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Ask Massively: What happened to open-world MMOs?
A reader named Gabe emailed Massively last year with two questions (I'm getting through all the emails -- I am!). I'll address the second one eventually, but let's do the first one today because it's something I love to talk about: open-world MMOs. What happened to "open world" MMOs? I grew up with giant world MMOs where you would almost never see a load screen. I remember spending countless hours running from end to end of continents exploring and trying to see what I could find. You would run into a city instead of loading a city. I don't feel I am a part of a "world" anymore. After World of Warcraft, I played The Secret World, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, and a few other closed-world MMOs, and it just pisses me off because I feel as if I am playing a single-player game with multiplayer options instead of a world I am a part of. I think we've got two separate issues here: One's about the literal meaning of open world, and the other's about the feel.
Human Element set for Nov. 2015, Ouya prequel canceled
Human Element, the first-personal survival game from Robert Bowling's studio, Robotoki, will launch in November 2015 on PC, Bowling confirmed on Twitter. He added that the Ouya-bound prequel to the game was canceled "early on" as the developer shifted its focus to the CryEngine-based PS4 and Xbox One versions of the open-world game, which don't currently have a release date. Bowling left Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward in April 2012 to open Robotoki and announced Human Element in June 2012. The Ouya prequel was revealed soon after in July, at which point Bowling donated $10,000 to the microconsole manufacturer. The Human Element prequel was also slated to be the first console exclusive game for Ouya. [Image: Robotoki]
Metal Gear Solid 5 map 'hundreds of times larger' than Ground Zeroes'
According to a Siliconera translation of a tweet by Hideo Kojima, the map for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is "hundreds of times larger" than the map being used for its prologue, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. The Ground Zeroes map also lacks real-time changes to the day and night cycle, though Kojima reportedly stated that each mission will offer different experiences. The Siliconera translation also reads that "GZ is both a prologue to the MGS5 story and, at the same time, a tutorial for a new MGS, which transitions to sneaking simulator." Are these statements hyperbole? Flat-out falsitudes? Or are they honest truth? With Kojima, you can never be sure.
Mafia designer announces Kingdom Come: Deliverance RPG for PC and next-gen
Warhorse Studios delivered a teaser trailer and name for its upcoming RPG today, now known as Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The indie Czech developer, founded in 2011 by Mafia and Mafia 2 designer Daniel Vávra, noted that the game is expected to arrive in 2015 for PC and unspecified next-gen consoles. Kingdom Come: Deliverance will take place in the "Holy Roman Empire during the late Middle Ages," in which players can engage in first-person hand-to-hand combat, sieges and large-scale battles. Unlike other games that draw inspiration from the era, Warhorse Studios promised "no magic, high fantasy or mythical overtones" in its description of the game, but will instead focus on "historically authentic characters, themes and warfare." Among those themes is the struggle for the right to sit on the throne and hold power over the kingdom, which will be central to the game's plot. The developer also recently issued a blog that described its lengthy trials in finding a suitable publisher for the open-world RPG and where it stands currently in its endeavors.
The Art of Wushu: Rewarding good and bad deeds
Last time, I mentioned that I might talk about the new school instances in Age of Wushu's Infinite Scrolls expansion, but the truth is that very little is known. I haven't done them (I'm guildless and I'm not really looking), and the guilds that have done them are very closed-mouthed about what is in the dungeons. I've heard they're pretty easy, if it's any condolence. However, I do have something more fun to talk about, and that's killing other people. You guys may have noticed, but I like PvP a lot. Infinite Scrolls released a new system called Big Jianghu that rewards people for open-world PvP. I have wanted more consequences for PKing for a long time, so I was really excited about this feature. Unfortunately, as with many things in the new expansion, I was bound to be disappointed.
Ubisoft delays The Crew's launch window
I can't wait to play Ubisoft's open-world racing MMO called The Crew. Unfortunately, it looks as if I'll be waiting longer than I first thought now that the firm has delayed the title's launch to sometime during fiscal year 2014 to 2015 (that's April 2014 to March 2015 if your business-speak is rusty). The Crew, which was announced earlier this year at E3, was originally scheduled for an early 2014 launch. "Our long term goal is to win the next generation," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot explained. "The tough decisions we are taking today to fully realize the major potential of our new creations have an impact on our short-term performance. We are convinced that, longer term, they will prove to be the right decisions both in terms of satisfaction for our fans and in terms of value creation for our shareholders. We are building franchises that will become perennial pillars of UbiSoft's financial performance."
Lost your Grand Theft Auto Online character? Have some money instead!
For all the problems of online games, there's a certain assumption that your character is safe no matter what technical problems might hit the server. Sure, Grand Theft Auto Online has had some growing pains, but if your character vanishes for some reason you can still -- wait, no, apparently your character is lost forever and will never return to you. That's kind of the opposite of news you were hoping for. So in the hopes that you'll be distracted, Rockstar is throwing half a million dollars at you. Before you get too distracted, you should know that this is in-game money. Two payments of $250,000 in-game will be provided to players on two distinct dates, hopefully by the end of next week. While this won't exactly replace the time and effort lost via vanishing characters, it should at least take the edge off of Grand Theft Auto Online's unexpected problems.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's dragon evolution
I'm praying to Grenth -- not just because he's lord of the dead and my human Necromancer's supreme master but because being in Sparkfly Fen during a Tequatl-stomping session has been threatening to down my usually robust computer and I'm hoping Grenth will take mercy on it. That, or I could just upgrade it. Every little bit helps, though. I've spent most of this past week finishing up the move to a new apartment, but I've still made time to throw myself at Guild Wars 2's buffed-up Tequatl the Sunless fight. I was pleasantly surprised by the encounter and the community's reception of it, and it's definitely given me hope that ArenaNet will be able to add more complex and fun fights of this kind to GW2's open world in the future. Tequatl is like the star of a teen movie, turning every head at the prom after a radical makeover. I know you needed that mental image. You're welcome.
New Bless clip shows off boss transformation
Bless is shaping up to be quite a pretty game, and developer Neowiz is intent on showing off what harnessing the power of Unreal Engine 3 truly means for a fantasy-based MMO. This latest trailer focuses on the transformation of a giant wolf boss into an uglier giant wolf boss, and while short, it offers a glimpse of what players can expect in terms of Bless's bad guy design. Check out the video after the break, and take a look at our interview with lead producer Jacob Han for more information on the future of Bless.
The Crew's creative director on RPG aspects and the open world
From the better-late-than-never department, VG247 has released a Gamescom-era video about UbiSoft's upcoming open world racer known as The Crew. There's plenty of gameplay footage on display, as well as commentary from creative director Julian Garrity that highlights the title's RPG aspects. "Of course we've got tons and tons of cars," Garrity explains, "but we really want people to be playing with one car and taking it everywhere." He mentions all sorts of tuning kits, individual parts, and even the ability to tear down and rebuild a vehicle in order to access and maximize specific components. The video also touches on the size, complexity, and detail of the gameworld. Driving across the U.S., Garrity says, will take between one and two hours of real time. The game's version of New York City is about the same size as Liberty City from the Grand Theft Auto series. There's much more info if you're interested, all of which is contained in the video after the cut.
Ubisoft to 'release open-world on a regular basis'
During Ubisoft's annual investor's call, CEO Yves Guillemot talked about the future of the company and how Ubisoft needs to "release open-world on a regular basis." Guillemot elaborated that at Ubisoft, "we have put to the market nine open-world games over the last seven years, including two in 2013. This is by far an unmatched performance. Through those years, we have developed technologies, we have grown the experience of our teams, we have put in place pre-sized processes to ensure efficient collaboration between multiple studios working simultaneously on the same massive maps. This gives us a unique opportunity in the industry to bring open-world on a regular basis." Guillemot went on to talk about the five "online and social breakthroughs" that each Ubisoft game will need to hit in order to ensure players spend more time in-game. "Those breakthroughs are systemic gameplay, co-op and social, low barriers to entry, user-generated content and personalized experience through analytics." Examples given by Guillemot include Watch Dogs' and The Division's solo, co-op and multiplayer experiences that will hopefully increase the amount of time a player spends with the game and entice players who may otherwise ignore any of these traditional modes. Guillemot also mentioned that two of Ubisoft's upcoming open-world games, Assassin's Creed 4 and Watch Dogs, are among the five most pre-ordered games on PS4 and Xbox One.
It's a steampunk dwarf on the new Black Gold website
Steam will rise, boundaries will fall, at least according to the newly minted Black Gold Online website. In case you couldn't tell from the tagline and the massive monocle-sporting dwarf on the header, Black Gold is a new steampunk MMO. It's brought to you by Snail, best known in the west as the publisher of martial arts sandbox Age of Wushu. The site boasts a couple of video clips, a few screenshots, and some very basic information about the game's open world. Currently the race/class and story sections of the site feature "coming soon" placeholders, but we expect to learn quite a bit more about the title during our demo at E3 this week. [Thanks Paul!]
Elsword adds open-world areas, quadruples in size
Kill3rCombo is adding an open-world element to its manga-inspired actioner called Elsword. A new summer update brings with it brand new "fields of battle" between each of the game's towns. Prior to the patch, Elsword's combat was limited to instanced dungeons and PvP areas. Now, though, players can explore a world that has quadrupled in size, slaying tons of enemies and discovering new towns as they go. We've got new screenshots in the gallery below as well as a new video just after the break. %Gallery-120229%
TUG tech video shows off in-house engine
Recently Nerd Kingdom promised more demonstrations of the tech behind its new TUG MMO hopeful. The company has made good with a new video that shows off the in-house engine, and lead programmer Brandon Nelson starts things off with an interesting tidbit about the game's contouring algorithm. "An algorithm like dual contouring gives us the ability to have the same quality of terrain that other games have, but not have to have them generated by level designers," Nelson explains. There's quite a lot of additional info packed into the clip's six-minute running time, all of which you can see for yourself after the break. You can also learn more about TUG via the project's Kickstarter site.
'The Forest' puts on Oculus Rift, goes exploring
The Forest is a first-person horror game currently in development for the PC and Oculus Rift. After surviving a plane crash at the outset of the game, players must build and thrive in a mysterious forest, scavenging materials throughout the day and defending against an indigenous enemy by night. Developer Ben Falcone promises changing weather and tides that shift with the day/night cycle. Players will have to chop down trees to build and make fires, scavenge food or plant seeds to grow, while traps will be necessary to maintain a safe perimeter and defend the home. On the game's about page, the nocturnal ne'er-do-wells are described as "a clan of genetic mutant enemies that have beliefs, families and morals." The Forest is tentatively scheduled to launch in late 2013, and is now vying for a spot on Steam Greenlight.
New Grimlands video talks free-form progression, huge open world
DRAGO Entertainment is making a case for its Grimlands MMO on Kickstarter, and the company has released the first part of a behind-the-scenes video that takes viewers through various aspects of the development process. The post-apocalyptic MMO mixes first- and third-person shooting action with a deep crafting system, a variety of vehicles, and RPG progression set against a large open-world backdrop. The video features plenty of in-game footage as well as narration by DRAGO's Lucjan Mikociak, who talks at length about Grimlands' free-form character progression. Have a look at the clip, and a list of key Grimlands features, after the cut.
MMO Burnout: Yucking it up with Saints Row The Third
So how would you feel about running around in an open-world action title smacking enemies with a giant dildo? The answer to that question will go a long way toward determining whether or not you'll dig Saints Row The Third, which is, naturally, the third installment of Volition's sordid sandbox saga. If that question made you laugh, utter some version of "hell yeah," or type "Saints Row 3 dildo" into your Google image search box, you and SRTT will get along famously. If you shifted uncomfortably in your seat, grumbled about kids these days, or fired off a how-dare-you email in the general vicinity of the Massively tip box, well, you can probably skip the rest of this week's MMO Burnout.
MMO Burnout: Do yourself a favor and play Sleeping Dogs
This week I thought I'd travel to Hong Kong as an undercover cop, infiltrate the Triads, enter a few street races, sing some karaoke, and generally kung fu fight my way through another jewel of an open-world sandbox actioner. You're welcome to come with me, but you'll need a copy of Sleeping Dogs to make it happen. Square's 2012 gangster opus got a new DLC injection this week, but it'll be a while before I can report on it since the rest of game is so large and involving.
MMO Burnout: Second time's the charm for L.A. Noire
I don't know about you, but I really wanted to like L.A. Noire at release. I mean, come on. It was Rockstar. It was also a gigantic open playfield based on the 1947 incarnation of a real-life town that's spilling over with sordid, sultry characters all looking to make their mark on post-World War II America. Alas, something about the title just didn't jell with me at launch. In fact, I didn't even finish the original campaign on my Xbox 360, which is rare when it comes to personal gaming habits. Equally rare is the occasion when I repurchase a game that I didn't really like on a different platform, but that's what I did thanks to yet another ridiculous Steam sale this past December. My second tour of duty as hard-boiled detective Cole Phelps has been decidedly more enjoyable than my first, and while L.A. Noire is still a flawed video game in some respects, it makes for an engaging vacation from massively multiplayer convention while riffing on some of the genre's new-school charms.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The open world and you
When we're discussing endgame and the long haul in Guild Wars 2, it can be really easy to talk about dungeons and instanced stuff and WvW and other things that can kind of cause you to forget the open world. The open world is cool! Just like there are people who haven't left sPvP and haven't left WvW, there are other people who are totally happy exploring every nook and cranny of the wide world. I dislike the idea of the world being neglected as soon as one turns 80, because I'm pretty darn sure that it's nearly impossible to really see all there is to see before 80. This whole discussion comes with the caveat that we probably disagree about what endgame is. We'll talk about things that can be done in Guild Wars 2, which means they might be part of your endgame, if they are things you haven't done and things that you enjoy. Some of them will help you progress along some arbitrary track; others most likely will not. They can be done post-80, for sure, but by and large the open world is full of things that can be done just about any time, depending on your sense of style.
