I hear this alot. Players want to see retail stores carrying great PC games. Now IDK about the rest of the country and maybe ya'll have some nostalgia for shopping in the mall......
If you happen to have one in your area, luckily verizon offers 3 megabit here now without a bandwidth cap. Gotta remember that a HUGE portion of america still has no access to even DSL speeds, and the areas that do are all moving to tiered bandwidth caps. (our old ISP had a 500MB/day cap, which was pretty lame as you could hit it in a few minutes and the connection goes down sub-dialup speeds until midnight)
Why blame EA for something that is out of EA's control?
All three of those statements are only partially true. Retailers do sell space, Vendors, as they are called, can put anything they want into that space. Also EA is a company with great influence, if it wanted something "tried" it could have it tried, granted it may not be able to keep things that don't sell on a retailers shelf, but it could get it put up to begin with.
It doesn't matter what EA wants to do, Wal-Mart is not going to carry cards for UO when it has games that sell more in a week than UO would in a year.
You must live in the sticks, because within 10-15 minutes of my house, there are several places selling plenty of PC games, including Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and Frys. They may all be selling the same 30-40 games, but they are selling PC games.
Maybe with some retailers, but Wal-Mart, no. Wal-Mart has an insane amount of control over what goes on its shelves. It's actually scary how much influence they have over vendors.Cloak‡1973827 said:
You have to understand the whole retail sector of the business I own a computer store. In order for any manufacturer that wants to market through retail chains THEY CANNOT BE IN COMPETITON WITH THEIR OWN VENDORS.
Okay, that makes sense, but what happens when EA becomes the sole distributor through certain channels, like if EA is the only online distributor of certain EA games, and I'm not talking UO.
You mentioned Wal-Mart twice, am I to assume you work there? I have worked there, know a DM and my uncle is a Store Manager. So my original post was on my knowledge of what happens at Wal-mart in my district.
I have a relative who is a store manager and I've heard plenty of stories about how much Wal-Mart can strong-arm manufacturers and how they track every item they sale. I also saw a good documentary where Wal-Mart executives talked about "helping" manufacturers by studying their production processes and telling them where they could cut costs, like using a slightly different material or outsourcing something to China. These executives really believed they were doing the manufacturers some good, but you could tell they felt like they were being held hostage. If they said no and Wal-Mart said they'd go with another manufacturer, they'd go under.Cloak‡1973935 said:
EA is not willing to invest that kind of money in UO, otherwise UOHerald would be listing a lot of new hires.
He said decent PC Game Rack. None of those places have one.
I said bobby and job in the same sentence ... Yeah! thats gonna happen!
pfffft! missed the actual "trend"
(there are likely more "minors" than unemployed "elders" gaming their lives away ...)
Not from me it wont. I either want physical media, a manual and some box art or a substantial price drop. I think paying full retail price for a game and just getting a few files deposited on my computer is complete crap.
We are in the minority.
Talks about a study done by NDP, a market research firm..
yeah, but as ever, its the Ones that Adapt that will tell the tale ...
keep up!keep up FASTER!
I meant more attention than it is getting, as even you yourself described, having a dozen more people work on it. And advertising for uo would be nice. As for boosters, I would be happy if they didn't put any new boosters out for a long while if they in fact fixed everything that is currently wrong with the game. >.<Technically it is getting more attention. It's getting the graphics and EC updates, it's got the UltimaForever.com and GOG.com stuff going for it. The Ultima Forever stuff alone got a lot of people talking on a lot of websites.
The problem is everything is going slow. It's going to take forever before we see the first graphics update with the terrain and walls. I just hope they don't screw around with any more booster or theme packs for a while so they can get the graphics updates out.
I would feel a lot better if UO picked up a dozen or so new hires - designers, artists, developers, whatever. The problem is that a dozen or so new hires starts to creep up towards the million dollar range when you factor in pay+benefits. It's one thing for Cal or whoever to get EA to allow them to do a graphics update with the human resources they already have for UO, it's another to get an extra million added to the budget.
It's depressing when you think that EA will spend $100 million advertising Battlefield 3
what this means is ... just like todays music and movies, todays games suck a big bowl of suckie. Not all but most.
What I don't understand is why the team uses its limited resources to do something like make sure that there is now, after so many years, a sound that plays when you use the tinkering skill. What in the world does the team see coming down the pike for UO that makes it worthwhile to spend whatever time it took to put that sound in and have someone be sure to mention in the publish notes that they fixed an issue with tinkering but it was so trivial or so hush-hush that they couldn't spell out the details? It just seems like a very odd decision to make unless there is more going on behind the scenes with UO than any of us realizes or is privy too.Technically it is getting more attention. It's getting the graphics and EC updates, it's got the UltimaForever.com and GOG.com stuff going for it. The Ultima Forever stuff alone got a lot of people talking on a lot of websites.
The problem is everything is going slow. It's going to take forever before we see the first graphics update with the terrain and walls. I just hope they don't screw around with any more booster or theme packs for a while so they can get the graphics updates out.
I would feel a lot better if UO picked up a dozen or so new hires - designers, artists, developers, whatever. The problem is that a dozen or so new hires starts to creep up towards the million dollar range when you factor in pay+benefits. It's one thing for Cal or whoever to get EA to allow them to do a graphics update with the human resources they already have for UO, it's another to get an extra million added to the budget.
It's depressing when you think that EA will spend $100 million advertising Battlefield 3
Are you talking about this?
From NetDragon Websoft Inc. Announces First Quarter 2011 Unaudited Financial Results NetDragon Websoft Inc. Announces First Quarter 2011 Unaudited Financial Results
No UO based game listed. Will never be allowed to run in United States or any country that the internet is not controlled by the government. You will not be allowed on any shard located in China, Hong Kong, Macau and India.
I think (hope) they are moving away from quick revenue generation (like the booster/theme packs) and seem to be working through a laundry list of little things. They may not be that important in the overall scheme of things, but from the tinkering thing to a few other small fixes I've heard about, it seems like somebody is now dedicated to fixing the little things. That's a definite change for UO, because I remember that over the last six months they went from admitting that they only fix bugs occasionally when they have some free time, to making an effort to fix bugs with every publish.
I don't remember who I pointed it out to, but NetDragon has literally not really been changing the templates they use for their public documentation for a few years now and the language discussing UO has not changed at all. What has changed is that NetDragon has announced several games/licenses since the UO deal, with release dates and everything. Since NetDragon signed the UO deal, they've picked up much more lucrative EA licenses. Besides NetDragon is targeting Asian markets, and they've already got a few high-profile licensed MMOs in the pipeline.
I don't think there are any shareholders holding their breath over a UO MMO from NetDragon. NetDragon has announced other EA titles and they are keeping the shareholders informed of those titles. Those titles are much bigger than UO. UO is not some kind of state secret or anything. Exactly. Think about it. The NetDragon 3D agreement, UO's team size is drastically cut, and their output is greatly reduced. They will say and spam anything and everything to keep people p(l)aying, i.e. like with the Classic shard and factions and anti-cheating, but it is phone it in mode until NetDragon takes over.
Whoa!
not so much "intent" need be there ... IF they knew with a guaranteed certainty that a 3d WAS forthcoming ...
"actual LEGAL work" being done ... ranges from cleaning monitors and keeping the waste cans empty ...
wow ... okay ... let's try this
well China has a rule about western influence in their country, and game play I would assume is high on their list. Dont let that modern look fool you, China is still comunist and they didnt roll over and give way to a soft government with no teeth. I trust China as much as I trust a deadly cobra at my feet. I would feel alot more secure if we didnt owe them so much debit! I would say this just means the government of China is only willing for their people to play our games under their eyes/rules.
