EverQuest 2 has arranged its own stand with booth babes directly online.
I’d say, take them all and make elf-based pr0n. It’s hot these days.
Monthly Archives: May 2005
Kalgan/Evocare tops the idiocy
Please intern this guy.
There’s an interview on Gamespy. Irrelevant for the most part. It possibly shows his superficiality when dealing about game design. That or a conscious attempt to just pull hype and commonplaces all around. There is nothing remotely interesting or hinting a decent insight about the game.
A few passages are unbeliavable:
Battlegrounds has been working out wonderfully on the test servers.
What? … No comment.
“The first purpose of Battlegrounds is to channel PvP combat away from the questing areas of the world into positively oriented experiences.” he said, “In this; they’ve been a big success.”
A big success? How the fuck can you declare something that still hasn’t happened? Who the fuck goes questing and levelling up on a Test server? How the fuck can you say that the action moved somewhere else when the ONLY activity on the PvP server is TO TEST THE PVP BATTLEGROUNDS AND NOTHING ELSE? How the fuck you can say that a part of the gameplay has been “channeled” if it DOES NOT EVEN EXIST on the test environment? How the fuck you can possibly say that this aspect has been “A BIG SUCCESS” when it still weeks away from happening?
So now he justifies his clusterfucks with fancy future predictions?
Please deal with this fool before it’s too late.
Gamespy itself completes the article:
While nobody faults their game design abilities, the game’s track record thus far has been one of underestimating the impact of changes they make to the title.
Noone faults their design abilities. They are sacred.
Non-mmorpg news from E3
– Joystiq has “hands on” impressions about the Nintendo Revolution prototype:
The CD just fell into the box.
Hilarious :)
– Lum would define this “not professional”. From Kazuo Hirai, president and CEO of Sony:
We want to pack everything in today and future-proof this as much as possible. It’s a box made of future technology as opposed to Xbox 1.5, which seems to be a combination of things available today.
Microsoft counterattacks by flaunting “software update services” to keep the hardware up to date, a better “online strategy” and by seducing “top software companies” (and the partnership with Squaresoft has been a good start as Kitsune commented on this thread).
– The insane Killzone 2 video for the PSX3 has been somewhat confirmed as fake:
Yeah, it’s basically a representation of the look and feel of the game we’re trying to make.
“Basically”? A “representation of the look and feel”? How exactly is this tolerable in a commercial show? From GamesIndustryBiz:
Virtually everything used in-game assets; some things were rendered.
Come on, WHAT THE FUCK?!
– X-Box 360 backward-compatible? Yes, if you buy a new copy of the game. Way to go with the cryptic declaration of the last days about the console running only “top-selling” games. Yeah. After you repurchase them.
EDIT – Well, it seems Microsoft denied the rumor.
– Will Wright’s “Spore” has now a website (with a wonderful introduction movie). It won’t launch before fall 06. There isn’t much to see but I’m starting to like a lot the design style.
An interview with the designer is here. A preview of the game here.
– Speaking of absurd game concepts, On Joystiq there’s the announce of a “pinball wargame”. No, really. There’s even an image.
– Two movies from the most hyped games: Quake 4 and Quake Wars.
– Two more movies from the big: TES4- Oblivion and Killzone.
This second one is truly mindblowing.
– An update and a precisation about the Final Fantasy XI (Online) port to the X-box 360 (covered here). This version WON’T have any graphical update. It’s just a direct port of the PC version without any change at all. The fancy movie that was shown at the presentation (downloadable here) was just a tech demo to show the potential of the hardware.
– Two short gameplay videos (here and here) from Serious Sam 2. Well, the game definitely mantained its “seriousness”. The same good old mess that only this shooter is able to deliver. It doesn’t show lots of change from the last episode but it isn’t really a bad thing. The only quirk that left me perplexed is the absence of actual death animations. The monsters just seem to blow up and vanish… Odd.
All for now. (News In Progress till there isn’t something major to cover)
Star Wars – Episode 3
Back from the movie theater. In a line: I liked it more than the first episide and less than the second.
I didn’t feel really immersed this time, I watched the whole movie feeling sort of emotionally detached even if some passages are slightly more effective and well executed. If I had something to write on during the show I could have filled pages and pages. To begin with it’s my first movie in a theatre with a digital support but the only difference I noticed is that the image doesn’t show any sort of “impurities” like it always happen with the normal film. The first part of the movie is great. I loved the whole scene in the space but I wished it showed some more the “choral” aspect of the movie and linger some more to describe the battle instead of just focusing on the two “heroes” gliding around cheerfully in the mess of the battle thanks to irritant luck and super-powers. That’s a general trend of the last three movies where each character becomes just the classic, predictable hero while all the other elements remain as an irrelevant backdrop. But at least the start is fast and spiffy, then the movie slows down and did very little to keep me intrigued.
In particular I noticed two problems. The first is tied to the emotional involvement. Not only it’s weak for the most part due to the predictability of the scenes and behaviours, but even the actors themselves show no involvement. The love story between Padme and Anakin is weak, I loved her in the second movie but in this episode she just sits there whining and mourning pathetically all the time. All the charm she gained (Uhm, someone saw “Closer” by the way?) is completely lost and even her aseptic death is sort of irrelevant and not involving. There’s no “feeling” between her and Anakin and the same happens between Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi. They are supposed to be good friends after all they went through together but all they are able to communicate is a rather cold friendship and some failed attempts at humor. You cannot feel any affection in their actions. As I said this is noticeable throughout all the movie, all the actors sort of sit there and play their role like if they felt actually ridicule with those dresses. The dialogues do not help this situation, they are often silly and pretentious and this add to the “faked” feeling that in this movie is more evident than ever.
Again all these elements affect the movie as a whole. The “baddie” of the first part is just too stupid and out of place. It’s humorous on a meta-level that in my opinion breaks completely the atmosphere. An asthmatic robot is an obvious and inappropriate mock of Darth Vader, in particular when the movie would need some seriousness due to what is supposed to go on. Lucas announced that this movie is more “dark” but this is definitely not what I saw. The humor is always inappropriate and uneffective, the actors do not show any emotional involvement, the characters look more and more like super heroes completely alienated and “opaque” for the public and the scenes are just too quick and already predetermined to revive some interest. Watching the movie feels more like a “practice” of something you know too well than a discovery. It fails to surprise, it fails to communicate. Some passages are “muffled” and awkward (I didn’t like the howling Darth Vader at the end).
At least there are some valid and still actual archetypes. The corruption of the power, the reasonings about war, peace, democracy are all actual and effective. Anakin’s journey toward the dark side works better than how I expected if it wasn’t for some parts a bit too forced (the murder of the Jedi childs, some dialogues with Palpatine) or badly acted (the murder of Samule Jackson). And finally Yoda remains the best part of the movie on every aspect.
Visually there are some good passages but still not on par with the second episode that I felt more evocative, imaginative and varied. Great is the zoomed out scene with Anakin and Obi-Wan hanging on a structure that is about to fall in the lava. Due to the distance and the dark light you cannot locate the bodies but you can still easily follow the scene thanks to the shiny neon-swords. I liked a lot the idea. As in the second movie these swords become even more an “icon”, a recognizable symbol everywhere.
In general I’d say that the serie would need some renovation and less self-complacency. It became a bit too much autoreferential to recapture the magic of the first trilogy. There was some more story and less plastic (but if the plastic is in the space, I love it).
Imperator video @ Corpnews
Corpnews has a 7:30 min video about the early moments in Imperator, the sci-fi based game Mythic plans to launch in early 2006.
My early comments weren’t optimistic and I would still like to see them committing to just one game and do it right. With the announce of Warhammer Online it’s obvious that this is not the path they chose.
The UI seems a direct rip off from World of Warcraft (overall layout, quest tracker, minimap, quest marks over NPCs heads) and SWG (overall look, waypoints, overhead combat status) with the rest directly carried over from DAoC along with a reskin (the dialogue window for example). In general the impression confirms the scepticism. It looks and plays exactly like a streamlined version of DAoC, just redone in a futuristic setting and with some more polish. The animations, the controls and the “feel” are identic and the combat is obviously nothing more than a rehash of DAoC under a new ruleset.
That Imperator uses the exact same engine isn’t a news, in fact even from the blurred video the common problems are all visible (stuttering, jerky updates on “mobs” movement, the character jumping and “freezing” while out of contact with the terrain, ugly far clip etc..). In particular I really hate how the character keeps shooting in melee range without even aiming down at his foot but just staring the line of the horizon while an oddly shaped critter is humping his legs.
From the last Dev Diary written by Matt Firor we read:
Today, most MMORPGs don’t invite a new character into their world. Think about it – when you create a character in most current MMORPGs, the new character appears in the world, usually in front of an NPC, and that’s it. There’s no real direction given, no reason why your character is there, no reason why the world really cares that you’ve shown up in it. It is time for this to change, and this is one of the major new things we’re attempting to do with Imperator.
Now go back to watch the movie I linked above… Yeah. You start right in front of an NPC. Well, at least after a stuttering movie.
Revolutionary I say.
Other pre-E3 previews for reference:
– Worthplaying
– RPGFan
– Warcry
– Allakhazam
– mmorpg.com (warning: fanboy)
– Gamespy
– RPG Vault
– Gamespot
– IGN
DAoC 2 officially confirmed: Warhammer
April’s fool in May, Mythic buys Warhammer.
Mythic Entertainment, developer and publisher of massively-multiplayer online role-playing games including Dark Age of Camelot and the upcoming Imperator today announced that they have secured the exclusive worldwide, rights to create massively multiplayer online games for PC and console set in the fantasy world of Warhammer created by Nottingham, UK-based Games Workshop Group PLC. The first game based upon the dark, medieval world of Warhammer will be released on PC in 2007.
I’m speechless, just saw it from Nerfed blog.
I do not know what to say. Good or bad.
I know that ten seconds later I was in DAoC to try to cancel my subscription but just to discover it renewed four days ago.
I won’t support the demise of DAoC.
รข
Mmorpg design with an ecological sensibility
From a comment on Chris blog. His posts always stimulate me.
—
I’m against the “mudflated” development simply because it kills the game world.
The development is always planned to replace a part that is ALREADY in the game. New content is usually added at the “margins” of a game. As a new “limb”. What I’d like to see (and it’s extended to the whole game, not just the content) is a development that uniformly considers the game to improve it.
Right now “new content” and explansion packs are added to the margin of the game even when the “core” is still broken, not functional, unfun or unused. The fact is that this new content keeps derailing the development on something irrelevant. My idea is that you can add and expand the world by keeping a cohesive approach. To consider the game world as a “whole” instead of an amass of stuff you pile up randomly and that keeps growing without a sense.
Instead of creating new zones with new mobs and new quests, you can also re-consider what’s already in the game, add more paths and quests, add interactivity, adjust something that isn’t working properly and so on. With this approach you do not need a brand new zone with brand new monsters and quests in order to keep the game up to date and the interest of the players alive. The development can reuse, adjust and expand what is already available and add more “space” only when it is truly required.
Mudflated games finish to become just patchworks of more or less successful development. In 90% of the cases something broken or terribly unfun isn’t properly addressed and refactored. It just lies there as a “museum” while the developers work on something completely new in order to replace that part.
This is an approach that is strongly deep-rooted in a CULTURE. We produce JUNK. Nothing is reused because we throw everything away and buy something brand new. It’s the consumer society.
I do not like this because as in the real world this approach is killing the place where we live. It’s viable only as a temporary solution. We live on a countdown. We destroy the world because we have the illusion that everything can be replaced. There’s always space, always an exit. If something is broken or has problem, we do not fix it: we throw it away. We do not face the problems, we simply dodge them.
We bury them like we do with junk. We hide.
I believe that a game world should be respected as we should respect our real world. Like we do with a “body”. Instead of producing junk and hide it from the view to not feel guilty, we should address the real problem. We should face the situation and plan the actions to go back at the root. To not keep killing and destroying what we have.
I don’t imagine a mmorpg like a cemetery of old and obsolete content. I imagine it as a continue development that keeps adjusting its content. That keeps fixing and improving what doesn’t work. That listens to feedback and that doesn’t ignore or hide the problems.
A world that won’t ask the players to move on a sequel in order to clear the junk that was laid around. A world without a Damocle’s sword hanging over its head.
I agree with Raph. A lot of the real world teaches us how to build better games, a lot of what we find in games can teach us about how the real world works. That’s why they are so fun.
What is Blizzard showing at the E3?
Seriously, In the last 4-5 days I frequently logged in the test server to try the Battlegrounds. I play at very odd hours throughout a whole day so I’m sure that what I saw was a constant situation and not something temporary or occasional.
Between around 30-35 attempts only once I was able to find a working Battleground. All the other attempts were in a broken BG due to missing flags.
Of course this is just one of the many problems and exploits currently in the game but for sure it is enough to break the whole thing.
As far as I know nothing at all changed these days. So again:
What exactly is Blizzard showing at the E3?
E3 coverage!
God forbid actual gaming news at the E3 from Corpnews.
As for the last year, “gaming” is the least interesting part of the experience.
We have fascinating stories about dependence from alcohol, love encounters and bullying the smaller kids.
These guys definitely have their priorities set right. Better than nothing, I’d say :)