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News from the Wider MMO World: August 26, 2008
The MMO genre is more than World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online. Here's what's going on in the rest of the world.Mabinogi welcomes Generation 3The MMO that bills itself as "your fantasy life" has gotten its next upgrade with Generation 3. Now Mabinogi players will have the ability to marry each other, complete with license and wedding attire for both genders. An overarching quest will require warriors to recover dungeon seals to prevent the Fomor from entering the world. And finally, the pet system gets an overhaul, with new interactions, behaviors, and controls. The removal of the combat cap, increased UI options, and new items all await players in Generation 3.Neocron 2 developer declares insolvency10Tacle Studios AG, parent company of Reakktor Media GmbH, developers of Neocron 2, declared insolvency on August 6th. They are awaiting an insolvency administrator to determine what will happen with the game servers. In a later update to the original forum post, Kirk Lenke, CEO of Reakktor Media announced that the insolvency will not affect business operation of Neocron 2, and that they are still in development for upcoming title Black Prophecy.
Jumpgate Evolution trailer depicts grand struggle
Fans of the sci-fi MMO genre have been looking for a game that fills a niche in the industry, somewhere between the complexity of EVE Online and the dynamic 'hands-on' starship piloting of many PC and console games. NetDevil might just be creating the title these gamers have been waiting for -- Jumpgate Evolution. Jumpgate Evolution's Games Convention 2008 cinematic trailer is narrated to a series of fleet engagements and dogfights in space. The footage sets the tone for the game's backstory with its conflicts between civilizations, and the struggle for survival against ancient and powerful beings who would 'extinguish their light forever.' You can check out the video after the cut.
News from the Wider MMO World: August 19, 2008
The MMO genre is more than World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online. Here's what's going on in the rest of the world.Battleground Europe launches new websitePlaynet Inc.'s Amy-Lynn Engelbrecht informs us that the destination site for Cornered Rat Software's World War 2 MMO, Battleground Europe, has gotten a significant makeover. With a focus on providing information that's more helpful to members of its strong and active community, the new updated site also features an RSS feed for news, or the option to receive regular updates by Feedburner email. Join up and fight with a 14-day free trial!Ankama Games announces new Wakfu featuresThe spiritual and temporal successor to Ankama's previous title Dofus, Wakfu is an up-and-coming 2D MMO with a currently unreleased launch date. However, bits and pieces of news trickle out from time to time, such as the following: There will be an Enchantment profession, in which items are dismantled for their runes, then grafted onto new items for special powers. Taking a page from World of Warcraft?Secondly, Wakfu will have no NPCs to offer quests. Instead, the game will have "Dynamic Challenges" -- quests that arise when environmental conditions are right, such as time, area, etc. The types of Challenges include Kill, Ecosystem, Social, and Discovery. Each will be available in both solo and team play.
LotRO: Mines of Moria to be shown at Edinburgh Interactive Festival
Codemasters has announced that they will be attending the Edinburgh Interactive Festival from August 10th through the 12th to show off some of their upcoming titles. Their Vice President and General Manager, David Solari will be presenting Lord of the Rings Online's first expansion Mines of Moria, as well as their new sci-fi MMO Jumpgate Evolution. In addition, they'll be giving away free copies of LotRO to the first 200 people attending the presentation.This festival will also play host to such giants as Nintendo, Sony and Activision. Be sure to check out the festival's official website for more information on scheduling, attendance and a full event guide in pdf format.
Jumpgate Evolution combat maneuvers shown in walkthrough videos [updated]
Netdevil is a firm believer that the MMOG genre is missing the galactic action-packed and fluid experiences that compare to Freelancer and Wing Commander. What is not lacking is the marvelous economic system found in EVE Online; however, when it comes to combat in space there's a lot to be desired and growth potential. Netdevil is setting out to fill that void with Jumpgate Evolution. We get a look at its current form in this two part developer with Associate Product Manager, Tim Hodges from E3-2008 courtesy of GameTrailers.com. Unfortunately, what we loved about earlier builds that showed off the first action cockpit view is absent but not removed. Several landscapes and bases show a sense of scale and some combat aspects from the game. The videos don't reveal much detail, but for being in such an early state of development it looks okay. Jumpgate Evolution is due out sometime in spring 2009, and the alpha is underway and there's no official word on when the beta will start. However, beta signups are live on the official website. The second video is available for viewing after the cut.
NetDevil's Brown likens Jumpgate to Gran Turismo
Of all the unlikely comparisons we've heard over the years, one we hadn't really anticipated was the comparison between Jumpgate Evolution and Gran Turismo. And just the same, there it is, smack dab in the middle of a recent interview Gamasutra conducted with NetDevil's Scott Brown. Brown says that in Jumpgate Evolution, instead of merely relying on a level-based progression system, you can achieve ranks in specific classes of weapons and ships in a manner not unlike Gran Turismo's license system.Brown goes on to talk about their priorities when it comes to putting the game through beta, the lessons they've learned from both Auto Assault and Jumpgate Classic, and the iterative development strategy they've employed. The interviewer also expressed shock--as many have--about the game's relatively lilliputian group of developers, with only 13 people developing such a brilliant-looking game. It's worth a read if you consider yourself a pilot-to-be.
The Daily Grind: Do you want to be a ship or control a ship in STO?
Since we get the feeling that something may be announced for Star Trek fans somewhat soon, we thought it a good idea to be topical.The moment anyone begins talking about Star Trek Online we here at Massively begin to wonder whether we want to play a character on the bridge of the ship with a group of other players or whether we want to just be the ship ourselves. It's an important question because it affects how the entire game is perceived and played. So far we've had three space MMOs where the ship was the avatar. Those games are Jumpgate, Earth and Beyond Online and EVE Online. On top of that, Jumpgate Evolution will make for a fourth spaceship-centered MMO.With that in mind, we here at Massively are hoping for something different from Star Trek Online. It seems to us that part of the draw of both MMOs and Star Trek is working together with a group of people to explore space and sometimes do battle. Still, we're not sure if we're on the minority with that opinion and would love to know what you happen to think on the subject.
Player Consequences: The Need for Speed
Traveling has always been one of the least popular parts of playing a MMO. It doesn't matter if you are marching through the lengthy Connall's Valley in Age of Conan or travelling across the galaxy in EVE Online. It can be tedious no matter what the setting. Nice visuals and guild chat can occupy you part of the time, but you still check the map every other minute. We're lucky that MMO design has come a long way since the early days, where the only option was to hit the road on foot. Most games now give us vehicles, mounts, and in some cases mechanical ostriches to speed up the pace a bit. After all, if it's the journey and not the destination that matters then you definitely want to travel in style. There is one underlying reason why travel times continue to be prevalent in MMOs today and it's directly related to player expectations of virtual worlds. Developers are very sensitive to the issue of making their games seem like a real world and not a collection of three dimensional video game levels. Any MMO that has too many instances and separate zones often gets complaints for breaking the feel of a seamless world. This can actually turn players away from the game. As a result, the most successful games are often those with an over-world where players don't find themselves constantly having to load data as they zone. Just look at how World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and EVE Online handle their world design.
JGE gets new site design, re-apply for closed beta spots
The MMO gods giveth and they also taketh away. As the NetDevil team moves ever-closer to turning Jumpgate Evolution into a marketable retail product, they've undergone a fairly extensive site re-redesign, bringing them under the umbrella of publisher Codemasters. According to community manager Awen, the change was necessary in order to consolidate user information in one place in anticipation of the upcoming beta and retail releases. Unfortunately, this had the unintended side-effect of rendering the old JGE forums (and ostensibly the old beta applications) obsolete.If you want to get your name back in contention for the beta, you have to sign up for CodeM account, which can be done on the beta sign-up page. The forums are slightly more complicated, and require logging into the Codemaster forums first to get a display name. We'll be honest here, it's a bit of a cumbersome system, and we're not surprised in the least that JGE's dedicated community didn't take kindly to the change. Still, you gotta do what you gotta do if you want your launch to go smoothly, and they clearly thought this was a necessary step.
WRUP: Waiting is the hardest part edition
Seems like we're in a lull for gaming in general, doesn't it? You'd think by now that game companies would realize that the summer months were prime time for gaming, and that we'd get more releases in May, June, and July, but that's not usually the case -- most of the time, releases are crammed into that all-important fourth quarter, so it's feast from September through January, and famine right around now.So we're waiting to play things instead of playing them this week, whether it be Warhammer, Jumpgate Evolution, Guild Wars 2, or any other upcoming MMO that you just can't wait to play (but have to anyway). Not that there aren't things to do -- you could get ready for the Empyrean Age in EVE, play some more with the original Guild Wars, or visit the Midsummer Fire Festival this weekend (with new Frost Lord boss!) in World of Warcraft. So tell us, dear readers: What aRe yoU Playing lately? Leave a comment below and let us know what you've been up to in the MMO genre.Around the Massively HQ, Age of Conan is still getting a turn, and Tabula Rasa is experiencing a resurgence of sorts, but as usual, we're playing it all. And waiting. Always waiting, for the next big thing.
Jumpgate's Peterscheck talks shop, massive battleships
Hermann Peterscheck is the producer of NetDevil's Jumpgate Evolution. He has a lot of experience working on MMOs -- including the original Jumpgate. For those reasons, Ten Ton Hammer decided he would be a great subject for an interview about the process of developing an MMO. You can read the result now.Apart from the revelation that the game will feature four kilometer-long battleships (cool), the interview was a little bit light on JGE details. But if you're interested in learning how and why games are made, that's okay, because there's a lot of content on that subject.We thought it was particularly interesting when Peterscheck explained the philosophy behind NetDevil's decision to make JGE. "It is very difficult to steal people away from other MMOs so you are much better off going after an underserved market," he said. He also suggested that every single big MMO succeeded because it (to some extent) created a new market instead of converting users in an existing one.
Jumpgate Evolution dev chat to commence June 9th
At 5:00 PM EST on Monday, June 9th, Stratics will host a live chat with several members of the Jumpgate Evolution team -- including producer Hermann Peterscheck, concept artist Kirk Lunsford, community manager Nicole Hamlett, and UI programmer Josh Stefanski. Stratics will also be giving away a beta key and a limited edition print to two lucky participants.The chat will take place in the #straticshoc channel on Stratics IRC. You can use your own IRC client or the Java one provided by the site. A list of servers and ports is included along with further instructions in the announcement, in case you're not a regular.
Massively interviews JGE producer Hermann Peterscheck
Ever since ION 2008, the fine folks at NetDevil have been slightly more forthcoming with details from their sci fi opus-in-development, Jumpgate Evolution. First there was the interview that writer Keith Baker did about the game's three factions, filling us in one some of the background lore that's being plugged into the game. More recently, they did an interview on the more technical aspects of the game's development. Not wanting to miss out on the action, we caught up with Jumpgate Evolution producer Hermann Peterscheck, who, as you might recall, is awesome.Check below the cut for some insights into NetDevil's perception of the recent mergers in the MMO industry, their approach to integrating PvP and PvE into the same game, and some information about Jumpgate's capital ships.
Massively interviews JGE producer Hermann Peterscheck - Part two
We read recently that you were against the idea of separate servers for players who want to PvP and players who want to PvE. How do you plan to allow the two groups co-exist and still fulfill both groups' desired play-style? I'm actually not opposed to that at all. I think it depends on what kind of game you have. The issue of PvP versus PvE is a hotly contested issue in the core gamer circles and the game development industry. Outside of that, it's not nearly as hot a topic. It's like every other almost religious debate, like capital punishment or abortion or whatever. You're never going to convince people that are believers in one versus the other that the other is correct. If I hate PvP, you're never going to convince me that it's a good thing. You have to build the game in such a way that you acknowledge that both of those positions are valid and that you give both sides something to do. That being said, the way you implement it into your game is largely dependent on the kind of game you want to make. So if you look at a game like World of Warcraft, which is a largely kill-collect, progress-based game, you see the Battlegrounds and Arenas and stuff like that. They've acknowledged that both are important. The way I see it working in a game like Jumpgate is that the large PvP space battles are largely going to be done by the people who represent a large minority of players. Maybe something like twenty percent. They're going to log in every day and want to engage in massive battles. Those people are being fed by the player-run economy, which is being contributed to by another minority of players. And the rest of the people are in the middle, and are probably going to mostly hang out in the safe areas. Every once in a while though, they'll venture out and see what PvP is all about. You basically just divide the space. This area of space is safe, this area of space is not safe. But you have to make sure that there is opportunity for fun on both sides. If you make a sort of situation where the first 30 levels are PvE and the second 30 levels are PvP, you're going to make everybody hate you. The PvE players are going to quit at level 30, and the PvP players are going to wonder why they have to grind through all this crap to get to the fun part. "I'd love to have something like the hardcore servers in Diablo where you lose everything if you get killed." So by bifurcating the experience, we tell players, 'Go PvP, and you'll get X rewards. Go PvE and your rewards are Y.' There's no bias towards one or the other and you can easily flip between the two. That's kind of how I imagine Jumpgate being. That said, I'd love to have something like the hardcore servers in Diablo where you lose everything if you get killed. So I love the idea of having a server where everything is open PvP, and you can kill anybody at any time, and that's it. We'll see how that pans out, but that's how I imagine the Jumpgate universe working in regard to that. How does that translate to an end-game. Obviously, PvP players can just continue with their huge battles, what would be the PvE equivalent of that? That's already reasonably well-established. PvP would be something similar to Battlegrounds, where you have instanced PvP and also open, epic PvP between organizations. And then on the PvE side you have things like really, really tough creatures that you have to band together with a bunch of people and there's limited access to. Those are the things that give you the best rewards in the game. Personally, I like both. I like engaging in big battles against other players and I also like cooperative battles operating with others people against some giant boss that nobody's every taken out before. So we try and do both of those things. We've read on your forums that you're knocking around the idea of including capital ships, how big are these battles going to get? We've been knocking the idea of capital ships around for a while. It's sort of the consequence of the way that we approach iterative development. If you think about space fiction, one of the things that always comes to mind is blowing up the Death Star, basically, or the equivalent in other fiction. It's the huge base that a bunch of people take out. So we've had this idea for a space station. And there's all these reasons why we thought we wouldn't be able to do it. We didn't have time, maybe it's something that we can do after release, but it kept coming up. So we decided that we have to look at this. So we actually made a battlestation. And it turns out that fighting a huge battlestation with a bunch of people is really really fun. The natural progression of that is to have some sort of large ship that flies around . My expectation at this point is that they won't be player-flyable. One of the problems we had is that since Jumpgate is a skill-based game and if you have this giant battleship that you're flying and you have turrets on it -- now you have to balance it against you and your ship with aiming. It's tricky. We've thought about things like having other players man the turrets and then one person is the pilot, which games like Battlefield have done, so there's a possibility for that. But for now, when we're talking about battleships, on the PvP side they would be largely AI controlled and player-friendly and on the other side, they'd be either giant things you attack or things that fly with you when you attack. You as a pilot would still be controlling your personal ship. That being said, it's really cool to fly around and get that sort of Battlestar Galactica thing going. You see the huge ship that's sort of hulking along, around it are the little Corvettes that are a little bit faster, and then around that are the sort of quick-moving individual craft. We want to create that sort of experience. How do you take something like mining for minerals or hauling cargo and make that as fun as a giant space battle? I don't know, I think it just sort of works out. I spend many hours in EVE just mining. In fact, right now I'm trying to get my isk bars because I want to do that. So I'm happy to spend lots and lots of time just mining, learning how that system works, and just making money in doing that kind of stuff. They have this other kind of stuff there that drives the economy . So it's a different kind of economy. The way we've implemented mining, for example, is to make it a sort of Easter Egg hunt. You're flying around amongst the asteroids, looking for that rare thing. And then you go and find it and it's like a slot machine, and you mine at it and it might drop something rare. Then you can go sell it and make a certain amount of money, and there's an anticipation and reward for that in the same way that there's a reward for taking out a new tough enemy that you've never taken out. I think it's all about giving people a path to achieve something. And you can do that with any number of different verticals -- you can do the same thing with crafting, which we call manufacturing. It's all about putting in time and effort to make progress, and getting rewarded for that is fun. To me the whole point is that different people like to do different stuff, and those same people like to do many different things instead of just one. I think many successful MMOs have alternative activities that you can do so you don't get bored. As fun as it might be to just blow something up, after you do it two hundred times, you might want to do something else too. Going back to the PvP, we've heard Jumpgate described as a skill-based game. How much is skill going to weigh in relative to the amount of time invested in player versus player engagements? We're somewhere between World of Warcraft and Quake. In WoW, equipment arguably matters more than skill (although this tends to change as you get further and further into the arenas), but if you look at a game like Quake, equipment is irrelevant because everybody has access to all the weapons. So we're somewhere in between there. A rank 1 guy coming in with beginning equipment whose the best pilot in the game is unlikely to take out the guy in the most powerful battleship and the best equipment. Our game, however, gives a much larger range where you can participate in PvP. So whereas in WoW if I'm level 65 and you're level 68 and have much better equipment, it's unlikely I'll be able to beat you. But in our game, that's not the case. If you're a much better pilot, you'll probably take me out, even if I'm in better equipment. It's that sort of subtly that I have to balance. So we have to be careful balancing that. Of course, it's very unlikely that somebody whose played the game for hundreds of hours and has accumulates a bunch of equipment is not to be a better pilot within the rules of the game than somebody who just logs in one day. So it's likely that the people who spend the most time will be the most skilled AND have the best equipment. Positioning yourselves as a skill-based game, do you plan to use client-side hit detection or server-side? We're similar to first-person shooters, where we have to trust the client to some degree, but we have a check on the server to make sure that people aren't cheating. In a game that's more turn-based, you can do something where you say you want to hit, and the server says, "OK, now you're swinging" and plays the animation. We can't do that. We have to verify and authenticate and trust more than a lot of MMOs do. But it's really no different than games like Quake and Counterstrike, and those kind of games have. You just have to solve for the cheating using the game style that you have. Anybody that's developed an MMO before knows that a certain percentage of your resources goes to the eternal battle against people trying to cheat. Every game has it, and it runs the gambit. It's hacking the client, it's trying to break into the servers, it's contacting customers and trying to steal their accounts, it's hacking memory, it's exploiting weaknesses in the system. I can't think of any MMO that doesn't have a constant war between their tech people and groups of people that are trying to exploit the game. The funny thing is that most of the people trying to exploit the game aren't doing it for any other reason than it's a challenge for them to do so. Without giving away too much, we have to be clever in a way that corresponds to the style of game we have, expecting of course that it'll be an on-going scenario. Maybe it's too early for you to talk about, but have you decided on a subscription model for Jumpgate? Will it show up on the shelves at Gamestop, or will you use digital delivery or what? It is too early to say, yes. That doesn't pose much hope for this question, but we'll ask anyway. How close are we to the closed beta? Let me put it this way, I want to release a game as soon as I possibly can, which means I want a beta as soon as I possibly can. However, I won't do it until it's necessary. The way I see it, you should go into beta when internally you can't make decisions about where your game is without it. Not just to prove some point. A lot of MMOs go into beta way too early, because they have some schedule that says, 'OK, beta here.' I think what happens when you do that is that, you have these players who are really excited about your game, and we have lots of these kinds of people. And then you release them a pile of crap doesn't work and then they say, 'Hey, why did you give us a pile of crap that barely works?' and they tear you apart. Then you close the beta, go back into development, and work on something else, and maybe it's better, but you've already burned all those people. So yeah, people ask that question all the time, and I think a lot of the time they think I'm being coy or something, but I really don't know. It's not tomorrow! And there's some period of time where I know it's not, but I don't know, because game development is a tricky thing. You don't really know when a game is going to be fun, you don't know what thing is going to make it work, and you also don't really know what major probably could be lurking just around the corner. So to know more than a few weeks or months in advance for something like a beta is just guess-work. You can beta when you're ready or beta before you're ready, but that doesn't change when it's ready. I guess the simplest answer is: as soon as we can.Thanks Hermann, we appreciate it.No problem.
What MMO Magazine launches
It takes guts to name your MMO-based magazine What MMO. You can imagine for yourself the raft of jokes that will inevitably be unleashed on this new magazine, which will be bundled with PC Gamer, PC Zone, and Windows Vista The Official Magazine. If you'd prefer not to purchase one of these fine publications just to check it out, you can preview the issue by checking out its digital version. It's a decent little mag, featuring spreads on Age of Conan, Jumpgate: Evolution, and smaller stories for most of the other major MMOs available. Even so, we'll get the jokes started by saying "What MMO were they thinking?"[Source]
The devils of NetDevil offer insight into Jumpgate Evolution
Interviews conducted at this month's ION 2008 conference continue to emerge, painting a broader picture about the industry as a whole. Yesterday MMORPG.com posted a discussion with the minds behind NetDevil's Jumpgate Evolution. Scott Brown and Hermann Peterscheck offered a taste of the game up to the site's Carolyn Koh, who includes in her writeup that the game almost looks like 'moving concept art'. Their discussion is of a more technical nature, focusing on the game's progress so far. Brown states that the devils have been treating the title 'like a live game', with testers and developers in-world almost from the start. They've already had a very notable public exhibition of the game's new user experience, at the March Connect 08 event.Brown goes on to say that they're currently focusing on the title's infrastructure: auction houses, mining, and mail. Other topics include the role of PvP, the importance of player-created goods in the game's economy, and the many options you'll have on how to control your ship. If you're wondering about power structure, Mr. Peterscheck offers the word that the game will use a very traditional system: "Levels are a symbol of your progress ... Everything you do gives you whether it is crafting or running missions and that builds your level. It will not make you a better pilot or give you more life. You have to build your ship, get better weaponry and shields, get your licenses."
JGE writer talks shop in a pair of interviews
In their on-going efforts to win over the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere, the NetDevil team have been out on the prowl, sending out lead writer Keith Baker out to conduct a a pair of interviews to keep Jumpgate Evolution at the top of every gamer's mind. The first interview over at TTH focuses mostly on the Solrain Empire, the premier mercantile power in the JGE universe. Baker explains the choices players have within the faction and the general voice and tone that the team was going for in developing these hardened profiteers. The other interview over at Vault focuses on more general information like the link between Jumpgate Classic and Jumpgate Evolution, and gives an explanation for the context of the larger universe. You can tell that Baker is excited about his work and that excitement is sort of contagious.
Photoshop a JGE dev, get a closed beta spot
In one of the more bizarre contests in recent memory, the NetDevil boys are submitting the hair of two of their developers to the whims and amusement of the larger Jumpgate Evolution community. In order to participate in the contest, you just Photoshop whatever freaky color you think would look good on either of the pair of developers, and the two that most amuse the team will earn the winners a signed Jumpgate Evolution print and a guaranteed closed beta spot. Oh, and did I mention they're actually going to follow through and dye their hair that color as well?Now, this is pure speculation, but this blogger has a sneaking suspicion that this contest may have been the product of some heavy drinking. In any case, entries must be submitted on the official forums by May 20. So get cracking!
Codemasters plans to bring MMO development in-house
Well-known European games publisher Codemasters has announced that they plan to move some MMO development in-house. The company currently acts as publisher for a number of Western massively multiplayer games, such as Lord of the Rings Online and Jumpgate Evolution. It also acts as an EU partner for the Korean games and RF OnlineArchlord. Today vice president of Codemasters Online Gaming David Solari has informed GamesIndustry.biz that in-house development was 'always a part of the plan.'In a lengthy interview with the site, Solari notes that entering the PC MMO marketplace is a daunting task - but they feel they're prepared. The numerous games they've licensed will give them an edge, and has given them a great sense of where the industry is going. His concluding statement is especially interesting, given recent comments by Bobby Kotick in the growing tit-for-tat war between EA and Activision/Blizzard. "I don't think you can compete with Warcraft. In two or three year's there will be something else that will be able to compete with Warcraft but nobody will be able to tell you what that is now. Chucking money at something isn't the answer."
Meet and greet the JGE boys at ION
For those who have never had the pleasure of doing, meeting one's favorite developers can be a really world-changing experience. Having the names and faces that you read so much about on the internet turn into real living, breathing human beings is surreal, but quite rewarding. It's something we have the pleasure of doing quite frequently, but we have a feeling they enjoy seeing fans more -- since they don't ask so many probing questions.Those attending to the ION Conference next month, or even just those in the Seattle area, might be interested to know that NetDevil's Hermann Peterscheck and Scott Brown will be holding a Meet and Greet for fans on May 14th. We're told that space is limited, so much sure and RSVP on their official forums ASAP if you're interested in a spot. Their website was down at the time of writing this, but hopefully it'll be back up again soon.
