Amanda Rivera
Articles by Amanda Rivera
City of Heroes: Return to Paragon City
I admit it, I have been a wayward hero. I started playing City of Heroes back in 2005, before sewer missions, before villains, heck, even before bases. The game back then was fun, but only for about an hour, and then I would get bored and log into EQ2 or WoW. I spent more time on the character creation screen than I did playing the game. I filled my character slots with crazy heroes, deleted them, and filled the slots up again. In essence, I was using the game as a glorified dressing room, which is probably why I got bored so easily.Recently I reactivated my account at the urging of a friend, and suddenly I have fallen in love with this game. I am getting a role player's pleasure out of saving the people on the streets, and conversely tormenting them with my villains. From the moment you load into the game for the first time, you have access to cool abilities, albeit basic ones. Now, I am not really talking about veteran rewards here, since I only have a few months' worth of those since I was deactivated for so long. I'm talking about instantly feeling like a hero or villain. This game immerses you into the world instantly, and you get to be kick ass for as long as you like.What used to annoy me about this game (the lack of trade skills) has now been fixed with the implementation of the invention system. Suddenly I am running around bashing on Circle of Thorns mages by the dozens, collecting their detritus and making enhancements with it. I am having loads of fun, almost as much as I had spending hours in a basement in EQ2. I guess what I'm saying is that even though I have to relearn the game, I am glad I am doing it. My characters might be low, but my level of enjoyment isn't. I'm glad to be back in Paragon City, and suspect it was where I was meant to be all along.
Zero Punctuation on Tabula Rasa
Yes, he may hate MMOs, but Yahtzee certainly has some valid points to make about Tabula Rasa. Largely his argument deals with the fact that the game seems to be trying to please everybody, both the shooter-lover and the MMO-lover. Now these are two very different types of players, who expect very different things out of a game. The MMO player loves collecting, building, and creating a character. The shooter player on the other hand wants objectives to overcome, so that they can prove to others exactly how uber they really are. Trying to appease both parties means that you have most people disappointed. How can they fix this? I guess it comes down to knowing who your target audience is. They can shift their target audience (hell Star Wars Galaxies shifted so much it became an entirely new game), but first Garriott and the dev team have to decide who they want to play their game. Now, it's all well and good to try to build a game that pleases everyone, but I think in order to do that properly you would have to delineate the sections of the game that are for each type of player. This is a tough thing to do, and in the end people will start wondering why you just didn't make two games and have done with.I think Tabula Rasa can be good as long as they up and decide who they want to play their game. If they want a traditional MMO, then they need to seriously look at the control point concept and reevaluate the "fun" level that comes when you collect 7000 pieces of alien carcass and go to turn them in, only to find the place is now owned by another faction. And in the end, isn't that what gaming is all about, fun?Note: NSFW warning, although he talks so fast your boss might not even understand the off-color language.
Tabula Rasa dev diary on control points
Love them or hate them, control points are an integral part to Tabula Rasa's gameplay. As the most recent dev diary explains, they wanted the game to feel like a battlefield. On a battlefield you have objectives to capture, and so they added control points into TR. Game developer Starr Long even says they add a level of excitement to the game. A base that is under your faction's control has quest givers you can interact with, has vendors, is a safe haven for your character. Now this isn't a new concept by any means. I can think of a specific town in Nagrand in World of Warcraft that runs completely off of this game mechanic. However, centering the gameplay on this mechanic is a mistake in my opinion. I have seen large scale PvP in MMOs before -- the base building in Anarchy Online for instance -- but it didn't inhibit gameplay. Capturing a base is a large undertaking, and for a single player just trying to get missions completed, this is impossible. It only serves to slow the player's progress and keep him from getting things done. It seems that if they want to create a war, then quests should be minimal if at all, and should revolve around capturing enemy objectives. Then at least you would have progression and massive battles at the same time. Related Story
Age of Conan on servers, betas, and more
The Friday update last week for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures was a doozy. First they started off letting people know that their server structure will be split by the Atlantic ocean, with North American players being separated from the European. It's got nothing to do with anything more than server stability, so put those nationalistic pitchforks down, thank you very much. Language is the topic up next, and it was confirmed that the three launch languages will be English, French, and German. They are considering adding Spanish, but the issue of customer service support arises. Of note is the fact that European players will have no language limitations as to which servers they can select. The localization of the game should take care of translation, so players of different languages can play together. Also while we're on the subject, there are considering allowing each game disc to have all three (or four) languages on it, since the system currently allows players to switch languages once the game is installed. I guess the feeling is that since players are allowed to select their language choice server side, why not just add it to the disc? All this talk of servers brings up one burning question: When do we get into the beta? As it turns out, the beta is coming soon. All the hardware is in place, they are making tweaks to the languages, but the challenge, as always, comes down to the legal aspects. Being a mature title is great and all, but each country considers various elements of gore differently, and so the game is going to need to reflect the threshold for blood spatter and decapitation in the various countries and render the graphics accordingly. It sound pretty slick, honestly, knowing that my Hello Kitty version of a sword slash will be seen as evisceration by another player in another country. It also sounds like a lot of work, but I am glad they are going to the trouble. That being said, the devs don't anticipate moving to an beta before next year. They simply don't need the people at the moment, but as they say, don't call us, we'll call you. Related Story
Bill Roper of Flagship on the sci fi trend in gaming
Hellgate: London is coming, and it is only one game in a recent trend that shifts from the fantasy to the sci-fi. Tabula Rasa, Halo 3, Bioshock, and even Super Mario Galaxy are all games that reflect the public's change in desire. Bill Roper of Flagship Studios recently talked about this swing toward the sci-fi. Some seem to think that this change is reflective of how much entertainment we are flooded with that is set in modern day, realistic situations. We live in a world where crime scene investigation is a popular television genre. But everyone wants to spend a little time outside their reality, and that is where the sci-fi gaming trend comes in.Roper says that the more removed a setting is from real life, the more difficult it is to focus on a great storyline. If you, however, set Spiderman swinging from the skyscrapers of New York, citizens of that city can identify with him because they have walked those very same streets. Another major factor in the trend toward sci-fi gaming is the stranglehold World of Warcraft has on the fantasy genre. Blizzard is king when it comes to fantasy gaming, and the more titles that come up against it prove that WoW is too entrenched to be moved. It is simply more cost effective to make a sci-fi game these days, in the face of a MMO giant that works within the genre so well.Personally, I wonder if the trend toward sci-fi games and movies represents a shift from a literate society to an alliterate one. In previous years fantasy novels were incredibly popular, much more so than their sci-fi cousins. But the less we read as a culture, the more we look to be entertained through experience, through dynamic movement, through engaging our future today instead of waiting until it actually arrives. I see this as a major reason why we prefer to race flying cars than classic ones, why our guns are laser rifles rather than six-shooters, and why the protagonist's ears are no longer pointed. Related Story
RF Online + Fileplanet = Free forever
A friend of mine tipped me off to this one (thanks MIkey!), and if you are as big a fan of the blending of Science Fiction and Fantasy in MMOs as he is, you'll be excited to. In a limited time promotion with File Planet, RF Online is allowing those with Fileplanet accounts access to play the game for free -- forever. They are calling it a relaunch, a reintroduction of the game to the public, if you will. As a reward to those that have Fileplanet accounts -- if you don't that is your homework assignment for tonight, my friend -- RF Online is giving out Play Free Keys. It's like a Beta key, but to the actual game, and it never expires. If you haven't given RF Online a chance, now would be the time. The only thing you have to lose is some hard drive space, but what you gain is a world replete with dwarves, elves, and mechs.
Matt "Positron" Miller interviewed
Ever since I heard about the new content coming to City of Heroes/City of Villians with A Stitch in Time, I have been positively drooling for more details. Recently Matt "Positron" Miller, the lead designer for the games, sat down to give us some details on what we can expect.To put it simply: time travel. Players will be able to participate in Oroboros Missions, helping to fight against a currently unknwon meddler in the space-time continuum. With the help of the Menders of the Oroboros, heroes and villans alike will participate in keeping time the way it should be.There are several types of time travel missions comes with Issue eleven, the first of which he calls the historic missions. In these we'll be able to go back to times in the last century for instance. The second type of mission will allow players to go back to moments in their own past by visiting "the Pillar of Ice and Flame." In these missions players will be able to set the parameters for the difficulty of the missions, for how long they will be, how many times you can die, etc. If you weren't excited to see Issue 11 before, you should immediately go back in time and change your mind on the subject. This is going to be awesome. Related Story
Law and Order borrows from Second Life
In a recent episode entitled "Avatar" Law and Order: Special Victims Unit created a scenario in an MMO so close to Second Life it might as well have been. In the episode a serial baddie stalks his victims using the a game called Alternate Youiverse, and creates an avatar based on his previous victims. While the majority of the episode seemed to be largely surrounding the tired themes of the dangers of the internet, not much was said about how the killer actually found his victims in real life, or why he chose one girl while impersonating one he had just killed. It appears that they largely relied on the smoke and mirrors that is the latest popularity in attacking online gaming to create an episode people would find interesting, rather than writing a tight plotline that just happened to use online gaming as a setting. Related Story
Carbine Studios and their super secret MMORPG
NCSoft announced on Thursday that there is a new kid in town in the MMO biz: Carbine Studios. Located in lovely Aliso Viejo, CA, Carbine is rumored to be working on an MMO, but won't release my else in the way of info on the project. What makes Carbine so fascinating is who they have on their staff. 17 former Blizzard employees are now working under the Carbine name, including lead World of Warcraft designer Kevin Beardslee. If you listen to the music track available on their downloads page --a track intriguingly entitled "The Awakening"--then you will definitely feel a Blizzard vibe from their work. I snooped a bit around their website, and managed to dig up that they are looking for a Lead Level Designer who maintains "a passion for playing / creating quality video games particularly MMO and RPGs." It would seem that the former Blizzard boys are trying to give the WoW giant a run for their money. The concept art definitely reminds me of Azuremist Isle, at least the two pieces they have released so far.Does this mean there will finally be a contender in the battle to dethrone WoW? Only time will tell. Check back with us here at Massively for the latest on this tantalizing company.