SOE Becomes Daybreak / Russian shutdown

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V

Valos

Golden Knight of the Realm
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Muligan_sl said:
Why they can't just add the more useful content to the existing content and shred the fluff is beyond me.
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I believe it comes down to perception of the product. You already have access to that area/zone. Why would I purchase an expansion that only reskins the zones? Why don't they just add it as a free content update? Ect ect. Its a much harder sell to have a expac that takes previous zones and changes them. Not to mention the possible outrage that people can have towards their favorite town being changed. Look at freeport in EQ, and a large chunk of WoWs expac: cataclysm. Some people quit those respective games due to this, albeit a small handful. To a niche/indy game that is a much larger %.

I don't think we'll have a true solution until good content is able to be made via AI. Deepdream and Deep neural networks are on the right path for this. The biggest cost for content creation is visual, usually coding the mechanics of a fight, or writing the story takes a fraction of the time. Once we are able to put in story, style, and theme into a program and have it spit out results in hours/days vs months, you'll solve almost all the complaints I've seen from the crowd on this forum and others. The companies are businesses, and at the end of the day they have a cost/benefit ratio they have to adhere to. 18 races with their own starting towns, areas, story, ect is not in anyway a good cost to benefit. Maybe if a rich eccentric decides to make their own company in Rhode island that doesn't care about the bottom line and just wants to make a stellar product that everyone will love...
 
McCheese

McCheese

SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
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They don't have to change existing zones. They can just make the new content accessible via the existing content (i.e., adding a new high level expansion zone connected to a vanilla low/mid level zone) instead of making an entirely new continent, with a new central hub, and migrating the entire population there (thus leaving the old content empty and useless).
 
Agraza

Agraza

Registered Hutt
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I think developers should do more to integrate the new with the old so they feel like extensions of the same rivalries you're familiar with. Kunark had a little bit of faction interplay with classic that was totally dropped in later expansions. Having a whole Ice Giant Keep become a feature near Permafrost and Everfrost/Halas become the staging ground for a crusade against the giants could be cool. I liked when they made an xpac about Mayong, but it was tucked away in instances and high end zones too much away from the rest of the game. It was an opportunity to make LFay relevant, and it was wasted. The Serpent's Spine stuff they added north of Highhold had a similar issue of just being more without improving anything that was already there and tying it together. They did try to integrate LoY into the base game quite a bit, but it was a bit too arbitrary, sudden, and heavy handed. Then they pussied out of it tossing the frogs out in Rathe of all odd places. Like Mayong, LDoN was in the old world, but it was just a few camps to access instances. That's just lame. I'm not against instances, I am against just making a few access and vendor NPCs for the instances and calling it a day.

I thought Blizzard did a good job with their whole world facelift when Cataclysm launched. It was somewhat instigated by legacy design issues they wanted to clean up, but they really made the game feel alive by integrating the changes throughout the world. Blizzard did(does?) world building really well.
 
E

etchazz

Trakanon Raider
2,707
1,056
Agraza_sl said:
I think developers should do more to integrate the new with the old so they feel like extensions of the same rivalries you're familiar with. Kunark had a little bit of faction interplay with classic that was totally dropped in later expansions. Having a whole Ice Giant Keep become a feature near Permafrost and Everfrost/Halas become the staging ground for a crusade against the giants could be cool. I liked when they made an xpac about Mayong, but it was tucked away in instances and high end zones too much away from the rest of the game. It was an opportunity to make LFay relevant, and it was wasted. The Serpent's Spine stuff they added north of Highhold had a similar issue of just being more without improving anything that was already there and tying it together. They did try to integrate LoY into the base game quite a bit, but it was a bit too arbitrary, sudden, and heavy handed. Then they pussied out of it tossing the frogs out in Rathe of all odd places. Like Mayong, LDoN was in the old world, but it was just a few camps to access instances. That's just lame. I'm not against instances, I am against just making a few access and vendor NPCs for the instances and calling it a day.

I thought Blizzard did a good job with their whole world facelift when Cataclysm launched. It was somewhat instigated by legacy design issues they wanted to clean up, but they really made the game feel alive by integrating the changes throughout the world. Blizzard did(does?) world building really well.
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I thought at least for the first few expansions that EQ did a pretty good job of keeping the original zones at least somewhat relevant. Even during SOV, you still traveled back to the original continents occasionally. It wasn't until POP launched with the POK that they really cut the original continents off entirely. I agree with you about integrating the new with the old. I liked it when they added the whole night cycle to Kithicor Forest. Thought they could've done more stuff like that to add a new element to the game.
 
tyen

tyen

EQ in a browser wait time: ____
<Banned>
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now hiring, a mad dash of top talent is rushing to be the first in the interview line.

Mlv6RND.png
 
Malakriss

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,659
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I'll bet the reason he stated he was 17 first was so he could estimate what his age would be in July using the new common core math method.
 
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arallu

arallu

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Now the Columbus Nova guys are in charge: Rumor: Daybreak’s Russell Shanks is out, Columbus Nova exec is in

"Mr. Ji Ham serves as the Vice President at Columbus Nova Private Equity Partners. Mr. Ham focuses on investments in the Special Opportunities Fund at Columbus Nova Private Equity Partners. He serves as Vice President of Columbus Nova Special Opportunities Fund. Mr. Ham is a Principal of Columbus Nova. He also serves as the Vice President at Columbus Nova. He serves as an Investment Professional of Columbus Nova Renewable Fuels Group."
 
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Mughal

Mughal

Bronze Knight of the Realm
279
39
arallu said:
Now the Columbus Nova guys are in charge
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They were always in charge. Smed had some autonomy and Shanks had zero. Revenues kept deteriorating, no clear path to a blockbuster and they are removing more and more of Smed's old management.

Also Columbus Nova is already looking for buyers. Presumably they are trying to rein in costs and restructure the company to extract the best possible price (or at least lose as little as possible until someone buys DBG).
 
Muligan

Muligan

Trakanon Raider
3,232
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I wish someone would get the EQ name before it fades completely into the unknown. There's still a hint of their name among gamers but it's one generation away from people just scratching their head. It's sad really because it really did something great during a great time. That time has passed but there's no reason someone can't make a niche game that is profitable. A simple re-envisioning of Norrath with familiar places taking place following some well known event such as PoT (PoP), Sleeper Awakening, whatever, would be really easy. Who knows how popular it would be but it just needs to look and feel like EQ. I guess I just hate to see it die this slow painful death but seeing some of the recent drama with DBG and their player base, it's just getting worse.
 
tyen

tyen

EQ in a browser wait time: ____
<Banned>
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via their career page, they aren't done yet. But, i hope the company dies.
 
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Skanda

Skanda

I'm Amod too!
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4,506
Mughal said:
They were always in charge. Smed had some autonomy and Shanks had zero. Revenues kept deteriorating, no clear path to a blockbuster and they are removing more and more of Smed's old management.

Also Columbus Nova is already looking for buyers. Presumably they are trying to rein in costs and restructure the company to extract the best possible price (or at least lose as little as possible until someone buys DBG).
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Did these people actually expect a different outcome?
 
Jysin

Jysin

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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New guy sounds like a suit with zero gaming industry experience. Just when you think they hit rock bottom!
 
Kuro

Kuro

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I mean, to be fair, as far as the vidya gaem industry goes, the more experience you have the shittier the product you produce, it seems.
 
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Mughal

Mughal

Bronze Knight of the Realm
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Jysin said:
New guy sounds like a suit with zero gaming industry experience. Just when you think they hit rock bottom!
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They hired some experienced people and structured the company so that the process of making games there has improved. The problem is revenue deterioration so they put a finance/ops guy in charge to manage costs. It's what needed to be done.
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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For EQ at least, there's no reason they can't treat it like a cash cow indefinitely and just have a minimal dev team making minimal amounts of content. There's no need to try and revitalize the game, it's doing fine for what it is, and there's no excuse for it to not be revenue positive.

DBG might sell it, might get purchased etc, but stability in EQ is key and any potential investor will probably minimize impact.

They might also subject EQ to a slow death by slowly cutting costs, but I doubt an investor will gut it quickly.
 
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Mughal

Mughal

Bronze Knight of the Realm
279
39
Tuco said:
For EQ at least, there's no reason they can't treat it like a cash cow indefinitely and just have a minimal dev team making minimal amounts of content. There's no need to try and revitalize the game, it's doing fine for what it is, and there's no excuse for it to not be revenue positive.
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That was already the case, they had like 2 people writing the content for each EQ and a skeleton team overall. The problem that you can't run a company like this because you have to pay for distribution of Kronos, ecommerce, ads, server infrastructure, 24/7 maintenance etc.
 
Pasteton

Pasteton

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Eq VR can someone make it happen? Tyen? Would be the only mmo I think where vr could work
 
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