Activision Teases the Return of Sierra Entertainment - Update
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
Well, I was hoping for another "Arcanum" myself but if they did do one it wouldn't be a real sequel (more Arcanum with better technology) but a modern re-envisioning of it that will probably simplify everything down to the point where it wouldn't satisfy me at all.
That said, while my sources aren't great, some of the scuttlebutt in the MMO scene is that this is being done for two reasons. The primary reason is allegedly that Activision has noticed the amount of money being made off of purely browser games and MMOs and how things like "City Of Steam" have for their various failings made unprecedented usage of the technologies. Supposedly what they want to do is try and re-launch a version of the "Imagination network" to compete with STEAM and Origin. They basically want to build a browser-based game hub where high end browser titles can be played, which will act as the incentive/anchor to get people to step into their marketplace where they will be selling games, streaming, and other services as opposed to just flat out dropping another "me too" market into the mix. Given the desire to resurrect old name brands and such, allegedly they want to make "Ysebrius" and "The Realm" two of the titles off of this new service, both of which were old MMO-type games you might occasionally hear the truly ancient grognards talking about "Ysebrius" was one of those games people left when they went to things like Ultima Online, Ascheron's Call, or Everquest... and where a lot of the elitist attitudes from those days came from". I believe "The Realm" made some geek-news (very old school version of it) for having the first online wedding between game characters or something like that, and Sierra's magazine covered how there was a player doing wedding services for people almost full time.
That said, as GoG, and the indie-market have shown there are markets for the whole quest/adventure genera of game, with a few games like "Heroine's Quest" being released for free and becoming quite popular in certain circles. It wouldn't surprise me if there will be an attempt to revive the old "quest" franchises, or even if that becomes the point of the entire thing.
Nothing reliable of course, but I actually heard this first as "I heard they are going to bring back the Imagination network if anyone remembers that" which seemed to be jumping to conclusions, and this seems like the same basic information that was based off of. All the specifics were some anonymous dude saying he knew a guy who heard from another guy who works for Blizzard... you know that kind of stuff.
Of course according to that rumor part of the reason this is being done is because Blizzard is taking too long to finish "Project Titan" which was originally going to be a competitor of sorts of "Old Republic Online" then got pushed back, and very little has been said about it since. The lack of any news to begin with, being one of the few reasons why there hasn't been much noise, but supposedly it's turned into a giant development cash pit so Activision is looking for other online games to have out there alongside WoW.
At any rate, I'm not holding my breath for any of this, but it might be interesting to see what a modernized version of Ysebrius working through browsers would look like. The original (which was a companion/sequel to Fates of Twinon) was a sort of cooperative party based dungeon crawl.
That said, while my sources aren't great, some of the scuttlebutt in the MMO scene is that this is being done for two reasons. The primary reason is allegedly that Activision has noticed the amount of money being made off of purely browser games and MMOs and how things like "City Of Steam" have for their various failings made unprecedented usage of the technologies. Supposedly what they want to do is try and re-launch a version of the "Imagination network" to compete with STEAM and Origin. They basically want to build a browser-based game hub where high end browser titles can be played, which will act as the incentive/anchor to get people to step into their marketplace where they will be selling games, streaming, and other services as opposed to just flat out dropping another "me too" market into the mix. Given the desire to resurrect old name brands and such, allegedly they want to make "Ysebrius" and "The Realm" two of the titles off of this new service, both of which were old MMO-type games you might occasionally hear the truly ancient grognards talking about "Ysebrius" was one of those games people left when they went to things like Ultima Online, Ascheron's Call, or Everquest... and where a lot of the elitist attitudes from those days came from". I believe "The Realm" made some geek-news (very old school version of it) for having the first online wedding between game characters or something like that, and Sierra's magazine covered how there was a player doing wedding services for people almost full time.
That said, as GoG, and the indie-market have shown there are markets for the whole quest/adventure genera of game, with a few games like "Heroine's Quest" being released for free and becoming quite popular in certain circles. It wouldn't surprise me if there will be an attempt to revive the old "quest" franchises, or even if that becomes the point of the entire thing.
Nothing reliable of course, but I actually heard this first as "I heard they are going to bring back the Imagination network if anyone remembers that" which seemed to be jumping to conclusions, and this seems like the same basic information that was based off of. All the specifics were some anonymous dude saying he knew a guy who heard from another guy who works for Blizzard... you know that kind of stuff.
Of course according to that rumor part of the reason this is being done is because Blizzard is taking too long to finish "Project Titan" which was originally going to be a competitor of sorts of "Old Republic Online" then got pushed back, and very little has been said about it since. The lack of any news to begin with, being one of the few reasons why there hasn't been much noise, but supposedly it's turned into a giant development cash pit so Activision is looking for other online games to have out there alongside WoW.
At any rate, I'm not holding my breath for any of this, but it might be interesting to see what a modernized version of Ysebrius working through browsers would look like. The original (which was a companion/sequel to Fates of Twinon) was a sort of cooperative party based dungeon crawl.
The economy crash had nothing to do with it.Imperioratorex Caprae said:
Craphammer Fantasy thought completly ruined them, it was a rushed mess of bugs, non working features that where simply ripped out of the game after release cause they couldnt figure out how to get them to work.
The game was simply terrible once you reached max level and the class balance was non existent (Sigmar priest, Burning Wizards/Dark Elf Sorcs being so overpowered the side who had more of them would usually win.. oh and the destruction melee healer sucked balls)
Also lots of office trench wars going on behind the scene and the Devs outright blaming their customers for being whiny bitches because "they" had the "metrics" and their "metrics" showed that everything was A-okay
"A-okay" as in 600k people left the game after the initial free month. The game had 1 mil players during the free month... and crashed horribly after it.
I'd always heard the bugs and development issues were due to a horribly understaffed Q/A team due to lack of money to pay them... but then my industry insider doesn't always feed me correct info just the rumors they hear.Karadalis said:
At the end of closed beta they introduced a mega patch that threw the whole balance of the game upside down... untested.. and the end of closed beta was two weeks before launch.Imperioratorex Caprae said:
It had nothing to do with a small QA team... and all to do with sheer developer arrogance.
Reports from closed beta testers indicate that they only listened to yesmen and that anyone who uttered critisism was kicked or had their threads deleted (take this one with a bag of salt thought, i have been around beta forums and i know what goes for "critisism" in some cases nowadays)
But the icing on the cake was that ridiculus podcast of Paul Barnett months after release when people where running away from warhammer as if it had the plague stating that it was all just in peoples head and that there is no class imbalance and that people are just whining cause they got killed by class XYZ... nevermind that the forums where full of people throwing hard numbers and mathematics at Mythics face that proofed that their numbers where all over the place.
And the CC... oh my god the CC... every class had atleast 3 to 4 forms of CC abilities. Especialy the most potent damage dealers in the game... in short the whole game was a complete mess.
The artwork rocked thought... really cought that warhammer feeling...
As I said, I have some insider info that isn't always accurate, sometimes just rumors... but an understaffed QA team also can result in a bad patch being released, still developer arrogance makes sense. Which also attests to why the studio eventually closed and not due to publisher interference.Karadalis said:
It bothers me how many people just assume a large corp is immediately responsible for a developer failing and never bothers to give the dev any culpability. I mean I worked for EA and never had or heard of any of the shit people talk about them going on. And they weren't the type of company to fire people for dissent (when I worked there at least). Yeah they were demanding, but understanding as long as someone was upfront about problems with deadlines being overconfident. A lot of the things I heard about other dev teams were mainly how they would bullshit their way to gold date then release their real bug reports... I don't know if they were trying to impress people or what.