Everquest was an awesome game, and I had some great times exploring and adventuring. As I passed 40 then 50 I noticed that I was not having as much fun. It took all the time I had just to get a group ready to do something before I logged. EQ became a grind and a chore. Sony/Verant ignored all their paying customers complaints and it catered solely to the hard core gamer. Now they are giving away the game.

WoW has its faults but at least it lets me get something done in a few hours. It minimized the “chore” part of an MMO and allowed me to have “fun”. Fun being one of the reasons I’ll pay to play a game (interaction and challenging content being the other). I can solo, group, raid, pvp without a huge time sink just to prepare and get anything done.

It is possible for bad business people to start a company. It happens all the time. Thats why at least 70% of all startup companies fail miserably.

Doing good business development deals early on does not guarentee success either. It seems that Red 5 is doing the right things on the business end for the moment, but it will remain to be seen how things turn out, as well as how good their game is.

Yes, I agree about Project Offset. Extraordinary graphics…but that is just the front end. Red 5 will need solid backend architecture on top of that.

When I said people waiting for their shot….well I can tell you from personal experience that there are a lot of people out there fighting for funding and attention, and working their butts off…but getting funding or business deals nearly always comes down to who you know, not what you know or what you have.

Anyway, this is all going to be interesting to watch how it plays out.

What intrigues me is that this team has picked the right partners. You can say all you want about design, but the fact remains a game is a business first and foremost. Good business can sell bad games *cough* Delta Force series *cough*. Bad business can sell a good game *cough* SOE buying Everquest *cough*.

Bad business however can’t start a company. I am guessing people in the industry that are waiting for their “shot” are just lazy, haven’t pursued it, are afraid to take the risk, or most likely just can’t market themselves and their ideas.

Red 5 gets the attention because they have and will continue to market themselves properly. First off they are teaming with Project Offset which is going to be big news in the next few years. On top of this they are in with NCSoft now and that gives them a buttload of experienced people and solid technology to work off. You did know that most NCSoft companies share tech? We could see a Red 5 MMOG running off the Guild Wars server tech… and honestly that wouldn’t be the least bit surprising.

And they would be dumb not to use their past experience on WoW as a bullet point on the good ole’ application.