All Posts by Scriar

I think the game will have a small perhaps medium sized (50-80k players at the most) dedicated fan base, I don't think it will do as well Warhammer purely because this game is so different from any other mmo. I believe that a lot of people like gathering items for instance, and like the WoW-like combat so it will never be as successful as those games even if it is a fun, polished game at release.

I think Age of conan will have a dedicated fan base as well, perhaps with the same numbers as TCOS most likely if it is not a bug ridden over instanced game like beta reviews imply it will do better. Either that or it will tank and its subscribers spread between other mmos.

I really really doubt anyone will come even close to WoWs numbers, they have 4.4 million players in Asia, 2.2 in North America, and 1.2 million or so in Europe and they are still launching in other countries. It is kinda of wishful thinking to expect to do as well as that. I believe their European and North American subscriptions are going to drop drastically since it has been out for so long in these areas people just want something different. Asia however and these other countries it has been around for a year at the most so it will still most likely have a growth in subscribers that will make up for the loss of European and North American subscribers.

Warhammer I think is going to do well no matter what, it looks like WoW 2.0 PvP addition a lot of people like (god knows why) WoWs type of PvP, Warhammer will more than likely appeal to these people and thus do very well because of it.

Aion I hear is meant to be a large title but I think it will be unlikely to do well in the west because it looks, even though I hear it isn't, like a Korean grindathon. That said more than likely that will mean it does very well in its respected demographic.

The combat system, PvP and lack of focus on Items. To be honest the only thing that I am not sure about/not really looking forward to is the death penalty since I think if it is not done well.

For instance where re-spawn points are located, if they are not far away enough then it could quickly end up like WoWs PvP where there is no risk what so ever and thus the PvP becomes very boring. Since it will just be respawn, kill die, respawn kill die, etc

If I remember right it is in development and is not an mmo. It is a single player RTS game with a multiplayer mode. But the multiplayer mode is meant to be some sort of MMORTS type game.

It is actually in open beta now, I am kinda bored so decided Ill download it and see for my self ;p

edit:

After looking more at the game it turns out it has a lobby, you can only have up to 3 other players in specfic CO-OP battles, It does not really have any MMO elements apart from the lobby the rest is your typical multiplayer RTS fair. Seems like a generic RTS from the looks of things. I also just found out it also uses gamespy which has caused me to cancel the download I seriously hate gamespy games.

Frogster is not and never has been a phone company.

 

European release is not solely done by Frogster. Frogster is publishing only in the French and German speaking countries in Europe. Mindscape is the publisher for the rest of Europe.

I am betting it will be Atari, Inc. as publisher for North America.

Im pretty sure people having the ability to swear is not going to make their game a AO one lol

Look at Age of conan, all the gore, the boobs, the decapitations that has got them a 'mature' rating. All Darkfall has shown is a small bit of blood spatter if you get hit. At the most this game will get a teen rating for fantasy violence, and the ability to swear. Both of which are present in WoW btw even traces of blood on some mobs.

Edit: also the teen rating is more likely due to mobs having fantasy nudity, like for instance the Harpies in WoW, if that game gets a Teen rating there really is no reason as to why Darkfall will not have one either if it ever sees the light of day.

I dont think it will be SOE, since they have mmos coming out don't they? around the time they have moved this games release to.

If it was SOE, I would not worry to much about it. SOE would not be the sole publisher, they have Frogster (which is a phone company I think lol) and two other publishers to contend with. The only real mistake I have seen SOE make lately is they messed up the advertisements in Europe for Pirates of the burning sea and they would not be dealing with those countries anyway since that is Frogsters area.

I brought that up in a post in another thread on this forum, I wouldnt say they are dishonest just that I think from the sounds of their latest report they were planning to release the game early which is always worrying.

I think they probably were going to release, and the US publisher said they would like to do a simultanous release which for a lot of gamers that is a plus for competitive reasons. So Spellborn probably saw the chance to give us a better game as well as get the incentives of a simultaneous release, so they have taken it.

I believe it is better for a company to delay a game at the end of the day than to have it released early, in this industry you will never get your reputation back if you mess up release, you rarely get second chances as well, so they need to release only when they are ready. I think a solid release even for say a game like Darkfall which has a terrible reputation (that is deserved) will make people forget or overlook their constant delays.

Most likely they did not tell anyone that they were planning to delay the game due to simply not knowing, or not having a confimation on the US publisher. To be honest I think that the string of updates coming up to the announcement is their way of softening the blow so to speak. I am pretty sure they have never said they were going to release either just that they were aiming for a Q1release which was then changed to a possible Q2 release.

Started planning in 2002, and then began 'real' development in 2005. A guy named Talos emails you when you sign up to their forums, the features are almost the same as Darkfalls concepts. The way that FAQ is written and how the forums look are the same as the Darkfall site, Devs wanted to make an mmo because they were UO players and wanted something similar than the theme park games and so on.

I hope someone is not taking the piss because that is a lot of coincidences.

I am probably looking too much into it, but I can not help being wary of games that have a small team and seem to be promising what could be a great hardcore pvp game.

It is sort of funny though after I made a post saying these guys need to hurry up because 2009 will be their last chance to release, this game gets announced lol (I have a feeling that a game that has unreal engine 3 graphics will not have also features and release so soon)

Originally posted by daarco

YAY, another sanbox MMO indevelopment : )

And the developers are Swedish : )  But it looks as a DF clone to me, wonders if they have naval combat?

Apparently a guy called Talos messages you if you sign up for the forums lol Think they got a bit carried away if it is meant to be a clone of their concepts ;p

The reason I get the impression that they were going to release an unfinished game is the bit in the second part of the report (click read on on the main website article) it says that they want to improve the server infrastructure.

And that they welcome the 6 months of extra polish that they can do to the game which gives me the impression that they needed 6 months of polish but did not have the money to do so. I don't mind them moving the dates back I would rather have a well polished, fun game that I and others will enjoy playing than to have a buggy game that has potential but is let down by lag, and bugs.

It doesn't matter anyway, 6 months now to get the game to a high standard. Hopefully the 6 month delay will allow for a release that was as good as the Lord of the rings one, which in my opinion is the new benchmark for developers to aim for.

Yeah probably is gonna be laggy as shit with those graphics, plus the combat system, sieges etc, I think it is safe to say this game will feature a lot of instancing or zoning.

Wouldn't say I like playing on small servers, but I think you could say quite a lot of people like having small communities where you are more likely to know everyone. Since the community is small you are more likely to find that they are more mature as well, it tends to make people think more about their reputation since word travels fast amongst a small amount of people.

The problem I have with small communities/servers is that in mmos it is natural to want to group or to have a strong focus on grouping in the game, so it is counter productive to choose a server that it will more than likely be a lot harder to get a group on.

Guilds tend to be few and far between as well, so if your someone that joins a mmo by yourself and not with a guild or if you have trouble finding a guild that suits you that could be a problem if you are on a small server as there is not much choice.

In raiding games like WoW youll find that guilds tend to tear apart each other on small servers with the best players being taken from the smaller guilds, and stuck in the large guilds. Then when those guilds collapse there is a lot of drama.

Was interested then I saw from the makers of Fury

I wonder how they managed to get the IP for Battlestar Galtica, you would think it would be an IP any developer would kill to get their hands on especially with all the publicity it would get due to the success of its T.V remake.

edit: forgot to say, maybe theres a small chance theyll make it good, everyone deserves a second chance I suppose.

Read a similar article on IGN yesterday. They are not making a fall out mmo yet, they still have not got the license off of Bethesda. Apparently they said to their investors it is a large possibility that the Fall out mmo could still never happen.

They have plans to license other I.Ps as well like Earthworm jim, MDK, and some others. Right now though they do not even have funding to do any of that and have announced they may sell current properties as well as takes loans out to fund themselves.

From reading that it sounded like they planned to release an unfinished game if they did not have a US publisher, which is worrying.

Well at least the good news is we wont get constant is there a US publisher posts now lol

I believe they have released enough information to show they have something MMO like in the works. What they have not done is proved what they are working on is functional, however there is potential for it to be proven to be functional so therefore it should stay on this site.

Henning I believe is well known or atleast known in the art world, he must be any way to appear in SFX quite a lot, so the game has some crediblity even if it is very little to go on as I doubt that someone like that would move all the way to greece to work on a game they think will never come out.  Whether it will be any good is another thing though.

What you said about SOE is true but recently they completley messed up POTBS advertisement in certain countries, although that alone would not of mattered since the game is crap, but it does still look bad for SOE. I actually think NC soft would be perfect publisher for this game, they allways seem to go for innovative titles and as far as I know they have a good reputation as a publisher. Not sure though since I have only played Guild wars from them, which I did not enjoy.

On the topic at hand, I believe that having a US publisher is not a be all end all case. If they release in the current countries they have publishers for then they will get the subscribers they need to sustain the game, all the problems with launching will be experienced and hopefully solved by the time that it releases in the US.

That will most likely mean a smoother release. I believe WoW only has 2.2 million players in the US according to their press release, the rest are from Asia, EU, etc so it should not kill the game to release here and then to the US later. It has worked the other around for the majority of games, so theres no reason to think not having a US publisher is a sign of certain doom ;p

You pay a monthly fee, if you look at a game like WoW for instance the content released is the equivelant to a small expansion once every 4 months or so, on top of that is the expected bug fixing, balancing etc. So you pay for it I believe since most small expansion packs cost around 15-20 pounds which is near what you pay monthly in the time frame they release the content in.

then theirs obviously money left over from that to pay any other costs of development and some left to make a small profit. I believe most companies make their money still off of box sales and extra services rather than on subscriptions alone.

Nothing in this world is ever free at the end of the day, Blizzard for instance may look to be given out free expansion sized content but for the amount of money they rake in from subscriptions and micro transactions in the form of server transfers, name changes etc then it really is no more or little than you should expect as a consumer.

Looks good, ill keep an eye on it. Its nice to finally see PvP sandbox mmos being made. To be honest when I watched that trailer I thought, ohh look someone is making Darkfall a reality lol after reading their site it looks like it to ;p

So you want to eat the cake and keep the cake.

A game that is COMPLEX is therefore also NOT EASY TO LEARN. Its purely logical.

Yeah you can try and make a complex system as userfriendly as possible. BUT it will NEVER be as userfriendly and easily accessible as a simple game.

 

I mean like say the Total war series. The game is easy to learn the basics, yet it is still complex, and is difficult to master. I hate the eat cake and keep eating cake games. I would like games that are very hard, but I know that a game that is hard is a turn off for people which is why it should also be accessible. I think that is possible.

I too like my combat systems interesting. For example, Vanguards is great. Though I have no idea what "TCOS" is meant to be and therefore have no idea why you think they have an interesting combat system.

I like a focus on gear. I also like it if you can craft your own gear, according to your own ideas what you want, instead of getting some predefined stuff.

Dunno what you mean about stats. Stats should be IMHO options. You shouldnt just need to maximize your mage's Intelligence so he is best in respect to damage.

Low system requirements are great but somehow everyone creates the next graphic revelation.

As I said, I dont believe complex and easy access harmonize as ideas.

I have yet to see a game where classes arent overpowered or underpowered. And skill based games have the exact same problem. Some skills are always stronger than others.

Sorry, I should of listed the full name. TCOS stands for the The Chronicles of Spellborn. The idea of the game is to not have a focus on gear since it is based around PvP, and player skill theres also small group based PvE, no raids as far as I know. Gear is in the game, yet it is for cosmetic purposes rather than increases in power.

There are sigils however that you can collect that give you very small upgrades in power, tracers for weapons, customization options basically.

The combat is interesting since you aim, dodge etc like in a fps. No rolls, as mentioned below, and theres a skill deck which is basically a teired skill system that is represented in game by a bar that spins as you move up in teirs.

There are no stats on items, it is more akin to how a fps game plays as there is no rolls( for instance critical strikes, to hit chance etc). However, there are some stat options as mentioned earlier that you can get from sigils, but they will not be the focus of the game.

I agree that theres yet to be a game that has a classes that are not overpowered or underpowered, but with all the features that TCOS has that I am looking forward to I suppose I can put up with it.

I think the focus on hybrid classes could lower the chances of unbalanced classes, and due to the nature of how the game is set out theres none of the Tank, DPS, heal. Set ups as in other games, since everyone can tank, everyone can DPS, and everyone can Heal. What sets each class apart is how many options they have for each area, rather than the power of their heals for instance.

Here the games site is: http://tcos.com/news/index.php?from=www.thechroniclesofspellborn.com
If your interested in finding out more, theres quite a lot of video and journals you can read on it :)