User comment history
< Newer [ 1 ] Older >
| News Comments > Gold - Uru: The Path of the Shell |
 |
| 18. |
TPotS and future expansions |
Jun 17, 2004, 11:12 |
Eric L |
|
|
Sorry for being johnny-come-lately to this forum. There's so much ground to cover with regards to this that it's ridiculous.
We were all rather traumatized by the closure of Uru Live. I myself had been beta testing for nearly a year, and so the closure marked a major personal loss for me. Nothing like seeing something you've poured your heart into for a year collapse due to "lack of interest".
In the post-mortem, it became apparent that the promotion of Uru just didn't compete well with the other games being promoted at the time--even other Ubisoft games. I've been through the grieving process, from blaming Ubi to blaming myself, but my general belief is that Ubi really didn't know how to promote something like Uru Live.
As far as the live component being buggy, well, yes. Prologue was the final dry-run while they got the systems ready to accomodate the thousands of people that were already flooding in. Cyan had a respectable number of beta testers, and Ubi had more, but the real stress test came with Prologue. Uru was still technically in beta, which is why it was free.
There's a particular contributor to the bugginess that I blame myself for. At one point, during the closed beta, there was the option of more than one Ae'gura. When you went to link there, you could pick from a list of different "instances" instead of just one Ae'gura. That really disturbed the realism of the game to a lot of us, and we shot it down. It just seemed to scream "you're in a video game!" to us. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have dealt with the biggest complaint--people had to wait in line to get to Ae'gura.
Even though a lot of people panned the first expansion, it was a step in my recovery process post-Live. I could at least get back to the places I remembered, although the broken 'heek table in Bevin* was a shock. People who hadn't been in Prologue finally got to go to the places that were hinted at in the original game. It basically brought Uru up to date.
As far as expansion packs after The Path of the Shell, there are two layers to the answer. The official on-the-surface answer is that TPotS will be the last, because that's what it looks like at this moment. The real word though, under the surface, is that it depends on how well TPotS does. Obviously, from Ubi's standpoint (and to a degree from Cyan's), there has to be some sign of money in it.
A lot of the fans are getting together to find creative ways to promote The Path of the Shell. If we can help TPotS do well, we'll boost the chances for future expansions. If we can convince Ubi that there's money in it, we may get Uru Live back someday.
At least that's our hope.
Shorah,
Eric L
*(Trivia: Bevin was the name of the original neighborhood the testers used, and literally the first part of Uru that existed.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
1 Comments. 1 pages. Viewing page 1.
< Newer [ 1 ] Older > |
|
Twitter 
