Here’s something that I didn’t mention to anyone before: for the past 6 months or so, I’ve been watching closely on the development on a little game called Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. The single player portion of this game is by Arkane, the same people behind one of my favorite RPGs of all time, Arx Fatalis, so my expectation is naturally high.
About two months ago, the single player demo of the game came out. It was absolutely amazing. Everything was done right and I can’t wait to play more of it.
Soon after, the multiplayer open beta came out, and I was one of the early players who get to try the multiplayer mode. Despite being developed by a completely different studio and the feel of the game night and day from the single player portion of the game, I find that there’s some exciting ideas that they’ve implemented.
In short, the hype machine got me this time.
If you’ve read the story this far, it doesn’t take much to imagine what happens next… despite some good things about the game, it is mainly a flop, and I can’t help but feel slightly ripped off. Then finally the naysayers all come out of the closet and put the nail on the coffin.
To come full circle, it makes me realize that despite the legions of complainers about WOW, they’ve manage to keep a small nation of players happy and never majorly screw up to the point that people run away by the masses… that’s something really worth respecting, I think.