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Player vs. Everything: Fear is the missing ingredient
When I was playing EverQuest in the Kunark-era days there was one item that stood head and shoulders above all the others for me: the Fungus Covered Scale Tunic (affectionately called "The Fungi"). It was the ultimate twink item, allowing you to regain your health at a rate unheard of in the days when long rest periods between each minor battle were the norm for solo players. The Fungi was something I lusted after, wished for, and dreamed of, but I was never able to actually lay hands on it during those days, due to the extreme difficulty of obtaining one. If you wanted one, you had to take a full party of maximum level characters into an exceedingly dangerous area, far from the reaches of civilization, and fight your way to a rare spawn deep in the ruined city of Old Sebilis. Very rarely, he would drop the prized Fungi, which you could then pass on to your low-level alts or sell on the open market for hundreds of thousands of platinum pieces. Other than the fact that it was a fantastic twink item, what made the Fungi so compelling? It was that you really had to risk something to get it. EverQuest, with it's naked corpse runs, experience loss on death, and horribly dangerous dungeons, made adventuring into a real adventure. Getting to Old Sebilis required traveling across several dangerous and hostile jungle zones in the forgotten continent of Kunark, far from the nearest hub of civilization. Dying in the depths of Old Sebilis was a sickeningly punishing experience in those days -- something you avoided at all costs. When a battle started going sour, you could feel your hackles rising, panic setting in, and a real sense of fear that made victory that much sweeter and death a soul-crushing experience. Is that sense of fear something we're missing out on in the modern MMOG?
Pirates need homes too
Pirates of the Burning Sea gets a lot of love from Massively, but that doesn't mean we haven't noticed some of the other games in the pirate MMO genre. One such title is Voyage Century Online, a free-to-play game published by IGG, already popular in China, South Korea, and Germany. The game is set in the 17th century, and players can choose characters from among European Monarch, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or Pirate classes. Voyage Century Online's game mechanics don't lock characters into a specific profession and, in time, a player can explore a number of different careers with a single character. Although Voyage Century Online already allows for exploration on the high seas and the seizing of ports, this freedom to choose your own career path runs counter to the ability to truly control your own destiny -- the most prosperous port cities have long since been under the control of the strongest guilds. To balance this, major changes in territorial control are coming to the game through the new city-building system. Voyage Century Online is set to expand the game's horizons by allowing all guilds to build their own port cities, provided that they meet the new requirements. [Via TenTonHammer]
The Main Man
EVE Online is a game where collective action trumps individual action. It's certainly a game that can be played solo although nowhere near as effectively as when your main's activities are supported or enabled by an alt. CCP provides 3 character slots per account, but skillpoint training can only progress on one character at a time. So where the real alt-play comes in is with dual boxing -- running two accounts at once to facilitate an activity. The main/alt duo can take a number of forms, by no means limited to the following basic examples:
MMOGology: Exploiting the matrix
You can't deny it; there's something exciting about seeing something you aren't supposed to see. It may have happened to you before, perhaps accidentally. You were minding your own business, just jumping down a flight of stairs in the Sunken Temple instance. And then ... BAM! Suddenly you're staring into a sea of light blue. "Am I dead?" you ask yourself. "What happened?" You rotate your camera angle and notice you can see three floors below you. You rotate it a little more and suddenly the grand design of the mighty level developer is revealed to you. You can see the entire dungeon stretching into the distance of ethereal blue. You've accidentally crossed over to the other side. You've entered the matrix!OK, so maybe it's not always quite that dramatic, but it's definitely interesting when you accidentally or accidentally-on-purpose stumble upon these little tears in the fabric of MMOspace. Many of us enjoy the exploration components of MMOGs. We love to find the hidden nooks and crannies of the world, the small places not often visited by our fellow gamers because they're in remote locations. Sometimes in our desire to see absolutely everything in the game, we stumble across these glitches that let us see a bit more than we're supposed to see. I think it's only natural to want to pull back the veil on our unrealities and see the "Wizard behind the curtain", so to speak. But of course anytime you begin participating in things that go slightly beyond the boundary of what you're "supposed" to be doing in a game, it starts to bring up questions about exploits and cheating. Viewing the underbelly of an MMOG hardly seems like a crime, but at what point exactly do you cross the threshold that will get you into trouble? At what point are we talking about account bans?
The Digital Continuum: Evolving past fantasy Pt. 2
Last week I covered several of the reasons given for the fantasy genre's dominance over the massively gaming market. The conclusion which I came to was fairly simple; all of the things that make fantasy great for MMOs can be done with sci-fi. Yet in the comments section last week there was a very good question asked by Jeff Freeman. That question was this, "If any genre can do what fantasy can do, then can't fantasy do what any other genre can do, too?" It's a very good point that I actually hadn't even thought of at the time of writing last week. The fact is that it's true, but only to a certain degree. I agree with Jeff in that fantasy has different strengths and weakness than sci-fi. The key to making a great sci-fi MMO is to simply take a look at all of the successful massively games over the past several years and figure out what made them work so well. For instance, part of World of Warcraft's success is in thanks to its relatively easy leveling curve combined with several stream-lined elements such as simpler quests. That is something that should be kept in some form no matter what kind of MMO a developer might be making.
Wii Fanboy Review: Endless Ocean
Here's a very brief list of adjectives I would almost never use to describe video games: Genteel Laid-back Soothing Historically, a handful of titles have bucked this trend -- Electroplankton, PlayStation 3 curio flOw, Pilotwings and its sublime 64-bit follow-up (one of this writer's all-time favorites) -- but on the whole, the term "video game" conjures up images that are far from tranquil: gobby, cornrowed marines shooting the bejesus out of this week's alien threat, epic battles with scaly fantasy creatures, futuristic pod racing, urban gang warfare. You get the idea.Endless Ocean does things differently. Arika's scuba-diving sim is almost certainly the most relaxing, pedestrian game of 2007. And while that's certainly a welcome change from other video games, occasionally it can become a little too laid-back for its own good. Or, to be blunt, boring.%Gallery-4734%
First look at Aquaria level editor
Bit Blot recently released a video (the first of several) showing off a graphical level editor for the upcoming exploration game Aquaria. The team, which includes artist Derek Yu and programmer Alec Holowka, decided to polish the editor and release it with a Mod framework along with the game. Aquaria walked away with the IGF Seumas McNally Grand Prize and is turning heads with its mix of gorgeous visuals and non-linear exploration-based gameplay. With powerful editing tools at their disposal, the (soon to be) teeming masses of Aquaria fans will go crazy with creativity.
Indie platformer Knytt Stories to be released by end of August
Previously silent on the timing of the release of a Knytt sequel, Within a Deep Forest creator Nifflas has finally let a date slip from his keyboard: August 30th. The indie game creator has forged new ground in the community by crafting atmospheric platform adventures that emphasize mood, environment, and exploration. Within a Deep Forest poured the challenge on like warm, thorny honey, while the follow-up Knytt nixed most of the enemies in favor of item discovery. Knytt Stories continues in the same vein and will include a powerful level-editor, a first for Nifflas. Another first will be the release of an expansion pack with extra levels, music, and other bonuses available for purchase, though both the game and editor will remain free. [Via Independent Gaming]%Gallery-3719%
Early look at exploration-based indie adventure Aquaria
The gorgeous non-linear side-scrolling exploration game Aquaria (winner of the IGF Seumas McNally Grand Prize) has the indie community all atwitter anticipating its looming release. The Ambrosia Times recently got its hands on a build of the game and had nothing but praise to lavish upon it.You play as Naija, a lonely sea creature who uses songs to affect the environment, gain temporary abilities, and interact with the creatures around you. Levels are vast with tunnels, caves, and hidden areas to explore for hours on end. Bit-Blot has been silent about a firm release date, but talk from the game's co-creator and artist Derek Yu suggests it's in the final polishing stages and could hit in just a few months.%Gallery-3627%
Within a Deep Forest creator Nifflas interviewed
Two very small, unassuming freeware platform games have made a big splash in the indie gaming community: Within a Deep Forest and Knytt. Created with Multimedia Fusion, a game creation suite similar to Game Maker, designer Nifflas wanted to make something different than the thousands of platformers swarming the internet.Nifflas' games focus on exploration and intrigue, breaking a few gaming conventions along the way. Both WaDF and Knytt feature large game worlds with very few enemies and tons of secrets to uncover. Knytt has practically no background music and instead relies on ambient sounds played at key points during the game.PlanetFreeplay has just posted an interview with Nifflas who is hard at work on a new game. He continues to forge ahead with his current philosophy to create more of exactly what we want. These games may look simple, but they're just as epic as many commercial titles on the market. Plus, they're free.
WoW Moviewatch: The Black Temple and the Battle for Mount Hyjal
Fanatik, a Blizzard devotee (or, as rumor has it, something else beginning with dev at Blizzard), posts a seven-minute preview of his final Exploration movie, due out on the 16th. Since most of us have plans for the 16th that don't involve watching movies on Youtube, we'll have to be content with the preview for now. Luckily it's a good preview that shows both the interior of Illidan's Black Temple and Archimonde at the Battle of Mount Hyjal. Check out the somewhat amusing in-development sequence at the end!
Britain's Isis ROV set to trawl the depths of Antarctica
We've seen mechanical devices creep through the inside of intestines, huge mounds of dirt, and even through the San Francisco Bay, but now a British deep-diving remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is getting set to probe the depths of Antarctica. In hopes of uncovering more about the effects of glaciers on the ocean floor, as well as details about the living creatures that inhabit said areas, UK scientists are carting the machine aboard the RSS James Clark Ross as they head for the Marguerite Bay area on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The robot, dubbed Isis, will spend time on its inaugural January mission combing the seabed and channeling live video and pictures back to its captains via the built-in cameras, lights, sonars for acoustic navigation / imaging, and two remotely-controlled manipulator arms. Once the bot gets dried off (and thawed out) from its arctic expedition, the next tour of duty is already lined up, as Isis will head off to the Portuguese coast to do a bit more sightseeing. Of course, if you're interested in taking the £4.5 million ($8.81 million) creature out for a mission you deem worthwhile, it should be available for deep-pocketed renters soon after.
Screenshot roundup: Tomb Raider: Legend
These Tomb Raider: Legend screenshots certainly needed to be rounded up ... and immediately executed. They're not particularly impressive and the one on the right is notable for not featuring a tomb at all. Still, it's early goings for Lara's return-to-roots portable adventure, and if it's even half as good as the console outings, we'll be satisfied. We'd rather it be just as good, however, controlling well and featuring plenty of evil traps looking to mangle our beloved Lara's limbs. There's every possibility of that happening, but confidence isn't particularly prevalent when it looks like the touch screen seems to have been relegated to yet another glorified inventory menu. [Via GoNintendo]
North Dakota students show off Mars spacesuit prototype
We had assumed that with all the robots being developed for deployment to Mars, the human astronauts would mostly be lounging around inside the comfort of their robot-built habitats and ordering drinks from their robot bartenders, but yesterday's unveiling of a prototype spacesuit for navigating the Martian terrain proves that manned missions might not be as cushy as we anticipated. The 50-pound suit (which they somehow got The Office's Steve Carell to model) was designed by students from five North Dakota colleges in a collaborative project funded by a $100,000 NASA grant, and includes at least three innovative technologies for which patents have been filed. Among the slew of sensors and communications gear designed for the harsh, low-gravity environment are oxygen and carbon dioxide detectors, GPS system, full suite of health monitors, shoulder mounted CCD cam, Bluetooth server to coordinate all the data, and a high-power transmitter for beaming info back to the mothership -- though curiously, there's no mention of an onboard weapons system that would be crucial for encounters with the occasional hostile Martian. Also, as the AP helpfully notes, even with all the research and design that went into this project, the forty-odd students seemed to neglect a key feature of any good full-body suit, which is an "escape hatch" for when the astronauts need to "jettison their waste."[Via futurismic and abc]
