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This week on The MMO Report
It's Thursday night, which means Uncle Casey and his mailbag are back to review this week in The MMO Report. Casey Schreiner gave us a rundown of all the latest and greatest MMO news. The rundown began with all of Trion's big news from earlier this week, including the newest look at Rift: Planes of Telara, End of Nations, and MMO that ties in with SyFy's One Earth. Star Trek Online's Season One -- the latest batch of content centering around DS9 -- got a look in, as did LotRO's birthday celebration. BioWare's new SW:TOR dev diary earned a "holy crap" from Mr. Schreiner (we agree), and then it was off to the mailbag after a quick stop by the WoW store to check out the newest goodies. Follow along after the jump to take a look, and check out The MMO Report every Thursday at G4TV.
Trion Worlds 'Syfy Action MMO' likely coming to consoles; publisher shows off two additional MMOs
Four years and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment capital later, Trion World Network finally has a couple of "connected" games to show ... and a new name, to boot. Now known as Trion Worlds, the company held an event in San Francisco last week to take the wraps off of the Petroglyph-developed "MMORTS" End of Nations and its home-grown MMORPG Rift: Planes of Telara (formerly known as Heroes of Telara). End of Nations is the latest game from the developer of Mytheon, Star Wars: Empire at War and Universe at War, which hopes to break new ground in the RTS genre by introducing elements such as a persistent game world and player-vs-environment battles that support more than 50 players simultaneously. It's set in a near future where resistance fighters battle a totalitarian one world government that possesses superior technology, including battleship-sized tanks called Panzer Hulks. (Check out our End of Nations image gallery for a closer look at the title.) Shown at E3 last year, Rift: Planes of Telara has undergone more than a name change. The game's visuals have improved substantially and its new hook -- "rifts" that appear randomly and spawn creatures from other dimensions -- is something Trion Worlds is focusing heavily on, calling it "dynamic content" that only its server platform can deliver. (Peep the Rift: Planes of Telara image gallery here.) Both games are due out in 2011 and are expected to be playable at E3 in June. The company is also working with Syfy on a hybrid action MMO / TV series believed to be called One Earth. The project is not being shown just yet, but it was revealed that factions and players from the game will be written into the show -- should they emerge victorious in tie-in challenges. We were also told by a Trion World rep that the game, while currently announced only for PC, will likely be released for console platforms. Check out the first concept art from the game in the gallery below. %Gallery-91785%
Syfy Channel series, MMO hybrid has a name: One Earth
[motionographer.com] General Electric, of all sources, has revealed the working title "One Earth," chosen for the joint MMO / television series venture underway between Trion and the Syfy Channel. The name was disclosed in a GE report to shareholders, which makes sense as its the parent company of Syfy and is partially funding the game through its "Peacock Equity Fund." Trion CEO Lars Butler explains that the One Earth MMO and show "not only promote each other, they literally depend on each other and co-evolve." Rob Hill, the game's senior producer, says that unlike many licensed properties where "you have a game that's based off of a book or television show or movie, or a movie that's based off a game," One Earth is "completely different" and has the potential to "really be able to broaden the audience" by -- as GE promises -- "bringing viewers from the show into the game and vice versa." Only time -- and TV ratings, and the game's subscription numbers -- will tell if that's all just a sci-fi fantasy. [Via BigDownload]
New information about hybrid SyFy MMO and television show
Back in June of 2008, we first heard about a neat little idea from SyFy -- then the Sci-Fi channel -- involving a combination MMO and television show. The project is still going strong as a collaboration between SyFy and Trion World Network, and now has the intriguing working title of One Earth. One Earth has since received financial backing from Peacock Equity, a global fund from NBC Universal and GE dedicated to investing in digital media companies (among other ventures). New video -- featuring Lars Buttler, CEO of Trion and President of SyFy David Howe -- delves deeper into the project. "...we are making this game now with a lot of support from every side," Buttler says. "we can, in this unique setup, do things that other people would never even dare before: create a video game world, a television show, they're based on the same universe, they take place at the same location in the future. They not only promote each other, they literally depend on each other and co-evolve." For the full story and video, take a look here.
