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Is a MMOG rerelease possible?
raykor
Member UncommonPosts: 326
I highly prefer sci-fi genre games and so had followed TR during development for some time. Unfortunately, I gave up on it and never tried it because of its nearly non-existent PvP system. I understand that PvP is not important to everyone but it is one of the primary criteria for me in choosing a game.
Nonetheless, I was bored and since it was now free I started playing recently. I read many reviews of this game and am fully aware of the many "lack of end game" complaints, but it's pretty damn fun right now!
It seems like a terrible shame (and a waste of a lot of money) to throw away this game. I think it has a lot of potential and I wonder if a little rework and rerelease is possible for these types of games?
Has any MMOG ever gone off-line and then rereleased?
Comments
I am sure it is possible, but i would not expect TR to be the game that does it. I have never heard of a game going offline and coming back.
TRs PvP is also pretty bad, so if that is one of your main criteria, you will soon get tired of it I am sure.
I am sure it is possible, but i would not expect TR to be the game that does it. I have never heard of a game going offline and coming back.
TRs PvP is also pretty bad, so if that is one of your main criteria, you will soon get tired of it I am sure.
Actually, Saga of Ryzom technically has gone offline and resurrected about three or four times now, but each time it seems to have suffered increasing rez sickness...
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
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What would have saved this game is to make Bane a playable faction.
PvP anyone?
MMOs Played: I can no longer list them all in the 500 character limit.
I am sure it is possible, but i would not expect TR to be the game that does it. I have never heard of a game going offline and coming back.
TRs PvP is also pretty bad, so if that is one of your main criteria, you will soon get tired of it I am sure.
To the highlighted point, I think Saga of Ryzom and Face of Mankind are both about to attempt this very thing.
Not sure if any game has succeeded previously.
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Sorry have to disagree. PvP is not the answer.
Yes, it's possible. Infantry did it eight years ago.
The situation then was that both the developer (Harmless Games) and the publisher (GameFan) went kaput in the dot-com bust. (Actually, I'm not sure that GameFan was the publisher as opposed to having some other role, but I know they had something to do with the game and didn't develop it.) Sony then picked up the game, since the development was mostly done, and they could get it for free. The game was offline entirely for about a month (October 2000) before Sony was able to bring it back online.
In the case of Tabula Rasa, the development cost is essentially done. If someone came to NCsoft offering to "buy" the game (perhaps in exchange for, say, a percentage of future revenue), it would be better for NCsoft to accept such an offer than to kill the game entirely.
Unless the server-hosting costs are higher than for most MMORPGs, I'd think it probable that something like that happens reasonably soon. The prospects for future development on the game, apart from relatively minor things like bug fixes, are much bleaker, though.
Indeed, even for PR purposes, to have the game change ownership is better than having it shut down entirely. NCsoft had better be careful lest it get a bad reputation for closing down games. If the conventional wisdom on NCsoft games becomes, "Don't start an NCsoft game because they'll shut it down soon," that could seriously hurt their profits on their other (and future) games. That is in the same sense that a lot of players would be hesitant to try an SOE game, for fear that they'll abruptly add RMT in the future.
Infantry really does not count. I never paid a dime for that game. Lets compare TR to other Pay to Play MMOs and see how many of those have shut down and then come back. Free to play games that make money through advertising or cash shops are not the same.
TR is not done and so the development costs are also not close to done. The game needs a continual influx of content to ever be a good MMO, meaning anyone who buys it will need to put money into it.
I'm really hoping another company'll pick it up or it'll get saved somehow....I'm really enjoying this game
The problem is the owner of the game usually thinks what's left of their investment is a latent goldmine, just waiting for the right opportunity to become a revenue stream. With most of these canceled games, I think it's likely the code will be lost in the chaos of a buyout or bankruptcy before the owners find the decency to sell them off or permit player-run servers. (And yes, that actually has happened.)
It's easy to think of this as inevitable corporate behavior, maybe even a legal necessity, and that is the excuse usually given - but it is a copout. It is a lie. Recall that it was Microsoft who first gave up on their MMOs - Asheron's Call, AC2, and (considered one at the time) Allegiance. Instead of burying them, they sold the AC rights back to Turbine and opened up Allegiance for players to download & host .
I like to think that 10 or 20 years down the road it will be possible & affordable for universities to host these games, that they might find doing so valuable to certain history courses, and that a much richer world will fill these servers up with warm bodies for us poor lost suckers to group with. But my head is in the clouds.
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I am sure it is possible, but i would not expect TR to be the game that does it. I have never heard of a game going offline and coming back.
TRs PvP is also pretty bad, so if that is one of your main criteria, you will soon get tired of it I am sure.
To the highlighted point, I think Saga of Ryzom and Face of Mankind are both about to attempt this very thing.
Not sure if any game has succeeded previously.
This is Ryzoms' third comeback attempt.
This is FoMs' first.
I don't hold much hope for either of them to pan out. Which sucks, in the case of Ryzom anyway. FoM was never anything in the first place.
Sorry have to disagree. PvP is not the answer.
PvP is AN answer if nothing else... MMO's will have to have fully-integrated (rather than tacked on at the end) PvP from now on to be viable.
Period.
Also, bane faction would not just make for good PvP, but depth of play.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
Sorry have to disagree. PvP is not the answer.
PvP is AN answer if nothing else... MMO's will have to have fully-integrated (rather than tacked on at the end) PvP from now on to be viable.
Period.
Also, bane faction would not just make for good PvP, but depth of play.
Disagree, MMOs do not need PVP to survive or be viable. When done properly PVP can be a great part of the game. When done poorly can be worthless.
Bane faction without a ton of changes to the game and the bane would have been a worthless change. As they were the Bane were crappy to play as. Ask any Spy with polymorph.
Considering that it is extremely rare for MMORPGs to have good pvp combat (albeit quite common to have bad pvp combat), I don't think that's a necessity for a game to do well.
Ryzom did.
Tabula Rasa won't though. That would require a Publisher or Dev house to buy the IP from NCSoft, and put in a lot of work to get stable servers and fix its problems. I don't see anyone doing that for TR.
RF Online has done this to. Although the game eventually turned into a F2P model, I personally think it still counts, especially considering the F2P model lasted for about 5-6 months before it went under, then the main company brought it back up.
One problem is the credit crunch is making new ventures pretty hard to pull off as it is. I think that trying to get funding to resurrect a failed game would be extremely difficult.
It's actually too bad, because there are a lot of MMORPGs that have failed completely, or that are just on life support, that got maybe 75% right and could conceivably be retooled into a very compelling title. For a lot less money than developing an MMORPG completely from scratch.
It has always seemed a particular waste to me to see solid game engines, character/npc models and a lot of content just completely go to waste once a project fails.
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I think this is really true, and TR is a great example. Like so many other vultures, I only played the game when it became free. My first reaction was, "What a blast!" But after about two weeks, I was bored. They had a solid product, but in a few crucial ways they made the wrong design decisions over and over again.
If they had just been able to party wipe the original team, and then bring in a crew to fix everything, I think the game could have been at least successful enough to live on for a couple of years. But in order to have avoided the taint of a bad launch, they might have had to party wipe Garriott's team during beta.