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June 27, 2025, 02:07:19 PM

we're back, baby

Anyone have any idea when this game is slated for release? The information on it tends to come out in drips and drops and it is looking really good.

Not sure if anyone has posted on this game previously so if you did, don't complain about my inquiry.

We tried, but some fanbois screwed everything up.

A couple couple more attempts.

Someone emailed me back in December and I thought maybe there was news, but it was only directing me to some new screenshots. Preston, who is a mod on their forums (yes, the same one from KoE) is convinced that they will release, but who knows? DnL and Mourning also seem very sparse on news. Mourning started taking pre-orders for their game a few months ago (40% off if you order through them! Whoop de do!) but I heard it was an effort to keep investor's interest... I wonder how that's working out for them. I think which ever, DnL, Darkfall and Mourning, is released first will get the money of those holding out for a good PvP game. I have no clue how anyone is handling their beta tests. Mourning used to be the one generating the most interest, but I can't even remember the last newletter they sent out. Darkfall is the one that seems the most interesting to me, personally. DnL seems to be having some rather nasty problems with their weather system... SURPRISE! They announced yesterday, however, that they will be doing a weekly update on their progress.

All three of these looked interesting to me a couple of years ago or so... but now they seem to be big black holes. Until they start talking, I can't be arsed to care.

Quote from: Signe on February 08, 2005, 07:41:32 PM

All three of these looked interesting to me a couple of years ago or so... but now they seem to be big black holes. Until they start talking, I can't be arsed to care.

Same here. Someone needs to fill the niche that Shadowbane was aiming at, and I used to think Darkfall was going to be it. Now I don't think it even exists.

They're not even good at lying about it either. Almost 4 years of what amounts to a lot of talk and all we get is a handful of lousy screenshots? They expect that to be "news"? I could render better "screenshots" in a week.

Any other pvp-centered games on the horizon?

Except for the 'biggies' coming out this year, such as MEO, GW and Matrix, (some with PvP, some without) I haven't seen much talk of anything. I get emails from some people telling me to look here and there... just recently a beta invite from http://www.irthonline.com. I don't remember this game or who I know there, but they seem to be ready to test pretty soon. The latest email was from someone who's name is unfamiliar to me. I have no idea what sort of PvP it has, if any, because all that type of info is missing from it's website. The only thing I know is that it's named after my husbands character in WoW! tongue

The only other things I have is Ages of Athiria... last time I heard from them was Summer 2004 newsletter. They have FFA PvP, I think. Although they distinquish between murder and PvP, I'm not entirely sure how or the rules. There is also Atriarch, which had a bare bones type 'beta' a couple of years ago, I think, and Serafina is still kicking around here somewhere, but I'm not sure what's happening in regards to the game. I saw some comments from her on the board that must not be named last month, but I don't get newsletters or anything. After so much time passes, I forget to check websites. Oh well...

Serafina? You still out there anywhere?

I'm sure Serafina will be at GDC, and possibly E3 as well. Just say hello and I'm sure she'll be happy to give you a warm hug and regale you with a tale about the current status of Atriarch. :)

Bruce

I don't know - I don't see anything on the horizon that looks like it'll be a potential center-stage cannidate. WoW and SWG were potentials, and both did really well. MEO has a huge IP following from the movies (and of course, most literate people before that), but the setting itself is a horrible one to do a game in. As a result they are going to play loose with the story, since in the 4th age there were no elves left to speak of, and magic was relegated to the Istari (Gandalf, etc), elves and a VERY select handful of people (Mouth).

MxO has a fantastic setting for a game, but it has the reverse problem; popularity of the IP has soured with the last two movies. The game may do well and help bolster the IP image, but normally you'd rather avoid having an uphill battle when buying IP.

I'm a fan of both settings though, and am looking forward to both. Both are being managed by large companies, so I don't doubt that they'll make it to the shelves with all appropriate hooplah. Then there are the smaller fishes...

Atriarch I followed for a while, before Shadowbane, but they quit posting news. Bad sign. I loved that they were taking MMOs in a new direciton. I don't like that they haven't taken it in a new direction *yet*. It's been like 6 years since they started development, which is longer than most software stays out (general consensus is that software is cycled every 5 years or so).

Darkfall tried to bill itself as SB2. They had some neat ideas, pretty screenshots. Then Claus went and made a snide comment about how long SB development took (4y) and something about how real devs wouldn't drag it out. That's about when I figured that he really didn't know what he was getting into, and quit following them. DF has been in the works for right at 4 years now, with no sign of a beta.

Pirates of the Burning Sea is one I've kept tabs on the last year or so. In development for 2y now, they intend to self-publish through Steam. Like their ideas, and I think they have a shot at making it since they have put a lot of thought into what they are NOT going to have in version 1.0 - something that a lot of MMOG devs have missed. But, going through Steam could mean a small userbase. With low funding to move foward on 2.0 and their other ideas, and there's potential that at release the feature set will be too small to be widely accepted.

So I dunno. Mixed bag. The big shops obviously have an easier path to release, since they've more money to throw at problems, as well as IP that fans relate to. I can't help but root for the smaller shops though.

Is Mourning the game that used to be called Realms of Torment? Or is that one still even in development? Darkfall, Mourning and DnL all sound interesting, but have been so light on actual details or any sort of development updates that I'm not even sure they are still being produced.

Apparently, The Mourning people had an interview in December, 2004. So I guess that's sort of news.

Yes, it used to be Realms of Torment. There was some sort of issue about the name though I can't remember what it was. I don't like either of their names. Calling it "Fred" would have made the same impression on me.

If a company can't even come up with a somewhat decent name, can they make a good game? Now that would make a good debate!

Well, maybe not....

Quote from: Signe on February 09, 2005, 08:13:20 AM

Calling it "Fred" would have made the same impression on me.

I would actually be more impressed to see a MMOG called "Fred." That's taking a chance. Something like "Realms of Torment" or "Darkfall" or "Shadowbane" or "Mourning" all impress upon me the same psuedo-goth, badass attitude of "n0 m3rcy" that really just makes me think they're trying very hard to impress someone. Like me! Please! Somebody like me!

I like names like City of Heroes, or Dark Age of Camelot, because they tell you what the game's about without trying to beat you over the head with how badass it is.

But then, I don't make my final decision based on the name... so I guess it doesn't really matter.

But still. If I saw a box in a store that was very plain and said in Arial text on the front "Hi, I am Fred the MMOG" I'd check it out.

Quote from: Llava on February 09, 2005, 10:37:27 AM

Quote from: Signe on February 09, 2005, 08:13:20 AM

Calling it "Fred" would have made the same impression on me.

Naming an MMO "Fred" would make breaking up a little too real.

I do agree though, I'm sick of names that try to out do themselves on being badass. When the name of your game can be replaced by the name of another game, you should rethink your name.

Hm.

If you're a guy, and you play a MMOG named Fred, are you gay?

Quote from: Llava on February 09, 2005, 01:13:21 PM

Hm.

If you're a guy, and you play a MMOG named Fred, are you gay?

'Fred' is gay?

If this trend in game naming continues, we'll be seeing some game named "Badass Motherfuckers: The MMOG".

PvP between rival gangs on bikes with chains and switchblades. Could be fun, actually.

Quote from: Llava on February 09, 2005, 01:13:21 PM

Hm.

If you're a guy, and you play a MMOG named Fred, are you gay?

You tell me.

She has old looking hands.

I'm not jealous. No no... not me.

I never had the hots for her, either. In fact, on Angel, she was downright annoying, Instead, I usually lusted after Anya or Faith or Harmony.

Bruce

Ok... enough gawking at the purdy gurls and back to the business of other shit. Since we were discussing Darkfall and what's on the PvP horizon, I decided to take a short stroll through the murky Mourning board. I found this juicy little tidbit from Tiamat, the boss guy. Evidently someone accused him of not making an actual game but instead, setting up a site and taking pre-orders to acquire CC numbers. Lots of games look like vapourware these days and people get angry about it, especially if they've been following them for a long time. This is the first time I've seen an accusation of vapourdevs, though. Considering all the different titles this man has, perhaps people were suspicious, thinking that they need some dosh to hire another body. Who knows? This is the response from Tiamat, the many hatted man:

Quote

A Temporary Announcement...
Hello all!

I am Dan Antonescu, Mourning's Lead Designer, Community Manager and Public Relations Manager.

First of all, I want to apologize for the lack of feedback from our part during the latest days, which is one of the main reasons for all the rumors I've heard are floating around here. We were all at our homes during the weekend and didn't know anything about what was happening in here, but still, I didn't say anything on Friday.. thought Egomancer's posts as well as what I've told to some people in our chatrooms would be enough to let you know what's happening :(

On a second note, I want to ask all of you a question.. what did we did to get ourselves marked as unresponsive, lacking feedback and so on?!! when did you wanted to talk with us, and we ignored you?!! when some of you saw any of us online and alive, tried to talk with us and we didn't responded?!!

How it came that a few weeks in which we had our heads caught in so much work and troubles we didn't had time for the boards made us your no1 public enemy?!! Have you all forgot the principles we build up our entire community upon?!! You should be ashemed of all of this, the way we are now, because we both are the cause of what happened on our forums in this weekend!

It seems to me that everything was started in this Is Mourning a ****? thread.

This is a second "attack" attempt to rise hell on Mourning's forums, partially successfull because of you.. I don't know who's doing this, and why (even if I, and I'm sure some of you too, have a pretty good guess, at least regarding the motives of those attempts).. Before throwing yourself in panic, you should have noticed that all the posters which started these are just registered, and such kind of info coming from a just registered user should be more than questionable, and carefully looked at as a real possible scum! You have a head, don't look for excuses and use it!!!

Now, regarding the rumors, let's take them one by one, shall we?!!

Firstly, I'm afraid i have to dissapoint you, but NO, Mourning is NOT a ****... if we wanted to do that, we would of had to have split off a while ago... look at all those screenshots and movies... if you believe they are all hand made then you have some serious problems there are enough people in the beta, people chosen from you, which would have spread the news until now if that would have been the case, don't you think so? also, if that would be the case, how do you think we decided to chose the path you'll see in our next week's announcment? please remember everything that happened this weekend when you'll read that announcement!

Secondly, here's what Egomancer said about the cc thing:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accentra, Inc, is a privately held International Internet Services business, among other things. ISP's have complaints against them for this kind of stuff because of their users actions at times.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a third way, we WON'T close Mourning's development. I know thats the worst fear some of you have, as Mourning (Darkfall and Dark&Light too, even if their game concepts are not the same as ours) is one of the last hopes all MMO communities have in breaking the damn EQ clones trend and get some fresh air in this ancient game genre.

In fact, there is an announcement we want you to hear in the beginning of next week, as I've said Friday to some of you in our chatroom...

It would be a very important announcement, and again, regarding something which was never done before in MMO development genre (maybe not even in all the game development in general).

I can't make it now, as we still have some details to fix, but as I've already told to some of you, It is NOT about us quitting Mourning or Mourning being a ****.

All I can say now is that it has something to do with games beta, it's launch and the fact that you are as important for this game as we are..

Please be patient, wait for the next weeks announcement and STOP all the mad false rumors which can only do harm to you and us alike.

Thank you!

Dan Antonescu

PS:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also, thank you Corbain, you did to us all a great "favor". You don't even diserve a ban for the thing you did, but kept in here as an example!

So, I won't ban you... and you know why?!! Because it will be against our community rules, our principles and you'll serve our cause in a way you didn't even thought it is possible, by showing everyone that what we do in here is different...

On every other boards you would have been banned for this, but we'll keep you in a cage and let everyone see.. you'll find your new forum title on monday, as well as any other one which wants to see it with his own little eyes...

In between giggles, I felt sort of sorry for him.

I bet Bruce could get banned there.

oh, forgot the ??!!!

That man is involved in game design/production? Jesus. English is either his eighteenth language, or somebody dropped out when the Coleco first arrived. He should have an interpreter if his spell check isn't working.

Seriously though, I can understand a slight spelling or grammatical deficiency, but for sake of all thats holy, if you really suck at communication, don't get in a business that requires it...constantly.

/soapboxoff

Quote from: TheWalrus on February 09, 2005, 10:31:19 PM

Seriously though, I can understand a slight spelling or grammatical deficiency, but for sake of all thats holy, if you really suck at communication, don't get in a business that requires it...constantly.

Tell that to John "I'll make you my bitch" Romero or "Dr." Serek Dmart. Being good at communication is not an apparent requirement for being a game designer. Harassing anyone who criticizes your creation or your broken milestones/deadlines/launch dates? Sure thing.

Romero can get away with being bad at communication. Many people look to him as a god.

Smart on the other hand is just a fucking nobody who we enjoy poking fun at for thinking he's a somebody. I hope to god I see someone like Peter Molyneux beat the shit out of him in an alley. I would pay real money to see that. I'd like to think of him as the gaming's Balki Bartokomous.

As far as that note from Dan Whatever goes, I couldn't finish it.

I've chatted to Tiamat, albeit a long time ago, and he's a sweet man. He's very polite but gets extremely upset when people are not only mean to him, but to each other. He chastises people for being cruel to each other. I find it refreshing and I like him. He's from Romania, by the way. He's not a one man operation, but I don't think he has much help. Look at all the titles he has? Is it any wonder this game is taking forever? It reminds me of those people who write a game at home and get all their talented friends to do the art work. Coincidentally, I received an email from MMORPG.com with eight new screenshots. Again, all of places and buildings... no NPCs. This is always the case... I'm not sure there are any NPCs yet.

I wasn't giggling at the man's grasp of English, I was giggling at his 'mother henness'. It would be nice if some of you would realise that not everyone in this world is American and speaks perfect English. (oxymoron alert!) By your standards nearly my entire family would be considered a bunch of uneducated Scandies and Wops, which is not the case. Tiamat's attempt at communicating works ok... he's mostly understood. I would be much happier having a nice conversation with him than with someone like... oh, I don't know... TheWalrus? I would, at least, know I'm talking to an intelligent man and not some pretentious xenophobe with porridge for brains. I looked at your nine posts, Walrus. Your contributions, so far, have been...well... non-existant. Up until now, however, no one has accused you of being a brain donor.

Anyway... bigotry and xenophobia ftw.

He read like Hrose. That is not a good thing. But being that they are located in Romania, I guess I'll give them a pass.

So someone accused them of being a scam-house made to collect credit card numbers? Shit, there's a whole bunch of better ways to collect CC numbers than acting like you are making a game. That would be the last thing I'd accuse them of. Ineptitude, or being in over their heads? Sure. CC scams? Not bloodly likely.

Sorry if I offended. I am not xenophobic, nor unfortunately, do I have porridge for brains. I probably went overboard with my tirade against his post, however my point stands. If I'm looking to pour some of my hard earned money into someone elses pocket for a game, or car or anything for that matter, I've got to have some sort of confidence in the product and the people behind it. If I saw that kind of writing on the back of a game I'd drop it.

Point conceded I don't know the man. Sure hes a terrific individual.

Quote from: TheWalrus on February 10, 2005, 08:16:59 AM

I forgive you, Porridge Head. tongue

I do, really. I'm nice that way. I'm sorry I called you Porridge Head, too.

Questioning the English skills of someone trying to sell you a game seems like a reasonable action to me. Remember the dialogue in Lineage 2?

If he doesn't speak English that well, no big deal. But with a post seemingly as important as that one, one would expect he'd have someone revise it to seem a bit more professional. If no one around speaks English better, that doesn't really raise my confidence in the quality of the writing in their game. That's not to say it can't be a good game, or that they're not smart people, but having massive grammatical errors is something that certainly breaks my immersion, if not yours.

What writing? It's going to be a PVP-centric game, who needs writing when your players create the content?! evil

Quote from: HaemishM on February 10, 2005, 12:58:52 PM

What writing? It's going to be a PVP-centric game, who needs writing when your players create the content?! evil

uR so pwnd f4gg0t. IR teh 133t.

Shadowbane demonstrated that no matter how good the lore writer, the monkeys that play will break any immersion. As a result, it doesn't bother me how Vlad the Impaler writes.

None of you own a heart.

And your souls aren't very sparkly, either.

Dammit. Permission requested to change name to Porridge Head sir!

Quote from: Signe on February 10, 2005, 02:01:07 PM

And your souls aren't very sparkly, either.

I don't know about you, but my soul is covered in glitter.

My soul went swimming in the tar pits out west 4 years ago.

I haven't heard from it since.

Quote from: schild on February 10, 2005, 06:31:25 PM

My soul went swimming in the tar pits out west 4 years ago.

I haven't heard from it since.

I found your soul in the belly of a seagull washed up on the Jersey shore. I gave it to Angel. Now he won't stop wittering on about Matt Damon and bent genres. What a nerd.

Post deleted because it wasn't funny.

I'd like my soul back. Now.

Edit: And what were you doing in the belly of a seagull?