Starting off with F2P in mind gives you innumerable advantages when it comes to planning it out. Patching it in later can be a total pain in the ass and its hard to figure out sometimes what is essential to the experience and what you can put behind a pay wall.
When you go from the beginning that way though its much easier to figure out and if you do it right no one will feel ripped off by losing out on something they once had. Going in with no expectations can be a great thing.
As many of our fans know, Skullgirls had more than its fair share of difficulties getting to market, but thus far none have been quite this dire: last June, the entire Skullgirls team was laid off from Reverge Labs.
To try to prevent such calamities from befalling us, our games, or our fans again, the Skullgirls team decided to form its own studio.
...
I'm going to assume this means Skullgirls didn't sell that well.
AGOURA HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--THQ Inc. (NASDAQ: THQI) announced today that it has entered into a forbearance agreement with Wells Fargo Capital Finance, LLC. Under the agreement, Wells Fargo has agreed to forbear from exercising its rights and remedies against THQ and its subsidiaries with respect to previous events of default under its credit facility. The period of the forbearance currently extends to January 15, 2013, during which time Wells Fargo has agreed to make additional loans to the company subject to the terms and conditions of the forbearance agreement.
Additionally, THQ announced that it has entered into exclusive negotiations with a financial sponsor regarding financing alternatives which may result in, among other things, significant and material dilution to shareholders. Information concerning the identity of the sponsor, deal size, structure and/or timing will not be disclosed until such time negotiations have concluded. There can be no assurance these negotiations will result in a transaction.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with Wells Fargo. This agreement enables us to continue focusing on bringing our games in development to market,” said Brian Farrell, THQ’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “Meanwhile, we are evaluating financial alternatives that will transition the company into its next phase.”
THQ also announced today the resignation of Paul Pucino, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The Company is evaluating its alternatives with respect to the Chief Financial Officer role, and has retained FTI Consulting to assist its finance and accounting team.
“We would like to thank Paul for his significant contributions over the past four years and wish him well in his future endeavors,” commented Farrell.
XSeed has reason to celebrate. I wonder what Nintendo thinks.
XSEED Games Releases New Standalone Version of The Last Story to replace the sold-out Premium Launch Edition
Highly Acclaimed Action RPG Title from Legendary Game Creator Hironobu Sakaguchi Most Successful Title in Publisher’s History
Torrance, Calif., (November 20, 2012) – XSEED Games, an independent-minded publisher, is pleased to celebrate the success of its hit action RPG, The Last Story, by announcing that it is releasing an all-new standalone version of the Wii™ exclusive, which started shipping today to select retailers throughout North America at an MSRP of $29.99. In addition to this new standalone game package, any remaining copies of the premium launch units at retailers, which included a bonus 44-page softcover art book packaged together with the game in a custom outer box, are now available for $39.99.
“The Last Story has been an amazing title for XSEED Games and it has become our most successful title to date,” said Ken Berry, Executive Vice President at XSEED Games. “This is a must have title for RPG fans, and we’re looking forward to more players discovering the magic that lies in Lazulis Island.”
Good F2P games reward people for spending money and only uses the stick to nudge people in that direction. D&D Online and LOTRO are the best western examples of this.
Bad F2P games make the game not fun for those not subscribing and does so in a very insulting manner. TOR and Everquest 2 are the perfect examples of this.
Hellgate:London is the perfect example because their game wasn't even an MMO and was launched before F2P was even a thing in US MMOs and yet they still managed to insult those non subscribers before it even came out! It was an outstanding failure of the marketing scheme before it even was a thing!
Someone smart will eventually figure out a way to procedurally generate end game content for MMOs.
Or work in live editor tools and hire a team of GM's... charge a premium for access to servers with live events. F2P and no live events for everyone else.
But yeah, procedural generation is cool as fuck. I wish programming didn't make my eyes cross.
It's starting to feel to me that fantasy worlds are a dime a dozen. But they really aren't.. it takes a lot of money to create one and then creators are often to protective of their vision (as well as potential profits from a sequel) that you're kinda limited on what you can do within them. One of my dream games would be to make a completely procedural RPG. Like, even the story would be procedural.
It would randomly generate a world, randomly populate it with kingdoms of randomly generated races, and then through complex political generator, set up the various conflicts and agendas of these kingdoms, races and rulers.
Quests wouldn't be pregenerated "go here and kill 7 rats" type stuff, but would come about due to the situations the gameworld produces. Like, say the gameworld produced a kingdom containing all manor of villages and cities. And near one of hte villages, it randomly generated a troupe of bandits that plagues the trade routes between it and a larger city. Instead of just getting "Kill 7 bandits" quest, you would hear about the situation, or maybe even find a bounty on a bounty board, but there'd be no set way to "complete" the quest.
-You could try and guard caravans as they travel down the roads, making money as a bodyguard
-You could try and track the thieves back to their HQ, and then give taht information to the city guard who will go and kill the bandits and give you a small reward.
-You could just go and try to kill all the bandits yourself, for a bigass reward.
-You could just ignore the whole thing. Maybe it'll work itself out, or maybe the price of goods in the village will begin to skyrocket (and maybe it's the main source of supplies for a local mining outfit, which starts to raise the price of iron good within the entire kingdom)
-Or you could challenge the leader of the bandits, defeat him, take over the troupe and begin raiding caravans for fun and profit.
Over time you could make a real dent in the world; maybe one kingdom goes to war with another and you could aid or hinder them as you see fit. You could lead genocidal campaigns to exterminate lesser races, or try to broker peace. etc. etc. Basically the ultimate medieval sandbox, where every world is unique and you're free to pursue the story you want to pursue.
It's starting to feel to me that fantasy worlds are a dime a dozen. But they really aren't.. it takes a lot of money to create one and then creators are often to protective of their vision (as well as potential profits from a sequel) that you're kinda limited on what you can do within them. One of my dream games would be to make a completely procedural RPG. Like, even the story would be procedural.
It would randomly generate a world, randomly populate it with kingdoms of randomly generated races, and then through complex political generator, set up the various conflicts and agendas of these kingdoms, races and rulers.
Quests wouldn't be pregenerated "go here and kill 7 rats" type stuff, but would come about due to the situations the gameworld produces. Like, say the gameworld produced a kingdom containing all manor of villages and cities. And near one of hte villages, it randomly generated a troupe of bandits that plagues the trade routes between it and a larger city. Instead of just getting "Kill 7 bandits" quest, you would hear about the situation, or maybe even find a bounty on a bounty board, but there'd be no set way to "complete" the quest.
-You could try and guard caravans as they travel down the roads, making money as a bodyguard
-You could try and track the thieves back to their HQ, and then give taht information to the city guard who will go and kill the bandits and give you a small reward.
-You could just go and try to kill all the bandits yourself, for a bigass reward.
-You could just ignore the whole thing. Maybe it'll work itself out, or maybe the price of goods in the village will begin to skyrocket (and maybe it's the main source of supplies for a local mining outfit, which starts to raise the price of iron good within the entire kingdom)
-Or you could challenge the leader of the bandits, defeat him, take over the troupe and begin raiding caravans for fun and profit.
Over time you could make a real dent in the world; maybe one kingdom goes to war with another and you could aid or hinder them as you see fit. You could lead genocidal campaigns to exterminate lesser races, or try to broker peace. etc. etc. Basically the ultimate medieval sandbox, where every world is unique and you're free to pursue the story you want to pursue.
Well, that's a tall order but Mount and Blade does some stuff like that. Sid Meyer's Pirates! makes it possible to alter the balance of power in the Caribbean. But to do it on a fine level of detail would be pretty hard. Just look at what kind of nonsense the Radiant AI from the Elder Scrolls can get up to and imagine it being more dynamic, more nonlinear and harder for the devs to predict and debug.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
So you know how Cous noted last that the Amazon listing for Call of Duty Vita says it's "discontinued by the manufacturer" and we all agreed that it was a hilarious mistake that would probably be fixed soon?
It still says it's discontinued by the manufacturer.
I still enjoy TOR, but even I am well aware of the problems it has. The F2P it has in its current form will probably generate a nice uptick in revenue - mostly through subscribers buying dozens of dollars worth of Cartel Pack gamble boxes - but I will be surprised if it leads to a sustainable increase in the amount of actual subscribing players. EA will make some good bank off of the planned monthly additions to the cash shop, but that alone won't save them, as Cryptic's horrible Champions F2P system has shown.
The biggest problem the game has is that it's really time- and resource-consuming to crank out new content for it while keeping to the same fully-voiced style, and it's even worse now that EA has TOR on some bottom-tier priority and most of its live team was sacked months ago. They've started cranking out updates at a much faster clip (the next major patch, 1.6, just went on Test today, four days after 1.5 hit), but the rushing to get new stuff out with such a small team is showing; each patch since 1.3 has been more bug-ridden than the last and it'll take at least a couple weeks of patching to fix this update.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
TOR also still needs to decide what its audience is. KotoR/Bioware fans really only care about the story stuff. They're quick to enlist but the restrictive F2P elements and MMO mechanics tend to drive them off. Hardcore raiders and PVPers would be the most likely to use a cash shop for that extra edge, but they're niche audiences, and let's be honest, TOR doesn't have really great PVP or end game.
I thought this when it first launched, but the whole approach to it is flawed. If I just want endgame I'll play WoW. For PVP I'll play WoW or GW2 or Dota even. For free MMO gameplay without having to worry about story, LotRO. Story? A single player game that doesn't have MMO mechanics forced on me.
Honestly, as far as DIKU-style MMOs with gear progression go, TOR's PvP is actually pretty good, at least for levels 1-49. At least, when they don't break something in it through an unrelated patch every third week.
A lot of the problem with TOR's end-game is that beyond the absolute most basic level of Story Mode raiding (which can be blasted through by most barely-competent groups in a couple of hours per raid), any higher tier is far more difficult for the average player to see due to the ever-harsher gear and player skill checks. At the highest raid levels currently in the game, TOR's probably got WoW matched in terms of strictness of enrage timers and required player reaction speeds, even if the fights aren't really as complex mechanically.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The "all consoles have issues at launch!" reply is getting tired. That assumes (and then wastes time) that people complaining about it are only after Nintendo. It's stupid and every console should be judged separate. I had issues with my 360 when I got it. It was irritating. I did not have any issues with my Wii when I got it, it was a fine launch. Doesn't make me any less happy to see Nintendo stumbling, for no reasons other than my own.
There is something to be said about enthusiasm. There was much more of that during both the launches of the Wii and the Xbox 360.
Could the WiiU turn out to be a perfectly respectable console? Of course! And the enthusiasm expressed for the Wii at launch didn't keep many people from feeling disappointed with it in the long run. But the fact is, the launch itself is a thing, and a generally "Eh, that came out? Interesting," kind of attitude is hardly something to celebrate. Likewise, the notion that all consoles contended with this is bullshit.
But the day isn't over, and there's still time for that enthusiasm, I guess.
Oh absolutely. I didn't address that at all, and the lack of really any sort of "The WiiU is awesome!" is both unsurprising and satisfying.
The Wii U is cool. But, yes, the launch has been rough. And things like this don't help.
Yet despite the Wii U’s refreshing features, its sluggish behavior makes it a product I can’t fully recommend. And some promised programs couldn’t be tested because they don’t function yet—a delay that could frustrate some people.
Starting the system up for the first time took well over two hours because Wii U was downloading updates. In my four timed tests, the GamePad only held its charge for three hours and 30 minutes of use, and then needed about 2½ hours to recharge. (It also works when plugged in, but isn’t as fun to use.) Opening each new program took close to 15 seconds. And I was constantly plagued by alerts that my GamePad had disconnected from the Wii console, even when I was four or six feet away from it in my small, city townhouse.
If you already own a Wii, its games and accessories—like the Wii Balance Board—are compatible with the new Wii U. Some programs that come loaded on the Wii U GamePad don’t work yet, including apps for YouTube, Amazon Instant Video and TVii, a tool that will let people use the GamePad to control their set-top boxes, TVs and DVRs (including TiVo). Nintendo says these are expected to work next month.
...
Nintendo deserves credit for creativity. But like a player who can’t seem to get through a difficult level in a videogame, the Wii U’s faults hold it back from success.
Nintendo promised consumers a modern HD gaming console, and the Wii U delivers on that promise ... in some respects. Games look gorgeous (HD Mario!), the risky controller is another successful control innovation and there's a ton of promise on the horizon. But there are also some major missteps and half-baked ideas: a befuddling Friends List / Miiverse connection, a complete lack of many system-wide console standards (group chat, achievements, the ability to play non-game disc-based media) and a game controller that lasts only 3.5 hours.
It's for these myriad reasons that we can't suggest buying Nintendo's Wii U just yet. It's a complex, innovative console that feels a few months short of primetime -- what's there is compelling, but its novelty will likely wear off with folks used to their consoles doubling as media centers; Nintendo promises its TVii functionality will launch next month, which could change this equation dramatically. For now, it won't hurt to wait a month or two until the stocks replenish and Nintendo finishes its launch.
Like I said, it's something but the polish isn't there. It's fun when you're in the games, but the OS needs a great deal of work.
Yeah, gonna say that trying to put TOR and CO in the same F2P category is a joke. TOR gives out peanuts if you don't pay them money.
CO gives out.........what, everything but freeform? And you can just buy a freeform slot nowadays. It's because of that that you'll never see any real content updates in CO again, and there haven't been any since they went F2P. Closest they got was a 'boss rush' mechanic that was essentially just that. You got put in a room with some other players, and you killed a boss from the game for credits or xp; they took two minutes to complete and added jack shit to the game.
But I've actually compared the two several times already, mostly in that it shows that giving everything away is a terrible way to have any longevity. Lotro? You do NOT get most of the game for free. You get the starter areas. You do not get those scenarios, pvp, dungeons beyond the very first one, extra classes, bag slots, money limits..........I could go on. They're a good model and I hope that TOR moves closer to it (being a little less restrictive and a little smarter about it), and it's allowed them to make numerous new content additions including, what, two expansions?
I mean I hate to break everyone's bubble, but successful F2P is NOT based around getting tons of players that pay you zilch. That's like the people 'selling' millions of free iphone apps. Math does not work that way.
I agree that a game can't simply give out content. Looking at LotRO, which a lot of us seem to agree upon as having a decent system, it's easy to see why it works so well. If I'm in a hardcore session and feeling OCD about completing things I can easily grind the ingame currency to buy the next area/scenario/etc. In that instance, it had might as well be totally free. At least as long as I can keep up marathon sessions and kill 100 wolves in every zone. For the average or casual gamer though, it'll take a long time to earn up to new things, time that can be circumvented by spending a little cash. There's only a few flat out gameplay restrictions, like the bag and money space, but those are pretty cheap in the store. The main restriction is new areas, and again, you can grind the currency for that.
The hardcore gamer that can potentially get everything for free is a very small portion of the audience, and chances are those are the same people who liked the game enough to sub before. They might even continue subbing, so it works out well. The larger average and casual crowd gets drawn into a game because it's suddenly gone F2P and maybe they heard something about it or like the setting or whatever. Ideally the game is addicting enough to keep them playing, but only in the small doses, the encourage spending. Even if they don't spend anything, they're still a customer that can tell friends about the game and at the very least are filling servers so shareholders can see those big numbers.
As many of our fans know, Skullgirls had more than its fair share of difficulties getting to market, but thus far none have been quite this dire: last June, the entire Skullgirls team was laid off from Reverge Labs.
To try to prevent such calamities from befalling us, our games, or our fans again, the Skullgirls team decided to form its own studio.
...
I'm going to assume this means Skullgirls didn't sell that well.
Did it only release on 360, or was it on PS3 as well?
Given how long it was in development, the controversial content, and the niche market, this really doesn't surprise me. It also makes me wonder if they were butting up against the same problems that other XBLA developers have talked about, what with the patching fees and things like that.
Honestly, I'd love to see more downloadable fighters. I fear the day when MLP: Fighting is Magic gets its inevitable C&D. But it really does seem like we're on the downhill slope of the fighting game renaissance, mostly thanks to a few developers absolutely whoring out the content.
You just put it in the charger when you go to refuel on doritos and mountain dew.
+4
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
The power cable isn't that annoying, but it also sounds like they kept costs + weight down by going with a smaller battery to start, and then allowing it to be upgraded in the future. Which is, overall, a smart idea.
As many of our fans know, Skullgirls had more than its fair share of difficulties getting to market, but thus far none have been quite this dire: last June, the entire Skullgirls team was laid off from Reverge Labs.
To try to prevent such calamities from befalling us, our games, or our fans again, the Skullgirls team decided to form its own studio.
...
I'm going to assume this means Skullgirls didn't sell that well.
I don't see what they did wrong in making the game. I'm with Athenor; maybe the huge XBL fees had something to do with it.
It could just be me but I find it ridiculous to use the UPad at max brightness and thus I don't really feel limited by the battery life. The 3.5 figure is probably at about max brightness and full volume. I think Nintendo says five is the max but I think you could probably eek out a little more.
There I was, 3DS: 2621-2671-9899 (Ekera), Wii U: LostCrescendo
0
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
AGOURA HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--THQ Inc. (NASDAQ: THQI) announced today that it has entered into a forbearance agreement with Wells Fargo Capital Finance, LLC. Under the agreement, Wells Fargo has agreed to forbear from exercising its rights and remedies against THQ and its subsidiaries with respect to previous events of default under its credit facility. The period of the forbearance currently extends to January 15, 2013, during which time Wells Fargo has agreed to make additional loans to the company subject to the terms and conditions of the forbearance agreement.
Additionally, THQ announced that it has entered into exclusive negotiations with a financial sponsor regarding financing alternatives which may result in, among other things, significant and material dilution to shareholders. Information concerning the identity of the sponsor, deal size, structure and/or timing will not be disclosed until such time negotiations have concluded. There can be no assurance these negotiations will result in a transaction.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with Wells Fargo. This agreement enables us to continue focusing on bringing our games in development to market,” said Brian Farrell, THQ’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “Meanwhile, we are evaluating financial alternatives that will transition the company into its next phase.”
THQ also announced today the resignation of Paul Pucino, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The Company is evaluating its alternatives with respect to the Chief Financial Officer role, and has retained FTI Consulting to assist its finance and accounting team.
“We would like to thank Paul for his significant contributions over the past four years and wish him well in his future endeavors,” commented Farrell.
I just did a financial analysis on THQ for my capstone class. Grim is an understatement. They're bleeding cash and have been for years. Their profits have been declining while their marketing expenditures have been rising about 20% per year. They still have a fair amount of cash, but they have little coming in (accounts receivable is very low). And from the sound of this post, they're looking at what.. selling to another company at a significant per share loss? Insolvency?
Ugh. I feel for the devs over there. I hope everyone lands on their feet ok.
Edit: I completely missed the CFO leaving. That's... pretty big.
Q: This will be the first Nintendo game machine that the company's going to be selling at a loss at launch. How does that change the business model for Nintendo?
A: The business model doesn't change dramatically, in that as soon as we get the consumer to buy one piece of software, then that entire transaction becomes profit positive.
In the end, the business model is still to drive the install base of hardware, and then to drive a strong tie ratio with all of the other software and experiences for the consumer. And if we're able to do that, then we will create significant profit for the company.
Probably a great rate on the loans for the next 50 days.
Has asking for more time ever worked in this biz? It seems like every company does massive layoffs or something to stop the bleeding and still bleed to death.
I have no question that Nintendo will remain profitable. They put out quality products and good games. I bought the Zelda 3ds for Zelda and Mario kart and consider it a solid investment so far. I may not have gotten a wiiu at launch, but I will get one eventually.
Probably a great rate on the loans for the next 50 days.
Has asking for more time ever worked in this biz? It seems like every company does massive layoffs or something to stop the bleeding and still bleed to death.
I think the more important question is what does THQ have that's going to sell this Holiday season?
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited November 2012
So it would seem from the accumulating metacritic of Sony altogether too many words in the title, that it isn't too flash and overall too much clone of a certain other game. Just without the charm and refined mechanics.
Probably a great rate on the loans for the next 50 days.
Has asking for more time ever worked in this biz? It seems like every company does massive layoffs or something to stop the bleeding and still bleed to death.
I think the more important question is what does THQ have that's going to sell this Holiday season?
So it would seem from the accumulating metacritic of Sony altogether too many words in the title, that it isn't too flash and overall too much clone of a certain other game. Just without the charm and refined mechanics.
I'm so surprised. All this time, I was expecting this game to be a unique snowflake.
Probably a great rate on the loans for the next 50 days.
Has asking for more time ever worked in this biz? It seems like every company does massive layoffs or something to stop the bleeding and still bleed to death.
I think the more important question is what does THQ have that's going to sell this Holiday season?
WWE games sell okay, don't they?
WWE 13 is already out, it was received very well and is likely to sell a ton, but there's nothing else coming from them for the Season that I can think off of the top of my head. Resting the future of the company on one series, albeit one very well received and selling, doesn't really inspire all that much confidence.
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
Posts
When you go from the beginning that way though its much easier to figure out and if you do it right no one will feel ripped off by losing out on something they once had. Going in with no expectations can be a great thing.
http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20121120006454/en/THQ-Update-Credit-Facility-Announces-Exclusive-Negotiations
Reminds me that I need to pick that up. Bleh.
Fixed that for ya.
Or work in live editor tools and hire a team of GM's... charge a premium for access to servers with live events. F2P and no live events for everyone else.
But yeah, procedural generation is cool as fuck. I wish programming didn't make my eyes cross.
It would randomly generate a world, randomly populate it with kingdoms of randomly generated races, and then through complex political generator, set up the various conflicts and agendas of these kingdoms, races and rulers.
Quests wouldn't be pregenerated "go here and kill 7 rats" type stuff, but would come about due to the situations the gameworld produces. Like, say the gameworld produced a kingdom containing all manor of villages and cities. And near one of hte villages, it randomly generated a troupe of bandits that plagues the trade routes between it and a larger city. Instead of just getting "Kill 7 bandits" quest, you would hear about the situation, or maybe even find a bounty on a bounty board, but there'd be no set way to "complete" the quest.
-You could try and guard caravans as they travel down the roads, making money as a bodyguard
-You could try and track the thieves back to their HQ, and then give taht information to the city guard who will go and kill the bandits and give you a small reward.
-You could just go and try to kill all the bandits yourself, for a bigass reward.
-You could just ignore the whole thing. Maybe it'll work itself out, or maybe the price of goods in the village will begin to skyrocket (and maybe it's the main source of supplies for a local mining outfit, which starts to raise the price of iron good within the entire kingdom)
-Or you could challenge the leader of the bandits, defeat him, take over the troupe and begin raiding caravans for fun and profit.
Over time you could make a real dent in the world; maybe one kingdom goes to war with another and you could aid or hinder them as you see fit. You could lead genocidal campaigns to exterminate lesser races, or try to broker peace. etc. etc. Basically the ultimate medieval sandbox, where every world is unique and you're free to pursue the story you want to pursue.
Well, that's a tall order but Mount and Blade does some stuff like that. Sid Meyer's Pirates! makes it possible to alter the balance of power in the Caribbean. But to do it on a fine level of detail would be pretty hard. Just look at what kind of nonsense the Radiant AI from the Elder Scrolls can get up to and imagine it being more dynamic, more nonlinear and harder for the devs to predict and debug.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
It still says it's discontinued by the manufacturer.
http://www.amazon.com/Call-Duty-Black-Declassified-PlayStation-Vita/dp/B002I0H09Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353112515&sr=8-1&keywords=call+of+duty+declassified
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
The biggest problem the game has is that it's really time- and resource-consuming to crank out new content for it while keeping to the same fully-voiced style, and it's even worse now that EA has TOR on some bottom-tier priority and most of its live team was sacked months ago. They've started cranking out updates at a much faster clip (the next major patch, 1.6, just went on Test today, four days after 1.5 hit), but the rushing to get new stuff out with such a small team is showing; each patch since 1.3 has been more bug-ridden than the last and it'll take at least a couple weeks of patching to fix this update.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I thought this when it first launched, but the whole approach to it is flawed. If I just want endgame I'll play WoW. For PVP I'll play WoW or GW2 or Dota even. For free MMO gameplay without having to worry about story, LotRO. Story? A single player game that doesn't have MMO mechanics forced on me.
A lot of the problem with TOR's end-game is that beyond the absolute most basic level of Story Mode raiding (which can be blasted through by most barely-competent groups in a couple of hours per raid), any higher tier is far more difficult for the average player to see due to the ever-harsher gear and player skill checks. At the highest raid levels currently in the game, TOR's probably got WoW matched in terms of strictness of enrage timers and required player reaction speeds, even if the fights aren't really as complex mechanically.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The Wii U is cool. But, yes, the launch has been rough. And things like this don't help.
http://allthingsd.com/20121120/gaming-proves-touchy-with-the-new-wii-u/?mod=tweet
http://www.engadget.com/wii-u-review/nintendo-wii-u-review/
Like I said, it's something but the polish isn't there. It's fun when you're in the games, but the OS needs a great deal of work.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
CO gives out.........what, everything but freeform? And you can just buy a freeform slot nowadays. It's because of that that you'll never see any real content updates in CO again, and there haven't been any since they went F2P. Closest they got was a 'boss rush' mechanic that was essentially just that. You got put in a room with some other players, and you killed a boss from the game for credits or xp; they took two minutes to complete and added jack shit to the game.
But I've actually compared the two several times already, mostly in that it shows that giving everything away is a terrible way to have any longevity. Lotro? You do NOT get most of the game for free. You get the starter areas. You do not get those scenarios, pvp, dungeons beyond the very first one, extra classes, bag slots, money limits..........I could go on. They're a good model and I hope that TOR moves closer to it (being a little less restrictive and a little smarter about it), and it's allowed them to make numerous new content additions including, what, two expansions?
I mean I hate to break everyone's bubble, but successful F2P is NOT based around getting tons of players that pay you zilch. That's like the people 'selling' millions of free iphone apps. Math does not work that way.
The hardcore gamer that can potentially get everything for free is a very small portion of the audience, and chances are those are the same people who liked the game enough to sub before. They might even continue subbing, so it works out well. The larger average and casual crowd gets drawn into a game because it's suddenly gone F2P and maybe they heard something about it or like the setting or whatever. Ideally the game is addicting enough to keep them playing, but only in the small doses, the encourage spending. Even if they don't spend anything, they're still a customer that can tell friends about the game and at the very least are filling servers so shareholders can see those big numbers.
Did it only release on 360, or was it on PS3 as well?
Given how long it was in development, the controversial content, and the niche market, this really doesn't surprise me. It also makes me wonder if they were butting up against the same problems that other XBLA developers have talked about, what with the patching fees and things like that.
Honestly, I'd love to see more downloadable fighters. I fear the day when MLP: Fighting is Magic gets its inevitable C&D. But it really does seem like we're on the downhill slope of the fighting game renaissance, mostly thanks to a few developers absolutely whoring out the content.
Yeah. For big gaming sessions you best be close to an outlet. Like a number of things, it's not a showstopper, but it is annoying.
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I don't see what they did wrong in making the game. I'm with Athenor; maybe the huge XBL fees had something to do with it.
I chug while it charges!
I just did a financial analysis on THQ for my capstone class. Grim is an understatement. They're bleeding cash and have been for years. Their profits have been declining while their marketing expenditures have been rising about 20% per year. They still have a fair amount of cash, but they have little coming in (accounts receivable is very low). And from the sound of this post, they're looking at what.. selling to another company at a significant per share loss? Insolvency?
Ugh. I feel for the devs over there. I hope everyone lands on their feet ok.
Edit: I completely missed the CFO leaving. That's... pretty big.
Has asking for more time ever worked in this biz? It seems like every company does massive layoffs or something to stop the bleeding and still bleed to death.
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I think the more important question is what does THQ have that's going to sell this Holiday season?
WWE games sell okay, don't they?
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I'm so surprised. All this time, I was expecting this game to be a unique snowflake.
WWE 13 is already out, it was received very well and is likely to sell a ton, but there's nothing else coming from them for the Season that I can think off of the top of my head. Resting the future of the company on one series, albeit one very well received and selling, doesn't really inspire all that much confidence.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.