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Mmorpgs should evolve around community, not?(wall of text)
someforumguy
Member RarePosts: 4,088
Where can I find an official and finalized list of which countries can play with who? The official forums are a mess with loads of threads about this. Ive checked the faqs on the main site and the forums and I cant bloody find it?
How can a new player find this? I predict that a lot of players will buy a boxed copy, assuming they can play TCoS with their international friends. Only to discover that they wont be able to chose the same server. They should put a warning on the EU versions of the boxed copies!!
The fact that Acclaim has part of EU and the two other distributors the rest with an IP block in between them, bloody gimps EU players. Acclaim obviously doesnt care. Understandable in their eyes : US+some of EU is more then alone US. The fact that the ip blocking within EU territories means that less EU players will play TCoS, doesnt matter for them. Considering that their alternative was only US and EU for a different distrubitor.
All those devs always state how important a guild structure is within a MMO. With their IP blocking they now show how important they really think it is. A lot of international guilds or simply friends who are used to play MMO's together will look for a different game. It doesnt matter who made the decision to use IP blocking, distrubitor or developer, both are going through with it. They just dont give a shit.
Normally I dont care about games I dont like. I dont start ranting like this. But this situation is different. MMORPG's evolve more around communities then any other types of PC games and here the devs+distributors are just hypocrite with their cursed IP block.
Dramatized TL;DR version: The whole community principle of this MMO just went down the drain.
Comments
We should give some credit to the Dev's, honest, it is a Indy company, there was not EA or SOE or one for those giants behind them all this time throwing money at them.
They had to find someone to publish the game,period, and probably, Acclaim was the only one willing to to do so, and to be honest with you, it is nor surprising since we can actually feel the way new MMO`s usually end up on the bin, think about TR, Vanguard, AoC, even WAR is getting a huge hit, and all those, they had a big company developing them
Even the MMO based on Halo was scraped, and the biggest reason for that was the fact that MMO games/world is very unstable, and even big companies behind huge games experience huge loses
Now you imagine those guys behind TCOS knocking on several doors and trying to find a publisher for a new mmo where armor is stat-less, where there is not epic swords, where skill actually matters, it is not based in a well known book, it is their first work etc etc etc etc
I still remember when i first started to look for a job when i did finish University, and yes, i had to sell a piece of my soul and eat-out my proud in order to get this first job, which would allow me to grow/develop my skills
Think on the same way, TCOS`s Dev's had to give something away in order to find a publisher, and probably what the gave away was some control about the way TCOS was going to be publish, in order to keep full control about the way TCOS is going to develop.
Is actually a much better way, a much fair way of thinking, when talking about this issue.
Peace. Zoo
The devs are the ones who are going through with IP blocked forums. That's not the publishers, that's them. They're taking down their current forums to put up the IP blocked ones. Once I saw that, it became apparent that more than a little bit of the IP blocking is directly due to them, at the very least they're endorsing it by their actions.
I originally had a viewpoint much like yours...till the world-first forum IP blocks.
The devs are the ones who are going through with IP blocked forums. That's not the publishers, that's them. They're taking down their current forums to put up the IP blocked ones. Once I saw that, it became apparent that more than a little bit of the IP blocking is directly due to them, at the very least they're endorsing it by their actions.
I originally had a viewpoint much like yours...till the world-first forum IP blocks.
Tell me Mister Wiseguy, why would a single party (i.e. developers) would want to block something? Why do developers publish, when they have plenty of publishers!?
Couldn't it be, that contracts were made and everyone abides by its terms? Just a thought, not that I want to challenge your unparalleled wisdom. And why would Chewbacca want to live on Endor? That doesn't make sense.
Think on the same way, TCOS`s Dev's had to give something away in order to find a publisher, and probably what the gave away was some control about the way TCOS was going to be publish, in order to keep full control about the way TCOS is going to develop.
Is actually a much better way, a much fair way of thinking, when talking about this issue.
Peace. Zoo
No it isnt as simple as that. The devs are also present at contract negotiations, or at least someone who represents them. A deal goes both ways.
They already had a deal with the EU publishers. So how on earth could Acclaim manage to get away with this? The only reason I can imagine, is that the TCoS devs underestimated the impact of IPblocking would give. Maybe Acclaim expected it (because this is the party in this deal with more experience in the MMO industry), but just wanted it to push through because for them it would mean more subscriptions. So I really wonder if the TCoS team realised what the result would be of this.
Like you I can only guess and assume things about this situation, but if you look at the EU player reactions it can only result in less players.
To me it sounds like a beginners mistake. The only winner here is the last publisher that came to the table : Acclaim.
While the players and the TCoS team (with hindsight) are the losers.
It is also as if those publishers like to have a bad name in the player's eyes. Maybe the problem is that they cant measure how many players they lost through these actions.
Think on the same way, TCOS`s Dev's had to give something away in order to find a publisher, and probably what the gave away was some control about the way TCOS was going to be publish, in order to keep full control about the way TCOS is going to develop.
Is actually a much better way, a much fair way of thinking, when talking about this issue.
Peace. Zoo
No it isnt as simple as that. The devs are also present at contract negotiations, or at least someone who represents them. A deal goes both ways.
They already had a deal with the EU publishers. So how on earth could Acclaim manage to get away with this? The only reason I can imagine, is that the TCoS devs underestimated the impact of IPblocking would give. Maybe Acclaim expected it (because this is the party in this deal with more experience in the MMO industry), but just wanted it to push through because for them it would mean more subscriptions. So I really wonder if the TCoS team realised what the result would be of this.
Like you I can only guess and assume things about this situation, but if you look at the EU player reactions it can only result in less players.
To me it sounds like a beginners mistake. The only winner here is the last publisher that came to the table : Acclaim.
While the players and the TCoS team (with hindsight) are the losers.
It is also as if those publishers like to have a bad name in the player's eyes. Maybe the problem is that they cant measure how many players they lost through these actions.
The team behind TCOS had to give something away, and i think, we do agree about this point.
Whatever they gave away end up been more than they had should gave away, is something, we could just , as u say, imagine.
AS i say on my post, i am ready to be easy on those guys, since they are an Indy company, and probably, they had to sell a pice of soul to the devil, but not just because i am a bit naif, but also, because, they deserve some respect, because, they are thinking out of the box, in some concepts.
If they keept on their side, the last word about the way TCOS would evolve on time, maybe they are smarter than many people think.
Peace Zoo
Indy company or not, they have signed the most stupid contract ever. As usually it is the case, they probably have someone in management that never played online game, but is in charge due to whatever reason - at least usually that is the main reason of the bad decisions in any company.
Besides that, setting up your own web shop is not magic, especially since they go with free client anyways. As it is now it probably makes more sense to play on Acclaim servers than EU ones, considering that their publishers can't even properly distribute the game in EU (game shops in Scandinavia for example never even heard about TCoS). So you get IP blocked from half of the Europe and not much of service in return.
It's even worse. You don't have a choice. Even if you want to play on the Acclaim servers, you won't be able to, because Acclaim IP blocks your country if your country is designated under Frogster/Mindscape.
It's just fail of EPIC proportions.
No matter how noob and indy they are. They should have never signed that deal with Acclaim.
They would have been better off to launch the game in EU first, without IP blocks! See how it goes and when it does well, a better American Publisher would have knocked on their door soon enough.
Now they have turned the whole European playerbase apart, and except Germans and French (wich will surely be happy on their little isolated localised world like they always do), everyone in Europe is already fed up and gave up on the game!
Spellborn shot themselves in the foot BIG time with this and killed off their own game before it's even released. As so far, the release here in EU has been a joke so far (except for the germans).
Cheers
I would not be so sure if it is Acclaim to blame to be honest. If you read Acclaim forums, they said that they are going to IP ban because the existing publisher contracts already had IP bans in them.
How it looks at the moment, it can as well be Frogster and Mindscape being greedy and since they could not be bothered to release game in the rest of the Europe, they might have felt a danger that their players might go for US servers to play with friends.
In any case, it is up to the Devs how to set up their forums and since they hapily continued with IP bans, it just shows they are fine with it. Or at least fine untill the sales/subscriptions prove to them it was most idiotic decission ever.