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WildStar Community Director Troy Hewitt announces departure from Carbine
It's a sad day for the WildStar community. Carbine's Community Director Troy "Aether" Hewitt announced today in a post on the WildStar site that he is stepping down from his position and leaving the studio. He confides in the community the reason for his departure: "Without going into too much detail, recent tragedies in my family require that I return home to be closer to my family [...] It was a decision I can only define as agonizing, but in the end, my family needs me." While this may be disheartening news for many fans, Hewitt is confident that he leaves the community in capable hands. In addition to the North American and European community teams, Hewitt specifically mentions three "forever friends of [his] and industry leaders in their craft" that will be taking care of the community in his absence: Carbine's new VP of Brand, Mona Hamilton; Director of Interactive Marketing, Christophe Bahamed; and new PR Manager, Michael Shelling. In closing, Hewitt tells fans, "While this is goodbye for now, I guarantee you that we'll be playing WildStar together on launch day."
TERA devs talk grind, player choice
TERA devs and community staff have been out in force as of late, making the rounds with interviews, podcast appearances, and forum posts at fan sites around the world. Roger over at For the Lore writes in to let us know about his podcast interview with En Masse producer Brian Knox and creative writer Robin MacPherson, which you can check out here. Also, En Masse community director Jason "BrotherMagneto" Mical stopped by Russian fan site GoHa.ru to answer a lengthy series of questions including bits on the PvP flagging system, grind, and player choice. "Our goal is to make multiple ways to reach any goal with no one way 'better' or more 'profitable' than others, and to give players the choice of achieving mastery based on their specific style of gameplay," Mical says. "This is another example of the range of choices players have in TERA – you can play either way. There's a rich story-driven experience in TERA, and our intent is to create questlines that will take you from the first to the final level without having to repeat a single one or grind for experience in the interim," he continues. Check out the full interview over at GoHa.ru. Please note that the forum post is in Russian. To view the interview in English, scroll to the bottom of the first post and click the green plus icon.
Fallen Earth dev chat transcript a glimpse into the game
As the post-apocalyptic massively multiplayer online game Fallen Earth has now entered closed beta and gets closer to its launch, Icarus Studios is sharing more info about the title. Tiggs, the Fallen Earth Community Director, has posted the latest Stratics HoC Chat Transcript. Quite a number of the Fallen Earth devs were on hand for the chat, not limited to the game's writer and content designer, lead scripter, lead game designer, and the art director. They fielded questions from the Fallen Earth community about the game, hitting upon everything from their choice to create an MMO without classes to the goal-oriented PvP style of the game, where territorial control is key. If you missed this as it was happening, have a look at what the devs and players are saying about Fallen Earth.
Fallen Earth hits content complete development goal
While the fantasy MMO genre still has years of life left in it and millions of fans, there's an upcoming crop of new titles in the sci-fi and post-apocalyptic genres. Of that latter category, Fallen Earth is one of the most anticipated titles that's nearing test phases.Tiggs, the Community Director at the official Fallen Earth forums, said, "After a nine-month schedule of intensive content development, we are happy to announce that we have reached the development landmark 'content complete.' The Fallen Earth team has met two critical development milestones on time within the past six months, including 'feature complete' in June." Her announcement to the Fallen Earth community breaks down the major accomplishments linked to the game's content complete status. Highlights include 50,000 lines of dialogue, well over 1000 new and motion-captured animations and emotes, and over 1000 square kilometers of explorable territory, but there's much more. See Tiggs' announcement at the Fallen Earth forums for more details on where the game is, although it seems that Beta testing is still some months away. [Via WorthPlaying]
