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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  MMOG Discussion  |  Topic: "Buy your own shitty MMO" or "Dorkfall for sale?" 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: "Buy your own shitty MMO" or "Dorkfall for sale?"  (Read 44173 times)
stray
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Reply #35 on: January 22, 2007, 11:39:21 AM

There are upcoming Unreal 3 based games that look like complete turds. Sometimes it's not the engine at all.
Signe
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Reply #36 on: January 22, 2007, 11:44:22 AM

Luckily, or not as time will tell, Age of Conan seems to have taken the spot of the most anticipated PvP game for now.  I think Darkfall will probably continue to fade into obscurity.  Even if it managed to some how get itself released, who's going to care?  If they keep trying to bring it up to date... "beautify" it, they say... it'll never get released and if they stop trying to beautify it, no one will want to look at it.  I'm surprised it hasn't completely disappeared from the minds of everyone already.  Or the internet.

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Stephen Zepp
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Reply #37 on: January 22, 2007, 12:14:00 PM


The Darkfall project is about seven years old now. My guess is that a bunch of guys locked themselves in an office with a giant stack of "For Dummies" books. The "learn as you go" method didn't work out too well for them. Now they are stuck with a big pile of shit.

One further comment on this...ironically, I fully respect Darkfall, Wish, Mourning, and all the "indie" teams out their that have tried. Sadly, most have failed (some miserably), but this stuff is not easy---AA/AAA studios have failed miserably as well, even after throwing millions of dollars at the challenges.

I'm honestly not sure if people remember how I first came to f13--but it wasn't as a GG employee, it was as a GG customer with grandiose ideas and designs for my own MMO--with a team and everything (well parts of a team at least). We worked our asses off, and I personally spent 10+ hours a day managing the team to design and develop a game we wanted to play, and that we thought others would as well.

We made it to Milestone 1 (of 8)...and reality hit. I got hired by GG and of course lost a lot of my free time (I was a freelance healthcare consultant at the time, which gave me literally months of free time), but even so the technical, managerial, art asset production, and a host of other problems drove us into the ground, and the project never made it any further.

I went into it with fully open eyes--I knew the challenges, and knew that this wasn't a trivial thing...I'm just glad in many ways that I made the decision to cut the project at the one year point, instead of 3, or 5, or 7 when it became too 'expensive' to give it up.

These indie MMO's may have wound up sucking, and may have had incredibly bad decisions along the way, and may have been total wastes of time, but damn I respect the tenacity and raw motivation of the teams that gave it a go.

"It's better to have tried and failed, then to have never tried at all. (Uknown to me)
« Last Edit: January 22, 2007, 12:17:42 PM by Stephen Zepp »

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HaemishM
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Reply #38 on: January 22, 2007, 12:43:18 PM

They didn't have a substantial fucking product. Wish was a train wreck from day one. Wish got canceled because it was a terrible piece of shit.
Nope. Wish was surely better than all these other mmorpgs popping occasionally like the one in this thread.

I thought, "This poster is FUCKING HIGH!" Then I saw who posted it.

Look, Wish was decent fun in Alpha 6, if only because it was different. When the alpha patch was opened where everyone and their goat was a goatfucking goat herder pet herding goat fucking goaty goat and if you didn't goat your way to victory, you died a horrible death, the game was dead of a self-inflicted goat wound to the goat.

In short, too many fucking goats. The program died when MahrinSkel got shitcanned.

WindupAtheist
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Reply #39 on: January 22, 2007, 12:46:20 PM

...everyone and their goat was a goatfucking goat herder pet herding goat fucking goaty goat and if you didn't goat your way to victory, you died a horrible death, the game was dead of a self-inflicted goat wound to the goat.

Uh... what?

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HaemishM
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Reply #40 on: January 22, 2007, 12:48:27 PM

If you'd played the Wish alpha/beta, you'd know what I meant.

Azaroth
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Reply #41 on: January 22, 2007, 12:49:51 PM

Apparently much goattery?

I did play Beta... but I don't remember much about goats. To be honest, I actually had fun.

It's clear the game had a long, long way to go... but they actually *had* something.

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stray
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Reply #42 on: January 22, 2007, 12:50:44 PM

"It's better to have tried and failed, then to have never tried at all. (Uknown to me)

Probably easier to fly to the moon.

I was saying this in IRC the other day, but I'd respect someone more who channeled their ambitions towards single player games. Most of the people dreaming of making MMO's are fools, not to be admired. (This isn't directed at you, since I knew nothing of your game) I've found little reason to have admiration for some amateur company that thinks they can make an mmo. In every case I can think of, their projects have turned out to be full blown fiascos.

This applies even more in today's market. I don't like WoW much, but I'll give them credit for raising the bar on production value. Now gamers are going to expect that from other games of the same type.

Thing is, that cost them like what? $60 or $70 million dollars?

If you have less than 5 or 10, what hope is there for you making a RPG based MMO like that? Dark and Light?

Just give it up. Please. Buy a catchy domain name, create a hundred flash games, and save your money. It'll be more fun anyways. These "games" are shit. Will always be shit. Have always been shit. Even IF you polish it up with 50 million dollar bills.
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Reply #43 on: January 22, 2007, 01:08:13 PM

"It's better to have tried and failed, then to have never tried at all. (Uknown to me)

Probably easier to fly to the moon.

I was saying this in IRC the other day, but I'd respect someone more who channeled their ambitions towards single player games. Most of the people dreaming of making MMO's are fools, not to be admired. (This isn't directed at you, since I knew nothing of your game) I've found little reason to have admiration for some amateur company that thinks they can make an mmo. In every case I can think of, their projects have turned out to be full blown fiascos.

This applies even more in today's market. I don't like WoW much, but I'll give them credit for raising the bar on production value. Now gamers are going to expect that from other games of the same type.

Thing is, that cost them like what? $60 or $70 million dollars?

If you have less than 5 or 10, what hope is there for you making a RPG based MMO like that? Dark and Light?

Just give it up. Please. Buy a catchy domain name, create a hundred flash games, and save your money. It'll be more fun anyways. These "games" are shit. Will always be shit. Have always been shit. Even IF you polish it up with 50 million dollar bills.


What's interesting Stray is that this is exactly the message from GG (not in your words of course). Indies aren't going to make the best MMO evah....make the games you can excel at--small, interesting, innovative, enjoyable. It's why TGB was put together as a product.

Ironically, folks just have a hard time getting it. No one really WANTS to make anything but the next MMO. I kid you not, one of the recent questions in our TGB user's forums was "Does TGB come with full MMO networking support for 10,000+ player???"

I cried irl a bit.

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LC
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Reply #44 on: January 22, 2007, 02:35:46 PM


One further comment on this...ironically, I fully respect Darkfall, Wish, Mourning, and all the "indie" teams out their that have tried. Sadly, most have failed (some miserably), but this stuff is not easy---AA/AAA studios have failed miserably as well, even after throwing millions of dollars at the challenges.

I'm guessing you don't know much about dorkfall. The developers have been less than honest (lied their asses off) over the years. It's hard to respect someone that strings people along like they do.
Azaroth
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Reply #45 on: January 22, 2007, 03:46:54 PM


If you have less than 5 or 10, what hope is there for you making a RPG based MMO like that? Dark and Light?

Just give it up. Please. Buy a catchy domain name, create a hundred flash games, and save your money. It'll be more fun anyways. These "games" are shit. Will always be shit. Have always been shit. Even IF you polish it up with 50 million dollar bills.


I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with going at a MMO with a smaller budget. I think the problem lies with indies on small budgets getting themselves riled up and proclaiming to themselves (and others) that they're going to build THE VERY BEST MMO OF ALL TIME (with more content than ALL of the current MMOs put together!) with no experience and small budgets.

However, if you look realistically at what you have and plan accordingly, I don't see what's wrong with indie MMO development. Dofus, Minions of Mirth, the recently announced Earth Eternal, etc. There's probably as many small budget/indie successes as there are failures. It's just that the successes and failures tend to create a visible explosion in proportion to their very nature. You promise the world and blow up, everyone notices. You plan and execute realistically, and only a certain amount of people notice that.

F  is inviting you to start Quarto. Do you want to Accept (Alt+C) or Decline (Alt+D) the invitation?
 
  You have accepted the invitation to start Quarto.
 
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HRose
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Reply #46 on: January 22, 2007, 05:40:50 PM

Look, Wish was decent fun in Alpha 6, if only because it was different. When the alpha patch was opened where everyone and their goat was a goatfucking goat herder pet herding goat fucking goaty goat and if you didn't goat your way to victory, you died a horrible death, the game was dead of a self-inflicted goat wound to the goat.

In short, too many fucking goats. The program died when MahrinSkel got shitcanned.
And this is not all that different from what I think.

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Roac
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Reply #47 on: January 22, 2007, 05:54:02 PM

Ironically, folks just have a hard time getting it. No one really WANTS to make anything but the next MMO. I kid you not, one of the recent questions in our TGB user's forums was "Does TGB come with full MMO networking support for 10,000+ player???"

Heh.  I'd be thrilled to make a game that had 10,000 accounts.  Which is the sort of thing that was doable with MUDs, less so with MMOGs (or would they just be MOGs at this point?) mostly due to art.  I've taught a good dozen stay at home moms how to write room descs.  Using 3d tools is just a teeny bit more difficult.

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Reply #48 on: January 22, 2007, 10:44:28 PM

"It's better to have tried and failed, then to have never tried at all. (Uknown to me)

Probably easier to fly to the moon.


I think a lot of indie studios start out with big ideas about how every other MMOG has failed and how they will succeed because they ran an 8 year D&D campaign that all their friends said was great.

Then, as Zepp has said, reality hits. Art is hard, content is hard, database managment is hard.

I think that the next generation of MMOGs will see a lot more off-the-shelf products used. PhysX for in-game physics, established game engines for graphics / world-building, other 3rd party applications to take away some of the burden of doing it all in-house. Hell, there'd probably be money in buying up dying MMOGs, ripping the artwork / core components out of them and offering these libraries for sale to companies who don't want to do everything from scratch.

And yes, there are independent MMOGs out there that obviously make enough to keep going, but they aren't the car crashes that f13 likes to slow down and watch.

Stephen Zepp
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Reply #49 on: January 23, 2007, 12:01:31 AM

Ironically, folks just have a hard time getting it. No one really WANTS to make anything but the next MMO. I kid you not, one of the recent questions in our TGB user's forums was "Does TGB come with full MMO networking support for 10,000+ player???"

Heh.  I'd be thrilled to make a game that had 10,000 accounts.  Which is the sort of thing that was doable with MUDs, less so with MMOGs (or would they just be MOGs at this point?) mostly due to art.  I've taught a good dozen stay at home moms how to write room descs.  Using 3d tools is just a teeny bit more difficult.

I should have pointed out as well that TGB is our 2-d engine, intended for retro casual game development, an introducation to learning game development, or your standard scroller/shooter/popper/card game stuff. It can certainly be used for more, but to want it to have a full backend architecture to handle a 2D MMO for $100 is just silly really, especially at that level.

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pxib
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Reply #50 on: January 23, 2007, 12:19:07 AM

Hell, there'd probably be money in buying up dying MMOGs, ripping the artwork / core components out of them and offering these libraries for sale to companies who don't want to do everything from scratch.

There almost certainly is. Every time I've ventured out to play one of the functionally identical Asian games that somehow gets released for free in America (Scions of Fate most recently) I get the sinking suspicion that they're all stealing art. I hear the same sounds, I see familiar monsters or familiar trees... not merely the same models but the same TEXTURES. I'll bet they're even copying code. I get the feeling that instead of starting new servers, game companies just make 'new' games. If some team thinks of a clever addition to the tired old framework, they don't release it as part of an expansion... they start their own company and frame that single innovation with a patchwork quilt of recycled content.

If you expect Americans to pay a monthly fee for your game you'll need to work harder than that, but not much. Drop development costs low enough and you won't have to charge the industry standard. Players who aren't paying "premium" fees don't necessarily expect premium content. Leave them pleasantly surprised and they'll go tell their friends what a great new MMOG they found... not realizing how little is actually new.

Every game's got spiders, scorpions, wolves, bears and skeletons... just buy somebody else's models and animations and even if you distort and re-skin them to fit your art direction, you'll still save a bundle in time and energy and produce something better than your own team could have made on its own.

The next WoW won't be running on Torque, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Garage Games' tools build the foundation for an American Flyff.

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Reply #51 on: January 23, 2007, 07:21:49 AM

There almost certainly is. Every time I've ventured out to play one of the functionally identical Asian games that somehow gets released for free in America (Scions of Fate most recently) I get the sinking suspicion that they're all stealing art. I hear the same sounds, I see familiar monsters or familiar trees... not merely the same models but the same TEXTURES.
I suspect since the business of making games is quite thriving there, there's quite a few people who make money offering the content packs (character models, textures, objects, sounds, UI elements) just like on the western side of world they focus more on offering the turn-key code middleware.

That and their games are published by large companies so i can easily see such company hand the content packs to the small groups starting on new projects, so they can get working prototypes faster, without need to reinvent the goblin model again and again. (extra bonus is, any new content made for standardized characters and such is reusable in the other games utilizing the same models... so if company owns few such games, there's certain synnergy going while each of these games expand their content base separately)
JoeTF
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Reply #52 on: January 23, 2007, 08:14:45 AM

Every asian game has the same bloody, half assed chat system. Just with diferent textures.
It's like they had some "Make your own mmo 20076 ultra premium" on sale - you just move sliders (Gameworld: SF, Fantasy, Mecha # of characters 1-...3) and press compile.
WaffleHouse
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Reply #53 on: February 07, 2007, 12:38:35 PM

Colton of LoudAnt claims to have sold Thrones of Chaos and posted the comment "Game is sold I made my money GL on being ugly fat losers". Turned to a crazy flame war on MMORPG.com and KRELSLIBRARY.org. Media Investagtions, IRS reportings and the such have cause Colton to look up the personal information of critics of the game. Anyway...

Reading..
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/forum/805
http://www.krelslibrary.org/forum/viewforum.php?id=1
Colton's investigation of a critics' info..
http://www.neverwinpoker.com/phpnuke/html/ftopic-33200-0.html
Signe
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Reply #54 on: February 07, 2007, 01:27:25 PM

O NOES!!! 

My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
schild
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Reply #55 on: February 07, 2007, 01:52:02 PM

Did we interview these guys? I don't remember.
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #56 on: February 07, 2007, 02:17:01 PM

The internet is scary sometimes, I tend to avoid it.
Signe
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Reply #57 on: February 07, 2007, 02:30:18 PM

Which guys?  The Darkfall ones or the Thrones of Mourning thingy ones?  I don't think you did Mourning.  That used to be those Romanians... Egomonster, Adonis, et al and I KNOW you didn't interview that crazy Colton guy.  I would have remembered that because I'm sure you would have ended up beating the shit out of him.  I don't think you interrogated either one.  I do remember you trying to run down (err... figuratively speaking) Claus from Darkfall who was very wily and able to avoid you. 

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LC
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Reply #58 on: February 07, 2007, 02:48:44 PM

Someone linked Colton to f13's forums. Prepare for incoming frivolous lawsuit threats.

tazelbain
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Reply #59 on: February 07, 2007, 03:02:22 PM

Finally we just get our heavy hitters.

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Reply #60 on: February 07, 2007, 03:30:08 PM

Maybe we need a Useless Gaming Forum. The Gaming Graveyard doesn't quite do it.
LC
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Reply #61 on: February 07, 2007, 03:52:40 PM

Maybe we need a Useless Gaming Forum. The Gaming Graveyard doesn't quite do it.

call it

"The Shit Can"

A forum for vaporware, crapware, shadowbane, and turbine games.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2007, 03:55:08 PM by LC »
Signe
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Reply #62 on: February 07, 2007, 06:12:31 PM

You made me giggle, LC.  DAMN YOU!

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Reply #63 on: February 07, 2007, 06:17:29 PM

Putting Turbine in the group is just wrong. They aren't shit. At least not at the caliber of shit we've seen lately.
Signe
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Reply #64 on: February 07, 2007, 06:20:48 PM

I like Turbine, too.  It was the Shadowbane that made me giggle.   tongue

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Signe
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Reply #65 on: February 07, 2007, 06:35:37 PM

They seemed to have linked it on January 29th and the thread looks dead.  I don't think they're sending us any heavy hitters.  I don't think they care.   cry

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LC
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Reply #66 on: February 08, 2007, 05:53:08 PM

MMORPG.COM responded by silently removing Thrones of Chaos from their list.
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Reply #67 on: February 08, 2007, 06:09:00 PM

Who gives a shit?
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Reply #68 on: March 26, 2007, 05:14:51 AM

Late last year thrones was approached by a few different companies wanting to purchase a mmog. One of them was Red Bull (the soft drink company) and that is how the information about a Darkfall sale was leaked. Basically in one of the phone conferences with the Vice President of Red bull , he stated that they looked over a few different games for possible purchase and Darkfall was one of them. He also said that when the company making df found out they were not interested in purchasing anymore and were going to move in a different direction with something else they sent him emails lowering the buyout price and trying to change his mind but there was no longer interest. The asking price he mentioned for df was first 2 million , than they dropped it to 1 million. Why did the sale not happen?  He basically said that it wasn't up to par for a purchase for whatever reasons.
 
Of course nothing less than a public denial of any type of sale from the producer of the project was expected , as any mention of a sale would have the fanbase crumble overnight as fast as Dark and Light after the release of SoG.  wink

Take this for what it is - a post by someone on the internet. However , I know it to be reality.

Now Redbull is involved with Project Offset it seems which is a very good move as that project looks amazing. They recently threw them a party at GDC.
Azaroth
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Reply #69 on: March 26, 2007, 08:55:54 AM

Alright, so I'm not going to say that Darkfall's general situation inspires me into a whirlwind of confidence, but I'm also noting that all of the people posting this "insider info" tend to also have one post on this board.

While not taking any stance in particular - I will say, through personal experience, that it smacks an awful lot of "griefing".

F  is inviting you to start Quarto. Do you want to Accept (Alt+C) or Decline (Alt+D) the invitation?
 
  You have accepted the invitation to start Quarto.
 
F  says:
don't know what this is
Az  says:
I think it's like
Az  says:
where we pour milk on the stomach alien from total recall
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