MMORPG highlights from GDC08
The Game Developers Conference of 2008 has ended, but the coverage Massively churned out on current and emerging MMOs lives on. We know you aren't chomping at the bit to wade through the dozens and dozens of articles we published covering the latest developments in the sexy, sexy world of online gaming development. No worries, we've done it for you.
From our arrival to our hands-on coverage to our relentless hounding of big name developers, follow us on a magical, mystery tour through best of Massively's GDC08 adventures.
Blizzard's approach to game design
World of Warcraft 101
Let's just kick off with the big guns. Blizzard's Rules of Engagement session was, how shall we say, popular. And Elizabeth Harper was there to live blog it. Ever wonder why your class is being nerfed or a PvP map got changed? Doesn't matter what MMORPG you play, the design principles for fun and fair play still apply. Blizzard's SVP of Game Design, Rob Pardo laid it all out for the WoW haters.
Gallery: GDC08: Blizzard's approach to MMOs
Turbine's online gaming strategy
Lord of the social networking virtual MMOs
Next up was Lord of the Rings Online's Executive Producer Jeffery Steefel giving his presentation of the philosophy behind Turbine's online gaming strategy. The Turbine folks see a convergence of the three kinds of online experiences: social networking, virtual worlds (sandboxes) and MMORPGs (directed experiences.) They are experimenting with ways to bring all three of them together such as LotRO's editable Google map of Middle-earth and their in-game medieval Rock Band music system. Rock on, Frodo!
Jack Emmert dishes on CoX success, failure
Cryptic talks about the past, hints at the future
The last of the big developers Team Massively tackled was Cryptic Studios. First they presented a session on what they learned from launching and overseeing City of Heroes. But we knew they had picked up an unnamed SciFi MMO project and were dying to get confirmation that they were going to be the last minute savior of Star Trek Online since Perpetual's implosion. We had hopes of running down the confirmation of the title before the end of GDC, but all we ended up with was a subscription to Game Informer.
Next: Hands-on with Conan, Requiem and APB
