The EA Red Herring

[Nar'Gall]

So far, I've been mostly replying to people's questions, adding more detail where we can, but the EA issue seems to be one in a lot of people's minds at the moment, thus I'll address this here with a perspective I think it's worth thinking about.

The 'MMO on Early Access is a bad idea' concept is such a red herring.

The majority of MMOs, regardless of where or how they were released, had a bumpy launch and only found their feet a year or so later. This applies to MMOs small and large, from indies to large corps, the list is long.

These games, they all went through huge changes, fixes, exploits, rebalance, you name it. They dramatically evolved over time, particularly in the early days, just like Worlds Adrift did.

Most of them are no longer around regardless.

How's that any different from Early Access?

By the time Worlds Adrift hit Early Access, people could play it for hours on end. Today, average playtime exceeds 20+ hours, with some players clocking more than 2,000 hours in it.

How is this different from an MMO launched outside of EA, that underwent a lot of changes (because every MMO does) and in the end doesn't work and goes offline?

Worth thinking about it in this manner.

Despite all its shortcomings, Worlds Adrift is a game one can play today, and has been so for a long while. Case in point, players with more than 100+ hours of play are the majority.

If you bought an MMO outside of Early Access, then paid monthly subscription, what happened when it was shut down? It was announced it was going down in X months, and so it went. No one asked for their subscriptions back, or the price tag of the initial game. Some even came in discs, and yet these discs are no longer playable.

How's that any different from Early Access?

It isn't.

Worlds Adrift went into Early Access fully playable, more mature that some 'fully released MMOs' I got to play in my time. A lot of people had a lot of fun with it (their posts are here in the forum to be read), and it evolved over its two years. So, if we took it out of Early Access a few months back it would be all right? Would it be any different? No it would not, because we would keep on updating the game regardless of it being in EA or not, just like every other MMO.

The EA label was to keep away players who couldn't put up with instability, with wipes, with ongoing changes to the core of the game. It has nothing to do with commercial models.

[Elcho]

Im miserable now.

[Alien Queen]

good game shud got solid story not like this chaos story in warframe onle solid like heros and generals add and add stuf keep it up and fix bug they was tiny shuter ww2 game now its more pleyers online then warframe and beter to developers arent like show up ther so ask me world a drift cud be succes sure orignal game play som glitch if add co op cud keep game life and sell it get GA help and you cud fix it all good games all got GA help i know GA ho made demon hunter for diablo3 and be gust in guild wars1 and sugestion made guild wars 2 oft see this GA telling whot to fix and do in heros and generals so ther succes cud go to the GA as well just dont give up and know EA pepol they more gready then blizzard and dont cere for players and fans they did shud down game battel forge of 3 years pay to get to steal money and add to titan fall 1 host servers and they shuting down C&c eawen if servers ther down they stil sell games and sims they cut to tiny DLC and sell eatch item for real life money they ar to gready to tell they ar any developers they ar gready cold blood company ho never gone succes in any game thx to gods of games they and blizzard gone fail after fail for using players and fans onle to cold gready money making:) world a dirift oyk keep money sell game som in game to ho dont efect game play sure but dont give up;) i play game 4 days or 5 and i like it lot.

[A D L]

Responding to your comment from a previous thread

Originally posted by Nar'Gall:

Running these servers have costs associated with it, and these costs are not compatible with the amount of players currently playing Worlds Adrift -- one of the reasons why it's being sunset at the end of July.

Your community (temporarily) quit the game because of progression wipes. We told our friends not to buy in until the progression wipes stopped. Who cares about the current player count when the amount of people echoing this sentiment is astounding? Not to mention the people who refuse to support early access on principle and you've done advocates of the Early Access model no favors on this one...

Meanwhile my $60 is going down the toilet because y'all thought it was a good idea make an MMO without a commitment or viable plan to release and to wipe character data on a regular basis and have the audacity to blame us for not logging in and playing.... And you built the game on proprietary technology meaning it can't be self-hosted or open sourced.

[/!\Kapudd im KoppDE]

A reason for some of us to be yellow is, no - it was not playable. I'm from continental europe, despite there being a shard for EU, the game lagged horribly in the beginning and server performance was bad at the end just a week or so ago (literaly empty wilderness, some ship sitting around doing nothing and suddenly a storm is chasing my dinghi around and even with two props and 3 sails i can not outrun it, gg)

From the head I can identify three topics that hindered the game:
* Hull building.

That inflexible, convuluted mess is not a mechanic that could have been resolved and added on to in hindsight when you literaly need a ship to get around.

* Crafting

Randomized blueprints are crap. its already a struggle getting enough knowledge together to create blueprints. Having values randomly determined on top of that is just... meh. RNGsus may be indifferent on the large, but to an individual they can be extremely harsh.

* instruments

having to traverse lawless space for something as integral as a compass or an artificial horizont without even naturaly being able to tell up from down is just madness. I'm pretty sure several noobs accidentaly fell into the void because they were upside down or at least severaly tilted without noticing.

[Atrophus]

And if anything people should hand the investors their package. Welcome to capitalism guys, the only thing the people who fund development are interested in is profit, and that as quick as possible. WA didn't fulfill that expectation so it now has to go. I seriously believe the studio people when they say they themselves would love to see WA come to fruition, but no revenue means no more funding, and even developers like having a salary to live off.
I saw it before in Eternal Crusade, we were promised a warhammer 40k MMO with open world like Planetside 2, everyone got super hyped into it and bought 100$+ founder packages, and then they released a lobby shooter with all the battles being connected by contributing to progression on a map that a toddler could have done better with paint. Everyone blamed the devs to the point where they all just deleted all contact methods and went anonymous, but its not their fault if the investors take their money to greener pastures.

[ringod123]

Are they seriously congratulating themselves in that OP?

"By the time Worlds Adrift hit Early Access, people could play it for hours on end. Today, average playtime exceeds 20+ hours, with some players clocking more than 2,000 hours in it.

How is this different from an MMO launched outside of EA, that underwent a lot of changes (because every MMO does) and in the end doesn't work and goes offline?"

It's different because those other MMO's actually released with 100% of their originally planned features and content and didn't stop players wanting to play yet because of regular player progress wipes, you closed your game down with 20% of your planned features/content and continued to wipe player progress.

Also, trying to say that most other MMO's have already failed and dissappeared is mind boggling, were you rummaging through the discount bins purposefully looking for dead games?

Such a self-congratulatory tone really does not fit well with the current scenario, i'm in awe that you clearly beleive the game to be somewhat of a success *compared to other MMO's*, even though it didn't get even half of its features and was never anywhere near leaving EA, never mind having to shut down before hitting 1.0

[Sparkythepet]

Can we Get someone to get the game code from the game or seriously add an update that will allow us to play offline instead of shut down the game completely that's a ♥♥♥♥ and you guys don't give a flying s h i t

[Korben]

You opened up a new thread for your own excuses as to why you gave up and left us with nothing, not even a try at a release, just gave up on. Bossa Studios, you are nothing but scam artists. Don't even try justifying what you have done here, it is insulting.

I really like how you advertise to us about your up coming games (the games that the worlds adrift money went to), as if we would give you losers more money. LMAO Get bent.

[Rig Nan Roach]

Liars.

When they released this game they TOLD us it was a long term project, that the early keys were not even really for profit, and that they would be keeping sales to a minimum so that they would not flood the servers.

That was a bald faced lie. And they know it.

The business model the floated was a down payment for the software and they would produce microtransactional goodies we could buy to keep the servers rolling. The servers cost about a half a penny per player hour. I am one of the people he is blithering about that has over a thousand hours in this game, and I STILL have only gotten about $12 of puke service, much of which has been wasted dealing with in game griefers and forum trolls.

Congratulate yourself on your own time, cheat. Rolling out an MMO means when the game dies, they take the software and sit on it. We get NOTHING for the price in the end. NOTHING. THAT is what people are complaining about. That you roll out these games over and over, and because they are MMO's, you get to take it all back and HIDE THE CODE.

Highlight that. The business model is to
>>>>>HIDE THE CODE FROM THE PURCHASER<<<<<<<

I played text MMO's for FREE for years. THAT'S what your game is worth, Bossa. NOTHING. Because MMO's are largely a function of the COMMUNITY, who happen to be the people you totally lied to, disrespected, and STOLE FROM.

Which is of course why the entire industry keeps trying to find a way out from under modders. Because a ton of people would do your job FOR FREE. If we weren't constantly being threatened by bogus IP abuse laws.

Same things that have YouTube transforming itself slowly into a glorified cable television platform, while all the private content creators that made it what it used to be are slowly run off.

This post is the most pathetic trash to date. But you see now the attitude. Why it was always fine with them that a ton of people were constantly abusing the player base.

They themselves are abusers. Therefore they like their fellow abusers.

[Angus McScrote]

Originally posted by Rig Nan Roach:

Liars.

When they released this game they TOLD us it was a long term project, that the early keys were not even really for profit, and that they would be keeping sales to a minimum so that they would not flood the servers.

That was a bald faced lie. And they know it.

The business model the floated was a down payment for the software and they would produce microtransactional goodies we could buy to keep the servers rolling. The servers cost about a half a penny per player hour. I am one of the people he is blithering about that has over a thousand hours in this game, and I STILL have only gotten about $12 of puke service, much of which has been wasted dealing with in game griefers and forum trolls.

Congratulate yourself on your own time, cheat. Rolling out an MMO means when the game dies, they take the software and sit on it. We get NOTHING for the price in the end. NOTHING. THAT is what people are complaining about. That you roll out these games over and over, and because they are MMO's, you get to take it all back and HIDE THE CODE.

Highlight that. The business model is to
>>>>>HIDE THE CODE FROM THE PURCHASER<<<<<<<

I played text MMO's for FREE for years. THAT'S what your game is worth, Bossa. NOTHING. Because MMO's are largely a function of the COMMUNITY, who happen to be the people you totally lied to, disrespected, and STOLE FROM.

Which is of course why the entire industry keeps trying to find a way out from under modders. Because a ton of people would do your job FOR FREE. If we weren't constantly being threatened by bogus IP abuse laws.

Same things that have YouTube transforming itself slowly into a glorified cable television platform, while all the private content creators that made it what it used to be are slowly run off.

This post is the most pathetic trash to date. But you see now the attitude. Why it was always fine with them that a ton of people were constantly abusing the player base.

They themselves are abusers. Therefore they like their fellow abusers.

*yawn

[Rig Nan Roach]

There they are. When the real filth starts showing itself around what they have done, Bossa Steam and the like re-release the forum trolls.

IT IS PART OF THEIR BUSINESS MODEL.

The festering clouds of annoying gnats around all of Steam are there to keep you distracted. That and the fanboys that can never seem to find anything wrong with anything.

Go ahead. Keep giving them your money. This will be what every aspect of your life looks like unless you stop letting people get away with this nonsense.

The business model is to
HIDE THE CODE FROM THE PURCHASER.

[Andbrew]

That's not how this works, that's not how it works at all.

A game in EA means it will get finished one day, thus, if it doesn't everyone has a chance to apply to a refund, even if the game is still playable, but just abandoned.
Your game on the other hand will be outright not playable. even thoguh it is an MMO, it doesn't mean you should apply the "MMO shutdown" logic to it. You know why? Because you never ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stated that until now. We ain't a bunch of mentallists, we can't read minds. How could any of us known that the game will shut down pre-maturely and won't give any refunds, cuz "it's MMO subscription single payment plan was always in out mind". You never said a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing about it.
You simply can't state such BS after never mentioning it before hand. Either start giving away refunds or get sued and lose even more money... But hey, at least there's one good thing now. You're a small dev and you're lucky you're mostly unknown, otherwise I am sure there would be people who couldn't take it so lightly. O the second thought, your growth of the copandy will die along with this game. Double edged sword, karma is a ♥♥♥♥♥ and etc.

[Sparkythepet]

At least someone hack bossa and take the game code from them

[urnamed32]

So TL;DR

We did our best but couldn't manage. In the past there are several games that closed down. Some even with subscriptions, some with physical discs and no one said anything.

Maybe, but we are saying anything. We wan't our money back. This has nothing to do with how many players played the game or how good the game was. In EA we were promissed a game and bought it as a customer. We didn't INVEST in anything we BOUGHT a game as a CUSTOMER.

It's like buying a car, then the company gets broke, then takes your car back and you say oh i had 100.000 miles on that car. LOL BS

[Quill]

Differance is far more simple to me, I played it, the game was fun but near unplayable. Showed the game to friends. I'd check back every few months, play an hour or three. I totaled 19 hours playtime going "Man, this'll be awesome when it launches."

Then the plug is pulled before is leaves EA because of numbers? This makes no sense. It's like saying your steak got poor customer reviews because no one liked your appatisers.

No one got a steak, though some are happy (And thats ok!) smelling steak and eatting 2000 hours worth of bread rolls.