Hmmn. How to respond to this one. Oh wait, I've got it:
Talk is cheap, neosource.
Here's the thing: Ages take time. You know this. Explaining it to you is pointless. You're just ignoring that fact to be contentious.
Creating new content, or even retrofitting unused content, in order to pay the bills and tie things up as neatly as possible is not nearly as easy as you'd like us to believe. The technology may have vastly improved from the days when a classic point and click adventure took a couple of years to hammer out, but the games were pretty limited, and the demands on modern games are much higher as well.
So really, the development time hasn't been diminished by any stretch of the imagination. It takes months to develop single ages without repeating yourself or your imitators. To develop whole games with enough content to please everyone, years. And the content CYAN had been developing when URU Live got canned? That went out as To D'ni and PotS. So what they went back to work with was drawing table stuff that had to be repurposed to tell not just any tale but the final tale. Gestalt years of work and plans for the future into a handful of days of gameplay at best.
And I don't know about you, but I always turn out my best work under the gun when I've just been gut-punched and told I'm unemployed the minute I get finished. Yeah, right.
You didn't like Uru. That's clear. Point taken. We did. Still do. that's why we're here. We believe it has a future. We believe Uru Live IS the future of MMO Adventure gaming. And we believe strongly enough to take constructive criticism. But you're offering nothing but derision and arrogance. You clearly don't respect our viewpoint. I respect your right to dislike URU and to dislike EoA. However, I think I can clearly see that you're just gonna keep banging away at this like that horrible monkey with the cymbals, because you have nothing better to offer. Please, feel free to correct me if I've got you all wrong. I'm sure you will.
Just thought I'd get things back on track by reminding you that we wouldn't be here if we didn't like what we'd already seen. So treating us like idiots is not likely to garner you whatever respect and admiration for your views you must surely be hoping for in some part of your head, or you wouldn't be trying to impress us with your superior wit and taste.
We see potential where you do not. Which one of us it being closed-minded?
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Maratanos: You know, the funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that's what I was talking about too.
What I figure is, you wanted something more like the standalone plots. What I suggested was, that won't work. You keep insisting that Uru need smore of what you consider to be good plot.
Let's see:
History of the D'ni society being revealed, check.
The efforts of the DRC to carefully discover and document this safely, check.
The daughter of Atrus, the last writer of D'ni, trying to find redemption for the D'ni, check.
The revelation that the D'ni culture was in fact not all sweetness and light, and that their power was built on the backs of species of creatures they used as slave labour, check.
Whole ages discovered that held dark secrets of D'ni decadence and paranoia, check.
Members of the DRC going rogue, check.
Members of Yeesha's followers endangering themselves and vanishing, check.
All of this, plus several worlds to travel to, mysteries behind the wealth and power of the D'ni, and unravelling the mystery of what actually happened to them in the end, check, check and check.
Oh right, I see exactly what you mean. Moving along.
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JWPlatt: Believe it or not, I actually enjoy reading your posts. I'm a very picky burger myself, who expects a great deal from the new Uru Live that has not been delivered on to date. I just see lots of promise, and I don't doubt that Rand sees and is pushing for things that will make Uru Live... the REAL Uru Live, something everyone can share and be proud of.
I've just done so much griping here and elsewhere about these games lately that I'm reaching the point where all I have left to talk about are the reasons why I think they can still work, and why I think folks are missing the point about what can and should be done with them. Too much argument for things that really aren't an issue, and won't be unless CYAN completely drops the ball with the relaunch, which I highly doubt. They may have taken too long to get Uru Live to market the first time, trying new things and building on premises that hadn't been tried before, gambling on the fans and the technology to converge with what they wanted to achieve. They started too soon, took too long, finished too late, and now have to pretty much do over.
But I think it's going to be fantastic, even if it surprises and disappoints some folks who want this to be more like what they've already come to expect. Anyone who has played MMOs and really thought about what goes on there can see that URU Live has to be quite a bit more interactive and involved, even when new Age content is months away. So things will change, and the stories won't be as direct and obvious, and the content will have to be about more than finding puzzles and Bahro stones and KI markers.
Stories, sure. But it's not like they can invent whole games-worth of shiny new ages and histories to be implemented with patches and tweaks and ephemeral content like new clothing and toys on a weekly or even monthly schedule, unless they tailor-make some of their content expressly for replayable MMO gameplay. Some of that content is going to have to be of the open type that doesn't involve going to ages, either new or to places we've already been, to do nothing more than take energy readings, find details we supposedly missed the last time we scoured an area, or to touch magic rocks and wind up in someplace where we can't do anything but look around and then link out to our Relto and back to D'ni.
Me? I trust the stories will be there. I'm just not seeing what all the fuss is about. People seem to expect whole novels or something, where all they can reasonably hope for at best is about four new chapters a year.
Okay, done babbling. I trust this sandbox has enough grouses already, without me muddying things up further.
_________________ Lee Edward McIlmoyle
Adventure Game Devotee at large
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