Originally Posted by
Drayth
Interesting thread for sure. Sadly, it's never gonna happen the way people, including Aaron himself, have handled things over the years. Hi there, Dray here, though you may've known me way back in 2000-2001 as Elder GM Caldris.
EA was a damn good game. I don't think it was my first MMO, but it was easily the best one I played the most, besides WoW, and still is. I have so many fond memories of it, and that's saying alot since I always was, and still usually am, a Carebear and the Open-World PVP was a huge part of this game. I still have my old Gold Release CD even, though Client CDs aren't very useful for this thread's goal.
However, as I said...it's not going to happen. As said earlier in the thread by Oracle, Aaron mostly wanted to work on the Engine to sell it. MR/Mister/Justin Gonzalez tried his best to run it and make it big...and also as said earlier, EA, if handled better, could have been super popular and a big thing...but there was waaaaaay too much corruption going on behind the scenes, and Aaron was focused on selling an engine, not making a big game. He's damn good at what he does but he's a developer, not a PR guy lol
The first big mistake was him not keeping backups of the "Original/Gold status" source code for himself. So Housing? Lost forever.
The second big mistake was the corruption: Letting active players who had no idea what "balance" was write/direct quests, and also giving some of those people shit noone else could obtain, e.g; Crom Wings, that one blob gun(Chalis? I don't remember) among a few others. People lied and said "Hurr hurr they're in chests in the Catacombs" and sent folks on wild goose chases etc.
The third big mistake was selling "the game" to people who wanted to turn it into other shit and basically used it as a lazy live-testing ground for stuff, like those "race" courses that you may have seen in the past or on Snowfox's server some years back when playing around.
Just to name a few, anyways. You know what the biggest problem of all is though? The few people who do have the power to do anything useful are greedy and trying to milk a once-interesting, but currently dead game that has no use or relevance other than nostalgia for all it's worth. 20k is ridonkulous for this game, especially with A) Lack of Documentation/clear Guides on making it work properly, B) Source is unreliable and not directly from Aaron himself, who doesn't even have it anymore nor does he care either, and C) A current MMO market where the "general player populace" will not stand for their items/gear dropping on death.
Those of us who are Nostalgic for the game, prefer it in the incarnation it was back then, but keep in mind: The Community made alot of that, too. There wont' be SWAT with Wargazm and Blue, there won't be the Fish guild, there won't be Toxic with Jezarith or Iggy supplying both sides of the "wars" with Orbic Heals and Zogs, and the post-gold AI changes made things odder too.
Endless Ages was a game before it's time. It could have been so much more. But it wasn't given the love it deserved, and now it's far too late to do so. Noone is going to successfully revive it for very long, and even when they do, they're not going to run it Professionally or Properly. It pains me to say this, but none of us will ever experience this game in it's true form ever again. Enjoy your Nostalgia, don't let the hope of reliving it be ruined by piss-poor attempts to do so. There are no reliable file sources, not of the game as it should be, no documentation, nothing.
At this point you're quite literally throwing your money down the toilet, so much is broken and so much work is required it would either require a larger team and budget than is fiscally possible, or you'd be frankly better off doing a new, similar game from the ground up. Kickstarter is out there, Greenlight is out there, you just have to get the talent, Coders, Artists, PR guys, Legal Guys, Anti-DDoS and Anti-Hacking measures to protect yourself from douchebags that get butthurt and childishly threaten to attack you, be it like CHOB or Snow or whoever else crops up with their silly feuds.
I loved this game, and I GM'd for free for that solid year of Gold release, Aaron did not pay us, we just wanted to help the game and help you guys back then. But there comes a point where you need to just realize what is and isn't feasible and just move on, folks. It's been -13- years since the Game was in it's "Full" state and other than a handful of half-assed attempts to revive it, with terrible AI, missing systems, missing mobs entirely, and so much other crap, noone's ever had it running proper for long. I'm glad you guys miss it as much as I do, but you're fooling yourselves at this point.
