In an attempt to contact the Coles and find out weather they still wish to continue the Qfg series I emailed Jason Ray, Chairman and CEO of Explorati company yesterday

To tell you the truth I was hesitating to do this, thinking that I could get a negative answer, meaning the petition and any actions to get the Qfg series to continue would be worthless if the Coles backed out on this.


But at the end I thought I would find out sooner or later so I sent the email

Afterwards when Jason Ray's reply came in I was glad I contacted him hehe

So I would like to thank him for his reply and kindness and share this emails with you all



-----Original Message-----
From: Elsa von Spielburg [mailto:elsavonspielburg@questformoreglory.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 10:56 AM
To: jason@explorati.com
Subject: Hello...
Hello,

I know you might not like this but clearly I had no choice but to use the contacts I found at your website, hoping that the Coles will get this message somehow…

I am one of the so many Qfg fans that had the chance to play the greatest RPG series ever made. And one of those that would like the Qfg series to continue.

As a result of my great love for these games, I ended up buying a .com domain and together with a friend (another Qfg fan) we built a site dedicated to the whole series.

Personally I felt that I had to do something to at least try and get Vivendi Universal’s attention and make them see that it’s worth continuing the series and make a Qfg 6. So I decided to go through the madness and made a petition about it at my site’s forums. The petition is in the form of a topic where the fans reply to state their agreement.

Here it is:

Petition to continue the Quest for Glory series

We, the Quest for Glory fans, would like to ask Sierra (or who ever the hell owns the Quest for Glory games now!) to continue the Quest for Glory series and to make a Quest for Glory 6 under these conditions:


1. To get the Coles to work on the game and if possible to have them Create/Lead the game team.
2. We understand that the current Hero’s storyline might as well have ended in Quest for Glory 5 and that the new game may have new Hero/Storyline/Game Characters etc… And we agree with that.
3. The game style and such should naturally remain the same to continue the Quest for Glory originality/tradition.

Finally if the current Quest for Glory owners do not wish to continue the series. We request that they sell the rights to the Coles so that they may continue the series.


I really don’t know how the Coles feel about this right now but I really wanted to let them know about the petition.

I’m taking the liberty to represent the Qfg fans in this email.

The Coles are our only hope.

Here’s the link to the petition:

http://www.questformoreglory.com/forums/in...T&f=2&t=58&st=0

And here’s the website:

http://www.questformoreglory.com

Sorry for contacting you like this.

Elsa


...................................................................

Elsa:

No apologies necessary, I am happy to help as best I can.

I will forward this to Corey and Lori, but I can tell you some information already.

1) The Coles would be more than happy to do more games in the series - they've wanted to for many years.

2) Sierra/Vivendi has zero interest in the QFG brand and they will not fund any more games in the series.

3) As part of the explorati company (now defunct, unfortunately) we attempted to secure the QFG rights from Sierra/Vivendi to do a massively multiplayer game in the QFG universe. They were not interested or open to selling or licensing the brand for any new title. I assume that if an appropriately rich deal can be worked out, they will let it happen. That information is now 3 years old, so who knows what they think today.

4) Vivendi is in the middle of selling off the games division and I am certain they will not want to make any deals like this until the sale is complete. There are many legal reasons to leave al their intellectual property un-touched until the sale is done. The good news is that the new owners (whoever they will be) are MUCH more likely to be willing to sell off old assets that *they* think are no longer of value.

So, I think that getting information about fan interest is very valuable and that you should watch the news to see who buys Vivendi Games. It will take about 3 months after the sale before its worth approaching them about this, but if you have your petition results and fan support you should be able to get a hearing.

Best of luck to you, and I hope when we resurrect the explorati dream for building interactive story worlds (the first Internet Holodecks) you'll be one of our supporters.

Have fun!

Jason Ray

..........................................................

Your conclusions guys

That's unbelievably good news, that the Coles are interested AND that Vivendi's selling off may result in a more amenable mindframe from the new owners!

Let's keep our hopes up and the signatures coming.

I can't believe it... this might actually work!!!!

We got a fighting chance folks, let's keep it up!

Till next time stay cool

YES!!!!

(Psst! The blue text is kind of hard to read )

...and I thought it was just me hehe...

Hmm...definitely not bad news. Much better than I expected, anway. Petitions for the continuation of adventure series have been sent off to Vivendi numerous times, and each got a negaive reply. We may actually succeed this time. I would be more than happy to see a MMORPG (Although, I tend to stay away from pay-per-play) in the QfG universe.

Fixed

Thank you

Ehh...hilighting wasn't sooo hard...

You guys think I should post this at the official Qfg forums too?

I don't see why not.

If Tin and Ellerit don't mind. And I'm sure they won't, this is pretty good news for the QFG community!

Till next time stay cool

Yup. In one of the fan chats that Lori and Corey attended, they mentioned that they would love to get the rights to QFG... I think if they did so there would be great potential.

Perhaps there is hope, because if we get a few thousand signatures, then that wouldn't be enough for the new owners to be interested in developing QFG themselves, and might give the Coles a better chance at actually buying the rights.

So, who is keeping a watch on Vivendi's selloff?

They do have the rights to Erasmus and Fenrus though! They had a comic series featuring them before QG was made, so Sierra doesn't own the rights to them!

Of course, if the rights are sold, its doubtful the official forum won't be shut down.

Orion and PL were telling me just the other day how much they would love to keep an eye on Vivendi's sell off...

I remember that conversation. I think everyone was happy in the end.

*Pulls off Eyepatch...* I just hope they don't sell the eye with it... It's setting right on top

Ehh??

So what if they shut down the offical forum? The Coles will probably open up their own offical forum for QFG on their website. It only makes sense, after all, they would have the responsablity of opening a new place for fans to hang around.

And I hope that they provide free manuals online for the folks who bought their games off Ebay and winded up without the manual, and thus, being incapable of finishing games like QFG 4.

Till next time stay cool

Erhhm...I happen to like the official forums, and would be pissed if they were shut down...

Well if the Coles get the rights, then the forums at Sierra would not be the offical forums anymore, and Sierra would have no reason to keep them there. I'm sorry, but I really do believe that they would shut them down if the sale of the rights of QFG is made, and that is a compromise we all have to make if QFG is ever going to come back to life.

Till next time stay cool

And if worst came to worst the community could always migrate here, though we would probably lose a lot of members in the process - but otherwise the news are great

We won't lose anything, there's a million QFG forums out there, I have no doubt all members would find their way into at least one of them.

Till next time stay cool

That's a big maybe, PL.

Till next time stay dood

I would like to know how we can alert these "millions" of fans that we have such a potentially important petition going...

Let's not worry about what happens to the QfG forums just yet. "Sufficient unto the day..."

I know how to inform millions of people


Goto every QFG forum you know off, and start a thread about the Petition and forward them to over here.

If you happen to know of any other QfG forums than:

FACS
Sierra
Matt's QfG site
QfGP
Lira's Duchy

then please post the links here and we'll do just that. Thank you. <smile>

I could go on all day, some are somewhat related to QFG ...

http://sflah.com/
http://qfgc.virtualave.net/
http://www.qfg3d.com/cgi-bin/forum/forum.cgi


Hopefully, people will read and respond accordingly.

Terrific! Thanks for those links.

Hey no problem...glad to help you out.

Thanks for the link - you ve been very helpful FMZ!

Ok I posted to all, except one that someone else already posted for us!

Excellent! We're certainly going to need a lot more signatures than we have at present, although this is a great start.

Bit by bit... It's not that people don't want another QfG - it's that the people are so scattered.

Yeah not to mention disappointed with Sierra and Vivendi....

It's SUCH a pity that the whole adventure game genre as done by Sierra lacks any official support whatsoever. Even the existing games of QfG 1-5, KQ, SQ, etc., etc, don't receive technical support any more, and haven't for a while. And Vivendi - well, they are clearly not interested in providing such support at this point.

It is an untenable situation that some people purchase QfG4, for instance, and lack a manual, which means they can't play it... and Sierra will absolutely not give them a manual. Very unfortunate - yet that's the way it is, and we just have to abide within the guidelines.

I hope that if our petition is successful, such a situation will be changed. It would be nice to get an error-free QfG4 too, but never mind - we do have ways around that.

Almirena, there is a SLIGHT chance that I may be able to hammer out Error 52 once and for all.

What I can do is this, once Brian finishes the new SCI studio, I should have the ability to see and edit the games scripts, when that happens, I'll open up QFG 4 and see if I can locate Error 52, and once I do that, I'll see if it's possible for me to discover exactly what's wrong, and fix the problem up.

If I suceed, I might be able to make a patch. But please understand that right now it's all theory, it may or may not work, so don't get your hopes up any time soon.



Sad to say that even the greatest of companies fall victem to the demands of the public. Much like Star Wars episode 1 and 2. In any case, the downfall of Sierra did play a role in the fall of adventure games, they had a little success with FMV adventure games, but never did quite figure out how to do 3D, and that didn't help to save the adventure game genre from the onslaught of action games.

Till next time stay cool

Now that would be great!

Personally I hope you make it

The best news of that post is that the Coles are indeed eager to continue the series

Microsoft Quest for Glory
Where do you want to be a hero today?

Who knows

People, if you find more QFG forums, please post the link, Administrator will post a thread about the petition currently going on over here.

Thanks,

FMZ

What FMZ said

Well PL, I'm pretty sure that the Error 52 message gives a location in the file of where exactly it occurs. If you let me know when the SCI Studio is finally released, I'd be interested in helping you find it.

I'm sure I can find it easily, but I just hope I can fix it. And yes, I'd appreciate any help with the task, we'll give Error 52 a decent burial and whatnot.

Till next time stay cool

It will be an Error that becomes an elder-bury. He he, little graveyard humour there.

As for a couple of forums that have at least an interest in QfG... here they are...

The Halfwittenberg: http://pub8.ezboard.com/bhalfwittenberg
Oktariina's Oasis: http://pub8.ezboard.com/bfellowadventurer

Hope you find these useful. <smile>

Thanks for the links Rath, we apreciate it!

Posted

I'm behind you all the way! Let's make this happen! Keep your eye on the news! If anyone hears anything, post it here!

-M.B.

Well, I guess I won't have to put into action my idea, which was:

A. Become really, really ridiculously rich.
B. Buy the company that has the rights to all the Sierra games at the moment, along with a few airlines and a castle in Scotland.
C. Hire all the people that made the Sierra classic games so classic, make lots of new games in the many classic Sierra series. Also, travel around the world, finally ending up in Scotland where I can oversee the reconstruction of said castle, where I can spend time relaxing in between travelling the world some more.

Hmm...actually, I think some of that idea is still quite viable...



Very little.

Tallin, I like some of your idea. The bit about getting rich... It sounds to me like a sensible approach - as long as you remember your friends.

<stares firmly at Tallin and intones, "Almirena is your friend..."> (Yes, I do that thing a lot, don't I? But I promise my last name is not Avis...)