Wish is cancelled

[schmoo]

http://www.mutablerealms.com/">http://www.mutablerealms.com/

Dear friends of Wish:

Unfortunately we have bad news.

After careful consideration of all the facts and analyzing all the data which we have gathered from the Wish Beta 2.0 test so far, we have decided to cancel the Wish project.

Our Beta test will end this evening at 6pm EST, and at this time our Beta forums will close as well.

We enjoyed working together with our fans very much, and we are very sorry about this development. We wish you the best of luck in the future, and hope that you continue to enjoy online gaming, even with Mutable Realms and Wish not being available anymore.

We also wish the best luck to our competitors, and hope that they will not suffer the same fate as us.

Best regards,
Your Mutable Realms Team

[Shockeye]

OMFG that's hilarious.

Yeah for April Fools!

Oh wait.. they're serious. It isn't April.

They wasted all this time and money to end it now?

[Soukyan]

I think the Beta 2.0 was to see what kind of interest there was in the game. Methinks that they looked at the timeline to "complete" the game and read some feedback from testers and decided it just wasn't feasible or worth it. After all, why release and then run a production house in the manner of Horizons. It's no fun to sit at bankruptcy's door all the time.

[Zetleft]

This is too funny, actually have a morbid curiousity to see the final beta of it now :)

[schild]

If they had balls they'd release all the stuff they'd done open source. But they don't. Where's Dave Rickey when you have questions that need answers.

[geldonyetich]

Thousands of sources converge to say: "Hey guys, the players are pissed.  Is there any chance that we can rip out the mouse based movement system and go back to WASD?"

Programmers: "We quit."

And with that, the age of MMORPGs which try to host more than about 3,000 players per world comes to a close... at least for a decade or two.

I seem to recall that Wish was first announced back in the age when the Everquest clones were really starting to manifest.  Anarchy Online was released (trainwreck that was) and Horizons and Wish were announced more or less at the same time.   I called them both vaporware, perhaps grieving over Ultima Origin's recent cancelation, or perhaps rightfully concerned over the glut in the industry.

I remember when I was really enthusiastic about WISH, back when MahrinSkel used to be working on it and was telling us about all these spot on game design observations.   I thought to myself, "Woah, if this guy knows this much about what makes the other MMORPGs suck, Wish should kick some serious ass!"

A few months afterwards (Summer of 2003), MahrinSkel's no longer on the team and I get my first taste of Wish Beta.   I was mortified about the lack of interactivity to the gameplay, where previously I was given reason to believe that Wish was going to actually emphasize interactivity.   The engine was interesting, but very kludgy - I chalk it up to forgivable given that it's an early beta.  

I stop playing Wish Beta, and for awhile beta is over while the team retools everything.  I applaud the year delay of the release, thanking perhaps Wish could provide an interesting 3D Ultima Online alternative with a little work.   (Although SWG had that niche covered fairly well already.)   Beta 2 rolls around, I got an invite, but there's too much on my plate with World of Warcraft and school.

And now it's come to this.

I don't know, sometimes it seems a real shame when those that cried "Vaporware" a half decade ago, myself among them, were right..

[Lum]

He hasn't been with the project for almost a year, so it's doubtful he could answer much if he wanted to.

MMOs aren't easy things to bring to market. Considering that this announcement probably also means a good dozen or so people are now unemployed, you might want to temper the HAW HAW noises.

[Nebu]

I'm not terribly surprised by this... I was a tester since very early in alpha.  Even at that time it seemed obvious to me that the game was little more than window dressing for middleware that they had hoped to sell to others developing mmogs (in fairness, I should two other people credit for this thought).  Wish was all about the technology of large population single server games.  I wonder if they had hoped that Wish could be used to demonstrate their technology and sell it as a platform to others in China and Korea.  

The problem: In the US, people appear to want multiple servers and instancing in their mmog. The market seems to be shifting toward small group and/or single player games enjoyed online with others.  The success of WoW and CoH may have shown this better than anyone.   Ok, the fact that the games are fun also helps.

On a side note, I had the most hope for this title when Dave Rickey was with the project.  When Dave left, so did those hopes.  I actually stopped active testing quite some time ago due to both the direction the game was taking and the rabidity of the blind tester base.  To their credit, MR was a pleasure to test for.  They were professional, responsive, and seemed interested in what testers had to say. I hope the best for all of those that were involved in with the Wish project... they all seemed like good folks from my testing perspective.

[Abalieno]

A few months afterwards (Summer of 2003), MahrinSkel's no longer on the team

Dave left the first week of January 04.

I still remember precisely every single day and every single post on their forums till the first week of February. I remember Kagara, Xavori, Nebu, Hyrrix, Apathian and Dispressa who was supposed to lead the Team Katana after Lepidus got "hired". I still remember the devs flaming me.

*waves at Nebu*

[Azaroth]

It's funny. I don't like most MMOs, but I had fun playing Wish.

It'll be interesting to see what their reasoning was behind closing it all down.  Granted it was an incredibly unfinished state and a lot of things flat out sucked about it, but I'd buy and play Wish long before WoW, EQ2, or the current version of UO.

It seems to have gotten a pretty bad reputation around here, and I ended up defending it to most people I knew who tried out the beta.

Oh well. I guess I'll have to figure out exactly why after a while.

As for now, Lum's exactly right. The amount of background laughter I can hear over this is wholly inappropriate. Not only are people out of jobs, but something they put their life into for a very long time has unceremoniously been buried and never really saw the light of day. Not really something to laugh at.

[schild]

It's funny. I don't like most MMOs, but I had fun playing Wish.

Please expand upon this. I'm not entirely sure what made it fun vs. anything else ever on the market. Assuming you're talking about the new beta, I still don't understand. Wish was rather doomed from the start when they said every single person would be on one server. And then the goats came. Then they went away, and now the game is disappearing. I wish I knew what you saw in it (pun unintended).

Edit: To add - should they have had jobs in the first place? I'm not sure I get the pity at the end of your post. I'm not one to laugh and throw a party about people losing their jobs, but whether they worked hard or not is irrelevant. Their product had no market interest. It's surprising it made it this far.

[Morfiend]

Maybe my Wish shirt will be worth some thing on ebay in 10 years from now. Its not like I plan to ever wear it or anything.

Should have stuck with the goats.




Ummm. WTF is that???

[WayAbvPar]

I "wish" I could say this is a surprise. Probably for the best, all things considered.

[Nebu]

*waves at Nebu*

Don't mean to be rude, but do I know you?

[schild]

*waves at Nebu*

Don't mean to be rude, but do I know you?

He's HRose.

[Miscreant]

When I played Wish last E3 it seemed nondescript.   You guys who were in the beta:  was there anything obviously wrong with it that suggested this cancellation?   Did it have anything especially interesting or fun?

[schild]

When I played Wish last E3 it seemed nondescript.   You guys who were in the beta:  was there anything obviously wrong with it that suggested this cancellation?   Did it have anything especially interesting or fun?

In all honesty - it was a terrible game. There's no other way to slice it. While I'm tempted to feel sorry for the developers, I feel much sorrier for the investors who bankrolled a game with what seems like incomplete design docs and absolutely zero aim other than packing bodies into it like a theater with 40 screens.

[MahrinSkel]

I'm not going to comment on this much, I've been gone from there a year, and some friends of mine are now out of work.  But I wanted to let schild know that Wish had only one investor, as far as I know.  The goals and procedures for Wish were what he wanted them to be.

--Dave

[WindupAtheist]

Suggested alternate thread title:

"Oops, we really ARE vaporware!"

[xmasteR]

In all honesty - it was a terrible game. There's no other way to slice it. While I'm tempted to feel sorry for the developers, I feel much sorrier for the investors who bankrolled a game with what seems like incomplete design docs and absolutely zero aim other than packing bodies into it like a theater with 40 screens.

First of all, hello, registered to comment on this thread.
As I read, some of those commenting have tried wish in some stage of beta, but only one(?), correct me if i'm wrong, tried the 2.0, the one who was willing to pay for it.
Must say i'm with him, frustrated that now i must go and be part of the WoW (aka diablo2-in-warcraft-skin-made-to-mmo)
Wish was fun and their live content also was very pleasing, we had our little town of Windok, many times we defended it against raids from different mobs led by dev's, helped the fellow towns and kept looking for some big bad monster Utec.
Also had the willage work together for crafting machines for the town and such.. it was fun.

For those who decide over very early stage of beta or alpha, its just sad to read your so not adequate posts, when you are nowhere near to "mr. current news", you shouldnt make too big words and laugh about some old development stages.

some screenies off the last minutes of wish beta:
www.zone.ee/xmpics/wish

[Rodent]

MMOs aren't easy things to bring to market.

And yet we see games like Horizons, WWIIOL, Swedens national shame AKA Project Entropia, Asheron's Call 2 etc. comming out, hell even surviving for the most part.

[Soukyan]

In all honesty - it was a terrible game. There's no other way to slice it. While I'm tempted to feel sorry for the developers, I feel much sorrier for the investors who bankrolled a game with what seems like incomplete design docs and absolutely zero aim other than packing bodies into it like a theater with 40 screens.

First of all, hello, registered to comment on this thread.
As I read, some of those commenting have tried wish in some stage of beta, but only one(?), correct me if i'm wrong, tried the 2.0, the one who was willing to pay for it.
Must say i'm with him, frustrated that now i must go and be part of the WoW (aka diablo2-in-warcraft-skin-made-to-mmo)
Wish was fun and their live content also was very pleasing, we had our little town of Windok, many times we defended it against raids from different mobs led by dev's, helped the fellow towns and kept looking for some big bad monster Utec.
Also had the willage work together for crafting machines for the town and such.. it was fun.

For those who decide over very early stage of beta or alpha, its just sad to read your so not adequate posts, when you are nowhere near to "mr. current news", you shouldnt make too big words and laugh about some old development stages.

some screenies off the last minutes of wish beta:
www.zone.ee/xmpics/wish

Just as a little clarification, I believe several of the people who commented in this thread have played the beta 2.0, not just one person. Now, you must forgive us for having only had the opportunity to play for a week as the game was cancelled. Jackass.


On another note, the game looked decent and ran pretty well for me, but I found it to be rather bland. This may be because they were following the older MMOG paradigm of lengthy gameplay, which is fine but just is not for me. I didn't have the chance to catch any events during beta 2.0, but I wasn't on the game 24/7 either nor would I ever be so I'm wondering just how many events an average player would have had the opportunity to see, especially once the game was live. Live events are a great idea, but somehow end up not working. I know, Wish was aiming for everyone on one server and localized events to ensure that the events happened, but there was talk about having to do more servers should the population of one get near that 10k user mark. Anyhow, I suppose this is all neither here nor there. The game lacked something for me.

[Numtini]

I played beta 2 and thought it was worse than beta 1. I'm not surprised at all. There was no game here. Far better off to terminate it now than to do a Horizons.

[schmoo]

I played beta 2 and thought it was worse than beta 1. I'm not surprised at all. There was no game here. Far better off to terminate it now than to do a Horizons.

Numtini's right.  Cancelling Wish was the smart thing to do.  They might have limped along with a few thousand subscribers for a while, but it would never have made any money for the investor(s).  Better to kill it now and retain some integrity.

I hear MR has licensed the Wish engine to some company in China(?).  Perhaps that was the goal all along...

[Signe]

I tested early on and briefly tested beta 2.0, also.  I agree... somehow it got worse.  Back during my first stint, with the goats and berries, I thought it might be a decent game someday.  They certainly came up with some nice ideas for the game.  How odd that they suddenly shut the doors like this... though I seem to be the only one suprised.  

I don't know if these games being terminated is a good omen or a bad omen.  It's bad if they shut down because they are finding they can't complete with the biggies... that just means less choice for the punters.
It's good if they're stopping because they realise they're about to release a piece of shit.  I commend them if that's the case.

[Fuinelen]

just to clarify what made the game so much fun, despite the obvious bugs and problems :

ever seen a MMORPG in which, because a player failed to deliever enough plants to a NPC, all other NPCs slowly began to get sick, upon which, a shady character (Vinnian) appears on the scene, and asks to be delivered money and a female NPC (called Monyka) from a rival Society in exchange for the cure to the plague. Enters Lady Monyka, walking toward her doom in Lokshire. Players, who have been searching far and lo through Ganedan escort her and her guard, but are ambushed by skeletons, upon which the guard sadly dies. At her arrival in Lokshire, where the exchange was to take place, a small army of players have gathered, and awaits the arrival on Vinnian, while discussing how to keep Monyka alive, get the cure and get rid of Vinnian at the same time .. all this being roleplayed. Sadly, Vinnian's messenger gets killed on the way by a player, so Monyka discloses the location of Vinnian's lair, and people rush there.

In the end we got the cure, but Monyka died under mysterious circumstances, as I found out the day after in the Newspaper.

I saw some of it myself, some I read in the newspaper.

Now tell me of a MMORPG in which something like this can be experienced on a regular basis?
Moments before Marc Laukien's post about Wish's demise appeared on the fourm, many players were already  deep into other Live Content threads, as it didn't need GM's to be present all the time.

(sorry if I cut short, but I just lost a lot of the post somehow and I'm writing this for the second time)

The death of Wish left me feeling empty. I browsed through the available MMORPGs yesterday, but none seemed to be able to stand up to the standard Wish set for me. Yes .. i'm spoiled. And from what I gathered on irc.sorcery.net (#wish), it's the case with many of the former Wish testers. Nothing out there is good enough to replace Wish, even in the beta state it was.

bbye,
Fuinelen

[plangent]

Well, so much for an honest to god system of rogue skills.  I've been dying to play a real thief (ie, no combat skills) for ages.  Looking at McFly's page again when the news about IPY went out just made things worse.

There is still a huge gap in the mmo market.  Some of us out here aren't going to whack-a-pig for a few hours a day to the tune of $15 a month.  

Now, $15 a month to pick the pockets of my fellow players followed up by an intense session of running like a girl before they can beat me to a pulp?  
That I would pay for.  

I just hope time and circumstances will align to bring a concept like Wish to market.  The subscribers are out here waiting.


PS, please don't bring up Shadowbane.  I swore that the third time I cancelled would be the last.

[Minthos]

schild, I think you're being unfair. I didn't play it before 1.5 so I can't compare to anything prior to that. Now, 1.5 wasn't very impressive. What kept me in the game was the impression I got of the devs and the promise the game showed. It was like any other unfinished mmorpg - boring after you explore the basics.

Beta 2.0 was entirely different. It started out similar with more players, but then something happened. Live content. I spent as much time ingame as I could, so I caught the rumors fast and got to participate in many of the storyline skirmishes and follow the ongoing investigations. It was great. I've never done anything like it. In just a few days, I was addicted. If wish was released today, I would play it, despite of the unfinished state of the game and server. Why? It was fun! It was great, great fun. And I'm really sad it ended. You might call me naive, but I've grinded and quested and crafted and pvped in various other mmorpgs, and none of them provided the same excitement as wish did. We saved cities from attacking armies of monsters and assassinated evil warlords - now, this is nothing new in itself, but what's new is that nobody told us what to do, we had to investigate the rumors we heard and discuss possible solutions to the problems presented. And when a problem was solved, we knew there were concequences. We knew we were the ones who saved the day. We hoped to have our names in the newspaper for our heroic acts.

I'm still sad about this cancellation. It looked like the answer to my dreams - to all our dreams - but apparently it was too good to be true.

[Bird]

this was a GREAT game, AWESOME even, this spanked EQ2, L2 and all the those games right on the butt ! this was finally an MMORPG in 3d which you could finally do something more then just slaying some silly lookin monsters, it had a story... IT EVEN HAD THE PLAGUE ! damn this is a shame that its canceld.... i loved the game !
ah well too bad its canceld...

RIP Grumpy The Pony... =/

[Soukyan]

Well, it appears as though the fanbois have arrived. It may have seemed like the answer to all your dreams (I hope you have better dreams and higher aspirations than an MMOG though), but we'll never know.

As to Live Content: see AC1, AC2, Saga of Ryzom and to a mild extent Horizons. Eve also has a fair amount of "Live Content", but in-game it is mostly player driven while the developers run the news in-game and on the web site. But it is a PvP game, so player driven content is a given really.

[Paelos]

Hey the fanbois at least registered here to defend it's honor. That's gotta count for something, right? RIGHT?

PS - I never played the game because...well because it wasn't even on my radar frankly.

[Minthos]

I don't want your flames, I'm trying to provide insight.

I've tried eve, and no way is it anywhere near the same experience as wish was.

Haven't tried the other ones you speak of. Heard AC was good, haven't dared trying the others. I suspect word would have spread if they had the same focus on live content as wish had.

[Tairnyn]

When the Wish development team decided, in between beta phases, to overhaul the entire game I knew it was over. Marc had stated on the beta boards that they were postponing the next beta phase because the game was "like a shuttle in pieces on the assembly floor" to which I replied "I'd hate to be an astronaut knowing it was a few months until launch." In fact, I even posted on the boards the message I expected from them soon, declaring the end of the Wish development process. Obviously, it wasn't well received by the rabid fanbois, but some of the people saw the glimmer of wisdom in my abrasive sarcasm. My first instinct was to see if the boards were up and dig my thread up for a "I told you so." :p

Wish was a few good ideas that were ruined by poor technical implementation and a staff that wore blinders to every criticism. They were over-confident, under-experienced, and unwilling to compromise on the details that could have saved them. I've had a baaad feeling about Mutable Realms for a while now.. I say it's about time.

[Soukyan]

I don't want your flames, I'm trying to provide insight.

I've tried eve, and no way is it anywhere near the same experience as wish was.

Haven't tried the other ones you speak of. Heard AC was good, haven't dared trying the others. I suspect word would have spread if they had the same focus on live content as wish had.

And I don't want your "insight". I played the beta 2.0 phase as well and I did not get to experience the Live Content that you so readily boast of. Is it because I didn't play the game 24/7? Or is there another reason? Either way, it matters not now. I've beta tested over 32 online games since 1995 and I have played every MMOG I mentioned (as a matter of fact, I've played every MMOG released to date). When you have a greater knowledge base for comparison to draw upon, then perhaps you can give me some "insight", but until then, I've been there and done that, baby. I've seen beta tests where the Live Content was spectacular only to see it completely disappear in the release version of the game. Could Wish have kept it up? Who knows. AC1 did and they did a hell of a job of it. As a matter of fact, AC2 does a hell of a job of it, too, even though they have a very small playerbase. Wish did it in beta with a very small number of players. Could they have effectively done it with thousands of players? Doubt it. But again, we'll never know.

[V_M_Smith]

Having played Wish for some time, and watching it evolve. There were good things that it didn't do that it needed to. There were also good things that it did do that I'm not sure anyone else could.

They needed better help files for new players, it did get a little better w/ 2.0 but still was a learning for my friends. Contrary to popular belief they did not instantaneous travel, but they did need to make the stablemaster invulnerable.

It was faster and slower than other MMORPG's. This however was probably part of it's downfall because we, ignorant want it all *now*  americans, have to see this or that flying by. Flying by to tell us *Your Leveling*.

It needed alot of work, but unlike other beta's I was in, they did listen to viable ideas. I remember the E&B beta *shudder*. THe only people who would have been openly screwed when wish came out would have been the FFA PvP people, and they have SB already.

It's a pity it's gone. Most of my friends are, to say politely, very angry that it happened. Incidentally for the person who said smaller server and instance this and that. I've play EQ2, there is nothing more annoying that your friends being in queynos 7 and your in queynos 1. The thing that brought me to Wish, that was bringing our who guild of UO'ers and SWG'ers to Wish was the one world concept. Out of 55 people in our guild who got into the Wish Beta, only 5 utterly disliked it. 30 like it but the UI needed some reworking to be more "accessible" about 10-20 thought the chat  might need some work.  10-15 thought it was coming along perfectly other than the obvious boo-boos in the beta 2.

Out of 55 people in our guild, 3 liked EQ2, about 10 like SB, 1 likes COH, and 2 play WoW. The rest of us still play UO and / or SWG. Speaks volumes that only 5 would have stayed in SB vs playing Wish.