e3-2006
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The Game Archaeologist: The rise, fall, and rescue of Vanguard
I have been wanting to do an article on the whole saga (small pun intended) of Vanguard for some time, and now that Brad McQuaid has returned with plans to make what appears to be a very similar game, I need no more prompting to do it. The significance of Vanguard's development, release, ongoing drama, and its recent mild renaissance is of great interest not just to game historians but to everyone who plays MMOs, period. What happened with this game caused a huge fallout in the industry, and we are still feeling some of its effects even today. As our own Bree put it in her blog, "Vanguard's implosion was a big deal at the time and marked the beginning of the post-WoW destruction of the industry that hobbled Age of Conan and Warhammer Online a few years later." While the crash and burn of Vanguard was a very well-known tale several years ago, I'm wondering if in 2014 there might be many who are quite unfamiliar with what happened to this unassuming SOE game eight years ago. Let me put on my old fogey glasses and we shall begin!
Blizzard's Paul Sams on the Wow Movie
Everyone has been buzzing about the announcement last week of a live-action Warcraft film, and now Gamespot has an interview with Blizzard exec Paul Sams, where he discusses some of the goals in bringing WoW to the big screen." We're not trying to take what we've done and...try to make a literal translation to the big screen. What we want to do is to make a great movie that happens to be set in a video game universe. That's a differentiator, and a key differentiator."It sounds to me like they have the right attitude about the project, as no direct adaptation, if one is even possible, is going to please everyone. The best idea is for them to craft a solid, compelling story that happens to be set in the gameworld we all know & love, and just try to make a good film first & foremost. From this interview, it seems that's exactly what they're trying to do, so lets just hope the suits don't stick too many fingers in the pie between script & screen...
Expansion Map Previews
It looks like some enterprising soul managed to snap a couple of pics at E3 of some maps that are supposedly of the new Blood Elf & Draenei starting areas. MapWoW.com has posted the images on their site for the interested to check out; you can see them right here.The Draenei area is called Azuremist Isle, in Amman Vale. The Blood Elf area does not identify itself on the given image, so the name is still a mystery as of now. I vote for Bloodelphia...
WoW Moviewatch: Napolean Blood Elf
Well, we knew someone would do it sooner or later. Now with added soundtrack music & jealous spectators, the new & improved Blood Elf dance!
Young and Wired
In the continuing saga of our nation's youth being taken over by evil computer overlords, the San Fransisco Chronicle has jumped into the scene with an article about technology use among teens, and what the consequences might be.According to research by the Kaiser Foundation (apparently they study more than just rolls), young people spend over 6 hours per day engrossed in some form of media or the other, which is up an hour from five years ago. And yes, of course WoW gets to share a little bit of the blame.It's hard for me to even imagine growing up today as a kid, with the internet & all the other technology we have available. There's a pretty good chance that if I'd had a modern PC when I was 13 or so, I would have never left the house...especially if my parents were as lax about monitoring it as they were about cable TV.
Blizzard Not Relying on it's Cash Cow
With over six million subscribers to WoW, and with no end in sight, it might be understandable if Blizzard focused all of their rescources on support for World of Warcraft. According to this Gamespot article, however, WoW is only one iron in Blizzard's fire, as they plan to actively develop a wide range of new games, for both PC's and consoles.Of course, there's no mention of what these new games might be, or exactly which platform they will appear on...but they're working on it, apparently. Which is fine with me, as long as they don't spead themselves too thin & allow WoW to suffer as a result. You know what I mean by suffer; long queue times, server outages, lag.....oh, wait a minute...
More Dev Interviews from E3
Tentonhammer has an exclusive piece from E3, featuring interviews with WoW developer Tyven, where he discusses much of the news we've already heard from E3; the main subjects being Draenei, flying mounts, and the rest of the announced content. Nothing shockingly new, but for all you E3 news completists, there's some good info there.Also included are a few tidbits of information from Blizzard's Mac team member Rob Barris, discussing Bootcamp on the Imac & other platform news. The full article can be found here.
How to Spot a Bot Farmer
I'm not sure if this counts as racial profiling or not, but the official Blizzard forums have an interesting thread on ways to spot a bot farmer. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a bot farmer is a program, running without direct human control, used by lowdown, cheating gold farmers to collect money in the game without even having to actually play it.The thread lists several different, highly debatable (all alliance bots are Night Elf females?), criteria for spotting a bot , and even gives some screenshots & video examples to back them up. I don't know how close to the truth it actually is, but it's an interesting read. I've never knowingly come across a bot myself (although I probably have & didn't realize it), but I'll be keeping a curious eye out after reading this...
Interview With WoW Producer Tom Chilton
The news from E3 keeps pouring in, and the folks over at WorldofWar.net have secured an entertaining video interview with Tom Chilton, one of the producers of WoW. The interview is rather lengthy, and split into two parts, but it's well worth watching, as Mr. Chilton discusses the Burning Crusade, changes in upcoming patches, and more.The interview can be seen via streaming video right here.
Sony's PS3 interface revealed
We saw those shots of the "Warhawk Store" and "My Singstar Online" during Sony's PS3 press event, but what we didn't see is a top level interface for the console. According to this video, it sure borrows a lot from the PSP, and therefore seems a bit limited for all the crazy uses Sony has planned for the console. Though we're sure Sony has put a lot more thought into this than we have. Also, the PSP interface has been generally well received, so why try to fix what isn't broken? The biggest additions are the new "Users" and "Friends" options, the former allowing you switch between different user profiles, while the latter didn't look quite fleshed out, but we guess it'll do what it sounds like. We also noticed under the settings option a mention of keyboard and mouse settings, rumored accessories which would seem quite appropriate for all of the PS3's PC leanings, so we'll keep an eye out for more news on that front.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Joystiq Video: Shigeru Miyamoto Interview
If you haven't already read the transcript of our interview with the inimitable Shigeru Miyamoto, we've gone to all the trouble of putting video of it online. Get his thoughts on everything from the Wii to the PS3's new controller, why the HD-era isn't quite here yet, and why the interface is where innovation is coming from. Unfortunately, we're wrapping things up, preparing for the trip home from E3, so we didn't have time to cut this video up into bitesized chunks for you as of yet, however, we are working on a bittorrent feed of it and will be adding the bits and pieces soon. Until then, right-click and save the 542.2MB file. Our very large video: 542.2MBs, 25:25 long, 480x360 3ivx Quicktime [link] Make sure you also check out AOL Games' video interview with Miyamoto.
WoW Moviewatch: Naxxramas Trailer from E3
This video, Shadow of the Necropolis, gives us our first glimpse of action in the upcoming Naxxramas instance, included in the 1.11 patch, from the Blizzard previews at E3. Those are some seriously gnarly spiders...
Nokia's E3 booth tour
Despite Nokia's best attempt at a snazzy E3 booth and plenty of 3D game examples on display, the only real draw to their booth was the booth babes. A trio of the cute girls even had their very own line of gamers waiting to have a picture taken with them. Otherwise, the whole booth had a roughly 10:1 ratio of staff to visitors. The games really weren't that bad, and the 3D graphics are always interesting to see running on a random Nokia phone, but nobody much seems to care either way. Click on for pics of all the excitement.
Spore figurines at E3
Randall Bennett and I got a nice little sneak peak at Spore last night at Wired Magazine's presentation featuring Will Wright and guest starring Robin Williams. We shot some great video that will be up on the site as soon as it's ready. We also managed to get a private screening of the game thanks to the people at EA Games. Randall will be doing a full write-up of the game play experience later today, but I just wanted to share one little cool thing in the room where they hosted the preview: Figurines of creatures different Spore designers built in the game and then printed out as three dimensional models (like the guy pictured above). Check below the jump for more pics...
WoW Moviewatch: Flying Mounts at E3
Again, from an anonymous, on-the-spot cameraman, some hazy, blurry, brief, yet extremely cool glimpses of flying mounts at E3. Take off, eh?
History of the Blood Elves
The official World of Warcraft site has been updated with a new feature, detailing the lore & history behind the mysterious Blood Elves, soon to be gracing Azeroth in the Burning Crusade expansion.The story follows the legacy of the outcast elf Dath'Remar Sunstrider, and how he led his people to their new home in Azeroth, millennia before the first war. From reading this, it looks like Blizzard has done another excellent job in setting up the backstory of the new Horde race & incorporating their history into the World of Warcraft; you can check out the story right here.
Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan on the Burning Crusade
Today's New York Times has an interview with Blizzard designer Jeff Kaplan, where he speaks out for the first time since E3 & the announcement of the new Draenei playable race. The piece is a very informative Q&A where Kaplan fields questions regarding the selection of the Draenei and the dev's motivations behind this & other upcoming changes that will accompany the release of the new expansion.For all those following the latest expansion news from E3 & elsewhere, there are some great tidbits of information here, concerning a wealth of subjects related to the Burning Crusade. Kudos to the Times, also, for such an unapologetically gamer-centric article, with no pretense of trying to explain what the hell they're talking about to the non-gaming reader. Click here to read.
Hands on with Nintendo's Wii controller
Alright, we briefed y'all on what we knew so far about the Wii controller early this morning, but now that we've gotten our paws on the Wiimote itself, we wanted to let you know how it is in the flesh. Nintendo and millions of fanboys are betting a lot on this concept, and Nintendo itself said that "playing is believing" every other sentence of their keynote, so the real question is: do we believe? The short answer is that we're just not sure yet. The first chance we got with the Wii was for a golfing game (the shortest line we found, go fig) and as soon as we got our hands on the Wiimote we knew it was something special. We slipped the wrist lanyard on so we didn't fling the remote across the room, and held in our hands the light weight, ergonomic, and simply beautiful controller. If this was as far as we'd gotten we would have gone home happy. The controller allows plenty of leverage for the trigger "b" and the large "a" button, and only slipped out of our hand once from a particularly aggressive sword strike in "Red Steel." Click on for the rest.
Sony's E3 booth tour
Sony's "booth" was quite unlike Nintendo's carefully planned Wii area, and more like an expo unto itself. With PSP, PS2 and of course PS3 displays all competing for the square miles of floor space, the place was a zoo, but also held an impressive managerie of kiosks harboring playable titles. The PS3 games themselves were powered by late-release dev kits that were clearly displayed behind glass, and the titles sure looked pretty at those high resolutions, even if they were a bit PS2-ish in their controls and gameplay. Warhawk was of course the exception, and there were plenty of people waiting to get a shot at the action. We captured most of the chaos to share with you, so click on for the shots.
Nintendo's E3 booth tour
After swearing to the Nintendo booth staff that yes we bow at the feet of Miyamoto, no we've never touched a Sony device before in our lives, and yes we'd like to skip the mile long line to see the Wii, we managed to find ourselves in Nintendo's special little (or not so little) Wii paradise. There were playables galore, though that "27 playable titles" they mentioned at the keynote was a bit misleading. Sure, you could grab a Wiimote and start making a fool of yourself in any one of 27 different ways, but most of the playable stuff was actually just a tech demo or a mini game. Luckily, the big names like Zelda, Mario and Red Steel were there in force, and the good times were aplenty even with the tech demos. We'll have our impressions of the Wiimote pretty soon, but for now we've got a whole slew of pics from the booth, so take a look.
