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Elvenar brings city building to a fantasy world
Pristine worlds and virgin landscapes are an affront to sentient sensibilities, which is why the call is going out to colonize the world of Elvenar. Today, InnoGames announced that it is working on a new city building game, this one to be set in a fantasy world. Players in Elvenar will get to choose between Elves and Humans, after which they will get cracking on building a city to honor that race. Like other InnoGames titles, Elvenar will have not only a building component, but trade and battle ones as well. Elvenar is planning on a January 2015 closed beta test for the PC. Mobile editions of the game are also planned, although they will be coming later. Players can pre-register on the official site right now. [Source: InnoGames press release]
The Game Archaeologist: Four online sci-fi titles no one remembers
In the MMO industry, science fiction has always taken the role of the overlooked little brother to big sister fantasy's popularity. Sure, there have been several online games that eschewed dungeons and dragons for spaceships and solar radiation poisoning, but even today the fantasy genre continues to be the dominant one in the genre. So not only have we had fewer online sci-fi games, but the ones that have attempted to make in-roads are all too soon forgotten. Over the years that I've been researching and writing The Game Archaeologist, I continue to come across these little games that have been all but forgotten by modern gamers, and many of these titles are indeed of a sci-fi bent. This week I'll be taking a look at four such games, including one that never even made it to launch, in an attempt to acknowledge their place at the family dinner table.
Kingdom Under Fire II took seven years and $50M to complete
After spending over seven years in development, Kingdom Under Fire II may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It's currently in beta testing in southeast Asia and has plans for US and EU tests before the end of 2014. Game Director Sang Youn Lee said that the title's lengthy development was compounded by a format switch from a single-player Xbox title to an MMO for the PC and PlayStation 4. The cost for the game also spiraled upward over the years. "The scale of the game has expanded to three or four times what it was at first," Sang Youn Lee told Kotaku. "$15,000,000 was the first budget for the game. Now it is $50,000,000." Kingdom Under Fire II blends RPG and RTS elements to allow players to lead up to 500 soldiers in battles against each other rather than against the computer. Reportedly, the game can handle displaying 10,000 troops in combat at the same time.
Avalon Lords gears up for its Kickstarter campaign
How do you feel about the MMORTS genre? The folks behind Avalon Lords don't have many nice things to say about it, which is why they're making an MMORTS game that, in their own words, is meant to elevate the game beyond free-to-play titles with microtransactions. The game launches its Kickstarter today, and it's put a trailer into the wild so potential backers can get a sense for what the game will look like. Backers are being asked for $150,000 for the base game, a fairly humble sum considering other titles. The official support page for the game includes stretch goals starting at $250,000 and moving up, including fully customizable cities, NPC armies, and at the high end, a full-access mobile application. You can check the trailer out past the break, and if you like what you see and think the title will go all the way, you can toss in a few dollars.
Sci-fi MMORTS Astro Lords: Oort Cloud arrives in July
Astro Lords: Oort Cloud. Yeah, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it is a new free-to-play sci-fi MMO en route to English, German, and French gamers this year. Developer Aratog Studios claims that Astro Lords is "the first MMORTS to combine three major game genres in a consistent world: construction management, arcade-style shooting, and strategic raid warfare." Gameplay progresses as "players manage and grow their asteroid base, their generals board spaceships to shoot and destroy enemy spaceships and bosses, and they raid other asteroids to loot or capture them." It'll be a cross-platform MMO available both in-browser and within a standalone client. Astro Lords is expected to enter closed beta on June 10th, with open beta a week later and formal launch on July 1st. [Source: Aratog Studios press release]
Stronghold Kingdoms attracts more than 3 million would-be conquerers
While self-funding a massively multiplayer real-time strategy game such as Stronghold Kingdoms was a risky move for a developer like Firefly Studios, it seems to be paying off as the castle building game has attracted over three million players since its debut on February 27. Firefly cites a passionate player base for the game's success, and notes that the game draws 200,000 users from 100 countries each month. Of course, it helps that Stronghold Kingdoms is free to download and play, and is supported by optional microtransactions, but given the number of other online games available to players with the same "free to play" price of entry, that three million player figure is still an impressive achievement. Those interested in joining the fight can find all the information they need to get up and running on the game's official website or by visiting its page on Steam. [Image: Firefly Studios]
End of Nations development halted
Development on End of Nations has officially stopped. Trion Worlds first halted the game in late 2013, recently telling Video Gamer it is "currently focusing the company's energy and creativity on Rift, Defiance, Trove, ArcheAge, and some new projects that we will be revealing soon." The game's website no longer resolves to any landing page and the last posts on its Facebook and Twitter pages were from August 2013, right around the time Trion Worlds shuttered its San Diego studio. At the time, the publisher opted to move development of End of Nations, along with that of Defiance and ArcheAge, to its Redwood City studio. It also named Scott Hartsman CEO of the company, who left his former role as COO of Trion Worlds in January 2013 before the appointment in August. [Image: Trion Worlds]
Trion Worlds confirms that End of Nations is on hold in favor of MMO titles
Trion Worlds has today confirmed that its MMORTS-turned-MOBA End of Nations is officially on hold. A spokesperson for the studio sent the following statement to Polygon: As we informed EON's community last fall, internal development on End of Nations was put on hold in late 2013 while we evaluated potential paths forward for the title. We're currently focusing the company's energy and creativity on Rift, Defiance, Trove, ArcheAge and some new projects that we will be revealing soon. Last summer, Trion reclaimed the game from developer Petroglyph with the intent to retool it as a MOBA. After Trion's layoffs and restructuring in August, CEO Scott Hartsman told Massively that the team was still working on and evaluating the title. The official website is no longer functioning.
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Free for All: Five reasons to continue loving MMORPGs
It's been all gloomy around here lately, hasn't it? Well there's a good reason for that, as you might know. Luckily I have survived the cuts that affected much of the AOL Tech network, although that means that Rise and Shiny and MMObility, my two other regular columns, will be consolidated into this one. While it might seem like less work for me, in actuality it means that I have less room to tell you, fair reader, about all of the fantastic MMOs that continue to come out. Yes, I said continue to come out. It's easy to become a Seymour ("I hate my interests!") in these days of non-stop hype, but the truth is that the MMO genre has continuously pumped out content for many, many years and will keep doing so for some time. So to celebrate the fact that three of my columns are now coming to you in one megacolumn, I thought it'd be fun to remind ourselves just why we enjoy this hobby.
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MMObility: Line of Defense Tactics is a fun start for an IP
Line of Defense is an upcoming MMOFPS created by 3000AD. It looks like an interesting twist on the shooter genre, complete with large battles and vehicles to control. It offers only a beta sign-up right now, so if you are interested in diving into the LoD universe, you can download the newly released Line of Defense Tactics standalone game. It's not an MMO, but it still introduces players to the IP. If you're a fan of real-time turn-based combat and challenging gameplay, you might want to give it a go on your portable device or PC. I downloaded a version of Tactics from Steam and tried it on my Android tablet as well. Both experiences felt pretty much the same, and my game save synced between both devices easily. Today I am going to cover the mobile version mostly, but it should be noted that the PC version looks and acts pretty much identically.
MMObility: Exploring the confusing world of mobile MMOs
The mobile MMO market has sort of come to a standstill, at least in the Western market. There are always new or incoming mobile titles that are MMO-like and even a handful of new fully fledged MMOs, but most of the ones I come across are either relative copies of current games or blatant repeats of current designs. There's just not much that is new coming to the table right now. It's a bit depressing because mobile devices are perfect delivery systems for massively multiplayer gaming, and yet so many developers are cutting down standard MMO design to fit into the mobile world. What I would like to suggest is a rethinking of MMOs for mobile. I'd like to see developers stop with the idea that mobile players are gaming the same way they do on a console or PC. Instead, I'd like to suggest that developers get to know how players interact with mobile devices and how that affects how and how long they play. Mobile MMOs should behave differently, but not so differently that they are no longer MMOs. There are many different types of games you will find when you search for "MMORPG" on Google Play or the App market. Most of them are not MMORPGs, however.
Kingdom Under Fire II interview highlights development
Kingdom Under Fire II, which is finally releasing this summer, has undergone a number of changes during its six-years-plus of development. And in a recent interview, Executive Producer Sang Youn Lee sat down with Worlds Factory to discuss the evolution of the game and highlight its upcoming features. Players can look forward to guild-owned territories, a persistent world, territory disputes and sieges, PvE dynamic events, and much more. Sang Youn Lee also noted that while the game will be available on multiple platforms, it will not have cross-platform play. Check out the full interview for all the details. [Thanks to David for the tip!]
MMObility: Innogames' Fabio Lo Zito details Tribal Wars 2
Tribal Wars 2 is the successor to Innogames' oldest title, Tribal Wars. The original is (to put it gently) ugly as sin, but that has never stopped it from being one of the most popular titles the German publisher produced. As a matter of fact, 2013 was the biggest year for the original game... after a decade in existence! You might have heard of some of the other titles in the Innogames lineup or watched an advertisement for two of its largest games, Grepolis and Forge of Empires. So how does Tribal Wars 2 compare to these other games? First of all, it offers much of the same intense gameplay as the publisher's other, larger titles. Grepolis is sort of the spiritual successor to Tribal Wars and features water-based gameplay that makes ships and deities an integral part of play. Grepolis also offers a more wide-ranging playerbase, thanks to television advertising that helped to pull in more casual players. Tribal Wars is much more hardcore, and Tribal Wars 2 will be no different. It will look a heck of a lot prettier than its earlier sibling, though! I sat down with Fabio Lo Zito of Innogames to talk about the changes.
MMORTS Kingdom Under Fire 2 picks a platform, will release this summer
If Kingdom Under Fire 2 sounds vaguely familiar but you just can't quite place it, that could be because the MMORTS was announced six years ago this month then went underground, popping its head up only a couple times in 2010 and resurfacing once in 2013. And over the coarse of those years, the game switched platforms, from the Xbox 360 to the PlayStation 3. Now, Kingdom Under Fire 2 has returned, and it will launch this summer on the PlayStation 4 (which will feature content exclusive to the platform) and the PC after a period of open beta testing.
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot traps you for hours of fun
It might sound like a bad thing, but my favorite part of playing Ubisoft's The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is logging into the game. I just love it when I get past the loading screen that warns "closed beta" to see who has attacked my castle and how the attackers fared during the attempt. Usually they have just blown past my defenses and humiliated me, but thanks to a wonderful replay feature, I can see exactly where my castle is at its weakest and can adjust accordingly. Every player in the game gets a castle like mine. They're all floating in the sky, chock-full of riches that are up for grabs as long as the attacking player can get past the castle's defenses. The gameplay is nothing really new. We have been playing castle defense or action-based puzzlers for a long time, but The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot delivers everything in such a polished, unique-looking package that it gets props for being unique. There's much more to the game, but you'll have to get past my glue traps to read the details!
MMObility: Elemental Kingdoms is almost a unique game
We've all had our share of trading card games. It's a popular genre, and there are always new titles popping up. Frankly, it's hard to tell many of them apart. That's sort of the point, I guess. The fact is that the basic design is so successful because it can be so fun to play with. Tweak the formula a little bit and you might have a very fun game that is easy to get into yet hard to master. It's also possible that you'll have yet another boring trading card game. I tried Perfect World's Elemental Kingdoms this week and found a very familiar title that sits a bit apart from the rest of the pack but still has plenty of issues. It attempts to be too many games at once and still does not go far enough as it's asking you to gather cards, craft decks, enhance cards, and fight enemies.
Sixteen games that ease the MMO level gap -- and how they do it
There's nothing I hate more than logging into an MMO, running across a friend, and being hit by the wall of levels that separates us. She might act as if she's OK hanging out with a newbie, but the truth is that she'd rather be off doing high-level things with her high-level buddies. If only there were a way for us to jump into combat (or anything else) together from the get-go! In many MMOs, that level gap is not an issue. There are a lot of creative ways to get around the problem, and some MMOs meet players more than halfway. Of course, there are a lot of MMOs that force players into a level-encased tunnel of grind, but today we want to shine some light on some of the ways MMOs help salve the level gap sting.
Novus AEterno announces Kickstarter campaign, expected to launch in 'next six months'
Taitale Studios has announced today that its upcoming MMORTS, Novus AEterno, is nearing completion and is "expected to launch within the next six months." In order to gather funding for the final stages of the game's development, the studio has launched a Kickstarter campaign that aims to raise $200,000 US over the course of the next 30 days. Of the campaign, Taitale CEO Nick Nieuwoudt states that the studio is "excited to make the supportive gamer community part of the [development] process and part of our success." If Novus AEterno sounds like the kind of game at which you'd like to throw some of your money (in exchange for some nifty backer rewards, of course), you can check out the official Kickstarter at the link below. And of course, to learn more about the game itself, just head on over to the official site. [Source: Taitale Studios press release]
MMObility: Crazy Tribes is crazy easy to put down
I've played Crazy Tribes before. Or at least it feels that way. I've played so many MMORTS titles, mobile and otherwise, that play exactly like Crazy Tribes that it's hard writing this without feeling as though I am repeating myself. It's not that the game is a complete dud; it's actually relatively well made in a few areas. The problem is that it does not do enough to set it apart from the pack of MMORTS games that already exist. If only Crazy Tribes would take at least a few cues from a game like Grepolis! I ran into issues almost as soon as I started the game. In the beginning tutorial -- if you can read the tiny, horrible font, anyway -- you'll be told to access a certain building in order to start upgrading. The problem was immediately obvious: Not only was the picture of the building different from the actual building in the town, but there are no labels on the individual buildings that make up your post-apocalyptic village. It's an annoying bit that could so easily be fixed.
Microsoft's Perry on F2P the wrong way
Today's winner of the most provocative post title award is this little ditty about Age of Empires Online. But hey, don't blame Massively! It's actually the title of a speech given by Microsoft's Kevin Perry at GDC Europe 2013. Gamasutra has posted video of the event, and it's well worth watching if you've got 45 minutes to kill and you're interested in what goes through a developer's mind as he thinks about continually evolving monetization schemes. Perry says that this particular speech is on its third iteration. It initially started out positive when he shared it with an internal Microsoft audience some time ago. He then reworked it based on newly collected data about the game for GDC San Francisco earlier this year. And then he reworked it again for GDC Europe based on even more data. If you're sensing a trend here, you're right: game devs often don't know how well their business models are performing at any given time. As Perry says, "it's an ongoing conversation." There are a few other choice quotes as well, including the notion that PvP players are small in number but "very, very loud" in terms of influence as well as the supposition that you can launch incomplete games under the F2P business model and "sort it out on the fly." This last bit isn't always true, Perry says, "especially for a large, branded title."
