i know how the devs cook. i’ve been following this game since closed beta. tons of passion but many actions can really only be taking as loathing their playerbase.
Doing my part to balance out you being ratio’d. Obviously everyone plays this with different expectations, but for some of the players, I think they arent trying to have fun but trying to be the first to find flaws.
I do wanna point out that one of the Horizon games (I believe the second) got pretty screwed by releasing within a week of Elden Ring and didn’t suck. Publishers big and small do need to be careful to not release within a time frame of absolutely massive releases such as Elden Ring and, inevitably, GTA6.
Even if the game doesn’t let you play on release day, I’m willing to bet my kidney that it’ll sell millions of copies and nothing big will be released within a month of it
“Just make good games” doesn’t really work in the age where we’ve got tens of thousands of game releases per year compared to the age of a few hundred games per year.
The failure of a game doesn’t come hand in hand with it being bad. Lots of studios are struggling right now, because there’s just so much out there, and no one wants to compete with GTA.
I’m playing Fallout 4 right now. It’s not the only game I play by any means. Too many new games are overly focused on graphics or monetization. I’m always trying new games and the better ones often don’t have the best graphics. We want 2010 gameplay. Hell, I’ll still play Unreal Tournament 1999 GOTY edition, but older games usually need resolution and texture upgrade mods. Fortunately a lot of great old games actually get them.
Was just now in another thread having nostalgia about this game: Reamlz.
It was distributed as freeware/ shareware back in the 90’s. You had to physically mail the producers cash if you wanted to get the expansions. I played through Balders Gate III recently and honestly, it doesn’t even come close to the replayability that Realmz had.
Realmz was out about the same time as Spiderweb Software’s games (Exile series, later re-released as Avernum series). Both were popular RPGs for the Macintosh (though I believe both had Windows releases as well).
While I did play and enjoy Realmz back in the day, I personally preferred the Spiderweb Software games. More complicated interaction with the world, and I preferred the writing. Less-pretty, though the Avernum re-release was isometric and had new graphics. Have you ever tried them?
I don’t know if I can recommend them in 2025, but if you’re still enjoying Realmz, I figure that the Spiderweb Software stuff might also be something of interest.
EDIT: The current Steam sale, which runs for another two days, appears to have a bundle of all of their games on sale for 60% off. I didn’t personally enjoy the Geneforge series as much as the Exile/Avernum series, and the Avadon series is considerably simpler, and didn’t really grab me. But a lot of the games are also on sale individually, so…shrugs
EDIT2: It looks like Realmz has not seen a Steam release; thought I’d check to see if it was on Steam too.
Me and my friends, we would play together by each getting a character and then taking turns during combat moving each of our characters.
I might buy that bundle on just your recommendation. I never tried those but if its vaguely like Realmz, I want to try it, since I pretty much only play on my steam deck these days.
Hah! I didn’t know this. Back when Jeff Vogel — the Spiderweb Software guy — was just starting out, Fantasoft, the company that did Realmz, published the first three Exile games too.
goes through the rest of the list
I don’t think that anything else they published were RPGs, though I’ve played some of the non-RPG games.
It looks like there were also a bunch of scenarios released for Realmz. I’m trying to remember…I definitely remember playing City of Bywater. I don’t know if I’ve played the other scenarios, though.
If you haven’t played them and can round them up, might be that you’ve only played about a fraction of the content out for Realmz, if what you’re after is Realmz-like stuff. :-)
While new scenarios were released throughout the game’s history, also typically packed along with the game in the next Realmz release, the game ultimately ended up with 13 official scenarios:
City Of Bywater (developed alongside Realmz by Tim Phillips)
I’ve definitely played City of Bywater.
Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs)
Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips)
Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)
I seem to recall the above names, though I don’t remember the scenario content, if I did play them. Nothing after this rings a bell at all.
Destroy The Necronomicon (1995, Tim Phillips)
White Dragon (1996, Jim Foley)
Grilochs Revenge (1997, Sean Sayrs)
Twin Sands of Time (1999, Sean Sayrs)
Trouble in the Sword Lands (1999, Pierre H. Vachon)
Mithril Vault (1999, Tim Phillips)
Half Truth (2000, Nicholas T. Tyacke)
War in the Sword Lands (2000, Pierre H. Vachon)
Wrath of the Mind Lords (2002, Pierre H. Vachon)
EDIT: There’s also apparently a pretty-inactive Realmz subreddit at /r/Realmz. No GOG Realmz release either, though. Some abandonware sites appear to have it.
<span style="color:#323232;"> Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs)
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips)
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)
</span>
Same. I also definitely played City of Bywater, and I know I had both Assault on Giant Mountain and Castle in The Clouds (this one was giants right?)
I’m stretching my memory too far. I remember the City of Bywater world map, but I can’t even remember the world maps for the other scenarios, if I indeed played them.
This abandonware site appears to have a Windows release:
I have no idea what scenarios might be included, and I’m always a little leery about running binaries from random sites outside of a VM — abandonware can be a vector for malware — so I don’t know if I should recommend using it, but it’s there. There are serial numbers to activate what looks like all the listed scenarios in a comment there, so maybe it comes with all of them.
The company appears to have been defunct for the past 20 years, so I suspect that there isn’t going to be any legitimate re-release.
Curious what makes Realmz so replayable. BG3 has so many unique storylines and endings you’d be hard pressed to play them all. Not to mention character classes and subclasses.
So Realmz is truly open world in a way that BG3 only pretends to be. In BG3, they create the sensation of this huge diversity of endings and paths you can take, but its all pretty much a fugazi: the illusion of choice when actually only a small number of endings are possible. In BG3, the choices add “color” along the way, but they don’t fundamentally change anything about the game, or what its about (like what even is the point of the game?). I have a whole essay of criticism I’ve developed on it, because I truly did enjoy it, but it was so… it pointed in the direction of how much possibility it could have but didn’t execute on it. Its really only an impression of what it claims to be.
There is no ending in Realmz. Its just a big open world. And as you dig, you find more, and more and it just keeps going. But there is no particular path to take. You just can go anywhere and find adventure along the way. There are a huge number of random encounters, and the combat style is basically top down tile based D&D, which BG3 is also, more or less. Then you get into some corner of the map in Realmz, and you find some cave or castle or dungeon to explore… and it just keeps going. And going and going and going. And instead of it being one monolithic story like BG3, its a world in which many BG3’s happen. The spider tower. The kobald army invasion. The castle in the clouds. The necromancers tower.
Another thing is, predictability/ “jail breaking”. Modern games have this expectation that we “know” everything that is possible for an item or method or whatever. This is a big departure from early games where we would often “find out” about what is possible. In modern games when something unexpected happens, the dev’s patch it and change the game. In old games when something unexpected happens… well… thats just part of the game. Dota is a great example of this, where basically, finding ways to break the game to come up with a new strategy was quite literally how the game was played. Its now devolved into a poor impression of itself. In realmz, I remember beating some adventure and its final wizard and getting a wand of polymorph. I used it on one of my characters and it polymorphed them into a red dragon and it killed the entire party. I highly doubt the game developers planned that as a possibility, but game development then was often about creating possibilities, not limiting them. Whenever anyone figures something like that out in BG3, they patch it and the game becomes a little more sterile, a little more boring.
Also, BG3 is just kinda… empty. Which I was really surprised by, considering how many studios create amazing, populated worlds with complex day night cycles and economies. In BG3, once you’ve pretty much cleared an area, thats it. Not much more to do other than advance to the next area. In Realmz, you had to watch your ass if you were really out there, because no-matter what state your party was in, a random encounter can happen at any time, and in that game, death is permanent. Also, wtf is with there not being a day night cycle in BG3? Like wth. I’ve got a damn vampire and they aren’t weak during the day and OP af at night?
There is no ending in Realmz. Its just a big open world. And as you dig, you find more, and more and it just keeps going. But there is no particular path to take. You just can go anywhere and find adventure along the way. There are a huge number of random encounters, and the combat style is basically top down tile based D&D, which BG3 is also, more or less.
Just to comment further, if you’re not a big fan of Baldur’s Gate 3 (or the Paths of Exile series, to name another popular modern RPG) for that reason, I wouldn’t recommend the Avadon series in the Spiderweb Software bundle, as it has the same sort of streamlined “move you through the world to the right places” thing. The Exile/Avernum series has the Realmz-style “go wherever and stumble onto stuff” model that you’re referring to.
Kind of reminds me of the difference between Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds. Like, both are…technically open world games, but there’s very little reason to ever backtrack in The Outer Worlds, and not much placed content to stumble on outside of cities, whereas in Fallout: New Vegas, I’m running all over the place and running into all sorts of stuff, without having the game really drive me in one direction.
It would certainly be weird, after their recent games were so story-driven. You can’t tell a good story, if you need to always keep the end open for possible expansions.
Did they? Mass Effect and Dragon Age began under EA, which a lot of people would argue are pretty good.
Also, what does EA do, that’s so bad? As far as I know, they’re really hands-off, so they don’t really meddle in the development, like what we’ve heard from Bobby Kotick.
Before EA, Bioware’s RPGs had some personality and took risks trying new shit. Since Mass Effect, they’ve been especially formulaic, toned down, and sanitized for a larger audience.
EA makes good looking, (usually) well polished games meant to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible, and when you have spent years playing games with a distinct style you can very easily see this shift once EA acquires a studio. Either you’re never going to see those games again, or they will become the most watered-down, generic version of the studio’s greatest IPs.
The one thing I can recall where it was known that EA had little to no involvement in development of one of their own games was when DICE made the first Mirror’s Edge. It was merely a AA game and the execs didn’t think much about it one way or the other during development; and then it became a huge hit so they started getting involved with the sequel. Which was shit.
when you have spent years playing games with a distinct style you can very easily see this shift once EA acquires a studio
Like I said, what does EA do exactly in these cases? People from Bioware themselves said that EA doesn’t interfere with them, and they’re making their own choices:
Are you familiar with the US foreign policy proposed by Theodore Roosevelt? “speak softly and carry a big stick”
EA may speak softly, but they carry a big stick. Bioware has clearly catered to EA, intentional or not, and their games have suffered from it.
Mirrors Edge was not a success either, btw.
DICE marketing director Martin Frain initially projected Mirror’s Edge to sell a total of three million units be sold across all platforms.[56] According to Electronic Arts, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions had combined sold over one million units by February 2009.[57] In October 2010, a court document pertaining to the legal conflict between Electronic Arts and Edge Games revealed that Mirror’s Edge had sold over two million units, with over 750,000 of those units having been sold in North America.[58] EA revealed the game had sold around 2.5 million units by June 2013.[59]
It took them 5 years to reach their initial projected sales, and that’s after combining every available edition. That’s a commercial failure.
They did still chase it with followup games, btw.
This was followed by Mirror’s Edge 2D, a browser game adaptation by The Fancy Pants Adventures developer Brad Borne.[41] A prequel to the game, also titled Mirror’s Edge, was released for mobile devices in 2010.[42]
Catalyst was going to be included, as it was shown at E3 in 2013 and 2014. And delay, delay, delay, all the way into 2016. Catalyst was quite literally EA chasing the money, because Mirrors Edge has only really gotten recognition long after its release – in terms of sales, and it’s availability on Steam really helped solidify it’s presence as a cult classic. The game of course was received well, it just didn’t sell (not much marketing and it’s not a game of the era, so to say, it is not an action heavy shooter game). So now after 8 years of letting this IP rot in development hell they said oh we can add some MTX and make another one, hm, let’s make it open world that’s what gamers like these days. It was actually decided in 2015 that it would be open world, since that wasn’t seen in any of the 2014 promotional. So 1 short year, since June 2016 is the games release.
Nah, I enjoyed parts of Catalyst but it’s a shell of its original. Dying Light and Ghostrunner are almost closer spiritual successors in regards to expanding on mechanics. The gameplay was the same but without any actual dynamics (gunplay wasn’t great in ME but it breaks up and gives variety), the writing was predictable and just really not that great, and that leaves new additions… Which you just avoid because it’s an open world and you only have running tools at your disposal. The mechanics of the game are horrible as well, inputs get dropped all the time it’s a huge problem. There’s just so little about the game that’s designed well, which is insane, because the game still accomplishes scratching the itch of Mirrors Edge, just very poorly.
No, what made Mirrors Edge great was the passion. It was a tight knitted and mechanically rewarding. These levels so carefully designed. Catalyst’s paths do not have the same care, they are just rushed together and it shows during the gameplay and how one path flows and the others are just ways you can go. There’s no depth and attention.
The developers freedom to pursue that passion was the very same thing that allowed Bioware to create the games they wanted to make (and like Bad Company 2’s story with DICE before dropping it entirely for multiplayer only).
BF3 may be a fine game, and 4, but you surely understand that they are copy pasted formulas that explicitly are not impassioned. What made Bad Company beloved was its improvements over the previous iteration along with its differentiation from MW2, on top of having a fair single player story. What made Mirrors Edge beloved was its direction and its gameplay. For both of these, these IP’s to EA became no more than how many zeroes they can generate. It’s a pattern with EA, from Mass Effect to Need for Speed to sports games to Battlefield. Once you have a formula you wait for it to be profitable to sell it again.
Mirrors Edge was received well but sold poorly. They tried to profit on some spinoffs, failed, 4 years later sort of began development and turned Catalyst into another open world microtransaction game without any of the heart that made Mirrors Edge work. Battlefield was mediocrely received until it did something better than CoD, then they focused on repeating that over and over, leading to BF3 and 4 and 2042, with the only “unique” Battlefield even available now being Battlefield One. Before Battlefield, it was Medal of Honor.
EA is a plight. I don’t know how you can say it’s not that bad and shift blame to the developers, that their games are their decisions. It’s just unequivocally untrue. Of course Bioware doesn’t have execs breathing down their necks, the execs are selling the game Bioware pitches to them - Mass Effect now with MTX. In that interview they literally even say, “EA wants to buy a company to do something well, if they ruin Bioware then they won’t get money. We make the games we want to make. They give input absolutely but we make our game.” Oh, and he mentions games, Shadow Realms, which never even came out because it was cancelled in 2015. And this is a video from 2013, so it may not have even been 2 years before this video with the timestamp you like is literally proving the point of the person asking the question (Q: Will Bioware be affected by EA’s acquisition; A: No, Bioware makes the games we want to make, EA wants money, EA gives input, Bioware makes the games we want to make) 2 years later, EA: Yeah, you can’t make that.
All that aside, I’m not really sure what the point of the video is supposed to prove… These people don’t even work there anymore if I remember right (head Bioware all jumped ship, no? I may be misremembering)? EA has the big stick. If you devs don’t follow them, you won’t be a dev at EA anymore. The devs at EA are inherently trapped because you cannot expect your game to be made unless it is within the expectations of the publisher, and thus you see the problem. When you pitch to EA, your creative work is already compromised. You think Bioware made the game they wanted to make with Andromeda? Anthem? Psh, Shadow Realms?
EA bought Bioware in 2007/8. EA killed Bioware in under 10 years and is now playing with its corpse. Literally 5 years after the acquisition is this video, the game of which he’s referencing 2 years later is cancelled and 2 more after that Andromeda releases. I really, really think you have mischaracterized EA and their relationship with their studios. EA is very hands off, yes. But they speak softly to you. And they carry a big stick.
You, too, would compromise your passion when working for this studio. It is actually impossible not to, by design.
I lived near EA’s SF studio for many years, that’s really honestly the main reason I even bothered to reply with something this lengthy. I know many former devs part of studios both made with and acquired by EA. It’s insane, they would be a great company to work for in so many ways. But their business practices ruin all of that. The last 20 years of EA being awful are true, just because you can point to BF2BC and say how could they be bad, you can also point to Madden Fifa and SWBF2. EA perfected this practice of seeping out the creatives from the studios long, long before Bioware was bought out.
You are pretty much just rambling, so I don’t really know what you want to say sometimes.
I never said EA was good, I only ever doubted how EA supposedly just kills their game studios. From all the evidence I’ve seen, they are pretty hands-off with studios like Bioware or DICE, so a lot falls on the devs themselves, if the games are subpar.
You mentioned Anthem, like if that was the game Bioware wanted. No it wasn’t, because apparently the most fun part of the game, the flying, was a suggestion from an EA exec.
Then for Mass Effect Andromeda, EA offered to delay the game again, before it’s release, but Bioware didn’t want to. Why? Must have been EAs big stick. That game also doesn’t have MTX
How is EA chasing money with Mirrors Edge, if they make a sequel, when it took years to barely make money? I’d say that’s the exact opposite. The game also has no MTX.
The point of the video I linked is that the people from Bioware actually say EA doesn’t dictate what kind of games they have to make. Bioware makes what they want. Even if this video is already 10 years old or if the people don’t work there anymore, why would this change? The only reason I could see this change, if the games just continue to underperform constantly, like what’s happening with Bungie at the moment.
Why do you think EA was the reason for cancelling Shadow Realms, pretty far into development? Do you know something others don’t? Don’t just say it’s obvious, because it’s EA.
You also mention how EA destroys or all the passion or creativity from their dev studios, but how are they doing that? You never explain that part, although you make it seem very obvious.
I think the reason why a bunch of these studios that were bought either go under or release sub-par games is much more simple, and it’s not directly EAs fault. After they are bought, management leaves, because they just got tons of money, or they might have a contract, which says they must stay for a few years, but after that they’ll leave anyway. Now there’s nobody left who made the original games, so the studio declines. It’s not like EA can do something against this, unless they make the devs sign some kind of slave contract, where they can never leave the game studio.
Bioware cancelled Shadow Realms because Mass Effect and Star Wars MMO was more profitable.
"Today I’m sharing some important news about Shadow Realms and our BioWare Austin studio. We’ve made the decision to not move forward with development of Shadow Realms. We fully recognize that this news is disappointing to some of our fans, so I want to explain more behind this decision.
"While the team did amazing work on the game concept and we got lots of great feedback from our fans at events and through other game testing, right now there are other projects for the team to work on within the BioWare studios for the coming year and beyond. We’ve got an incredibly talented team here at the Austin studio, and they are excited and already deep on new projects within the BioWare family, ones that will make some great BioWare games even better.
"These include additional ongoing enhancements to the award-winning Dragon Age: Inquisition, as well as the next game in the Mass Effect series and other new IP. But the biggest focus for our team in BioWare Austin will be on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. As every Star Wars™ fan knows, this is a massive year in the Star Wars universe. We have some great plans for expanding this epic game this year, and look forward to sharing the news about those plans with our players in the coming weeks.
Read between the lines. EA canned it so the studio would give us Andromeda and more Old Republic. Oh but sure, “it wasn’t EA’s decision”.
Maybe Bioware just wasn’t happy with the game, it happens all the time. Bioware also cancelled two games in 2013, looks like they were just doing a lot. So, possibly they were just stretched too thin with all those different projects. The founders also left Bioware shortly after Mass Effect 3. Who knows if they were the driving force behind the game, and after they left it didn’t really go anywhere.
There are tons of different explanations, but of course it’s all EAs fault. From what I’ve read, working for EA is actually really great, and people seem to love it. That doesn’t really gel with the soul-sucking image you try to paint. In the early 2000s they were actually garbage, with the whole EA spouse thing, but they have apparently massively improved since then.
Also, while this isn’t really evidence for anything, we’ve had actual stories that some publishers forced some type of game on a developer, like Redfall or possibly Fallout 76. Personally, I just think stories like these can’t stay hidden forever and will eventually make it out into the open, like the Anthem flying stuff.
It definitely could be, it just seems like there’s a pattern of fallen leaves surrounding EA. Also, EA is great to work for, that’s why they are so bad. I know that sounds silly, but I mean that in the sense of they offer the developers so much and all the dev needs to do is add a little MTX here and there.
Then all they need to do is do it again, but maybe follow something that’s trending. Then see if maybe the full game could be cut into pieces, to sell as DLC. Then see if you can implement more MTX, maybe this time add some smoke effects that you can pay to change the color of.
That said to your point, NFS Heat has MTX that were so bad and hated that EA again like with SWBF2 got the message and didn’t include MTX in Unbound. I wouldn’t really actually mind them too much in a way but it’s also somewhat more of a core aspect to the game that having it is just so… Odd.
But that’s the thing about EA. Why did it happen again. Why didn’t they keep the message they got the first time from SWBF2. Or Andromeda with $100 payment options for a lootbox system to get you to spend more.
These were all before Heat released, and EA still was fine with doing it again.
And don’t even get me started on The Sims. They have broken and killed so many copies of sims games for people that there are cracks specifically to circumvent patches. They don’t want people playing older games so they delist them, release a patch to break it (I’m not even joking, The Sims Medieval), and the user has to move on or never the game they paid for again. It’s cruel.
So maybe a tree is just a tree. Or maybe it’s a pattern that’s ebbs and flows and EA toes the line of what they can get away with nickel and dimeing players before they throw a fit, all while leaving studios to rot while the IP they bring to EA is marionetted every 8 years, 3 if it sells well.
Not only does this behavior always return, but it encourages other companies to follow suit – and moreso when you learn that all these executives just swap between companies and EA owned 20% of Ubisoft for a edit:decade wasn’t deleted before I posted 6 years ('04-'10).
So those are some examples of what EA does, and I’m critical because they are good to work for, and their force in the gaming industry should not be the monolith of MTX but the big stick that delivers AAA games instead of junk that destroys a developers vision and standing with the gaming community while we beg for EA to get it through their thick skulls that games are better when you put passion into them. Anthem having flying be the best part of the game suggested by EA is like the bare minimum of what a leading studio should be accomplishing.
One last point that should indicate EA’s behavior is how they treated Star Wars games. When the mouse was breathing down their neck, they came out with Star Wars Squadrons without a single hint of microtransactions. The mouse was so peeved from the SWBF2 that EA wouldn’t dare add MTX.
And yet they don’t give that respect to their small studios. Bioware doesn’t get that pass. Dice doesn’t get that pass. Respawn doesn’t get that pass.
Destroyed Sim City franchise, made The Sims 4 a DLC hellhole, made Mass Effect 3’s shitty ending, maybe the mishandling of Battlefield 2042 and Battlefield 5?
Other things I could think of is releasing Origin and pulling their games from the Steam store. Other than that, I don’t really follow gaming news enough to list more, nor know enough to determine if everything I already listed are caused by EA.
I guess if a game is bad, it’s EA’s fault, but if it’s good, it’s all because of the dev.
What about Mass Effect 1 and 2, EA had already bought Bioware at that point. What about other Battlefield games? People always rave about Bad Company 2 or maybe 3 and 4, but how come EA only chose to interfere after 20 years?
So, one thing that’s funny is the one instance that popped into my head was when an EA exec actually recommended a feature that ended up making Anthem better (but also possibly worse?). There’s a famous story of how they were requested to add flying to the game, which added tons and tons of work and a good portion of dev time. But arguably was the best part of anthem. Unfortunately, they were unable to salvage it as we saw.
the absolute shitshow every Battlefield has been since they were purchased by EA
That would mean basically no good games for almost 20 years, which I can’t believe. Even Bad Company 2, BF3 and 4, apparently beloved games in the franchise, are terrible?
Look, I barely play EA games, I just think that they aren’t the sole or even major reason a bunch of their dev teams have turned to shit.
Nuance is lost. Simplistic narratives are everywhere - and there’s nothing simpler than blaming the big boogeyman for everything. I’m not saying that they haven’t made mistakes and aren’t to blame for a great many things, but not every time and everywhere for everything.
Talented people fail to make a career in gaming. Idc how many mines his daddy owned, he’s not going to make a good game. Although we should encourage him to do it. Making games would obviously waste the time he uses to harass people.
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