Pirates of the Burning Sea Fails

[Human Shield]

Reports abound of retarded decisions made between beta and release (1/10 money drops means people will play 10 times longer right?). They shut down 7 out of 11 servers and merged them. Lowered the number of people that can fight with ships at a time and melee combat still sucks as much as the videos look like. Their server login screen lists the peak users amount for the week instead of currently (so "medium" means it was medium at one time and could be empty now), while they deny real-time statistics as lies. SOE failed to advertise or do anything they were supposed to but the devs are still spinning that it was a good decision.

Another dead MMORPG, when will people learn.

Meanwhile Conan starts a beta while Darkfall will come out and say beta is around the corner and post a picture of a character next to a tree with no interface or combat like they have been doing for 4 years.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

Fail. Wasn't one of the posters here a dev for that game? Or somehow otherwise involved in it.

 

[Shagnak]

Yeah, errorcode was.

He was also involved with the Matrix Online.

Oh, and he started that infamous Uwe Boll petition thingy way back when.

 

[errorcode]

yup, guilty as charged

although, while i agree with a good bit of HS assessment, merging the servers was a good thing.

Our game is more fun with higher population densities, so in spite of the perception it would cause (oh noes, we're crashing and burning!!!11!!) we went ahead with it to make the game more fun.

Yeah, our avatar combat still blows (though, we've got new content coming out that is actually a lot of fun for avatars to play through) and the animations still are basically ass (our animators do great work, but they're working with a crap character engine).

And yeah, the Sony deal was a good deal. They may have totally fucked up our marketing, but there is a lot more to getting a game on shelves then that and they came through with the rest of it. Folks may hate Sony, but they are a good partner for us.

As for us being a dead MMO....we ain't dead yet. We still have folks playing and enjoying, we're still making new content, and still showing that an indie game company can create an MMO that isn't generic fantasy du jour. Is it WoW big? nah. But we're hardly dead.

aside from the bits you hated, what did you think of the mission writing or the single player role-playing story arc?

 

[Texas Red]

So if a MMOG is dying, shouldn't it constantly increase monthly payments in order to sustain those servers?

 

[psycojester]

It would have been a better game with less instancing. If you scaled up the world map and allowed for open combat on the high seas rather than instancing everybody would have been gay for it.

As it was you had a really cool character design system and a good economy and nothing entertaining to do with them.

 

[errorcode]

So if a MMOG is dying, shouldn't it constantly increase monthly payments in order to sustain those servers?

eh?

not sure what you're asking here. Are you asking if MMO's increase the monthly subscription costs to offset the lack of subscriptions?

 

[errorcode]

It would have been a better game with less instancing. If you scaled up the world map and allowed for open combat on the high seas rather than instancing everybody would have been gay for it.

As it was you had a really cool character design system and a good economy and nothing entertaining to do with them.

agreed, i hate the amount of instancing we do. sadly it was a design and development decision way before i came on board, back when the game was just going to be a limited naval engagement simulator. The game grew in scope, but we were stuck with the limitations of the engines we were using.

 

[psycojester]

Okay then, how about you strip out the melee combat engine and replace it with insult sword fighting?

 

[errorcode]

heh, I would strip out our avatar system in a sec if i had my way. it's clunky, doesn't synergise well when fighting in groups, doesn't feel good when navigating through the map, and just doesn't live up to the level of players expectations in comparison to the ship combat.

There is some talk of revamping the system, which i'm trying to push. It's just a tough prospect convincing folks to change such a fundamental part of the game once you've shipped, even if it's obviously needed

 

[psycojester]

I played WoW and i played EQ, my character in PotBS looked unique. I liked it.

 

[Texas Red]

So if a MMOG is dying, shouldn't it constantly increase monthly payments in order to sustain those servers?

eh?

not sure what you're asking here. Are you asking if MMO's increase the monthly subscription costs to offset the lack of subscriptions?

What's not to understand? If the game is like WoW then they're raking a huge profit because the subscription fees go over the necessity amount of money to sustain the servers. If that is the case they should come clean and proclaim that they're demanding players an extra 5 dollars or whatever for nothing.

Basically, MMOGs come in different shapes and sizes with a radically different number of players, but they all seem to ask the same monthly price.

 

[obediah]

Basically, MMOGs come in different shapes and sizes with a radically different number of players, but they all seem to ask the same monthly price.

So?

Basically, computer games come in different shapes and sizes with a radically different number of players, but they all seem to ask the same price.