What happend to TaleWorlds?

Users who are viewing this thread

So, let's go back in time:
[Disclaimer: This post is completely useless, and just for the validation of my own opinion, so if you don't agree with this, I hope that you run into a big group of bandits and lose all your equipment!]

The Beginning
"TaleWorlds Entertainment" was founded in 2005 by Armağan and Ipek Yavuz, as a small development studio with a focus on Indie games. Shortly after being founded, TaleWorlds announced their first major project by the name of "Mount & Blade". This game would eventually release on September 16, 2008 and sell somewhere around a million copies. For a first major project, that's absolutely huge. As someone who has played the original "Mount & Blade" I can say that, for the time it was released in, it was a great game. It was the first game besides the "Total War"-series, where I was able to play and/or simulate battles with a relatively large quantity of troops.

As a reaction to the large amounts of success and money that "Mount & Blade" was accumulating, "TaleWorlds Entertainment" announced the sort of expanded and enhanced version of "Mount & Blade" by the name of "Mount & Blade: Warband" in January 2009. On March 20, 2010, Warband would officially launch in NA, with the EU release being on April 2 of the same year.

"Mount & Blade: Warband" - A Huge Success
With the hugely successful launch of Warband came numerous awards and ALOT of money. I have not found any actual sale numbers, but it is commonly said on the internet, that Warband has sold somewhere between 6-7 million copies as of 2021, which would make it a very, very, VEEEERY successful game. For comparison, "Grand Theft Auto IV" sold between 17.5 and 20 million copies (with GTA 4 being released two years before Warband) according to estimates. Now, that might seem like a big difference, but you have to remember, "TaleWorlds" was a little indie studio back then, and "Grand Theft Auto" is literally the flagship franchise for one of the biggest development studios in the world. Let's say Warband sold 7 million copies, and GTA 4 sold 17.5 million copies - That means a just over 5 year old studio sold 40% of the games that one of the biggest studios on the planet sold. That's HUGE!

Even after all those years, Warband is still getting new players, who just grabbed the game during a sale or something. In January 2021, the active players of Warband are still at around 6.5k at peak, which for an 11 year old INDIE game, is alot.

"Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord" - A Huge Pile of... Butter
Now, after having created one of the most popular and beloved games on Steam, TaleWorlds was taking the next logical step: Making plans for the next installment. However, now TaleWorlds made a massive mistake... They rushed it. Instead of actually focussing all their energy on Warband for like 5 years or something, they basically took two years, where they published minor fixes and one major expansion (Napoleonic Wars). After NW released in 2012, I am assuming that the focus was solely on Bannerlord, as there wasn't much in terms of updates and new versions for Warband, according to SteamDB.

If that wasn't the case, then that would be even worse, because it would mean, that TW announced the development of a new game, before even being completely finished with their previous one.

Now, after over a year with Bannerlord in Early Access, I have to say that, while Bannerlord is graphically much better than Warband, has larger battles than Warband and a larger map than Warband, it is nowhere near Warband in terms of atmosphere, feeling and actual gameplay. Don't get me wrong, Bannerlord has many new features, such as diplomacy, which was basically completely missing in Warband, or a proper barter system. Minor factions were another addition. The maaaaaassive problem about implementing new features is, that old features and other parts of the game, that made the predecessor the great game it was, are often times neglected.

I'll give you an example of what I am referring to:

- Bannerlord: Complete Overhaul of the trading system, with price listings and caravans
- Bannerlord: Lords and Ladies do not have any sort of personality and sometimes have no dialog at all.

Sure, a new trading system and a new way to make money are great, but now all the Lords in the game are just some freaks who all the exact same dialog, with the "I have a question" tab being completely blank. My point is, in Warband you could sway certain Lords into doing your bidding by influencing their demeanor towards you. In Bannerlord you can make millions with a broken economy system, but now you have lords that literally can be bribed into doing everything you want. Under Siege again? Ah, just request a parley, pay them 100k and there ye go.

Bannerlord was supposed to be an enhanced version of Warband, with new and enhanced features, better graphics and larger battles. Instead of an even better version of the already great Warband, we got some rushed and neglected game with mediocre graphics, tons of bugs and crashes, a broken economy and robot lords... In other words just a pile of Butter.

The Multiplayer Problem - A f**cking Sacrilege
I know the Multiplayer has been talked about in every single post on this forum, but just for completion purposes, I'll include it here as well. The fact, that a nowadays quite big development studio is able to f*ck up the main source of life for the game this badly, is kinda astonishing. Warband's Multiplayer wasn't perfect, but it WORKED. Private servers have carried Warband almost entirely since the release of MP. What is so hard about giving people the chance to make their own servers, WITH ACTUAL GOOD PROVIDERS, and fun mods?

I am close to 5.000h on Warband, and most of the time I spent on the game was on Multiplayer. Sure, at the start of a new game, everyone wants to see the new Campaign / Sandbox mode, try out the new weapons and graphics for themselves, but after like 1-2 months, most people will have done their walkthrough of the game, and might wanna head over to MP, to play with their friends (those of us that do have friends...). They'll load up MP, join either some TDM server, Captain Mode or Skirmish... and then they crash, get some weird glitch, have their ear drums explode or get stomped by some sweaty clan in some matchmaking system that is supposed to be ranked, which sometimes can lead to people getting quite angry and uninstalling the game (Hi ONeil).

To conclude this absolutely useless text on the development of TW, I'll have to say that a year ago I was quite optimistic that Bannerlord would be the new Warband, just better... Nowadays that opinion has shifted completely... I am barely playing Bannerlord anymore, and in the current state the game is in, I would definitely not recommend it to any of my friends that don't already own the game. I just can't help but think, that BANNERLORD WAS JUST A MASSIVE CASH GRAB.

It's an absolute shame what has become of the Mount & Blade series, and there is nobody else but TaleWorlds to blame for it!



P.S.: 1.6.0 WHEN?
 
I wanted to see a New Persistent World, but right now Native Bannerlord Multiplayer has so many problems and limitations compared to Warband. Not sure if there will be much of a playerbase left if it was done. I still have hopes but it'll take modding for certain if there was any improvement. So far in terms of Multiplayer, Captain mode is promising but games like Conqueror's Blade has so much more action going on.

Last Oasis is the true Mount & Blade Sequel IMO
 
Make big group to make big game, get big problems.
Release game to appease crying fans before they forget about game.
Make big money.
Game still hard to finish.
Game takes a long time to finish.
Buyers get annoyed and disappointed.
Game still takes long time to get finished.
 
Nothing has really changed, BL is taking a while to develop. The game has massive issues, but it hasn't exactly been a standard year in terms of game development. It has been one year since the EA launched, and they have yet to give up on developing the game. BL will take a while to be fully finished, and literally all that can be done until that point is to point out flaws and issues when they arise and wait for TW to release the game. Issues such as custom servers and the like have already been commented on, and nothing can be said on these forums to get custom servers to release sooner.
 
PW on the Oasis server was the peak of Warband Servers!
I loved the Bohemia events in the weekend. Oasis , Nexus and Phoenix were all pretty fun.


Mercenaries (better customization the Bannerlord) Full Invasion ( majin having no battle mode) Mount & Musket (Better then Holdfast)
Last Oasis season 4 hopefully gonna be fun, game has a small community, think it might retain numbers this time around.
 
I don't see how a small studio can mess up so badly on their flagship (only?) game and still survive. If it takes them 9 years to develop a game this broken, the studio won't be around much longer.
 
Last edited:
I am don't see how a small studio can mess up so badly on their flagship (only?) game and still survive. If it takes them 9 years to develop a game this broken, the studio won't be around much longer.
The sad part is that the game is still fixable, but patches are getting farther apart and have less content. It seems like TWs is just trying to collect the paychecks without doing any work. 1.5.10 took 2 months and had no meaningful content for multiplayer.
 
artworks-000542569440-k208ib-t500x500.jpg
 
so we need to sue tw for scamming and let the other game design studio to finish bannerlord....this is the most stupid comment on this forum and is amazing since the bar was rly high like rly high but you manange to top the level of low IQ proved by op and other weirdows here like boy o boy...where to start...no normal lawyer will take this for a lot of reasons and the big one is that when you buy the game is this message that the game is EA and in develpment plus the fact that the devs are wow idk...in contact with the players.Second you rly need proof of money scam like something more than your feels and I know you smart boyos will come with some "here is how can bernie can still win the election" rationament so yes my dude you manage to be the top dog in stupid post and the bar was high.Plus the let the other game studios do the game?who my dude not only is not a think just if idk the studio goes banckrupt or from theyr own will give the game to other studio since you know there is trade mark stuff plus intelectual property on the code...I know low IQ dudes like you op

Poddicus

MavDrac

Beast of Rome

and the rest of the allways on the forum since you have no life team dont know how the world works
 
so we need to sue tw for scamming and let the other game design studio to finish bannerlord....this is the most stupid comment on this forum and is amazing since the bar was rly high like rly high but you manange to top the level of low IQ proved by op and other weirdows here like boy o boy...where to start...no normal lawyer will take this for a lot of reasons and the big one is that when you buy the game is this message that the game is EA and in develpment plus the fact that the devs are wow idk...in contact with the players.Second you rly need proof of money scam like something more than your feels and I know you smart boyos will come with some "here is how can bernie can still win the election" rationament so yes my dude you manage to be the top dog in stupid post and the bar was high.Plus the let the other game studios do the game?who my dude not only is not a think just if idk the studio goes banckrupt or from theyr own will give the game to other studio since you know there is trade mark stuff plus intelectual property on the code...I know low IQ dudes like you op

licked well
 
so we need to sue tw for scamming and let the other game design studio to finish bannerlord....this is the most stupid comment on this forum and is amazing since the bar was rly high like rly high but you manange to top the level of low IQ proved by op and other weirdows here like boy o boy...where to start...no normal lawyer will take this for a lot of reasons and the big one is that when you buy the game is this message that the game is EA and in develpment plus the fact that the devs are wow idk...in contact with the players.Second you rly need proof of money scam like something more than your feels and I know you smart boyos will come with some "here is how can bernie can still win the election" rationament so yes my dude you manage to be the top dog in stupid post and the bar was high.Plus the let the other game studios do the game?who my dude not only is not a think just if idk the studio goes banckrupt or from theyr own will give the game to other studio since you know there is trade mark stuff plus intelectual property on the code...I know low IQ dudes like you op

Poddicus

MavDrac

Beast of Rome

and the rest of the allways on the forum since you have no life team dont know how the world works
Remember punctuation and proper sentences are your friend, and maybe try using the spell check too, because reading this was next to impossible for me. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who was trying to figure out wtf you were saying.
 
Back
Top Bottom