A "poor" WC year? What?

S

SpaceDrake

Rear Admiral
Looking at the frontpage, I'm STUNNED so many people are voting "poor" for what kind of year it's gonna be. Between the already-release portion of Standoff, what's still to COME for Standoff, WC Saga, continuing projects like HTL and whatnot, and the stuff that usually happens out of nowhere each year, this looks set to be quite possibly the best year Wing Commander has seen in a decade. Standoff, and even more so Saga, have a very good shot at revitalizing the franchise, I think. Especially if we get Slashdotted.

So yeah. Stop voting poor, you hacks :p
 
While fan projects are all well and good, they are all we have left of the once mighty WC empire. While entertaining, they are nowhere near as cool as a new game would be... and sadly that's never going to happen. It's us realists driving the polls.
 
NuclearPenguins said:
While fan projects are all well and good, they are all we have left of the once mighty WC empire. While entertaining, they are nowhere near as cool as a new game would be... and sadly that's never going to happen. It's us realists driving the polls.
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Well, Great dominated the polls for several days. It's you people not visiting consistently who are starting to now add up. Electronic Arts and other organizations regularly take an active interest at creating new Wing Commander products. Unfortunately the market for all simulation material right now is not nearly what it was ten years ago. These things all happen in cycles and it's only a matter of time before things chance. The original poster's point still stands though. What else has happened in the last five years that compares to what's going on right now? If you take the fifteen years that Wing Commander has existed, and rank them from best to worst, even counting years when new WC games came out, 2005 could only possibly be an average year at worst. Once again, as the original poster said, 2005 will be the best year for Wing Commander since the CIC opened, so I really have no choice to vote anything else but "great."
 
I agree, 2005 will be an average year at worst . Besides, why would you want anything less than a great year?
 
Who knows... perhaps some brilliant unknown developer will release
"Baldur's Gate... In Space!", and it will magically turn the faded, once-proud genre of space combat "sims" into The New Hotness.
 
It's hard to imagine how it could be a 'poor' year. That would mean, to me, that something bad would have to happen -- that a game would be cancelled or that the community would fall apart or some other

Now, sure, we can lean back and declare that the only way we'll ever feel good about Wing Commander is if Electronic Arts announces a new game. Then we can each add our own personal caveats to further avoid the possibility that it might be a good year: the game has to star Mark Hamill, the game has to be produced by Chris Roberts, the game has to give you a diamond studded steak for playing it, and so on. The point is that no matter what happens, people are going to try to avoid enjoying themselves.

So what will make this a great year? Hell, I don't know - I can't promise that it will be. I know I'm going to enjoy the hell out of it simply because of the community. New game or not, I'm going to enjoy 365 days of arguing about the movie, helping new players with tech support, making really great friends and learning more about Wing Commander here, on IRC, in Atlanta, in Austin and in real life. The Wing Commander community is one of the closest knit, best fandoms in the world -- we will always have that to look forward to.

Beyond that, who knows? There's fan projects - I hate to admit that I don't play them very often, but a lot of people love them. They don't have to be your cup of tea, though, for you to realize what they're doing for the community and for you to understand how much love and effort is being expressed by their teams. Give them a try - they might surprise you and they're sure to inspire and impress you. The same goes for fan fiction, fan art and all the other activities that fans do on their own.

I'll be doing my best to try and find new pieces of some of our long lived puzzles. Wing Commander 2 SNES is out there. The cut scenes from the Wing Commander movie are out there. Prophecy DVD is out there. Scripts and artwork and other documents from cancelled titles are out there. Half a dozen other holy grails are out there. I'm going to work on trying to find them -- chances are, I'll hit a home run or two and we'll all benefit. Lend me a hand, if you want -- there's thrill in the chase.

And can any of you really claim to be done with the massive amounts of Wing Commander that's already out there? Ever played the 3DO port of Wing Commander III? The gameplay is completely different! Go pay $50 for a used 3DO on eBay -- for the same price as some horrible car robbery simulator you can play a new Wing Commander. Why not hunt down that rare book you never read? Or that rare port you never tried? I know for a fact that none of you have played Wing Commander for the FM Towns! Heck, a lot of you have probably never had a big Armada multiplayer battle. You can put together a network of 486s for the cost of a new game. Give it a shot, you'll have a good year.

This year in Wing Commander is how you make it. EA can step up and make it an amazing year without exception by announcing a new game, sure... but the lack of that event is not a death sentence. (And even then -- as the man himself chose: there's always hope. Keep that hope alive and you'll have a good year, even if you don't take any of my advice.)
 
Heck, a lot of you have probably never had a big Armada multiplayer battle. You can put together a network of 486s for the cost of a new game. Give it a shot, you'll have a good year.
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Just wanted to add that Armada has been compatible on the Kali network for sometime... It'd be nice to see some players there for online WC action.. ;)


Hmm... I just had a interesting thought.. What about an Armada ternement this year? That'd be something..
 
Really? Last time I heard anyone talk about Kali, Armada was not properly playable on it. What emulator or system would you boot the game up in first? http://www.kali.net/games.asp They don't list Armada.

We talk about tournaments all the time, but people have enough trouble just getting the game to run.
 
Hmm I'll have to get back to you on that... I havn't done the Kali thing in quite a few years... I remember it worked a while ago but with no one playing I stopped using the network.

(And now I have a new prodject to keep me busy for awhile... thats what I get for opening up my big mouth... lol)
 
Prior to a year or two ago, there was no method whatsoever to Play Armada in any variant of Windows, so getting it going over Kali would have seemed to be a difficult situation. Now there are methods.. and Kali does indeed support IPX network stuff.. but I still haven't heard of anyone getting it to really work.
 
There was a DOS version of Kali some years back that worked with Proving Grounds with some memory juggling, IIRC.
 
I'd be willing to play some Armada and/or Proving Grounds over kali or any other medium if somebody could get it together... I've got my old Pentium 166 and it runs armada like a dream.
 
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