How many space combat games can we have?

An article on Massively talking about a forthcoming game called Black Prophecy made me think about space combat MMOs. I'm not sure how much room there is for them. I'm not saying the desire for a space combat MMO is zero - Eve Online would put paid to that - but I wonder if Eve hasn't cornered the market on this sort of gamer. To be fair, Eve has issues, by all accounts, so I suppose simply doing Eve better might reap a significant reward. We'll see how this new game does (I saw there was a beta signup - maybe I'll give it a run once I get my new setup in place (assuming the movers don't break my rig))

crazy news!

Wow! I turn my back for one second, and all kinds of news breaks! Flagship Studios goes under, and apparently citibank will have the rights to hellgate:london? And then WAR announces major cuts to the game at release.

It's a tough call, what to do when your game isn't ready. You need money coming in, but you're going to alienate people. Frankly, I expect they made exactly the right business decision - people are waiting for WAR, and they'll probably pay (regardless of how much they scream right now). So get something out there (that works) and add the rest.

Obviously the mistakes were in announcing the rest before they could actually be done. Don't any of these companies have a project manager? Or someone capable of telling them 'no, we can't do that in 12 months'.

Atlantica

I'm not sure what I think about the idea of a turn-based MMO - it seems... odd to me. Although, as a general, one often gives orders and then has to wait to see how they turned out, so if done like that it might work.

What prompted this was a story on Atlantica (which I think should be here, tho the site didn't work for me). If the site gets working I may check it out - I'm curious how they plan to do it.

Myst Online

Back in 2003 I sent my first job app to an MMO - I can't remember the position, but it was in Paris, and it was with Myst Online (which had a subtitle like 'legend of uru' or something). It seems I was fortunate I didn't get the job, as I read a story today saying the game has been shut down twice already, but may be on its way back (zombie much?).