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Cheyenne releases 11 new Stargate Worlds images
The slow but steady trickle of Stargate Worlds stuff continued today when Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment published 11 new concept art and screenshot images for the game in the gallery at its official website. The images include a screenshot of the Ancient planet Agnos, concept art for a Goa'uld player character, and screenshots and concept art for various buildings. It's not much, but we did say it was a "trickle," didn't we?It looks like Cheyenne is making pretty good use of the Unreal engine but these screenshots don't seem very game-play-ish so it's tough to say for sure. The concept art is definitely worth a look, though.
SGW builder describes the challenges of making an MMO
French Stargate SG-1/Atlantis fan site Stargate Fusion landed an interview with Stargate Worlds world builder Josh Kurtz. The interview understandably represents a Stargate SG-1 fan's interests more than it does those of a gamer, but presumably if you're interested in SGW at this early point in development you're already a fan of the franchise to begin with.Kurtz talked about the relationship the SGW team has with the producers of the TV series and about the rules the team follows to make sure they stay faithful to the source material. He also described the challenges of making an MMO, saying "the MMO market is a dangerous place because to be honest the exploration of how to build one and what will make a good one has only just begun."He's confident (of course) that the team at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is going to be able to rise up to the occasion and produce a top tier game.[Via WarCry]
Stratics interviews Stargate Worlds' Kevin Balentine
When Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment revealed back in March that it would be outsourcing some of its game design jobs for Stargate Worlds, a lot of people took that as a bad sign. Outsourcing game design? That's kind of like the Conan O'Brien sketch in which Conan absurdly outsourced the show's writing to India (though, if the WGA strike keeps going for too long, you never know what might happen).Stratics interviewed Kevin Balentine this week, and he defended the decision to outsource design by saying that it cuts back on a lot of the detail-oriented busywork that consumes lead designers' time, so that time can be spent designing more unique, story-based missions or quests. Maybe that will alleviate some people's fears. The interview is fairly short, but Balentine also talks about instancing, squad-based combat, and a couple of other things.
Stargate Worlds dev chat is not entirely without new info
Information about Stargate Worlds is oh-so-sparse. That's why we were excited to hear that MMORPG.com was to host a live chat with several of the developers behind the game. The chat happened yesterday and we did get some juicy details on a few things. Player quests will be tied into the story line. We're guessing they'll be similar Lord of the Rings Online's quests. Also, quests can be acquired through means other than talking to NPCs. The game's puzzle system allows archaeologists and scientists to level up in their fields outside of combat.And yes, it's been confirmed that the character advancement is level-based. A fan asked whether it was level or skill-based and the developer didn't even understand what the fan meant by "skill-based." If only the MMO industry could remember the days before EverQuest! The developers consistently dodged questions like "what makes Stargate Worlds better or unique compared to competing games" by either saying "it's Stargate" or, well ... that's pretty much it. Even when they were asked a question along the lines of "what makes this game special, and don't say anything about it being Stargate," they still sneakily fell back on "it's Stargate."They did say that the combat system is unique because it's influenced by squad-based shooters, but even that sounds strangely familiar. Hopefully we'll see some more promising info come up as Cheyenne gets further along in SGW's development cycle. In the mean time, read the vagueness that is the chat log or the summary article.
