Trouble in Telon (Vanguard)

Both over at Grimwell Online and F13, one of the many conversations involves Vanguard. The conversation at GO was started by Heartless posting some "leaked" info an anonymous beta tester posted in his comments thread. 

Basically, all is not well on Telon. While I am not surprised, the discussion at GO has mostly involved the reaction of both the old and new Vanguard Forum posting community to the state of the game and it's relevance to the ever changing conditions of the genre.

Continue reading Trouble in Telon (Vanguard)…

Nth Chances

Every year features new entrants into the MMO space. While last year was dominated by Blizzard, we also saw the debut of some newbies ArenaNet (GuildWars), Monolith (Matrix Online) and Planetwide Games (Ryl), among others.

There's also been a long list of expansions for specific titles, from relative newcomers like Everquest 2, maturing titles like City of Heros and genre veterans like Dark Age of Camelot and the venerable Everquest 1 itself. This mix of old and new feeds the very breadth that almost ensures there's an MMORPG for every gamer. But this also shows that almost every game has a fair chance at a second (or Nth) chance. Continue reading Nth Chances…

E3 Day 2- and End

So the daily surprises that are no longer surprises kept me from the show until almost noon. Meetings, emails, teleconferences from what would, in the real world be considered "noisy" but which actually was rather quiet relatively. I've theoretically been at the show for two days and I've gotten to actually walk it for about nine total hours.

But it all ended and I was free once again. While I wanted to hit South Hall again to finish up with games I hadn't learned enough about yet, it was my duty to actually, you know, see the other 2/3 of the show. To Kentia and West I did go.

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E3 Day One

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.

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ULDK from SOE MMOG for PS3

(Because I couldn't get enough acronyms in there) Just read about Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom over at OGRanlk. They got the news from this entry at John Smedley's blog. An MMOG for the PS3, some highlights I read from John's blog:

• They are emphasizing play in the 1080p resolution/aspect-ratio.
• They're employing a separate SPU water alone. This is referenced as a way to add "depth to the gameplay", but I'm not sure what it does beyond making it look better.
• The character shown on the official SOE website is old, and has been redesigned.
• The acronym, expected for this genre, is sorta ugly: ULDK

Finally, they're using another separate SPU for physics. Here I can see some gameplay innovation possibilities, particularly with this statement:

Just about everything in the game now has a full physics simulation running on it, and it makes all the difference in the world. Watching a skeleton get thrown around like a child's toy and pieces of it flying all over the place never gets old. It's funny how much time people spend just playing around with the different things you can do with the physics system.

MMO meets Half Life 2? Bring it on!

James Cameron MMO

According to this entry at Slashdot.org, James Cameron, the Director of such classics as Terminator 2, True Lies, Titanic, Aliens 2, and other-stuff-of-note, announced plans for an MMOG launch to coincide with his upcoming movie 'Project 880'. Sounds like a sci-fi adventure. The game will predate the movie as a hype exercise.

Should be interesting to say the least. I have neither high nor low hopes.

John Romero goes MMO

According to this article at CVG (which I first read about at F13), John Romero has become co-founder of a "complete secret, stealth company", and will be developing an MMOG "very different from any other MMO for some special reasons". Their development budget looks to far exceed the $10 million he stated as being used for Gauntlet.

He was very cagey when asked questions, so that's all there is in the article. Everything else is speculation.

MMOFPS in development: Versus

Stephen Zepp of Garage Games, also a frequent reader and poster of F13, stopped by this thread about Planetside to remark on an indie development effort called Versus.

I'm always a fan of any team that wants to extend the MMOFPS genre of titles all but started by SOE's Planetside.

Continue reading MMOFPS in development: Versus…