Author Archives: Abalieno

Prey “gone gold”, demo out NOW

by | Leave a comment

I’m late reporting this, but the FPS I’m waiting from a long time is finally out to the public.

The official release of the game is planned for the 10 July, but right now the demo is out. The announce about the gold status is expected for later today. The demo for XBOX360 is delayed.

I’m quite excited about this because I always found stupid to release a demo of an anticipated game only when it is already out and in this case it is the first occasion to finally find out whether those innovative features provide fun gameplay or not. My bet is that they do (but I won’t be able to comment till tomorrow since it will take me a long time to download this).

About this demo:

– Filesize is 450Mb.
– The single player portion should be quite consistent with about an hour of gameplay and the first five levels (intro and stuff included).
– Four weapons SP (pipe wrench, plasma rifle, energy gun, critters grenades), plus the bow in spirit mode. The MP also has rocket and grenade launchers.
– Two MP levels (with gravity flipping and wall walking).

Previous coverage about the game: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Two fun things I’ve read in the demo previews (here, and here) about the game and that I wasn’t aware before:
– The game will have just one default difficulty mode that will monitor your performance while playing and “adapting” the difficulty dynamically. When you beat the game an harder difficulty mode (Cherokee) will be unblocked.
– The portal technology also supports different scales. So that your character and point of view can be “resized”, making rooms and enemies bigger or smaller.

And here are the mirrors for the demo:

http://gamershell.com/download_14372.shtml
http://www.fragland.net/downloads.php?id=15389
http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/prey/prey_demo.exe.html
http://files.filefront.com/prey+demo/;5175632;;/fileinfo.html
http://www.p0wn.com/prey/
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=8998
http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=34993
http://videogames.yahoo.com/predownload?eid=465828
http://www.computergames.ro/site/p/downloads/o/download-details/lng/en/dowid/6689/

Enjoy.

Posted in: Uncategorized |

Your soul is mine

by | 4 Comments

Gathering some comments I wrote about Mythic being sold to EA.

—
It means that EA will now set too high expectations. And when Warhammer won’t reach them (and it won’t), EA will take over completely and put Mythic to rest forever.

The only difference is that this time they’ll let it release.

Really. The only REAL change after this acquisition is that the 120-130k subs DAoC currently has aren’t REMOTELY enough for Mythic to exist. And that Warhammer must do 5x better only to be granted continued existence.

You think throwing money at it is enough. I don’t. Before this Mythic could survive with modest-sized games and still slowly building very good ones. I seriously think that they threw away a lot of potential because they had the possibility to slowly increase their market share, instead of slowly losing it.

Under EA they don’t have anymore the luxury to go on with modest-sized mmorpgs. It’s quite obvious that EA will now bet heavily on this. It’s quite obvious that they will throw a bunch of money at Mythic. And it’s quite obvious that things at Mythic will change SIGNIFICANTLY because of this.

—

Athryn: Who knows, maybe they will infuse some life back into DAoC?

DAoC was already the sacrificial lamb for Warhammer. They are too similar to let them compete for the same audience and it already happened that they used DAoC shortcomings to publicize Warhammer (instead of fixing them).

This already before EA’s acquisition, so nothing will change. Maybe DAoC will even have a few more leftovers devs that will give the illusion of more support when instead they will complete the disruption of the original DAoC team (as SWG demonstrated the simplest, quickest way to kill a mmorpg is to have an high churn rate with the devs).

The true impact of EA’s acquisition is that now Mythic is something *completely new*. Maybe not in those who work there, they won’t even relocate. But in *expectations*. Before Mythic could survive and prosper with medium-sized mmorpgs finding their own space. 100-200k subs were absolutely viable and they still had a lot of resources to increase their market share with the time if they wanted to (instead of losing it).

After this, the rules are changing. EA is going to throw a lot of money at Warhammer. This is good? Not from my point of view because it’s quite obvious that you don’t hand out money at will if you don’t expect something BACK. The “old” Mythic dies here (if it didn’t before). Expectations change, plans change. And you can be sure that when Warhammer won’t reach those insane expectations, EA *will* take over completely. Or start the cleansing.

Till now Mythic has been DAoC. Warhammer doesn’t exist. Well, for EA DAoC is nothing less than a grain of sand. You really believe that it’s enough to grant Mythic a continuity similar to the one they have now? Hell NO. You really believe that Mark Jacobs told EA that the target market for Warhammer is 200-300k subs? HELL NO.

EVERYTHING changes with this. The scale changes. The company’s objectives change. The production process will change, testing will change. The ambition and overall strategy change.

No matter what Mythic reps are saying while trying to reassure themselves.

Jason Booth commented on Lum’s blog:

As for Mythics future games, I wish them luck, but so far, no studio has managed to hit it out of the ballpark more than once.

And that’s the point. Before Mythic could sit in the back and remain prefectly active and healthy in that ballpark. They were deciding for themselves. Set THEIR OWN goals and ambitions. They should have tried to slowly improve and increase their market share in small step as CCP is doing with Eve-Online.

After this acquisition the objectives skyrocket. EA didn’t buy Mythic for *what it is*. But for what they hope it will become. Not for their identity, but for their potential. Not for their current worth, but for growth possibilities.

They bought it as a raw material to transform. Hence the reason why Mythic is now FORCED to “hit it out of the ballpark” or die in the process.

Putting their hand on EA’s wallet means accepting their conditions and expectations. It’s not about getting a disinterested donation. It’s betting with the devil.

They aren’t anymore their own measure. They are EA measure.

Mark Jacobs decided that continuing to do small steps wasn’t anymore satisfactory and, quoting:

We chose to do this deal because of what it meant to Mythic today and to our company going forward. It was a grand slam home run.

They chose to make this big jump at the price of their identity. You know, a sellout.

And you are silly if you believe that “things will remain the same”. Nothing will. For the worse or the better.

You really believe that EA will let Mythic survive with similar subscription numbers to DAoC? And you really believe that throwing money at them is enough to make great games?

Goodnight Mythic

by | 1 Comment

Rumors were correct.

EA is now officially going to acquire Mythic:

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 20, 2006–Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS – News) today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Virginia-based Mythic Entertainment®. Upon completion of the acquisition, Mythic Entertainment will become EA Mythic, a wholly-owned studio dedicated to developing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs).

Upon completion of the acquisition, Mark Jacobs, the President, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Mythic, will become Vice President, General Manager of EA Mythic. Rob Denton, the Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Mythic will assume the role of Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of EA Mythic. Mythic’s 175-person development team will remain in Fairfax, Virginia.

“Mythic has always been a leading independent developer in the online space,” says Mark Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of Mythic Entertainment. “EA’s commitment to the online market as well as its focus on creating games of unsurpassed quality, scope and scale gives us opportunities and resources we could only dream about in the past.”

“The addition of Mythic to the EA family reflects our deep commitment to the online gaming market worldwide. Mythic will bring one of the industry’s most talented MMORPG teams to EA. Together, we will create games that will introduce MMO players to a whole new level of game play and excitement,” said Paul Lee, President, EA Studios.

The only good part of the news is that I underlined. Now I’ll wait before picking some fun on Mark Jacobs. The post where he denied the rumors (sort of) can be found here. This is what he wrote today:

Mark Jacobs: As you can imagine, it’s been a rather interesting few weeks at Mythic. I promise to post a much longer letter here but the rest of the day is filled with interviews and questions and then I fly out for a few days with the folks at EA. I’ll try to find time to post here during that time but if I can’t, I will do so upon my return.

As always, there is nothing wrong with being skeptical, worried or cynical (traits that are near and dear to my heart) but we will prove over the next 15 months why we deserved your trust and faith from the beginning.

WAR is still coming and nothing will change, except for the better and nothing will stop that.

I’ll leave you will one final bit, we didn’t need to do this deal, we chose to do this deal because of what it meant to Mythic today and to our company going forward. It was a grand slam home run.

Expect LOTS of spinning. LOTS. Mark Jacobs will do his very best.

Sanya also commented:

– EA came to us. Not the other way around. And our deal with GOA (to work as partners on CS and simultaneous patches, etc) still stands.

– We have not been absorbed. Mark’s title is the highest/best/most powerful one he can have. In other words, he remains the studio head.

– I don’t blame MMO players for being nervous, but think about it – we KNOW the history of all previous deals. Only a complete monkey wouldn’t have taken that history into account while the contracts were being written.

– Wait and see if a chunk of sky hits you in the head before you say the sky is falling, okay?

NO ONE is being laid off, moved, rearranged, or changed. Mythic is working with Games Workshop and that isn’t changing in any way. I believe, and I will leave it to Mark to confirm, but I believe that keeping the relationship between us and GW exactly the same was kind of key here.

You don’t have to believe it, but I had to try

Yes, we knew all this. Money hat for Mark. The true impact of this will be only visible in the long term. And it won’t be pretty.

SELLOUT!!1! (this beats Brad bringing Vanguard back to SOE)

WoW is crap, buy EQ2

by | 10 Comments

Now I’m joking but the current issues with the download of the WoW patch let me really appreciate how much, MUCH better is SOE’s support.

It’s from early beta that Blizzard decided to distribute game and patches through Bittorrent to spare on the bandwidth. Problem is that their client is total crap and for very simple reasons. I can use Bittorrent without a problem but the Blizzard’s version is completely broken for me. It was broken during beta and it still is. Two years have passed and ZERO improvements have been done. At that time I ranted on their forums explaining the problems and they said they were going to fix it in time for launch. Yeah, sure.

There are two problems with that crap-program.

The first is that it doesn’t save partially downloaded “parts”. Basically a Bittorrent client chunks a large file in smaller parts and then downloads them from peer connections to then recombine to form the full file. Let’s say a “part” is 256kb (as in this case). Other, better Bittorrent clients save even partially downloaded parts, so that even if you have downloaded 128kb of the 256kb, it isn’t lost and then it is resumed seamlessly. Blizzard’s client doesn’t do this. If you go look at the connection details you could see that you have downloaded a total of 15Mb but completed only 8Mb. If you restart the client the 7Mb partially retrieved won’t be saved and will be lost.

The second problem is an issue with certain network cards and connections. While other Bittorrent clients allow you to set the max number of open connections, Blizzard’s downloader opens them up at will till your connection gets totally swamped and cannot keep up anymore. In my case (ISDN line) I can keep open forty different connections without a problem. It’s way, way more than enough to cap both my upload and download bandwith. But if I go above that cap my connection gets completely swamped till it dies. It stops completely to upload and download and I cannot open even a webpage. Basically it kills my connection till I shutdown that program and all those useless open connections. So if your network card doesn’t like an insane number of connections open the Blizzard’s download is simply unusable since it doesn’t allow you to set a cap. It just continues till it kills your connection.

Recently Blizzard got the “smart” idea to keep the downloader up while you play the game to download the patch in the background using “spare” bandwidth and ease the load during patch day. Well, if I don’t disable it I last two minutes in the game before that FUCKING SHIT of a program lags me to a disconnection. Again because it happily goes to open connections to other PCs at will till my own drowns in despair. You idiot of a program, I’m on dialup, what the fuck you expect when you open more than *eighty* connections to other PCs?

So two years later I’m still waiting Blizzard to fix those two trivial problems or at least provide a standard .torrent file so that I can bypass that shitty program they have.

And one has to praise SOE at this point. SOE doesn’t rely on peer to peer to support their game. In fact their patch program is so smart that verifies and keeps up to date ALL the files. You can go in the game directory and delete a random file and the patch program will deal with it. With a fast, reliable connection. Add to this the mini expansion packs that are distributed completely online. Add to this the possibility to download the FULL game if you need to. Hell, add to this even that they forgot to include the expansion in the expansion DVDs. No problem. I downloaded *all of it* directly from their servers. And if I want I can buy the expansions directly online without bothering to drive to a shop or wait a few days for a shipment to arrive.

Even SOE now supports the possibility to download optional content packs in the background while you play the game as Blizzard tried to do recently. Differently from Blizzard’s crap version, it works. I can play the game even with my poor connection and the background downloader does it work smoothly without lagging me at all.

So some praises, at least when it comes to a good support, are well deserved.

EQ2’s evolution for next year?

by | 2 Comments

It’s almost like whatever I care about is now off the official channels.

So I read Scott “Gallenite” Hartsman Producer’s letter and it tells me nothing particularly interesting. While a post on FoH’s forums is much more compelling:

It’s one of our longer term projects. No releasable details yet, but since Smed directly addressed character animations here originally, I’ll say at least this much about it:

What we need to go through to make both armor/wearables and animations for 40-some different race-gender pairs across both US and Alt models isn’t really tenable in the long term. Fixing that is something we’ll be talking more about over the next year.

In the interest of efficiency, this project supercedes making a couple thousand new animations for the existing character system.

Doing that much animation work, just to have to throw it all away when the system itself is fixed (and delaying the system fixes by months in the process), wasn’t really the best option for us.

That’s not to say there won’t be incremental animation improvements in the meanwhile like the tweaks that continue to come out with updates. Just not any massive-scale replacement. Hopefully the reasoning above explains why we think this is the smart call.

– Scott

Actually what this post says is not encouraging: “It was delayed, don’t expect anything soon”. But at least they could decide to address the problem radically when it will be the right time. And this is good, because the problems definitely aren’t “superficial”.

EQ2 is a game that went totally wrong. But now, step by step, it is adjusting the aim, and it’s becoming a good game. Maybe it is watching WoW too closely and backpedaling on a number of design decisions, but overall improving.

Of course it’s a matter of “priorities”. We usually say “it’s about the gameplay, not about the look”, but client optimizations, better models and animations, better UI features, less memory requirements… these are all features that can have a strong impact on ALL players ALL the time. I think that a mmorpg should have a continued development at all levels (the systemic approach). Instead of just tweaking balance and add some new content preriodically.

Right now EQ2 is a decent game, with plenty of content and zones to explore. It still has significantly high accessibility issues, a clunky client, an heavy UI and varying artistic style and quality. But it is satisfying enough. Still far from being polished and carefully designed as WoW, but it has some richer aspects here and there. Plenty to do. Perfect for someone bored coming from other games.

Perfect for those fond of this kind of gameplay and who desire a whole new, huge world to discover for the first time.

Looking at the future I don’t think it is grim. The biggest competitor for EQ2 is Vanguard, as ironic as it could be. EQ2 isn’t a masterpiece and for many players it is like a “parked” experience. Something to do while they wait for something that can arouse the interest again. I believe that if EQ2 plays well its card and continues to improve in the same way it is doing at the moment (at all levels, not just with “more content”), it could have nothing to fear from Vanguard and easily outclass it. Then it will be the time for Vanguard to chase desperately EQ2 as EQ2 is now doing with WoW.

An aggro train.

In the meantime I continue to play casually with my experiment: combat experience turned off permanently and just getting some of it through quests (54 completed, currently). Since there’s so much content to see I decided to leave behind the desire to “level up” and just do everything I can. I made to level 12 but it starting to feel a bit too redundant and vain. I wish there were more quests directing me to new zones and places and a rebalance of the xp points so that more of them would come from the quest completition and less from kill-a-foozle.

Latest sightings of bearded people

by | Leave a comment

It’s too darn HOT to sit in front of the PC. Even if I’d have something to write.

If I try to play some graphic-intensive game I risk to crash just after a few minutes due to heat issues.

I’m in the mood for harsh rants and being mean. But luckily other things will keep me away from the pc.

Posted in: Uncategorized | Tagged:

Diablo and Starcraft as MMOs – Last chapter

by | Leave a comment

Blizzard asked us to remove the slides and we did. The slides, though, are publicly available.

People on Q23 still argue whether we need a public execution for this crime or not.

Shild concludes all that went on with a very well written article thaty I’m going to quote. In the light of what has been said, I think that my first reaction still represents the heart of the discussion. Which is about the relationship between Blizzard and Vivendi that has already caused a good number of developers to quit both before and after WoW’s launch (Flagship Studios, Arena.net, Red 5, NCSoft Orange Country, Cheyenne Mountain and Castaway Entertainment to name those I remember, plus the single devs that fled to a number of other companies).

Right now Blizzard doesn’t even have enough resources to support properly the development of WoW and the expansion. Vivendi is another matter.

So I’m concluding quoting SirBruce again and then Shild to underline what we were actually talking about. (edit: added Darniaq)

—
SirBruce: No one reported that in the future they would only focus on MMOGs or only on one platform; that’s a misinterpretation of what WAS reported, which was “All Blizzard franchises (actually, Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo) to become MMOGs.” The same slide that supports this suggests that those three franchises could expand into the console market, as well.

Rob Pardo is splitting hairs. *Blizzard* may not have any current development plans to do an MMO beyond the WoW expansion, but *Vivendi*, who *owns* them, does. So they can easily give Blizzard a bunch of money to make World of Starcraft, or even decide to delegate that to one of the other development studios under Sierra Online (although that would probably be a big mistake).

The news is “Vivendi plans to make more MMOGs, with Diablo and Starcraft among the IP possibilities” not “Blizzard is currently making Diablo and Starcraft MMOGs.”

Bruce

—
Darniaq: Of course, I happen to agree with that, as I always have. They’re held in very high regard, and I certainly won’t argue against their skills. But they’re still a profit center, a division of a multi-national. The average Blizzard fan can believe otherwise, and are probably currently arguing all over the place in defense of some stance they thing Blizzard is taking. But this is still a corporation with goals and objectives and nowhere near complete autonomy.

Gotta love the web :)

—
F13: Blizzard is owned by Vivendi Universal – or as far as I can tell they still are. They do not get the final word. It doesn’t matter who you ask at Blizzard – including one Mr. Rob Pardo. He’s a lapdog as far as I’m concerned. They pay him the big bucks to do what he’s told. I did not see a single website talk to the executive equivalent to Pardo at Vivendi. Someone might have, but I missed it. Referencing Blizzard/WoW moderators was a true sign of awesome journalism in action. These people, I guarantee, know less about what’s going on at Blizzard than the average player who scours the internet for every tiny nugget of information on their beloved company.

Also, the slide presentation – you know why I didn’t talk about it in my original post? Because it had nothing to do with what I said. See, the problem is, I have a majority of the facts – and put simply, I like playing some cards close to my chest. Especially when it’s about the three headed hydra consisting of Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft. By referencing some other folks, you’ve managed to get your dirty little paws on a slideshow given during the Wall Street presentation. GRATS. That slide show presentation – if you haven’t read it – did a great job of dumbing this gaming “stuff” down for people who have no clue what it’s about. They want the bottom line, that’s why population and dollars were the big discussion there. What hasn’t been discussed anywhere, as far as I can tell is the Q&A session that went on afterwards. Shortly after I posted the news, an unnamed source sent me news that people were getting it wrong. That the line “All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs” came from a Q&A with a Vivendi rep after the presentation. Have I said Q&A enough times? Is someone going to refer back to the WoW Slideshow for Dummies again? No?

A Vivendi representative saying [the bit about franchises] means two things:
1. All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs.
2. This will happen with the support of Rob “The Ego” Pardo & Co. or not.

Posted in: Uncategorized | Tagged:

I Wished

by | 2 Comments

This is an article I wrote in italian during the December 2004 that was supposed to appear in the most popular paper magazine about games here in Italy (also the one that spolied the WoW’s expansion before the official Blizzcon, if you remember).

It was a preview of “Wish”, the game developed by Mutable Realms and Dave Rickey. It was supposed to appear in the issue of February but it never did. Just a few days after the New Year’s Day (if I remember correctly) Dave Rickey was kicked out of the position of lead designer (to never be replaced) and the game took a really bad turn. One year later it was definitely canceled.

The article never appeared because all I wrote was wiped from the game along with Dave.

—
Another MMORPG is coming into an already overcrowded market and people wonder, as always, if it is worth it.

This time Mutable Realms, developer of the game, has a modest team and resources, but looking solid. The path they chose (the lead designer Dave Rickey in particular) is about going in a different direction from all the other consolidated patterns that every mmorpg seem to repeat, to try to bet on original, well thought ideas, instead of trying to go directly against the genre behemoths and rinse and repeat with yet another pointless, boring clone.

It’s not simple to summarize in a few words the differences between this project compared to others, however two are the main points.

The first is about the character progression. The second is about the structure of the world and the dynamic relationship between its parts.

Concerning the first, the progression of the skills will be “linear”. Every character, newbie or veteran, will have from the first minute in the game the possibility to group with other players and have a small, positive role. Without the need to spend hours to reach an “appropriate level” in order to be able to join his friends. Moreover, the focus of the player won’t be on a infinite, obsessive level growth, but will be instead shifted directly on the game mechanics. If you are going to kill a goblin it won’t be to see a skill going from 1.5 to 1.6, but because that action has a meaning within the context of the game. A context where it’s the player to decide his own objectives and where the game world reacts appropriately and actively to those actions (quests in particular).

In short: an idea closer to that ideal of a “virtual world”, on which the very first mmorpgs moved steps and that now seems completely forgotten.

All this leads to the second point. There’s a lot of ambition behind these ideas on which the game will be developed. The final result and concrete value will depend strongly on the execution, but the premises, one year before the planned launch date, are very good. Beside the fact that these ideas will bring a “wind of change” in a genre that has so much potential but that seems now swamped on the same redundant ideas and styles of game.

To explain better concretely, Wish will be developed around a concept, a pivot, around which the whole game will revolve. This pivot is called “House vs House”. To those experienced with DAoC this concept could be easier to grasp.

The idea is about creating a world with villages and outposts spread around. The players will begin the game in one of these villages and will find outside an hostile world. The travels from one village to the other won’t be risk free. These players will have the possibility to form guilds, more or less big, that in this game will be called “Houses”. Once this step is done, they will have the possibility to move out of the starting village and try to go clear and conquer one of those villages under the control of the monsters to claim it for themselves. When an “house” gains control of a village, the village becomes their property and they can then establish a NPC guard system and taxes (beside the usual services such as vendors, blacksmiths etc…)

Essentially both the PvE (Players vs Environment, aka players vs computer controlled monsters) and the PvP (Players vs Players), will be completely immersed in the same game world pivoting around these villages/forts.

The monsters not only will overrun the villages not controlled and defended by the players/houses, but they could move out on their own to attack one of the players’ outposts, becoming an “active” element of the game and not just standing still under a tree waiting for a player to pass by to kill them.

Obviously the “rival Houses” will be able to declare a war on each other and then poke each other with sharp sticks everywhere in the game world. This will still leave the “neutral” players relatively safe, but still subject to the conquest system and the taxes, since thew world around will see a continue evolution.

The goal is to make converge all the positive and “fun” aspects of PvP coming from games like DAoC (of which Dave Rickey was an opinionated designer) to make them converge and then “signify” in a world that reacts actively to the players and just doesn’t remain in a state of staticity and neutrality.

Diablo and Starcraft as MMOs – FACTS

by | 21 Comments

Follow up to this (I will trim the post in the next days).

These are the “incriminated” slides from the presentation. Kindly made available by SirBruce.

—
The last one is probably the one that generated all the rumors. Still FAR from the claim “All Blizzard franchises will become MMOGs.” But maybe it was presented to the live audience in another way.

For now THE FACTS only describe a remote possibility. Not a concrete plan.

—
EDIT: I remove the slides at request of Blizzard (I decided to remove them before receiving the e-mail after all the discussions, but I was away from the PC) and the same happened to Grimwell where they were posted first. People on QT3 wrote that it could be copyright infringement. Well, this is something too stupid to get in trouble with. I originally mirrored the slides just because I thought they were public and just to try to dig the facts behind the “news”. It looks like even this time this is about asking too much.

The slides didn’t even show anything we didn’t know already. So I really don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Surely I didn’t mirror them with malicious intentions.

—
EDIT: Since the slides were removed I’ll just say that the last one showed a scheme where both Diablo and Starcraft were marked as “potential” in the MMO market, as well an extension to the console market for all three franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft).

As Shild explains here the original claim wasn’t coming from rabid speculation derived from these slides, but from a Q&A session with a Vivendi rep *after* the presentation.

—
LATEST EDIT: The WHOLE presentation is available publicly here, as reported.

Posted in: Uncategorized | Tagged: