GameSpy Dissapointed By Troika

MarFish said:

Vault Dweller said:

dojoteef said:

What does that have to do with my contention? He states that design decisions (such as Obisidian cutting out a planet for example) can not be attributed to poor sales.

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I used Obsidian's KOTOR 2 as an example of a developer being unable to "do anything to ensure a better reception for their games".

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I predict that Lucas Arts will announce the magic mark of 1.000.000 sold copies within two month.

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No arguing here. Yet it won't be because it's a bug-free polished game.

RGE said:

I'll have you know that I was perfectly fine with Greatatlantic not having an avatar.

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Whooops, I'll probably change that soon, hate to have a duplicate when there are so many to choose from.

Thanks in advance then.

It's a bit jarring every time I see 'my' face in threads I don't even remember posting in.

"I very much doubt Troika wanted a contract to do it in 12 months"

Good. Because TOEE was more like 18-20 months; not 12 months. Nice try though.

Saint_Proverbius said:

MarFish said:

In retrospect, I don't think the bugs killed Troika, - what killed them was the demonstrated incapability of releasing working products within the contractual limits.

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You might have a point if they didn't release all the games when the publishers said it was time to release them. That's not what did it. Keep guessing.

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damn, you beat me to it.

MarFish said:

I said working products, not bug infested barely playable products.

I don't think it was their decision to release them in that state. Atari took the release candiate and sent it off to manufacturing, not wanting to play Troika's "just a bit more time" game.

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Don't confuse your "opinion" of ToEE with the "reality". 95% of the bugs in ToEE were not game stoppers and IF you didn't know D&D rules you wouldn't even know they were bugs. Which is exactly WHY it got by the Atari 6 man QA team. Do you seriously think Atari gave a shit about ToEE ? It's was just a quarterly numbers game to them. Your assertion that, Troika got a "bad rep" from not being able to meet contractual obligations when those contractual obligations themselves were either unrealistic or unfufilled themselves from Atari is fucking assine. As for the "bit more time game"
It's hardly a "game", to say "we need more time" chalk that up to Troika being over ambitious and Atari "not understanding" what type of game they were actually hiring Troika to make. Feel free to criticize ToEE for it's lack of story or design features but your far reaching conclusions that have zero basis in fact despite the obvious must mean you've migrated from the Atari boards, just great

Sheriff05 said:

Don't confuse your "opinion" of ToEE with the "reality". 95% of the bugs in ToEE were not game stoppers and IF you didn't know D&D rules you wouldn't even know they were bugs.

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Well if you want to talk about reality, let's talk reality. I haven't beaten ToEE. I bought the game after the first patch was released. I installed the patch before playing. Consider me surprised that when I first tried to play the game, it crashed to desktop. Great patch. Then I started playing on the Ironman mode. I was in the temple and the game crashed. It fucked my savegame. Great, time to restart from the beginning. Even with the latest patch and the Co8 patch, I still get crashes. I simply can not start a chaotic evil party. After the cut scene, crasheroo!

Now I'll admit, I haven't played a game in a while, because I've been too busy, and not because of the bugs. I do intend to play ToEE again when I get the chance, but your statement about "reality" just really struck a nerve. If it's only 5% of the bugs that are game stoppers, then I must have encountered all 5%. And considering the number of miniscule bugs, 5% has to be a hell of a lot of game stoppers. (Though I thought the infinite magic missiles bug was awesome! )






Now to you folks bitching about the publishers releasing the games in a poor state, I find that to be one of the dumbest opinions ever expressed. If you give a developer a time extenstion to complete the project, and they still don't complete it at the end of that timeframe, how are you going to be able to figure out when the developer would actually be able to complete the project? If a developer says they just need a couple months to complete it, and they don't complete it in that time frame, then obviously they aren't going to be able to give you an accurate assessment for the time to completion. At that point, as a publisher they have to cut their loses. Publishers estimate how many sales they expect to get from a title based on market analysis, and then make the budget based on that fact. They can't just keep giving the money to developers, otherwise they'll not be able to recoup their costs.

So if a publisher gets to the point where they have to cut their losses, then they certainly can't be blamed for releasing the product to the public. They are after all a business. Paying for the development of a game and then not releasing it is just a death wish. At least if they release it, they stand a chance to recoup some of their money. And yeah, I know that sucks, and I hate being lead into buying a shitty product just like the rest of you. For example, I bought Tribes 2. I NEVER played it. The game was buggy in that it didn't want to connect online, and it was an online game. The only way to get the patch to fix it was through the ingame update thingy, which DIDN'T WORK! Yeah, I was pissed about it, especially since I loved the first Tribes. It's a shame publishers have to resort to such shitty business practices, but if they want to stay in business, they have to at times.

Also note that Troika wasn't being all that honest either. Here's that postmortem quote that Marfish dug up:

Postmortem said:

For programming, I think the biggest challenge was getting the party pathing in and working. We had a milestone for pathing very early on, but we had sort of fudged that one together using existing code from Arcanum and making it look pretty good... but the intention was always to rip it out entirely and come up with something new. So, a new milestone was added called "complex party pathing" for several milestones down. Well, when that one hit, for some reason we got that past Atari too, even though it really wasn't as complete as it should have been. Ultimately, pathing was being worked on and improved up until the very end... and there are even additional enhancements in there now from the patch.

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They simply passed off the milestones with temporary fixes that "looked nice". Despite being a common practice in games development (so it's not like it's only Troika that does this), it's deplorable. It's these sorts of "Let's just get the milestone completed and then think about actually making it work." mentalities that are a VERY big sign of something larger being wrong. It means bugs propagate and development usually isn't finished on time. Once you reach the milestone, the publishers tend to accept that you have the features in a working state. That means they have no reason to expect to give you more time, heck the features work, right? When instead you have a complete rework in mind, "the intention was always to rip it out entirely and come up with something new", and you pass it off like it's complete, things get out of whack.

So while the publishers might have some deplorable practices, it's not like they are alone in that fact. The developers have them as well. It's just that the publishers pass it all onto the customers, which sucks even more!

MarFish said:

Atari threatened to pull funding and at some point took a release candidate and sent it for production, without Troika's approval because Troika had no say about the final go / no go for the game.

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22 days of testing!!!!! Twenty Two!

MarFish said:

Yes, the big guns like Bioware or id can take the publisher hostage and force them to wait with release until the game is done, but the big guns also have their own QA departments and the ability to self fund extension periods they might get for their contracts.

Publishers don't want to work with people who can't fullfill the contracts they agree to.
Again - publishers don't like to be fucked with. That's the stuff that ensures you don't get future contracts right there.

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yep, the two months added to the project doesnt sound like an extra time at all if they were contracted to add content and and re-adapt the game to 3.5 rules, sounds like a big midstream change dictated from Atari on a project that was already in trouble.

MarFish said:

And yes, we, the fans, had too much expectations in ToEE - we wanted it to be an AAA title when in fact did not have the potential to be one. Read the post mortem, it was a 1 year development cycle and a 14 people core team - probably less than the NWN expansion packs.

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I agree, if Baldur's Gate was a 3 year development cycle and 60 people
Atari was planning on making a cheapbin game from the start, they probbably never expected it to be as good as other great AAA titles like PoR or Lionheart

Vault Dweller said:

obediah said:

Remember a little game called Diakatana? Or another doosy called MOOIII. Publishing companies allow games to slip all the time, but they can't give developers an infinite amount of time.

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Nobody said anything about "infinite". As for your example, yes, there are games that are fucked from day one and no amount of extra time would save them. Neither ToEE nor Bloodlines was such a game. Also, there are many more examples of games being delayed until they are ready and
then selling extremely well.

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I would be much more convinced by an example of a Troika game being delayed until it was ready and then selling extremely well. I don't think Troika had the discipline to ever make a "ready" game. Even in bizarro-world were two months would have made ToEE bug free, it still would have taken a giant hit for just being a combat simulator. To go from Arcanum to a story-less dungeon crawl was inexcusable.

It's the the developers responsibility to make sure the two match up, not the producers. I do software development for a living. I miss deadlines - and when I do I don't blame my boss for my shitty time management skills or over-ambition.

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Everyone's an expert on Troika's situation and business management in general. I don't blame my mom if I can't finish my homework on time - Troika should take a lesson from me!

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Yeah, they should. Responsibility is way undervalued today. You don't need an MBA to see that Troika made their share of mistakes and responded by playing the blame game rather than owning up.

Btw, there are many people who do software development for a living here, and who have taken a different position.

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Even I can't be right all of the time. I would hope that all of the development houses stick together, even when one of them makes a mistake. It really is "them vs the publishers", solidarity, informal unions and all that.

Vault Dweller said:

It's the the developers responsibility to make sure the two match up, not the producers. I do software development for a living. I miss deadlines - and when I do I don't blame my boss for my shitty time management skills or over-ambition.

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Everyone's an expert on Troika's situation and business management in general. I don't blame my mom if I can't finish my homework on time - Troika should take a lesson from me!

Btw, there are many people who do software development for a living here, and who have taken a different position.

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I am a software dev myself. If I am given a deadline and I put in a full days work everyday until the deadline and my project is not finished, then is it my fault or the fault of the manager who decided on the deadline? It is the manager's job to determine a reasonable amount of time for the job to get done. If the developer is not given enough time, then it is the manager's responsibility. That is presumably why they get the big bucks.

Another thing I wonder about is the actual effect of Troika's alleged reputation for buggy games. Out of all the people who purchase games, how many would know who the hell Troika is in the first place? I mean, we all know about them, but we have a particular specialized interest in CRPGs. What about Average Joe Gamer? Most people I mention Troika to have no idea who they are.

dojoteef said:

Well if you want to talk about reality, let's talk reality.

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Wait, I thought I was a "moron" and you were done talking to me until I pulled "Troika's dick out my ass"? but Ok, I like getting "real' as it's so rare around here.

I haven't beaten ToEE. I bought the game after the first patch was released. I installed the patch before playing. Consider me surprised that when I first tried to play the game, it crashed to desktop. Great patch.

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For someone that "knows it all" Dojo. you seem to be overlooking that Atari's 2 to 3 weeks of incredibily limited QA also included compatibility testing. Obviously your rig didn't like ToEE, plenty of other peoples did. Personally the only crash I ever had in the game from the get go was the fire node. I'm not running any uber rig either I had ToEE on 2 machines both Dell's 8100/8200 with Nvida cards, no CTD issues other than what I mentioned.

Then I started playing on the Ironman mode. I was in the temple and the game crashed. It fucked my savegame. Great, time to restart from the beginning. Even with the latest patch and the Co8 patch, I still get crashes. I simply can not start a chaotic evil party. After the cut scene, crasheroo!

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I don't want to blame your computer, but I will. The stupid shit got past Atari 's QA is inexcusable. As psuedo developer you ought to know that even the most obvious bug can slip by as your so close to your project you sometimes don't see things staring you right in the face. Ataris QA letting the Iron Man save bug go unnoticed just shows they reallly didn't QA the game, possibly never even playtesting a game in IM.

Now I'll admit, I haven't played a game in a while, because I've been too busy, and not because of the bugs. I do intend to play ToEE again when I get the chance, but your statement about "reality" just really struck a nerve. If it's only 5% of the bugs that are game stoppers, then I must have encountered all 5%. And considering the number of miniscule bugs, 5% has to be a hell of a lot of game stoppers. (Though I thought the infinite magic missiles bug was awesome! )

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pretend you don't know D&D rules period. And outside of issues probably linked to poor CT and your computer, what were the game stoppers?

Now to you folks bitching about the publishers releasing the games in a poor state, I find that to be one of the dumbest opinions ever expressed. If you give a developer a time extenstion to complete the project, and they still don't complete it at the end of that timeframe, how are you going to be able to figure out when the developer would actually be able to complete the project? If a developer says they just need a couple months to complete it, and they don't complete it in that time frame, then obviously they aren't going to be able to give you an accurate assessment for the time to completion. At that point, as a publisher they have to cut their loses. Publishers estimate how many sales they expect to get from a title based on market analysis, and then make the budget based on that fact. They can't just keep giving the money to developers, otherwise they'll not be able to recoup their costs.

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The flip side of that is as a publisher don't hire developers to make games unless you can discern what are or aren't unrealistic goals, not understanding the complexity of what ToEE 'was' / turned out to be a two way street
Look any fuckhead with half a brain can figure out all ToEE needed was for Atari to pay Troika to QA the game themselves for 6 weeks and then run 2 weeks of their own to make themselves happy, that would have pushed the game to Dec release (which never hurt sales) and the game would have shipped with only couple hundred ruleset bugs instead of a couple thousand. Bottom line Atari wanted the game out in Q3, the cost didn't justify the results. quality of product be dammed.

So if a publisher gets to the point where they have to cut their losses, then they certainly can't be blamed for releasing the product to the public. They are after all a business.

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That's the lamest crock of shit I've ever read, obviously coming from someone whose never worked a fucking day in their life. Any business should be concerned about quality of product. that's was one of Troika's problem and certainly Atari's problem across the board. Not to mention a problem with everyother big publisher out there. You really think Atari was somehow going to go out of business if they didn't release ToEE in Q3?

Paying for the development of a game and then not releasing it is just a death wish.

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Anyone that's successful to point of being able to self-fund can release games "when they are ready"

At least if they release it, they stand a chance to recoup some of their money. And yeah, I know that sucks, and I hate being lead into buying a shitty product just like the rest of you. For example, I bought Tribes 2. I NEVER played it. The game was buggy in that it didn't want to connect online, and it was an online game. The only way to get the patch to fix it was through the ingame update thingy, which DIDN'T WORK! Yeah, I was pissed about it, especially since I loved the first Tribes. It's a shame publishers have to resort to such shitty business practices, but if they want to stay in business, they have to at times.

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Thanks for supporting one of my main arguments. Publishers don't give shit because they know they can sell games, despite lack of quality. It's simply not an issue of whether the product meets a certain standard of not. If it's a franchise that will sell
people buy it regardless, why do you think every fucking stupid movie that gets made these days get it's own video game that suck balls and no one plays?, because it SELLS. Once again, You honestly think that Atari just HAD to push ToEE out in august or suffer some financial hardship?? They just didn't give a fuck it's just widget and number crunching to them

Also note that Troika wasn't being all that honest either. Here's that postmortem quote that Marfish dug up:

Postmortem said:

For programming, I think the biggest challenge was getting the party pathing in and working. We had a milestone for pathing very early on, but we had sort of fudged that one together using existing code from Arcanum and making it look pretty good... but the intention was always to rip it out entirely and come up with something new. So, a new milestone was added called "complex party pathing" for several milestones down. Well, when that one hit, for some reason we got that past Atari too, even though it really wasn't as complete as it should have been. Ultimately, pathing was being worked on and improved up until the very end... and there are even additional enhancements in there now from the patch.

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That's what happens when your under the pressure of living on someone elses dime,
you do shit like that to survive, dishonest or not. That's the way it is. Again this supports my larger point that Troika was not in a "position" to be successful given the state of Publisher/Developer relationships in the current industry. the parallels between the gaming software industry and every other failed business model of the entertainment industry are obvious.

So while the publishers might have some deplorable practices, it's not like they are alone in that fact. The developers have them as well. It's just that the publishers pass it all onto the customers, which sucks even more!

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Thanks for seeing the light, it took you long enough.

Sheriff05 said:

Publishers don't give shit because they know they can sell games, despite lack of quality. It's simply not an issue of whether the product meets a certain standard of not. If it's a franchise that will sell
people buy it regardless, why do you think every fucking stupid movie that gets made these days get it's own video game that suck balls and no one plays?, because it SELLS.

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That is so true. Lucas Arts has been releasing so many Star Wars games of questionable quality, yet they still sell something incredible. No, I'm not dissing KotOR or one of the few Star War games of any enjoyment, but the 90% of Star Wars titles that are honest to goodness bad.

I go to Activision's website, and see big banners for Spiderman and Shreck. Are those games any good? Possibly, but doubtful. Yet people out of the loop recognize the property and buy the thing. Go to THQ and see ads for Constatine, the Incredibles, and Sponge Bob Square pants. I'm sure all these titles were rushed productions with only a minimal goal of quality in mind. Who knows if they even released patches for such titles. Sigh... Wait until Uwe Boll decides to desecrate another franchise, I then predicts a sequel in very close proximity.

Blame game

People keep talking about the "blame game" that Troika played, but when I look at interviews such as this one:

http://www.troikachronicles.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=8

I see Troika accepting responsibility for many of the problems in their games. So I am left to wonder, are you people upset that Troika does not accept 100% of the responsibility or are you upset that they blame the publisher at all, even a little bit? Because it certainly looks like they are blaming themselves for the problems with their games. Here's a quote from that link:

5. As part of GameSpy's "Game Of The Year Award", Temple of Elemental Evil won the "Old School RPG Award". Aside from that and a few favorable reviews ToEE was disliked by a majority of reviewers and gamers. Many reviewers and gamers called it "buggiest CRPG ever" and critisized the story and the voice acting. What are your thoughts on this subject?

I think the negative reviews were fair. More QA time would have helped the bug problem (we got no where near the six months of play testing I recommended in the schedule), but the story and voice acting are squarely our fault. We seem to have teeter tottered from Arcanum (good story, bad combat) to ToEE (bad story, good combat). The third time’s the charm, I suppose.

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Are there links to any articles where they lay the blame with their piblishers?

Re: Blame game

Remax said:

People keep talking about the "blame game" that Troika played, but when I look at interviews such as this one:

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Who the fuck are you to come and tell people that they are wrong?!!! And please, don't try to impress people here with your ability to read and comprehend. It's so fucking overrated.

I see Troika accepting responsibility for many of the problems in their games. So I am left to wonder, are you people upset that Troika does not accept 100% of the responsibility or are you upset that they blame the publisher at all, even a little bit?

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We are just upset because we like to be upset. Do you have a problem with that, reader-boy?

I think the negative reviews were fair. More QA time would have helped the bug problem (we got no where near the six months of play testing I recommended in the schedule), but the story and voice acting are squarely our fault. We seem to have teeter tottered from Arcanum (good story, bad combat) to ToEE (bad story, good combat). The third time’s the charm, I suppose.

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Are there links to any articles where they lay the blame with their piblishers?

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Are you fucking blind?!!! I thought you liked to read? It says right there "I think the negative reviews were fair". He's like totally blaming the publisher for that one!!! And then he goes and blames the publisher for bad combat in Arcanum and bad story in ToEE and says that he will blame the publisher AGAIN!!! if the third game isn't right. All that makes me soooo MAAADDD!!!!

Anyway, welcome to the Codex, Remax.

Re: Blame game

Remax said:

Are there links to any articles where they lay the blame with their piblishers?

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That's what I'd like to see, some quotes to back up all the bullshit.

Re: Blame game

Jed said:

Remax said:

Are there links to any articles where they lay the blame with their piblishers?

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That's what I'd like to see, some quotes to back up all the bullshit.

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You are talking crazy, mon. If people start backing up all the bullshit, it's gonna be a very empty place.

Everybody keeps repeating Troika had to fold "because the games didn´t sell". It´s clear by now that the NPD numbers were significantly too low and only covered something like 1/4th of the world market.
Why was Troika unable too stay in business while developers like Ascaron (Sacred) or Phenomic (SpellForce) started to work on add-ons and sequels immediately, although the official sales are probably closer to 500k (confirmed for both) than 1M? Maybe Troika´s cost structure was unadequate?

Another point I haven´t seen in this discussion so far is the contract structure question. Were ToEE and Vampire work for hire for a flat fee? Then the sales numbers are only significant in negotiations about future projects but have no influence on their earnings. Or did Troika sign an advance against royalties contract?

Unlike Ascaron and Phenomic, Troika operated out of California. They spent most of their profits paying for their office rent and paying their employees. If only they had moved elsewhere, I think they'd still be around. This is Troika's fault, 100%.

Exitium said:

Unlike Ascaron and Phenomic, Troika operated out of California. They spent most of their profits paying for their office rent and paying their employees. If only they had moved elsewhere, I think they'd still be around. This is Troika's fault, 100%.

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It's California's fault for being so damn expensive. Damn you California! Another developer sucked dry! On the other hand, this obviously influenced Bloodlines. :D

I only have one comment for this thread and it has nothing to do with what they said about Troika. Troika's gone and it's a shame, but no amount of bitching and whining won't bring them back. And will we ever truly understand the whys and wherefores of their demise? Maybe, maybe not. Someone else will rise up to take their place as the niche crowd pleasers and will possibly do a better job of keeping above water.

Anyways, I went over my one comment count and didn't even put down the comment I meant to originally, so here goes:

GAMESPY SUX!!!111! LEWLEWLEWLEWL!!!11!1!!

ElastiZombie said:

I am a software dev myself. If I am given a deadline and I put in a full days work everyday until the deadline and my project is not finished, then is it my fault or the fault of the manager who decided on the deadline? It is the manager's job to determine a reasonable amount of time for the job to get done. If the developer is not given enough time, then it is the manager's responsibility. That is presumably why they get the big bucks.

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On it's own, this is a wonderful observation that should be ground into the skull of every manager in every industry. However, the contractor-contractee relationship is entirely different from the employee-manager relationship, and none of your observations hold in that case. A publish is under no obligation to take a bullet for a contracted development house. They are under a moral obligation to give a fair accounting of the work done by the contractor - but I'm guessing that the people at Atari that signed off on ToEE played the blame game themselves in an attempt to save their jobs.

@Volourn - nice try, yourself. I didn't say anything about Troika completing ToEE in 12 months, did I?

Troika didn't do any number of things right - my point is just that Atari didn't get it right either.

Overall, I think Arcanum was a fine niche game and if those NPD figures are doubled, that's around the same sales as Freedom Force and a bunch of others. However, as time goes forward fewer and fewer publishers are going to be interested in this type of game so it's no surprise they turned to other things and it's questionable whether it could sustain increasing development costs.

ToEE was a good idea on paper but the development cycle was just too tight...but I think the biggest single problem was the choice of module. The masses want BG3, which is never going to happen on that sort of restricted budget but a more story-focused module would have been closer and found more favour. A straight-up error of judgement, IMO.

Bloodines is much harder...I suspect the biggest issues were the competing titles and the performance. I know my partner and her sister both loved it but gave up because of the load times and poor performance. The dreary last 1/4 didn't help, either.

I doubt bugs had any serious impact on sales but if they had been able to manage the dev cycle better so they could actually finish each game, they would have been in a better position regardless of other factors.

I can understand the argument that the title Troika did best with was their "hardcore" title but I'm doubtful they could have found the financing to continue down that road.

ElastiZombie said:

Exitium said:

Unlike Ascaron and Phenomic, Troika operated out of California. They spent most of their profits paying for their office rent and paying their employees. If only they had moved elsewhere, I think they'd still be around. This is Troika's fault, 100%.

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It's California's fault for being so damn expensive. Damn you California! Another developer sucked dry! On the other hand, this obviously influenced Bloodlines. :D

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Irvine is only about 25% more expensive than the average US city.

Otaku_Hanzo said:

GAMESPY SUX!!!111! LEWLEWLEWLEWL!!!11!1!!

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Maybe we should start a thread titled "Gamers Disappointed with GameSpy," listing their multitude of crimes.

Doubt the bugs had anything to do with it? You don't think word of mouth plays a role? I think its one of the most important aspects for companies like Troika and games like RPGs.

obediah said:

ElastiZombie said:

I am a software dev myself. If I am given a deadline and I put in a full days work everyday until the deadline and my project is not finished, then is it my fault or the fault of the manager who decided on the deadline? It is the manager's job to determine a reasonable amount of time for the job to get done. If the developer is not given enough time, then it is the manager's responsibility. That is presumably why they get the big bucks.

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On it's own, this is a wonderful observation that should be ground into the skull of every manager in every industry. However, the contractor-contractee relationship is entirely different from the employee-manager relationship, and none of your observations hold in that case. A publish is under no obligation to take a bullet for a contracted development house. They are under a moral obligation to give a fair accounting of the work done by the contractor - but I'm guessing that the people at Atari that signed off on ToEE played the blame game themselves in an attempt to save their jobs.

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Although the reality of the contractor-contractee relationship is pretty much as you describe it, the spirit of the argument that I am making is valid, I believe. After all, the publisher does stand to profit a hell of a lot more than the developer if the game is a success, if I am correct in my assumptions about publisher/developer contracts in general. I would say that should indicate more responsibility on the part of the developer.

But that, of course, is just my own opinion and doesn't necessarily reflect the real world in the least. Hmmm... That sounds like a good standard disclaimer to adopt.

Re: painted lead or leaded paint

Oyarsa said:

Without the numbers (and presumably somebody at Atari did have the numbers) it is reasonable to make the assumption that creating a series of games based on older D&D modules would sell.

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I can't understand why anyone thought an old GYGAX module would be a top-seller. While TOEE was slightly better than his early Giants series, where the average room description looked like:

3. 4 Hill Giants (HP 82, 78, 67, 61) with 100-600gp each in a large sack.

The TOEE dungeon was a klunker. It was too tedious and pointless, and the factions within the module were poorly described and their motivations unclear. None of my old role-playing buddies remember it fondly except for some that played it as 12year old min-maxers dual-wielding Holy Avengers while riding in on their Ancient Dragon mounts.

I will admit that the Village of Homlet could be quite an entertaining place to roleplay in with a good DM, but Troika managed to screw that up too...

I'm pretty sure the TOEE engine with a new and unique storyline, good dialog and interesting NPCs would have sold a truckload better than the revamped old module we got, despite any bugs.