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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Rubies of Eventide MMO Shutting Down? 60

Posted by simoniker from the goblins-need-jobs-too dept.
Bruha writes "Over at Rubies of Eventide Warcry it has been announced that the fantasy-based PC MMO Rubies of Eventide will be shutting down operations in December unless they can find some way to pay the bills. The owner of the company sent out an announcement where he said those paid up to that point will be receiving refunds and pointed out that they just did not have enough players anymore to continue: 'Our customer base continues to decline; as of yesterday we had only 806 paying customers (we lost another 41 over the weekend).'" Are there just too many MMOs out there, thus spreading players too thin, or are these problems down to the state of this particular game?
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Rubies of Eventide MMO Shutting Down? More

Rubies of Eventide MMO Shutting Down?

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  • Ouch (Score:2, Insightful)

    by phlyingpenguin ( 466669 )
    That kind of sucks... I played that MMO for awhile and liked it. It was a bit lacking on excitement I think, but overall a solid and engrossing game. Having a free download really helped it's image in my mind as well.

    It was kind of sparse on players after the newbie's area. I agree that MMOGs are getting spread thin as I've basically been playing a new game every month looking for a good online home which I haven't discovered yet. There are a lot of options. Every time I've switched I've found that the gra
    • It didn't fail due to market saturation at all. I wish they listed the number of people who tried the free trial of Evertide but didn't sign up. I personaly know 8 people (including myself) who tried RoE and canceled within 5 days.

      We're all MMORPG veterans, we've all loved the genre, we all played EQ and DAoC till we 'exausted' those games (reached max lvl, had uber gear etc). We were starved for something new. (SWG is a joke. There is nothing to achieve in that game)

      RoE failed simply because it sucks and
      • Nice opinion. I know several people who disagree though. The biggest reason that I/my friends liked it so much is because it's a much smaller scale. Personally I don't want to play with my ten million closest friends. It really is too bad that it didn't work out.
        • Ah..but that's the catch.

          You can't really make a small scale MMORPG.

          Yet at the same time you CAN play 'small scale' in a full blown MMORPG.

          While I played EQ I knew plenty of people who never wanted to go over lvl 45 and spent YEARS in the game doing nothing but roleplaying, hanging out with friends, etc.
      • DSO was turn-based. Don't you remember it?

  • It means there are at least enough games. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jefft ( 13574 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:45PM (#7563644)
    Are there just too many MMOs out there, thus spreading players too thin, or are these problems down to the state of this particular game?

    This is not necessarily a sign of too many games. If no MMO games ever closed, that would be a sure sign that there weren't enough of them.

    • Doh, that's sad news :(

      "Are there just too many MMOs out there, thus spreading players too thin, or are these problems down to the state of this particular game?"

      I think it's more of a sign that RoE had their scope set too high. A MMOG doesn't have to have millions of players to stay afloat (afterall M59 was successful for years and their top was roughly ~15,000 or ~20,000?). If M59 was designed to accomodate 20 players or 20 million players it probably would have failed from the start, but through alpha/
  • Has anyone even heard of this thing?

    There really aren't that many Fantasy mmorpg's out there. Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot, The Realm, Asheron's Call, and that pretty much covers it.

    4 Games hardly covers "just too many".
    • Actually I see the occasional ad placement for it on Gamespy, and quite often it's on the rotation at PvP [pvponline.com]
    • Ultima Online, Shadowbane, AC2, Final Fantasy XI, and at least a half dozen other major names I'm forgetting, and who knows how many independant works like Rubies.

      This one died from poor word of mouth, as far as I'm concerned. The only postive reviews I saw were from places RoE had bought advertising from, the current and ex-EverQuest players I hang out with who tried were all unfailingly negative.
    • Actually, there is quite a glut. I say the more the merrier!

      List of MMOGs [stratics.com]
    • maybe I should clarify, just my opinion, but it hardly qualifies as MM if there are less than 100,000 players. Otherwise it's just morpg ;)
      • Then according to your opinion, Asheron's Call, AC2, Planetside, the Sims Online, Eve Online, Everquest: OA and others aren't MMORPGs. I think the current subscriber base is hardly as significant as the intent.
        (Source: Sir Bruce's Subscription page [netcom.com])
        • ok again, I'd call Asheron's anything made by microsoft to qualify as ONE game, same with Everquest anything you want to call it. So you lump those subscriber bases together. The rest of them yes. The sims online may be multiplayer but it's not exactly a role playing game, therefore it can't be a massively muliplayer roleplaying game regardless of the subscriber base.

          You believe it's more important that the games desigers wanted to have a massive subscriber base than whether or not the game actually doe
          • Except I disagree. There are a massive number of quake players, it is not a MMOG. It is the intent and design of the game which determines whether it should be categorized as MM, not the actual results, otherwise the terminology is useless for defining a genre. When one takes a finished product to a publisher, one wouldn't say 'well, its a multiplayer online rpg. We hope one day it'll be massively multiplayer.' The distinction of massively vs non massively indicates the scalability of the game, it's capabil
            • you right, RPG is a genre. MMORPG is an rpg which both has a massive number of players and is multiplayer. Quake has alot of players but isn't MMOG because they are spread across hundreds of servers and therefore there are not a massive number of players to interact with. Otherwise it would be an MMOG regardless of the games creators intent.

              I can scribble on a piece of paper and intend it to be a drawing of a horse. It's still not a drawing of a horse unless someone can recognize it as such.

              The labels

              • Everquest players are spread across hundreds of servers. A typical server on Everquest has players. Is that still massive? It's less than 100k players in a single environment...

                If at some particular time of the day, nobody happens to be logged in to any Everquest server, or perhaps only 30 people are, is the game therefore not at that moment considered a MMORPG? Woops, nobody logged in right now, we're downgraded to just an RPG.

                Rubies of Eventide was designed and implemented with the intent of having a l

                • ok lets try this again, THE GENRE OF A MMORPG IS RPG, RPG IS THE GENRE OF THEM ALL. If a game of the RPG genre is online, you could abbreviate it by saying ORPG, but the genre is STILL just rpg. The same for MM. Everquest does not have hundreds of servers, it has more to the tune of about 15-20ish, I could log in an count them but I'm too lazy. The majority of the players group on about 10 of those. The average everquest server has between 10-50k players at any given time.

                  The genre of Everquest is RPG,

                  • Well, let's be consistant here. Who decides what the definition of a genre and what genres exist? Unlike you, I certainly consider genres to be defined by the artist and media, not by the players. Or if you prefer, the publishers and the media reflect the consensus of the players as to determining what genres exist and what defines them. I could say that Everquest is a RTS, that doesn't make it any more true. Also, just because Everquest is in the RPG genre doesn't mean that it cannot also be in the MMOG g

                    • *sighs* your the type that just keeps replying and replying, debating simply for the purpose of debate.

                      You do realize this entire discussion has evolved from you debating a technicality in my original Post which had very little to do with what we are discussing now, and neither of us being willing to let it go ;) I'm not going to endlessly debate you on the meaning of MMORPG or who defines it, especially since my opinion is that individuals define it for themselves and that includes you. I've debated mys
      • Gee. My definition of "Massively Multiplayer" is any game big enough that you can't comfortably fit everyone into a single adventuring party.

  • Extra, extra! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Slashdot: News for 806 Nerds. Stuff that Matters to a theoretical maximum of 806 people on the planet.
  • I predict that this is the first of many of these stories. The industry is saturating the market with these games. I haven't played Everquest. or any of it's ilk. What I have gleaned from others complaints is that this genre demands LOTS of time. There must be a fixed amount of people in the world with the time and determination to keep playing. Flooding the market with these games is only going to disrupt the available pool of people willing to pay a monthly fee. IOW, if X amount of people are ever
  • It doesn't sound so massive anymore!

    How about a TMO (tiny multiplayer online)

    • >>How about a TMO (tiny multiplayer online)

      Now that is a good idea, and I will bet it is one that we eventually settle into.

      I'm not talking about the 16 player maps, or even the 64 player maps. I am talking about a server specifically designed to house about 400 people, with a guesstimated 100 playing at any given time. Games designed to operate at this level will be able to cover every possible genre.

      First though, the finances must be nailed down and publicized. Once everyone has a basic game p
      • I bet you could make a decent 400-people game using minimal bandwidth, with a P2P distribution and server model. IE everyone connects to everyone else, instead of always connecting to your servers.

        It would be really amazing to see, though. What we need is a decent turnkey MMOG engine (clientside) with a well documented interface, and some story tellers like you said.
    • A TMO is not really a bad idea... I was in the Beta for Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. Although they want it to be an MMO, I think it could work really well if you had fewer people on a server. Then you could have people hosting games on their own boxes... why not create an MMO style game where the server-side portion is designed to run on a single box? I don't play MMOs, so I don't know if it's feasible... anyone else know?

  • Where they went wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OneFix at Work ( 684397 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:14PM (#7563942)
    Lets see...from the FAQ:

    Can I download the game, or is it on a CD?
    Rubies Of Eventide is no longer being offered on CD during open beta. Any updates are automatically downloaded after the installation of the game. All updates are mandatory to run Rubies Of Eventide.

    Oh, so this never got out of beta...yet...in the same FAQ...

    What do I need to play this game? What are the system requirements?
    You will need an Internet connection to play Rubies Of Eventide. There is no single player version planned at this time.

    Minimum System requirements are:

    Pentium 4 or faster Processor
    256 MB of RAM (512MB recommended)

    Yet the screen shots look real bad (like something from the '90s)...and I'm certain this has to be their best screenshots...

    And the whole try before you buy thing seems to have eluded them...as in the same FAQ...

    Rubies of Eventide Pricing for 2003
    1 month - $14.95
    $35.85 for 3 months ($11.95/m) Save 20% off the standard rate!!
    $65.70 for 6 months ($10.95/m) Look, over 25% off!!
    $119.40 for a year ($9.95/m)Best deal for almost 35% off at $9.95 a month!!

    Ok, so for a recap...

    You want me to pay $15/mo to play a beta of a game that I've never heard of and obviously never played with high system requirements that looks like it's about 5 years too late with the graphics...

    Ok, I can't tell why this company is having problems selling their beta game to everyone...must be the start of another games crash...

  • I have played ROE a little (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sparr0 ( 451780 ) <sparr0@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:18PM (#7563983) Homepage Journal
    This game has potential, but was never really finished beta. It needs more content, and more fleshed out skills. The engine is also somewhat dated, pre-Everquest quality graphics. I hope something good comes of this, they seem to have good developers and good ideas, just general problems along the way.
    • I played it a bit too. Their class make ups and things were really cool sounding on paper, but when you actually tried to play the game and found that half of the classes weren't available yet, and half of the ones that were available's defining skill was NOT available... kinda got to feeling like I was playing beta... so I never started my payed subscription, just played the free one for like 3 days and quit because of the lack of features and the extremely cumbersome interface. I hope someday someone do

  • It was a clunker (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kirby ( 19886 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:28PM (#7564080) Homepage
    I got a beta CD (quite a long time ago) and loaded this sucker up. The first thing I noticed was the terrible graphics - only somewhat better than Bards Tale era. This isn't necessarily the kiss of death.

    But the game was just so generic. It was just another fantasy game in a crowded market, with the only interesting thing about it being that it was massively multiplayer.

    I vaguely recall spending about an hour playing with it, before concluding that it was terrible, and not comparable to Asheron's Call or Everquest or Ultima Online. And when you're talking about games with a monthly fee, not to mention a sizeable time commitment, MMORPGs compete head-to-head more than traditional games do for players. There's very little reason to have chosen this one. It wasn't a hidden gem, just hidden.

    • Re:It was a clunker (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, Rubies was a decent enough game, but it wasn't exactly unique. Further, it was incomplete. By incomplete, I mean that there were a ton of classes and sub-classes and careers and specialties which were in the player configuration menu but were "not yet implemented". Additionally, there was virtually no documentation so you had no clue how to build your character since you had no idea what specific skills really mattered.

      I've wasted so much money buying MMORPG installers only to find out that the games

  • Pretty clear solution to me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ayanami Rei ( 621112 ) * <rayanami@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @08:11PM (#7564430) Journal
    turn the servers (and the source code?) over to hardcore fans.

    Apparently a few of them don't mind it being beta... maybe they'll get some people in on it to polish it up.

    I mean, even if it has to be under an NDA so the people who steward it don't sell the ideas to competing game publishers.
    • Open Source it!

      If it's going to die, might as well allow the world to reap the rewards and improve it, host it ourselves, and give it a second chance at life, in the open. Having it rot on a shelf in the basement is a terrible end for a game with such great potential.

      By giving it to the world, you solve the problem of the ideas/code being sold, we can port it to a dozen platforms, improve the graphics, and add a vast amount of story/plot to it. Give the editing / modelling tools to the community (or a
  • and its not over yet!

    There's gonna be a lot of these, then the industry will mature.

    Happens in everything.

    In the fallout, we are bound to pick up a lot of source code and models and textures! Excellent!

  • CyberWarrior (Score:3, Informative)

    by molo ( 94384 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:08PM (#7565303) Journal
    I used to use Cyber Warrior back in the day (the company that does Rubies). They were an ISP located in Fair Lawn, NJ with a POP in Ridgewood that I used. I used to know the sysadmin there (Hi Rich) and even got to visit the facilities. This was back in 1995 or so, and they were running the ISP on a fractional T1.

    They have been developing this game the whole time too. I was just happy to have a shell account and a dialup, and never tried the game. Unfortunately, they never made much progress with the game. They had a limited following and only like 4 people working on the game. One or two developers and a couple artists.

    I kinda got the impression that they were going nowhere fast. After Rich left, it seems they went downhill quickly on the ISP side of things. I'm not sure about the game side.

    -molo
  • We'll it appears that projections in the late 90's of the market being over x millions of players have yet to pan out. The current giants are not even US built games but ones from more broadband developed countries such as South Korea and Japan.

    Once again we lag the world in broadband access where other countries are well over 60% of the population. We will continue to see this trend and the smaller games will fall off.

    Even a giant such as Turbine Games is having trouble resurrecting Asheron's Call 2 fr
  • When I first saw this story, that's what my initial thought was: market saturation. But the numbers don't play out. The MMO industry is a gravy train for certain kinds of people, and apparently there's still a lot of room left.

    I remember when DAoC was first coming out, and you had EQ fanbois on one side of the fence claiming that DAoC would die a slow death, and DAoC fanbois on the other side claiming that EQ's days were numbered. Of course, two years later, both games are wildly successful. Earlier
  • It appears that www.skotosnet is possibly a good place for games like these -- they currently have 10 games, including to 90's era games Meridean 59 and Underlight.

    As I understand their business model, they can be less expensive for the smaller 'niche' games because they handle all the backend stuff.

    -- Herder of Cats

  • Sorry to see it go (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kirruth ( 544020 ) on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @03:10AM (#7566731) Homepage
    Well, I came into the game in the last two months, and found it to be alot of fun.

    I guess they made a few mistakes, like putting unimplemented skills in the skills list, rather than doing what other games do and bringing them in later and charging for them. But it probably had more skills actually implemented than many other such games. The content was all there, but a little hard to find. Cool if you like that kind of thing, but not if you're the typical l335t gamer. Graphics were fine when I got there.

    The thing about it was it wasnt put out by an huge, evil megacorp, but a small independent company. We need to get our heads around the fact that games are like movies or bands. Little indy games are cool, like little indy movies or unsigned bands that nobody has heard of. They are not going to be as slick as stuff from the big guys perhaps, but then you are not handing over a cheque to people who would sue you at the drop of a hat.

    I am amazed that people who will have nothing to do with Microsoft or Sony on the PC, will own a Playstation or XBox. It's time we wised up.

  • Basically this is exactly what I expected from the company.

    This game has been in development for ~7 years. I worked on it for a little while about 2 years ago and it had no chance of shipping. Feature creep had pushed the release date out for years. The rest of the market at the time was using 3d hardware while we still had a ray casting engine similar to doom. The combat system was horrible. The servers could barely stay online for 4 hours with 20 users before memory leaks took them down.

    The company
    • sorry to reply to myself, but I had one more thing to add.

      While working for cyberwarrior we had a bug tracking system. You can type in a description of the defect and when a developer fixed it he could close the bug. Some bugs on this software were open for years. One of my favorites was bug #2 or 3 which was still open even after new bugs were ~#500.

      I don't remember the exact details but the bug was basically titled "make the game not suck" and the bug description was "this game sucks, fix it".

      All of
  • Everyone wanted to play a barber. [pvponline.com]
  • I recall using a free trial to play this game. It was good assuming I didn't go into any towns. For some reason I'd suffer amazing lag getting in and out of towns/building/dungeons whatever. There are better games out there on the market for about the same price.
  • Snowblind (boards) a.k.a. Tinrock (toon), a player of the game for the last few months.

    This is a "I am the Content" kinda game. We interact alot ala MUD's especially on the RolePlay server Opals.

    Currently I am trying to organize WACOS We Are Content Online Society to save the game as a hobby.

    We will see if it works. Core user community may drop to the 500 range, but this is enough given the quality of players. Go look at the material we have created in the Tavern. Good stuff.

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