All Posts by Torak

There are a couple of reasons why but IMHO here is the main one -

Its just more fantasy.

All it really has to say for itself is a gimicky skill bar. I watched it on a dev interview, it's still the same old, some old but with a few minor twist and slightly different art style. There are literally dozens of fantasy grinders out there and its going to take a lot more then a rotating skill bar to compete with all that junk.

Almost everything you listed is all under the hood mechanics but how is it going to be any different from anything else out there?

How is Spellborn going to grab you by the shirt and drag you into an emersive fantasy world that even the most jaded gamer would lose himself for hours in? Answer - its not. And thats what its going to take to compete these days. I wish them luck. Hopefully they put out a game that can at least sustain itself for awhile.

Originally posted by grues0me

Thanks for the feedback!

Well, i dont overdo it, but i feel it uncomfortable to play while i know she is sitting there, watching TV or doing her studies in another room. I can sit there for 2-3 hours, but even if she doesnt mind, i feel *bad* and are half the way always thinking "you should better NOT play and better do something with her"...

I work till 7 pm and its hard to cut out some time for gaming after social resonsibilities are finished.

Also i try to "buy" me time by doing things she likes usually before i go play a bit. I have some time consuming games laying around (i always like time consuming RPGs) but i dont dare to start them, because i dont want to neglect my wife.

But its interesting how you guys get along with it, when i was in my *old* relationship i never thought gaming as a hobby and a woman with different interests will work.

Notebook...hmm...nice idea.

PS: Arcken...i noticed that too, when she is doing her studies or surfing the web herself, its much easier, but when she sits there, zapping channels i just cant but to log off and throw a movie in.

PPS: I tried to get her into gaming by starting with flash games, but she loses interest very fast, sadly. Sims 2 looked very interesting, but she just cant get into those games.

PPS: Why is WoW so time consuming...and i love my Deathknight. But sooo few time.

I've been married for 15 years and me and my wife both game.

The key to this is communicating (as in any relationship issue) You need to tell her about feeling a bit uncomfortable or even guilty at times when you game.

Set some ground rules and let her know that no matter what is going on, she can interupt.

Like others have said, they are just games. Your wife provides the yum, yum. Don't mess with that.

Originally posted by Sevenwind

Pretty good write up sanskirt. Don't know why someone reported it, but ah well.

1. Agree the devs are pretty responsive. I like how they will post in reply to something that could be a bug. They fixed the halloween npc after I posted about it.

2. The only time I feel it is a grind is when you try to finish TOO quests. Then you again your not forced to do it. And on my alt I'm skipping a lot of the stuff and just having fun. While on my main I'm trying to do it all.

3. Client runs fine on my system as well. They got an xfire bug atm I don't like, but nothing critical. They fixed the howler stun bug. My system would pause for half a second where it is suppose to go to black and white screen.

Rest I pretty much agree. I hope D15 lives up to all the hype.

I see his points and agree for the mostpart HOWEVER I disagree with the point on mechs. This game is sorely missing vehicles or any sort to the point that it is comical that a Sci-Fi society / war doesn't even have a truck / Hummer / APC  or darn motorcycle. (Sci-Fi equivilents you get my point) No air vehicles to provide air support...nothing.  That is an issue for me.  

I spent a lot of years in the military and its a rediculous idea that an army has no vehicles at all.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

 

To me at least Vanguard you gain skills and abilities past 30. In TR 30 is he last level you get new skills.

There is no winning but there is endless debate.

Well I gotz me 30 more free dayz.

I winzors! For now anyway...

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

 

You are assuming I did not like TRs gamestyle which you are 100% wrong on. The gamestyle was great, the fact the game was so easy I soloed to 50 in less than 2 months and then got there and had nothing to do but farm for loot to sell on the MS was the biggest problem.

Then trying to run an alt through the same boring quests killed my joy of the game. You played the trial, and I bet the trial was great because TRs best parts are below level 30. Hell after the first 20 levels I thought I found the MMO to play for years to come. Then I got past the truly polished and well built areas and got into TRs less thrilling game play areas. Post level 30 is really just blah, the missions are the same as any other MMO, nothing innovative there and CPs become a grind after you see the same exact Bane for the thousandth time.

Sounds like Vanguard Maybe Brad and Rich are buds or something.

Yeah bro, there is no winning with these things, is there?

Originally posted by indiramourn

Originally posted by Abrahmm

 

Funny, doesn't seem like ANYONE is making a good game now, experience or not. So I don't think that has any effect on the game. Atleast he can say he HAS made a good game, which directors haven't been able to say for the last 4 years.

Hold on a minute.  This has nothing to do with making "good" games.  In the case of TR and Vanguard it has everything to do with making "ready-for-release" games.  Both those games could have been great.  Releasing betaware is the problem here.
 

Since we are on that subject...

I only did the trial and although I didn't think it was all that bad, is it in a "ready - for - release" state now?

(I haven't a clue beyond level 15 as a commando, and I gotta say, rocket launchers did, in fact, ROCK) I experienced no technical issues and it didn't really feel grindy at all, I was doing missions straight through although most of them were pretty basic they kept with the fast paced nature of the game. The instances, although not super impressive, were pretty good...

However, like I said before, was more like GW then a traditional MMORPG (and that is why its catching so much flak IMHO)

So what are its real core problems? As a noob / trial I just don't know. I would guess its long term playability (I've only written that about 2 dozen times in various ways) and it dilutes at level cap to nothing more then a few limited repeatable activities or something. (I really gotta read up on this game one day)

 EDIT

I just got a message from massively.com and I just won a Tabula Rasa contest prize (soldier pack) which has a t-shirt, TR dog tags, and the game....

Talk about karma lol....

Of all the damn contest that site had, I won the TR....

Originally posted by TenSpotting

I visited the site and it doesn't even look good.  They'd be much better off to build something like a true D&D Online MMO or another fantasy style MMO..  Bioware is real good at building those kinds of RPG's.

Yeah and they could have it where you could play Elves and Dwarves too and fight against Orcs and Dark Elves...that would be awesome.

Originally posted by Mahlo

It's a shame about Tabula Rasa as it doess seem to be on borrowed time. It has a lot of good points, it just didn't work as an immersive MMO.

Nope it doesn't work well as an MMORPG very well BUT it does fit the GW style game (action online game or whatever they called it). Its just missing the completeness of GW's content and competetive play aspect. Thats why GW is going on 4 years old and still loaded with players and stores still have full priced retail boxes.

 (edit...well the no monthly fee also helps play into that...)

 Also...

Darkfall is progressive, it is gritty, violent, it tickles your brain, it pushes your ego. It has all sorts of features u never see ANYWHERE. It has taken the ULTIMATE HARDCORE and developed it.. Darkfall doesn't care what others think..

I think...its not going to launch this year like they said OR in 2009 anymore then it was going to launch in 2004 like they said in 2003 with its 1999 graphics.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

I have been playing VG 3 months and compared to TR it is worth my $15 a month. There are more people on now than  you might have been used to and finding groups at different levels is far from impossible. VG has issues no doubt, but compared to TR it is a true MMO. TR would have been a decent PC game if it had no fees after purchase. Should have went with the GW buy it and no monthly fee system, then maybe it would have been worth the total money I spent on that tiny MMo with so little to do.
 

That's exactly what I am talking about. You were the wrong person to target the game at. So much that you are willing to endure a technically inferior game then play a gamestyle you don't like.

Either way they are peer games. VG WAS at about 40k a year ago TR can't be a whole lot better off. VG will remain running for now as the stationpass enables SOE to keep all their games running (sorta like an MMO socialism) NC runs everything individually to live and die on their own performance (or lack of it) Anyway arguing about VG and TR is like arguing which is better, being set on fire or falling off a cliff. Pointless.

At least until SOE announces that they will be changing their overall strategy in the market with the coming of Freerealms, the Agency & DCU and starts cutting the fat. SOE isn't doing so hot in the market either these days and is probably in far worse shape then NCSoft as they have no big ticket names anymore and never had anything close to the level of success of Lineage 1 or 2. In fact SOE has damaged its reputation so badly that even if they made a good game I doubt that people would seriously give it half a chance. NC on the other hand...Aion, breaking records in Korea. Give it 3 months after launch and we will see how good the game really is. Then of course NC has GW2 on the way...

Didn't the devs of DF put out that the game would be launching in 2008? 43 days left.

Hows that going? If I remember correctly they said beta would have started by now...any word on that yet?

I am simply amazed that anyone still follows DF...this game was suppose to have launched in like 2003 or 2004...They just need to remove that game from the list like Heroes Journey and the other Vap games.

Hmmm...no Vanguard is ten times the mess this game is. In fact from what I saw, this game really isn't all that bad just not really all that MMOish, its more like an action game like GW but it doesn't have any real technical issues.

Vanguard is a frickin mess of game that hardly runs and even if you can get it going with decent FPS, its just a "10 rats" grinder with nothing else to really do. Yeah they have "diplomacy...but it doesn't really do anything, you can grind out crafting but..loot is better and there is no one to buy your stuff. You can get a boat but it doesn't do anything at all but let you ride around empty water...you can get a flying mount but again, it doesn't offer any real benefit except you get to fly around an empty landscape.

There are not enough players in VG to support an economy, not enough to group with at any level besides cap so its a long lonely trip, the world is enormous...and deserted.

How you guys even get remotely close to comparing the two is beyond me. I strongly suggest you download both the TR free trial and the VG free trial and play them back to back. Then rebutle my post. I was a beta tester of VG and played it on and off for about 8 months. In fact I wrote a bunch of player profiles until I ran out of active players to write about.

IMHO the base issue with many posters here on this site is that RG promised a next generation MMORPG but delivered a SciFi Guild Wars instead. (what did they call that an MMO action game or something?)

 All things being equal the main issue with this game appears to be that it has the playability of a normal PC game. You basically "play it through" and then you are "done", I'm est it has maybe 1 or 2 months of play before you esentually "finish it"? In the big picture of Video gaming thats actually pretty good (most games you are lucky to get 40 hours out of them). For an MMO, thats pretty bad. To do an action MOG it needs to have a lot of content and an open ended aspect like GW. You grind out to level cap in GW in about 1 - 2 weeks but you have so much content AND basically an unlimited amount of gameplay in the PvP portion. TR shoulda followed this more closely.

To say this game was "poorly" made is a stretch. It was poorly and incorrectly marketed and not filled out enough at launch and then RG lost focus and went to play Spaceman Spiff instead. It needs an open ended aspect and like I've posted here a few times, IMHO more emphesis on "Control Point" gameplay (with impact) and Humans vs Bane in a PvM style set up would have given this game the edge it needed.

Other then that it would have helped if it was correctly marketed, the wrong people totally bought into this games hype lol.

Originally posted by jinxit

I was one of the people that played Auto assualt and enjoyed it, when NCsoft canned the title I felt rather let down by NCsoft and Netdevil, getting some free time as a type of apology with TR was a bit of a bonus but imagine my suprise when I logged into TR and realised it was nothing more than a clone of Auto assualt but without the cars......

I couldn't understand how they thought TR was going to be a success seeing it was pretty much Auto assualt without the "Auto"

The original TR was a wierd fantasy / SciFi hybrid. There is a movie floating around somewhere. I'm not saying it was any better or worse then what we have today but it was something totally different from the current TR.

About 2 years before the current version of TR launched big Rich completely changed it to what it is today after all the investment money NC had already given him for several years.

There was also a highly publized at the time dispute about the art direction and how the new version of TR wasn't going to appeal to Asian gamers so Rich went it without the Asian market. If I recall this didn't go over very well with NC Korea. At the time they basically said it better be good or....

Well we see what happened, NCSoft north American has been consolidated down to the bare bones and big Rich suddenly has better things to do besides be involved with NCSoft. IMHO they asked him to resign.

They trusted RG & his brother far to much and he made a LOT of very bad and very costly business decissions. Anything the North American branch touched with the exception of GW and to a lesser degree CoX sorta floundered around and most of it died off or never got out the gate.

...almost over!

In case any readers have been under a rock lately, many will have noticed the once seemingly endless parade of fantasy grinders has actually about run out.

IMHO not only are MMO moving away from the tired and beaten like a dead horse fantasy theme but they are evolving away from the just as tired grinder formula as well.

Hopefully gone forever are the days of whacking 10 rats or whatever they had us whacking and paying a fee for.

www.massively.com/2008/11/15/the-digital-continuum-fantasys-upcoming-vacation/

How this will all play out in the near future, I guess we will see. I for one am very glad that its not another round of EQ's, Lineage's, AC's and WoW's and whatever else they've been cloning. New ideas like APB, Champions, Earthrise, FallenEarth, World of Darkness, Global Agenda, EVE's "walking in Stations" expansion and a dozen others...are finally on the way.

I would seriously advise you jump in a play it while you can....

NCSoft is again considering what to do with this game and they have ZERO reason to keep it alive. You know that meeting they said they were going to have last week, the one about what to do with this game? Well guys don't be surprised if shutting it down was one of the options.

www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/11/133_34158.html

Nov 10 2008

NCsoft, the kingpin of the local gaming industry, also has its own demons that need exorcising. The company is now reluctantly discussing whether to pull the plug on ``Tabula Rasa,'' developed by famed game developer Richard Garriott and the product of a seven-year, 100 billion won investment.

(thanks gameloading, for posting this article)

So spend some time with your old friend because IMHO, the time is near.

Originally posted by Lydon

I think Aion will indeed be a big hit...both in Korea and foreign markets. I do, however, hope that they don't pull the plug on Tabula Rasa. It really is a fun game that just needs more content added to it.

If anyone likes Tabula Rasa, I would advise you play it now while you have a chance cause its not looking like its going to be around a whole lot longer. NC has no reason to keep it going at all.

NC has been slowly pulling out of the western market over the last 2 years.

They got burned far to many times and negected their real money making markets, Asia. The Lineage franchise has aged and lost a lot of ground in Korea while they dumped millions and millions of dollars in failures like AA and TR here in the west. TR alone cost NC something like 74 million dollars. After all that money the US only makes up 12% of their total revenues and their real money makers have aged and lost their competitive edge.

NCSoft quarterly operating report

ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

GW2 will probably be NC's last western produced product. After that, IMHO all NC West is going to be is a server localization point for the games they make for Korea. (Aion, Blade and Soul, L3 and the other projects they are working on)

IMHO, NC has hit gold with Aion in Korea and they really are not all that concerned with what the west thinks about it.  They will throw us our localized version like they did with L2 when they are ready. IMHO, their dreams of a creating a successful US/EU market seperate from their own are gone.

(source article stating the cost of Tabula Rasa www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/11/133_34283.html )

Originally posted by Ragana

Despite all the negative reviews and the talk of this game getting shut down (it's not is it?) I decided to start this up after all.

 

I got a few questions before I actually start playing.

 

1- Whats a good class to start with so I can enjoy the game and not have a hard time

2- Are there enough players for me to enjoy the content?

3- Are there active guilds?

4- What draws people to the game (i heard something about live raids, not sure what it is)

5- What server to roll on?

 

Thanks,

 

~Tom  

Hey Tom,

Nah, its not that bad IMHO. We are all just being overly critical...

You don't have to pick a class starting out, you start as a recruit and then make class choices down the road. Its a branching system.

Are there enough players to enjoy it? I just finished the trial and I would say definite "yes" to level 15, past that I don't know. I had ZERO problems getting people to do the missions with me like the Pravus Research mission and such.

I saw a lot of people asking for guilds and taking invites, I didn't do any guild shopping so dunno first hand.

What draws people, well enough of the negative right? All MMO's have their pros and cons. I think a lot of that event stuff is going on for the level cap players (I'm guessing, like most MMO's, they make up the bulk of players) But the game is a pretty fun action game. Up front, at first it really captures the atmosphere of a war going on. (it fades though as you realize nothing ever changes)

The 2 things I thought were done pretty good compared to the 90% fantasy rat grinders were: the missions. Even the low level ones where decent. And the Control Points. The low level ones have a lot of trial account people do them.

Dunno on servers, I played the Euro and it always had enough people on it (server conned yellowish)

All in all I can think of many  worse games to spend a weekend on. Just have fun with it.

IMHO, most people are just disappointed that the game was a little more then what it turned out to be. The old "what it coulda been" rather then what it is. I'm guilty of it also.

Originally posted by kinglee

 I'm basing the $600thouand/mo on the quarterly average of $1.8 million.  I just divide by three to get $600K per month.   There are no subscription numbers, probably because they'd be so embarrassing.  The statement by the CFO is from a previous "conference call" in Feb 2008 quarterly report.  You can download the audio file and listen to it.  There's enough on the NcSoft site to keep you busy for weeks...they are very transparent.

  (By the way, they also have the now-bankrupt Lehman brothers   represented on that conference call...blast from the past!  The Lehman bros in 2007 had issued very optimistic reports to their own stockholders about the prospects of a RGTR hit, they invested heavily in it......so the pain just keeps on hurting.)

 

Lee said between $10-15 would be necessary for TR to break even for the year.  I used 12 for ease because there are 12 months in a year.   A million in expenses to run the game, $600thousand in income, means $400K loss per month, times 12 is $4.8 loss per year.  

 

And that does not take the original capital investment in the Garriotts into account.

 

It seems to me that the only embarrassment NcSoft should feel is in investing in the Garriotts in the first place.  After all, they were promised and  expected American knowhow, talent, vision, good management and hard work.  The embarrassm