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Joined: Sep 2009
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Heya larian.


Not sure if this is important or not, but i wanted to give a heads-up on my experience as a customer of the new LarianVault Store and the new Dragon Knight Saga PC experience.


I have to say first that i did buy D2 before so i was not realy expecting to buy the new DK:S, but since you promissed it would be a new experience (and i didnt want to wait for the patch) i went ahead and decided to get DK:Saga as it was in a competitive price.

At first i was delighted that you have larianvault now. Its simple, effective no bells and whistles system that does its job clearly, fast (3mbit/s), with no problems installing and activating online. So first of all I wanted to congratulate you guys for this awesome service (that i think must have been a big comercial leap for your guys).

About the game, its wonderfull. It feels "polished", it realy (finaly) feels that it was made by a multi-milion budget as in those major developers companies that have massive resources to do everything right. In your case, you have that feeling AND the natural Larian "touch", wich brings the game to a whole new level from the original D2.


The only complain i had in the beggining was the 30FPS lock that was giving me a little headache in the first few hours but after a while i got used to it and now it doesnt bother me a lot, but i believe that can take some people away after just playing the demo (when its out) and then discard the game because of it. I understand why this was made and its advantages (consoles FPS, stuttering problems, etc), but i'm worried it could take some customers away.

Also, I can't fix the Anti-Alising situation, but it's not even a complain as i'm not all that interested in it.


Graphics look much better, the engine even looks like you could license it to other companies as its realy well polished now and shows potential, the sound is also better, the whole gameplay feels more mature and all-in-all i'm realy thrilled to start over again with this new stuff as the experience is much improved now.


Anyways, just wanted to thank you for your larianvault and your courage to invest valuable development time "ressurecting" D2, its well worth it.


As a closing argument, i just wanted to leave an advice to you guys to try and invest more time in PR with gaming sites to convince them to review Dragon Knight Saga, even if they already reviewed D2, as i'm perfectly sure they will all acknowledge its improvements.

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Thank you for the nice words - you're right that we underinvested in PR, but to be honest, we're having a lot of trouble grabbing the attention of the larger media outlets as we're not supported by a major publisher.

I once flew to the US from Europe to do five presentations at 5 of the very large outlets - two of them had the decency to listen to my story but didn't publish anything, another one put me in front of an intern who wrote a piece which was so badly written and had nothing to do with what I showed him that it hurt, another shortened the meeting to 15 minutes after he figured out it wasn't a major publisher behind it and yet another cancelled just like that. If memory serves me right, out of that entire trip came the badly written preview, and nothing else whereas clearly certain games get plenty of coverage just to mention who the voice actors are going to be wink

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Originally Posted by Lar_q
Thank you for the nice words - you're right that we underinvested in PR, but to be honest, we're having a lot of trouble grabbing the attention of the larger media outlets as we're not supported by a major publisher.

I once flew to the US from Europe to do five presentations at 5 of the very large outlets - two of them had the decency to listen to my story but didn't publish anything, another one put me in front of an intern who wrote a piece which was so badly written and had nothing to do with what I showed him that it hurt, another shortened the meeting to 15 minutes after he figured out it wasn't a major publisher behind it and yet another cancelled just like that. If memory serves me right, out of that entire trip came the badly written preview, and nothing else whereas clearly certain games get plenty of coverage just to mention who the voice actors are going to be wink


Ouch.

Fortunately for larian and most of us, RPG fans, the good RPG news fly from mouth to mouth news, community forums, sites like RPGwatch.com, and i'm sure as soon as good fan-reviews start going on, Dragon Knight Saga will catch up in publicity and then the "big review sites" will have no option than to at least try to get more info.

I'll probably later make more posts about my whole playing experience, but quite honestly right now i do have to get back to the game, sorry :P


Cheers and thanks for your answer.


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That's what we're hoping for - if you like it and think others should play it, please spread the news. Not having the clout of a massive publisher, we're heavily dependent on mouth to mouth.

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At the cost of dignity you could just slap a half-naked elf maiden all over your promotion, or involve the American army somehow, probably slip in a sniper rifle for headshot nuts - sure-fire way to trawl in the masses!

On the other hand, games to me are like films - massive Hollywood blockbusters are boring, special-effects laden, explosive, clichéd piles of muck. It's all about the smaller independant Swedish / French films with subtitles that add a real flavour to the storytelling and aren't bogged down by having every object explode in some fashion, or the rare Hollywood film that is exceptional.

In a way, keeping it "small" only improves the level of quality. Don't actively try to sell out!

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Originally Posted by Lar_q
Thank you for the nice words - you're right that we underinvested in PR, but to be honest, we're having a lot of trouble grabbing the attention of the larger media outlets as we're not supported by a major publisher.

I once flew to the US from Europe to do five presentations at 5 of the very large outlets - two of them had the decency to listen to my story but didn't publish anything, another one put me in front of an intern who wrote a piece which was so badly written and had nothing to do with what I showed him that it hurt, another shortened the meeting to 15 minutes after he figured out it wasn't a major publisher behind it and yet another cancelled just like that. If memory serves me right, out of that entire trip came the badly written preview, and nothing else whereas clearly certain games get plenty of coverage just to mention who the voice actors are going to be wink


That's really depressing, I'm sorry to hear it. It's doubly a shame for me because as the gaming industry gets more and more mainstream I find myself not liking a lot of the hyped games, seeking out smaller projects like Divinity 2, Avernum or Dead State to get the bulk of my enjoyment.

It would certainly help those projects to continue existing if the gamine media expanded their horizons a little bit.

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Might be an idea to get the old xbox 360 demo wiped off of xbl marketplace and replace it with the new version. Just to stick it in the spot light for a while. The new dash allows many game demos to be listed now so it should be on show for a good time and with xmas coming and all...

The thing is also, while the old demo is still available those that may have an interest who have not seen it before could judge the game from that which is not a true reflection of the awesomeness it is now.


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They've already submitted the DKS demo to MS, but said it would likely be December sometime before it gets through the release procedure.

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Errr... it's not submitted yet, we're prepping it for submission wink

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Cool. Not that I need it! silly


Divinity II: XBOX 360
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Oops, apparently I wasn't paying attention, or my memory is going...

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Originally Posted by Raze

Oops, apparently I wasn't paying attention, or my memory is going...


Probably both. Get your copy of Dragon Knight Saga now before it goes completely...



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Before what goes completely?











evil

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Originally Posted by Lar_q
Thank you for the nice words - you're right that we underinvested in PR, but to be honest, we're having a lot of trouble grabbing the attention of the larger media outlets as we're not supported by a major publisher.

I once flew to the US from Europe to do five presentations at 5 of the very large outlets - two of them had the decency to listen to my story but didn't publish anything, another one put me in front of an intern who wrote a piece which was so badly written and had nothing to do with what I showed him that it hurt, another shortened the meeting to 15 minutes after he figured out it wasn't a major publisher behind it and yet another cancelled just like that. If memory serves me right, out of that entire trip came the badly written preview, and nothing else whereas clearly certain games get plenty of coverage just to mention who the voice actors are going to be wink


Dude, I'm with Neoseeker.com and would've loved to have covered lots of stuff since this whole project began, but yeah, I think limited PR is a lot of that..I've had to go hunting for it, and trying to get DKS for review has been tougher than it should be. Contact us if you'd like to help get the word out -- we've got a rather sizeable userbase and a redesign coming up. media_assetsATneoseekerDOTcom is the email for press stuff -- use editorialATneoseekerDOTcom for more personal stuff.

Love your work! smile

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I'm not really an active poster or really spend all that much time on the forums at all. But I fumbled my way here and just wanted to let you know that flaws and all, I probably enjoyed Divinity 2 more than any other game in quite some time, without exaggeration. The amount of detail and obvious care that was put into it shows, particularly the music, which is haunting. It even came with a solid manual! I love exploring game worlds, and there's something tucked around every nook and corner, something I haven't seen since the Baldur's Gate days. I'm not even "that guy" who obsesses over one game for a lifetime, I'm just a regular gamer and play things like CoD and Dragon Age like the rest of them. But I remember the roots of PC gaming, and I guess that gives me a bit of a soft spot for this kind of thing.

I managed to get some people who otherwise wouldn't have given the game a shot when I was working at my local EB a while back (unfortunately *or fortunately...* don't work there anymore) because I know you guys have been getting the short end of the stick. I just wanted to let you know that people do appreciate what you're doing. Thank you.

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Originally Posted by chautemoc
Dude, I'm with Neoseeker.com and would've loved to have covered lots of stuff since this whole project began, but yeah, I think limited PR is a lot of that..I've had to go hunting for it, and trying to get DKS for review has been tougher than it should be. Contact us if you'd like to help get the word out -- we've got a rather sizeable userbase and a redesign coming up. media_assetsATneoseekerDOTcom is the email for press stuff -- use editorialATneoseekerDOTcom for more personal stuff.

Love your work! smile


Hello chautemoc,

Thanks for the nice words wink
Please send me an email lynn@larian.com and I'll help you with review code.

All the best,
Lynn


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