Imperator Postponed

[Rakael]

I don't know if anyone has seen this yet or not, but apparently Imperator has been postponed (www.imperatoronline.com/pressrelease/). Permanently.

Sad too, as I was really starting to look forward to this game.

Editor: It's great news actually. With Imperator being indefinitely postponed, the Warhammer-MMO (http://www.mythicentertainment.com/warhammer/) is coming along full steam.

[Rakael]

A dev may want to fix that hyperlink, as its screwed up somehow.

*I think the /pressrelease is unecessary, as imperatoronline.com automatically directs you there.

[kokyunage]

The only problem is the game didn't feature anything new or exciting than a somewhat interesting backstory (Roman Empire never falling). That could be a decent FPS or Age of Empire-esque RTS game.

[Rakael]

Yeah, but I'm a bit sick of swinging swords and axes myself. It seems that any game that is varying from the sword and sorcery MMO mainstay is either not supported by publishers and the fans, or is cancelled near the end of its production. I honestly do not understand why they would cancel anything this late, as the money and time are already invested. They could at least try to recoup some of those losses.

[Deadend]

It was just like the old MMOs.

but laser swords and robo-axes.

[Garthilk]

Basically they are switching gears. Warhammer online will become the new focus, rather than Imperator. Which may well become nothing more than a scrapheap of code. We shall see.

[Tricky Thumb]

If you're sick of swinging swords and all that, you could always look into www.autoassault.com or www.playtr.com since those two games are very sci-fi and very unique looking.

[motor]

The weird thinga about MMO's is that the server cost is so huge that sometimes it is actually cheaper to shut down near the end then to try and run it for a six months and see how things go. It is difficult to ramp up servers quickly, so you need to make an strategic investment in X number of servers at start up. If you guess to few then you can have bad start-up perception issues (which can be very hard to shake) and if you have too many you are really just burning money. I think that's why sony is going to eventually have a real competitive advantage. They are acquiring real skill at managing a huge array at servers that potentially they could start to dynamically allocate to different games. And that is a huge competitive advantage.

[eatme]

This is absolutely the right choice, if they had doubts about the game's quality or viability. Motor's dead on: add all the MMO launch costs on the hardware side, plus the public beta costs, plus marketing costs, plus....

Re: Sony (SOE, really), they won't have a competitive advantage until they fire some people at the top and figure out who's running the show.

[Bushido]

Vini Vidi Vic.....aarrgggghhhh

[balamoor]

No great surprise here. Mythic dose some really nice work, but they make some really bonehead decisions.

Lets make Paladins rent horses in our Arthurian MMORPG!
BRILLANT!!!

Lets create a Sci Fi game but not allow people to own Spaceships, or have space combat
BRILLANT!!

[Klade]

This was somewhat expected but still good to see that mythic can read the writing on the wall.

The game had less then nothing special going for it. It was using old ideas and it wasn't even all that great looking. Anarchy Online fills the role for futuristic combat MMO. It would have bombed at release so switching gears was a good idea.