I am quite surprised by the good position achieved by TOEE on the sales list since it´s release (and without any promo). I think that this is because it was really bad distributed, on my country, Spain it wasn´t even released as far as I know (and many people couldn´t play it). It´s a pity that Troika games run out of business, they didn´t make the best games technologically, but were quite good games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvgSGxNTADI

We will never see this one :-( And this really looked good for a Fallout fan like me.

Si que llegó a nuestro país, venía en una cajita de cartón como la de la primera edición del Neverwinter Nights... otra cosa es que desapareciera de las tiendas rápidamente y sea complicadete dar con él, aparte de que no lo han reeditado como si han hecho varias veces con Fallout/BGate/Neverwinter...

Desde luego a mi ciudad no llegó, lo tuve que pedir a Inglaterra. Pero gracias por la puntualización.
Ahora dejo el castellano :-)

I think it's great that TOEE is getting recognition, but it's good position on the sales list probably stems from it being $6 and a Dungeons and Dragons game released in the same promotional blitz as Planescape and Baldur's Gate.

I'm also going to say that Troika failed for a reason. The RPG market was kind of drying up around that time, and they always made slightly more hardcore games than what the average consumer (even the average RPG consumer) could handle. Add in a general inability to bugtest and you have something that is quite frankly, unprofitable. It's a damn shame, because I would have liked to have seen where they could have gone.

Yep. However, it´s a pity. The video that i´ve posted before was shown only some weeks before they closed doors. Beautiful music indeed, it makes me feel strangely sad

I don't know - Troika folded for all sorts of reasons and unfavourable circumstances coming together. I think Vampire:Bloodlines had the potential for Troika to reach the more casual market - it certainly wasn't a "hardcore" RPG like the the first two games Troika released. As all Troika projects it was handled and managed real bad though (from both Troika's and publisher's side [the engine license deal with Valve was so silly]).

If Bloodlines would have been a hit, I'd guess Troika's chances of finding publishers for further games would have been way, way better. But Bloodlines tanked and it's initial sales were even worse than those of Troika's more "hardcore" games.

I believe that Troika actually tanked before they even got Bloodlines out the door, hence why it was literally unfinished, and the first patch was made with the staff working for free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_mDTLphIVY&feature=related

Yes and no. Bloodlines was released November 16, 2004 - Troika shut down in January 2005, so they were still in existence during that all important initial sales period. There really wasn't one particular cause for them folding - just a general mess of big proportions. Bloodlines was "done" (but buggy as usual) for quite a while, but due to the licensing deal wasn't allowed to be released before Half-life 2. As Half-life 2 was delayed again and again Bloodlines was in limbo for quite a while and Troika actually used the time to polish and patch the game some more. The retail version was more advanced than the actual gold version.

But the decision to license an unfinished engine in the first place was just stupid as agreeing to those conditions: Troika struggled with keeping their own modifications to the engine intact while constantly receiving new development versions from Valve. Add to that bad project management (which was the case with Troika with any game they published), a bad relationship with the publisher, a complete re-write of a lot of the game during the design process, etc. That Troika did publish a patch, unpaid, after shows they at least tried to salvage a little after things went wrong.

Troika was working on their next game (see video above), but didn't manage to get a publisher to sign them up - if they'd had they'd likely been able to tide over the initially disappointing sales of Bloodlines. By now, I think, it is selling fairly okayish.