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?
[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?