Since Three kingdoms support got cancelled, i felt that that was a terrible move by CA. Three kingdoms had a consistent player base and the potential to be one of the best total war games to date.

It is fairly obvious to me what management must have been thinking. The concept of opportunity cost often plays a role in their business decisions.

For those who don't know what opportunity cost is. It is a basic economic term meaning the cost of something that is forgone. For example if I have money sitting in a checking account, my opportunity cost is the forgone interest of whatever a savings account would be paying if I where to move my money there.

In CA/ Sega's mind they saw that DLC for 3k where not meeting their expectations and they thought that the opportunity cost of focusing dev time and resources to 3k was very high because instead they could focus dev time on producing a new title to try and replicate the original sales of the 3k base game. (We saw this same logic followed with Troy/Pharaoh, were Pharaoh was originally a DLC for Troy but changed to be a full game). Clearly that idea didn't pan out too well.

So Management had a misguided notion of what their true opportunity cost for 3k DLC was. Because they thought that they could get heaps way more sales revenue from a 3k 2 type title or by focusing the teams on making different titles and from a business standpoint focusing resources on projects that can generate a better return is a good way to maximize revenue/minimize forgone opportunity cost. However this will fall flat if you are unrealistic about your true opportunity cost. Just because it would be wonderful for the company to get people to buy cheap low effort games, that doesn't mean that that will play out in that fashion. This is a major miscalculation of true opportunity cost because people want quality, releasing half backed games will not be able to break sales records.

Paradox with EU4 support as an example has been able to slowly grow it's player base and I think 3k could do the same with a proper DLC strategy continuing the story after Guandu, introducing the northern expansion DLC as well as fixing up lingering bugs.

Companies that are short sighted solely focused on quarterly earnings reports, will in most cases lose in the long run. Why? Because people have options, and when people can chose how they spend their time they will chose quality over just what any company whant's to push as new and cool. 

For Three Kingdoms CA had several things going for them:

1) A loyal customer base who really enjoys that game and wanted more content

2) Regular player numbers that exceed other historical titles

3) Many people would be willing to return to the game if more bugs where addressed

4) Making DLC that match the players want's and bug fixing would create a positive sentiment and more positivity from influencers which would benefit both 3k DLC sales and sales for future games if CA shifts focus to quality.

5) Making DLC for a beloved established game, while it will not beat sales revenue from a mainline WH3 or base 3k type release it is an easer endevour in the short run. (It takes less effort to make a stellar DLC than a stellar full game)

6)Making DLC now for 3k as well as dedicated bug fixing would instantly give CA another revenue stream in the short run without having to reinvent the wheel

Great book of Grudges made a video about bringing back 3k and I completely agree. Why would CA not bring back support of this game? It would be totaly dumb. 

Thats all from me folk. What are your thoughts on bringing back support for 3k now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz1wjBRNlVM

It wasn't short sighted tho, they worked over several years for it and did make changes to what they focused on with their DLCs and still they didn't sell well. They then moved to a second 3K game which is miss named as 3K2 as it's not like that, it's looked at the original and tried to learn the issues of the post support. The issue being that the entire direction doesn't seem to have been interesting to the main player base, why when they announced the new game they pointed out the focus on following the Romance and on characters. That wasn't really something they could do with the state of the original 3K. Doing effectively another Nannman DLC when that DLC didn't sell well isn't sensible. 

So no, it would be totally dumb to go back and do what already failed again and expecting a different result.

TheTrue_LordAndy#1434 wrote:
3k given the nature of the story if they are following the romance novel has larger than life characters so it will never sit well with the old school historical fans. #k has to be done the way it was. Med 3, Rome 3, empire 2 would be an attempt to recapture the old historical fan base. These are different market segments. If you are trying to make a game that satisfies everyone, in the end you are more likely to get a game that staisfies no one. It's ok for different games to have a niche audience. 

That's the point. And why trying to restart it is a bad idea. It's why when they announced the end of 3K support they said they were going to restart and go in a single direction, one that metrics had shown was more popular.

TheTrue_LordAndy#1434 wrote:
They where targeting a different market though. The chinese community would buy the DLC if it was done well.

And they tried to do it differently, tried to take the feedback and metrics to make the content. Why Nanman is far more Romance focused than Records and still didn't perform that well.

TheTrue_LordAndy#1434 wrote:
Also the DLC for 3K was profitable it just wasn't as profitable as the execs wanted it to be. So no i am not saying that starting 3k again would break records on sales but I am saying that they could still make a profit on it as well as restore good faith with the community.

It wasn't as profitable as working on other products could be. Rebooting it wont do anything for it but likely lose them money. They've got to cut staff and tighten their budgets as it is, pulling staff to dust off a game they've written off isn't going to work. It wont help with good will from the community. We already have so many who hate them doing anything with other titles than their chosen one, even if it's not even released.

This went horribly wrong and I feel terrible for the developers, who worked tirelessly to give us such an excellent game. Even now, I continue to play TW Three Kingdoms, over TW Warhammer, because it is just superior, despite all of it's bugs and half-baked mechanics... it is remains far more entertaining and exciting to play, than TW Warhammer. One thing that worries me about Creative Assembly however... is that, while their hearts are with their games and their fans... business is business and ever it hungers to cannibalize whomever it can shove into it's mouth.

There is nothing wrong with profit, but when profit comes before quality service, it's only going to lead to a downward spiral. I sincerely hope CA do not become a worthless husk, like EA Games or Blizzard... that would be a significant blow to Strategy Games everywhere... then we really will have to rely on small indy publishers like Slavic Magic (manorlords) and Bamboo Games (Ancient Warfare: Han Dynasty).