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Raph Koster on Origin's Privateer Online
Raph Koster's thrown up a fairly fascinating blog post detailing one of his Origin projects that never saw the light of day. It was originally codenamed Star Settlers and it featured procedurally generated planets, exploration, resource management, and more. Koster's executive bosses "blew up a huge portion of the design" in favor of fitting the fledgling game into Origin's Wing Commander IP, several online versions of which were already in the works. "Some of them had gotten pretty far -- piles of artwork, design work, and even some tech," Koster writes. Finally a Privateer Online team was assembled, and it cranked out a prototype featuring "radically different" procedural planets, multiplayer space dogfighting, fractal ship customization, modular planetary settlement capabilities, and "a huge pile of lore" written by Wing Commander vets. Though Privateer Online was cancelled in favor of Earth & Beyond and its design docs were burned in a bonfire at Origin's shut-down party, Koster says that many of the developers went on to make Star Wars Galaxies which contained some of the same ideas.
The Game Archaeologist: Wing Commander Online
Like many gamers who grew up playing the popular titles in the 1990s, Massively's Jef is understandably excited that Chris Roberts, creator of Wing Commander, is working on an original space sim MMO called Star Citizen. Jef is so thrilled, in fact, that he started a column anticipating the title. Jef's not alone; it seemed as though half of the internet went bananas when Roberts came out of the woodwork to announce his title and ask for a few coppers for funding. He got more than just a few, as gaming nostalgia is one of the most powerful forces known to mankind. Even if it can't be Wing Commander in name, gamers reasoned as they plunked down their money, it could be the Wing Commander MMO in spirit. Interestingly enough, there was an actual effort made to bring the well-known franchise to the MMO table back in the late '90s. A pair of projects, Wing Commander Online and Privateer Online, promised the thrills of the hit space saga with the expanse of the online gaming world. What happened and why aren't we playing one of these games today? Find out on this exciting episode of The Game Archaeologist!
The Daily Grind: Which unfinished MMO would you love to play?
For every MMO that makes it to release, there's probably two that died a sad death along the way. Sometimes it's the decision of the studio or publisher to can it, sometimes it's the result of finances, and sometimes it's just plum bad fortune. Whatever the case, the history of MMOs is littered with half-finished games that will never see the light of day. But what if? What if you had the power to magically resurrect, finish, and release just one of these games? Which one would it be? Would it be the intriguing Ultima X: Odyssey, the original Middle-earth Online, or True Fantasy Live Online? What about Privateer Online, Imperator Online, or Project Copernicus? Or would it be a different game altogther? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
