News Room Contributor  Posts: 4926 Joined: 12 Nov 2002     | |
Paperboy  Posts: 15 Joined: 14 Aug 2008     | Sad to see Homeworld on that kind of list. I still play that game to this day. The only other game that comes close, in my mind, is SoaSE. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 464 Joined: 24 Mar 2008     | It always was an inevitability, I am sure any consumers for whom these servers are important are important centres of their gaming lives are getting a little certificate of appreciation, a nice Sierra cap and a coupon for a free half year of WoW for being such dedicated Sierra clientele. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1525 Joined: 6 Sep 2008    | Was bound to happen eventually |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 563 Joined: 16 Jul 2008   | Was going to happen eventually, and to be fair alot of the people I know who play half of those titles online doso via hamachi. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3762 Joined: 14 Jan 2008   | I don't have any of those so it doesn't bother me. Besides if they are shutting them down, there can't many that actually play it. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1180 Joined: 26 Mar 2008  | Its amazing how much longer these communities stick around on the PC in comparison to many newer console titles. I just hope it doesn't effect the players too much and they find other servers to play on. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 89 Joined: 30 Apr 2008 | I expected to see more of an outburst from people saying, "They can't do that! People paid for the game and now they can't play it!" The truth is, these games are all quite old. I doubt that any of them see any significant traffic anymore. There eventually comes a time where it's just not worth supporting these games anymore. Consumers have to expect that any program which requires publisher support (e.g. any online game where the servers are exclusively owned by the publisher) will eventually see the day where it is no longer supported. On the other hand, I have seen some games (such as an old favorite of mine, Subspace), which had significant populations when the servers were shut down. I think publishers who wish to keep server ownership private should be required to release public server software when they announce end-of-life. That way, the community can continue where the company has decided to leave off. Virgin Interactive didn't do that for Subspace, leaving the community running unlicensed software in a very gray legal area. To the community's dedication, they managed to create a new client and server from scratch, moving them considerably further away from blatant copyright infringment. Similarly, my view of "use it or lose it" extends to all copyright, patent, and other such competitive protections. Those protections are there to allow you to reap a reasonably-compelling benefit from your hard work, not to ensure your entire economic future or to give you sole control over the eventuality of your work's use. If the work you have done never gets to benefit society (either through its licensed use or through its addition to the public domain), it doesn't deserve the protections that copyrights and patents were designed for. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1525 Joined: 6 Sep 2008 | Truth be told I have a copy of Tribes2 and havn't been able to play it on Sierra servers forever, only Gamespy Arcade. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 389 Joined: 15 Jul 2008  |
Urr...Homeworld 2? Lol
You're doing yourself a disservice, a lot of those are really excellent games. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 683 Joined: 20 Aug 2008 | Oh, so I won't be able to participate in the "Caesar's Challenge"? Ummm...yawn? As for Empire Earth and its sequel, those games were effectively obsoleted the moment Age of Empires 3 came out, if not by Rise of Nations. |
Paperboy  Posts: 15 Joined: 19 Dec 2007 | NOOO! Not Nolf! |
Beat Writer  Posts: 182 Joined: 5 Aug 2008 | Yeah, it happens. I still play Tiberian Sun on Westwood Online and I'm surprised at how long EA has kept the server running. Like someone said however, you can still play the game with your friends or other people in the community through Hamachi, so the game isn't actually losing its online capability completely. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1214 Joined: 23 Oct 2007    |
Wait - you mean that Sierra still had multiplayer servers for Ground Control? I was of the impression that without WON, you couldn't play the game online any more. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1598 Joined: 18 Sep 2007 | Heh, I had no idea that The Incredible Machine was still going. That killed a lot of my time back in the day. Never did play it online though. -- Steve |
News Room Contributor Posts: 4926 Joined: 12 Nov 2002 | Homeworld is still one of the finest RTS titles ever released, and well worth a play if you can pick it up in a bargain bin somewhere. Runs great on XP, too. (Not sure about Vista.) |
Copy Clerk Posts: 69 Joined: 16 Jun 2008 | Damn. I still occasionally play Ground Control with some friends online. Shame to see it go... Aren't some of these relatively recent? Or am I just getting old? |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2957 Joined: 20 Dec 2007  | Anyone willing to host dedicated servers? (Or buy Sierra?) |
Muckraker  Posts: 271 Joined: 3 Apr 2008   |
actually, the old C&C servers are run by a fan company |
Muckraker  Posts: 333 Joined: 25 Nov 2007  |
I think we're getting towards the point where the cost is the same for either option. I understand why a company would pull support for very old games, but as ReverseEngineered pointed out, there's no harm in releasing a utility to allow public servers to take over the load. Heck, it might even get them some extra sales. |
Paperboy Posts: 37 Joined: 23 Nov 2007 |
Well, depends on what you call "recent". Ground Control 2 came out in '04, and Empire Earth II came out in '05, and I think those two are the newest games there. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 567 Joined: 18 Sep 2008  |
Amen. I LOVE Homeworld. Brilliant game. I wish I could find my copy...and I wish I had a computer to play it on (I'm at work now). |
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Sierra Shutting Down 21 Game Servers
Sierra has announced the upcoming closure of 21 game servers, ending support for a range of older titles including Empire Earth, Homeworld, Star Trek: Armada and Tribes 2.
The shutdown will take place November 1, according to an announcement on the official Sierra Community Forums. No reasons for the shutdown were given, although the recent merger between Activision and Sierra parent Vivendi has been rough on the label. On the other hand, most of the games in the list are getting on in years, and in the support forums for many of them the news went entirely unnoticed.
The full list includes:
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