Posts Tagged ‘mmorpg’

Being John Malkovich Online

5 February 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Okay, so not really, but that movie immediately jumped into my mind after reading about a new Flash-based MMO by Creatrix Games, called Lila Dreams, that takes place inside the mind of an 11 year old girl. I have to say, I do not know whether to be intrigued or disturbed about this game. The game looks to be a step away from the usual elves and orcs fantasy games, and is trying to make an interesting spin on the MMO genre itself. Here is a basic description of the game from the developers blog:

You get to make a character, choose what to wear, fight exciting battles against a bestiary of insanely weird creatures from Lila’s mind, team up with friends and explore strange places, meet in towns and emote at each other, get to know helpful NPCs (non-player characters), grow items in your garden, and manage your character’s abilities and inventory. We’ll see how much more we can cram into the game before launch, but we also hope to keep building on it after launch to make it even better.

Only time will tell if this game will be successful, but for a Flash based game, even a fraction of the MMO market can make this game succeed. Apparently there will be a beta test coming in the months ahead, which I would love to take a look at. I will revisit this game when there is more concrete information. In the meantime, feel free to check out the developers website.

Ed's Weekly Watch #2

3 February 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Well, I am back folks, with the second Weekly Watch! This has been a reletively slow week, but I will get you the information you have been wanting.

Our first order of buisness is about Warhammer Online!

Taipei – Jan 31, 2008 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), the world's leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment and GigaMedia Ltd (NASDAQ: GIGM), a major provider of online entertainment software and services, announced today that the companies have entered into an agreement to launch and operate WARHAMMER® ONLINE: AGE OF RECKONING™(WAR) in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Based on Games Workshop's Warhammer fantasy universe, the online game features next generation Realm vs. Realm™ (RvR) game play that will immerse players in a world of perpetual conflict.

Next is Age of Conan!

Funcom is excited to announce the launch of the Spanish community forums for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, just one week after launching the Spanish marketing site available on www.ageofconan.com.  

Funcom will be launching a Spanish localized version of the highly anticipated massive online game simultaneously with the North American, English, German and French on May 20th, 2008. Launching the community efforts is an important step in that direction.

 

The upcoming MMO Jumpgate Evolution launched their first newsletter called the “Jumpgate Times”. You can read it here.

MMORPG.com and the new game Mabinogi have partnered and are offering beta keys to be given away! Get yours here. It’s a Japanese anime style game.

Pretty decent week after all! Not too much to get excited about though…Tune in next week for WW #3!

Is Blizzards Secret MMO Starcraft?

30 January 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

I don’t know, but there is some very interesting news that seems to be pointing to it. Netease, China’s leading online game operator, might soon be licensed to operate overseas online games and according to Caijing Magazine this first foreign game will be Starcraft! Netease CEO Ding Lei has not yet confirmed this.

To give you an idea of what Netease does, here’s what the company’s profile states:

The company’s online games business focuses on massively multiplayer online role-playing games by selling prepaid point cards to the end customers who may use the points on such cards for online game services provided by the company.

So what does this mean? Is this a web based or watered down MMO based off the Starcraft Universe that Netease will create for Chinese gamers? Is Netease going to be licensed to sell prepaid cards for Blizzard games in China? Could it be a hint pointing to World of Starcraft? I don’t know, but it is interesting non the less.

Source: http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1036606/

The MMOs You Never Knew Existed

24 January 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

In today’s MMO world there is a bunch of competition. Between pay2play games such as World of Warcraft, and Everquest 2 and free2play games like Archlord, and Dungeon Runners there just doesn’t seem to be much room left for the smaller, more indy, MMO games that get released. In fact most of the time they are so small that you never even knew that they existed. Quite sad really, but no matter, that is why we are here to help enlighten some of you who may be looking for an “off-game” to check out or just like reading about some new games.

Now, before I continue, a couple of these games (and they will be labelled as such) have not yet been released. They are very small indy games, and therefor hold no promise that they actually ever will get released. MMOCrunch is not vouching for them and if you opt into any sort of “pre-order” you are doing so with your own knowledge and caution.

Ok, sorry about that, I had to get the legal mumbo-jumbo out of the way. Onto the games:

  • Exteel - Brought to you by NCSoft, Exteel is a new MMORPG-ish game that is based around mechs. “Gundam” type mechs to be more exact. The game is fast, free, and very fun for what it is. In a review by GameDaily, the newsite compared it more to Unreal Tournament than World of Warcraft, which is definitely a good thing for those of you who were looking for a more aggressive and furious game. Definitely something worth looking at.
  • Lost Colony - This game looks very much to be a Planetside clone. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad game. The creators are a start-up company called Red Planet who decided, after a few bad decisions in their favorite game (Planetside) to make their own MMOFPS game. The game may seem a bit rough on the egdes right now, but it’s also still in development. Something to keep an eye on for any MMOFPS fan in the crowd. (MMOCrunch does not guarentee this game will every be released)
  • Force of Arms - This is another mech-based game, only it’s based on the more traditional mechs from the popular franchise: Mech Warrior. The game is being developed by a company called Wardog Studios. Promising mech customizability, a huge world full of PVP, and faction based combat the game is looking to be quite fun. For an indy developer they seem to have big big plans for their game. Also worth noting is that the game is to be set in a persistent world. Keep an eye on this one. (MMOCrunch does not guarentee this game will ever be released)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean Online - Now, I know what you are thinking, “how can a Disney game be included in your list?” Well, to be honest, a lot of people don’t actually know about this game. It launched a couple months ago with very little fanfair and almost no advertising at all. The game is free2play, and just by that makes it worth at least a gander. Aside from being based in a Disney world, the game is actually pretty fun. For those who have no desire to pay for a pirate-based game such as Pirates of the Burning Sea, this game provides you an excellent free option.

So that’s it, well all I could find anyways. I’m sure that there are a multitude of MMORPGs out there that deserve attention but won’t get them. It’s a sad truth, but games that don’t have multi-billion dollar publishers usually don’t get any spotlight no matter how great they are. So, is there any game I left out?

CrunchContest Winners: Mythos Invites

21 January 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

So, it’s actually 9:30am when I am writing this and all the little names are in crumpled up bits of paper in a box to my right. I know, I promised you guys it would be done in a bowler hat not a box, but, you see, I am moving later this week and I accidentally packed my bowler hat so the box will have to do. If anybody is seriously upset you can call our complaint hotline at: 1(325)234-9876. Operators are standing by. . . no they aren’t. Don’t actually call that number because I literally just made it up off the top of my head right now. To any person that owns that number and is accidentally called by disgruntled contestants complainng about some hat and/or box, I’m sorry. . . you can go ahead and call this number so as to reach our comments/complaints operator: 1(678)432-7654. Sorry, I lied again. . . we don’t have a number. :( You see the horrible conditions Mike makes us work in, we don’t even get telephones!

Wow, ok so now you know what its like to begin writing a blog that you can’t actually publish for a half hour. I would normally go ahead and pull the contestants names right now, but there might maybe possibly just be one more entry in these last 15 minutes.

Now, without further ado (it is 10am now :) ), the contest winners are:

  • Joshua Tompkins
  • Dan

Congratulations to those winners! WhooOOooOOO! I seriously hope both of youo enjoy Mythos. Feel free to give me a hoot while in game if you are lonely, my Mythos characters are Wrenches, and Bloodface. I could be on either one at some point today.

Also, as a side note, we had no people disqualified during this contest, which is a good good thing! I was a bit worried when I went to sleep with 3 contestants and then woke up to find over a dozen. Which leads me to another side note, we got 17 contestants! Not a bad start for a first ever contest that we in no way advertised at all. I think we all deserve a hearty pat on the back. I can’t wait until we begin offering real prizes like actual games. . . maybe an Age of Conan contest when it gets released? We’ll see. . . enjoy Mythos guys.

P.S. Both invites were sent out to the email addresses provided. If, for some reason, you don’t get yours then their must have been a problem with your email address. We don’t have anymore to hand out at this time so it’s not like we can just send you another one.

Move Over Eve Online, Meet Infinity

17 January 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

I came across Infinity: The Quest for Earth a few months ago when they released a trailer of a spaceship flying seamlessly from one planet to another with no loading times. Let me say that again, from the surface of one planet into and across space, into the atmosphere of another planet and onto the surface with NO loading time. Today they released a new video of the games combat system. One of the main things I didn’t like about Eve Online and one of the reasons I couldn’t really get into it was because you don’t actually get to fly, it’s basically point, click, wait, even the combat. Infinity allows for real-time combat where you actually get to pilot your ship. How well you can maneuver will no longer be based on stat point, but instead on your skills. By my count that gives Infinity a huge advantage over Eve.

Aside from the real-time combat system and seamless flying, Infinity also promises to have an enormous galaxy to explore. Keyword is galaxy, you can land on a planet, fix your ship and get supplies, but you can’t walk around it. It’s basically like Eve where you’ll spend most of your time in your ship.

“Expect a galaxy with up to hundreds of billions of worlds. You will not be able to visit them all in your whole lifetime, even if you were to spend only one second per world”

Wow, that makes Eve look like my backyard. So how does one travel to all these billions of planets? There will be jumpgates throughout the game, however every ship can equip a hyper-propulsion system so you don’t need to travel all the way to a gate. But just because you have a jumpgame doesn’t mean you’ll get to where you going instantly.

“You can choose your destination on the galaxy map and jump there (providing you have the resources). Jumping will not be instantaneous. It will be very fast to jump to a local system, but jumping to the other side of the galaxy will take from minutes to hours (in real time). “

HOURS! I’m sure they’ll change there minds once gamers get a hold of the game and curse them out. Seriously, who’s going to sit there for hrs, just make the resource cost very very high, problem solved. The game promises to be very open ended, which means PvP. HORAY!

Infinity is still in very early development and is expected to take another two years before the game is finished. So far from what I’ve seen it looks like it might be worth the wait.

More Infinity Videos here

The Next Step for MMORPGs

15 January 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

 

Go to any MMORPG forum and you’ll see countless threads complaining about the state of MMORPGs today. Some of these complaints are valid while others are just whining, but it appears that a majority of MMO gamers think that the MMORPG scene has grown stale over the last few years. A slew of over hyped and under performing games in recent years are partially to blame as well as the industries “lets just copy World of Warcraft” mentality. Studios are desperately trying to mimic the success Blizzard has had with WOW and gamers are suffering for it.

Fury, Hellgate, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Tabula Rasa were all over hyped and in my opinion did not deliver, some more than others. I looking at you Fury and HellGate. It seems that the only “good” MMORPG was Lord of the Rings Online. I put it in quotes because even though I don’t consider the game to be good, it did win a few awards for MMORPG of the Year. How? Well, its not hard to win when you have no real competion. I was basically a watered down version of WOW set in the Middle Earth universe.

In 2008 we get to look forward to the next generation of MMORPG.  Age of Conan and Warhammer Online both arguably the most anticipated MMORPGs of the year promise to revolutionize the genre with new PvP and combat systems. Will that be enough for gamers, only time will tell.

So whats the next step for MMORPGs? What I’d like to see is a step away from the cookie cutter MMOs and an attempt to make a truly unique game. I think the next big thing in MMOs will be player driven storylines. Waiting for an expansion or content update will be a thing of the past. MMOs will be driven by the players themselves, with a website dedicated to the going ons of the game universe. Players will be the ones giving the quests, making the rules and creating the storylines. Guilds will start wars with other guilds not because there bored, but because they want more land and wealth. Your actions will not only effect your own character but all characters. You might log off one day in your town only to find out that it has been sacked by a rival guild and your guild has taken shelter in a cave. Top players will be listed as people of importance with special items as reward for killing them or perhaps to help protect them.

The options are endless, however I don’t think we’ll see a game like this anywhere in near future, although I am confident that this will be eventually where MMOs go.

Whatever Happened to Mythica?

14 January 2008 | No Comments » | LHStaff

Way back in 2003, a time of lore and buggy-dances, a small MMORPG was beginning to surface in a world that was positively teaming with new IPs and restored IPs being brought into the same scene. It was a simpler time back then, the only real competition in the scene was Everquest, Asheron’s Call, and, to a lesser extent, Ultima Online (which had begun to show it’s age). This was when Microsoft decided that it wanted a slice of the MMO pie.

Mythica was announced at GenCon back in 2003 as an MMORPG that was based on Norse mythology. Even the combat was centered around being a “demi-god” where the player would have been placed into the role of a fallen hero against Ragnarok, and preventing him from ending the world. If nothing else about the game, the story was definitely very interesting. Unfortunately, the game was cancelled in 2004 and was never brought back to life.

Mythica was not riddled with performance issues, and was not clouded by disastrous PR or lawsuits (although there was one). There was really nothing that was seriously preventing the game from being released, and everything looked according to plan until Microsoft cancelled it. So why was it cancelled? Well according to Chris Lye (former global product manager at Microsoft, GFW #15) the entire Microsoft MMO protfolio hinged on one man: Ed Fries. You see, Ed Fries was the Vice President of Microsoft Gaming Studios, who also happened to be an avid MMO gamer. He loved MMORPGs and understood that there was a real fortune in the genre in the future (this was pre-WoW by the way). After he left (no reason given) the MMO-scene at MGS had little support and it eventually just dwindled. Eventually Mythica got the ax because somebody somewhere in the head offices felt that a new MMORPG was worth more time and money than Mythica. You know this game currently as SOE’s stepchild: Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Fascinating game history eh?