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Warcraft as a whole: story balance between RTS and MMO
I was perusing the forums (like you do) when I came across this forum thread from poster Xewie, and I found it an interesting place to start thinking from. Xewie's points aren't entirely ones I agree with - I frankly found Mists of Pandaria one of the richest expansions in terms of lore and story and feel that anyone who dismisses it simply because there are pandaren in it is deliberately and willfully blinding themselves to an excellent ride with some astonishing highs and lows - but there's a certain truth in the points about the RTS vs. WoW itself. As others (including our own Michael Sacco) have pointed out, Garrosh Hellscream is really one of the first big lore characters we've had in World of Warcraft who was born in the MMO, evolved over its course and became a faction leader and finally an end villain. I think part of the problem is that the RTS features these characters, so even when it kills a few (like Terenas Menethil) it offers up a few more. But the MMO features us, ultimately, so when we put down Lady Vashj or Arthas, there's no immediate replacement. To be sure, there have in fact been tons of new faces over the course of World of Warcraft - Ragnaros, C'thun, Nefarian were all first introduced in classic WoW, not the RTS. The problem is, we introduce these characters and then, well, we dispatch them. Sometimes, like Ragnaros, our first encounter with them isn't a final one, but even if we know they'll eventually be back, it's not like their luck will hold out forever. I called this the "Joker problem" once, and to a degree I think it is an issue for the MMO. However, does it follow that we need an RTS to create stories? Since I think Mists of Pandaria did an amazing job of building up the story, and in fact I'm really much more of a Cataclysm booster than most, I don't agree with that idea. In fact, in many ways, WoW has done more to broaden and expand the Warcraft setting than the RTS ever did.
Cryptic Studios co-founder looking to fund zombie RTS Undead Overlord [Update]
Cryptic Studios co-founder Cameron Petty is leading JumpCore Productions through the development of Undead Overlord, an RTS that will put the player in charge of spreading the zombie apocalypse. The team is seeking $60,000 on Kickstarter to finish the game for release on Windows, Linux, Mac and iOS. In Undead Overlord, killing an enemy will add its zombified corpse to your infantry. Picking off certain units will inspire reactions from their ex-colleagues - the game's pitch describes a soldier spotting his friend's lifeless body tottering towards him, which may result in him "fleeing in panic, or even leave him cowering in abject fear." Boss zombie mutations and power attacks will diversify a player's strategic options against the remnants of humanity, including military forces equipped with guns and grenades. The game's maps will vary from blocks of pristine, pre-apocalyptic small town America to bleak, ravaged cities speckled with bands of survivors. Should the player-driven zombie apocalypse be funded, the early access outbreak of Undead Overlord is estimated for January 2014. Update: The article originally stated that Undead Overlord is due for release on January 2014. For the sake of clarity, we've updated it to specify that the date is for the game's early access release.
Planetary Annihilation targets beta this month, launch in December
Planetary Annihilation, the upcoming large-scale real-time strategy game from Super Monday Night Combat developer Uber Entertainment, will launch a beta later this month. The final retail release is planned for this December on PC. The Kickstarter update post announcing the beta promises interplanetary war, colonization and planetary destruction will be featured. There are two ways to gain access to the beta, either by pre-ordering the Planetary Annihilation "Warfare" edition or above through the Uber store, or by having pledged $40 to the Kickstarter campaign. Planetary Annihilation hit Kickstarter on August 15 with the hopes of achieving $900,000 to finance the PC RTS. The pledge drive was a success and earned Uber Entertainment $2.2 million in total to make the game.
EA shutting BattleForge down in October after four years of service
Free-to-play RTS BattleForge will shut down on October 31. An update on the game's official site notes that those with a remaining balance of in-game currency are "encouraged to spend it" before it is unavailable to play. BattleForge's developer, EA Phenomic, closed in July, resulting in 60 layoffs. The game first launched in an open beta phase in March 2009, prior to receiving a price drop and subsequently a free to play edition.
World Zombination beta early next year, launch in the spring
During a demo session at the PAX Prime Indie Mega Booth, Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak told Joystiq that a beta for World Zombination, the studio's strategy game that pits zombies against humans, is expected early next year, with a full launch planned for sometime in the spring. World Zombination is due first on iPad and Android tablets, with phones to follow, and then PC and Mac. "I think we'll try to target the iPad 2, but we'll certainly do iPad 3, 4 and whatever's coming next," Sivak said. "It'll be playable on the phone, as well. We're building it foremost to be a tablet experience but we'll bring it across platforms. It'll be a universal app and it's a shared world across devices." As for pricing, Sivak said that Proletariat is still working that out, though two initial pricing models seem to be frontrunners. "We've been toying around with two options: One is a premium to purchase the app – because it is kind of like an MMO, some amount of paying for new content like when we release new units and things like that," Sivak said. "The other one is just going like how the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was, where you have progression and you unlock and buy booster packs. So that would be more of the free-to-play model.We haven't really gotten to the point where we're seriously talking about that, we're just trying to build a game that's like an MMO that feels like you could play it instantaneously and still have the same sort of team guild feel that traditional MMOs have."
Extraterrestrial RTS Final Horizon coming to PS4 and Vita
Eiconic Games, the UK developer behind Total Recoil, recently announced its new project, Final Horizon. Described as an "extraterrestrial RTS," the game will come to PS4 and Vita at an as-yet-unannounced date. Final Horizon Creative Director Simon Credland wrote in a recent PlayStation Blog update that the game is "the evolution of tower defense," in that enemies won't crawl "slowly in single file from left to right" like other games in the genre. The game's insect-like robots will "move in an alien way" and will challenge players with missiles, pulse beams and other weapons.
Command & Conquer's live service designed for 10-year support plan
Victory Games believes it has the tech in place to support Command & Conquer for ten years, according to an interview with VideoGamer. Command & Conquer is being developed as a live service and will be both free-to-play and require an Internet connection. "We built this Command & Conquer shell and frame to be the one-stop place for Command & Conquer for the next 10 years, so we want to add the other universes and maybe even a new universe that we didn't even have before, all under the same landing site, log-in [and] persona that you would keep track of," Victory Games General Manager Jon Van Caneghem said. Canegham also noted that he believes "the days of a boxed release are probably over," making an exception for any potential collector's editions of the game. Command & Conquer will launch this year for PC through EA's Origin service.
Scott Hartsman on leading Trion Worlds out of the woods
It's been a rocky return for Scott Hartsman, who has rejoined the Trion Worlds fold as CEO. With End of Nations going through development hell in its final stretch, studios being shuttered left and right, employees being laid off, and a mess of unknown questions, Trion's been put through the ringer this past year and come out looking bruised. But that's the moment in the movie when the crafty manager inspires his boxer to get back in there and fight for the win -- and there are few devs more inspirational and passionate than Hartsman. The way he sees it, Trion is due for a rally. We spoke to Hartsman as he was in the second week of a two-month period of evaluation, meetings, and decision-making. Instead of sounding tired or stressed, Hartsman came across as upbeat, enthusiastic, and brimming with good things to say about his team and the studio's future. So why did Hartsman return to the Trion fold now, and what does it portend for the studio and its many titles? The full story is more interesting than you might think.
Why Age of Empires Online failed
Since the beginning of this year, Age of Empires Online has shifted into stagnation and decline -- and done so intentionally. So why did Microsoft Studios decide to all but abandon the future of this game? In short, the title launched with far too little content, a bad business model, and couldn't crank out the goods fast enough to retain an audience. This resulted in a sharp drop-off from 100,000 players to 15,000 in a few months. Executive Producer Kevin Perry criticized the game's launch at GDC Europe, pointing at its skimpy features (including only two civilizations at launch) and bad public perception: "You don't get a soft launch for a branded title. Players come there for your brand. You only get word-of-mouth once. Whenever we got new players, they always came in with the overhead, 'but I heard this game sucks.' That hill was extremely difficult to climb." Even after tinkering with the game's cost, adding in more content, and figuring out ways to allow players to spend more money, the company ultimately realized that the players were mostly demanding new content which couldn't be generated to make a profit. "The content itself was too expensive to create," Perry admitted. "We did do a lot of things right, but they weren't enough to actually save the game."
Veteran RPG devs launch Project Phoenix Kickstarter with Nobuo Uematsu in tow [Update: Funded!]
Project Phoenix, a JRPG with squad-based real-time strategy trappings and an all-star cast, is now on Kickstarter. Among those working on the game are Lead Composer Nobuo Uematsu, Art Director Kiyoshi Arai and Director/Producer Hiroaki Yura. Uematsu is best known for his work in creating music for the Final Fantasy series, and Arai illustrated worlds for Final Fantasy 3, 12 and 14. Yura is the founder of Project Phoenix's developer, Creative Intelligence Arts, and worked on Diablo 3 and Valkyria Chronicles. The credited list of developers includes as-yet-unannounced lead programmers and art supervisors, the latter of which has been credited with work on "some very famous anime that everyone knows." Creative Intelligence Arts is aiming to launch Project Phoenix in mid-2015, and is starting with PC, Mac and Linux as its primary platforms. It will develop separate iOS and Android versions, and is "working to have the game released on PlayStation 4 and other platforms." The developer is seeking $100,000 on Kickstarter by September 11, of which it has already raised $25,921. (As of this writing. Given how quickly that ticker is going up, however, by the time you read this, it'll likely be higher.) Update: We weren't lying about how quickly this thing was getting funded – Project Phoenix passed its $100,000 goal in less than nine hours and shows no sign of slowing down. The first stretch goal is $300,000, and it doubles the number of monster and character models, and adds extended musical numbers from Uematsu.
Meridian: New World is a sci-fi RTS ripped from one guy's brain
Meridian: New World is a new real-time strategy game from independent studios Headup Games and Elder Games, due to launch in Q2 2014 for the PC. It's the brainchild of Hungarian indie Ede Tarsoly, who's spent the last two years building the game. With a strong focus on a single-player narrative campaign, Meridian: New World will employ customizable loadouts for units – rocket launchers, plasma cannons and mining drills are a few weapon types. A full suite of level editing tools will also ship with the game and players can grab custom maps through a built-in downloader. The decision to omit multiplayer came down to resources. "I simply don't have the resources required to polish both a single and a multiplayer mode so I had to make a decision between single and multiplayer," Tarsoly told Joystiq. "I already had part of the story written back when development started, so I decided to develop the single player mode."
Trion Worlds: End of Nations 'not drastically changed'
The rebranding and reworking of End of Nations from an MMORTS to a MOBA was cause for concern to some players who are worried that Trion Worlds has taken a hatchet to the grand concept of the game. Executive Producer Scot Lane says that the move is for the best, as the change doesn't present a radical shift in focus. "The game hasn't changed as much as it sounds like," Lane said in an interview with RTS Guru. "We've made the game more hero-focused, and the biggest change would be tactical leveling. The addition of tactical leveling opens up lots of different strategies throughout a battle. Combat is very similar but faster, and we've made a lot of changes to the UI. We don't feel we drastically changed the game at its core[;] we brought what we felt were the best parts up to the surface and removed some stuff that wasn't working." Lane also explained why the team took out elite companies, the importance behind mods, and the increased importance of hero units.
End of Nations resumes alpha testing, boasts new MOBA features
We reported last week about End of Nations' transformation from sci-fi MMORTS to sci-fi MOBA. Now, Trion is making it official via a press release that touts a "re-engineered build" and "enhanced tactical gameplay." As of today, EoN's alpha server is back in business, with the invite-only testing build boasting "noticeably quicker and more dynamic MOBA gameplay, streamlined UI, cleaner graphics, smaller teams, and more powerful heroes," Trion says. Teams now feature two to four players, the objectives are more focused, and there's more of an emphasis on commander abilities plus four new classes. Finally, Trion has added something called "streamlined tactical leveling" that allows players to advance on the fly. You can register for an alpha or summer 2013 beta invitation via the official site link below. [Source: Trion press release] %Gallery-194008%
End of Nations rebranded as a MOBA
Trion's End of Nations, which started its life as an MMORTS, is now being called a MOBA, according to the game's website and discovered by Eurogamer. The game suffered through some layoffs late last year as developer Petroglyph handed the game over to its publisher, Trion Worlds. All's been quiet on the EoN front since then, but the changes from the original game to a MOBA seem to already be underway as shown off by five hero vehicle images on the website. If you'd like to find out more about what Trion is calling "The first MOBA RTS," head on over to the game's official site and sign up for the beta.
Syndicate Wars successor Satellite Reign heads to Kickstarter
As expected, real-time strategy game Satellite Reign recently began its Kickstarter project, and will need £350,000 ($532,455) by July 28 to become a reality. Satellite Reign is a real-time strategy game that draws inspiration from Syndicate Wars, another tactical game developed in 1996 for PlayStation and DOS by 5 Lives lead Mike Diskett. The project boasts emergent gameplay within a "living metropolis," along with tactical combat driven by different character classes, weapons and augmentations. Satellite Reign's crowdfunding campaign is already off to a great start, as it has raised £95,474 ($145,244) thanks to 3,355 backers so far. The developer is looking to bring the game to Steam and GOG for PC, Mac and Linux, with DRM-free options being made available to all backers.
Keeping your eyes open in the cold of Company of Heroes 2
After navigating a troubled road alongside former owner and publisher THQ, developer Relic Entertainment has found a new home for its library of titles with Sega. Though shifting to a new company with different policies and directives could hurt a studio's progress, a recent mission playthrough at E3 tells us that Company of Heroes 2 has not suffered in the transition. Last December, Relic previewed the seasonal combat on show in the multiplayer mode (which has been in open beta for most of June), its E3 demo for Company of Heroes 2 focused on a single-player mission, one based on the historic Battle of Leningrad between the Russians and Germans in World War 2. In addition to Relic's RTS design expertise in action, the mission had a new technology on display: a feature known as "TrueSight." Using this new system, darkened areas of a map only become visible based on the realistic line of sight a soldier has on the battlefield, with terrain and objects able to obstruct their views to the dangers that lie in wait.%Gallery-191374%
Command & Conquer being developed 'as a live service'
Victory Games' Command & Conquer, built on EA and DICE's Frostbite engine, is launching as a free-to-play game later this year through Origin. Tim Morten, development director, says that while Command & Conquer will require an internet connection, it makes for a more nimble game that can be updated far more frequently than a traditional retail product. With SimCity still fresh on everyone's mind, I asked Morten about the choice to take the online path. "First thing to know is this is not only a multiplayer game – we do offer skirmish so that people can practice up. I think with SimCity, a lot of people had an expectation to play solo. Many people are going to come to us to play multiplayer so we came from the mentality of, 'How do we the make multiplayer experience as good as we can make it?' The answer to that question is: we try to get rid of as much cheating as we can, and we try to get rid of as many problems with other peoples' lag impacting your own game."%Gallery-191297%
Kingdom Under Fire II gets 2013 launch window in SE Asia
It's been a couple of years since we last heard about Kingdom Under Fire II, so it's good to check in with one of our neighborly MMOs to see... oh hey! You're launching! What are the odds that this would happen during a completely random house call? OK, so the good news is that Kingdom Under Fire II has been scheduled for a 2013 launch. Unfortunately, the bad news is that so far this release will be limited to Southeast Asia at first. Apparently developer BlueSide wants to see the game in action in that region first before rolling it out elsewhere. The title is a combination of action-RPG and real-time strategy, promises battlefields with "thousands" of soldiers fighting at once, and will be launching on the PC and PlayStation 3. [Thanks to Steparu for the tip!]
C-Wars Kickstarter ends with over $95K raised, heading to Wii U, iOS and Vita
C-Wars, the cyberpunk roguelike RTS by Beijing developer OniPunks Studio, raised a total of $95,574 in its Kickstarter campaign, which ended Saturday. That's $63,574 more than its initial $32,000 goal, just under 300 percent of its funding aspirations thanks to 3,348 backers. The campaign hit a number of stretch goals along the way, which will result in the PC, Mac, Linux and Android game also coming to 3DS, Vita, Wii U and iOS. C-Wars is estimated to launch in late 2013.
Cyberpunk roguelike real-time strategy game C-Wars hits Kickstarter
Chinese indie developer Onipunks Studio kicked off its Kickstarter campaign for C-Wars last week. C-Wars is a roguelike real-time strategy and tower defense-styled game that is currently in its alpha stage of development. The game has players investigating infected areas of a post-apocalyptic world, taking on enemies in Mega Man Battle Network-style RTS combat along the way. The game's site notes that battles are much faster paced with non-stop action being a focal point, as seen in the developer's Kickstarter video above.Onipunks is offering a free demo of the alpha build of the game on its website. C-Wars is currently sitting at $19,943 in funding, and is seeking $32,000 by May 11 to complete its Kickstarter campaign. The game is coming to PC, Mac, Linux and Android tablets in fall 2013, with the developer considering Wii U and 3DS support, providing enough money is pledged to make that happen.
