168 replies to this topic

[Gouty]

Hehe, I have an idea.

Egomane, if you had to formulate a hypothesis for why MWLL has been discontinued, what would it be?

[Adridos]

Gouty, on 17 January 2013 - 08:28 AM, said:

Egomane, if you had to formulate a hypothesis for why MWLL has been discontinued, what would it be?

Harmony Gold gone wild.

Microsoft gave them the license only for a set number of years and it went down in 2013.

The two leaders simply getting bored of it, or being pulled for a job that doesn't allow them any further modding.

CryTek shutting it down for making CryEngine 3 look worse than it's predecessor.


It's easy to make a hypothesis, really. And there is no denying or proving any right or wrong, sadly. Unless someone from the involved actually reveals the whole story, we are powerless.

[Volume]

I nearly cry every time I read that posting.

The injustice is immeasurable.

That said, in regards to this thread? Page 7 is just wall to wall trolling, I can't tell if Egomane is serious or not, or just replying to people who probably shouldn't have bothered posting in the first place.

Pro tip: When the first press release says "We want to continue working on it but we can't anymore due to the owners of the license" and then the second one says "To clarify, the decision to discontinue development of MechWarrior: Living Legends was made by the founders and owners of the project" that means that EITHER they are being forced to lie OR they truly, honestly, stopped developing MW:LL (despite wanting to continue to develop it).

Any ideas as to why this might have been done? Money? Possible hiring from another company? Etc etc? I don't wanna speculate, but it would be utterly inane to ignore the massive difference between both "farewell" letters and chalk it up to a "miscommunication" or whatever.

Saw this on the MW:LL forums: "They work for Crytek, PGI is a customer of Crytek.

Not logical to own a company making a perceived competitor of a client"

Emphasis on perceived competitor, despite not making any money, not drawing many people, anyone it would draw would play BOTH, etc...

Edited by Volume, 17 January 2013 - 09:37 AM.

[Volume]

double post.

Edited by Volume, 17 January 2013 - 09:37 AM.

[SouthernRex]

MW:LL is awful. So, meh.

[Volume]

SouthernRex, on 17 January 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

MW:LL is awful. So, meh.

MWO:Mercs is awful. So, meh.

Look, I can do it too.

[Adridos]

Volume, on 17 January 2013 - 09:05 AM, said:

I nearly cry every time I read that posting.

The injustice is immeasurable.

You still fail to grasp there is absoluetly zero logical reasons to force shut-down of a mod. If they had a mod that does exactly the same with numbers reaching at least a damn hundred, then I could potentionally understand, albeit still disagree with it, but shutting down a mod of 50 people, while knowing what the backlash will be seems...

[Catamount]

Adridos, on 17 January 2013 - 08:45 AM, said:

Harmony Gold gone wild.

Microsoft gave them the license only for a set number of years and it went down in 2013.

The two leaders simply getting bored of it, or being pulled for a job that doesn't allow them any further modding.

CryTek shutting it down for making CryEngine 3 look worse than it's predecessor.


It's easy to make a hypothesis, really. And there is no denying or proving any right or wrong, sadly. Unless someone from the involved actually reveals the whole story, we are powerless.

Well at least someone's taken to being the voice of reason here. Thank you, Adridos, for being one of the few people in this eight page thread to demonstrate a rudimentary understanding of basic logic.

Unfortunately, while you're absolutely right, and one could come up with a myriad of hypotheses about MWLL based on the tiny tidbits of information we have, none of which could be asserted with any amount of certainty, you're dealing with the tinfoil hat brigade here, so they're going to latch onto whichever one is most outrageous, insist it's the only possible explanation, and then rant and rave about it until enough people get tired of and ignore them and we go back to lolcats and complaining about lag shields. I suggest this happen sooner, rather than later. Arguing just gives them the attention that keeps the wild accusations flying (as though they'd really accomplish anything even in the extraordinarily unlikely circumstance that they were right).

Edited by Catamount, 17 January 2013 - 10:36 AM.

[TB Freelancer]

Wow two voices of reason....

....and a whole lot of Truthers....

[Adridos]

Catamount, on 17 January 2013 - 10:35 AM, said:

Well at least someone's taken to being the voice of reason here. Thank you, Adridos, for being one of the few people in this eight page thread to demonstrate a rudimentary understanding of basic logic.

Thanks for the compliment, but I really couldn't be a representative of the clear-minded people. I'm slightly biased towards MW:O, no matter how much I'd like not to in a rational discussion.

However, I completely agree that there's little to get to now. Without hard facts, or inside knowledge, this argument really can't move from a point.

[Catamount]

Well, whether by sincere effort at being unbiased, or simply serendipity, I think you've definitely arrived at the right attitude here.


I have an idea, since this thread is all about crazy hypotheses spawning out of a vacuum of information, let's create our own additions and see if we can beat the tinfoil hat brigade at their own game!



Okay, so here's my explanation:

MWLL was never intended to be a real game/mod; it was all a scam to attack MWO, preemptively. That's why it spent years proceeding at a snail's pace of development; why put tons of effort into a game that you plan to never finish?

How, and why? Here it is, fully exposed. They can't hide the truth!


Phase 1: Create MWLL, attract fan attention. This was done when MWO wasn't even MWO, back when it was just a conceptual project on the drawing board to create a new Mechwarrior game.

Phase 2: Have MWLL and MWO run concurrently. Have some of the conspirators pretend to be a few supposed LL fanboys troll the MWO forums, insisting that MWLL is amazingly better to attract more fan attention, and create the illusion of animosity between the titles.

Phase 3: Close MWLL, unexpectedly. This is where the genius of the plan begins. First, can the project without warning, and release a fake list of planned features that supposedly "you'll now never, ever see". Then, have more of the conspirators, basically Scar et al, pretend to be outraged LL fans and create a collection of angry forum threads (Oh, believe me, these "angry posters" are totally in on this).

The idea? Generate tons of animosity against MWO, at the most inopportune time, as part of a first step towards bringing down the project. Believe me, this is absolutely just the first step.


So who's behind this dastardly plot? None other than AL GORE. He's angry, because all the hot air coming out of gaming PCs and consoles is fueling global warming, so bringing down MWO is a first step in a grab for world domination, to ensure that gaming never happens ever again, anywhere. That's right; these supposed angry posters here? Their goal is nothing more than the cessation of ALL GAMING, EVERYWHERE!




Now, my hypothesis explains all the evidence that the TFHB's does, except that is explains two additional pieces of evidence:

1.) That MWLL never proceeded at a pace of development indicative of a serious project (oh, it was free and they had limited resources, right... THAT'S JUST WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!)

2.) Al Gore doesn't play MWO, so clearly he's in on an evil plot against it.

Edited by Catamount, 17 January 2013 - 11:31 AM.

[Gouty]

Reduce this to a triviality if you will, also, very witty, do you write your own material?


Edit Removed quote including Defenders removed post (he did this himself because he "was not informed enough to make the statements" at the time)

Rest of the post: here

Edited by Gouty, 17 January 2013 - 12:33 PM.

[Catamount]

Gouty, on 17 January 2013 - 11:50 AM, said:

Rest of the post: here

You see? This is why people shouldn't jump to conclusions.

Conclusions are something to be drawn slowly, and cautiously, with full consideration and appreciation of the limitations of their certainty. This is something any science student has drilled into them, over and over, year after year, with all the subtly of a murderous bludgeoning, because it's a lesson that's important.

Otherwise we just end up flying off the handle with things that later turn out to be wrong


I hope this concludes this thread, and any ill will towards PGI from MWLL's closure.

Edited by Catamount, 17 January 2013 - 12:45 PM.

[Purplefluffybunny]

My response to defender's post was thus.....

Purplefluffybunny, on 17 January 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

Given what you have said above it still stands that Kamikaze and Criminal, who own MWLL and work for Crytek, pulled the plug. As Russ states, he had a conversation and expressed a preference for a single project, his project. No one made any threats and Kamikaze and Criminal shut down development of MWLL of their own accord. Quite a few of the devs, the ones actually developing MWLL, would continue to develop it if they were allowed to by the legal owners of MWLL.

It is good to have that all cleared up and clarified.

Given all the documented evidence, what people have said, the above quote is a very solid statement. Which ever way you cut it, it does not look good for PGI nor others that are involved.

Edited by Purplefluffybunny, 17 January 2013 - 12:55 PM.

[Gouty]

I jumped to no conclusions.

And just because some people who did jump to conclusions might be wrong, doesn't automatically make the opposing view right.

Catamount, on 17 January 2013 - 12:42 PM, said:

I hope this concludes this thread, and any ill will towards PGI from MWLL's closure.

I hope this is not the end of the conversation, there are still questions unanswered, the main one being why did the decide to discontinue development of the mod.

We probably aren't going to find out either unless the owners decide to pipe up. Which does not seem likely. Only time will tell.

Edited by Gouty, 17 January 2013 - 01:03 PM.

[Catamount]

Gouty, on 17 January 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

I jumped to no conclusions.

Right, you were just quoting incorrect information from Defender, giving it an implicit endorsement. That couldn't possibly look like jumping to conclusions

Quote

And just because some people who did jump to conclusions might be wrong, doesn't automatically make the opposing view right.

You're right; people who assumed that there was no possibility of any intentional involvement by PGI/IGP would have been just as foolish as those who assumed such involvement was a certainty.

Exactly how many people expressed such a point of view?



I also still fail to see the point in the topic. As your yourself admit, even in the unlikely event that there is some grand conspiracy at work, we're not likely to ever know about it, and whining about it does no good (not that you've been among that crowd, to your credit)

Edited by Catamount, 17 January 2013 - 01:12 PM.

[Purplefluffybunny]

Catamount, on 17 January 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

Right, you were just quoting incorrect information from Defender, giving it an implicit endorsement. That couldn't possibly look like jumping to conclusions

No where has Defender retracted parts that pertain to facts known, some of which were known before this embarrassing affair.

1) Kamikaze and Criminal own MWLL, work for Crytek and don't currently contribute to the development of MWLL in a hands on capacity.

2) Russ had a conversation, (Russ's own words) with them. He expressed a wish for a single project, his project.

3) Kamikaze and Criminal shut down development of MWLL of their own accord.

4) Some devs actually working on MWLL would like to continue to do so but can't due to the wishes of the legal owners.

These are established IMO and nothing about these points has been retracted or countered. Indeed Russ's (?) statement reinforces these points. A lot else follows from accepting these four points as 'true' statements. I won't go into them here .

Edited by Purplefluffybunny, 17 January 2013 - 01:19 PM.

[Meldaran]

The news is starting to sink in and I'm slowly getting past the annoyance (*hint* understatement) phase.

When MWO was announced, I was thinking: Awesome. A commercial Mechwarrior game. Let's see where they go with this.

But I kept thinking: Even if they make a botched up job of it, we still have MWLL we can play, that's slowly moving forward with awesome stuff on the horizon and even if they're slow about it, they're ages ahead feature wise (yes I know they don't even have a mech lab. I too found that annoying in the beginning, but in the end, I thought having limited selection of variants, seeing we had so many vehicles/mechs/aeros to choose from, was so much better and helped eliminating min-maxing; I'm not saying I'm not enjoying having access to mech lab once more though).

Then we got access to to MWO, and seeing what state of advancement it was in, albeit being in beta, and what features were on the horizon (or rather, which ones weren't yet), I then thought: that's going to be a loooooong wait for it to catch up...

Now that MWLL's plug has been pulled. I'm going to be even more demanding of PGI. But I'm willing to wait (or rather, I don't have a choice ^^).

I mean look at a game like EVE Online and the way it's been developed. They started with a relatively 'small' feature set and watched what the players did with it, and then built upon them. Today, EVE is a *very* impressive game. You may not like it (it's like Marmite. Love it or hate it), but you can hardly deny this, and business wise, they're reasonably successful. Instead of going through the usual very high investment, high initial subscription (and accompanying datacenter and hardware requirements), almost nil conversion player/retention rate and closure that other MMOs usually go through, they built their game slowly. When I look back, I would never have believed that we'd be one day getting all the stuff we have access to now.

I'm hoping the same goes with MWO. Do things progressively. Get the basic technology, gameplay and balance right (please hurry up about that though ^^). Then start adding stuff. See if players love or hate it. Improve. Iterate.

But please *do* *give* us combined arms warfare in the long run, hour long battles, not just TDM variants, etc... ^^

Edited by meldaran, 17 January 2013 - 01:51 PM.

[RagingOyster]

Unfortunate, though not unexpected, news. It is a shame that Microsoft/PGI did not allow the LL team to continue developing their mod, or even invite them to work at PGI.

[Purplefluffybunny]

http://forum.mechliv...p?topic=17906.0

Not like this had not been on the cards for a while now. At least it is all in the open now. The above post was from around the same time that I was told by three different members of the MWLL dev team, that forceful emails were sent from PGI.