E3 Day One

May 11, 2006 on 8:09 pm | In MMO (Live), MMO (Upcoming), General Gaming, Technology, WoW, Innovation, Industry

So it's that time of year again. Time to dust off the camera, brush up on your inner geek and get ready for the year's biggest arcade game. Yes folks, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is in full swing, and so far it has been pretty interesting.

The Basics

Having arrived late, not being subjected to any bag search (as nobody else was either apparently), suffering the use of my cellphone as a voice recorder and noting everything wi-fi hotspot I could find, I managed to basically live in South Hall for what time I could actually walk the floor. Such is my life of late that the daily surprises of work are little more than the default expectation.

I originally decided to do the show backwards as it were. As loud and boisterous the South Hall and the ample MMOG and mobile offerings can be, the true noise (notable from the new consoles) comes from the West. That I've saved for tomorrow. Or Friday. Not sure yet, as except for actually using that funky Nintendo Revolution/Wii controller, I'm no more interested in consoles today than I was at the dawn of the previous few generations.

My hope this year is to find strong indications of innovation in the MMOG space. Importantly, that means you'll need to get your WoW info elsewhere. You already know about the Draenai. Except that I was glad to have guessed correctly, I otherwise just don't care.

So, into the South Hall I go.

South Hall

The booths were so large in this hall that it didn't seem to make sense to do the usual row crawl. I decided to spiral in from the perimeter to the center. Or put another way, I started at Webzen and went where my noise took me.

Webzen

This company has intrigued me of late, in much the same way NC Soft did two years ago. Though not sporting as many titles as NC even then, their three are very diverse and interesting in their own way. Also, it was apparent how new they were to the U.S. market as when trying to get real answers from people who actually knew what they were talking about, there was a decided language barrier.

• Huxley- A new MMOFPS to enter the fray. This one appears to have all the makings of a success though. In addition to the massive battles of Planetside, it has pretty high production values, and is more than just about the battles themselves. Featuring ample storyline and game-directed content, Huxley could offer that magic combination of the superior control system of PS but with a more mass-marketable way of retaining players through new content release. The server will support up to 5,000 players concurrently logged in, but they appear to have some effort left to go before their 2007 launch since the game was lagging fairly noticably with just the 30 concurrent players they were hosting at the show.
• SUN: Soul of the Ultimate Nation- This is a fairly standard RPG that feels a bit like Guild Wars.
  • I find the graphics to be superior, but otherwise the game features the same fast paced action, the same boutique customizable instanced battle zones and the same element of PvP.
  • The difference here seems to reside on the ability of players to create their own games, FPS style. A player can visit an instanced zone, choose to create a map, and then set some minor parameters about it. Other players can then join that map and the game begins.
  • The games I played all featured players visiting the same zone each with the same objective: kill as many mobs as possible. The twist? You could kill your opponents also, to prevent them from getting kills. Players respawned right where they died and could be attacked that moment, but this is, after all, a beta build.
  • Play as a Berserker (Tank), Dragon Knight (Monk-like), Valkyrie (Healer) or an Elementalist (Mage).
  • Except that this fills out Webzen's U.S. library of offerings fairly well, this is an otherwise fairly recognizable, and therefore merely passable, title.
• Project Wiki- Looks like it uses the SUN engine but with a cell-shaded style. I couldn't get confirmation on whether that was the case. The game targets teenagers with what appears to be a Dofus-like experience.
• Mu- Another intriguing title, I first heard of this years ago as a game played in China both on PC and on cellphone. Beyond that, I haven't really heard much, and there wasn't more info at the Webzen booth to learn. It seems Webzen will be bringing the title to the U.S, but I plan to dig in on that more tomorrow.

Yedang Online

Another Korea-based company looking to import titles to the U.S. Their two titles were Priston Tale 2: Enigma and LaxeLore, a game link I can't provide as the path to get there (from yedangonline site) is riddled with Flash-UI. Neither game appears to promise much in the way of innovation, and the booth lacked anything in the way of details.

Microsoft Game Play Booth

Like other E3s, Microsoft featured a pavilion of various PC games, each with a representative from the company. I've always liked this feature of the show, and how both ATI and nVidia do this as well. This allows a more individualized conversation about the game, separate from the din of the host company's booth.

• Vanguard- Given how new the announcement was, it wasn't surprising to see Vanguard featured both here and at the SOE booth. My cumulative report of the game is that it's basically ok. It's as close to EQ1 one can get without hell levels. It does feature some interesting elements though:
  • All enemies that are currently targeting you are listed on the upper right.
  • Players can have both Offensive and Defensive targets. The former would be enemies you attack, the latter people supported, with things like heals and buffs.
  • Some characters can transform. Standard stuff here: Necros to Skeletons, Shamans to Bears or Wolves, Druids to Trees. These guys did make EQ1 after all. But here the Necro needs to become a Skeleton/Zombie/Something to manage their undead minions. I don't know if that impacts things beyond what a character looks like (ie, does transforming to an undead decrease faction?).
  • The graphics are ok. They feel like someone started with the EQ2 world and threw some vibrant colors at it. Animations were ok. Servicable, but nothing to write home about. Which of course makes me wonder why I wrote about them.
  • They've implemented a system like EQ2 Heroic Opportunities where moves can be linked together to perform uber actions.
  • Counterspells. This was cool. Enemies that cast spells can display an icon of that spell next to their name. If you have the appropriate counterspell and activate it in time, you can affect that spell before it is completed casting. Sometimes you can cancel it. Other times you can reflect it back to the caster.
  • They use a modified Unreal 2 engine.
  • Their goal is a 100% seamless indoor and outdoor world with no zoning anywhere. I did see some noticable lag when crossing a zone boundary, but it's a closed beta.
  • This month's Computer Gamer magazine has some beta keys.
• Age of Conan- This title now interests me much more than it had previously, for a few reasons:
  • Combat is very real time. I was particularly intrigued by their implementation of the sword-swinging function. WoW this is not. They mapped the Num-key pad to perform sword swings at specific angles. For example, the 7 key would swing a sword from upper left to lower right while the 6 key would swing laterally from right to left. Fighting is very direct. Beheadings and lifting-enemies-by-their-neck-to-gut-them. PG-13 type stuff here.
  • Further to the above, as players advance, they learn combo moves. These combo moves require the pressing of the number keys in sequence and in time, sorta like combo moves in a martial arts title for the arcade or consoles. This alone is a big leap beyond the standard system of smacking keys as needed, and more tactile even than FFXI Renkai or EQ2 Heroic Opportunities.
  • Archery is different. Switching to that mode brings up a gray targeting reticle. It turns red when something can be hit, but the actual hitting is ased on whether you're moving, they're moving and when you fire. Then dice take over.
  • Horse riding is cool. They used mo-cap to get the horse running right, but the riders don't look that great when riding. Horse riding includes horse fighting, and it's tricky to time a sword swing just right to hit a target.
  • The world itself is very alive. Both NPCs and Players can build their own cities. The one city I saw (Torontia) was, in a word, enormous. Imagine Coronet from SWG but in the style of Minith Tirith from LoTR. And all of it was navigable by the player. This is a "hub" city, one of three. I was extremely impressed by both the size and the style. Within the city, guards salute players who have the proper status, kids play, beggars beg, whinos deficate in neon green. Nothings sanitized here. People of fragile sensibilities should avoid this one.

NC Soft

• Tabula Rasa- I once loved this game. After the considerable changes started 18 months ago, I wasn’t sure. I now am. I love this game. Even the presenters have said this game was “completely redesigned from the ground up” a year and a half ago. It shows.
  • For starters, it’s sci-fi now, pure and simple. No dragons here. It’s a pretty well-done form of sci-fi too. Anyone looking for a Starship Troopers type experience won’t be disappointed with TR. The style just works.
  • Combat is completely different. Right now, the set up is very twitch. Use the Q key to scroll through various weapons one can use. Use the E key to scroll through various types of ammo one can use for that weapon. Use the mouse to target and the mouse button to shoot. The game does employ target locking on a per-weapon basis (ie, for some it’s required, for others it is implied), and the chance to hit feels very similar to Planetside in that it is not pure physics-based collision detection. But the action here is amp’d up, so it feels less “why didn’t that work” like PS can be. Basically, you need to keep something under the target reticle. That’s enough to push it beyond the ubiquitous target-locking I’m growing so very tired of in this milieu.
  • All characters are born as recruits. As they level up, they can choose specific specialties (sub-classing), with that first choice being at level 10. There are 7 sub-classes. Everyone can use the basic weapons (the ubiquitous pistol, rifle and machine gun), with the sub-classes gaining access to more specialized equipment. The character I was running had two rocket launchers and a flamethrower to complement the default equipment.
  • Knowing that people will change their mind about what they’ve specced, players can save clones of their character at these key decision point levels. If they
  • Right now the game is PvE, with all the trimmings of game directed content. To me the most important point here is that it’s a PvE MMORPG set in a sci-fi space with a twitch-based control system. This could possibly do what Neocron could not though in appealing to a mass audience.
  • The world is constantly changing. Bases move around and spheres of influence constantly change. I do not know if this means installations look and use actually change. Bases are captured by capturing/holding/destroying the holographic flag in them. Beyond that meaning the base changes hands, therefore providing access to utilities therein, I don’t know what happens. It doesn’t look like someone could destroy the walls and buildings of a base.
• Exteel- I can’t tell if this game is supposed to be an MMO or not, but am assuming it isn’t. Basically, it’s a mechwarrior type game where each player is a robot with increasing abilities. The action is very fast paced, twitchy, and includes flight. It feels like City of Heros on crack. The game appears to be able to support up to 16 concurrent players, though this demo had 12 stations. It was fun to play, but there’s not much more to the game. The brochure includes this byline: “A fast-action, fully downloadable, ‘mech game’ that’s always free* at basic levels!”. The asterisk points to “Some charges may apply for advanced game play”. To me sounds like a Micropayment strategy, typical of Korean-focused offerings at this point.

Flying Lab Software

Tucked into the nVidia booth was Pirates of the Burning Sea. I've been following this title on and off for a few months, but am now even more intrigued with it.

• The game is mostly persistent, though they are talking about instanced player housing.
• The map is a scaled version of the Caribbean. This reduces travel time to something manageable.
• They project being able to have up to 5,000 concurrent users per server.
• The game started out as a Pirate game, and they've been growing the game around that core them. For example, their original economy was a simple WoW-style affair. But their lead economy designer is also a big fan of Eve. As a result, the Pirates economy feels much like that of Eve, being entirely player driven and involving all levels from resource acquisition through the creation (and loss) of gigantic Titan-like ships (in Pirates that'd be the 104 gun behemoth, something only an entire guild could make).
• On land you drive an avatar, in water you drive a ship. Ship driving follows the same conventions, but is affected by everything. Wind speed, wind heading, your heading. You can tell how fast you can go by how buffeted the sails are.
• The AI is impressive. It will try and flank you, force you to turn into the wind, force you aground.
• Players and guilds can own ports, by turning them (placing their flag). This puts a PvP ring around that port, allowing others to come and try and turn it back. Eve-like feel here again, where players can own multiple ports and hold choke points between them. If you own to ports across a bay from each other, you own the straight between them.
• Towns have taxes, but the idea is to not need taxes. Otherwise why would people come and buy from you?
• They plan to integrated persistent world Guild Halls and instantiated private player housing. Their dream is to also integrated Player Theaters for performances.

The Day's Report

A good day. I found a few titles I'm going to definitely check out again, to see if I can't get some more info. But I'm also now more convinced there is innovation happening. It's just not coming from the expected places, which I guess in actuality, is expected.

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