Silverlode interactive from Saga, now making some ships game. Behind their wall of fanbois. Great game colectable card game mmorts and all, run to the ground with crap support, even crapper liar PRs and lack of any endgame content. People join and leave one month later. Doesn't matter to them none, so long as people continue to buy 'booster packs'. Oh until they stopped and just bought cards (units) off each other.
Blizzard and ArenaNet are the best developers out there so ater these two just take your pick because who is the worst everyone else struggles desperately to stay afloat.
CCP would make a 'top dev' list imho.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
You all are naming developers that make games, most of which are still running and enjoyed by thousands of people at a minimum, many with tens of thousands.
Here is a more objective answer, fueled only partly from my emotional bad-end-to-a-love-affair psychology but not flying in the face of any simple objective criterion.
Snail Games - maker of Age of Armor. I like robots (emo part) but this game is terrible. 'All your base are belong to us' type translations, ridiculously priced cash shop, etc. etc.
Out of AAA developers, I think most people's comments are fairly objective.
You all are naming developers that make games, most of which are still running and enjoyed by thousands of people at a minimum, many with tens of thousands.
Here is a more objective answer, fueled only partly from my emotional bad-end-to-a-love-affair psychology but not flying in the face of any simple objective criterion.
Snail Games - maker of Age of Armor. I like robots (emo part) but this game is terrible. 'All your base are belong to us' type translations, ridiculously priced cash shop, etc. etc.
Out of AAA developers, I think most people's comments are fairly objective.
I'll give you that, but that was not the question asked. Plus to ask the question in that way would be to say
Of the developers of the best games, which are the worst?
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
I'll admit that their list of failures pales in comparison to some others, but they are the only jackals that have managed to burn me personally. I've successfully sidestepped everyone else except that APB mess. But in that case, I actually did take a great deal of pleasure in the character customization feature, which I still consider groundbreaking. They get points for that. Funcom though? Nothing but garbage from a bunch of arrogant asshats.
In the same time frame EQ2 has released 6 expansions and the 7th is on the way. Over an 11 year period EQ original has had 17 expansions released. Not a paltry 1 expansion every 2 years. I know SOE suck at most things but at least they get new content out the door at a respectable rate. 2 years between expansions is, for me, a disgrace - especially when they have such a huge revenue stream coming in off all those 9 million or however many it is subs every month. Do the math, they must be clearing 5 million a moth in profit easily.
Personally I loved the rate at which SOE was releasing expansions in EQ, but a lot of people viewed it as SOE nickel and diming them. At $20 an expansion, thats $340 on top of your monthly fees compared to Blizzards $80 worth of expansions.
I think it all comes down to a money issue. Since EQ had far fewer subscribers, they needed us to buy the expansions to cover development costs and Blizzard is making so much money off subs that they can sell fewer expansions and patch in new content later.
The "worse" would be SOE. The WORST would be Cryptic. Only Cryptic would have the cajone's to create MMO's with smaller worlds and less content than many single player games. And do it TWICE.
In the same time frame EQ2 has released 6 expansions and the 7th is on the way. Over an 11 year period EQ original has had 17 expansions released. Not a paltry 1 expansion every 2 years. I know SOE suck at most things but at least they get new content out the door at a respectable rate. 2 years between expansions is, for me, a disgrace - especially when they have such a huge revenue stream coming in off all those 9 million or however many it is subs every month. Do the math, they must be clearing 5 million a moth in profit easily.
Personally I loved the rate at which SOE was releasing expansions in EQ, but a lot of people viewed it as SOE nickel and diming them. At $20 an expansion, thats $340 on top of your monthly fees compared to Blizzards $80 worth of expansions.
I think it all comes down to a money issue. Since EQ had far fewer subscribers, they needed us to buy the expansions to cover development costs and Blizzard is making so much money off subs that they can sell fewer expansions and patch in new content later.
This is a very good point, but I don't think the level of later "in game" patching made by Blizz amounts to anything near the level of content supplied by SOE, and it's nowhere near enough to keep the gameplay from becoming stale and boringly repetitious.
I just can't see an excuse for 2 year gaps between expansions. 18 monhts is stretching it a bit. 1 year would be about right for the amount of content they have released in expansions so far.
Just my own opinion, and the reason I no longer play WoW. I got bored of 5 mans and ICC runs.
This is like picking the smelliest turd. You can do it, but who wants to smell all that shit?
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
You all are naming developers that make games, most of which are still running and enjoyed by thousands of people at a minimum, many with tens of thousands.
Here is a more objective answer, fueled only partly from my emotional bad-end-to-a-love-affair psychology but not flying in the face of any simple objective criterion.
Snail Games - maker of Age of Armor. I like robots (emo part) but this game is terrible. 'All your base are belong to us' type translations, ridiculously priced cash shop, etc. etc.
Out of AAA developers, I think most people's comments are fairly objective.
I'll give you that, but that was not the question asked. Plus to ask the question in that way would be to say
Of the developers of the best games, which are the worst?
He should have and I think the question should have been " in your experience, what are the worst?" Because let's face it, most people have only played AAA titles or have played very little else to compare.
Personally I loved the rate at which SOE was releasing expansions in EQ, but a lot of people viewed it as SOE nickel and diming them. At $20 an expansion, thats $340 on top of your monthly fees compared to Blizzards $80 worth of expansions.
I think it all comes down to a money issue. Since EQ had far fewer subscribers, they needed us to buy the expansions to cover development costs and Blizzard is making so much money off subs that they can sell fewer expansions and patch in new content later.
This is a very good point, but I don't think the level of later "in game" patching made by Blizz amounts to anything near the level of content supplied by SOE, and it's nowhere near enough to keep the gameplay from becoming stale and boringly repetitious.
I just can't see an excuse for 2 year gaps between expansions. 18 monhts is stretching it a bit. 1 year would be about right for the amount of content they have released in expansions so far.
Just my own opinion, and the reason I no longer play WoW. I got bored of 5 mans and ICC runs.
Oh I totally agree, but at the same time, it's working for Blizzard and the masses seem to enjoy it. Some friends and I were discussing this the other day and most people do not realize that the time between the launch of WotLK and the day that the LK was added as in game content was 13 months. Very few companies can get away with selling content and not completely releasing it for over a year.
You all are naming developers that make games, most of which are still running and enjoyed by thousands of people at a minimum, many with tens of thousands.
Here is a more objective answer, fueled only partly from my emotional bad-end-to-a-love-affair psychology but not flying in the face of any simple objective criterion.
Snail Games - maker of Age of Armor. I like robots (emo part) but this game is terrible. 'All your base are belong to us' type translations, ridiculously priced cash shop, etc. etc.
Out of AAA developers, I think most people's comments are fairly objective.
I'll give you that, but that was not the question asked. Plus to ask the question in that way would be to say
Of the developers of the best games, which are the worst?
He should have and I think the question should have been " in your experience, what are the worst?" Because let's face it, most people have only played AAA titles or have played very little else to compare.
That works.
SOE. SWG lags more than Age of Conan and looks like something from 1999 on my machine.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Developer....hmmm I dunno....not too many developers that I think are intentionally bad. But Cryptic would probably get my vote. Any dev that makes a game with the intent of double dipping in my wallet is on my chet list.
Publisher.....now that's easy EA for sure. They killed my baby Earth and Beyond before it's time. Raped my girl Ultima Online over and over and over. Yeah if I hate a instant kill switch, I'd throw it in a heartbeat to get back at dem a-holes at EA.
EA today has done a complete turn around. They no longer are IP killers and through their EA Partners program are actually giving a lot of smaller developers a chance.
Or do you still live in the late 90s and early 2000s? Hate activision now. Bobby Kotick is a complete douche.
There are so many bad developers out there that trying to pick the worse is like finding the stinkyest of the stinky (no offense to skunks intended). The world of game development is so distorted that I am not sure I could even pick a 'best" developer much lest the worse one. I guess who is the worse depends on where you are looking from. For me the worse developer keeps coming down to a three way tie;
1a; Blizzard
1b; Mythic
1c; Funcom
Sigil is a close second.
I would like to point out that EA (other than EASports), NCSoft and SOE are not developers, they are publishers. The developer is the one that create the piles of cr_p they try to feed us, the publishers are the ones that spread the cr_p like peanut butter on break and tell us how good it tastes (which is thier job).
Actually to carry the metaphor all the way through, or not mix metaphors, it has to be smell and not poke with a stick.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
There are so many bad developers out there that trying to pick the worse is like finding the stinkyest of the stinky (no offense to skunks intended). The world of game development is so distorted that I am not sure I could even pick a 'best" developer much lest the worse one. I guess who is the worse depends on where you are looking from. For me the worse developer keeps coming down to a three way tie;
1a; Blizzard
1b; Mythic
1c; Funcom
Sigil is a close second.
I would like to point out that EA (other than EASports), NCSoft and SOE are not developers, they are publishers. The developer is the one that create the piles of cr_p they try to feed us, the publishers are the ones that spread the cr_p like peanut butter on break and tell us how good it tastes (which is thier job).
EA and SOE are both publishers and developers. EA owns the studio(s) (Bioware Mythic) that develop Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and Warhammer Online. The studio doesn't have EA in its name currently, but it is no different than several EA studios that make the various sports games.
SOE has a handful of studios that make the majority of the games they publish. SOE's Austin studio makes STar Wars Galaxies and the upcoming trainwreck DC Universe online. SOE's San Diego studio, where their main offices are, develops Everquest 1 and 2. SOE's Denver studio makes/made the virtual card games SOE has available, depending on wether or not SOE has replaced the folks from the Denver studio who quit to start their own company, which was reported to be almost everyone who worked there. SOE also develops non-MMO games, such as the Wheel of Fortune and Jepardy! games. The only MMO SOE publishes that they aren't the developers of is Pirates of the Burning Sea. In fact, SOE has an entirely seperate lable they use for publishing games that they don't develop called "Platform Publishing".
Who in your opinion is the worse game developer/publisher in regards to MMO's? My vote will go to SOE for there general lack of commitment to develop and promote their games. Think Vanguard, EQ, Pirates of the Burning Sea, the Matrix Online, plantside and so on and you get the picture of a company that seems indifferent to their own product. But perhaps their greatest sin was creating Everquest 2 when they should of continued to invest in the original. Although Everquest 2 extended comes a close second.
The issue I have with this is that SOE was not the developer (at least initially) for some of the MMOs you listed.
Vanguard - originally developed by Sigil Games Online w/ Brad McQuaid as the designer. Had SOE not stepped in to take it over, the game would be non-existant. I give props to SOE for keeping the game alive for the game's fans. Had it been EA the game would have been shut down.
Pirates of the Burning Sea - developed by Flying Lab Software. I don't recall what SOE's involvement was as the publisher but the developer is the one that's really ultimately responsible for the game.
Matrix Online - was originally developed by Monolith and published by Warner Bros/Sega. SOE came in much later. Again, their involvement extended the life of the game.
So that leaves us with EQ & EQ2. I don't think anyone can argue with the success of EverQuest. After a decade the game is still being played. As for EverQuest 2, the success of that game says otherwise. EverQuest 2 Extended is just an adaptation on their part to the trend in the MMO market of the F2P model. Should they just ignore the trend and not attempt to adapt their business to the changing business market?
If you are going to dismiss SOE from the lack of performance of games made by other developers, then you must include Everquest in that list. EQ was developed by Verant and was a major success before SOE was even created. In fact most people would say the decline of EQ started when SOE fully took over.
The actual games that soe was in charge of developing have a really sloppy ugly history. Most of which have been left abandoned and unsupported for years.
Personally I loved the rate at which SOE was releasing expansions in EQ, but a lot of people viewed it as SOE nickel and diming them. At $20 an expansion, thats $340 on top of your monthly fees compared to Blizzards $80 worth of expansions.
I think it all comes down to a money issue. Since EQ had far fewer subscribers, they needed us to buy the expansions to cover development costs and Blizzard is making so much money off subs that they can sell fewer expansions and patch in new content later.
This is a very good point, but I don't think the level of later "in game" patching made by Blizz amounts to anything near the level of content supplied by SOE, and it's nowhere near enough to keep the gameplay from becoming stale and boringly repetitious.
I just can't see an excuse for 2 year gaps between expansions. 18 monhts is stretching it a bit. 1 year would be about right for the amount of content they have released in expansions so far.
Just my own opinion, and the reason I no longer play WoW. I got bored of 5 mans and ICC runs.
Oh I totally agree, but at the same time, it's working for Blizzard and the masses seem to enjoy it. Some friends and I were discussing this the other day and most people do not realize that the time between the launch of WotLK and the day that the LK was added as in game content was 13 months. Very few companies can get away with selling content and not completely releasing it for over a year.
The reason Blizzard gets away with it is because they are upfront about it. They explained what was in the expansion and what was going to be added to the game inbetween the next expansion. They let everyone know that the LK raid was going to be the last content addition before the next expansion.
On the flip side, SOE has released several half finished expansion for EQ and EQ2 where they lied about features being in the game, until they had a later patch not that mentioned those features being implemented. People are much more forgiving and understanding when they don't feel like someone is trying to get one over on them, somthing which the folks at Blizzard seem to understand (definitely not the rest of Activision) that the folks at SOE do not.
The "worse" would be SOE. The WORST would be Cryptic. Only Cryptic would have the cajone's to create MMO's with smaller worlds and less content than many single player games. And do it TWICE.
Somehow Robsolf you have this awesome ability to drive some of these failures to depths deeper than I thought they could hit with me, amazing I never really thought of Cryptic like that.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Comments
Square Enix for taking the Final Fantasy IP and making it into a steaming pile of shit.
Craptic and SOE
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Silverlode interactive from Saga, now making some ships game. Behind their wall of fanbois. Great game colectable card game mmorts and all, run to the ground with crap support, even crapper liar PRs and lack of any endgame content. People join and leave one month later. Doesn't matter to them none, so long as people continue to buy 'booster packs'. Oh until they stopped and just bought cards (units) off each other.
www.playsaga.com just check the forums
CCP would make a 'top dev' list imho.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Out of AAA developers, I think most people's comments are fairly objective.
I'll give you that, but that was not the question asked. Plus to ask the question in that way would be to say
Of the developers of the best games, which are the worst?
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Funcom.
I'll admit that their list of failures pales in comparison to some others, but they are the only jackals that have managed to burn me personally. I've successfully sidestepped everyone else except that APB mess. But in that case, I actually did take a great deal of pleasure in the character customization feature, which I still consider groundbreaking. They get points for that. Funcom though? Nothing but garbage from a bunch of arrogant asshats.
Personally I loved the rate at which SOE was releasing expansions in EQ, but a lot of people viewed it as SOE nickel and diming them. At $20 an expansion, thats $340 on top of your monthly fees compared to Blizzards $80 worth of expansions.
I think it all comes down to a money issue. Since EQ had far fewer subscribers, they needed us to buy the expansions to cover development costs and Blizzard is making so much money off subs that they can sell fewer expansions and patch in new content later.
Cryptic.
They have no clue what "world" building means and to make an MMORPG you need to know how to world build.
Second, those makers of APB and the makers of Global Agenda. What boring games and embarrasments to the MMORPG genre.
The "worse" would be SOE. The WORST would be Cryptic. Only Cryptic would have the cajone's to create MMO's with smaller worlds and less content than many single player games. And do it TWICE.
This is a very good point, but I don't think the level of later "in game" patching made by Blizz amounts to anything near the level of content supplied by SOE, and it's nowhere near enough to keep the gameplay from becoming stale and boringly repetitious.
I just can't see an excuse for 2 year gaps between expansions. 18 monhts is stretching it a bit. 1 year would be about right for the amount of content they have released in expansions so far.
Just my own opinion, and the reason I no longer play WoW. I got bored of 5 mans and ICC runs.
This is like picking the smelliest turd. You can do it, but who wants to smell all that shit?
--John Ruskin
He should have and I think the question should have been " in your experience, what are the worst?" Because let's face it, most people have only played AAA titles or have played very little else to compare.
Oh I totally agree, but at the same time, it's working for Blizzard and the masses seem to enjoy it. Some friends and I were discussing this the other day and most people do not realize that the time between the launch of WotLK and the day that the LK was added as in game content was 13 months. Very few companies can get away with selling content and not completely releasing it for over a year.
That works.
SOE. SWG lags more than Age of Conan and looks like something from 1999 on my machine.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
EA is a publisher not a developer. They are actually gaining a lot of respect in the gaming comunity this gen for their IP creation.
Activision/Blizzard is the evil hated company now (mostly due to Bobby Kotick).
Its amazing how out of touch MMO gamers are with the gaming scene these days. Which is why your opinions are worthless as a whole.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2
EA today has done a complete turn around. They no longer are IP killers and through their EA Partners program are actually giving a lot of smaller developers a chance.
Or do you still live in the late 90s and early 2000s? Hate activision now. Bobby Kotick is a complete douche.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2
There are so many bad developers out there that trying to pick the worse is like finding the stinkyest of the stinky (no offense to skunks intended). The world of game development is so distorted that I am not sure I could even pick a 'best" developer much lest the worse one. I guess who is the worse depends on where you are looking from. For me the worse developer keeps coming down to a three way tie;
1a; Blizzard
1b; Mythic
1c; Funcom
Sigil is a close second.
I would like to point out that EA (other than EASports), NCSoft and SOE are not developers, they are publishers. The developer is the one that create the piles of cr_p they try to feed us, the publishers are the ones that spread the cr_p like peanut butter on break and tell us how good it tastes (which is thier job).
No one's smelling it, just poking it with a stick. Of course, your point is no less valid.
Actually to carry the metaphor all the way through, or not mix metaphors, it has to be smell and not poke with a stick.
--John Ruskin
EA and SOE are both publishers and developers. EA owns the studio(s) (Bioware Mythic) that develop Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and Warhammer Online. The studio doesn't have EA in its name currently, but it is no different than several EA studios that make the various sports games.
SOE has a handful of studios that make the majority of the games they publish. SOE's Austin studio makes STar Wars Galaxies and the upcoming trainwreck DC Universe online. SOE's San Diego studio, where their main offices are, develops Everquest 1 and 2. SOE's Denver studio makes/made the virtual card games SOE has available, depending on wether or not SOE has replaced the folks from the Denver studio who quit to start their own company, which was reported to be almost everyone who worked there. SOE also develops non-MMO games, such as the Wheel of Fortune and Jepardy! games. The only MMO SOE publishes that they aren't the developers of is Pirates of the Burning Sea. In fact, SOE has an entirely seperate lable they use for publishing games that they don't develop called "Platform Publishing".
If you are going to dismiss SOE from the lack of performance of games made by other developers, then you must include Everquest in that list. EQ was developed by Verant and was a major success before SOE was even created. In fact most people would say the decline of EQ started when SOE fully took over.
The actual games that soe was in charge of developing have a really sloppy ugly history. Most of which have been left abandoned and unsupported for years.
The reason Blizzard gets away with it is because they are upfront about it. They explained what was in the expansion and what was going to be added to the game inbetween the next expansion. They let everyone know that the LK raid was going to be the last content addition before the next expansion.
On the flip side, SOE has released several half finished expansion for EQ and EQ2 where they lied about features being in the game, until they had a later patch not that mentioned those features being implemented. People are much more forgiving and understanding when they don't feel like someone is trying to get one over on them, somthing which the folks at Blizzard seem to understand (definitely not the rest of Activision) that the folks at SOE do not.
Somehow Robsolf you have this awesome ability to drive some of these failures to depths deeper than I thought they could hit with me, amazing I never really thought of Cryptic like that.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Funcom would get my vote for the worst.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.