Status of Emperor

[Duke_Atreides]

yes, but i hate to pay for playing it, maybe if it will have an offline mod.

[Mahdi]

It follows the books less than westwoods Shaddam.

[Duke_Atreides]

Yes, it take place in the Dune universe and nothing more.

[Mahdi]

And even then they ignre a lot, such as sgield fighting, the guild controling everything in space, etc.

[Guest SimonSays]

if Emperor have a new ex-pack it could make it more popular. Maybe add a new house.

:)

[areyouforit]

compared to starcraft (like my bro said before) the game has

no good AI i mean come on!The game could have been better if they advertised in nov. and made it come out in dec. (christmas time (hello westwood are you there) THINK!)

the ai could be better (im talking way better) and they could

have put something new inside. cause its dune 2000 all over again! (except with a pretty stupid name). It could have been better if ww had played some of its competitors games and found out how to make their games better (i mean way better!!) . Im just saying i went to some Kmart, walmart,ect.

stores and a few people were buying blizzard games like starcraft and warcraft (even after five years!) and i was like

well man that game is still "in" with little people who think the game is cool(with a name of starcraft), but *emperor* no way! cause with a desert and all, it looks like a medieval times (hello emperor not a good name ) (unless for dune fans)game. (who would buy that)and anyways there are probably more RTS fans then dune, cause dune games are RTS and then there's games like c&c that are RTS so that means , my fellow internet people, that there are more RTS fans which = more

RTS then dune fans.

I know im criticizing the game to an all time low (very low like 1 out of 100 ) but im not a dune fan, im more of a hard RTS game fan.

those were my dollars of time down the drain

and i know this is long very long.

[Guest DuneY2k7]

shame,shame,come-back-to-dune2k.u.guys-its-still-alive-good-players-and-old-plaers-still-come-by...i-mean-online,if-u-want-names-of-peopel-who-r-stil-in-dune-that-r-oldies-ill-tell

[Edric O]

You lost what little faith you had in WW, Shaddam? And when was it that you had the slightest bit of faith in them, exactly?

Emperor is a great game. It only has 2 problems: lack of advertising and high requirements

I think YR is better than Emp, but that doesn't mean Emp is bad. Not by a long shot.

[Guest hectic3]

Westwood better stop what they're doing and sit down at the R&D table and think, why are their games going dead so fast?

For Instance, this has happened to Tiberian Sun, which turned out to be a flop and now they're focusing on Red Alert which brings in a substantial amount of profit and renegade. They must ask themselves, why are a lot of people still playing starcraft and other old RTS in LAN shops and over the internet while thier games only have a 4-5 month lifespan. Westwood was one the best when they releases Tiberian Dawn and ever since then, it had gone downhill. They make the AI dumbber for newbies and make really cheezy and corny movies to help maket their product. I don't think much time is spent in developing the storyline and how to improve gameplay. Their focus are on the wrong things.

Dune can be a very successful RTS if only westwood or other game companies are willing to invest time and money to make it into a classic that would last throughout time. :P

[nemafakei]

Yes, but Emp was atest-ground for a game with decent storyline and gameplay- they wanted to get the engine to work and play so they can use it in another game. They wish to keep the dune fans happy and get the bugs out of the system before they release a game with more effort put into it.

[garth]

It has the essence of the Books, Mahdi.  The political intrigue, the back stabbing, the cut throat politics.  All of which are absent in Emperor.

If I never had a shred of faith in WW I wouldnt have bought the game Edric lol

[areyouforit]

Emperor just doesn't have that much quantity. I mean for the campaign its just like 15 wins and then you beat the enemy.

It said that there were 150 levels but 150 my @$$ cause

it took me like only 7 wins to get to the ordos then 3 more to get to destroy the emperor worm. Thats only 10 wins I mean come on! Starcraft had 56 campaign lavels after the brood war expansion pack! I mean wow you get to pick you own levels and where you want to go it doesn't matter if you go straight towards the enemy, you'll win cause the AI stinks!

Insead of programming 150 levels they should have made the map editor (more polished) inside the CD-rom and then make a couple more maps, then make like 50 levels(to at least beat regular starcraft.) Then they'll have the map editor ready to go so they can release 2 or three maps a week and a map of the month! I think emperor was used as a distraction till YR and renegade. They probabaly were to lazy to test the piece of crap, so they decided to make a quick game so they can

make a little money, and test the 3-d engine.

 WW= laziest game makers on earth

I'm not trying to diss the dune fans, or Frankey I'm jsut saying a stupid company made a game that was a disgrace to

dune!

And also they should have put some spy missions in even after you beat a house in campaign, and they should have never even thought about "emperor worm" that was just corny and gay. I mean thats something a three year-old would say, and i know a three year-old doesn't play these kind of games. You know what i think i think that WW was too cheap to pay a man that would work for them so they hired a 5-year old to make up the game (a penny a day can keep a robber away! hahahahaha). thats why they said the map editor was complicated cause they had hired a 5-year old to do it.(that was not supposed to be funny).

 conclusion WW is cheap and lazy.

thank you thank you very much.

[bob_fox]

I was a bit dissapointed when I bought this game. I thought it was gonna be one of Westwood's "major releases", but it turned out to be a 3D version of their other games with a couple of units. They churned it out, lost interest in it almost immediately, and started working on Renegade.

Now you guys may think I'm crazy, but RED ALERT 2 WAS AWFUL! Come on, if another company had made a game like that in this day and age, there would have been riots. Why do we accept it from Westwood? Because of Command & Conquer. C&C was a very good game, a classic, but their games went downhill from there.

[Koen_van_de_Sande]

Complaining about Emperor... I mean the game looks good - but it misses 'it'.

I had the same feeling with Tiberian Sun - this game is 'missing' something. C&C, RA and Dune 2000 all had this 'great feeling' when you played them, and RA2 was OK and Yuri's Revenge is OK too.

Personally, I think it has something to do with the recognition of tank units (is there a 'standard' unit which the player can immediately identify as the bulk of his attack force, called tank in all games but TS & Emperor).

Secondly, the base defense issue. When I play a game, I like to dig myself inside my base, build a lot of defenses (Tesla Coils, Obelisks, Prism Towers) and start building a huge attack force. But I can't do this in Emperor - the base defenses are very bad. I'm moving to crush the enemy base, and suddenly my Construction Yard is under attack, and everything goes wrong. I had the same thing in TS - I couldn't defend my base very well.

You could say I'm a bad player, but these 2 tactics (defending and tankbuilding) are what most people do, and start developing better tactics from there.

Finally: I HATE LEECHES. Thank you.

[nemafakei]

DII: Revolutionary

C&C: Successful and a major new standard set

RA1: No real improvement on C&C, except skirmish.

D2000: No effort on WW's part.

TS: New standard, good game- a lot better with FS

RA2: Tacky version of TS

Emp: Well... This page is a summary.

[Taqwa11]

:-/I don't understand all the badmouthing about Emperor.  It's a great game--the best RTS I've ever seen.  No, it doesn't have the multiplayer support that RA2 does.  Yes, it requires a better than average system to really run well.  But it's not dead until the next great 3D RTS comes out, and even then it will die a long, slow death.  Westwood simply blew their chance by poor marketing.  As the saying goes, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later."  Since Westwood didn't pay to really advertise this game, they released no demo, and they put it in an average-looking package, Westwood is paying now by having less than expected support for the game.

[Guest Muxbox]

I remember the orignal dune on the AMIGA. It was ground breaking and set the path for C&C style games. This is the father of RTS and should be treated with more respect.

If have owned every dune realease to date and enjoyed them all.

When i bought emperor game and first played it i was really excited, when i first connected online and had a quick match i got really excited, when i saw the ranking system and prizes i got really excited. When i tried playing it with others i realised that there were not that many online. I doubted myself and said i got the game early it is about to take off. Months go by and the world isn't buying dune. More months go by and i get annoyed at the crashes and lack of status update with regards to the connecting and start of a new game. I realise after reading this what is really happening.

Westwood Hear me out. You must re-release this game with a bit of polish and a lot of adverstising. A fantastic game that needs a bit more dedication to the online playing facility. It was released ahead of its PC specs. People did not have the hardware yet. I am fortunate to be able to afford new hardware every year but others arn't.

You hit a good game idea. A great graphics and control engine. It needs polishing though.

I know you guys won't let me down. There are people out there waiting to discover dune.

P.S. When you guys say that the desert is boring i disagree. Pretty backdrops just confuse the eye. This is simple and you can really see all your troops.

:)

[nemafakei]

Emperor is not terrible, it's just that most dune fans here think (and I agree) that WW could have done a far better job. If you are even considering desert to be boring, then you miss the essence of gaming. It should be about the gameplay, not visual effects. If poor graphics hindered control and thus enjoyment, fair enough - but it doesn't. If you really don't like the desert, enjoy the unit models - they are very detailed for an RTS (not bad for a 1st person if you were a soldier!) so study theit intricacy instead of staring at the sand.

[quoudam72]

Westwood left Emperor by the wayside with poor marketing and no support. It is by no means a terrible game but I guess after all the begining hype about E:BFD one would expect Westwood to continue to show support for their product. As someone said in an earlier post polishing the map editor would have added life to Emperor. Still without muti-player support, almost zero on-line players and the fact that Westwood seemed to never care in the first place no wonder Emperor is dead because Westwood killed it!!!

[alphabeta4000]

Westwood have problems

[Guest Hectic3]

Since WW are such lazy asses, why not give the loyties of the Dune name to some other company like one that has just started or something, even they show more promise than WW. Blizzard will refuse as they concerntrate on theyir 3 main games, heck, we don't even know when starcraft 2 will come out!

As I said in my ealier post, WW should be more serious and keep interest of the game up for a long time, like Red Alert did.

So sad :'(...

P.S. BAH! I'm so pissed that even Maxis could so a better job. Just images, a cross between the Sims and Dune...control Paul Atreides in his usual daily life...hehehe ;)

[Thalassicus]

Is it not that WW were usung Emp as a testing ground for an engine -cum- graphics and control system? Thus, they will attempt to make games of the same style, but based on C&C or something? I'm thinking as in RA(2) - in which the internal name of the Allies was GDI.

I would agree with Nema, I see a pattern of research-and-refine going on with Westwood's after it was bought out by Electronic Arts.

[nemafakei]

RA2 was pretty poor - the plot was easily recognisable, but tacky and simple (worse than Emperor, in my opinion). There was no improvement over TS, and I got bored of the game far faster than I have anything else. But it sold well because someone at WW decided it should be advertised to sell well.

[Edric O]

I still think that trying to find internal reasons for Emperor's failure won't work. The game is good, very good. It didn't fail because there's a problem with it. It failed because WW didn't advertise and support it, and it didn't have a famous brand name to back it up.

But come to think of it, how do we know it failed? All we know is that Emperor is dead ONLINE. But I'm sure that many people (like me, for example) bought Emperor and never played it online! Emp is lots of fun in a LAN.

[nemafakei]

Here, Here.