Best Wing Commander Add-On

Best Add-On

  • Secret Missions 1: Goddard Incident

    Votes: 7 31.8%
  • Secret Missions 2: Crusade

    Votes: 6 27.3%
  • Special Operations 1: Ghorah Karr Rebellion

    Votes: 2 9.1%
  • Special Operations 2: The Mandarins

    Votes: 3 13.6%
  • Proving Grounds (Armada)

    Votes: 1 4.5%
  • Righteous Fire (Privateer)

    Votes: 3 13.6%

  • Total voters
    22
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This argument is completely retarded

You were hip deep into it!

Ok ok ok, just for future reference Secret opps is not an add-on, but I think people around here are having a hard time seeing it as a stand alone game. Perhaps "continuation" would work?
 
Wow, I didn't mean to start a firestorm discussion about semantics! Yes, you can play word games till the cows come home.

The points I wanted to bring up are essentially the points that Madman made more eloquently--that Secret Ops, although a stand-alone game, is far far closer to WCP than any other standalone WC game was to its predecessor.

LOAF, you said that no one in 1998 would have called it an "add on". Well, in 1998 I (and all of my WC-enthusiast friends) DID call it an add on. When people asked us what we were playing, we'd say "It's an expansion on Wing Commander Prophecy". Could you argue with our semantics? Sure. But the reason why we viewed it as such was because it essentially looked like they took the Prophecy engine, stripped out all the cutscenes and storyline stuff, wrote some new missions, and had their creative team write some fiction to be distributed and read independent of the game. So it felt like an add on--same game, just adding some new missions with some new fiction to go with them.

I would disagree with the statement that SecretOps added new ships while SM1 didn't... There were some new capships, sure (including the Cerberus), but SM1 had that too (the Sivar, anyone?) The flyable ships were all the same. You can change the color texture slightly and tweak the stats, but it's essentially the same 3D model, and the same basic capabilities, so it's the same ship.

On the other hand, WC2 and WC4, although they used the same basic engine as their predecessors, introduced completely new ships, new elements to the gameplay, new characters, and chronologically represented substantially different chapters of the story. Not so with Secret Ops.

I agree that Secret Ops is a strange, in-between case. It's so much like WCP that it smells like an add on, yet it is a standalone game. We could probably argue semantics till the cows come home, but I think it's far more interesting to argue the issues. It's interesing what you said about Secret Ops starting its development life actually as a non-standalone expansion pack... How was the decision made to instead switch to the free episodic release format? Do you know?
 
Ok ok ok, just for future reference Secret opps is not an add-on, but I think people around here are having a hard time seeing it as a stand alone game. Perhaps "continuation" would work?

That doesn't really pass the "why would anyone... ever... need to do this?" test.

I would disagree with the statement that SecretOps added new ships while SM1 didn't... There were some new capships, sure (including the Cerberus), but SM1 had that too (the Sivar, anyone?) The flyable ships were all the same. You can change the color texture slightly and tweak the stats, but it's essentially the same 3D model, and the same basic capabilities, so it's the same ship.

Secret Missions did have four new ships (Sivar, Lumbari, Diligent and Venture). The big difference is that all four were 'leftovers' which were cut from the original Wing Commander to save space*. Secret Ops actually had a dedicated art team and included a lot more than people probably remember. I count at least nine new ship models (Vesuvius, Accretion Disk, Ella, Starbase, Cruise Liner, Derelict Cruise Liner, Murphy, Plunkett and Cerberus), a whole set of new weapons effects (for both sides) and an all-new gameflow screen (the Cerberus' CIC).

* - I think everyone must have 'felt' this... nobody sits down to build a cool new series of extra-difficult missions that has to fit onto a single floppy and then spends half their space budget on graphics of new tankers.

On the other hand, WC2 and WC4, although they used the same basic engine as their predecessors, introduced completely new ships, new elements to the gameplay, new characters, and chronologically represented substantially different chapters of the story. Not so with Secret Ops.

I would disagree on several points.

- Story: Secret Ops' story is pretty darned important. It both begins and ends with events that change the shape of the Wing Commander narrative: first by bringing back the aliens in force (making it a proper war instead of a single incident) and then by leaving the Confederation with a usable captured wormhole.

- New characters: Secret Ops has several, including fan-favorite Captain Clippy... but most important (and most often ignored, since there was no followup) it introduces us to Admiral Rayak and Governor Cavazos as the replacements for the Tolwyn and Paladin roles. This would have been important...

- Completely new ships: Well, see above for the new 3D work. Gameplay itself included all the 'Black' versions of fighters with special weapons.

- New elements to gameplay: It doesn't have anything as major as phase shields, but there were several significant changes... including large fighter wings, friendly capital ships (*demanded* by fans after WCP) and an array of new weapon types to play with (who didn't enjoy cloud bursts?).

I agree that Secret Ops is a strange, in-between case. It's so much like WCP that it smells like an add on, yet it is a standalone game. We could probably argue semantics till the cows come home, but I think it's far more interesting to argue the issues. It's interesing what you said about Secret Ops starting its development life actually as a non-standalone expansion pack... How was the decision made to instead switch to the free episodic release format? Do you know?

The context that casts its shadows on every Origin product those days is the amazing, unparallelled success of Ultima Online. EA wanted Origin to move away from single player games immediately and so the team managed to sell Secret Ops as a similar chance to do something new with the internet that was also cost-effective... if it had been a smash hit then they could have charged people for future Wing Commander episodes. Turns out they were just about eight years too early...
 
It's also worth mentioning that Secret Ops has only existed as a standalone product for a couple of months when it was first released, and again since late 2008. For nearly ten years it was only available on a disc in Prophecy Gold, with the box labeling it as "Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops." The people whose first exposure was through Gold would likely think of Secret Ops as part of Prophecy.

Game developers themselves call their own products stand-alone expansions. If anyone thinks no such terminology exists within the video game industry, he is wrong.
 
It's also worth mentioning that Secret Ops has only existed as a standalone product for a couple of months when it was first released, and again since late 2008. For nearly ten years it was only available on a disc in Prophecy Gold, with the box labeling it as "Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops." The people whose first exposure was through Gold would likely think of Secret Ops as part of Prophecy.

Game developers themselves call their own products stand-alone expansions. If anyone thinks no such terminology exists within the video game industry, he is wrong.

Dude, just stop. Please arguing semantics is a losing argument every time.
 
I don't understand how this stupid argument could have last so long.

The poll was about add-ons. An add-on is something you add on to something else; in the case game of video games, you need to own another product to use it. Period.

Developers may call "expansions" whatever they want they think suits the definition of expansion (universe, related story, whatever)... but ultimately it's irrelevant because Secret Ops neither requires Prophecy to be played, nor was it ever called "expansion" by it's makers. Same for Academy.
 
Catnip said:
For nearly ten years it was only available on a disc in Prophecy Gold, with the box labeling it as "Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops." The people whose first exposure was through Gold would likely think of Secret Ops as part of Prophecy.

I would venture that that's the main reason why there's so much confusion over what to call Secret Ops: Difference of perspective.

Catnip said:
Game developers themselves call their own products stand-alone expansions. If anyone thinks no such terminology exists within the video game industry, he is wrong.

I'd say Secret Ops was a Stand-Alone Expansion. That's even what Wikipedia says. And yeah, I'm one of those Internet idiots that actually believes most of the stuff that's on Wikipedia.

frostytheplebe said:
Dude, just stop.

I could say the same about your posting a Best/Worst thread every other day. I hope you realize that you opened up this can of worms in the first place with uninformed, unnecessary polls.

PopsiclePete said:
I don't understand how this stupid argument could have last so long.

The poll was about add-ons. And add-on is something you add on to something else; in the case game of video games, you need to own another product to use it. Period.

Developers may call "expansions" whatever they want they think suits the definition of expansion (universe, related story, whatever)... but ultimately it's irrelevant because Secret Ops neither requires Prophecy to be played, nor was it ever called "expansion" by it's makers. Same for Academy.

The Voice of Reason took too long to appear. Thank you.
 
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