SpyralPegacyon

Whoa, wait, that's him? How'd he go from this to this?

... Having fond memories of Embla again, I'll be back later.

Its currently sub-based in Korea, that's why I thought it'd be the same here.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

For marketing and development, but B&S didn't open 'til June 30th. Revenues won't kick in until Q3. And to be fair, its reportedly been selling like gangbusters in Korea.

And to also be fair, its very pretty and I've heard good things about its combat. Then again, well, yeah, Aion. And if it comes out buy 'n sub in this market? Hooboy...

The slap in the face was two weeks ago. Today was more confirmation to me that it was delivered by Moe Howard.

I really wanted to get into TSW, based in large part because the conversations were a lot better than what I've encountered in other games. But... after a couple hours of running around exploring and just finding new conversations to listen to in my home base, I got the point of 'OK, this is going to take a massive time investment just to get to the fun parts, I'll put it off until I have time for it.' And the time never came.

Then I boot up GW2 and after finding taking the walking tutorial to the inn and a short cutscene they want me to go off and fend off a centaur invasion. And it was off and running from there. It was like M.C. Chris's take on Resident Evil 4: 'THIS AIN'T NO CUTSCENE! YOU AIN'T GOT TIME TO SMOKE A BOWL! PRESS A!' You don't get much in the way of talky downtime, there's villainy to thwart and you're our only hope hero and - hey, that reminds me of another game. But to be honest, maintaining that momentum works. TSW didn't quite grasp that.

OK, one other last note. I still have Twilight:2000, Megatraveller, and Jovian Chronicles books from my college days. Meanwhile, D&D is on, what, its 5th iteration now? I read a lot about fantasy and high fantasy in particular being overplayed, but, well, the bottom line is going to compare TOR and TSW to GW2 and Pandaville and even League o' Legends. There's the odd duck like EVE and World o' Tanks, sure, but boy howdy does the high fantasy still sell like hotcakes.

I can see it. I would quibble with regards to GW2 and technology, that's a huge thing for the charr and asurans, but it sounds about right for high fantasy and thus GW2. The game does enough things differently for my tastes - boomstick toting warriors, breakdancing and/or gunslinging thieves, engineers with a weapons loadout straight from the MannCo Catalog - but its not going to be for everyone.

And that'll be it from me for this thread as it devolves into Stop Liking What I Don't Like and Stop Hating What I Do Like.

I'll bite from yet another direction: What defines the fantasy genre?

I think its less having more money to spend and more making sure not to spend anything. I think it was Father Xmas who pointed out earlier how pie in the sky NCSoft's projections for 2011 and 2012 were. They had big expectations, big enough to throw plenty of development cash at Arenanet, Carbine, and Paragon. And then expectations met reality. The bean counters took a look at how badly the Western MMO market has been doing over the past year, how badly NCSoft's Western numbers looked, how GW2's sales numbers compared to what they had been selling investors on, and then finally noted that between their two ongoing future projects neither Carbine nor perhaps even Paragon were going to be returning profits any time soon. Throw in the quickly growing revenues out of NCSoft's social media games, and, well, here we are.

Caduceus's hometown has a rat problem, you get renown points for one-shotting the buggers. And you can't take two steps in there without tripping over a cat. Lazy felines...

One of the big unspoken reasons why NCSoft shuttered Paragon is that the Western MMO market is in a noticeable decline.

I, for one, would hope others feel that if the game itself is worth their time and money, they'd go ahead and play it regardless of who's corporate logos are on the login screen.

... and that's what I thought it was. Great googly moogly.

I feel I must ante up, and so I will.

I so wanted to enjoy it, but, well, at least to me that really was a grind. That said, I may put up with it for World of Planes and especially World of Warships. You interested in either, Sam?

Ah, I see. Right now I have a 20 warrior, a 16 thief, a 6 engineer, and a couple other projects I've been toying with, and I've had the game a week and a half now. I've taken my time, exploring here and there, jumping in where I can, and by and large not feeling any need to have to grind myself up. But that's probably why I also have something like forty still existing alts spread across Virtue and Exalted with only a half a dozen or so 50s, two 50+3s, and two with purple sets. I guess I've always been about the journey and GW2, at least so far, has been doing a good job in making that enjoyable.

Let's not forget the great Mel Blanc. Biddybiddybiddy.

... Excellent point. I'll be in my bunk.

Yesterday? Well, since you asked...

I figured out how to reach all the vistas in the asuran borg cube. I joined in the beatdown of the giant eldritch abomination in the Queensdale swamp. I wound up trapped in a cave full of unhappy ettins and somehow escaped without dying once. In fact, I had the most fun with my thief by simply attempting to die less often. Though running around Rata Sum with my asuran came a close second.

Admittedly, that was pretty much it, but I spent the rest of the day either at work or RPing on Virtue so there's not much else to tell about.

I've come to the growing belief that 'NCSoft' translates into English as 'Electronic Arts'.

Add in this and there's your story. The Western MMO market - right now - is saturated in titles with a dwindling audience. NCSoft, having the long-term thought 'n planning ability of your typical corporate giant, is bailing out on what they see as a busted market. Paragon's secret project was no longer in their plans. Once they figured that out, then, well, might as well shut down the whole studio.

Admittedly, none of my GW2 alts have dinged higher than 20, but I can factually claim to have yet to see one orc, elf, gnome, or hobbit.

$15 to troll the board of a wounded game community. I'll just let that fact stand on its own and keep a thought out for the few poor souls who have to deal with you in real life.