Will "MoO" Franchise Be Sold?

[DanQ]

From Apolyton's 'Miscellaneous' section from the end of last month:

In 2003, game developer Stardock Systems (SS) decided to delay the release of Galactic Civilizations for the PC a month so as to give the strategy market some breathing room between it and similarly themed and chief competitor Master of Orion III from Quicksilver Software. In the end, most popular and critical opinion put GalCiv ahead of MoO3 in acceptance and critique. Now, the SS Founder/President who served as GalCiv`s Project Lead -- and now on its sequel, Dread Lords -- has told Apolyton Civilization Site (ACS) that his company is "in negotiations" to presumably acquire the rights to the Master of Orion franchise.

"We don’t know yet", Wardell says when the first two words in the competing series` title are mentioned to him. "We have an agreement on the money. There’s just a lot of contract issues that have to be resolved still".

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[Darkstar]

Wow. So Galciv3 might turn out to be titled MoO4? That's... interesting. Well, StarDock, if they did a MoO, would do an truly interstellar job of it.

[Ellestar]

He said "Master of ..." and we already know that Stardock is trying to buy "Master of Magic" license. Also, Brad Wardell said on GalCiv forums that they'll make a fantasy TBS anyway, be it MoM2 or not. I suppose that it will be that 2008 fantasy strategy. Why do you think that in this interview he talked about a "Master of Orion" license?

[vmxa1]

Either way let see something. No MoM has been done and no one is talking about MOOx, so it can't hurt.

Although I must note that I was not in love with GalCiv and judging from the forums here it is not a superstar. I see that even Realms has let it die.

[Destroyer]

Galciv was awful!

I bought it and was expecting so much after what some fanboys had said, but I think half of it was because of the great support provided by Stardock. The actual game itself isnt particularly great at all.

Its inferior in every way to Moo2. And the best part of moo2 - combat was non-existant on Galciv. I just dont think they have that sort of programmming experience. Its all seemed a bit amateurish anyway. The interface was a bit clunky too.

Personally I think Moo3 is the best space based 4x by a mile. It took me time to get into it, and had way too many bugs upon release, by the time the patches came out, people didnt need any further excuse to hate it.

Shame really. Moo 3 had great potential for further development, as I think the framework is there for a really fantastic game.

[TheDarkside]

Yeah I'm not too thrilled about the makers of GalCiv getting the Moo license. I found Galciv to be amateurish and boring.

I also didn't like Moo3 though, but destroyer's comments amost makes me want to locate my CD and give it another try.. I have not tried any of the patches as I deemed the game DOA with no chance of resuscitation.

[Destroyer]

Originally posted by TheDarkside
Yeah I'm not too thrilled about the makers of GalCiv getting the Moo license. I found Galciv to be amateurish and boring.

I also didn't like Moo3 though, but destroyer's comments amost makes me want to locate my CD and give it another try.. I have not tried any of the patches as I deemed the game DOA with no chance of resuscitation.

The thing about Moo3 is that you have to rely on Macro management. You no longer need to tell the planets what to build. You merely "zone" the planets to produce food, Manufacture, research, etc. The AI does the rest. You can still queue planetry buildings and military stuff. But moo2 had one build queue. Moo3 has 3.

Everything about the game is slightly different to moo2, which is why people went into it expecting the same relation as the civ series, and didnt know how to play it. A crap manual pretty much killed the game in this respect.

Moo3 is a very deep and complicated game. There are dozens of pages on the Atari forums, on the strategy pages. I suggest you read some of those to understand the game better. If you fancy fiving the game another chance, download the patch and either the Strawberry or Megamods to make the game much more playable.