Kill Ten Rats

[San Diego Comic-Con International] I headed down to the San Diego Convention Center this weekend for the annual geek fest known as Comic-Con. No matter how much you may try to act non-geeky, the site of Optimus Prime from the upcoming Steven Spielberg produced, TransFormers live action movie is enought to make anyone who grew up watching the show and playing with the toys have a little geekgasm. [Click here to go to the official movie page and see a clip of Steven Spielberg waxing poetic abour TransFormers] It’d be too hard to write about all the awesome stuff I saw there (man, I’m even writing like I’m 8 again :) so I’ll just focus on the MMO stuff I got a look at.

I only noticed 3 booths that had MMO related products to promote. If you look at the exhibitors list on the Comic-Con website there are more than 3 MMO companies listed. This means 2 things. 1) I gotta pay more attention. It’s hard with booth babes trying to hand you stuff, celebrities wandering around, and freakin’ Optimus Prime sitting behind a tarp on the showfloor. 2) The companies I missed gotta work on getting traffic to their booth. With few exceptions, the video game companies did the absolute worse job at this. A friend that was with me has attended E3 in the past (lucky bastardo) and he commented that the video game companies weren’t really at the top of their game. It seemed like they dumped some displays and demo stations on the floor and that was about it. It wasn’t as if the displays weren’t nice, in fact a lot of them were likely shipped over directly from E3 in LA, but having a staff consisting of one guy that is just there to make sure things don’t get stolen is not going to draw attention to your booth when Lions Gate Films right next to you has Rob Zombie signing autographs and giving out free posters. (To be fair, THQ and Nintendo had very nice boothes that were fully staffed and had cool freebies). I think video game companies are just starting to promote outside gaming and electronics conventions so they haven’t been putting their full efforts into things yet. Movie companies only began becoming a major presence the past few years, but now they have some of the nicer presentations at Comic-Con. Anyways, enough of that and let’s get to the booths I did visit:

1) [Blizzard Entertainment] This was one of the first booths I visited. I had no idea they would be there and ran into them quite accidently. They had a very small booth against a wall with 5 or 6 computers set up and and a plasma screen showing cinematics from WoW and Ghosts. Mostly people were just playing with newly created characters in the lowbie areas. They really should have had some lvl 60 test server characters in BattleGrounds for play, but still, there were long lines to try the game out. For a booth their size they attracted a lot of attention, mostly with their cinematics. People seemed to really enjoy the game and the looks on their faces reminded me of when I first started playing. WoW is very friendly to new players and the ability to jump into the game without the long tutorials of other MMOs helped make it popular among the attendees. But that is not the big news. The BIG NEWS is that they had a playable demo of StarCraft Ghosts! (So much for the BlizzCon premiere huh?) I didn’t get a chance to play due to the long lines, but it actually looked pretty good. I had little interest in the game until I saw it at Comic-Con since I assumed that the delayed development would mean a game that isn’t exactly cutting edge. Well I was wrong. The game looked and sounded excellent and appeared quite fun. Take that with a grain of salt since I did not get a chance to play myself, but if it plays as good as it looks I’ll be getting it. Hopefully they’ll spring for a bigger booth next year, but their product did attract a lot of attention despite a crappy booth location, no booth babes, and no freebies.

2) [Planetwide Games] They were there mostly to promote their Comic Book Creator software. Basically it is a program that lets you turn screen shot from your favorite games into a comic book. It is a very interesting concept although they probably won’t be able to find a wide market unless they sell it for a relatively low price. They were also promoting their MMO called RYL (Risk Your Life) and had 2 pretty girls on hand to attract attention to the booth. I haven’t heard much about RYL except they have some sort of tournament going on ingame with a $1 millon prize (that’s $1 million US real life dollars). I didn’t spend too much time at their booth, but hot chicks at a comic convention meant plenty of attention to their modest sized booth.

3) [NC Soft] They were by far the largest MMO presense. They had multiple computers running Guild Wars and were handing out Guild Wars posters at their huge, centrally located booth. They also had screen showing trailers from their other games, but the main focus was on promoting Guild Wars, which I found odd given that Comic-Con would have been a great place to build some hype for City of Heroes and City of Villians. I guess the main reason was because Guild Wars, where you can created a maxed out lvl 20 character and play on the PvP servers, is much easier to demo. Players could start out getting a taste of the endgame rather than the newbie area like at the Blizzard booth. I think NC Soft did a good job and build some hype for all their games. The trailers for Lineage 2 were very well received. That game has some amazing details and designs. Auto Assault seemed to confused some people who didn’t know if it was a MMO or a game in the vein of Twisted Metal, but people seemed to dig the cute female charater in the trailer. City of Heroes didn’t seem to have the same effect as the other titles, maybe partially because a lot of the attendees were comic book fans who probably have heard of it again. However, a lot of people at the convention were talking about City of Villians (I never saw a demo or a trailer while at the NC Soft booth so I don’t know what kind of presentation they did for that game, but it was probably behind the DreamWorks Optimus Prime display in terms of what I overheard people talking about the most).

Well, that’s it for this year. As you can see I completely missed the Sony Online Entertainment booth and a few others. But I guess I gotta save something for next year!

DC

[World of Warcraft] I know this is old news, but I was talking about it with my friends over the Fourth of July weekend and we were somewhat confused about the whole deal. They haven’t really announced what will be going on so I’m not sure how much interesting stuff will be there. Sony had their Fan Faire in Las Vegas which was a sort of Sony Online mini-convention. It didn’t sound like the best time ever, but hey, it’s hard not to have fun in Las Vegas. Blizz Con will be somewhere in Orange County, CA. As long as they keep the prices resonable, I might check it out, being an OC resident and all. The Anaheim Convention Center seems the most likely venue, although they might go for somewhere closer to Irvine.

Anyways, I was trying to get some others to commit to go with me, but the general response was “what are they going to do?” No one seems to understand what the thing will be about. Will it be mostly WoW and maybe about the expansion? Or are they going to throw something WC3, StarCraft, and Diablo players can get excited about? We’ll see, but I found on friend who will be there just to see if they have any models dressed as night elves.

DC

[The Matrix Online] OK, everyone has probably heard about Sony Online Entertainment aquiring the rights to The Matrix Online from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. I played The Matrix Online for a while and I thought it had the most potential of any MMO. But, like the Matrix movies, potential was not realized.

Remember at the end of the original Matrix movie? Neo was stopping bullets in mid-air, beating the crap out of agents, and flying around in full view of the public. You got the feeling that in a sequel with a bigger budget they could do amazing things. Plus you had the very interesting story of how the world (well, those “blue pills” in the Matrix anyways) would react to seeing a flying man. Instead of showing us any of that, in the sequels Neo pretty much just goes around kung fu fighting more people.

Instead of one agent he takes on hundreds, plus two ghosts for good measure. We don’t learn how the world reacts to flying Neo or seeing Morpheus swordfight on a moving truck. By the time the third film came along, they basically gave up everything they set up at the end of the first film and focused on the real world (Zion). I actually enjoyed the last film a lot and I think the people making the new Superman movie should watch that final fight between Neo and Smith. The second film actually isn’t that bad either if you try and ignore all the pretentious pseudo philosophy talk. However, neither film lived up to the potential of the first one. Why is Neo even worried about agents when he could stop bullets and easily defeat them at the end of the first one (the answers is probably because they didn’t want to make him too powerful, which would be boring to watch since he would never be in danger)? Well, the game pretty much suffers the same fate as the film series.

The game is based on a great premise that it never really lives up to. Maybe I’m just missing the whole techno punk aesthetic, but the game is very depressing to play. The gloomy, green tinged cityscape aside, the central concept of the game is to maintain the status quo. The three factions (Machine, Zion, and Merovingian) have a peace which you must maintain although you spend much of your time killing operatives of the other factions. While it makes no real difference which side you choose in the game, if you look at it logically, why would anyone side with not Zion? Before you point to Cypher, who betrayed everyone and worked for the Machines in the first film, realize that in that film the Machines agreed to let him re-enter the Matrix and live a happy life with no knowledge of the real world. Which mean the motivation (storywise anyways) for joining the Machines in game is to… one day not have to play the game? Maybe I’m just taking the story aspect too seriously. Some people probably just get a kick out of working for the Machines, but for me I must be emotionally invested in the story to enjoy the game.

In WoW I truly have moments when I feel bad for the Undead and want to kill those Scarlet Crusade bullies picking on them. In MxO the most sympathetic faction is Zion, but they admittedly cannot win and their goal is to only maintain the status quo, which isn’t exactly the most exciting of motives.

MxO was probably designed to have murky motives that might appeal to some. The incredible ammount of customization of wardrobe and abilities would definately appeal to more hard core gamers. However, the game suffers from more than just a tedious storyline. The finished game just wasn’t polished. It was confusing as hell and it was harder to get into than Guild Wars. To be fair, I did not experience any of the live events that MxO is know for. Friends who have told me those really shined and alone are enough to justify the monthly fee. If they are as fun and involve as many famous actors from the film as I’ve heard they are, I would agree. (BTW, what ever happened to those elemental attacks promised in the last, last WoW patch?) I love in game events. I even liked the lack luster Children’s Day WoW had a while back. It was lousy, but at least it was something new.

Getting back to MxO: under Sony I’m not sure the special events will continue. They were probably the main reason to play to game to anyone outside die hard Matrix fans. Over the past few years Sony has actually gone from electronics company to major media player. They bought out Columbia Pictures and are now a major Hollywood player. I would imagine that they could definately continue putting out decent MxO events. They got Heather Graham for EverQuest 2 so it isn’t as if they haven’t involved famous actors with their online games in the past. I’m just not sure MxO will be a huge priority for them. The game doesn’t have huge subscription numbers and their flagship title is EQ2, which has had live events as well, although, by all reports, not as fun as the MxO ones.

It’ll remain to be seen if SOE is commited enough to continue producing live events for MxO. Remember, the MxO live events involve must be approved by the studio (Warner Bros. would probably not be happy if they had a live event where everyone dies and they can never make another sequel), the creators (who have been said to have wanted to continue the Matrix storyline in the game and were active in the games development), and actors (who would get hefty paychecks and some creative input). How difficult will it be for SOE, which is owned by Sony Pictures, to work with Warner Bros., a rival studio? Then again, SOE seems to get along fine with Fox, which owns Star Wars, but everyone knows Lucas really owns Star Wars.

I was going to write about SOE aquiring the rights to a DC Comics MMO set to be released in 2007, but didn’t realize that I’d write so much about MxO. I’ll do the DC Comics thing later this week. For those keeping score: DC Comic is at Sony Online Entertainment. Vivendi Universal has the rights to a Marvel Comics MMO.

DC