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Sunday 27 October 2002

Where are all the UT2K3 players? [lurks]

UT2003 has been out for awhile now. I'd expect there to be quite a lot of people playing it but there isn't. In fact there are less people playing it than Soldier of Fortune for Christ's sake. Given that what people are playing it are split between game types, this thins it out yet more. I quite like Bombing Run but it's actually darn difficult to find a server with anyone on it, even now on a Saturday afternoon. In fact there's less than 150 people playing Bombing Run now!

It has to be pointed out that CS has even /more/ people playing it now. 78,000 players as I write compared to UT2003's 3,100. Normally novelty counts for a lot and you see a good early peak but that's just not coming through at the moment. Is it still too early to tell or are we looking at UT2003 being a bit of a fizzer?

It'd be a shame, I was really warming to Bombing Run but then again... there's not that many maps and a couple of them are shite anyway (BR-Slaughterhouse in particular).

5 comments:

  1. I played UT for a year, with some Quake3. Before that I played Quake2, Unreal, Quake, Duke, both Dooms, etc etc ad nauseum back as far as '94. I don't find the jumpy-roundy cramped corridor FPS shooter any fun any more.

    I'm playing Battlefield 1942 solidly right now, it's fantastic fun dogfighting and strafing, plus tank battles or just zooming around in my jeep with a bazooka trying to put it up tank's arses (ooeer). It is very different and very enjoyable.

    I'm sure many others feel the same way, or they're still stuck into the previous generation of games like CS.

    Either way I reckon many people see nothing new or interesting in UT2K3 - it may be a great game, I haven't played it myself so I don't know. But my perception is that there's nothing there I want to bother with. So I'm not going to spend money/time on it. :)

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  2. I don't claim I'm in touch with your average gamer, but I'm just not up for UT 2003, and that's why I've not bought it. Goddamn the demo looks nice and plays pretty welll, but... I guess basically we've seen it all before.

    However, that's not stopped people before, it can't be that simple. Is there perhaps a piracy issue? How is it riding in the PC games charts? And how's it doing compared to 1942?

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  3. That figure looks _way_ too low.. I remember that ut2k3 seems to have two different server/browser type setups at one time or another.. ASE has it down as 'ut2k3' and 'ut2k3 new'.. wonder if thats just one of them. It is a good fun game. Propper fragfest action, which I've found I've missed in some of the newer more strategic games. Certainly be a shame for it not to keep the playing figures up.

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  4. (note that I actually blogged this hours before Teeth but it appeared after - so that's two of us thinking on the same lines :-)

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  5. Teeth? What you on about Beej?

    Anyhow as suit says, it is a good fragfest but I think that's thedifficulty. Slower more strategic games are just more engaging. Youcan't keep fragfest levels of action up for long where as you canhappily sit there and play CS or 1942 for hours because of the moreinvolving play with breaks in the pace. With this longer play, you getmore attached to the game, get to know a bunch of people through thegreater chance of running into them etc. It's a superior formatreally.

    Most people are treating UT2K3 for what it is, a frag fest asdeathmatch is by far and away the most popular mod running on servers.Unfortunately Bombing Run is 4th most popular which really sucks givenhow original it is. I tell you, some sort of variant of Bombing Runwith a slower paced game - maybe some 'out-time' forced observing maywell be a killer game type.

    Incidentally, I did a rough count of servers in ASE, Gamespy's statsand the in-game browser and they appeared to be in the same ballparkso I don't think I'm mistaken about the numbers.

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