The old Westwood board...

[Edric O]

Well, since the official board is almost a thing of the past now, post here the goods and the bads about it and what WW should have done better. I'm sure God will appreciate the suggestions.

I have only 2 complaints:

1. Devinoch was a lazy mod who didn't do much even before he abandoned us.

2. NavarosX didn't get banned soon enough.

And yeah, I got banned *gasp* yesterday after posting a topic in which I called Devinoch a "stuffed dwarf" among other things. Want me to re-post it here? ;D

[Gobalopper]

No or I will ban you here as well. You obviously don't know what really happened so there is no point in blaming Devinoch.

[Edric O]

Hey, no need to get angry, Gob! The reason I said what I said was to vent my anger at the fact that Devinoch did less for the community than his RA2 counterpart (Delphi), although WW eventually took the same stance on both YR and Emp.

Of course I don't know what really happened, nobody does! (except you, maybe) So I just compared Dev to Delphi and came to... certain conclusions...

Maybe you could tell us what really happened? I'm sure I'm not the only one wanting to find out what's with this WW policy of abandoning games...

[nemafakei]

It's called profit-mongering - that is, the institution in WW is now only be interested in profit, whereas before, whaen they made DII, they were interested in making good, long-lasting games.

[Gobalopper]

Westwood gave up on Emperor after they released the last patch. People didn't believe me when I said it but it was pretty obvious.

Emperor didn't sell.

It didn't sell well for many reasons and EA/WW didn't want to spend time supporting a game they were probably losing money on. Games like Starcraft sold a lot more copies then Emperor ever will so Blizzard has the resources to keep patching it. I would like to see WW support Emperor as much as anyone else but I know it isn't feasible.

And Devinoch did a lot while he was still community manager before he had to move onto Renegade. When WW was supporting the game I think he did a great job, he posted a LOT more then Delphi has.

To boil it down:

Emperor Not Selling = Westwood Not Supporting It

[Nyarlathotep]

I agree that you can't blame a company for not supporting a product that didn't sell.. How ever, support comes in many ways. I think the Dune comunity is very tight and strong. If they at least would have given Gob more rights in the official forum, it would have been nicer there. As for product support.. well, if I would have sold one computer from my store, I would.. no, by law I HAVE to support it far after the sale has been done.

I truly doubt that they couldn't have done a better job at support then they did with EBFD. That said though, I doubt if it was Westwood who was calling the shots or EA.. I do believe that Dev did the best HE could.. One must not forget he's just a puppet in the whole picture..

When ever you decide to sell something, you need to support it no matter what.. If you can't, don't sell it.. Westwood/EA has lost a lot of customers by the way they handled EBFD.. Though it's not fair to take it out on Dev..

[zamboe]

Gob,

Ok. I agree that is not Dev's fault.

However, I have a few question for you, please let us know also the "off the record" version :)

* If you would have refused to accept the board changes, do you think they would have closed it anyway ?

You seem to have more information from us, since u can talk to those guys at ww.

* In your opinion what else can we expect in the near future (bad news i mean, since no good news are possible now). Will the online gaming servers are close to be closed ?

Pd: WW : I want my money back ! 8)

[Gobalopper]

Yes they were going to close them anyway. Cliff called me and asked if I would agree to them forwarding people to my site when that happened. That was back in March, it just took them a while to finalize it I guess.

I doubt WW will close the gaming servers, they might scale down tournaments like they have been doing since Chojin left but I don't really know how far they will go.

[xvayne]

Well i for one am devestated by ww action towards emperor. I have become extremly addicted to emperor, and it became part of gaming day. Before all this I was a loyal ww fan all the way, but now I am far from it. I know if theres no money coming theres no point to put it in, but to keep there customers happy is far more important than current profits. To buy one game is (40 dollars). But a loyal fan will buy pretty much every company game, so you think ww would be interested in keeping a fan base. That is what makes no sense, is how could they sacrafice that many loyal life time buyers.

[ken124578]

:'(

[Frodo_I]

i have a couple opinions on the matter (big surprise)

1)  i think WWOL should do just as good a job supporting a game as WW/EA "tries" to do selling a game

2)  if the game didn't sell that well then WWOL should have had the foresight to do one of three things

either:

a) can the game, and end the suffering

b) integrate the game into a multi game (user interface) server that supports other games, for instance blizzard has the same servers for  BW, SC, diablo, diabloII, warcraft, and warcraft II all together, so everyone can game equally

c) they could have installed ad banners to pay for further support, or they could have combined "c" with "a" or "b" if those ad banners wouldn't make the difference

I don't think WWOL failed because they didn't have the rescources from good game sales.  I think WWOL failed because they didn't have the forsight and good people that EA doesn't seem to value.

That being said, i haven't bought the renegade game, and i may never do so, i'm not sure i want WW getting another 30 bucks from me after the treatment of this, and other games they have made

[Frodo_I]

OHH and about the old board (to get back on topic)

I think it sucked, Gob didn't have enough authority, and the game was getting "gangs" of users who were only interested in how to cheat, who called them a cheater, and who cheated this week

[Edric O]

Gob, isn't it true that Emperor would have sold better if WW/EA would have put more money in supporting it BEFORE the release? I mean, there are thousands of potential buyers out there who never even heard about it!

[Frodo_I]

Gob, isn't it true that Emperor would have sold better if WW/EA would have put more money in supporting it BEFORE the release? I mean, there are thousands of potential buyers out there who never even heard about it!

i didn't hear about emperor until i went looking to buy a video game.  For that matter, the only way i would have known about renegade was cause i play WW games.  

I didn't even know emperor was old when i bought it.  I thought it was new cause i never heard about it.  This is mute though, i think the trouble with emperor will extend to renegade also, people are already complaining about not enough servers.  And even if you have cable you cannot play with more that 4 players per team.  I think the problem is not what needs to be done, i think the problem is whos management the game is under.  I am skeptical as to whether ANY ww games will go good now that ww is under EA

[Gobalopper]

Well if you ask me it was all in the marketing. I mean if you lived in North America, I don't know about other places, there was almost no way you could have not heard about Renegade. They did so much for that game and look what happened, even Emperor got better reviews then it did.

So yes if you were to ask me it never had the support it needed before the game was released and that really hurt it. I don't know why maybe because it wasn't just WW's game but it was IG who did a lot of the work.

As for WOL I think WW is just slow to change, I think having a joint sytem for all games would work way better. I don't know about ads but since they already have ads on the messageboards I don't see why not have them ingame too.

Lets face it after two flops on their hands with Emperor and Renegade they better get their act together. If E&B doesn't sell then I don't think things look to good for WW.

[Frodo_I]

So yes if you were to ask me it never had the support it needed before the game was released and that really hurt it. I don't know why maybe because it wasn't just WW's game but it was IG who did a lot of the work.

WHich game emperor or renegade, or both??

[Gobalopper]

Just Emperor, Renegade was done by Westwood.

[DjCiD]

what if by some chance someone at WW or EA or whoever  is in charge of it just out of the blue (or with some deviator) decided to do a lil advertising and put out a demo of Emp and studied the results or what not think theyd see the untapped gold mine? or shall Dune Generations be the next Dune Game that sweeps the market the way EBFD should have ( or would have i feel if they would of spent a few on marketing).  Maybe WW should take a clue with Sci Fi doing the next instament of the continuing mini series....  oh well...

[ace1gold]

gob renegade has sold thousands of copies i wldnt call it a "flop", although i cant get into it myself mainly because the thing is god damn hard to get work it has sold @!$% loads of copies, plus they r patching it a lot more frequent and the community is heaving, go look at forum it has sooo many posts its unbelieveable

[Anathema]

It's 19 april and the WW board is still not dead...

[Edric O]

I hope EA decides to terminate WW. After all, the dEAvil will not tolerate inefficient slaves. ;D

The fact is, WW desperately needs new people to handle their advertising and marketing... The current team made a horrible mistake with Emperor, which probably costed the company a whole lot of $$$.

[DjCiD]

k Gob heres my idea, give it to Dev or whoever....

SciFi is doing Children of Dune, why not send a comerical for EBFD to them to advertise during the show...  give them a stie to get a demo from and see what goes from there....

*pinch*

huh oh yeah only dreaming ;D

[Gobalopper]

I guess they made the link to the forums on the Emperor page not point to the forums anymore but never shut the actual forum off. Should be gone now though.

Well Renegade didn't exactly get great reviews and it was only on the top 10 chart for two weeks I think. Now it probably sold more then Emperor but I don't think it turned out to be the "CS killer" that people wanted it to be. Maybe it wasn't a flop but I don't think it was a hit either.

And I don't think WW is going to spend anymore money on Emperor, it would be a good idea but not likely.

[ace1gold]

gob theres over 45,000 ppl on renegade tourny........... and emp has less than 600 how can u even try to suggest they r similar in sellign quantities

[Gobalopper]

Well Renegade is newer and was meant more for online play while Emperor is getting close to being a year old. So of course there will be more people playing it. I was just saying that if Emperor got the marketing attention that Renegade got it would have done better.

I didn't say Renegade sold less I said it probably has sold more then Emperor. But still I don't know if it was the hit that WW wanted it to be.