Jade Empire: IP fuckup?

[oscar]

Could of been entertaining if combat hadn't been utterly broken.

 

[EvilIndie]

How long do developers last once EA owns them? 5 Years? I can't wait to see Volourn have a heart attack over their dissolution.

 

[Azrael the cat]

How long do developers last once EA owns them? 5 Years? I can't wait to see Volourn have a heart attack over their dissolution.

Changes usually occur after first serious flop (these days - the old empire was more blatantly evil...or perhaps even just more evil), but it seems that it's a slower winddown these days. Also, EA in its present form is more likely to keep the company alive and just replace the staff and management.

So Bioware has almost certainly survived for the time being. It's difficult-to-impossible to imagine that they haven't made enough money for EA to allow them freedom. Remember that Bioware has long declared that it makes Summer-blockbuster style games/stories, so given that Bioware wants to make the kind of games EA wants to sell, they probably have little to clash over. It isn't exactly an 'EA purchasing Origin' analogue.

I'd say they're doing well enough that even if TOR is a flop they'll be given leeway. If they're going to have a 'serious flop', that's the only direction I can see it coming from. Their present fanbase isn't too bothered by the transition away from crpgs, yet is still one of the most loyal/rabid fanbases around. TOR has them doing a style of game they've never touched before, and I can see some serious conflict arising between what their fans want and what the folk who are going to be longterm customers on a mmorpg will want. People aren't going to want a single-player campaign that they have to pay a monthly subscription for, and they haven't shown anything that even comes close to suggesting that they've found a way to do 'epic storytelling' in a mmorpg environment that doesn't amount (a) to the monthly-subscription-single-player-campaign, (b) a grinding raidfest or (c) a serious inability to provide content at a rate commensurable with how fast the playerbase is blowing through it (see WoW's difficulties providing small-group content past the levelling stages).

Everything has just looked so standard - it's all been cinematic effects and dialogues that are seemingly on-rails, with nothing to back up their claims that they've found a way to make their touted 'different sort of mmorpg' that allows an epic storytelling/campaign focus. Mmorpgs have been the graveyard of many many projects by companies who think they've found the 'new way' of doing things, only to discover that their model is unprofitable or that they're actually not that different from being a WoW-clone (and the market knows it). Not that I can see it pulling Bioware under or anything - there's a reason it's a subdivided studio: I imagine they've set things up so that if TOR flops then that studio gets the beat-down, while the class-A Edmington studios stay thriving.

 

[kris]

It is their most interesting setting.

JE? It's erm, well... yeah, on second thought, and compared to TheDAS and ME (their only other creations), it's definitely miles better. It had a lot of untapped potential - contrasting the Empire with the equivalent of Europe, a more dynamic relationship between the typical fantasy tropes (magic! golems! demons!) and the almost-steampunk elements (the insectoid ships, the floating palace), stuff that sadly never even gets a side mention. You're just supposed to take it all as it is. But even in its current shape it was far less generic than Generic Space Opera 101 and Generic High Fantasy 101.

I think it was both interesting and a fresh of new air, but basically it was close to a photo-copy on China and their mythology. Is just interesting for us, because we are not handed that many games similar to it.