C&C Labs News Wire

— Thursday, October 6, 2005 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 7:15:51 PM ET

Words from EA and Apoc

Aaron "Apoc" Kaufman sent the following messages around today:
Greetings from your C&C Community Manager!

To continue the ten year anniversary celebration of the widely popular Command and Conquer franchise, I am pleased to reveal EA’s partnership with XWIS (XCC WOL IRC SERVER)!

Through this partnership, all Command and Conquer games formerly supported by EA/Westwood Online will be redirected through XWIS, thus instituting XWIS as the main online game server management team. XWIS is a community driven online game server that launched in October 2003 to replace the XCC Community Ladder. The new and improved features enabled include chat, in-game ranks, matching filters, lobby monitoring, improved Quick-Match, and fully functional automatic ladders for clans and individual tournament players. The beauty of this partnership is that you won’t have to download any external programs to utilize XWIS. All the enabled features and connections to the servers are already integrated into the supported games!

I’m also excited to share with you that the Strike Team will be monitoring the banning and anti-cheat controls on a daily basis and will provide technical support as needed. The Strike Team is a website built of hardcore Command and Conquer fans and is sponsored by the EA German Community Team. Their goal is to ensure a controlled and fun online environment for all players.

XWIS will commence a two week trial period with Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 and Command & Conquer Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge. Once this trial is completed on Oct. 20th, XWIS will be supporting the following EA/Westwood online games:

-Command & Conquer Red Alert 2
-Command & Conquer Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge
-Command & Conquer Tiberian Dawn
-Command & Conquer The Covert Operations
-Command & Conquer Red Alert
-Command & Conquer Red Alert: Counterstrike
-Command & Conquer Red Alert: Aftermath
-Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun
-Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun: Firestorm
-Command & Conquer Renegade
-Dune 2000
-Nox
-Emperor: Battle for Dune

EA is 100% dedicated to the Command and Conquer franchise and wants to ensure a strong and secure online gameplay environment. Long live Command and Conquer! We hope to see resurgence in the legions of NOD and GDI followers claiming ground online.

Good luck soldier. Hit the hot keys and get online with Command and Conquer!

--Apoc
Community Manager & Marketing Liaison
Electronic Arts LA

I'll be honest; I think EA is getting worried. With no C&C product near enough to completion, they are grasping on to anything they can to please the community. This is good news, but I wish it were under better circumstances. It leads me to another message from Aaron, though, from an email conversation with C&C King of CNCNZ (original post here).
So, I fully understand the cries and pleas 100% but everyone in the community is going to have to be patient still. I cannot directly comment on the C&C franchise, but I can say that we are 100% dedicated to the franchise. I nor anyone at EALA is in a position to talk about what lies ahead for the C&C franchise, but the word franchise has strong meaning around the studio. Now, you guys can all read between the lines and I know you have all been patient.

I wonder how Warcraft fans are feeling, or what about Age of Empires before AOE3 was even announced. The last C&C game was Zero Hour, 2003. Age of Empires 2 came out in 2000! Warcraft 3 came out in 2002. Those studios are taking quite some time between their sequels. It’s been less than 2 years since ZH was officially released. It is not abnormal for major franchises to go in to hibernation for more than a couple of years. BFME and BFME 2 should not be looked at as blows to the C&C community. C&C and BFME do live under the same umbrella of passion and franchise dedication from EA, so anyone who doesn’t think that, I suggest turning that frown upside down. EA is very dedicated to both franchises.

My point is, the C&C community in general is restless and demands high expectations. Hey, cool, we understand, but at the same time, I have a level of confidentiality that I need to abide by with the studio and EA and I simply cannot talk about C&C any further than what I said above.

What I can keep doing is strong community support. I do have plans for the upcoming months, plans that I can’t talk about in depth just yet. I know I know, it’s all confidential right now, but you have my word, patience is a virtue in this industry.

The C&C community, LOTR fans or not, will more than likely be very pleased with BFME 2 as it is gunning for the hardcore taste. I’m looking forward to the reactions.

Chin up man, Petro has that old Westwood spotlight shining on them, but they still need to deliver a good game, so we’ll see how it ends up.
A few quick things here. First of all, equating Command and Conquer and BFME is a mistake of huge proportions. There is no comparison; C&C is a definer of a genre, in both story and gameplay. BFME is, at best, a mediocre game about a fantasy land, with the story done for them, and the gameplay lacking. Second, you cannot say it has been two years since the last C&C. It hasn't. At most, you can claim that RA2 was the last C&C, which came out in 2000, before the games that he bashes for taking their time. I think Aaron is doing his best, but again, everyone there is grasping at straws. Maybe there's nothing else left for them to turn to?
Last edited by Mike on Friday, October 7, 2005 at 12:47:44 AM.

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