highguard

“It won’t be Concord 2.” It was in fact Concord 2.

High = Con Guard = Cord 🤯

"We're not Concord 2.0!" they scream as they follow in every footstep of Concord...

I don't know what drove Wildlight to tackle such a risky project as their first game. It was do or die, and they died trying.

They didn't try to make Highguard a fun game, they tried to make it an esport.

Today's board meeting agenda: How can we once again make this the gamers' fault?

Remember when Geoff Keighley said "In 48 hours, I'll be accepting your apologies" That aged well

So about that apology jeff.............

Waiting for Geoff’s apology.

There are literal worker bees (who only live 6-8 weeks) that got to live to see Highguard be released and shutdown within their lifespan

To have a reveal in December and close in March is insane.

IT'S BEEN 45 DAYS?!

If live-service were a restaurant: You pay upfront, but when the food arrives, it's bland and not fully cooked. The waiter tells you the chef will finish cooking it later, so you eat what's edible for now. Meanwhile, the waiters keep telling you to buy food from the salad bar.

At this point they oughta change the genre name from Live Service to Doomed Service.

Live service. Not even once.

If leadership had just listened to the reasonable things the groundfloor devs were telling them... they got overconfident because they had worked on Apex Legends in the past and it bit them hard.

They wanted to copy Apex Legends, a Game that came out 7 years ago and they thought "We should strike while the Iron is frozen."

Devs: "We made Apex Legends and Titanfall!" Icarus: "Nice view form your glass house!"

Deciding to release a Triple-A live-service hero shooter as your first game as a new “indie” studio is indeed pure hubris.

What still baffles me the most is that they had this total creative freedom, they had good workplace, they had funding and they still ended up making a game that looks like it was designed by marketers and HR, some of the most generic AAA slop imaginable

Highguard is the physical manifestation of "What in the hell did you think was going to happen?" Hubris is definitely the right word. I mean, they thought that them having been involved in Titanfall and Apex would outweigh the fact that they were making a rather unappealing game, in an overcrowded genre, with a despised monetization model, with minimal marketing between the huge announcement and the later release, whilst taking no feedback prior to that release. I mean... wow. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that this strategy was never going to end well.

The 200 staff indie studio banked by tencent didn’t do well? Who would have thunk?

Knowing about Tencent funding this game makes it even more pathetic when that developer said "We don't want to go back to the corporate multiplayer machine". BRO... you are the corporate multiplayer machine!!!

Tencent pulling funding shutting the whole company down screams INDY

This is impossible. Their CEO clearly stated that they didn't need many players to be successful! He wouldn't just go and tell a lie like that on the internet, would he?

over 2.000.000 players... and no player retention whatsoever... daaaaaaaaaaaamn

2 million played, only 388 stayed.

adding a progression system right before shut down is diabolical

Level progression and skill trees should have been there at launch.

Account progression and skill trees being added a week before shutdown is a mean knife twist for the 800 people who loved the game 😂