Thursday Next posted:

He got 9 million from the monthly “telethons” that they still do, as well as from whales buying /pukeblood emotes and snowman dances. Their financials are available. We don’t know exactly how much cash was infused by other investors (Travian, Black Sun, etc).

The financial data shows they’re making $2,000 / day on cash ship items, and $250,000 / quarter on begging telethons. These do not appear to cover their operating expenses, however.

Gynovore posted:

Okay, there's definitely something not kosher going on. For a hundredth of what they raised, they could have hired three Full Sail grads as 3D modelers, texture artists, playtesters, whatever. They had more than enough money and time to make a quality game, but chose not to.

big nipples big life posted:

"Right Sized"

http://massivelyop.com/2018/06/20/shroud-of-the-avatar-suffers-layoffs-saying-right-sizing-is-needed-ahead-of-episode-2/

There's a special place in hell for whoever came up with that euphemism.

"Darkstarr posted:

You will be a big part of our preparations for Episode 2 as we relaunch the Stretch Goal Store! You will get to vote on some of the Episode 2 features by purchasing rare items related to Mounts, Flexible Lot Placement, the Elven Playable Race, and Pack Animals. Stay tuned for more information soon!

jabro posted:

CoffeeBooze posted:

Do MMOs with cash shops shut down these days? I thought they would just limp along on life support for a long, long time while bilking the few players who are too financially committed to stop logging in until the end of days. Like Wildstar.

jabro posted:

You will be a big part of our preparations for Episode 2 as we relaunch the Stretch Goal Store! You will get to vote on some of the Episode 2 features by purchasing rare items related to Mounts, Flexible Lot Placement, the Elven Playable Race, and Pack Animals. Stay tuned for more information soon!

Thursday Next posted:

Those comments






“This game is just too good for WoW babies,” I insist, lifting one meaty leg from the couch. The effort comes close to exhausting me. “It’s literal perfection. Many gamers are afraid of that.” I begin to fart.

“If you don’t pledge to this game, if you haven’t already bought in for at least ten kay, you’re an obvious child. Go back to Call of Duty, you WoW baby.”

....

“WoW... babies!!”

DancingShade posted:

One of these days I'm going to have to play WoW simply so I can "get" a lot of the talk around it.

Not in a rush though.

Dr. Kyle Farnsworth posted:

And then there was a big MMO boom right around then. For a while, you could get away with what Shroud of the Avatar and a lot of these old school reboots did: Get the game to something resembling playable, kick it out the door, then frantically make it good because people would play a new MMO just for the novelty or because they didn't have much selection. At one point Everquest patches could keep the servers down for days or weeks, but your alternative was UO and that would mean you'd have to drive to the physical store and buy a physical copy, then install it and wait for it to download patches (which could also be days!), and then you'd be a naked baby with a stick in a new world. Now you're pushing out a broken MMO that's the 21st iteration of OLD SCHOOL HARDCORE FANTASY but you're competing against a mature game like Warcraft that has a ton of content and expansions and usually works, so you can't get away with half-assing something, making GBS threads it out, and then collecting subscription fees to actually finish it. Now I can go "Okay, World of Poopsockers 3 is janky but there's 30 other lovely fantasy MMOs I can play". So the barrier isn't my apathy regarding running down to CompUSA to buy a box, it's "Why would I play this lovely game when I could play the game I already play with all my friends and tons of things to do?"

Aaod posted:

This isn't limited to mmorpgs either I have a pet theory that back then if you wanted an online experience or certain experiences period you were limited to mmorpgs or one specific mmorpg in particular.

I said come in! posted:

I really don't like a lot of the older established MMORPGs anymore, like Everquest 1 & 2, Lord of the Rings Online, and World of Warcraft because they are overloaded with expansion packs and content. It gets to be super overwhelming. I've been playing Dark Age of Camelot for this reason because the game is frozen at a level cap of 50 and hasn't had new content updates in years. It's been refreshing to play a more simple MMORPG.

I am looking forward to World of Warcraft classic for this reason. The level cap will be 60 and I like that a lot.

Dr. Kyle Farnsworth posted:

I haven't played WoW in years and never got anywhere near cap, but to give DancingShade an idea:

Warcraft did (and does) a lot of things that make the genre more accessible and show a lot of growth since 1998 or the height of Ye Olde Poopsocker MMOs.

Like experience through questing. It used to be there were enemy spawns just hanging out in the world and you would go find something appropriate to your level and powers and ability and kill them. That's how you levelled up. So you would go kill bear cubs for 8 hours, then kill young bears for 16 hours, then kill adult bears for 24 hours, then grizzled bears for 48 hours. And that's it. That was literally the only way to gain experience points and progress your character. It was also the only thing to really do besides hanging around bullshitting. There would be an occasional quest here and there for things like a class weapon, but otherwise you'd hang out in the designated zone for your level and kill poo poo. If you wanted to progress faster, you needed to find a group, and you'd go hang in a much higher level area and kill poo poo with them. The upside was you'd get more XP. The downside was you'd all die if someone hosed up, and in those days that meant experience loss and losing all your poo poo unless you managed to recover it.

So it was entirely POSSIBLE that you could log in for a session, pick the wrong group, gently caress things up, and you'd actually lose progress as well as money and items.

So WoW comes out and there's lots of questing and a semblance of a storyline. Most of the quests are still old school "Go here and kill 10 bears", but you had a sense of progression and a thin candy shell of purpose. Likewise, the death penalty wasn't nearly as harsh and you didn't lose all your poo poo when you died. And there were other things, too. In classic EverQuest, soloing as any class but a handful just wasn't worth it. You HAD to group up to make progress. In Warcraft, you could solo all the way to the cap (and they've been making it a lot easier over the years). In the old school MMOs, there was little in the way of guidance. You'd spawn somewhere and have to figure everything out yourself, and you'd still suffer consequences like experience loss while you did. Like there was a city in classic Everquest up in trees but with no guard rails, so you could (and would, given everyone was on dialup) fall to your death, then lose XP and have to go recover your body, even if you were level 1. Warcraft gave you something resembling a tutorial. Or nightvision. See, Everquest was based on text MUDs which were based on DnD, so there were races with night vision. And a day night cycle. If you picked a race without night vision, the screen was basically black during the night unless you carried a torch or got a special item. How would you know that? FIGURE IT OUT, NOOB. Some races and classes would also have stat or EXP penalties (because of the roots in DnD), so you could come in unknowingly and make a lovely character and not even know it because if you were lucky it might be documented on one or two fansites or it might just be player lore that "it sure seems weird that these guys don't progress nearly as fast as these other guys."

So a lot of the saltiness is that kind of thing, old timers that fondly remember hanging out for 6 hours grinding XP and not realizing the only reason people did that is they were teenagers with free time and there was literally no other option, whereas nowadays a lot of us are older and aren't going to play a game that's a constant kick in the balls. And you did have to "earn" knowledge of how the game worked and git gud through lots of kicks in the balls.

And then there was a big MMO boom right around then. For a while, you could get away with what Shroud of the Avatar and a lot of these old school reboots did: Get the game to something resembling playable, kick it out the door, then frantically make it good because people would play a new MMO just for the novelty or because they didn't have much selection. At one point Everquest patches could keep the servers down for days or weeks, but your alternative was UO and that would mean you'd have to drive to the physical store and buy a physical copy, then install it and wait for it to download patches (which could also be days!), and then you'd be a naked baby with a stick in a new world. Now you're pushing out a broken MMO that's the 21st iteration of OLD SCHOOL HARDCORE FANTASY but you're competing against a mature game like Warcraft that has a ton of content and expansions and usually works, so you can't get away with half-assing something, making GBS threads it out, and then collecting subscription fees to actually finish it. Now I can go "Okay, World of Poopsockers 3 is janky but there's 30 other lovely fantasy MMOs I can play". So the barrier isn't my apathy regarding running down to CompUSA to buy a box, it's "Why would I play this lovely game when I could play the game I already play with all my friends and tons of things to do?"

Byolante posted:

I think about people saying 'bring back wow classic' and I think 'are you mentally deranged?'

There will be like 1 pve and 1 pvp server per region. There will be at best 2 raid guilds worth of black lotus per week. Tuber hunting has been mapped out and timed so having enough tubers will be a nightmare. backpack and bank size will be tiny but you will need multiple sets of resist gear. All the bad old mods like discord action bars, healbot ect will be mandatory. loving dispelling everything every fight. No dual specs. No druid tanking, priest or shaman dps, paladin anything but standing out of combat and ressing. 5 minute blessings. Spell consumables. World bosses.

TheAgent posted:

I thought they already brought classic servers back as wildstar

I said come in! posted:

lol!

I wish Wildstar had turned out better. That could have been such a good MMO.

Groovelord Neato posted:

the grindiness of old mmos sucked but eq felt like a "world" while wow feels like a theme park and that is lovely.

Good Dumplings posted:

"exploring" what, every map was the same field with a couple of animals running around, one humanoid that was a Tough Fight, and the only difference was retextures