E3 2010: Global Agenda Interview — “Sandstorm” Phase 3, Open World, And Beyond

Posted by on June 25, 2010 - 12 Comments »

iTZKooPA didn’t just sit down with any old dude at Hi-Rez Studios; he got to sit down with the old dude at Hi-Rez Studios, Founder/CEO/Director of Janitorial Services, Erez Goren. And what did they discuss? E3 is, of course, the time to show off the most exciting aspects of your upcoming releases and, for Global Agenda, that’s rounding out the mini-expansion called “Sandstorm” with Phase 3.

And that’s a very important phase, because it finally introduces the concept of an “open world,” the lack of which has been a common complaint about the game’s label as an MMO in the first place. Normally, you would just sit around in the hub city and queue up for missions via the user interface, but now people have a little bit more to explore. Currently, it’s limited to a single zone, designed primarily for Level 5-15 players (though Levels indicate something far different than they do in your average game of this sort, so it’s not as much of a problem if you’ve already maxed out your characters), but what a large zone it is! Mr. Goren explains in the video that it takes about 15-20 minutes to get from one end of the Sonoran Wastes to the other, and the draw distance makes it look really beautiful.

Ah, but there’s even more to be found in Phase 3 and upcoming content patches: War Zones (32 vs. 32 PvP maps), Raids (self-explanatory), more Special Ops dungeons, Defense Missions (survival-style matches against NPC invaders), a revamped achievement system, consumables, and yes, even the fabled Rainbow Dye used to customize your armor, so you can run around Dome City looking like a bag of Skittles. However, don’t expect it to be the sort of thing you can easily obtain…

Before I give all the details away, check out our expanded coverage below. I apologize for the odd darkness in parts of the video. While it was actually dark where the video was filmed, the editing process somehow messed with the gamma of certain clips. Now that it’s been rendered and uploaded, not much can be done to fix it. But you still get some really good footage of upcoming content and an excellent chat with Mr. Goren, to boot!