With all that has gone on with 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, my late purchase of KoA would have made little difference in what went down. One purchase out of a million and half more than they were banking on doesn't count for much. Though the demo, for whatever reason, convinced me to not buy it at release. Perhaps it was my mood at the time, financial situation or it just not being a good demo. Now that I've played the game for a number of hours, I find it very enjoyable, both story-wise and gameplay-wise which is the exact opposite of what I felt from playing the demo. I'm having a helluva good time backstabbing dudes and then setting their buddies on fire and cutting them up.

While I would not have picked up the MMO, as I am done with those, it is a shame this game and universe are doomed to oblivion. I cannot fathom how a game that sold well over a million copies was considered a failure. Perhaps the executive side of things expected too much and promised too much to Rhode Island. Perhaps they didn't see WoW 's massive success as an oddity, which is is and will likely never be repeated, even with Blizzards unannounced MMO.

But this has been a recurring theme. The Diablo 3 beta convinced me not to buy Diablo 3, same with Torchlight 2. But KoA has turned out to be an action RPG that I really like. There's depth, beyond loot lust.

They shipped a good game and it is a shame that it will likely be the first and last.

I don't think it is actually considered a failure - just the Mayor of Rhode Island did because it did not make a profit. Yet that wasn't the point in the title, it was a universe-opener to build public fondness for it and a lore to look back on for the eventual release of an MMO which was aimed to get money back later. I think 38 Studios actually considered it a success. Glad you are enjoying it though.

I don't remember if I played the demo but I did buy the game on launch. I played for a couple hours and never touched it again until a couple days ago. I started over after randomly watching an angry Joe review. Now I'm about at the same place I was before but I actually want to keep playing this time. I think the opening of the game is too boring for its own good but if you stick with it the game gets good. Shame that there won't be another one.

i had the same experience, didn't like the demo at all - i think the mmo style of the presentation put me off, then i caved and bought it during a dry spell, gave it a decent spin, but got distracted, and only got sucked in earlier this year when i went back to it a second time, and had a proper play around with the skill trees and builds.

given that the world is quite open, and content heavy, i now consider it a game i will go back to probably more than a few times.

maybe an edgier presentation would have given it more appeal right off the bat, but i think the company was doomed through mismanagement regardless of how well it did.

Same, I hated the demo, bought it only because I was done with ME3 and Skyrim at the time. I enjoyed the game allot, both the factions and the main story were all really good, a bit predicable but enjoyable. The rest of the side quest however, were pretty useless, only completed all the side quest of the first two sections, then stopped. Also enjoyed both the DLCs which were released, Dead Kel was the better out of the two, but both were good DLCs in terms of content.