Quote:
Originally Posted by MindStar9
The main question is has MA foresaken the " entertainment arena" as you have termed it, for big business? |
Not at all, from everything I have read, this is exactly what MindArk intends to stick to. MindArk intend to continue as they have stated .... I believe in the last Dev chat ... They will continue to create worlds for entertainment.
One things to keep in mind at is time is that 90% of the work force currently working upon ... As Marco stated in Twin Peaks not too long ago ... '
Cool Stuff' for us guys in relation to the opening of space.
Though this also includes the massive overhaul of the client engine, reworking all models within
EU to adapt them to the new engine, reworking the entire landscape framework and meshing, reworking textures in
EU upon calypso amongst other things to make sure they are correct, recoding all the routines that relate to the client/server communication and the way in which data is sent too and from each to make sure we do not have item swap over bugs, MindForce Lag, Loot lag etc ... Recoding all the new Avatar and Mob models with the new requirements to make sure they all move and act as intend ... Wow the mind boggles with the workload
To be really honest, I have my doubts, even though they are working to a pretty tough schedule that all this will be ready by fall 2008 as intended. I would not be surprised if you see delays spanning into the first quarter of 2009 upon the completed *initial* overhaul.
Remember once this is done, there is going to be a 3 months period of bugs that will annoy the community whilst the dev team sorts them out. Cry2 is an extremely powerful and development feature rich engine. It is not just a bombastic look good engine and it is still very new to a lot of them.
With MMO's and not going too much detail into this, there are generational cycles of which they are given to represent. For example Ultima Online and Everquest is considered a first generation MMO, EQ2 & WoW a second generation MMO, Vanguard was the first of the third generation MMOs along with Age of Conan fitting into the 3rd generation but also pushing the limits to the 4th as far as realism and detail goes.
I strongly believe that
EU in it's initial overhauled state, keeping in mind it will take a good 12 months of updates ranging through 2009 will come out at the 4th generation status and then over time continue it's realism into the future in time to come coming closer and closer to true virtual reality one day ... but that is still a long time away
Needless to say. You will find
MA will be able to do far greater things with the cry2 engine, along with technology and graphic adaptors following suite in being much cheaper and s lot more powerful, they will be able to implement as time allows and resource is available a lot of the things they have said in the past they would like to.
I will not call them promises because anyone who knows about MMOs will already know that any idea conceived by development of that product should be kept as that. An idea or concept which will be implemented as per the development teams ability when they are able to.
You can clearly see MindArk, yes is a young company, and yes they have learnt this simple fact of life not to make such promises in recent times as they have in the past ... It just becomes a quick way to hang themselves, and again yes, are partly to blame for helping in the process of their user-base previously upto date pedestalling
EU of which they now need to deflate (Really not as easy a process as it sounds, much like letting go, it can be much harder to 'Let Go' of something than it sounds
So to answer your question, no they have not forgotten or forsaken us for big business in the entertainment arena as this will be their
core business for future success, of which they intend to add additional worlds ... ** Points to the potential of the bot world in the other system mentioned in the last XFire Dev Chat **
The platform system with other worlds from partners will be very much only a small percentage of their business, most likely commissioned along with licensing involved with using the platform of which MindArk will be in direct competition with these new worlds also for retaining it's current particpant base along with attracting new participants from other regions of the virtual universe. (Even though they may be getting a commission from everyone within the universe, this will be only a tiny percentage)
It is just with a team of 50 odd people, mostly half of them dedicated to the Cry2 implementation amongst other things and 10% of that team, 2 or 3 at max dedicated to the *current day workings* of the platform and any minor tweaking that needs to be done, I can not see a lot being done right now on any major fixes required at this time.
I hope this irons things out just a little. From everything I have read, MindArk has no intention to abandon any of the original storyline as this would be as abandoning Calypso itself
Of course we all may get a surprise with additions to the storyline down the track. Only time will tell.
Take Care,
Sparkz