Playing MoE in Windows 7?

[TheReturnofDMD]

Anyone got any ideas how to get it to work on Windows Vista/7, outside of VMWare (which costs a lot of money!)?

[Baggins]

Someone just needs to buckle down and make a fan patch :p...

[TheReturnofDMD]

Someone just needs to buckle down and make a fan patch :p...

If I had any knowledge of programming I'd try it. I've heard it used a VERY obscure or unique engine and that's what the issue is.

[Fierce Deity]

I was trying to get MoE to work on my computer as well. I've been focused on getting King's Quest 5 and 6 to work first, but if anybody can get MoE to work as well, that would be very awesome. Although MoE is the 'black sheep' of the King's Quest series, I admired their attempt to reinvent the series (even though it didn't need reinventing, and it didn't need the Disney graphics from KQ7 either).

[TheReturnofDMD]

I was trying to get MoE to work on my computer as well. I've been focused on getting King's Quest 5 and 6 to work first, but if anybody can get MoE to work as well, that would be very awesome. Although MoE is the 'black sheep' of the King's Quest series, I admired their attempt to reinvent the series (even though it didn't need reinventing, and it didn't need the Disney graphics from KQ7 either).

When you think about it, every game after V attempted to re-invent the series in some way. V changed the whole mechanics of gameplay with the phase-out of the Parser, VI brought in a focus on plot over puzzles, VII was the "Disney experiment" and VIII was the "Action/Adventure" experiment.

Something around 1994, Sierra went from being a leader to a follower. Disney was huge in the mid 90s, so all of their Quest games from 1994-1996 (KQVII, SQ6, LSL7, Torin's Passage) had Disney style graphics; FMV was huge in the early-mid 90s, so Sierra made FMV games (Phantas, GK 2), Myst was huge in the mid 90s, and in turn Sierra made Myst clones (Light House, Rama, Shivers); Doom and Quake were huge, and so they made several Doom and Quake clones (Mask, Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance).

That's not to say none of those games weren't great--I love them all. However, Sierra stopped really trying to LEAD the field, and instead made their own takes on what was leading the field.

[Fierce Deity]

When you think about it, every game after V attempted to re-invent the series in some way. V changed the whole mechanics of gameplay with the phase-out of the Parser, VI brought in a focus on plot over puzzles, VII was the "Disney experiment" and VIII was the "Action/Adventure" experiment.

Something around 1994, Sierra went from being a leader to a follower. Disney was huge in the mid 90s, so all of their Quest games from 1994-1996 (KQVII, SQ6, LSL7, Torin's Passage) had Disney style graphics; FMV was huge in the early-mid 90s, so Sierra made FMV games (Phantas, GK 2), Myst was huge in the mid 90s, and in turn Sierra made Myst clones (Light House, Rama, Shivers); Doom and Quake were huge, and so they made several Doom and Quake clones (Mask, Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance).

That's not to say none of those games weren't great--I love them all. However, Sierra stopped really trying to LEAD the field, and instead made their own takes on what was leading the field.

Sadly, this has become a bit of a necessary evil in the entire gaming industry. Once Modern Warfare came out, every FPS had tried to use a similar system or a similar emphasis on online multiplayer. When Rock Band came out, every publisher needed to hop on the Rock Band Bandwagon. MMO developers try to beat World of Warcraft by making games that are literally "WoW Clones". When something becomes successful, most publishers need to follow to make ends meet, but then the creativity that the developers once had is lost. It's unfortunate to have seen Sierra fall to that standard of working, but in retrospect, it was probably important for them to appeal to a newer demographic. It was rather more unfortunate that they never really caught on to that wider audience. 

[TheReturnofDMD]

When you think about it, every game after V attempted to re-invent the series in some way. V changed the whole mechanics of gameplay with the phase-out of the Parser, VI brought in a focus on plot over puzzles, VII was the "Disney experiment" and VIII was the "Action/Adventure" experiment.

Something around 1994, Sierra went from being a leader to a follower. Disney was huge in the mid 90s, so all of their Quest games from 1994-1996 (KQVII, SQ6, LSL7, Torin's Passage) had Disney style graphics; FMV was huge in the early-mid 90s, so Sierra made FMV games (Phantas, GK 2), Myst was huge in the mid 90s, and in turn Sierra made Myst clones (Light House, Rama, Shivers); Doom and Quake were huge, and so they made several Doom and Quake clones (Mask, Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance).

That's not to say none of those games weren't great--I love them all. However, Sierra stopped really trying to LEAD the field, and instead made their own takes on what was leading the field.

Sadly, this has become a bit of a necessary evil in the entire gaming industry. Once Modern Warfare came out, every FPS had tried to use a similar system or a similar emphasis on online multiplayer. When Rock Band came out, every publisher needed to hop on the Rock Band Bandwagon. MMO developers try to beat World of Warcraft by making games that are literally "WoW Clones". When something becomes successful, most publishers need to follow to make ends meet, but then the creativity that the developers once had is lost. It's unfortunate to have seen Sierra fall to that standard of working, but in retrospect, it was probably important for them to appeal to a newer demographic. It was rather more unfortunate that they never really caught on to that wider audience. 

Oh they did--
Quite a few of the latter day titles, especially Half Life, Homeworld, Lighthouse, etc were pretty nice sized hits. Half Life actually spawned a lot of it's own clones. Sierra's fall came from mis-management, not from a lack of his.

[Fierce Deity]

Ahh, I wasn't really aware of what made them go under. I had just assumed that their games went south.

[TheReturnofDMD]

Ahh, I wasn't really aware of what made them go under. I had just assumed that their games went south.

It's a loooong story.

Basically, CUC International Inc., a membership-based consumer services conglomerate with travel, shopping, auto, dining, home improvement and financial services offered to more than 60 million customers worldwide, approached Sierra to buy them. Sierra wasn't for sale, however, but had grown rapidly (Sierra bought 6 companies in 1995 alone and by 1996 had over 1,000 employees; In 1991 they had just 300.) which made them  a lucrative investment to would-be buyers.

Walter Forbes (CUC's founder and CEO) was a member of Sierra's board of directors for over five years. He approached Ken Williams (Sierra's founder, CEO and Chairman) sometime around late January or the beginning of February 1996 after a board meeting, surprising Ken with the offer. Initially, Ken declined the offer. However after Walter persisted, Ken, Michael Brochu (President and COO of Sierra; He ran Sierra day-to-day while Ken focused on product. Brochu had made Sierra grow tremendously in the past 2 years) and had Walter along with other CUC people had dinner and CUC laid out their plans, essentially those plans were that they were going to buy a few other software companies and merge them into one.

Ken turned down this offer. However, CUC agreed to Ken's terms: The company created by the software companies CUC bought would only share finances, resources, distribution, production and sales. Sierra would retain total creative autonomy, and no company would influence the other. They agreed to the creation of a software board (made up of the CEOs of all the software companies) which would oversee the direction of the software business and approve or veto any major decisions (acquisitions, etc). They also agreed to make Ken a Vice Chairman of CUC and Member of the Office of the President, which would they said allow him to oversee the games division directly.

Ken agreed to these terms and the sale was announced on February 20th and closed on July 24th 1996. Sierra was bought for roughly $1.5 billion.

Ken Williams stepped down as CEO of Sierra the day the sale was closed in July 1996 as part of the deal, though he stayed as an employee of CUC, (and initially at Sierra as a Strategic Development Advistor) until November 1997.

Ken was named a Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors and Member of the Office of the President of CUC in September 1996. Michael Brochu now ran Sierra totally as President, though Ken gave strategic advice and still wrote for InterAction until the Summer 1997 issue.

Along with Sierra, CUC bought Davidson & Associates, Inc. (The largest educational software company in the world, since Sierra was the largest entertainment software company in the world), Blizzard (which was owned by Davidson at the time), and Knowledge Adventure (another educational software company), all of those companies formed CUC Software--a separate division of CUC.

CUC put Bob Davidson (CEO of Davidson & Associates) in charge of CUC Software, which meant Sierra's President (Michael Brochu) reported to him, and violated every one of the promises they made: The software board only met once, and Ken's titles gave him little real power over the direction of Sierra or CUC Software.

Davidson wanted to LITERALLY take more adult oriented Sierra products (specifically Leisure Suit Larry and Phantasmagoria) off store shelves and stop production of them because they felt they were ''evil''.  Davidson also made Sierra publish games developed by companies Davidson owned (For example, in 1997 Sierra published Stay Tooned which was developed by Funnybone Interactive, and they published Diablo: Hellfire for Blizzard)

Ken successfully fought against Davidson trying to take Sierra's adult products off store shelves and he and Bob Davidson did not get along, which created intense friction in the company as you had two guys with two very different views wanting to control one company. This began to bleed over into Sierra's employees and Ken was getting a lot of phone calls from upset employees.

CUC didn't want Ken back in charge of Sierra, and Ken didn't want to be at Sierra with Bob Davidson as his boss anyway, and so he asked to be transferred out of the software division around the Spring of 1997 and spent his last 9 months at CUC in charge of developing CUC's internet retail website, NetMarket (a site very much like Amazon.com)

Not long after Ken left, Bob Davidson (who had his own disagreements with CUC) resigned from CUC and CUC placed Chris MacLeod (a marketing executive who had no video game industry experience at all) as the new CEO of CUC Software, and thus the guy Michael Brochu and the other game companies reported to.

Michael Brochu resigned as Sierra's President in October 1997 and MacLeod responded by breaking Sierra into three business units run by three different guys, all of whom reported directly to him; Thus a man with no experience in the gaming industry was essentially the CEO of Sierra--Things were beginning to get bad.

On the outside however, it seemed things had continued as they had before the sale: Sierra bought three smaller companies (Books that Work, Berkley Systems and PyroTechnix) in April and December 1997, which made Sierra even larger, and in one of Ken's final acts with Sierra got exclusive rights to publish Half Life, which ended up being a mega hit.

More to come, I'm a little tired.....

[Baggins]

If I had any knowledge of programming I'd try it. I've heard it used a VERY obscure or unique engine and that's what the issue is.

Well, its some kind of weird hybrid of in-house engine and bits of 3Space... whatever it is...

Technically the game doesn't even get into the engine itself :p... It crashes before it even loads the title screen (which is not even in the engine).

Doom and Quake were huge, and so they made several Doom and Quake clones (Mask,

Seriously let's be completely honest about this, have you even played doom or quake?

MOE isn't even like doom... If anything its more Tomb Raider mixed with Diablo... MOE all point and click slash fest, with platform jumping. They even admit to be inspired by Diablo for the combat in game (see talkspot interviews). Its not anywhere near a first person shooter. (even if you play from first person perspective)

Also you probably know they tried to make the game without enemies, but they found the world seemed too empty and boring. Thus why they went about adding in enemies, to make it seem a bit more populated and interesting. They also a bit inspired by the sword combat at the in KQ6, and thought it would be interesting if they could expand on that.

However, if you think about the enemies are similar to the random bad guys/encounters i.e. "arcade sequences"(ya they used to call those action sequences or some such), in KQ1, KQ2, and somewhat in 3 (bandits), that were there to kill you or rob you if you didn't leave the screen quick enough. Only difference, Connor is skilled enough to defeat them. Whereas we are told Graham is too weak or slow, or the enemy too powerful to be defeated (wizard/enchanter for example is apparently has magical defense, wolf is too fast, ogre too hard skinned, witch is too high in the air, etc).

MMO developers try to beat World of Warcraft by making games that are literally "WoW Clones".

This is funny since WoW has been said to be a clone of earlier MMO's. Albeit it did add some simplified things that made it more casual experience.