[mohaa] Is PA dead?

[Jordan]

Quite honestly, my clan-mates lost interest during the whole patch #1
process. The few who kept playing it afterwards eventually stopped because
none of their pals were playing it. As for me, I became disenchanted with
the whole thing after waiting for months for the Linux binaries in the hopes
that the Linux version would run better (that's not a reflection of the
excellent work Ryan does, more that EA SHOULD have been on the f*ckin' ball
in the first place).

I run both Windoze and Linux servers on a T3; I tried to run it on the Win
box for about a month...even after the patch-1 fixes, there were net-code,
user-connection and resource issues. It was also obvious that a main
weak-link in the chain was that most users don't have the hardware to run
the game at "playable" frame-rates. 

Someone earlier brought-up a comparison between the number of PA servers and
the number of CS servers, which was kind-of an unfair comparison, but, I
want to point-out that the reason CS is so popular is that it's playable on
almost any machine. If you have a 5-year old machine with a 32MB vid card
and a halfway decent connection, you're in. Full DX9 games require a lot
more horsepower. Funny thing is, PA is a rough play even with a serious home
machine on a proper connection to a good server.

Also, this shouldn't be about sharing copies of the game and whether or not
6th-gen copies are easy to get...personally, I am always willing to pay for
retail versions of games because it keeps the game-design companies in
business...after-all, they can't make games if they can't pay their
designers/programmers. If you're a serious gamer and you're too cheap to buy
a $45 game, especially one that you're into enough to belong to a clan for,
there's something wrong with your priorities. BUT, Stefan is right, if the
demo is fubar'd and users have to buy a full version to see that the game
actually DOES have serious problems that will likely never be addressed by
the company that built it, that's a total waste of time AND a rip-off. Not
to mention that forcing admins, especially those who rent their servers, to
upload the ENTIRE game so they can run a dedicated server is totally
ridiculous...bandwidth costs money, y'know. 

Is PA dead? Well, when I hear my clan-mates saying things like "yeah, I
really WANTED to like it, but it never played right" or "I kept trying to
play it, but it was always too laggy", it leads me to believe that if most
clans are like us, it's basically dead - at least by popular standards. -And
these are seasoned, adult clan players who LOVE MOH...and who know how to
set their systems-up...not 12 yr old noobs. If EA is turning these folks
off, the core members of the MOH fan-base, then the game is destined to die
a slow, lonely death...like BT.

-As an aside, we regularly have international players on our CoDUO server
that have pings of over 300 and they say that the lag is practically
unnoticeable...and they don't seem to affect the rest of the players. How's
THAT for good net-code?! I know this isn't a CoD dist-list, but for the
record; I was very reluctant to try UO because I didn't really like CoD, but
I have to say that I love UO...it runs great and it's easy to admin.


Ummm...JMTC.

][ambrgr_][elpr




-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Hartland [mailto:killing at multiplay.co.uk] 
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 6:10 AM
To: mohaa at icculus.org
Subject: Re: [mohaa] PA binary?

I wouldn't be surprised if what u say is true, cut their losses and run.
If we get a Linux server in the end then good if not I wont be loosing
any sleep over it.

    Steve / K

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Luke" <luke at techfreak.org>

> My guess is that EA is simply saying to themselves 'this game pretty
> much sucks. Why should we continue to dedicate staff and resources
> when its not going to get any better? Lets cut bait and focus on the
> next project'. Its bad PR, but good business.
> 
> Luke



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