N-Gage was a cell phone as dedicated portable game console. It failed because it did not establish easy user interface, cheaper disposable games, on an established application provider platform, and freedom of cell contract. It would take until Apple to get all those pieces together bit by bit until the iPhone became a perfect storm for casual gaming apps. Puzzle solvers have never been happier, until pay to win (and social data collaters) arose and now things are swinging back to quality productions, albeit slowly.

Think smartphone before there was smart phones.  I think the game came with cartridges.  It was suppose to compete with Nintendo and Sony at the time.  It was a flop as you can see.

Quote from: AnthonyRoberson;853054Just saw this over at ENWorld. Is ANYONE surprised?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2874-Pathfinder-Online-Layoffs#.Veh9BfT6LfY

Personally I think it's a shame.  I'd much rather MMO in Golarion than Neverwinter as envisioned by the microtransaction pimps and whores at ARC Games.  75 fucking dollars to play a dragonborn?

The crazy goblins would have been pretty funny.

Quote from: Orphan81;853152Oh god yes... Back in 2012 when folks like Garatha Skara were going on and on about "Transmedia" being the future, and any company that didn't diversify their tabletop games into novels, comics, tv, movies, and videogames was doomed, DOOOMED...

wotc has comic books, video games, novels, a movie in the works (fucking please please be decent) and likely a raft of cartoons. I dunno about doomed but the number one rpg company is doing exactly that.

Quote from: Orphan81;853131Pathfinder Online was a perfect example of Hubris.

How many tabletop games have been made into Videogames outside of Dungeons and Dragons? Oh, that's right, about zero, except for Whitewolf who got two Vampire Games, an aborted Werewolf game and an aborted MMO.

There's Drakensang Online, which is much bigger in Europe than the US, and is based on Der Schwarz Auge, the biggest pen-and-paper RPG in Germany.

So the pathfinder mmo is failing before it was even finished? colour me completely unsurprised, it was a pile of utter shite and had literally nothing to do with golarion or pathfinder at all on top of being so badly dated graphically that even eq1 looks more cutting edge and modern....so er yeah it was a waste of time and effort even bothering to continue it in that pisspoor state.

As others have said goblinworks should have gone for a more traditional crpg or two first so folks outside the limited playerbase of the tabletop could learn about the setting and such, then if mmorpg's are still a think in say 5 years maybe have a go at one then if the golarion games are mega hits(which tbh i doubt they would be with dancey involved).

Well, I never saw the boondoggle coming, but to be fair I was blissfully unaware of an attempt at a Pathfinder MMO to begin with.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;853284Well, I never saw the boondoggle coming, but to be fair I was blissfully unaware of an attempt at a Pathfinder MMO to begin with.

It's kind of like that time in 1987 when I got pissed off because the Jefferson Starship front office was slow getting my season tickets out and I missed a really rare, really fucking smokin' 'We Built This City (On Rock and Roll)' at the Clark County Fair. I got over it. But sometimes, torn by both self-loathing and a diabolical predilection for insomnia, I wake up late in the night and scream 'Fuck you. Starship!' at bloodcurdling volumes. Boondoggles, man. Fuck boondoggles.

Quote from: Warthur;853186I think they are, but it's worth each of them is building on a tried and true videogame franchise

That seems to be a prerequisite; very few MMOs (oleies like EQ1, DAoC, GW1, EVE, and more recently The Secret World) succeed without building on established IP.

And even that is no guarantee; WAR died an ignonimious death and Age of Conan... is it even still around?

Quote from: The Butcher;853307And even that is no guarantee; WAR died an ignonimious death and Age of Conan... is it even still around?

It is. I'm still playing it.

Funcom has up until December 2016, though, before officially going bankrupt. And that's after they managed to get a 6-months debt extension from their biggest creditor.

Quote from: Jason D;853276There's Drakensang Online, which is much bigger in Europe than the US, and is based on Der Schwarz Auge, the biggest pen-and-paper RPG in Germany.

Thanks for reminding me.

There is also at least one, maybee two PC ports of Drakar oc Demoner.

Quote from: Orphan81;853131Pathfinder Online was a perfect example of Hubris.

This. The original business model that was based on the Eve Online Subscription Model is good and it works. It wasn't executed in this case though...

With Eve Online a very small tightly focused team of ten or so game designers built a beautiful and playable science fiction world with some basic combat, trade, and crafting mechanics, then they setup one unified server, and signed up people to play. The team focused on creating aesthetic experiences over game balance, and game play.

The Eve universe was visually stunning, and their was a superb original soundtrack that released by the composer Jon Hallur that was included in game with a jukebox.  I used to sit for hours in an asteroid belt somewhere happily mining with my gaming peeps listening to songs like Under The Asteroids, Jovian Influence,  Miner Stories, Hidden Momentos, and We Fight Proud for the Holder. There was really nothing else like this in online gaming...

The Eve Online team continued working on improving this game with regularly scheduled patch releases that included bug fixes, game play rebalancing, updates, new content, and new art. It was a no-brainer to sign up for this. Even now, ten years after joining I still play Eve Online regularly. It does have some issues though, and it's those issues, combined with a bit of old fashioned greed, that crippled Pathfinder Online.

Pathfinder Online is still very much a salvageable game property by the way, with the right focus.

One of the main reasons that I let my subscription to Eve Online lapse from time-to-time is because of two game play issues... First... where the game was focused on providing significantly more benefits for large groups such as corporations and alliances. Because of the combat and movement mechanics, a large corporation or alliance in Eve could control significant amounts of territory in Eve and could block individual players and small teams from gathering the resources necessary for growth. The largest alliance for example, the Goonswarm at one time fielded 50,000 active players.

This fail mechanic was built right into Pathfinder Online right from the very beginning, and put me off from subscribing.

The second main reason I let my subscription to Eve Online lapse was because of griefing. Everyone understands Eve Online is a brutal universe. Play against another individual or team that is better than you, and you die and lose your stuff. I get it. Outside of the high security Empire space is a no holds barred frontier where there are no rules at all, and you only get to hold soveriegnty, and keep your hard earned rewards if your team can consistently block any other team that shows up from destroying your ships, taking your space stations, and interfering with your efforts at resource gathering and building.

I'm ok with that. The problem was, that the alliances and corporations that were in control of nullsec went to highsec and interfered with the new players... Everything from can flipping, and war declarations, where a very experienced corporation would declare war on a new corporation and siege the new players for weeks or months to effectively block the new corporations ability to gather enough resources to meaningfully participate in the game.

The few were so effective at this in Eve Online, that of the 750,000 people that have signed up to play this game since I started in 2006, there are only about 60,000-75,000 remaining with only 35-40,000 regular players.

19 of 20 people that signed up to play Eve Online quit. Mostly because of the griefing.  

But CCP finally got it. In 2011 they introduced wormholes. Hard to reach hidden areas of space where small corporations and groups could effectively build bases of operations and grow their companies, or at least accumulate enough resources so that when they clashed with a much larger corporation or alliance they wouldn't be totally wiped out. Continuously losing is not a fun experience.

In the initial Pathfinder Online Demo there was no indication that the Pathfinder team grokked these simple truths, and they were busy building large guilds that would control territories in much the same manner as the large alliances in Eve Online. There was nothing in the demo that I saw that convinced me I would be successful in opening a small trading post or crafting shop in any Pathfinder Online territory.

There were also a couple of significant differences in marketing the game as well. I should have been on a mailing list and received regular updates concerning Pathfinder Online. The first year while they were busy doing the Kickstarter I rceived three of four major updates and was watching with significant interest.

After the Kickstarter, didn't even get a single email. No offers to playtest, or play online for a week or two to see how the game has been improved, just nothing... from Paizo or Pathfinder Online.

At CCP they never quit. Even after my subscription had lapsed they would send me regularly updates about every couple of months about what was going on in the Eve Universe, and several times a year they would offer free gameplay time. I never minded paying CCP online though, and don't spend my ingame earnings Plexing my account to play for free. They deserve to get paid for making and running one of the best games ever.

I wouldn't expect to play Pathfinder Online for free either. Last few years, they haven't let me know what is going on though, and no one there asked for my help either.

Quote from: Omega;853236Yes. It apparently did come out in some small release. I am pretty sure one of my players had a copy. But might be mixing it up with the un-related MMO.

re-found it. Rifts: Promise of Power for the N-Gage in 2005. What the heck is an N-Gage?

it was Nokia's phone/game system that came out a few years too early.

I worked on the Rifts game and I still have my copy of the goldmaster cart. It is a really good game just on the wrong system.

I am sorry for all the Pathfinder fans. I think PF suxxors, but I know people who were all excited to play the MMO and invested in the KS and this news is gonna crap their weekend.

Quote from: Orphan81;853172Fuck me, I'm just flat out wrong... but in my defense I'm suffering from some extreme insomina at the moment.

Holy shit! You've just admitted to being wrong...ON THE INTERNET!!! That's just not done! Get some sleep!