A simple thank you

[NTJedi]

This game could easily blow the Civilization game series out of the water upon the arrival of Dominions_3... especially if diplomacy features for the AI are added. I wonder if the developers will find a major publisher for Dominions_3 which will save us the hassle of buying Online.

[Gandalf Parker]

NTJedi said:

This game could easily blow the Civilization game series out of the water upon the arrival of Dominions_3... especially if diplomacy features for the AI are added. I wonder if the developers will find a major publisher for Dominions_3 which will save us the hassle of buying Online.

From the looks of things, by then there wont be any.
Maybe someone will iron out the hassles in offering Digital Downloads instead.

[Boron]

Yeah playing it now since 4-5 months and still discovering new things each day . Even started to play SP again because i haven't time for more than 1-2 MP games now during my new semester .

I was as many of you may remember for about 1 month in a period of thinking dominions is unfair and unbalanced but that was only because some things are more hidden .
Dominions 2 is the best strategy game of all

[PDF]

Gandalf Parker said:

From the looks of things, by then there wont be any.
Maybe someone will iron out the hassles in offering Digital Downloads instead.

Why don't Shrapnel offer that already ? I've been very impressed with the download system Stardock offers for their (GalCiv) and other games (look at totalgaming.net) for example ...

[Gandalf Parker]

Not really my area so Im talking mostly from info in SysAdmin newsGroups. It seems kindof at the level that "shopping cart" sites were years ago. Now if someone wants to do a shopping cart site then what resources are needed to support it, what package to download and install, what you need to pay and to whom in order to get one that wont put you in the headlines, thats all worked out. For Digital Downloads its all looking good, but its not where shopping cart is yet.

[Richard]

PDF said:

Why don't Shrapnel offer that already ? I've been very impressed with the download system Stardock offers for their (GalCiv) and other games (look at totalgaming.net) for example ...

We do offer downloads for some products. It's just not feasbile for something the size of Dominions. Not without adding some serious server hardware (beyond the three we have) to account for the processing and such needed.

Also a download only game, which has to have a pdf manual, is extremely easy to pirate. This leads to less sales and less money for Illwinter to work on Dom 3.

[msew]

why don't you all just slap up a torrent and let us (the dom2 community) provide bandwidth? (WoW is doing it just fine, so is half-life etc etc)

[Richard]

msew said:
why don't you all just slap up a torrent and let us (the dom2 community) provide bandwidth? (WoW is doing it just fine, so is half-life etc etc)

Our experience with download games is they don't add sales to the books, and they open a game for much easier attempts to pirate the game.

Since most of our games do not offer copy protection, which is a choice of each developers and our recommendation, it doesn't make sense to put the manual into public domain by making it downloadable.

And there is no way any publisher, or developer, would consider putting the download file out for folks to distribute via a service like bit torrent. There is almost not way to control piracy that way, and how would you integrate that into a payment portal, etc.

Again we do download games, but only where it makes sense.

[Arryn]

I notice, Richard, that your replies have not addressed PDF's post regarding Stardock making GalCiv available for download, nor that GalCiv is also available at retail. Have you not commented because Stardock both develops and publishes their games (unlike almost everyone else in the industry)? Is there some reason why Shrapnel cannot implement a system similar to what Stardock uses?

Another thing I don't understand about your Last post is why downloading "makes sense" for some of your games, but not for others?

[Ironhawk]

Richard said:
We do offer downloads for some products. It's just not feasbile for something the size of Dominions. Not without adding some serious server hardware (beyond the three we have) to account for the processing and such needed.

Also a download only game, which has to have a pdf manual, is extremely easy to pirate. This leads to less sales and less money for Illwinter to work on Dom 3.

But you are already hosting the download of the Dom2 Demo, which is the about the same size as the Retail Version as far as I can see. How would it be more complicated to just host a retail copy of the exe and have Demo functionality in place until a user enters a purchased CDKey?

On the topic of a download game being more or less easy than a CD based on in terms of piracy I have to disagree given the prevalence of pirated retail CD games. Particularly with the advent of p2p networks you dont even need a strong server in order for a malicious user to share out thier ripped executables.

And on a side note: download only games do not implicity require an Online manual. Look at how Spider Web Software does thier indy games. You download the exe, buy the CDKey, and then eventually you are shipped a CD and a manual as well. But as with most games (dom2 included) people rarely learn the game from the manual but rather from trial/error, in-game tutorials, and user-authored walkthroughs/FAQs.

And now before everyone starts jumping down my throat for voicing a disagreeing opinion I want to state for the record that I am very much appreciative of Shrapnel and Illwinter for Dom2 and by no means wish to make them lose money. My comments are solely in response to the running dialog in this thread.