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What is Turbine up to?

First: Happy 1st Birthday Lord of the Rings Online!

Now back to the topic at hand, from here:

Turbine develops MMORPGs and company officials said when they replaced Anderson with current CEO Jim Crowley the move was done in preparation for a change to Turbine’s business plan.

Turbine spokesman Adam Mersky said the company plans to make an announcement regarding its future plans in two weeks. But the company website includes employment listings for console-game positions, fueling speculation that Turbine could be expanding from the online market to the console player market.

Hmm…

– Ethic

EXCLUSIVE! Reporting about NASA MMO ALL WRONG…

…this isn’t rocket science guys. Get your story straight.

I was at the NASA MMORPG Workshop held on Monday of this week at the BWI Marriot, so I’m speaking from first hand experience. The first thing I’ll tell you, is that everything you have been reading (like Slashdot, Gamasutra, Second Life Herald and even Wired are all wrong. Absolutely. Like, what happened to doing accurate reporting? Or even checking sources?

[Damn, even Wired goofed this?]

I’ll explain how and why these sources (and almost nearly everyone else there) has it wrong. First, most of the people that actually attended the workshop ignored the first rule of the world of technology. RTFM. Or, in this case, the website, documentation, materials, and everything else. Heck, I’m starting to think that the majority of the people that went didn’t even bother to pay attention during the panels or even read the powerpoint slides.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE! Reporting about NASA MMO ALL WRONG…

Shire as a Place

Taking a whirl around Middle Earth, I remade my hobbit hunter from beta and am almost back to where I was, looking forward to seeing new things. There have already been several new things, what with the updates since beta, but I don’t think I cleared level 20, so there is a lot of game ahead.

Hobbits start in The Shire, which is a wonderfully executed zone. It comes across as a part of the world, rather than a convenient place to stock bandits and goblins. There are bandits and goblins, but those are not the center of The Shire. The focus is on farms, rolling hills, and peaceful people. It is not high adventure, but it is setting-appropriate.

This is the place that feels like Middle Earth online, rather than Yet Another Fantasy MMORPG. Two major concerns are improving the postal service and delivering pies. Your early fights are against wolves that are eating chickens. You fight bears because of concerns about honey, and you get a title for slaying giant flies that would otherwise eat the crops. If there were somewhere in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ where you would go and just be, it would probably be The Shire.

And then it is The Lord of the Rings. Dwarf and human bandits are in the opposing zone corners, connected to those lands’ foes. Goblins and spiders infest the north. A black rider is looking for a certain Baggins. Mordor casts a long shadow.

: Zubon

MT

Facilitating a statewide planning meeting last week, I had a keyboard connected to the room’s projectors. This let us visually track notes, issues to resolve, action items, etc. It also made me very aware that I should not try to talk smack about people in /gu.

: Zubon

New MMO malaise

I wish I could get really excited about one of the new MMO’s coming out.

Warhammer seems to be the biggest hype machine right now, but for all the neat-sounding gameplay offerings, I just don’t like the visual feel. It seems kind of lifeless to me, a bit like Everquest 2. Like the buildings are made of cardboard, and the players are painted wooden mannequins. Reminds me a bit of Everquest 2. WO’s gameplay may turn out fantastic, but I just don’t know that it’s a world where I’d actually enjoy spending time.

Conan looks much nicer to me, but I’m kind of iffy about the whole barbaric blood-and-guts vibe. The Conan universe is never something that I’ve felt drawn to in book or movie form, and my impression of the game isn’t feeling that different so far.

Like Conan, The Chronicles of Spellborn has some really beautiful imagery; that looks like a world I think I’d like to spend some time in! Unfortunately I don’t have much faith that it’s going to be a solid product. For example, their website doesn’t clearly explain how TCoS will differentiate itself in a way to make me want to spend dozens or hundreds of hours with it. Instead they spend time explaining to me that resistance rank zero to rank +5 is an exponential curve divided in 64 points, which may be a perfectly good design decision , but is just a tad more detailed than I’m really looking for. And if they can’t don’t even have a sense for what I, as a consumer, want to see from their website, I’m not too optimistic they’re going to have a good sense for what I want to see from their world.

So I’m waiting to see what 38 Studios and BioWare have up their sleeves, and keeping my fingers crossed.

– James

Quote of the Week

From Moorgard‘s friend Kohath:

“You guys have an uphill battle differentiating yourselves from all the other MMOs that no one cares about.”

And there are good reasons not to care about lousy MMOs. And there are a lot of them. A lot. And more coming. And Raph is helping people make their own at home. I can only hope that Sturgeon’s Law is not too optimistic.

: Zubon

Red-Shirt Data Analysis

While the game itself seems to be wearing a red shirt, the makers of Star Trek Online (in whatever final form it may appear) may want to read this presentation on the deaths of Star Trek red-shirts. The canny player might be tempted never to put his crew in red outfits, but that is obvious cheating that is just asking for karmic revenge; you want the enemy to focus fire there, rather than hitting valuable bridge crew members. Instead, note the bit showing that Captain Kirk’s sex life is a primary determinant of whether crew members live or die. Now I’m not saying that there is any cause-and-effect, since Kirk was not one to seduce fanged tentacle fiends, but a noble PC captain must be willing to take one for the team. Age of Conan is trailbreaking this gameplay, so be sure to earn your crew buff on each new planet.

: Zubon

H/T: Mark Krikorian

Speculating on WoW’s successor

Tobold posted some musings about what Blizzard will eventually do with their next MMO that got me thinking.

Tycho over at Penny Arcade speculated a few weeks back that Blizzard’s new MMO project will simply be an engine update for WoW, but I don’t think this will be the case. It seems inevitable that someone will eventually come out with something better designed, more accessible, more fun than WoW, just as WoW did the same for Everquest. And of course Blizzard would like that “someone” to be them.

I’m also not convinced that “the next big game” will be significantly more advanced than WoW, graphically. When you get into the sort of subscriber numbers that WoW has, you’re reaching far beyond the market segment of hardcore gamers, which means you’re targeting people that don’t make a point of upgrading their PC every 2-3 years. So you’ve got hardware limitations to deal with.

I’m also of the opinion that graphics technology today is already “good enough.” It can (and will) continue to get better, sure, but the main thing that distinguishes WoW for me visually is not the graphics technology, it’s the aesthetic. The art, the architecture, the style and spirit that goes into the world is something I find beautiful. I think it’s wonderful that graphics technology is advanced enough so that artistic beauty is finally the biggest differentiator in terms of a game’s visual impact.

– James