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E3 2014: WildStar's Jeremy Gaffney introduces The Strain
Although WildStar launched a mere week before E3 2014, that didn't mean the team didn't have exciting new things to talk about! In fact, Carbine President Jeremy Gaffney revealed the new content coming up at the end of the month. Fans, prepare yourself for the Strain! If you think the moniker implies some hideous malady that results in freakish mutations, you're right on the money. From ferocious multi-fanged rowsdowers and giant gastrointestinal pustules to an emote that makes a purple alien mouth erupt from your chest, this new content created by the "intelligent virus" shows a whole new side of the planet Nexus. And I got a sneak peek of the new land, new dungeons, strain-infected gear, and other mutated goodies that await players in the Strain Ultradrop. As a bonus, we've even got the official trailer for you.
E3 2014: Recapping Guild Wars 2's first season
With Season Two of Guild Wars 2's living story starting up on July 1st, players are eager for more information. So far, only snippets and clues have teased fans. To try and glean more details, I sat down with Associate Game Director Steven Waller and Studio Design Director Chris Whiteside at E3 2014. Before moving on to what lies in store, however, the devs wanted to look back at the impact of the first season. Oh, and they offered a new trailer that adds a bit more fuel to the teasing fire!
E3 2014: Shroud of the Avatar's Garriott and Long emphasize immersion
Touted as the spiritual successor to Ultima Online by its creators, Shroud of the Avatar aims to fill a sandbox-shaped void in the modern MMOverse. Judging by the successful crowdfunding campaign and continued support by backers, I know there are plenty of players who are eager for that to happen and believe SotA is the game to do it. Are backers getting what they paid for? One weekend every month they can jump in and experience a new release of the game and offer feedback to the development team. And thanks to E3 2014, I also got to jump in and get some hands-on time with the latest release of the game. On top of that, I spoke with Richard Garriott and Executive Producer Starr Long about everything from player economy and pay-to-win concerns to combat, immersion, and player-contributed content.
E3 2014: PlanetSide 2 PS4 demo showcases visuals, performance
While PlanetSide 2 has been out since the end of 2012 on the PC, it isn't due out on PlayStation 4 until later this year. At E3 2014, we got a hands-on demo of the game with lead game designer Luke Sigmund and executive producer Clint Worley to check out how the console version of the MMOFPS is coming along. And it's definitely coming along. Sigmund said that In order to get PS2 ready for release on the PS4, the team has been focusing a lot of attention on optimization and getting the controls feeling right. Currently, the team is doing daily playtests to get feedback on the look and feel of the builds. Sigmund emphasized, "The things we are focusing on for the PS4 are usability, new player experience, and optimization. For us, it's just a matter of getting it right. We don't want to put it out there and not be happy with the way it looks." So how does it look right now? Pretty darn good!
E3 2014: Underground and underwater with Landmark's Terry Michaels
You didn't need to be at E3 2014 to partake in Landmark's latest (literally) groundbbreaking patch. In fact, if you were at the con as I was, chances are you haven't been able to log in and experience it for yourself yet! Luckily, Senior Producer Terry Michaels was on hand to offer me a peek at the new features before I broke down in heap of deprivation-induced agony from my Landmark withdrawals. What was the big deal with this latest update? It included the first iteration of caves and the second phase of water. Players can now go spelunking deep in the earth to find large veins of minerals, explore uncharted biomes with new plants, and even find treasure chests filled with special items. On top of that, they can swim through the bright blue oceans that surround each island. As Michaels helped me get my Landmark fix, we talked about everything from the newest content to heroic movement to my pet topics: player books and theme-enforced islands. Oh, and did I mention that combat is planned to appear by SOE Live in August?
E3 2014: FFXIV's Yoshida on 2.4, 3.0, new classes, and more
After the recent E3 2014 announcement that Final Fantasy XIV was getting a new class and a marriage system, fans have been understandably eager to learn more. And the best way to do that is go to the source! We sat down with producer Naoki Yoshida to discuss the content slated for upcoming patches and expansions. Before delving into the new, Yoshida spoke about the old. He noted that since last year's expo, FFXIV has enjoyed a successful relaunch, added a couple of major updates, and given millions of gamers around the world the opportunity to play. He then led into the new by saying, "We want to continue to grow the game from here. We have a lot of exciting content building up to 3.0." Part of said growing includes expanding the availability of the game by getting it into even more regions; this summer, for example, FFXIV will launch in China. Another part of the growth process is expanding the content and introducing new features, which is where patch 2.4 and the 3.0 expansion come in.
Graphical upgrades en route for Age of Wushu
How do you feel about Age of Wushu's graphics? Do you think that they could really use an upgrade? It seems that they'll be getting one. Shi Hai, CEO of Snail Games, was recently interviewed in China, and a translation of that interview reveals that graphical upgrades are definitely in the works. While he declined to specify exactly what sort of upgrades would be coming, he did joke that the rumors about the Unreal 3 engine might well be true. Shi Hai also commented on the potential of a subscription server for Age of Wushu, noting that while several free-to-play games have dabbled with the idea, they seem to inevitably wind up going back to the free-to-play model in time. He stated that the company is currently focusing on porting the game to home consoles rather than exploring the possibility of any sort of subscription server. You can read a few more translated statements at MMOCulture.
Guild Wars 2's Festival of the Four Winds launches today
As promised, today ArenaNet will update Guild Wars 2's western servers with the Festival of the Four Winds, a Chinese-themed patch that will return the Zephyrite festival to the game and mark the game's launch in China. Says the studio, The Zephyrites have returned to Labyrinthine Cliffs in their large-sailed flying ships to support Lion's Arch in its time of need. Although Lion's Arch suffered a devastating blow as a result of Scarlet's nefarious plans, Captain Ellen Kiel of the Captain's Council is grateful to see the Zephyrites return with their generous offer of materials and moral support. And to help reinvigorate trade and provide some joy to its citizens, the Zephyrite Master of Peace and Queen Jennah of Kryta are hosting a festival to honor Lion's Arch. Visit Labyrinthine Cliffs and experience the rush of Aspect movement skills, take part in the Sanctum Sprint, or enjoy one of the brand-new events; then take a hot-air balloon to Divinity's Reach and enjoy the reopened Crown Pavilion, including a new version of the Queen's Gauntlet, the Boss Blitz. Join Braham, Rox, Marjory, Kasmeer, Taimi, and Scruffy as they enjoy the festivities and usher in the return of Lion's Arch services! We spoke to ArenaNet Game Design Lead Mike Zadorojny and Associate Game Director Steven Waller about the update and how players will gradually aid in the rebuilding of the Tyrian capital.
Ascent adds in a colonization city-building sim
The galaxy is now open to colonization in Ascent: The Space Game -- and there's plenty of room for everyone. Developer James Hicks has added in a colonization system to the sandbox MMO, allowing players to engage in a city-building sim among the billions of star systems. Colonization is intended to be the endgame for industrial players, with a great amount of complexity and no upper limit on the number of buildings or colonists. Every planet can be colonized, although ones with hostile environments will require more work and protective domes. To build up their colonies, players will need to recruit colonists, bring them to the planet, and task them with farming and mining the new world. "My intent from here is to expand on the city building aspects -- giving the population more complex needs and desires, making the recruitment aspect deeper and more meaningful, and adding new production types, new structures for interacting with other players like starport facilities and stock markets, and expand on the 'out of ship' play," Hicks wrote.
WAR40K's Miguel Caron on lore, immersion, and cloud computing
Miguel Caron is a passionate man. The former Funcom Canada CEO has moved on from The Secret World to lead the team developing Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade, and he's not shy about showing the world what's happening behind the scenes. In fact, he recently showed off an impromptu video of a fan playing the pre-alpha build at Chicago's Comic & Entertainment Expo. Total transparency was the theme of our two-hour-long Skype chat this week as the Behavior Interactive studio head talked to me about everything from pleasing 40K lore fanatics to avoiding the "public quest curse" that plagued the original Warhammer Online MMO.
Massively's first look at sandbox Shards Online
How many games have you played only to find yourself uttering the phrase, "If only I could run my own server"? Chances are, there at least one or two titles you''d love to make into a private playground for select friends using your own personal ruleset. Lucky for you, in Shards Online, you'll be able to do precisely that! Announced last month, this upcoming sandbox by former Mythic Entertainment devs is built on the premise that players will run the majority of the virtual worlds how they want to. Do you want a fantasy world where you can boot those who ruin immersion? You got it! What about the ability to take over mobs and fight the players while spouting personalized comments? Yup, that too. What if you want a hardcore world where survival is for the fittest? Mm-hmm, starving to death is an option, as is permadeath. And how about a world where gameplay unfolds around players as they explore rather than offers questing on rails? That's the theory behind the game. But how do these ideas hold up in practice? Last week I sat down with Citadel Studios co-founder Derek Brinkmann to witness a demonstration of Shards Online and talk all about the plans for the game. And what I saw certainly looks promising! So if this idea tantalizes your gaming taste buds, keep reading to get the scoop. I've even added a teaser video.
The Nexus Telegraph: In which no WildStar injuries happened
My performance on the dance floor during PAX East 2013's WildStar party is the stuff of dark legends (in my mind, anyway), but it was not replicated this year. Indeed, when I tried to get into this year's WildStar community party, the entranceway was inaccessible due to the sheer mass of people. As I naturally handle crowds about as well as a Mechari handles knock-knock jokes, I opted to turn around and go back to my hotel room. There was a Ghostbusters marathon on, so it was still kind of awesome. This did not, however, mean that the convention was devoid of interesting stories; it just was devoid of stories in which I sustained injuries greatly impacting my normal hiking routes. So let's talk about what things really stuck out in my mind through the whole con. For my money, that comes down to the focus on the endgame and a really stupid statement. Where to start?
Ascent: The Space Game on building a better sci-fi sandbox
You'd be forgiven for not having heard of Ascent: The Space Game before. EVE Online is the sci-fi sandbox dominating headlines, and Star Citizen and other upcoming games are breathing down its neck. Is there room in the genre for, well, an indie space MMO that isn't all about cutthroat politics or hardcore ganking? James Hicks, the founder and CEO of Fluffy Kitten Studios and the man behind Ascent, says yes. He took the time this week to answer our questions about his already-playable-but-still-in-development game in deep detail, focusing on the game's complexity, player feedback, business model, mechanics, and how Ascent can truly expand the genre.
The full scoop on Marvel Heroes' team-ups
Massively: Last week Marvel Heroes added a new feature to the game in the form of "team-ups." While we know the basics of this new system, we wanted to go into more detail. To help us with this, Gazillion Community Manager Ryan Collins sat down to answer a few questions. So Ryan, let's strip away the game-specific terminology: Are team-up heroes NPC companions? Pets? If you had to compare them to another game's features, what would it be to help us understand what they're like? Ryan Collins: Team-ups would be most similar to companions or hirelings. Like Diablo II's hirelings, team-up heroes have their own gear (with four brand-new item types just for them) that allow you to customize your team-up's stats. Some team-up items even convey bonuses to your hero directly. Team-ups also have a power tree that allows you to customize the way they function, the powers they use, and the passive bonuses they have. The first choice you get to make with your team-up is how they behave, for which there are three "modes."
Jukebox Heroes: Talking to HEX Composer Michael Shapiro
Massively: On today's column we have the composer of the upcoming TCG MMO, HEX. Now that's a lot of capital letters all in a row, so take a deep breath, get over it, and please welcome composer Michael Gordon Shapiro. Mike, can you give us a bit of your background in music? Michael Gordon Shapiro: When I started my career I was only interested in film music. Game audio was just starting to emerge from the low-tech era, and there was a kind of stigma associated with it, much as there used to be with television music. As fate would have it, I was offered an in-house composer position at a game studio and was pleasantly surprised to find myself recording the same kind of live orchestral music that I loved doing for film. I also came to appreciate the high artistic effort going into both console and PC game scores. So from that point, the stigma dissolved in my mind and my artistic palette widened. Today I love doing both film and game music, for both overlapping and complementary reasons.
PAX East 2014: Pre-launch words with WildStar's Jeremy Gaffney
WildStar is being released in about a month and a half. It feels as if it's been forever since the game first revealed its announcement trailer. Now we've finally got a release date in sight, and the last few features for the game are being revealed to the public. It's one of the last chances that we'll have to talk about the game before it releases. On the last day of this year's PAX East, I had a chance to sit down with executive producer Jeremy Gaffney to chat a little bit more about the game before it launches. While the game has gone gold and the discs are being manufactured, the team is still refining and improving the game and plans to do so up until the day of launch. That meant talking about the endgame, the development process, and the changes that have been made already in the most recent stages of beta.
PAX East 2014: State of Decay eyes multiplayer, stays offline
The ground is fairly littered with zombie games of some sort these days. That isn't meant as a mark against Undead Labs' State of Decay, but it does raise questions of focus. How do you make a zombie game more unique? According to the studio's Jeff Strain at this year's PAX East, you focus upon building at the community level rather than individual survival. While games like DayZ focus on the personal, State of Decay is much more focused on the idea of putting society as a whole back together and trying to accumulate resources and structures for survivors as a whole. Of course, most of our readers are more interested in what comes next, specifically Class4. That's the proposed sequel to State of Decay, previously codenamed Class3; it's meant to be a full MMO according to previous statements, a game in which you can worry about rebuilding not just a local community but the world as a whole. And Undead Labs certainly isn't hurting for talent that's familiar with online games, especially with the acquisition of ArenaNet co-founder Patrick Wyatt in January. So what's happening?
PAX East 2014: Landmark's current tools and future crafts
We've all seen what gamers are capable of making in Minecraft. A quick search online turns up replicas of everything imaginable, sublime works of art, even inexplicable cat fountains. According to Dave Georgeson, this is exactly what led to the creation of Landmark, and by his own admission the development team owes Notch a Christmas card solely because of that. Without that limitation, Landmark wouldn't be what it is now, nor would it be developing into what it will eventually be. At this year's PAX East, Georgeson explained to me that as much fun as Minecraft is, it lacks something crucial: a way for players to see all of these creations. Landmark, by contrast, is designed from the ground up not just to allow that sort of interaction but to actively encourage it. And that's only the beginning; the game's current status as a sort of super-Minecraft is the simplest core expression of the game's promise. By the time it's done, the whole point is to make a game that can be anything, a game for all seasons and tastes.
Interview: Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig talks Warlords of Draenor
I was lucky enough to head over to Blizzard Campus this week to talk to Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig. Chadd is a huge part of the class design team, key to a lot of the changes we saw in the recent Warlords of Draenor patch notes, which is just what we discussed. We were also joined by Senior Community Representatives Zarhym and Lore. You can also find a much-abbreviated summary on Wowhead. Olivia: First up, is there anything you really wanted to clarify and get out there? Celestalon: I've tweeted about pretty much everything. This was the first version of the patch notes, there have been more changes since then, those patch notes are about a week old or so? Zarhym: Yeah it's like, tons of changes. [Rygarius] said he had a huge list of changes. Celestalon: There's another five thousand words that aren't up there yet, which [Rygarius] is working on now. There have been different amounts of patch notes released for different classes. Paladins have been complaining that they haven't got enough, rogues have been really happy that not much has changed. Is it safe to assume there's more to come? This is just step one? There's definitely more coming. Like, for example, paladins had relatively few patch notes, and a lot of that is we were relatively happy with how things played out, at least for ret and prot, with the exception of a few things we can solve with tuning – changing numbers. So a lot of what you see in the patch notes now is what we call design changes, so the mechanics that we want to change so we can get to some design that we like.
SOE's Georgeson: 'F2P is the way gamers should want their MMOs to be'
IGN has published yet another article stemming from its recent interview with SOE's Dave Georgeson. The EverQuest franchise development director says that the free-to-play business model is a no-brainer from a gamer's perspective. "I think that free-to-play is the way that gamers should want their MMOs to be," Georgeson explains, "and the reason I think that is that if we don't do a really good job and we don't entertain the player, we don't make a dime." Georgeson's vehement defense of F2P is interesting in terms of its timing, as this week sees the launch of one of the year's big-budget subscription-only titles, with another to follow in June. Georgeson maintains that game developers are effectively street performers. "We go out there and sing and dance and if we do a good job, people throw coins into the hat," he says. "And I think that's the way games should be, because paying $60 up front to take a gamble on whether the game is good or not? You don't get that money back."
