Author Topic: Another one bites the dust  (Read 8085 times)

Eoraptor

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Another one bites the dust
« on: September 18, 2013, 10:12:47 PM »
I never played it, but I know those who have...

today the deathwatch begins for Warhammer Online http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/09/18/warhammer-online-to-close-december-18th/

announced on their 5th anniversary no less
"Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story, while others can read the back of a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe!"
-Lex Luthor

The Fifth Horseman

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2013, 10:38:32 PM »
Pity. But hardly unsurprising.
The way it's worded, though, it's going to feed into fattening GW's godawful reputation for screwing over their (formerly) loyal fanbase.
Not that they aren't doing a spectacular job at maintaining that rep, nosirree...
We were heroes. We were villains. At the end of the world we all fought as one. It's what we did that defines us.
The end occurred pretty much as we predicted: all servers redlining until midnight... and then no servers to go around.

Somewhere beyond time and space, if you look hard you might find a flash of silver trailing crimson: a lone lost Spartan on his way home.

JWBullfrog

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2013, 11:48:41 PM »
At least this one has a fairly logical reasoning. As stated in the article, the licensing agreement is running out. That is a whole lot more explanation than we got.
 
Well, WAR players, if you're out there, come on over and join us in our clubhouse. It's a lot larger on the inside and we have room for everyone.
As long as somebody keeps making up stories for it, the City isn't gone.

JaguarX

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2013, 12:12:49 AM »
Dang. MMO games been dropping like flies in the past year.

LaughingAlex

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2013, 12:16:32 AM »
I think NCSoft had shown the business end of game development that it's ok to drop mmo's for the heck of it.  This is horrible and very bad.  But if Games Workshop shuts down for it I will not feel to bad and that could send a message about game publishers and reputation, something thats been sagging in general recently.  The most recent publisher to go defunct to my knowledge is Eidos interactive for the same reason; publishing to many crap games such that the few good games they publish couldn't make up for the money they'd wasted.  They litterally had a reputation for forcing games out the door to early repeatedly.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2013, 12:25:17 AM by LaughingAlex »
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Eoraptor

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #5 on: September 19, 2013, 01:30:27 AM »
Truth is, Games Workshop has generally become little more than a patent troll. they have no interest in creating content, for Warhammer or any other property. all they care is "hey, I own the legal rights to all these valuable words like troll and space marine. let's go sue a biitch" so yeah, they really couldn't give two pancakes about their actual fans.

unfortunately, as LaughingAlex points out, between NCSoft and now Games Workshop, it sets a really ugly precedent that you can create an online community, and then shut it down with zero real world repercussions, even after collecting money on it, perhaps for years. because digital property law is skewed 99% in favour of the corporation, where it exists at all.
"Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story, while others can read the back of a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe!"
-Lex Luthor

JaguarX

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #6 on: September 19, 2013, 01:38:54 AM »
digital property law is skewed 99% in favour of the corporation, where it exists at all.
yup.

Captain Electric

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #7 on: September 19, 2013, 02:03:38 AM »
Crap eight years already??? Geez. *Thoughtful pause*

Well I hope new accounts can still be created. I never got around to checking WAR out.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2013, 02:22:50 AM by Captain Electric »

The Fifth Horseman

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #8 on: September 19, 2013, 04:53:19 AM »
Truth is, Games Workshop has generally become little more than a patent troll. they have no interest in creating content, for Warhammer or any other property. all they care is "hey, I own the legal rights to all these valuable words like troll and space marine. let's go sue a biitch" so yeah, they really couldn't give two pancakes about their actual fans.
Yeah, I've had the pleasure of handling an indie dev's response to some of their heavy handed legal threats a while back.
Except anyone who looks into the details can present a convincing argument that GW's initial use of the term Space Marine infringed on another property that existed at the same time - and that they knew about it.
Probably not going to be a little less aggresive with some of that crap since Spots the Space Marine though.

Also, GW sometimes laid claim to the word "Marine" by itself.

Also, they're going to owe Michael Moorcock unpaid royalties for... oh, every single GW product sold with the Chaos symbol. They kind of copied the one used in conjunction with Moorcock's Eternal Champion metaseries without permission, registered it as a trademark and are slapping it on every single Chaos model produced.
We were heroes. We were villains. At the end of the world we all fought as one. It's what we did that defines us.
The end occurred pretty much as we predicted: all servers redlining until midnight... and then no servers to go around.

Somewhere beyond time and space, if you look hard you might find a flash of silver trailing crimson: a lone lost Spartan on his way home.

hejtmane

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #9 on: September 19, 2013, 01:03:31 PM »
I played it you did not miss anything. I was an old DAOC player and was excited about Mythic making a new game then EA swooped in pushed out the old guys and released the crap that was War Hammer and I wanted to like the game but it was terrible the class I wanted to play was terrible the witch hunter the Balance was terrible beyond bad for a PVP centric game it was the kiss of death because they did not fix it they made the gap bigger.

One of several MMO's I played I am an old school MMO player going back to UO and if you count Diablo I use to do the original Diablo as well man those where the days 33.6kb modems and you where a rockstar when they came out with the 56k modem and you got one. I skipped EQ but everyone was drooling over the Monster Video card by Vodoo back in the day

wyldhunt

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #10 on: September 19, 2013, 07:56:19 PM »
...between NCSoft and now Games Workshop, it sets a really ugly precedent that you can create an online community, and then shut it down with zero real world repercussions...
GW has been in the business of trashing their old fans and marketing to new ones for more than 20 years now. Just ask the ancient WHFB fans about that. Luckily, I only spent a few hundred dollars on their skirmish-level games Man O' War and Mordheim, tried a few others, but never really invested into any of their full army-level games. The sad thing is, NC$oft may well have learned how to survive while trashing old fans from GW. This should be seen as a lesson for us - NC$oft doesn't have to change to stay in business. Instead, in order to get what we want, we have to go a route which doesn't depend upon businesses which operate like they do. I still hold hope that one or more of our Plan Zs come to fruition.
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FatherXmas

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #12 on: September 20, 2013, 02:35:55 AM »
I think NCSoft had shown the business end of game development that it's ok to drop mmo's for the heck of it.  This is horrible and very bad.  But if Games Workshop shuts down for it I will not feel to bad and that could send a message about game publishers and reputation, something thats been sagging in general recently.  The most recent publisher to go defunct to my knowledge is Eidos interactive for the same reason; publishing to many crap games such that the few good games they publish couldn't make up for the money they'd wasted.  They litterally had a reputation for forcing games out the door to early repeatedly.

I disagree.  There were plenty of MMOs that have shut down before us to say NCSOFT showed the evil corporations the way, and this includes EA with Earth & Beyond and their MMO lite variants on the Sims.
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Captain Electric

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #13 on: September 20, 2013, 04:19:02 AM »
I disagree.  There were plenty of MMOs that have shut down before us to say NCSOFT showed the evil corporations the way, and this includes EA with Earth & Beyond and their MMO lite variants on the Sims.

Thankfully Earth and Beyond has an emulator and it's just as awesome (and more awesome) than the live game was. This is why players should keep games alive when publishers don't. Don't get hung up on the details. Don't bicker about EULAs and C&Ds. Just take your game back and have fun with it. If the publisher is stingy, go underground, decentralize, do whatever it takes. At the end of the day, after years of hard work and reverse-engineering, the only question that matters will be this:

/team Sup team! What are we doin tonight?

I'm pretty sure you'd disagree with that FatherXmas, and if so then I respect your principles. But I have principles too. After playing Earth and Beyond so much since it was shut down, and getting to see the joy that it continually brings its fans, and getting to see the devs go from amateur to expert over the years, I feel like there are bigger things than EULAs that are worth protecting. And I want COH's fans to have those accomplishments and joys too.

JaguarX

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #14 on: September 20, 2013, 04:33:25 AM »
I disagree.  There were plenty of MMOs that have shut down before us to say NCSOFT showed the evil corporations the way, and this includes EA with Earth & Beyond and their MMO lite variants on the Sims.
Yup.

FatherXmas

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #15 on: September 21, 2013, 07:42:14 PM »
Thankfully Earth and Beyond has an emulator and it's just as awesome (and more awesome) than the live game was. This is why players should keep games alive when publishers don't. Don't get hung up on the details. Don't bicker about EULAs and C&Ds. Just take your game back and have fun with it. If the publisher is stingy, go underground, decentralize, do whatever it takes. At the end of the day, after years of hard work and reverse-engineering, the only question that matters will be this:

/team Sup team! What are we doin tonight?

I'm pretty sure you'd disagree with that FatherXmas, and if so then I respect your principles. But I have principles too. After playing Earth and Beyond so much since it was shut down, and getting to see the joy that it continually brings its fans, and getting to see the devs go from amateur to expert over the years, I feel like there are bigger things than EULAs that are worth protecting. And I want COH's fans to have those accomplishments and joys too.

But that requires a corporation that is willing for now to turn a blind eye toward the emulator.  Or those who would sic the legal department on the emulator staff and host simply doesn't know about it.  A change in management, a new legal team trying to look good, even some outside agency looking to police IP for other corporations for a fee.  It could all come crashing down one day.  Of course that's no difference than having the plug pulled on your MMO but with monetary damages tacked on for good measure.

I would love a day when a publisher officially releases the server for some defunct MMO.  Put a version up for sale that can support a limit number of players on at one time, simply because most people don't have the servers to support an entire population.  Go binary here, 32 or 64 simultaneous players.

But my fear is if a group far cleverer than me are able to get an emulator up and running all it takes is one C&D letter from NCSOFT's law team to put the official kibosh on it.  Then it gets driven underground and I wouldn't want to see the first rule about City of Heroes is we don't talk about City of Heroes.
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PSI-on

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #16 on: September 21, 2013, 08:47:31 PM »
That was practically word for word what I said when I saw the article


Dang. MMO games been dropping like flies in the past year.
Please don't send blind requests in games to me, I learned to ignore them in CoX, no offense meant. (this is only here until I can figure out how to put it in my actual profile on here.)

Captain Electric

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #17 on: September 22, 2013, 04:58:29 AM »
But that requires a corporation that is willing for now to turn a blind eye toward the emulator.  Or those who would sic the legal department on the emulator staff and host simply doesn't know about it.  A change in management, a new legal team trying to look good, even some outside agency looking to police IP for other corporations for a fee.  It could all come crashing down one day.  Of course that's no difference than having the plug pulled on your MMO but with monetary damages tacked on for good measure.

I would love a day when a publisher officially releases the server for some defunct MMO.  Put a version up for sale that can support a limit number of players on at one time, simply because most people don't have the servers to support an entire population.  Go binary here, 32 or 64 simultaneous players.

But my fear is if a group far cleverer than me are able to get an emulator up and running all it takes is one C&D letter from NCSOFT's law team to put the official kibosh on it.  Then it gets driven underground and I wouldn't want to see the first rule about City of Heroes is we don't talk about City of Heroes.

See my reply here.

AlphaFerret

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #18 on: September 24, 2013, 12:21:15 AM »
I just recently made WAR my new home....not sure if I am gonna play it out like I did with Coh, or just abandon and move on.  Of course, WAR had all the markings of a game near the end, so I was not too surprised with the news.

JaguarX

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Re: Another one bites the dust
« Reply #19 on: September 24, 2013, 12:38:21 AM »
I just recently made WAR my new home....not sure if I am gonna play it out like I did with Coh, or just abandon and move on.  Of course, WAR had all the markings of a game near the end, so I was not too surprised with the news.
I'm sure some long time and or deeply invested players were very surprised by the news.