I was wondering since SD does not have an MMO title yet and since TR is a scifi one that has a small but committed following that will be shut down soon, if it would not be something that SD could use as a first step into the MMO world. I think such a move would be well received by the gaming community given SD scifi based game orientation.
I think they'd have to hire a bazillion new employees and find some way to cover the overhead of all the servers.
Stardock have limited MP experience, so I don't know how well an MMO would go . . . especially one that "failed".
I thought a Korean company was taking over . . . ?
Yeah, I'm thinking an MMO that's closing down because it basically sucks is not the best way for Stardock to break into the MMO business
After playing the trial, there's very little worth saving in Tabula Rasa. About the only neat thing I encountered were the dropships that would spawn enemies at random times near you.
TR was awesome. I really enjoyed that game.
I personally don't care much for MMOs, but that game really hooked me and I (unlike every other MMO I played) never once was bored or hated doing anything inside of it.
I'll miss TR. I really will.
The short answer is "No."
The longer answer is "Noooooooooooooo!"
The MMO genre is the slowest evolving genre in gaming. Right now companies are all too eager to pump out WoW clones. I would rather that Stardock stay out off mmos. I don't want another crappy WoW clone. MMOs are also the most exspensive type of game to develop and maintain. BIG NO NO!
Tabula Rasa is failing. Maybe it is failing for a reason. I want Elemental not Tabula Rasa with a new company on it.
Stardock has a planned MMO, but not for 3-4 years I think.
TR was one of the few mmos i actually enjoyed playing for some time.
But at some time it didnt offer any variety anymore because there too few skills.
The lack of support did the rest.
When it comes to MMOs, the launch is all important. Its VERY hard to recover from a poor first three months. In the case of TR, its probably too late, and would be incredibly risky. I'd rather Stardock focus on their other games then devote energy to a lost cause.
If they are looking for a sci-fi MMO they should look at acquiring CCP.
They'd get EVE and WoD that way. One of the longest running, still growing subscription models in EVE and World of Darkness would be an IP win.
Would have to fight off Atari and a bunch of Icelanders though, so...
TR is fundamentally flawed at the base design, so it's hardly worth sinking anymore money in to. It's also closing down because it isn't profitable with the small playerbase that remains. It would be a loss for anyone to pick it up.
That's money better spent on designing something that actually works right out the door, rather then picking up yet another MMO abortion.
Lack of support? What the hell are you on about? It was getting free content updates in the vein of DDO and LotRO right up to now. If anything it's one of the best supported MMOs, along with CoX, DDO and LotRO.
If you have a look at Society, Stardock have their own take on persistent multiplay, and one which could be quite interesting. Whereas there are already far too many third person cooperative action RPG stylings and I don't think many people will be worried about the loss of one.
Personally, I thought World Eater looked like a really interesting concept, but that stalled in development years ago. I reckon adaptable biological ships which eat each other and eventually munch on planets is definitely underexploited territory. I also like the idea of humans being a resource (slaves) rather than a playable faction. "Crush the human revolt" event anyone?
Tabula Rasa had a lot of potential, the only good would come of taking it over would be to be able to build new game elements to it. It lacked a lot of really solid 'fun' factor. It's a game that could work great for Mechs for instance, but nothing was given to the players. Last I played it, they screwed up the cooperative element, thats when I got bored of the game. I'm not sure if they fixed that, but the whoile 'never ending battle via same exact spawn zones' does feel pretty darn scripted... TR would need a lot of rebuilding, because "General British" was so full of himself he forgot to see that the game he was making was full of suck.
I have noticed that several of these threads have been coming up of late. Everyone seems to have several games that they want a good game company to do "right".
I have seen Hellgate all the way to the Total Annihilation series mentioned. Says a good deal about Stardock, or at least the fans of SD.
And between all the content updates they hardly ever cared about fixing bugs and such. And the content updates honestly came too late. Some of them should have been in the release. (the clan controlled control points for example and the crafting system was royal hassle)
I think the next gen in Space MMOs should be similar to 3D RPGs like Mass Effect, in which there are things both to do on planets themselves as well as the usual space exploration and combat. Almost like 2 games in one. The planetside development could be even more elaborate than in Mass Effect, integrating land and space trade, mining, building businesses, or focusing on research, construction, and so on.
Some planets might be more oriented toward combat quests or simpler functions like mining or sightseeing. But there should be large core planets which do everything and are huge environments in themselves to explore, on the scale of GTA or more. A real sim which allows hard core gamers to have fun.
And just like in Freelancer and many other games, there are carefully graded zones of safety where beginners don't get wasted by high level predators all the time.
The space travel portion could extend that notion of safety zones, varying levels of PVE, and then an occasional PVP zone for those interested in that. Team space combat could also be implemented with the establisment of clans or guilds, allowing interstellar battles and such. However, when players land, they can interact with a more sophisticated planet that extends the activities and organizations that existed in space, to the planet. Or they could simply sell stuff they salvaged from space and quickly lift off to the space sim part of it, allowing them to focus choose their own depth of game.
That way people could exist as nomads, soldiers in a trade or combat, or with work, influence and experience, become the admirals of guild fleets or become the captains of planetside business, or titans of both.
I think that would be cool.
The grail here would be to fully integrate planetside business, mining and production, with space trading and the building of large guilds in space that have the freedom to focus either on trading or combat.
space mmo? Just wait for World of Starcraft.
Stardock should definitely try to get CCP games. I bet Stardock can fix EVE's flaws and make it more appealing to people. I got the 14-Day trial, thought the game was cool, but still had problems (hard to get into, takes a long time to progress).
As for Atari trying to CCP, I doubt it. Atari's basically dead, but it still has a spark of life that just wont go out. I never see their name any more. The last "major" game they published was Alone in the Dark, which sucked, as you all know.
Concerning Stardock's MMO, Society, I really wish they would make it sci-fi. I am honestly sick of fantasy games. They all seem the same. There are some gems, but most are just copies of Diablo and WoW, which in my opinion, aren't very good at all. To all you Blizzard fanboys about to flame me: Blizzard did NOT create the fantasy game we know. They essentially ripped of Warhammer and Baldur's gate, and changed the races around at bit.
Bummer about Tabula Rasa. It was unique.
Now the wait for The Old Republic begins.
TB (and Hellgate) were destined to failure. They simply didn't have big enough markets with tiher quality. TB wasn't a good enough RPG or action game so not enough of either playerbase played, Hellgate was a crap action game with some WoW talents plonked on top which isn't good enough for the playerbases either.
Hybrids need to be really good in all aspects, not just mediocre if they want people to stick around and pay for it.
Err WoW didn't take anything from Baldurs Gate, Everquest was thier template for an MMO (and only the name and the green skinned orcs are really left from the Warhammer rip-off). Credit where it is due, Blizzard made todays idea of an accesible MMO that you can solo to max level, before WoW that simply didn't exist (unless you enjoy self harm).
Also TB wasn't very 'unqiue', bad sci-fi plot combined with a basic rip off of WoW with most of the meele quest rewards replaced with more rifles? Ha. Wolrd War II Online (Battleground Europe now) and Planetside are unqiue in both scale and design respectively. Other than them unique is not something you can say about many MMOs.
Alone in the dark was a good game with horrid interface problems though, the game itself should be fun if you can get over that (I had to use first person as much as possible).
That pretty much shows that you never even played TB. It was one of the MMO's as far away from WoW as you can get. Along with DDO, it was one of the rare MMORPGs that required constant player input for combat, instead of the standard Everquest/WoW autoattack with occasional one-click skill triggering.
Constant interaction? Err, thats your measure of quality? Id rather have better game design where I need to think wether thats useing tactics, or aiming, or teamwork you know. The lack of any simulation on the weapons put me off the game personaly, that and I don't like hotbar skills with guns. But thats just me, clearly im not the only one.
Take a look at Infinity.
Cheers
I thought Stardock dealt with Good games, thus specifically excluding Tabula Rasa.
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