[Cavarath]

I was lately thinking about the best possible pubsliher for the west.
And its really hard to imagine a company that is both, capable of publishing a MMO and not being involved in the usual casualization the most are doing to games.

Anyway, my list so far:

Probably not even interested because of own MMOs:
Electronic Arts
Funcom
Frogster
Acitivion Blizzard
NC West
Square Enix
En Masse

Companies that would definitely destroy the game (by either a lag of support or casualization):
Activision Blizzard
NC West
En Masse
Frogster

Companies that have not much or no experience running MMOs:
Ubisoft
THQ
2K Games
Paradox Interactive

I couldnt think of a single company i would give the publishing to without being worried.
Even so, i would probably choose Ubisoft because they have at least a little experience with MMOs and produce really great games that arent dumped down to fit the casual market. Only downside at Ubisoft, aside the lag of experience, is their UbiLauncher, which wouldnt effect AA since its being played online anyway.
Paradox would be interesting as well. But they do only publisher semi indie strategy games. I think they would fail publishing an MMO.

What publisher would you guys like to see for AA?

[PMC]

Valve, excellent history with their games.

[Cavarath]

But also zero experience with MMOs. And they are not publishing. Their publisher is Electronic Arts.

[PMC]

Yeah... I wish Valve published, love those guys. I haven't seen anything from Sierra in awhile though, maybe them?

[Cavarath]

Sierra doesnt exist anymore.

[ArcheAdmin]

I'm rooting for En Masse, to be honest. They would do the story justice, and they've handled their own game fairly well (TERA is fun, I've played in every test since late 2009).

NCsoft isn't the kind of company that publishes games made outside their own studios, as far as I know.

EA, Activision, and Ubisoft will publish anything, but that's not necessarily a good thing.

Frogster I don't really have an opinion of. I know some people at the company, but it seems that they haven't been very popular in Europe for reasons unknown to me.

Square-Enix wouldn't touch an MMO that wasn't named Final Fantasy.

Sierra got bought by some other company.

Don't know about THQ.

Who owns the Monolith studio now?

[Cavarath]

Sorry but En Masse is for me about the worst company possible to do the job.
They were lying to the community. They are making the casual themepark game TERA even more casual.
They are listening to the people crying on their forums about censorship for the Elin, which says much about how they will react in future situations.
They were originally named Blue Hole West and that means they are a sub company of the people in Korea that betrayed there community consisting of L2 players.
They have Brian Knox as a leading head.
They do only publish in the USA and give the licenses to publish their games to F2P companies with bad reputation.

The only company worse would be Activision Blizzard.

But i dont have to worry about this. They will be busy with ruining a ruined game and wont have time for AA.

Frogster is the F2P publisher that doesnt offer support at all. No anti cheating. No help. No anything.
Account security is as alien to them as the English language is.
And if someone stands up and puts up some negative feedback on their forums they are just deleting it. Sometimes even banning the person.

[Cavarath]

Sony. Yeah i forgot about them.
They got some experience with MMOs and they tend to do there own thing instead of releasing dumped down games.
But they just recently released Final Fantasy 14.
Thats why i would put them into group 1.

About Valve and EA:
Publishing is about more. Publishing is giving money to the devs and especially doing the marketing. But its true that Valve is doing a lot on their own.

[KeksX]

THQ is making their own MMO so they are out as well.


I would love to see a NA/EU office by XLGames. Would be the best way to publish this as they keep full power over the development.

[ArcheAdmin]

KeksX, on 21 April 2011 - 01:46 PM, said:

THQ is making their own MMO so they are out as well.


I would love to see a NA/EU office by XLGames. Would be the best way to publish this as they keep full power over the development.

They used to have one, but it was waaaaay too early and the one office they had in Austin was closed a few years ago. Now is a better time to start a company, but I don't think they'll do it.

If they did, I'd totally submit my resume.

[Power Incarnate]

I too wouldn't want EM handling the game for personal reasons. Cav who i +1ed listed most. Mark you already know my beef. I too have been in every test since late '09. The real problem is that the big question looming is still "What changes have we seen since initial testing, especially pertaining to PvP."...The answer? Simply put; an underwhelmingly low amount. TERA was pushed as a sandbox MMO focusing on the PvP community...since the initial announcement its gone steadily in the opposite direction while maintaining an enigmatic shroud on the PvP content, as to keep the initial pulls from the PvP community...

On a side note i disagree with Cav on one point. I dont think the game will necessarily fail by any means (we are talking about whether the game will be a financial success or not)...and for quite some time will easily be the best game out. In most Regards EM has done a gr8 job, i just don't like the way they handle business. Quite reminiscent of Blizzard and the whole Curse Board community...Casual, Care bear, Crying, Underhanded...

But we digress...

Likewise i couldn't really think of a pre existing one that id select at the drop of a hat. I think no matter what the deal is, its going to entail some kind of "freshness" for lack of a better term. Thats one of the things EM has going for them. First title, doing an exceptional job on a mainstream, casual community friendly, basis.

IDEALLY I'd love to see an XLGames West with some of their higher ups overseeing the operation. I truly believe thats the best case scenario. No existing bias, we get to feel them out while they do the same, and hopefully the end result would be as refreshing to publishing, as their title seems to be with MMO's. Other than that id like to see some of these pre-existing companies step it up, in order to draw a better conclusion. All of them have established fuck ups and high points within our sphere. Id love to see Funcom break out of their rut and pull it off, but they have upcoming titles and even then it'd be anyones guess. AoC had probably the greatest potential in a long time and it was completely ruined. I completely and utterly despise EA as a company. Richest, bandwagon producing, conglomerate there is. normally when they hop on a title they ruin it, at least in the non casual sense. Die hard fans lose out whenever EA's involved. UO was their greatest feat in publishing IMO, now their involved with SWTOR which is terrible IMO for more personal reasons. But UO is one title that was gr8, while they have a shit ton of others that i have been upset by, MMO or not.

So again...no definite conclusion. Ideally some of their guys expanding over here. If not only time will tell...and theres certainly time available. I say XL should play it patient and wait quite a while b 4 picking one up.

[Eligor]

THQ might be making their own MMO theough an inhouse studio but that doesn't mean they would take AA, it just comes down to profits nomatter the company. Unless a company has unlimited funding in which case they would care moat about being renowned as a good company... Now they just want profits.

[Cavarath]

Yeah i think THQ is working on a Warhammer 40k MMO. But thats so far into the future and its just a single MMO for a rather big company.

@Isow
Right. My mistake.
On the other side would Sony probably not only publish in the west while publishing rights for Japan are owned by another company.

[Power Incarnate]

Isow, on 22 April 2011 - 09:56 AM, said:

Is there already a publisher for Japan or are they self publishing?



Sooo... back to Valve, then?

Valve doesn't publish afaik...Unless we are talking about steam? And even then im not quite sure it works in precisely the manner being discussed? But i could be wrong.

[Eligor]

Valve doesn't do MMOs... They haven't got the resources to host MMO servers. Publishing games through steam isn't the same thing as providing servers for thousand of players across EU and NA.

[Power Incarnate]

Eligor, on 22 April 2011 - 11:42 AM, said:

Valve doesn't do MMOs... They haven't got the resources to host MMO servers. Publishing games through steam isn't the same thing as providing servers for thousand of players across EU and NA.

Yea i didnt think so...I knew it wasn't quite the same, just not "how" it wasn't.