I never got into WOW. As a 90s kids Warcraft was always the FIRST game in the series. I couldn’t get the 2nd one as a kid (and only played part of it a few years ago to get it out of my system).
This hatred for old games makes me want to take a shit outside their offices.
I did not lose interest in 2. I simply couldn’t get it. I think we had some demo versions but they just… didn’t work. I have a functioning copy now, but I haven’t played it much. It is a fantastic game.
When I first got WC2, I discovered that my 1x CD couldn’t read from the disc fast enough for me to play it. The game would run for about five or ten minutes, then crash. I made it about half way through first campaign - 5 to 10 minutes at a time - before I was able to afford a 4x CD and play it normally.
For me, it is just that the game never ran. To make it clear, I don’t think I ever had the WC2 full game, but the demo, but that didn’t do much either. I remember being at a cousin’s place who seemed like he had it, but again… it just didn’t run. It seems like all the forces that be in the 90s just didn’t want me to play that game.
I find this especially interesting as I bought the game from a garage sale and when I got home I found out it was just a burned disc with a home-printed label. I was too young to understand the dangers of putting that shit in my cd-drive but old enough to know there was a good chance the game wouldn’t work at all. To my great surprise it worked fine and I played the crap out of it. Probably one of the first games where I finished the single player campaign.
I played hundreds of hours of WC2 and WC3 over LAN in college, awesome games. Starcraft too. I mean quotes and terms from WC RTS games haven’t entered the modern lexicon the way that “zerg” has but they’re part of the same cultural continuum and are important to understanding how we got here.
Edit: also, WoW was huge but it’s where Blizzard lost their way and will always be tainted in my mind. RTS is more my scene than those sleazy MMOs
Yeah, I never got into MMOs (probably because WoW got big before I had a disposable income lol), so RTS was also my scene back then. I dabbled in SC, and played WC2 at a friend’s house, but WC3 is where I really cut my teeth. That game was so much goddamn fun to play online (dial-up, don’t pick up the phone mom!). I remember getting caught every now and then in some kind of surprise rush that I had never seen, so I’d save the replay of the game and watch back to see how they did it, and then try it out against other people… I think I learned some kind of wyvyrn rush with Night Elves that way, if I recall correctly. Shit was tight. My memory is shit, I can’t believe I can recall that. There were so many crazy strategies I picked up that way.
I’ve heard a lot of mixed opinions on the WC3 Leaders mechanic, as it focuses gameplay around farming and single points of failure (losing a leader at the wrong moment often meant losing the game)
In that light, Starcraft was the pinnacle of PC RTS gaming and WC3 was an experimental variation that branched off into an RTS variant that would eventually congeal into DOTA, the pinnacle of PC MOBA gaming.
I played DotA for 14 years, but WC3 was home to so many more incredible custom maps. Element TD is an example of another that became a standalone game. But there was also Footman Frenzy, Uther Party, Wintermaul Wars, Hero Line Wars, X Hero Siege, and countless others that made WC3 the greatest RTS platform ever conceived. I hope the suits that pushed out the piece of garbage that is “warcraft reforged” rot in hell forever
I loved WC3 because of the Hero mechanic. It made it added just enough RPG to it… You could usually resurrect your Hero, and if I recall, you can upgrade to make the cooldown faster. Been so long though and I didn’t play the unfortunate remake.
That’s like saying “A hamburger is good, but I just can’t into bacon double cheeseburgers.”
I mean, I would say this unironically.
I’ll add that WC1 had fewer variances between factions. Orcs and Humans were almost identical. That made the game more akin to a real time digital chess than WC2, which made Orcs marginally more aggressive and Humans more defensive. I think WC2 is more fun because of the asymmetry, but that’s purely a question of taste. I’m not going to begrudge someone who has a fondness for the original.
Mine experience is polo with non major brand logo and carrying a whole PC. If you come in a white work van, not a single person will question you, they will even open the door for you.
Nintendo: Emulation is illegal, criminal, and you should never ever do it. If you do, we will sue your ass, send the Pinks, and then shit fury on you!!!
Also Nintendo:
Needless to say, I will not be buying an alarm clock today.
They literally included emulation starting with the wii
So it is more of a rules for thee but not for me situation. Not you should never ever do it but you should only do it on our hardware with our emulators
I mean, their position is that they as the rights holders can republish how they please, but that buying a cartridge does not give you license to play on other devices. You can disagree with them on legal or philosophical grounds but their position isn’t really inconsistent.
You arent wrong and they have every right to use emulation themselves as the legal owners of their products.
The hypocrisy, as i see it, is that they have in the past painted emulation as bad. Fullstop. So for them to have had that opinion, then use it themselves is where they come into being called out for it. Hence the rules for thee but not for me phrase.
And its not a perfect fit which is why i said “more of a” if that helps explain how i intended to mean it
The inconsitency is in their past words vs actions especially where going after emulators is concerned.
It’s tough if not impossible to find now, so I don’t blame anyone for not knowing or believing this to be the case whole google results are dominated by more recent events involving more recent emulation cases. But they have literally in the past made the false claim that emulation itself was an illegal practice. Then later they pretend they never said that and most people never see it. I’ve seen emails from the big N’s legal team making the claim, but it was over 20 years ago. I just have a long memory…
Totally wrong my guy. I do see what you mean, but im claiming to be an exception to the case you have laid out.
Their actions are more important than their words which is why i made my point. Im well aware of nintendos history with going after emulation. They almost rival the mouse
For the record im not defending Nintendo here, i just apprciate honesty and accuracy. Otherwise its just slander and misinformation which we have way too much of.
Anyway their “philosophy” seemingly changes whenever convenient. No slander or misinformation there just sucky reality. You replied to someone mocking actual junk they at least pretended to believe at one point so I wanted to point out they actually have said things like this, coz I legit thought you didn’t know. At that time your other reply calling out their hypocrisy didn’t exist yet.
That seems weirder to me to be honest. Like the recent The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. Just call if Return to Moria and make a LotR badge for marketings sake. Same here.
While Helldivers 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 might look like sudden jackpot successes
This article is funny. It’s like the feel-good inverse of a rage-bait article. It’s stating what we all want to be true and cherry-picking two games that only sort of provide evidence towards it, and only if you squint really hard.
Both games are sequels backed by huge publishers with tons of cash.
BG3 is a Dungeons and Dragons franchise title; a franchise which recently received a massively successful film, a huge boost in popularity during a pandemic, and a boost in cultural relevance in Strange Things.
Helldivers 2 fits the claim a bit better, but it is still a sequel to a well received, well selling title. The extraction shooter genre is also exceedingly popular right now, and the fact that it has Games as a Service bullshit built in says that publishers weren’t as hands-off as the article implies.
So the more realistic take-away from this is that good games with huge budgets for development AND marketing in reasonably popular genres can make a ton of money.
Which isn’t saying much. And it certainly doesn’t look like a sudden jackpot.
Very true. Though I would click that bait so hard!
I still prefer this type of article to lots of others in the bait family. Obviously they want people sharing this article and saying “See! That thing I believe is proven!”
Worth mentioning that Helldivers is hugely and openly influenced by Starship troopers, which although not as big as something like D&D, is still pretty well known in pop-culture to this day, at least in the sci-fi circles.
I can’t speak to Helldivers, but pinning Baldur’s Gate 3’s success on the recent growing popularity of the D&D franchise is beyond reductive. There’s no huge publisher for Baldur’s Gate 3; Larian’s a licensee and an independent studio to boot, and Hasbro’s not running massive marketing campaigns for them any more than Disney is for the typical licensed Star Wars game. There’s also the game’s pay-once sales model, which is something else you get when you’re not beholden to publishers or public shareholders.
BG3 was the culmination of decades of iteration by Larian and was the studio’s first attempt with a AAA budget. The game has more in common with Divinity: Original Sin 2 than it does Baldur’s Gate 2, as the Baldur’s Gate die-hards would be happy to tell you.
Calling CRPGs a popular genre is also going to get some laughs. Sure, we might be able to look on this point now in a few years as when CRPGs went mainstream (or maybe not, as the insane amount of choice built into the game set the bar so high that it’s possible no one’s going to bother with that kind of risky content-making). But by the time Larian started development on BG3, the genre had just risen from the dead after some successful Kickstarter campaigns and was still very niche.
I think the last good Ubisoft game I truly loved was Beyond Good & Evil. And I am pretty sure they merely published that, but it’s been a long time I could be misremembering.
That’s probably why development now stops. Nah, I’m being sarcastic, they did good with Anno 1800 and I can understand something new to make money with is needed.
CS is awash with gambling websites that let you bet on the outcome of a match and potentially win some weapon skins. As for the reasons for the stunt, it’s explained in the article.
I really wonder how the palworld devs feel about being gamepass day 1. I have no idea what the payouts look like for them. It probably got a lot more people to try their game, but would they have done better selling it only on steam? They probably weren’t in a position to negotiate a very favorable contract with Microsoft.
I think that’s looking at the deal in hindsight. Palworld had just as good a chance at flopping completely as hitting #1 worldwide, I imagine they were grateful for the opportunity to have some guaranteed income at the time.
I think they meant guaranteed income prior to selling the game, since they had no way of knowing how successful (if at all) the game was going to be once released.
Because craftopia and palworld have a social aspect getting a big seed of players who only played it because it was free (for them) was I think a catalyst in making palworld blow up like it did. There are too many games out there for people to look through so it probably helps get word out effectively to sell out cheap for a big initial audience like gamepass when you’re a small dev. I only knew of craftopia or palworld because of gamepass at least
The flip side is Microsoft is 100% giving the above as a sales pitch to devs why they should put their game on gamepass for peanuts (paid in exposure!). That’s probably some of what drives the shittier deal devs get now
For those wondering about why such basic features are mentioned here it’s because work on Squadron 42 (single player part of the project) moved to the polishing stage and everything created for it is being ported back to Star Citizen (multi player part).
Is it worth an article? It is if you’re interested in the game, I guess?
Is SC a perfect project? Of course not, far from it. I do find it interesting however how… angry it makes people and how much they want it to fail. Yeah, I know $1000+ packages and so forth (not needed if you just want to play the game btw).
For those interested in actually checking for themselves whether it’s a scam or not, there are free flight events multiple times a year - you get to see the current state of the game with everything good and bad it entails. Surprisingly enough, they tend to bring in more players every single time.
Just because the product they are making is quality does not mean it isn’t a scam. The game was supposed to be released a decade ago now. They said they had the entire single player finished and ready in 2014. The things they have made are impressive, sure. But after that amount of time its looking more and more like they lied about how ready things were to get more funding, and have been doing that for a decade now.
I absolutely agree with this point. I think CIG’s inability to openly communicate when things go bad is a big reason for the scam allegation (that and loooooots of issues with planning, especially early on). I see it’s as a serious problem for a project that presents itself as “open development” (which it is, don’t take me wrong, but not as much as it should be).
I think both CIG and players underestimated how long it takes to build a company, tech and two big budget games at the same time. It’s 100% on the devs to realize and communicate that, which they failed to do.
For better or worse, S42 is officially in its final stretch. Is it really? Transfer of people towards SC seems to confirm that but we’ll see when the game finally releases. When that happens we’ll also see whether game taking this long was worth it.
On the contrary, the last few years were pretty much fully focused on Squadron, with SC being maintained by (almost a) skeleton crew - hence the slow updates.
Now updates are seemingly picking up, though it’s early to say for sure since we only got one quarterly patch so far, with next one probably targeting April-May (depending how porting some of new additions goes).
They didn’t, they just had a big announcement on October that SQ42 is “feature complete” and that it’s entering the polish phase which is why they moved devs back to SC. The remaining teams stay on SQ42 as so-called “strike teams” to polish and tweak tech.
Source: I follow the development way too much, send help lol
It’s not that they lied about it being complete, it’s that they entirely changed the scope of the game around 2014ish. If I remember correctly they even had a poll asking the community if they’d rather wait for planetary landing which was originally not meant to be in the game.
The original game was freelancer 2.0. you don’t land on a planet, you get into a cutscene and then appear in “New Atlantis” (yes I’m referring to star field, that’s not a city in SC) then as the story goes a developer made a tech demonstration they called “pupil to planet” showing the ability to continually zoom out from, you guessed it, looking at a pupil and going all the way to space with no loading screen so the had to essentially rework the game from the ground up. The story and a lot of the assets/voice work, etc was all done and “ready” for what that game would have been, but since the change they now had to rebuild a lot of the systems and make new systems for the way the game works now. That’s just squadron 42 (the single player game) star citizen the MMO has always been a bit on the “back burner” waiting for SQ42 to complete.
Now that we’re past all that, and just this last weekend SC had a majorly important tech test that seemed to go very well, they’re putting the last foundational pieces together so they can actually complete the game.
If anyone wants to say it took too long, I’m with you. I backed in 2014 and thought “damn, answer the call 2016? That’s a long ass time.” but to say it’s a scam? They’re the dumbest bunch of scammers in the entire history of scamming, Nigerian princes and all, if this is supposed to be a scam.
If SC simply showed their original roadmap and timeline, it would speak to itself if it is a scam or or not.
As someone who bought in from the start (when everything was bundled), the argument of “not a scam” fell through when they started to hide their original roadmap.
Just to clarify, which roadmap are we talking about?
The changes to the release view from last year or so?
One from CitizenCon after addition of full planet exploration?
One from the early days where SC was suppose to be a prettier Freelancer with planets separated by a loading screen and consisting of a small hub for activities?
I’d like to make sure which one we’re talking about.
Edit: I’d also like to add, how far are we going with people being scammed?
I can understand this view for early backers (I’m one of them) but what about people who decided to drop money on the game in the last 2 or even 5 years? Were they also scammed despite hundreds of articles about delays, issues and thousands of people yelling about a scam every time SC is mentioned?
I can understand this view for early backers (I’m one of them) but what about people who decided to drop money on the game in the last 2 or even 5 years? Were they also scammed despite hundreds of articles about delays, issues and thousands of people yelling about a scam every time SC is mentioned?
Maybe, maybe not, but is entirely possible to be scammed while also being in a position where you should have known better; the two are not mutually incompatible.
Of course, but I think it’s a bit harder to defend this accusation with all of this info available and the ability to try the game for yourself for free. The latter is what I’d suggest to anyone interested in the game, even if they aren’t worried about wasting money anyway.
Eh, let’s not act like CIG is completely blameless in all of this. They made a lot of mistakes along the way and SC is still far from what they promised it to be.
Yeah it’s honestly pretty fun, but there were juuuust enough performance and stability bugs that I gave up and returned it. I think it has potential and I’m glad someone is doing this.
Which is why I appreciate them doing free flight events. They don’t present the game in the best light a lot of the time but it’s a great way to test if the game is for you in it’s current form (or even in general). They are also a good way to prevent new players from feeling scammed so there’s that.
I feel like a lot of us backed and stayed with this project despite all of the issues exactly because they’re trying to do something no one else is willing to risk. It’s a rough road, full of mistakes and delays but they’re sticking with it, which is more than many people expected.
Because everything ran locally at a datacenter, the real killer app of Stadia would have been a super-massively multiplayer game. There wouldn't be any problems with latency between game states, (any lag would be between the server and the console.) Imagine massive wars or mediaeval battles with thousands of participants. They never developed games that took advantage of what was unique about the platform.
AFAIK, MMOs keep all the game state on the servers already. The difference is that what they send to the client is key deltas to the game state, which the client then renders. Stadia type services instead render that on the datacenter side and send the client images.
With their expertise at networking and so-on, Google might have been able to get a slight advantage in server-to-server communication, but it wouldn’t have enabled anything on a whole different scale, AFAIK.
IMO, their real advantage was that they could have dealt with platform switching in a seamless way. So, take an addictive turn-by-turn game like Civilization. Right now someone might play 20 turns before work, then commute in, think about it all day, then jump back in when they get home. With Stadia, they could have let you keep playing on your cell phone as you take the train into work. Play a few turns on a smoke break. Maybe play on a web browser on your work computer if it’s a slow day. Then play again on your commute home, then play on the TV at home, but if someone wanted to watch a show, you could either go up and play on a PC, or pull out your phone, or play on a laptop…
Larger massive multiplayer capability was one of the features Google was touting upon Stadia's launch:
Over time, Buser [Google’s director of games] says we should not only see additional exclusive games on Stadia, but also cross-platform games doing things on Stadia “that would be impossible to do on a console or PC.” Instead of dividing up virtual worlds into tiny "shards" where only 100 or 150 players can occupy the same space at a time because of the limitations of individual servers, he says Google’s internal network can support living, breathing virtual worlds filled with thousands of simultaneous players. https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/6/18654632/google-stadia-price-release-date-games-bethesda-ea-doom-ubisoft-e3-2019
Sure, they claimed that, but it’s telling that nobody ever took them up on that.
Google’s internal network may be good, but it’s not going to be an order of magnitude better than you can get in any other datacenter. If getting thousands of people into the same virtual space were just a matter of networking, an MMO would have already done it.
A shard is going to be storing the position, orientation and velocity of key entities (players, vehicles, etc.) in memory. If accessed frequently enough they’ll be in the processor’s cache. There’s no way the speed of accessing that data can compare with networking speeds.
That doesn’t mean there couldn’t have been some kinds of innovations. Say a game like Star Citizen where there are space battles. In theory you could store the position and orientation of everything inside a ship in one shard and the position and orientation of ships themselves in a second shard. Since people inside the ship aren’t going to be interacting directly with things outside the ship except via the ship, you could maybe afford a bit of latency and inaccuracy there. But, if you’re just talking about a thousand-on-thousand melee, I think the latency between shards would be too great.
You’d only be able to play with people local to you, in the same Stadia datacenter. If Stadia wanted to minimize latency, they would increase the number of datacenters (thus making fewer people per instance).
This happened with Helldivers, everybody forgave them and immediately rewarded them by continuing to play/buy, and then they turned around and stuck PSN account requirements on a tonne of other games. Looking forward to the same cycle happening again very soon 🫡
Good choice. I haven’t really kept up with new releases for a few years as the mainstream of the industry started to feel more and more like a scam, but I wonder if anybody’s ever done studies comparing the percentage of people with short term memory issues, and the percentage of people who play video games – because video game consumers seem to forget getting screwed over and constantly get surprised when they reward bad behaviour lol
I would've wanted a conclusion just to shut up all of the dead-horse beating to dust memelords that for years have been wagoning their tiresome HL3 jokes.
But, it's like, how many games have we waited so long to be released whether it's to continue the story or end it and the reception being more of "...wait that's it?!" than "I'm satisified."
Gamers are the hardest people to appease, so I get the sentiment that Gabe not only felt stumped but written himself into a corner with HL3. Whatever hype at all that has been built, is insurmountably high that whatever Valve pitches out, it's going to be mixed. It'll have a higher chance of being what happened to Duke Nukem Forever in context, than it being what Baldur's Gate 3 became 23 years later after Baldur's Gate II. It's a very narrow window to hit that sweet spot.
This has literally always been the case with Steam, the only difference is that people are told up front now. Things will likely continue to operate exactly the same as it has until now, I doubt Valve wants to disrupt the giant money train they have.
As far as I know there is no mandatory DRM on Steam either, so if a publisher wants to they can just make their game be portable and not require Steam to even be installed. Pretty sure all the re-releases that use DOSBox or ScummVM are like this, for example.
Yeah there are loads of DRM free games on steam (mostly indies of course). Steam just offers a very basic (and easily bypassable if you know how) DRM to devs/publishers but they absolutely don’t need to use it.
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