For those of us who *love* Paradox's grand strategy games (I seriously consider Europa Universalis 3 one of the best games ever made), really bad news.
But first, a little backstory.
The original 'vanilla' game lets you play any country in the world from 1399 to 1820 or anytime in between, you can even change what country you play whenever you want. It runs by events, so when you play as England, your experience is much different than if you play as China, or as the Ottomans, or as France, as there are many events that depend on the country, or provinces you own, or regional situations.
The game is also extremely modifiable, letting people change pretty much anything in the game, from maps, to countries, to rules, etc.
I love the vanilla game as it is, but one complain that many people have about it is that it's not historical enough. Basically, that you can do or see things that would have been historically impossible (like France or China gobbling everything, and as a player you can even conquer the whole world if you want).
The most famous and complex mod was named "Magna Mundi", originally made by one person, eventually growing into a team of people from around the world. Their goal was to make the vanilla game more historically accurate, pretty much by changing everything that could be changed. To many people, the mod made the game much better.
Apparently, some of these people included the actual creators of the game (Paradox) so much that they seeked them out to make a Paradox's licensed stand-alone game called 'Magna Mundi'.
The game has been in development for 3 years or so. Originally to be released a year ago, then 6 months ago, then supposedly any moment now… when suddenly a week ago in the official forums Paradox posted a note with the heading 'Magna Mundi, the sad state of affairs' describing how the game was pretty much close to cancellation, as every release candidate had failed its target date and quality level, with bugs that haven't been fixed since the first time they reported it, and new bugs coming up.
To me, this is a perfect example of 'young' companies needing proper management. Mod developers have a lot of heart, great intentions, but they have one major problem… without someone telling them "no", it's very common to fall into what I call 'featuritis', basically they keep adding features that are 'cool', without before thinking what that would entail in terms of extra complexity, development time, resources, costs. Basically… biting more than they can chew.
I for one was really looking forward to this game, and would be very sad to see it cancelled after so long (and you can already see "let's play" videos of the game), but putting myself in Paradox's shoes, I do understand why they would want that, as putting their name in a box (physical or electronic) of a game that not even them consider to be even close to be in a release state can tarnish their reputation as a company (and after the gem that was Crusader Kings 2, it erased some of the previous failures in many people's minds).
I hope some sort of miracle happens and the game is actually released, but after seeing the responses of the dev team about Paradox's posting, I don't see it happening.
But first, a little backstory.
The original 'vanilla' game lets you play any country in the world from 1399 to 1820 or anytime in between, you can even change what country you play whenever you want. It runs by events, so when you play as England, your experience is much different than if you play as China, or as the Ottomans, or as France, as there are many events that depend on the country, or provinces you own, or regional situations.
The game is also extremely modifiable, letting people change pretty much anything in the game, from maps, to countries, to rules, etc.
I love the vanilla game as it is, but one complain that many people have about it is that it's not historical enough. Basically, that you can do or see things that would have been historically impossible (like France or China gobbling everything, and as a player you can even conquer the whole world if you want).
The most famous and complex mod was named "Magna Mundi", originally made by one person, eventually growing into a team of people from around the world. Their goal was to make the vanilla game more historically accurate, pretty much by changing everything that could be changed. To many people, the mod made the game much better.
Apparently, some of these people included the actual creators of the game (Paradox) so much that they seeked them out to make a Paradox's licensed stand-alone game called 'Magna Mundi'.
The game has been in development for 3 years or so. Originally to be released a year ago, then 6 months ago, then supposedly any moment now… when suddenly a week ago in the official forums Paradox posted a note with the heading 'Magna Mundi, the sad state of affairs' describing how the game was pretty much close to cancellation, as every release candidate had failed its target date and quality level, with bugs that haven't been fixed since the first time they reported it, and new bugs coming up.
To me, this is a perfect example of 'young' companies needing proper management. Mod developers have a lot of heart, great intentions, but they have one major problem… without someone telling them "no", it's very common to fall into what I call 'featuritis', basically they keep adding features that are 'cool', without before thinking what that would entail in terms of extra complexity, development time, resources, costs. Basically… biting more than they can chew.
I for one was really looking forward to this game, and would be very sad to see it cancelled after so long (and you can already see "let's play" videos of the game), but putting myself in Paradox's shoes, I do understand why they would want that, as putting their name in a box (physical or electronic) of a game that not even them consider to be even close to be in a release state can tarnish their reputation as a company (and after the gem that was Crusader Kings 2, it erased some of the previous failures in many people's minds).
I hope some sort of miracle happens and the game is actually released, but after seeing the responses of the dev team about Paradox's posting, I don't see it happening.
Months later I tried again, but started with Castille instead, and totally fell in love with the game.
