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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Dragon Empires Cancelled 29

Posted by michael from the everyone-knows-dragons-aren't-real dept.
Darniaq writes "Today, Codemasters announced they are discontinuing development of their massive online game Dragon Empires. They had this to say about it: 'The decision to close Dragon Empires' development does not impact on Codemasters' long-term ambitions in the massively multiplayer online gaming market and the company remains very active in evaluating future opportunities.' It appears yet another studio has realized a persistent virtual world requires more time and effort than they wish to expend. Regardless of the true reason, I applaud the move. The massive online gaming genre does not need more games from companies unwilling to focus themselves on them."
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Dragon Empires Cancelled More

Dragon Empires Cancelled

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  • but continuing work and expenses as well, the catch of course is that if subscription based then they would get "endless amounts of cash" which must be why these are 'hot' as well.

    but if you don't hit it big it can be a drain.

  • What's stopping them from releasing everything they got so far under the GPL and Creative Commons?

    Any legal obstacles?

    • Re:What's stopping them (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Are you kidding? It's probably all garbage inside there. Once you got hold of the code you'd probably realize it would be easier to start from scratch.

      Now, if they had a product that had been out for a while, was stable and had the kinks worked out, then yeah it might be worth the effort to keep the product going as open-source. Otherwise you will just be looking at the unwieldy alpha stage source-code of a large project.

      • Still, it'd be interesting to get the design docs and specifications. A company that had plans to roll out a huge MMORPG system probably did some research on how to pull that off, research that is pretty tricky to do by little guys... even if a) it's impossible to follow them to letter if you're doing your own game and b) they were probably Subject to Change and require Expertise anyway, they might have proved to be valuable lessons anyway.

        Also the actual game code might be crap, but there's got to be som

        • I'd be more interested in the models and textures - but you have to remember that the people running these things are selfish opportunistic pricks who don't give a rats ass about anything but lining ther pockets with This Weeks Gimmick. They just shit canned the art and moved on to the next scam.
  • I know there are plenty of great MMORPG out there that are FREE. I would like to play some of the others (City of Heroes,etc.) but am not willing to pay the $15 per month. I'm sure that the companies have looked at the inverse ratio of cost to # of players.

    What would you be willing to pay as a subscription per month - I'd pay up to $5.

    • Great free MMORPG's? I guess it depends on your definitions of "free" and "great".

      There are some passable free ones out there, but content costs. It costs money to create, test, and develop new content for MMORPGs, which is what keeps players interested in them.

      Furthermore, there are clearly a lot of people out there who DO understand this and ARE willing to pay for it -- see the subscriber numbers for EQ, AC, DAoC, UO, SWG, and AO if you don't believe it.

      -E-

    • Re:Subscriptions - what would you pay? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Lightwarrior ( 73124 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @02:00PM (#10151113) Journal
      Let's have some names. Running a MMOG costs huge amounts of cash for hardware and bandwidth alone. I'm willing to bet that the so-called "Free MMORPGs" are in no way massively multiplayer or persistant.

      ---

      • Re:Subscriptions - what would you pay? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @06:15PM (#10153719) Homepage Journal
        Runescape was strictly free for the first year or so, and still has large amounts of content available for free. Paying a monthly subscription, at the lowest rate in the industry, gives you access to the full map and all expansion content -- no box to buy, no expansion packs to buy.

        Planeshift is an open-source MMORPG. It's still in the early alpha stages, and development is slow, but it's free.
      • Furcadia is free, has been since 1996 and always will be. We have about 50,000 regular players, and peak at around 3,200 logged on at once (all in the same game world, we don't do "shards"). The elements of the game that persist are somewhat limited, but we're gradually increasing that over time. I know there are a lot of people that play on unofficial Ragnarok Online and Ultima Online servers for free too. Not really the same thing as an officially released and supported by the original game developer

    • Re:Subscriptions - what would you pay? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by databank ( 165049 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @02:15PM (#10151277)
      You're upset about paying $15 a month for COH? How much do you pay for Cable?

      Personally, I dropped cable tv 2 years ago. Instead of spending $50 a month watching reality tv shows with 20 minutes of advertisements per hour, I find the amount of time spent playing COH much more worthwhile and cost effective at $15 a month.

      Admittedly though, more then $20 a month is pushing it for me.

  • Finite Pool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BartulaPrime ( 744634 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @01:51PM (#10150981)
    Unless you are breaking out into new territory (City of Heroes), I find that there are too many similar MMORPGs in the market. I believe CoH to be the only MMORPG since the original EQ that has been able to draw new players into the market.

    It may just be me, but most of the people I know that play MMORPGs are the same ones who play the new games when they arrive. So, you have a nomadic tribe of people moving from EQ, to DAoC, then to Horizons, and most likely to EQ2. I've stopped playing them altogether due to the time committment of work and a new baby, however, I still only played one at a time.

    So, until companies figure out how to maintain a user base and keep the game fresh, I think most MMORPGs will eventually tank due to people leaving to other games, which takes away the income necessary to making patches, updates, new content, etc.

    • Re:Finite Pool (Score:1, Redundant)

      by pat_trick ( 218868 )
      I wouldn't discount Planetside, which has pulled quite a few FPS players into the fray.
  • They were the ones who made the Dizzy [dizzyzone.org] games for assorted systems (I think they were most popular on the Spectrum), as well as the classic Micro Machines games for the NES and Genesis. Nice to see them making games after all of these years (though obviously this one isn't going to be made).

    Rob

  • Technical Issues (Score:2, Interesting)

    by crashdavis ( 69986 )
    In the press release, there is this quote:

    However, technical issues have resulted in the project's discontinuation.

    Anyone know what this means exactly?

    Possible explanations I can think of are:

    1) Servers weren't scalable enough and had insurmountable lag problems.
    2) Games like EQ2 have insanely cool gfx and models, especially on high-end hardware, and DE would have had to redo their engine AND all their models to compete, given their release date.
    3) It was purely financial and blaming "technology" is just

    • If I still had contact with some of my beta tester friends who got in the DE beta back when Eve: Second Genesis was coming out (I'd wondered where this went, since that was over a year ago) I could tell you which of those was the most liekly...

      Though combining 1 & 2 together sounds reasonable. Compared to Lineage 2 and EQ2 the graphics I remember in beta pics of DE were pretty bad, though they remind me a bit of World of Warcraft... I remember stress testing was a big part of the phase of testign they
  • Word has it that Codemasters, creators of the Game Genie devices, simply failed to develop effective measures to prevent rampant cheating in their virtual world.

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