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The Good, The Bad, The Dead
Welcome to the 631st Edition of Loading... If you aren't reading this in your e-mail, you could be. <a targ

by on Jul 30, 2007

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Are you looking for the latest industry headlines? Look no further.

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My Internet connection is down, but let's start Monday off with some good news anyway!

The crew that spent last week in Sandy Eggo is back and hooboy do they have stories, but as the old saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words". We have about 200,000 words worth in our ComicCON '07 gallery, including some of Cody's favourites. Next year the guys are going to be asked to wear costumes. Jeff in his rodeo clown outfit. Cody dressed as Chewbacca. Phil as Spongebob. Perhaps we'll just send them as a group of huge yellow foam hammers, ambling around the event, trying to fit into those tiny folding chairs at keynote speeches, interviewing Jessica Alba, etc. Phil, I've found your calling!

More good news for those of you who enjoy our videos; we have a video from the Stargate press conference with Amanda Tapping, Ben Browder, etc., but that's not all.... We also have April "Cuppajo" Burba, the CM for Tabula Rasa giving us a first ever peek at the Medic class. If video isn't your thing, or you're checking in from work where speakers aren't allowed then dive into Cody's interview with Gavin Kirby, mission designer on Pirates of the Burning Sea.

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World of Warcraft and EverQuest 2 released for retail purchase over two-years ago. Since then we haven't seen a new release that broke from the gate and set itself up at the right-hand of WoW in the subscriber throneroom.

Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) made an attempt and sold well initially, but whether it was the lack of content, the forced grouping or some other factor, the game never truly escalated its sales to the point where it could be considered a huge player in the market. To be fair to Turbine, the developers of DDO, this was always going to be a niche game. It's ironic that persistent worlds require fluid rulesets, but without change players unsubscribe. Without rule changes players are never reintroduced to the game. DDO was and I suppose still is, locked into a ruleset that was created not for a living, breathing, vibrant world inhabited by thousands of players at a time, but for a world where a small group could explore at their own pace, able to tweak rules as they deemed fit. Make no mistake about it, Turbine did an impeccable job of recreating the D&D experience in a large persistent world. Unfortunately, those two experiences, though not mutually exclusive, don't hold a lot of common ground. D&D players inevitably enjoy the game. Players coming from other MMOGs often found that it fell short of what they expected and as anyone in this industry knows, expectations are the bar by which a game is measured.

Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO), another Turbine entry into the race has produced sales that I'm sure delighted the developers. They probably aren't prancing around, squealing like little girls who were just gifted their first puppy, but they aren't disappointed either. Unlike Dungeons and Dragons Online, LotRO gives Turbine the ability to muckity-muck with the ruleset. The background from the books is the part of this intellectual property that Turbine can't mess about with. As much as I would enjoy it, I won't see Gandalf wearing an apron and judging the wares at the annual Halfling On A Spit Festival. LotRO was a sales success, but I hear very little about it now that it has been out for a while. I'm not convinced that the $200 lifetime membership or the $9.99 a month subscription fee was the way to go, but then again, how many people who dove into LotRO at launch will still be playing in 20 months?

Games with the highest expectations are often the most disappointing. They have the farthest to fall if things don't go as plan. Enter Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, the brainchild of Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler. This was to be the next-generation successor to the former King of the industry, EverQuest. Promises were made and the expectations of the fans were through the roof. Promises and expectations, two things that developers need to provide if they intend to market their product are coincidentally the two things that can kill a game before it takes three-steps out of the starting gate. Managing the expectations is difficult and if the devs aren't careful, it impossible. Vanguard launched prematurely and has died a thousand deaths since. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) now guides the good ship, but unless they have some tricks in their marketing basket there will be no grand reintroduction of the game to the masses. Games get one chance to launch and if in that infant stage they cannot learn to walk then they are doomed to crawl through their lifecycle.

But where is the good news you ask?

After a long drought of quality MMOGs we are approaching the '07 holiday season and with it at least three games that might tear you away from the title that you are playing now.

  1. Tabula Rasa (TR): I've seen it. I like it. I have my apprehensions about the gameplay, but I trust that Richard Garriott, Starr Long and Paul Sage will guide their team through the process of fixing the niggling gnats that are eating at would could be a royal member of the MMOG family right up there with their original hit Ultima Online.No Elves, Dwarves or other fantasy related gobbledy-good, CHECK!A vibrant world that has enough guidance for the casual player and enough open-ended ferocity for the hard-core player, CHECK! (at least in the areas I have been shown)

    A development team that can't afford to launch a loser, CHECK! This game has reset and started over already.

    Hype-meter: 7/10 - The fans are clamouring for more of what Garriott has proven he can offer.

    Launch Date: I'm going to guess early October.

  2. Age of Conan (AoC): "M" rated this game has taken the Conan universe, kept the blood and guts and taken the leap. It's a unique title given the "M" rating and from what I have seen looks like a blast to play.Conan IP, a cult favourite, CHECK!"M" rating which for good or bad will create hype surrounding the game and in the end sales, CHECK!

    A development team that has already created a successful game from a unique IP (Anarchy Online), CHECK!

    Hype-meter: 9/10 - You can't swing a word in a message forums about MMOGs without somebody mentioning Conan.

  3. Gods and Heroes (GnH): I've loved the "idea" of Gods and Heroes since I saw it at E3 2005. Of the three games I'm mentioning today, this is the second with an Ultima Online link. Chris McKibbin, big dog at Perpetual Entertainment was part of the Ultima Online team. Of all the titles that are in public development this is perhaps the only one that makes you feel powerful and important right from the start. I've often wondered why developers insist on making us start out as peasants hunting rats. I understand why they did it in the past, but are we truly out of heroic ideas? Can't a player start out as a powerful hero and simply get increasingly powerful? Gods and Heroes lets you do just that.Vast libraries of mythological information to draw upon, CHECK!Big dog from StarCraft and Diablo 2 leading the development team, CHECK! (Stieg Hedlund)

    Unique gameplay mechanic (minions), CHECK!

Q4 '07 has a shot at being a holiday season that we will look back on fondly for years to come. Are these the three games that you are eager to play? Is there something else?

Comment in the blog (now with direct link goodness) or email me directly.

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John "Boomjack" Hoskin

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Dissecting and distilling the game industry since 1994. Lover of family time, youth hockey, eSports, and the game industry in general.
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