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[Drakkar166]

Does anyone know what sierra is gonna do with betrayal in antara? If its gonna be made Abandonware or something...cause their ploy to uber promote it by making the first betrayal at krondor failed miserably.

[Borodin]

I'm afraid you leave me confused. Sierra Online no longer exists; hasn't, for years. So they're hardly promoting these days (much less over-promoting) Betrayal at Antara through the re-release of Betrayal at Krondor. I don't know who owns the rights to Antara these days, but it might be UbiSoft.

Just for the record: John Cutter at Dynamix made Betrayal at Krondor. As soon as it was released, a VP at Dynamix (who shall remain nameless, though he was a slime for a variety of reasons) fired the entire team. He then assigned a bottom-level programmer with no previous experience in game design to make a followup. That became Betrayal at Antara. It was trash: completely linear, terribly written, and proof that shoving "more of the same" at players won't work if the people doing it don't have any ideas about the product. The VP left Dynamix shortly after Antara was published, to almost universal pans.

Return to Krondor was farmed out by Sierra to a different team with only strategy experience. Feist was heavily involved in the project, unlike the previous ones, and frankly responsible for many of the least creative aspects of it, such as forcing a return to an AD&D style magic system. It wasn't the bomb that Antara was, but it was decidedly less successful and innovative than BaK. A shame Sierra didn't grab Cutter back.

If I were to detail all the various companies and people that tried getting a piece of the Krondor software pie after the original game's success, it would take a book. An amazing tale lurks there.

[Drakkar166]

I know all that...I just wanna know if its abandonware or if its even purchasable...I've been havin trouble finding it here at home and thus I turn to seeing if its abandonware...or If I have to pay for such a barely thought out pile of crap...ya see...I wanna finish my collection of sierra games...I've even got the Realm...heh

[Borodin]

Well, if you know all that, it's interesting that you posted some misinformation, above. That implies you knew your statements were inaccurate when you made them.

Since you write that you're trying to finish your collection of Sierra games, how large currently is that collection? How far back does it extend, and do you have titles like Outpost, arguably among the worst strategy games ever produced? Just curious--I'm not interested in acquiring it. I threw it out, years ago.

[Drakkar166]

I'm working on a list right now but I have the realm, outpost 1 and 2, and betrayal at krondor right now...I started just a short time ago...

[Borodin]

Gods, how far back do you go with Sierra titles? They were a pretty old company, after all. Not as much as SSI, by any means: I remember playing SSI titles back in 1982, and they already had a large catalog. But Sierra Online really had a considerable amount of games to their credit over the years. What a shame nobody feels its worth re-releasing "game packs" of, say, all the Dr. Brain, or all the Leisure Suit Larry, etc. I do know the Quest for Glory titles were bundled together for rerelease at one point, and I think Monkey Island, too. But much else has yet to be put out there.

[Drakkar166]

Absolutely true...but I'm a huge sierra fan no matter what.

[Borodin]

Well, good luck in your hunt, regardless. I'm sure somebody here can point you in the correct direction to possess that title. I threw out my copy of BoA years ago--shortly after it's release, in fact. Reviewed it for a magazine where I panned it as possessing some of the worst writing I'd ever encountered. But it's bound to be around.

[Timpsi]

There are 3 copies of Antara available at http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/005015.htm

[Drakkar166]

sweet thanks...muhahaha now my domination will begin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!