f13.net

Mourning is back.  I can't remember if this is the 4th or 5th incarnation.  Of course, most people never got their money back so the previous company owned by Porno Dave promised those people 5 or 6 months free game time when it released.  Which it did.  Then they put it back in beta.  I don't know if it's in beta now or alpha or what.  They claim there is a new dev people.  Maybe it's just a coincidence that the new dev team seem to have mostly the same name and live in Romania.  What are the odds?  Anyway  THIS  (http://www.loudant.com/) company owns it now.  This "game" is cursed, I think.

Well none of the game website's links work, so they're off to a roaring start.

Feet, you sure are a glutton for punishment.  How do you keep up with the inconsequential?

People email me stuff, meanie.   :cry:

http://www.myspace.com/blackhat840 (http://www.myspace.com/blackhat840)

Myspace of Nuanced Entertainment's owner. He cleaned it up a lot since I first saw it. The colors were changed, and most of the content was removed.

http://www.devmaster.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5959 (http://www.devmaster.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5959)

There is a rumour that the owner of one of the companies is only 17. 

Adam's myspace originally said he was 17 years old. He changed his age as well.

Does that work?  You mean I can change my age?  Just like that?  As of rignt now, I'm 22.  If you don't believe me, just ask some dumbass named Adam.

YAY!

Half the people on his friends list ask "who r u". They should just follow the dots. Adam McCall has left way too much information out there.

Oh wait, he's not 17, he's 19. Which I tend to believe. If you're going to lie at that age, you'd probably want to lie in such a way that you can drink legally.

About one week ago myspace said he was seventeen. Was he was hit with one of those age changing ray guns? Myspace gets age from the DoB you provide. I doubt he intentionally put it in wrong the first time.

Sooo... where do I get one of these age changing ray guns?

And it doesn't really matter how old he is.  I've been in the game he bought.  It's worse than awful. 

That got me intrigued. Aliases to google: Vertilious, brian72282, darcnier88

In 2003 (age 14?) he was a Dragon Empires fanboi in a would-be guild called the Red Dragons (gluttons for punishment who later got behind Dark & Light). He told them he had a company called HyperCore Corporation that was developing a MMOG and asked for their help (http://rl.calego.cc/index.php?s=35109c6066d1ab781f809e2f732f3abf&showtopic=185) in testing and developing. They enthusiastically agreed. Two years later, they seemed cynical (http://rl.calego.cc/index.php?showtopic=1288) when he claimed to have a company of 20 people working on a game called Draclian Signus. Their reaction was "remember the book? remember the last mmorpg?". He claimed the book in question existed and asked them to give him two weeks to upload it, but nobody remembered to follow up.

He received generous help with 3D modelling of trees (http://www.truevision3d.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6885&sid=873b82216ed9aae0ce114228858a0d99), claiming it was for a school project. He posted on EQ emulation sites and co-ran an emulated server (http://eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?p=98574) called Draclian Signus. When Dragon Empires was cancelled, he proposed buying out (http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:fcn6ASGQebgJ:realmsoftorment.net/forums/showthread.php3%3Fs%3D2087f35716c875972596a04a78abdc12%26postid%3D199668+Hyper-Core+Corporation&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=27&client=firefox-a) the technology, saying his companies were HyperCore and Sorizian Animation Gaming Studios. But later, when canvassing community reaction to buying out Mourning, he said Dragon Empires had been way too expensive.

Even before Mourning was shut down, he claimed he knew it would be shut down and was in negotiations to buy it, resulting in an awesome thread (http://www.mpog.com/discussion2.cfm?thread=43017&bhcp=1). Even while supposedly in these negotiations, he posted that Mourning's backer Dave could "lick my balls". A reply from Egomancer denied the buyout, but that didn't stop the thread.

As late as March this year, he was even posting on the Vanguard forums about licensing their modified Unreal engine (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43563).

And yes, back when a 17-year-old of today would have been aged 12, brian72282 was seeking threesomes on Yahoo and claiming to be 19. Makes me glad there was no Internet to record my childhood inquisitiveness.

1) Where the hell did he get the money (I would think that even a piece of crap like Mourning would cost too much for a 12 year old...Or a 17 year old...Whatever)?

2) Why doesn't this story JUST END?? How could it get any more bizarre than it already was? WTF?

Maybe he got the money because he's mummie's proper little soldier!

I bet he's the type of kid I would've beaten up on the playground. Also, he got picked last at dodgeball. Or whatever they do where he's from. Dodge a heavy rock.

I looked a bit more, and I think there might be two people behind the posts I linked. Adam McCall (darcnier88, vertilious) and Brian ____ (brian72282, who also goes by azurarutlan). Everything I linked is Adam, until the Mourning buyout which is where Brian kicks in. Adam is HyperCore Corporation and Brian is Sorizian Animation Gaming Studios. It's likely they met in the emu community and came together for the Dragon Empires bid.

It makes more sense because brian72282 was looking for a threesome and claiming to be 19 in 2001. Posting as Azurarutlan, he asked about 1980s cartoons and claimed to be married. If 72282 is 7/22/82, that would give Brian a 1980s cartoon-watching childhood and make him 19 in 2001. If darcnier88 means born in 1988, that fits with Adam's age.

Fun with azurarutlan and Rubies of Eventide (http://www.eventide.net/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=GenDiscussion&Number=9870&Forum=,All_Forums,&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=9870&Search=true&where=&Name=906&daterange=&newerval=&newertype=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post9870):
Leading to an abortive event (http://www.eventide.net/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Events&Number=10895&Forum=,All_Forums,&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=10895&Search=true&where=&Name=906&daterange=&newerval=&newertype=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post10895).

More on Brian's game industry career (http://www.eventide.net/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=20998&page=109&view=collapsed&sb=11&o=&fpart=1) from the Rubies of Eventide forums:

Azurarutlan is banned from (http://www.forum.ragezone.com/online-gaming/looking-79597.html) something called Ragezone. But someone quoted an Azurarutlan Ragezone post (http://www.lordofchaos.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=662&view=findpost&p=2221) about Blizzard:

But best of all, Azurarutlan ran a cooking series (http://www.girlzgametoo.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=950) for GirlzGameToo.

kinda misleading info don'cha think?  did that set off an uncontrolled spasm of nerd jolly's through
your body or something?  :-D
Looks like this entire thread is one big erotic conspiricy fest with no solid facts anywhere in it.

there are a few "facts" though....

Actually mourning doesn't appear to be "back". Probably some old assets being used.  As you can see the site is clearly called ThronesOfChaos and owned by a company called LoudAntSoftware llc who has done work for
companies like Sony Pictures and even done some things for Guild Wars.
http://www.sonypictures.com/games/thedavincicode/index.php?hs308=
http://www.sonypictures.com/games/bewitched
http://loudant.com/gallery/guildwars/index.html

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/709/709875p1.html



I dunno about all this "pron" stuff but if your really so hung up about companies being involved in pron (which probably 99% are) than maybe you should go cancel your cable TV since Time Warner has tons of adult channels on their networks... hell , even the owner of S2Games , savage 1 and 2 owns adultrevenueservice, like the biggest adult affiliate program on the net..
MarcD is his name I think.
I could even find posts he made on some huge adult webmaster forums showing off the game there if i really bother to look. everyone knows.. nobody cares. get over it.

Huh?

People are posting about it because they like a trainwreck.  Mourning is the most worthless piece of shit in the history of MMO's (and that's saying something...Because they're all pieces of shit to begin with). Pr0n, 12 year old owners or not.

The death of Wish was one of the most dramatic deaths ever. Never made it into a proper beta. Mourning could be a 200 page monster before this ends. Or 2 pages at LEAST.

At least Wish had a design document. I think.

Wow! I didn't know they developed those awesome flash games. That changes everything. I have never seen such high quality Bejeweled clones before. They are obviously a team of professionals with years of experience.

If you don't agree just look at the CEO of Loud Ant. (http://www.myspace.com/benkorb) 

does any of this possibly matter?  would you give your CC details to any of these people?  No

There's a good point.  I wonder if the sale of Mourning included the credit card details of those people who paid for the game?  Given the past behaviour of Porno Dave and the recent strangeness of whoever these new people are, I would not be at all surprised.

As for "nickatnight", keep your innocence, my old son.  Never grow up.  You are too cute for words!

Oh no......

Also hi Signe and anyone else I might know :D

Signe, where did you find information that they're mostly the same people or based in Romania? I only saw some info that they were located in the US, but of course, that was what *they* claimed...

As for their "experience"?
Yikes...
The Da Vinci Code and Bewitched games were made by the old developers.

When the aliens come and cleanse us from the planet in fire, I plan on blaming Myspace pages like that.

I wish Schild would run a cooking series.  His recipe in the game-a-day threads looked delicious.

I saw it on one of the new people's websites.  Someone asked a question in their forums and the guy from the new company said that they had kept some of the same devs.  I'll see if I can find it.  I just don't remember where it was.

Edit:

 THIS  (http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/37720/page/129) is the first post I saw on that particular subject:

The post where I thought one of the new owners or someone said that "yes, some of the developers from the old game are still here"  seems to have poofed, or I can't find it.  I was pretty sure it was on the official board.  The people associated with the game now claim that no dev involved with the old game is on the new dev team.  I'm sure I didn't accidentally make it up!   It also seems odd that Adonys and Egomonster both worked for Loud Ant in the past.  I do remember them chatting about their great game that Sony or someone published.  One of the companies say they also work for NCsoft.  Sheesh.. who knows?   It's not like anyone is going to play this horrible thing!

PS  Hiya, Aelf!

The only reason I can think of to register and make that post would be some connection with LoudAnt or one of the people named above. It's like something Brian would do (http://www.mpog.com/discussion2.cfm?thread=43017&bhcp=1).

I jumped into this thread and dug up Adam and Brian's pasts only because:
* It's an interesting journey of kids obsessed with MMOGs and their desperate urge to be MMOG developers.
* I'm not claiming to be good at it, but I work in news journalism. Piecing information together is a good workout.

Mourning is a standard topic for a MMOG forum in the Lum the Mad diaspora. You may want to convince the world that you haven't resurrected Mourning and you're only using its assets, but it's unlikely to wash here. And Porno Dave is Porno Dave, but that was the only time porn was mentioned in the thread. Why did that set you off? Is there another way this is all linked to porn?

Doesn't it all eventually come back around to porn? It's 80% of the reason most of us have internet connections to begin with...

Hello new friend. Welcome. We like new people here, and we are completely oblivious to bad pr spin. Can we hold hands and sing songs?

The internet is serious business.

Thank you for reminding me why I hate MySpace.

I welcome our new Myspace-cleansing overlords.

So,there are no more romanians working on this?

It says in your profile that you are from Romania and your sig is very suspicious. What news of the Abysmal engine?

Its crappy,atleast in Mourning.I was a tester for Mourning.Had hopes for it.

Did you visit Cock $teamers' (http://www.myspace.com/benkorb) myspace? It's almost just like Adam's before the edit.

That is a fucking offense to the World Wide Web. Tim-Berners Lee should bash that fucker's head in with a baseball bat than violate the corpse.

This game is slowly going from being the new Horizons to being the new Dawn.  Considering the fact that there IS an actual game in there somewhere (however shitty) that real people have really played, that's damn impressive.  Fetapults plz, ok?

It went past Horizons territory a long, long time ago. Horizons at least had a standout crafting system.

That wasn't with Loud Ant (as far as I know). It was the old dev team who made those games, or at least, that's what they said at the time. Which just makes it even odder that Loud Ant now claims to have made them...  :roll:

Ok Im confused and need a list

1. Darkfall
2. Dark and Light
3. Wish
4. Mourning
5. Dawn

what else?

I don't know, Spoon.  It's all very confusing!  Maybe whoever it was who made that little game and is now making Mourning of Chaos bought all the companies involved.  Or maybe they're just making it up and hoping more people will send them more free money.   The more I read about it, the more confused I become!

Darkfall is pure vaporware. It doesn't exist in any way, shape, or form -- And in my opinion, that's better than being an aborted piece of shit.

Nice work folks, especially tale. You put my research to shame.

Rune Conquest
Dominus Online



It looks like Cock $teamers is already making stupid promises (http://www.thronesofchaos.com/community/showpost.php?p=103&postcount=5) he will never keep.

Still, Warcry believes in it to the point they released an interview (http://www.warcry.com/scripts/columns/view_sectionalt.phtml?site=15&id=499&colid=9722) about "the most robust PvP system I have seen in years." just 2 weeks ago.

From the interview intro:
"Having been part of the pre-patch 16 era of Ultima Online I am reminded of the incredible feelings that PvP once gave me when I think about Darkfall.", by David Greene.

EDIT:
"Warcry- What about collision?

Darkfall Team- You collide against everything in our world..."

FWIW, I don't care if a game misses it's announced deadline(s).  What bugs me is the groupthink that you must first start hyping a game YEARS before it's even ready for Beta.  You can see this with every unlaunched title, for instance, on mmorpg.com.  There's just a real lack of credibility that creeps in when multiple providers always try to one-up the other with more outlandish features, but don't even have screenshots or a closed Beta for people to verify.  And I don't think a lot of Korean MMO's work this way.   

People have seen the actual game.
Or rather a dude has seen the actual game. He wrote an article about it that was linked on Sinister's site (afraidyet.net) a while back.

Anyway, the game will be crap :P

The real problem with MMO's is that you need a shitload of money only to have the chance (that will probably go wasted anyway, but that's another story) to release a good game.
Of course, without said shitload, you can only hope in some sort of movie-screenplay-worth (http://www.eve-online.com/) talent based miracle, apparently.
Otherwise you are so doomed (yes, in advance).

Money or not, that's not what screwed up Mourning.

Quoted from an article (http://www.krelslibrary.org/interview.html) I ran into recently:


And it only gets worse...

Durchfall (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durchfall)? Ach, entschuldigung, ich habe es falsch gehoert.

Vanguard.  :rimshot:

It looks like he edited his profile already. (http://www.myspace.com/benkorb) The display name was changed to just "Ben", and he removed the company section.

When I look at that all I can think of is these guys. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDeWJqKx3Y0)

I was going to agree, but what abour korean Mcdonald mmorpgs? Take SCO I was loviing so much recently - it has like 10 skills in total, 8 simple maps, 30 ship and weapon models, 20 mobs plus half of the code is blanatant reuse from Knight Online. Seriously - it looks like they're selliing DIYmmorpg kits for 19.99 somewhere on korean interweb.

I'd guess that if you took the money that gullible investors put into any of the 'also ran' games listed above, and spent it on resources in the far east, you'd be able to get the number of developer hours that companies like Blizzard and SOE put into their games. Maybe not in Korea, but certainly nearby.

Programing sweatshops? :-o

What would prevent skilled Indian/Malaysian coder landing a well paid job in Korean/US/Japanese company?
I don't think you can get quality programming hours cheap anywhere.

Provided you have project managers who speak the language, you can, and people do. Also, not sweatshops - lower cost of living. As for what stops well educated programmers from landing those lucrative positions in other countries - immigration law and/or a desire to live well in their own country. That said, we're handing out visas reasonably quickly to foreign IT workers. We have to - there's been a drop in college aged people, a growth in science and engineering jobs, and we keep filling up our law faculties with the blue blood and promoting liberal arts among the subjugated groups in our society, leaving a substantial shortfall.

But without going too deep into this, I'll stand behind my suggestion that you can make games cheaper in other counties if you have the will to.

Aye, read this from American McGee's blog from yesterday (http://www.americanmcgee.com/wordpress/?p=135)

Saw this linked on mmorpg.com:


Hello all!

I would like to take a few moments to bring everyone up to speed with what
has been happening lately with Thrones of Chaos and Loud Ant Software.

Over the past few months we have been contacted with numerous offers
ranging from publishing to the full aquisition of Thrones of Chaos. We are
currently in the very final stages of accepting an aquisition deal with a
world-renowned corporation. Once complete, Loud Ant will move into the role
of providing support and continued development services for the title after commercial launch in 2007.

Further details will be made available in a public press release, possibly
before the end of the year.

If you have any questions regarding this,
please post them in the thread already started for this subject in the general section, and we will do our best to answer them.

http://www.thronesofchaos.com/community/showthread.php?t=919 (http://www.thronesofchaos.com/community/showthread.php?t=919)

My money is on Purestroke Golf or Glitchless Software.

Necrophilia is never pretty...

So whats worse....Necro or not searching and posting something that was already a subject?

Seems like a lose-lose to me! :)

Isn't Mourning itself a massive act of MMOG necrophilia?

It's actually zombiephilia. With Mourning, the dead fuck you.

To be fair, he didn't start a new thread and that WAS actually an update from yesterday.  It just doesn't seem like new news. 

In Soviet Russia MMOG grinds you!

We think we can exchange it for a burger at McDonalds.

lol

Is she hot?

/snicker

You have a filthy mind!

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=7171.msg192462

Err... what are you doing?  What's the point of sticking something someone already posted at the end of dead thread and then not bothering to say anything?  Are you stoned?

script-kiddie necromancy

This "game" seems to be named Era of Shadows now.  It appears to also be owned by the same "company" as the last one only they changed their name, too.

 Didn't Even Bother To Change The Look  (http://www.eraofshadows.com/)

Signe, can you knit me a scarf?

I know how to start.  I know how to knit.  Just like everything else, however, I don't know how to end it.   :oops:  It will be a very, very long scarf, Little NiXel.

Griefed!

Just imagine! Beautiful! War Ravaged!

heheheh. Thanks Signe, whenever I get bored you find the inspiration I need.

I guess Colton Burgess didn't get paid after all.

.

MMOGs are serious business around here, sir. We may joke and play inbetween but when it comes to MMOG info, we are dead serious. Our lives depend on it.

We aren't game media. Go away.

Don't listen to them, viralentity.  They're just too old to remember when they were shiny and new.  As for actual news about games like Mourning, Dark and Light, Dawn, Horizons, etc... this isn't the place for that, really.  We just mock them from time to time.  And their "developers".  And the people who scammy rhetoric.  The guys over at MMORPG.com are the ones who mostly dig up the dirt for us to laugh about.  There are a few expert dirt digger uppers over there giving us the ammo for our gleeful and snarky mockerage.

As Signe said, we know too much to care about bad games.