Research into the emotions on the original closure

[PlatinumClient]

Good Day,

I know not how many responses I may get here, but here goes nothing.


I am student at university, and part of my course is to write a research paper related to my area of study. As a games design student I chose to look into the effects and emotions a dead game can have on its community. I know here you have revived the game through a community made server, but I wish to hear peoples thoughts and their emotions when you originally found out about the news.

Any responses would be greatly appreciated as I am having difficulty find games that have been officially closed down to the point of being unplayable such as this game was for a time.

any feedback is also much appreciated. CHEERS!

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FFZ8LJJ

[vianiznice]

Happy to help

[wargrimnir]

And my axe!

[Wrench]

Hi Mr. Client,

Well now it has been a while since I thought about the original game going offline. Out of memory it was the 18th of December 2013?

We actually suspected it way before that the game was going to be offline because about 5 or 6 months before that, you could not buy multiple months anymore (like 6 months or 12 month subscriptions). Of course nothing was said until I think early September 2013.

I was personally dividing my time between Warhammer and Guild Wars 2 but the news hit hard. Yes, I had games to fall back onto, but it is not always the game itself that you will miss but the community that you build within the game that can make your gaming experience that much better. Warhammer always was that one game that offered extremely good RvR and if you did not work together you were pvp food.


I remember many old guilds (Destro and Order) that were hanging in there until the close date. The last few days I made recordings of several GvG in CW (I think it was Orz versus a something Blackstone mercenary named guild of order, not sure anymore) Of course there were the renown 100 + gear u could use if you did not hit 100 yet and those potions that turned u into stone that u get a lot less damage and do less damage and the Aqshy potions that you could throw on the enemy and wipe a nice formation of players:-)

To answer your question:

The server going offline was a profound sense of loss,
I will not lie:
Real tears were shed on our Ventrillo. I myself was in Fallen legion in the end, allied with Red Shadows and a few other guilds. We stayed online until the server kicked us off. And one by one we logged out of Ventrillo. I still miss my friends form back then even though some moved with us to other games. It never is quite the same. Many memories and epic fights + idiotic wipes to remember but they all created a unique gaming experience I have rarely encountered since.

I can only thank the Devs and others for bringing the game back and that confirmed to me that my former guildies and friends in game were not the only one left with the feeling that this game had so much more to offer. And now it can again.

Kind regards,

Wrench Crowbar

[Darosh]

Good Day,

I know not how many responses I may get here, but here goes nothing.


I am student at university, and part of my course is to write a research paper related to my area of study. As a games design student I chose to look into the effects and emotions a dead game can have on its community. I know here you have revived the game through a community made server, but I wish to hear peoples thoughts and their emotions when you originally found out about the news.

Any responses would be greatly appreciated as I am having difficulty find games that have been officially closed down to the point of being unplayable such as this game was for a time.

any feedback is also much appreciated. CHEERS!

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FFZ8LJJ

Hey there mate,
I'd suggest you reach out to the folks from CoX (City of Heroes/Villains), their story is alot more ~ well, intense.
Here you'd go for that.

Let me put it into perspective:
Whereas WAR was a pretty flawed game from the get-go and its end almost inevitable - especially given the gremlins from hell in their very back happily stabbing away... -, CoX was at it's peak* (it still was reasonably proftiable) when NCSoft shut it down to 'clean house' for their stakeholders, given they have gone through a pretty bad year beforehand. CoX was made the scapegoat for their failure in terms of investments and so on.
Long story short, their shutdown was more abrupt, and NCSoft is ever since running a policy of scorched earth* - as a game designer you might have heard about the latest incident regarding the topic (there are better articles on it, but I can't be arsed to source them).

If I had to pick a case to study, lets imagine I was young again and would go through the very tiresome psychology studies once more, to which your studies are tangentially related - its getting ever more relevant in games nowadays (with your very case being a good example), for better and certainly worse (recent developments regarding the introduction Skinner-Box'esque mechanisms; lootboxes, matchmaking tampering, yadayada) - I'd pick CoX's fate rather than WAR's.

Just skim through the CoHTitan forums, you'll notice rather quickly - I'd suggest you dig up older posts, they read like a visit to an asylum in print.

Best of luck with your studies!
Cheers.

Abbd.:
* The folks playing CoX did not - at all - expect a shutdown, so their attempts of logging packets for the emulator shenanigans were futile, as they had a headsup of roughly 2-3mnths iirc - that might even be too generous of an estimate.
** NCSoft is since shutting down anything that comes even close to an actual re-creation; emulator or otherwise (with that Paragon Chat thing standing only due to legal loopholes and its state), keeps the IP in their greasy and greedy grasp (see the incident mentioned above) and ... rumor has it that they have pretty much nuked the servers (and everything of the likes) that held the source code in a rush to reuse them for the piss-poor excuse of a MMO that GW2 has eventually become.

[TenTonHammer]

The options feel a bit limiting kinda

like for example the ruined vs cherish memories thing.....

[Darosh]

The options feel a bit limiting kinda

like for example the ruined vs cherish memories thing.....

The 'joy' that is doing statistics for just about anything remotely related to just about any kind of psychological phenomena - I am actually surprised that such an undertaking is part of game design courses; they can become really messy ~ really quickly, limitation equates to accuracy if you will.
There is no point in giving respondents too much leeway, for that you'll end up creating an abomination of data that you can't possibly sieve through in a manner that would allow you to craft a metric that you could feasibly work with, or draw conclusions from otherwise.

Abbd.:
Note: It should go without saying that game design and psychology go hand in hand, but the scope of this undertaking in particular is quite something. I'd be interested in the very contents of the paper in regards to game design, as - frankly - decisions of that kind (to discontinue a gaming service and alike), before and after the fact, are normally outside the very spectrum of a game designer's responsibility.
I guess it is primarily concerned about retention; the relationship between publisher/developer and costumer/playerbase and longterm developments, yadayada?

Though, there is alot that could further be inquired than just retention - hence, at first glance I'd consider the very (raw) proposition of this paper to be more suited for a 'proper' psychology course, as there are naturally applications in a plethora of fields, you could expand the scope of this research to all kinds of products and situations alike. Surely, research of this kind has already been committed, but studies are studies - if it is a project that he has chosen <entirely> by himself, well, it shows dedication, but moreso interest in basic psychology rather than gaming as such, but the latter is certainly one of the most enjoyable angles from which one could approach this field.

E: Words.

[PlatinumClient]

cheers for the replies guys, it been two weeks of getting nothing but in the last week boom, mtuolie responeses from multiple games and with more game suggestions i hope to have a massive amount before the end of the month.

anyway to replay to some specifics.


TenTonHammer
the options are limited, but the scope of this subject is very borad, and I am limited to writing 2750 at the very max, and I tried giving you as many chanced to write in detail when possible.

but ultimately I figured your memories will become bitter or more cherished, happier or sadder. I did not want to add anymore options when the end point of most feelings would be happy or sad anyway.

but at the very least could you provide anymore example for feelings, or at least your specific feeling on your memories and how the games ORIGINAL closure changed them?


Darosh
thank you so much for the err... well informative posts lets say. The main goal of my paper is to see the emotion and connection a player has towards a game and then find out what those turn into or become when that game is ripped from their hand, unable to play it again. For me a potential designer I feel like its important to keep your players happy with the game they play, long after after you have abandoned it for another project.

Also as a side goal i want to try and establish some variables or parameters as to what kind of games can suffer this horrible ultimate fate f death. Which from my own research and suggestions from others are almost exclusively online games, with online profiles which are not stored on your computer but on a company server.

yeah this kind of psychology could be, and can applied to other media and products as well, one of my feed backers have said I should also look at tv series, as they commonly have a final end with no more additions being made, whether canceled or the show ran its course.


also I will look into the COX fiasco when i get the chance, I typically dont keep up with that kind of genre news.

[Telen]

I remember getting the were closing down in a 3 months email.
I was on holiday in Ireland checking my email in my hotel room.
Really ruined my day.