So I just remembered, for some weird reason, how I loved to plant spider-bombs in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, or the trip mines. In some weird locations, where you barely saw the beam, under an angle, or under the ceiling where you didn't expect it, and watch people rage at me. So I went online to search for a list of servers.
There were 50 servers, 5 full 24/24, two half-filled and the others empty. 0/24, 0/16, 0/23. Dead. Sure, one of the most popular Oh My Strogg! was still kicking, but... I remember that game came out just THREE YEARS AGO. I mean holy crap... And Enemy Territory, the original from 2004? At least a full page of full servers, few pages of half-filled. And those were various language servers - English, Brazilian, German, Polish, French, Russian, Spanish. Everything. Quake Wars was only American, British and some minor Polish/German, where the game was popular.
Another example. I've been a Neverwinter Nights FANATIC since release. For over a dozen of years I played for hundreds if not thousands of hours - action, RP, arena (used to spend weeks tweaking builds and gear just to have fun battling others). Then I remembered I bought NWN 2 Platinum on Steam on a sale. I already had a pre-order of NWN 2 basic, but it was a long ago, and in Polish - buying expansion packs separately would've been a lot more expensive than all for 5 pounds. So, I go online.
Three or four Roleplay, about the same Action, one empty Arena and other modes deserted... There were about 10-15 playable servers, and by playable I mean more than a handful of living players.
Heck, I say, I'll check out Neverwinter Nights. God knows I never uninstall that unless I break Windows and have to install again. About 10 action servers, two or three arenas (granted, not many people - I used to wait in queue to get on one server that had two separate 24-player hosts, now it's only one), a lot of RP servers and even some obscure like Hack'n'Slash and many, many Persistent Worlds.
So my question is - what do you think will be next? Will Diablo 3 fall into obscurity? Will DotA remain the more popular game in the series? And what about Torchlight, or any other game that might actually turn out to be worse than the predecessor?
Now, if you excuse me, I'll cry a little over the fact that Activision even had to shut down the official page and forums...
There were 50 servers, 5 full 24/24, two half-filled and the others empty. 0/24, 0/16, 0/23. Dead. Sure, one of the most popular Oh My Strogg! was still kicking, but... I remember that game came out just THREE YEARS AGO. I mean holy crap... And Enemy Territory, the original from 2004? At least a full page of full servers, few pages of half-filled. And those were various language servers - English, Brazilian, German, Polish, French, Russian, Spanish. Everything. Quake Wars was only American, British and some minor Polish/German, where the game was popular.
Another example. I've been a Neverwinter Nights FANATIC since release. For over a dozen of years I played for hundreds if not thousands of hours - action, RP, arena (used to spend weeks tweaking builds and gear just to have fun battling others). Then I remembered I bought NWN 2 Platinum on Steam on a sale. I already had a pre-order of NWN 2 basic, but it was a long ago, and in Polish - buying expansion packs separately would've been a lot more expensive than all for 5 pounds. So, I go online.
Three or four Roleplay, about the same Action, one empty Arena and other modes deserted... There were about 10-15 playable servers, and by playable I mean more than a handful of living players.
Heck, I say, I'll check out Neverwinter Nights. God knows I never uninstall that unless I break Windows and have to install again. About 10 action servers, two or three arenas (granted, not many people - I used to wait in queue to get on one server that had two separate 24-player hosts, now it's only one), a lot of RP servers and even some obscure like Hack'n'Slash and many, many Persistent Worlds.
So my question is - what do you think will be next? Will Diablo 3 fall into obscurity? Will DotA remain the more popular game in the series? And what about Torchlight, or any other game that might actually turn out to be worse than the predecessor?
Now, if you excuse me, I'll cry a little over the fact that Activision even had to shut down the official page and forums...