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Fallen Earth's Marie Croall answers player questions
Icarus Studios Senior Game Designer Marie Croall took time out of her schedule to answer a slew of player-generated questions about the post-apocalyptic sci-fi MMORPG known as Fallen Earth. Hosted over at Thirteen1.com, the questions are all over map in terms of subject matter, and Croall manages to discuss everything from the new weather effects, to the game's future, to Blood Sport exploiters and what's being done to stop them, all in the space of one interview. "Right now Blood Sports [are] still pretty new. We just released the fourth game, Assault, this week. So right now we're sort of in a holding pattern while we see what the player reaction to all the maps are. I don't think any sort of lobby system is being considered at this point, though we've already begun to address some of the issues, such as raising the Deathtoll rewards, lowering the cost of the Deathtoll ammo and putting things in place to stop hackers and exploiters," she says. Check out what Marie has to say on factions, acid rain, and new content by viewing the full article.
Fallen Earth's Marie Croall takes on player questions
Curious about the folks behind the meticulously-assembled wastelands of Fallen Earth? Despite the recent layoffs, there are still a lot of personalities involved with the game's development, and it's always good to know as much as possible about the team behind your favorite games. This week, Senior Game Designer Marie Croall takes the opportunity to answer player questions on the forums, answering a bevvy of largely personal questions with a few game questions added to the mix. Although veteran Fallen Earth players might not find a huge amount of information on upcoming patches, there's something to be said for learning things about the designers other than when they'll give you a pony. If you're staunchly part of the "ponies only" crew, however, there's still hope. Questions will be collected and answered from the main thread all week, which means that if you have something more you want to know, you've got the chance to ask it. Head on over to the official forums and get typing!
Massively's interview with the new Fallen Earth lead developers
There have been some big changes in the wasteland lately: Fallen Earth has gotten some exciting new content, with even more on the way in the form of Blood Sports. The changes aren't just in game, though. While the departure of Lee Hammock left some sad faces behind, the current Fallen Earth team is more than enough to inspire confidence in the future of the game. The majority of the player focus at the moment is on patches 1.4 and 1.5. The addition of both new PvE and PvP content -- along with changes to game mechanics -- is keeping everyone busy checking things out and wondering what's to come. With that in mind, Massively has some answers for you. We recently spent some time talking with two of the new Fallen Earth leads -- Director of Content Development Wes Platt and Senior Game Designer Marie Croall -- about what's in store for the game. Follow along after the jump to see what they had to say.
Fallen Earth promotes new leads to fill Hammock's shoes
With the recent departure of lead designer Lee Hammock, Icarus Studios' Fallen Earth was left with some big shoes to fill. The company announced yesterday that four veterans of the post-apocalyptic MMORPG have been promoted. Wes Platt steps into the Director of Content Development role, Marie Croall takes over as Senior Game Designer, Greg Roth is the new Senior Systems Designer, and Josh Peery steps to the plate as the Content Team Lead. Icarus also wants Fallen Earth players to interact with the developers, and will be highlighting questions and answers on the forums beginning on Monday April 26. Finally, both Wes and Marie will be featured on the team's Twitter dev chat next Thursday, April 29. Check out @FallenEarth for the details.
Fallen Earth's developers talk patch 1.3
Patch day is an exciting time to be playing an MMO, assuming you can look past the various instabilities, server crashes, and inevitable bugs that come with a major update. Even then, there's still the sense of doing something new and different in a familiar game, however touch-and-go the new content might be. Fallen Earth is not too far from their next major patch day, but if you can't wait for the patch to go live, there's a new developer diary and Q&A from Dev Team Lead Marie Croall and Live Team Lead Ian Lemke. The patch's major focus was a thorough revamp of the area around the starter towns, and between those towns and the central cities. It might seem odd to add such a large patch to improve the first few levels of the game, but from the developer's point of view, it's those levels that really first get a player hooked on the game, so they wanted to make it as memorable as possible. There's also some information on Deadfall Point, a new encounter area in Sector Three, offering the higher-level players something new to experience. Be sure to take a look at both features to get a picture of what's coming in the near future for your clone in Fallen Earth.
Massively Exclusive: Fallen Earth dev event transcript (and another party!)
This weekend we had the chance to hang out with a bunch of rough-and-tumble types in the wastelands of Fallen Earth. No, we weren't just doing our typical weekend gaming! We were lucky enough to get to spend some time in-game, hanging out with Marie "Arosei" Croall, Content Team Lead for Fallen Earth. During the evening, we asked her some of the great player submitted questions we solicited last week. She also tossed out a couple of interesting asides to the huge crowd that amassed to take part in the event - and to get some of the free goodies we were handing out! For those of you who may not have been able to make it - or would just like to check it out without all the cross-chatter - we've transcribed the interview (and some interesting asides) behind the break. Also, remember that we have another Massively Fallen Earth event happening this Wednesday night at the Embry Satellite, starting at 9:00 PM Eastern. This time our very own Shawn Schuster will be dropping by to hold a Massively Reader Meet-up, with - you guessed it - more free stuff, and a special Halloween-themed show on Post Apoc Radio.
Fallen Earth MMO tour will bring devs to GDC 09
We've mentioned a rather unique approach that the Fallen Earth team is taking to promote their upcoming post-apocalyptic MMO, a national tour across key cities in the United States. The Fallen Earth publicity tour began in North Carolina last month, meeting with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), and they've just announced that they'll be working with the IGDA again at this month's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Fallen Earth will co-sponsor the IGDA networking event at GDC on March 24 and developers will be on hand to speak about the game. Key Fallen Earth devs planning to attend include project manager Colin Dwan; associate project manager Dave Haydysch; content team lead Marie Croall; product manager Jessica Orr; and lead game designer Lee Hammock.
