They sold over one million copies of Titan Quest. What exactly do you consider "no one buying the game?"
They're a small company with a modest budget. Unless a publish wants to jump on board and fill in that void, making a digital distribution is the only solution that makes sense for Crate Entertainment.
Ask the Iron Lore producer who was crying about their game flopping. What, total including expansion sales over the 3.5 years the game has been out? And including practically giving the game away during Steam sales? Bottom line is that the company literally went out of business after Titan Quest came out. That says something.
http://worthplaying.com/article/2010/1/27/news/71881/ Screens, also it seems you can no longer pre-order from their website.
Ah i loved TQ,completed it few times, so did few of my mates..i dont think it was a complete flop. Diablo III? 2011 sounds way too good, the yhave WOW: Catalysm coming this year, Starcraft this or next year. So i guess Diablo III wont be out until 2012. I guess i might pre-order Grim Dawn or at least buy it when its out. if its anything like TQ ill def get it
I really hope those screens are years old and they have since improved the graphics. If the game is going to look it has already failed.
First of all, they're low res images. So don't base your entire opinion on the visuals from the few preview screens you've seen. Secondly, have you even looked at the videos and screens from Diablo III? They look like something from 2005. Titan Quest looks better IMO and that game was made in 2006. Grim Dawn is built on the TQ engine + more optimizations and more texture detail. So not only will performance be better than TQ, but visuals will be better as well.
Am I suggesting that Grim Dawn will have superior visuals than Diablo 3? IMO, I think it will be on par with Diablo 3 at the least. Sound surprising? Just look at the videos and screenshots of Diablo 3. They're quite underwhelming. Now honestly, this isn't very shocking. Blizzard always looks at its entire customer base and doesn't want to exclude someone because they don't have a video card like 4670/9800GT or faster. Blizzard will make every attempt to have this game playable with an IGP.
Those screens look far worse than Titan Quest. It's like someone turned their gamma all the way down, all settings at low, and resolution at 800x600. At least TQ looked sharp and colorful. Diablo III isn't the best looking game out there but it's years ahead of Grim Dawn judging by these screens.
Like I said, low res images. I wouldn't hold those screenshots to be truly representative of the full detail for a game that is still ~12 months out from release.
This actually looks more like the original Diablo than Diablo 3. And no one should expect high end graphic from this game, since it's essentialy an indy tittle. Hopefully it'll turn out to be good, but their apperant fixation with dlc's (according to their site) I find a bit off putting, especially since they are basically asking the community to fund their tittle. It'll be interesting to see if this way of making games is feasable though, if it turns out to be, more developers may follow, and it'd be great to have developers make games for their fans, rather then generic big budget crap publishers want.
Essentially contributing to a game that we as gamers want, not what the publishers and developers want.
http://www.grimdawn.com/about_faq.php#q05 This may help explain what we mean by DLC and ease some of your concern. We're certainly not talking about charging $5 to download horse armor if that is the impression people are getting. We're talking about full-fledged expansion packs that can be added onto the game but, since we're going with digital distribution, naturally they will be downloadable.
The problem is that when I read "planned dlc's", I thought of possibility that instead of simply using cummunity's pre-orders to build the best initial game you can, your team might instead build a game with less content and use some of those funds to create dlc's in order to maximize on the good will of the community. It's just something that would be on the back of my mind while pre-ordering or donating money. Simply put, the uncertainty of what exactly I may be paying for, a great game, or a bunch of dlc's to pay for in the future. Perhaps it would have been better not to mention dlc's at this stage, so that people don't get any paranoid ideas (like I did). Because as someone who likes quite a few niche games (for which this type of development would work great), and belives that smaller teams almost always make better games, I would love to see you guys succed. As per FAQ "These expansions will be similar to a normal boxed game-expansion" is great to hear, considering that most dlc's for other rpg's amount to something like horse armor or an hour or two worth of content, while proper expansions have become history. Good to know you guys intend on doing dlc's right.
Deserved Bump! Can't wait for this game, there's more material on their site since this thread was made, check out the new screens, and here's a short Pre-Alpha (actually Pre-Pre) vid of some combat - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqGP4LT_cYo In one of the threads, someone asked how many pre-orders there'd been thus far, in which a mod replied (then someone added up the numbers); Dated @ 07-19-2011, so probably more by now. Great to see how awesome they're doing, even at Pre-Pre-Alpha stages. Has anyone here pre-ordered? I definitely plan to once I have the funds.
I would but I need more solid stuff I don't know... I have no doubts that it will be much better than Titan Quest. But they did show not much so far...
Grim Dawn Pre-Alpha: Occultist Class Just CANNOT wait for this game, though that UI really needs an overhaul.. Tacky!