It's kind of creepy over there nowadays . . . you get the impression you're walking down a long, dark, empty corridor saying "Hello? Anybody here?" Even the mods are gone. But they say on dark, rainy nights when bandwidth usage is low, the ghost of Grok can still be heard walking the halls of the deserted boards. I was just over there and thought I saw him out of the corner of my eye in the "Spoilers and Quest Help" forum. But when I ducked in to look, no one was there. ;-) (All this talk of Tolkien and what not in the other threads has got me to thinking of HP Lovecraft for some reason. "May Eve" was a big day in the Lovecraftian Cthulu mythos, but I think that was actually May 31.) Gaear
hehe the mod at Atari boards has made, erm, 0.02 posts/day in all the forums he mods... Lord Spike is father of the boards over there. Just wish he'd finish that Greyhawk world series... I want to know more! I loved PnP Cthulu.. the only PnP game I played where it was fun to find out in which interesting way you would die that session..
Yeah I noticed that about the Atari boards, for a while i was tempted to post "HEY ATARI YOU SUCK!!!" in the happy knowledge no-one would ever pick it up... Atari ignore a game, their boards are silent. Co8 release a patch, their boards are buzzing. Go figure. Pity there isn't some way to divert profits from ToEE to Co8, where they belong. Speaking of which, I saw the big box version selling in a local department store for FULL PRICE. Thats $89.99AU over here in the merry old land of Oz. I got mine just as patch 2 was released, whenever that was (many months back) for $14AU for memory. Some stores really have no clue.
Man, I got ripped off, I got my copy around the same time at Myer for the full price. I wish I'd known, but ah well, it was worth it.
I bought mine the day it hit the stores here in the U.S. I was looking forward to playing it so much I forewent my usually cynical period of waiting to see if the game was crap or not before buying it. Thank God for everyone here at Co8 making the game worth the $54.95US I paid for it!
Since there's so much interest... ...in Greyhawk, I think I'll start posting stuff here. My initial intent was to just give enough info to keep the ToEE story going...for those who didn't know and or wished to add more by modding. So, the logical thing to do is follow the audience....right here, to the Co8 boards. Those who can't mod, write. Rather strange that my rogueish youth led me to follow the warrior's path, now telling tales and possessing knowledge both arcane & mundane to share with fledgling adventurers...holy CRAP! I must be some kind of a BARD! Gaear, old friend, that was me prattling about over there, looking for lost and battered adventurers to guide hence
I just got mine for $5 on ebay. Now I need to find a friends computer to play it with. From what I hear, I'm not even going to bother with vanilla and just get all the fan mods the first time around.
Know what's weird? At the local Hatings where i bought my copy (budget bin, $10), they still had their big-boxes in the "current release" isle for about $40. WTF? I checked: it was EXACTLY the same thing, just a flashier, more expensive box. Barns&Noble, here we come.
Having heard all about Dragonshard.. I thought I'd leave Atari a message of support for their new RTS take on DnD... http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=403489
The Atari ToEE board was full of spamming idiots in as soon as a month after the game came out. while I do recognize a few names here from over there as credible posters, be glad it's dead. The majority of serious talk that went on there was all leading up to the games release. That forum wasn't good for anything other than directing people who see the game for what it is over here. Also I am currently beta testing Dragonshard, So far it's another by the numbers RTS with a few cool bells and whistles. As D&D game I was hoping for something like a "D&D" Age of Wonders, it has no where near that kind of depth The application of D&D ruleset in any sort of a game like that is real stretch to begin with. It all boils down to collecting magic items that give bonuses to your stats and leveling up units through building improvements. While an RTS in a D&D setting will be a novelty to some for a short time, this game will definitely do neither genre a favor. Nice post over there Zebedee, too bad Atari doesn't read there own forums and decides what games to make based on GOTY awards from all the stupid gaming mags.
I play a lot of Paradox Interactive games. They are a small Swedish company. Their games are usually buggy as hell when they first come out. But they patch and enhance and patch again for years after the game first comes out. They listen to feedback, their tech support is fantastic, their forums are well moderated. How can Atari manage to screw up so badly? It's got to be something in the ethos of the company. When I first went to the Atari forums to check up on ToEE (a couple of months after it first came out) I was shocked by the bug list. (Blame Troika, blame Atari - end result is the same). So I hung back, and I kept hanging back from buying the game. Bugs are acceptable but only when the company responsible for customer service is actually going to fix them. I never buy Atari games full price now. By buying at budget price, I can use the difference to support Indie developers. If a company has the licence to produce DnD games, how on earth does it end up using it to produce an RTS? I'm either getting old and senile or is it that it really is crazy? Look at the through traffic on this site since Livonya, Allyx, Morpheus, Dulcaoin, Agetion, Gaear and Lord Graywolfe (insert your name here if I've missed your name) started to integrate their work - and this is for a title that has an extremely bad reputation and is totally off the radar in gaming terms. /rant off. Apologies and normal service will be resumed shortly.
Ummm homepage for these guys? Google is SUCH a hassle, all that typing... EDIT: U know, i have always wanted to see some sort of D&D RTS, to my mind if you could have MP it would be the pinnacle of cooperative play (mind u, i have never played BG co-op as i think u can so i have no idea what that was like, probably I should have). If D&D were 'real life' a wizard would have barely a second when the monsters appeared to yell 'fireball!' - or an equivalent codeword - and then launch it at the approaching horde of goblins (or is that orcs?) at what he thought, using guesswork (or possibly some magical sixth sense) would be the best centre for the expanding sphere. The other players would have to know what they were about at that moment, or whoosh, up they go! Imagine fire support in a crowded tunnel, little halflings n elves trying to shoot over the barbarian and paladin in the front line... or the cleric with the blink of an eye to decide who needed a heal more, the dude getting stabbed on one side or the dude getting pummeled on the other... done properly, this would need REAL teamwork and would, imho, be awesome!! Having played mostly FPS's the last few years, cooperatively at LANs, I have always dreamed of a really good D&D coop game (RTS not FPS, FPS would be stupid). If they can do this well, I will certainly grab it 8^D
It appears to me that if a game isn't a big hit and deserves a sequel, like Doom, and if it aquires a bad reputation then the company won't support it. I went from the Atari site, to GameBanshee and then this site. If it wasn't for this site this game would be in the trash bin of failed games. It seems like if a game gets a bad rep, it can't shake it. Without co8-3.0.4 and temple .dll this game isn't worth playing. The sad part is nobody cares. A small group of modders keep this game going. I think it's a shame that they don't have a much larger audience tp appreciate their work. Go back and play the game as is out of the box and look at the difference. It's a sad situation, but it's getting better.