I watched a good game, go bad tonight. I had always thought and hoped that ICO was on to something. That people would rather play with others as opposed to the AI. I felt that Ironclad was breaking new ground by having an online feature, that wasn't subscription based. I mean it had super potential.
I think somewhere in the ranks of Ironclad someone really wants this to work. Not be a MMPOG type thing, but have a following, and possibly other games as well on ICO. I see a coffin, and a long line of black cars for ICO now though. You don't just have multiple crashes for no appearent reason on the biggest night of online gaming.
Last week I was excited to see 200+ people playing all at once. The games became fluid, you didn't have to wait for 10-15 minutes to find a game to play. It felt like we might actually be growing somewhat. My hopes have been dashed. It seems like for whatever reason ICO is being shunned.
There are multiple improvements that could be made to the functionality of ICO. Friends list, the ability to switch from entrench to vanilla games on the fly, host options, chat commands, but I hear some executive somewhere whining" There is no profit in this junk". Fan base is part of profitability, piss your fans off and they will find other things to occupy thier free time and money with.
