into the NCSoft Money and Marketing Machine, and voila! Really Really Good Game.
> While the genre may run into a barrier at some point (particularly if they continue to insist on monthly fees), it isn't there yet.
Have to differ with you there. If you look at Sir Bruce's charts, it's fairly obvious where some of those 500,000 FFXI players came from: Straight out of EQ's pockets. I agree that I don't think we have hit a wall, but MMO Gamers are fickle and flighty beasts. They'll jump ship at the first new-and-shiny for greener pastures, unless you have them so engaged and interested they never want to leave. How many EQ players are still at that stage? I love EQ, and I hope it survives to hit it's 10th anniversary, but I think it's going to lose quite a few more players in the coming years.
I would like to add that I think it's simply shameful that Mythica, TFLO, and WHO died the way they did. Developing MMOGs is not rocket science, and their are plenty of people in the industry who have begun to really get the feel for the process. A year and a half behind after two and three years of development is just ridiculous. At the same time, developming a MMOG should take a long time. If MS and Games Workshop wasn't ready for the long haul, they should have looked at the process before they invested a penny.
Personally, I'm just very frustrated by all the talent, hard work, and ingenuity that gets flushed when a MMOG dies before it goes live. All those developers could have been working on something else, something that will see the light of day. Horizons may be heading for the toilet in the next few months, but at least the developers ideas got out into the open.
There are currently over 400,000 players registered to the Everquest service. FFXI broke that number since the beginning of the year and is rapidly heading towards the half a million mark.
Upcoming games with mass market appeal like Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft could do even better than that.
A stretch of land in a game with a population that large is a giant captive audience. Any message, commercial, political, moral, or otherwise, that you want to get out can be shoved down the meme-holes of people playing these games by purchasing some land and throwing up a virtual billboard or store.
Now, second life has no where near those numbers. But if more games begin to use the model presented by 2L or There....
People right now are paying something like $250 for 10 pieces of gold in Dark Age of Camelot. Why should property be any different? Percieved value trumps everything, dude.
The XBox component would have made it unique. I know that I would have liked to try a MMOG via XBox live.
It would also have been the first MMOG to natively and ubiquitously support voicechat.
I think MS has made a mistake in ditching the MMOG market. It may be getting crowded, but the propertie s they were creating had features that set themselves apart from the crowd in interesting ways.
Mythica and TFL would have been cool games. A combined 5 or 6 years of dev time, flushed down the drain because Microsoft got twitchy about the market.
My hope is that MS will try to recoup it's losses by selling the properties to other development companies, but I kind of doubt that will happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Personal, not at all. :)
I felt like some folks took things personally this weekend, and I wanted to comment on that. My only bias is techno-happy, really. If there are any luddites on the site, I suppose I could have a fighting words war with them.
As the AC responding to your comment (who was modded down to 0) stated: That was the user's opinion, not mine. User opinions are constantly included in stories posted to Slashdot.
As for disliking the search engine, I use Google an average of about once every 5 minutes. It is like a kitty that I keep by my side, that I lovingly pet and stroke every once in a while to illicit a soft purr or sigh.
I tried to avoid putting an opinion into the writeup, but IMHO Chris had the idea that was most true to the spirit of the design challenge. His lateral thinking was really excellent to hear described, and in my mind conjured up a game that was part Rez, part DDR, part World of Warcraft's crafting aspect, and part slam dance poetry session. Just sitting in the audience I had a real sense of what he was trying to get across and where he wanted to go with it.
I respect Mr. Molyneux's vision a lot, but from other session writeups I've seen it seems like he made the demo to kill more than just the Emily Dickinson bird. Slapping the Dickinson license into your tech demo is cool and all, but not really in my idea of the challenge's spirit.
Will Wright, I think, half came up with USB Emily just to goof around. Even his goofing around (obviously) is good work, but he seemed almost embarrased to recieve the prize for the competition.
A while back we had a 2004 Board Game Gift Guide that linked to some good resources. You might try those folks.
Here are some other games that I have played and enjoyed -
Tikal: One of a set of three board games published by Rio Grande Games, the other two being Mexica and Java. Having played all three, Tikal is probably my favorite. In it you play an archeological team unearning mayan-esque ruins for the win. Lots of fun, 2-4 players and about an hour and a half or so needed. Family Friendly.
Cosmic Encounter: Definately a more "hardcore" title, the best way to think of this is like Pax Imperia or Galactic Civilization in boardgame format. Requires a large table and has *lots* of little pieces, but it's incredibly fun if you have the time and patience. 2-4 players and about 3 hours (or more, depending).
Dos Rios: An incredibly fun game about diverting a pair of rivers such that you have the most plentiful harvest, while avoiding the bandits and your fellow players. Family friendly fun, 2-4 players and about an hour and a half or so.
221-B Baker Street: An oldey, but a good game nonetheless. Each time you play you're solving a different case. You travel from location to location finding clues and trying to stop your fellow players from doing the same. Family Friendly, 2-4 players, 60 minutes or less.
From the article: "A deal between MLB and Take Two wouldn't change EA's plans in the area, though, as EA doesn't use the MLB branding on its baseball title, MVP Baseball - but smaller rivals in the sector would certainly be squeezed out, such as Sony's MLB range, the latest iteration of which is due out in March."
Maybe you, and they, wouldn't be wondering about why it wouldn't hurt EA if you read the article before commenting. Way to totally call me on my summarizing, dude.
Player accountability is something that older MMOG players have wanted for a very, very long time.
I wrote about it a while back. The ideal situation would be for a third party company to create a database where you could have a persistent identity across games. This idendity tag would follow you on all characters made across all games, ensuring that any stupidity on your part had actual repercussions in future online meetings. It would be a boon as well, because much like Ebay feedback good social and or adventuring interactions would be rewarded.
PA post strips Monday - Wednesday - Friday.
We'll be hosting them here as well until this series is done, though the rest of the strips will be Games sectional only.
I know!
I thought that was a huge oversight as well.
Good to know I'm not the only one.
I'll conceed he was originally a construction worker.
/ / / / / / / /
However, in my defense:
Yo, yo!
It's the Mario Brothers
And plumbin's their game
Found the secret warp zone
While working on the drain
Lend the princess a hand
In the Mushroom Land
Comin' atcha with the plumbers
You'll be hooked on the brothers!"
No problem.
The start of my review says "Read on for my impressions of World of Warcraft as the game stands at Launch." I didn't take into account the lag and server queues when I wrote the review, because they're weren't an issue before launch, and are not going to be an issue six months from now.
As you (and a lot of folks) have said, it's not a flawless launch, but the only one I can think of that's done better is City of Heroes (which had to contend with a *much* smaller initial population rush).
I give the Blizzard techs mad kudos for keeping the game as stable as it is.
I wrestled with what score to give the game for quite a while.
It basically came down to this: I think half scores are copping out. Gamespot gave the game a 9.5 but didn't have a single complaint in the review, as far as I could tell, that would merit half a point being taken off.
I was planning on giving it a 9 until, as I say at the end of the review, I considered the inordinate amount of polish this game has. The polish really brings the game above and beyond basically every other MMOG out there.
Don't take a 10/10 as "perfection". There is no perfect game. I gave it a 10 because to I simply couldn't think of anything to complain about, and I know it's just going to get better as they add more content.
I don't think that 10s should be used regularly, but if any game warrants it it's this one.
There are no actual *gameplay* elements that you need to have played the first game to understand.
As far as the plot goes, as other folks have commented here, they don't do a great job of recapping what happened in the first game. If you want to be on board from the first chapter a quick play through the first game would probably be a good idea.
You can even buy a partial remake via Steam, if you're so inclined. They just reused all the old textures, so it's not terribly pretty, but the added physics and the pretty water are nice touches.
I agree completely.
You are entirely entitled to do whatever you want to what is indeed your property.
However, if you sign up for Xbox Live you're signing a service contract that states somewhere in there that modded machines aren't allowed. MS is perfectly within their rights to make that requirement a part of the deal. In fact, I appreciate it. Knowing that a modded cheater isn't going to be gaming with me is a reassurance.
I get a little frustrated when people decide that just because they bought one piece of a puzzle, they own the whole damn puzzle too.
Buying an Xbox doesn't mean you get to decide how they run the Live service. Buying Diablo 2 doesn't give you the right to run your own Battle.net server. Read the fine print before you sign on the dotted line.
There are indeed lots of folks who play Roleplaying Games that are socially..."special", but I would wager that the vast majority of RPG gamers are socially adept, bathe, and have no problem with the fairer sex.
I wish I could quote you a study here, but I don't have one available. I can only talk from my personal experience.
Among my own circle of gaming friends, nearly every one of them has a girlfriend. Many of the girlfriends game with us. I am happily in a circle of gamers that includes half a dozen women. This is not typical, from what I understand, but it is becoming less rare as the hobby regains popularity thanks to the D&D revival phenomenon. Within the group there is a married couple, an engaged couple (myself and my SO, actually), and a couple that has been together for almost 6 years.
We get together twice a week in two groups of four, with another bunch of folks that I haven't had the chance to game with yet getting together on another night during the week. Everyone shows up bathed, clothed, and no one stares at the women when we game. Of the group, I'm the only one who you'd have to worry about lifting dead weight if I were to fall unconcious. Everyone else in the group is of normal human proportions.
Again, I don't have data so I'm not sure of the general trends.
I do know your odd, cut and pasted reply to this story is a pretty shallow look at a diverse group of people who have a penchant for storytelling.
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
While I certainly understand the perspective of the offended players, I can understand the point of view of the developers as well.
This is a fascinating example of why, despite what a bunch of people in this thread have stated, Online worlds are every bit as real as the 'real' one because they're inhabited by real people. Events in a MMOG can make you happy, sad, or angry just as easily as real world events. The line between the game world and the real one blurs because of the player's participation in both.
I see the method to Teppy's madness, and it'll be interesting to see what future choices he makes along these lines will be.
Am I really the only other person besides Nick Yee who cares about data-mining MMOG players?
The reason I found this interesting is because of the benefits the project gives to massive game designers. By participating in the survey, gamers clue designers into what we find most important in online massive games. For those folks who are into raiding, the difficulties in running a raid, pinned down and categorized, should allow future and current games to provide tools for raid organization. The social ramifications of bringing together such disperate people of class, race, and gender is fascinating to look at, too. I personally got a kick out of specific raid stories, regardless of their success or failure. The quantification of common experiences amongst gamers makes for good reading, sez I.
Settlers of Catan is a German Board game created by Mayfair Games. In it, you use cardboard tiles to randomly assemble an island (Catan). You then begin the game by placing two settlements on the board. Each tile on the island represents a resource, with a number between 1 and 12. You roll a pair of dice, and the number that shows up dictates what resources "appear" for that round. Resources are used to purchase roads, settlements, and cultural improvements.
It's very simple to learn, but *very* hard to master, and is possibly one of the best board games ever made.
Up until I was hired on as the Slashdot Games editor, I was an editor over at MMORPGDot.com, where I was known as Dialogue. I also recently worked with simoniker on the Gaming Hacks book for O'Reilly Press. I do have a website, located at Randomdialogue.net. I don't keep my editor name linked to it because I'm not sure I could handle the traffic.
It's interesting to compare this situation with that experienced by the developers of City of Heroes. There, the developers blabbed about their pie in the sky ideas to the press years before the game came out. As the launch came closer and massive revisions of the original concept were done, disillusioned fans rose up in arms. A good subsequent design and a successful launch has since made CoH a fan favorite, but even today Jack Emmert (the lead designer) states that that was the biggest mistake the team made in the design phase. Given Mr. Molyneaux's experience in the industry, my tendency is to think that the marketing department may have had something to do with the high expectations for the game. All that said, I think it's very honorable for him to fall on his sword this way for the game. A man with principles, there.
Last year's winners are still very fun to play with. Puzzle Pirates gets daily use around my home by both myself and my fiance, and Bontago got some heavy play at the last LAN party I attended.
In all fairness to the Lucasarts/SOE folks, the community relations folks there (specifically Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl) do a really good job of keeping the troll-pits (the forums) under control and happy.
As is always the case with a MMOG, the forums folks only represents maybe 5% of the playerbase. The folks who are having fun with the game are just out there playing.
At the same time, combat is horribly imbalanced. PvP is a joke and from all the commentary I've seen they're losing players pretty quick. This delay in the combat rebalance seems like a very poor choice on their part.
Their institutional decision to favour new content over making their current content solid is (IMHO) a weekness that SOE has on the whole. If you'll recall, the EQ folks pushed back the Omens of War expansion so that they could take care of their problems from the Gates of Discord expansion. The EQ folks have finally gotten it (after 5 years) and I really have to tip my hat to them. You make players happy by listening to them. The SWG folks should learn a lesson from their brethren.
> Monthly fees are not a requirement.
Agreed. The first game that allows a pay-by-the hour plan, or a pre-paid hours card that allows you to roll over your time from month to month is going to be very well recieved.
> I'm certain that City of Heroes cost NCSoft less money to develop and launch than Valve has spent on Half-life2, for example.
Absolutley true. CoH is rumoured to have been a very quick, efficient and cheap development cycle. The reason for this, of course, is because NCSoft hooked up with Cryptic to do it. Cryptic's relative anonymity actually helped it (I think), because they didn't have egos running the development and production side of things. Hook that into the NCSoft Money and Marketing Machine, and voila! Really Really Good Game.
> While the genre may run into a barrier at some point (particularly if they continue to insist on monthly fees), it isn't there yet.
Have to differ with you there. If you look at Sir Bruce's charts, it's fairly obvious where some of those 500,000 FFXI players came from: Straight out of EQ's pockets. I agree that I don't think we have hit a wall, but MMO Gamers are fickle and flighty beasts. They'll jump ship at the first new-and-shiny for greener pastures, unless you have them so engaged and interested they never want to leave. How many EQ players are still at that stage? I love EQ, and I hope it survives to hit it's 10th anniversary, but I think it's going to lose quite a few more players in the coming years.
I would like to add that I think it's simply shameful that Mythica, TFLO, and WHO died the way they did. Developing MMOGs is not rocket science, and their are plenty of people in the industry who have begun to really get the feel for the process. A year and a half behind after two and three years of development is just ridiculous. At the same time, developming a MMOG should take a long time. If MS and Games Workshop wasn't ready for the long haul, they should have looked at the process before they invested a penny.
Personally, I'm just very frustrated by all the talent, hard work, and ingenuity that gets flushed when a MMOG dies before it goes live. All those developers could have been working on something else, something that will see the light of day. Horizons may be heading for the toilet in the next few months, but at least the developers ideas got out into the open.
Why?
There are currently over 400,000 players registered to the Everquest service. FFXI broke that number since the beginning of the year and is rapidly heading towards the half a million mark.
Upcoming games with mass market appeal like Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft could do even better than that.
A stretch of land in a game with a population that large is a giant captive audience. Any message, commercial, political, moral, or otherwise, that you want to get out can be shoved down the meme-holes of people playing these games by purchasing some land and throwing up a virtual billboard or store.
Now, second life has no where near those numbers. But if more games begin to use the model presented by 2L or There....
People right now are paying something like $250 for 10 pieces of gold in Dark Age of Camelot. Why should property be any different? Percieved value trumps everything, dude.
The XBox component would have made it unique. I know that I would have liked to try a MMOG via XBox live.
It would also have been the first MMOG to natively and ubiquitously support voicechat.
I think MS has made a mistake in ditching the MMOG market. It may be getting crowded, but the propertie s they were creating had features that set themselves apart from the crowd in interesting ways.
Mythica and TFL would have been cool games. A combined 5 or 6 years of dev time, flushed down the drain because Microsoft got twitchy about the market.
My hope is that MS will try to recoup it's losses by selling the properties to other development companies, but I kind of doubt that will happen.