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Role Playing (Games)

Gods and Heroes Canceled 29

Posted by Zonk from the nothing-is-perpetual dept.
WarCry was one of the first with the news that Perpetual Entertainment's years-in-the-making MMOG Gods and Heroes is now canceled. The title was due out in August, and was pushed back after changes to the animation system were put into place. Now on 'indefinite hold', it appears a game just weeks or months away from release will never see commercial production. From the article: "Our source tells us that the majority of the Gods and Heroes development team has been let go as part of the move, which comes only a few weeks after they had downsized and pushed back the release date. The Star Trek Online team, those who worked on the Perpetual Platform (which was recently licensed to BioWare) and a small number of people from the Gods and Heroes team will be remain with the company." For a great deal more usefully cynical commentary, F13 (as always) has us covered.
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Gods and Heroes Canceled More

Gods and Heroes Canceled

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  • Grand realizations... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @01:13PM (#20928891)

    Now on 'indefinite hold', it appears a game just weeks or months away from release will never see commercial production.


    They probably realized that it would take much longer than a few weeks or months for the development to catch up to the hype/marketing. A more accurate statement would likely be "A game we were led to believe was just weeks or months away from release..."

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )
      This is interesting, because just a few minutes ago I read that this game was going to be delayed until 2008; not canceled.

      Either way, it sounds like they don't care enough about the game or the staffing for it to maintain it in the long run. Even if it was finally released, I would not risk my time and money in the investment as they probably would not provide enough resources to keep the game and community running properly.

      Oh well . . . still no decent MMORPG on the horizon. I guess we'll have to wait unt

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ivan256 ( 17499 )

        Oh well . . . still no decent MMORPG on the horizon. I guess we'll have to wait until 2009 for something to pop up.

        I think the whole genre just has some inherent flaws. There's no way anybody's thought of yet to get around the fact that there are other people doing things in the game that you already did... It's like there are a bunch of people playing a single player/minimally multi-player game on the same map at the same time, but with a unified economy. I think that Puzzle Pirates is the closest anybod

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Seumas ( 6865 )
          I usually manage to get excited about certain MMORPGs (such as Vanguard and Gods and Heroes, but not LOTRO or WoW), but no matter what, I usually get incredibly bored by the repetitive "single player game . . . that is online!" aspect of it within a few weeks and never play again. I'm waiting for something truly exciting and revolutionary. *sigh*

  • The Star Trek Online team, those who worked on the Perpetual Platform (which was recently licensed to BioWare) and a small number of people from the Gods and Heroes team will be remain with the company.
    Well, that is good to be know.
  • We already have too many MMO's diluting the gaming market.
    • I don't know, competition has never been a bad thing.
    • Butbutbut the money!
    • Not really, for a gaming genre there are not that many choices out there, not when you think about it. Half of the MMO's on the Market are already 1-2+ years old, I don't know about you but for me, if I play a game for two years, I start looking for something new. Right now, there is nothing new out there to go play. What gives that saturated feel is the very nature of the MMO, which is a long term commitment to a single game, I mean look at the first generation MMO's, UO/EQ/AO/AC all but one of those are s
  • I suspect Star Trek Online will do better than yet another Sword & Sorcery game, so they are going to be concentrating on that from now on. Also the comment about licensing middleware to Bioware. Smart move.
    • That theory hasn't held true yet... maybe that's because the attention to detail put into sci fi style mmos just hasn't reached the level of World of Warcraft or LotRO. Of course even a strong Sci Fi mmo like EVE Online isn't nearly as popular as WoW or LotRO. Ths may be due to the fact that a large portion of time in EVE is spent flying from point A to point B and not actually doing stuff. We could even toss FFXI into the mix as a game that is stupidly long and difficult and still much more popular than an

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Knara ( 9377 )

        WoW supports casual playing and is well polished. That's its key to success. There's no *real* reason why an MMO needs to seek the numbers that WoW has in terms of population. EVE is anything but a casual MMO and seems to manage a profit.

      • I know, but it's Star Trek. It's got a ready made mythology that people know before they even logged onto the game and how many Trekkie are there out there?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Bluecoat93 ( 140994 )
          Ask Sony how well having a ready-made mythology went with Star Wars Galaxies. Anything can be screwed up.

      • Re:Where the money is ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @02:37PM (#20930117)
        Well, EVE suffers from a few "flaws" compared to WoW. First of all, the learning curve is incredibly steep. There's no nanny holding your hand, pretty much carrying you over the first couple levels. Which is another "problem" by itself, the lack of "levels" to speak of. There's no immediate gauge to tell whether player A or player B is "higher".

        If you spend most of your time on EVE flying from A to B, I'd say you got something wrong. At least I don't. Most of my time is spent "productive", i.e. making creds. Also, flying from A to B doesn't take nearly as long as it took a few years ago, mostly because it's now possible to jump pretty much into the gates (if you know how, which isn't rocket science and quite possible to stumble upon).

        EVE can be tedious if you want to play it "seriously". To take this game serious, you have to be a beancounter, because that's what it comes down to. You'd have to spend your time watching charts and see market trends if you want to be "successful" (or, rather, more successful than the guy next to you not able to do that). It's not a game where you hop into an instance and "do stuff".

        This is admittedly not the right cuppa tea for everyone. EA tried a more hack'n'slash approach to space MMORPGs and failed after running it for 2 years. They made about every mistake in the book with the game, granted, but still... I don't know if a space MMORPG akin to fantasy MMORPGs can be done sensibly.

    • Re:Where the money is ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fozzyuw ( 950608 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @03:05PM (#20930539)

      suspect Star Trek Online will do better than yet another Sword & Sorcery game

      You make an good observation. Richard Bartle, author of "Designing Virtual Worlds" [amazon.com] talked about this same aspect.

      Here's a snippit of what he has to say...

      Why are there so few Wild West vitual worlds? Because it's very hard to explain why Joe Newbie's character can't enter a shop, buy a loaded six-gun, and empty it into the back of a character someone else has been playing for five years. They didn't call those things "equalizers" for nothing! Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror worlds have fiction-preserving ways out of this, as do ones based another hundred years or more into the past. It's not the only issue, though - there are plenty more. Following are some examples:
      • Crime fiction doesn't work well as a genre because players don't want to divulge clues to one another. This means they're discouraged from communicating; most designers would prefer to encourage them.
      • Comedy flops as a genre. You laugh the first time something funny happens, but by th etenth time that same thing happens, it ceases to amuse you.
      • Romance doesn't work for virtual worlds. Sex does, but romance doesn't. If you start out with the former, you rapidly end up with the later.
      • Lone heroes or heroines don't translate well into virtual worlds. It doesn't make sense to have 5,000 people running around who all act like Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, James Bond, or Dr Who. There wouldn't be room for them in the real world, let alone a virtual one
      ~ Designing Virtual Worlds, Richard A. Bartle, New Riders, p.40-41

      The gem is just one of many great points he covers. Anyone who's a fan of video games and MMO's would probably truly enjoy reading this book. It's basically a complete history of MMO's with great details on how virtual worlds work and how they don't.

      I've learned a lot in just 100 pages. Though, it was released in 2003, so it's only current up to Dark Age of Camelot, which is a bit sad as I would LOVE to hear his views on the monster that is World of Warcraft as he analysis games such as EQ, DAoC, Ultima Online, MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHES, AC, AO, and SWG.

      Cheers,
      Fozzy

  • The Best Headline Ever (Score:5, Funny)

    by HiredMan ( 5546 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @02:12PM (#20929743) Journal

    Taken out of context this is the best Slashdot headline ever.

    That is some seriously deep stuff right there.

    =tkk
    • I almost thought they were talking about the TV show Heroes and I was about to cry before I realized it was about a boring MMORPG.
    • Yes, made me think "OK, let humanity cancel God if they want, I don't care, but WTF, don't cancel Heroes!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by patio11 ( 857072 )
      I don't care much about the Gods being canceled, I've got one and He is plenty, but if NBC cancels Heroes they'd better find a recently unemployed war god to do security at the corporate office.
  • This game had no niche or originality, into which it could land successfully.
    Next on the chopping block, Conan.
    • Conan is going for the hardcore PvP crowd, I believe. Something which WoW is currently not retaining very well.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Sinkael ( 1089531 )
        Conan is, IMHO, shooting for the adolescent male crowd from what I have seen. Lots of Blood, Gore, Sex, Boobies and Alcohol Use.
  • I briefly tested it. I liked the whole mythology theme. The game was pretty buggy and had issues. It's basically like WoW, LOTRO, etc.

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