world-control

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  • Global Agenda producer interview explains Players vs. Playable Environments

    by 
    James Egan
    James Egan
    07.09.2009

    How can we describe a game like Global Agenda? "It's like a sci-fi Team Fortress 2 with elements of territory and resource control." That works. Or we could say, "It's an MMO that's gene spliced with a first person shooter." That's pretty accurate as well. But whichever way you look at it, Global Agenda is a game that's hard to define with any single, existing label. You'll play as an "agent" in one of four classes -- Assault (heavy weapons), Recon (stealth and melee), Robotic (gadgets galore), or Medic -- in a game that's as much about fast-paced combat as it is about controlling territory and tapping resources on an alliance (guild) level. The title is in development at Hi-Rez Studios, and I4U News recently spoke with Global Agenda executive producer Todd Harris about what makes this game unique. Harris discusses Global Agenda's elements of world control and says, "When a player alliance successfully claims an entire zone, anticipated to take approximately 45 days, that group will be rewarded with prestige items, public display of their alliance banner, and permanent notation within the lore of the world."

  • Earthrise newsletter Issue X updates players on game's state of development

    by 
    James Egan
    James Egan
    06.18.2009

    Newsletter X for the post-apocalyptic MMO Earthrise is here, after these community updates from Masthead Studios went on hiatus since March. This tenth newsletter mentions how their current development focus is on the game's crafting system, which they've said will allow for a high degree of customization, allowing skilled players to become well-known among their peers for their particular creations. There's also a fair amount of coverage of some of the various Earthrise community efforts, ranging from fansites to player-created art, as well as a media coverage recap. There's definitely a few things in there worth checking out if you're interested in keeping up with Earthrise. While Masthead Studios may not feel quite this way about the game, this writer feels that Earthrise has some of the makings of a terrestrial EVE Online: a sandbox setting; guild-level world and resource control in what are now called 'Concession grounds'; and hopefully with that, player politics. If they can develop Earthrise along these lines, we suspect it could prove to be popular with fans of both sci-fi and post-apocalyptic games.%Gallery-48760%

  • SONY DSC

    GDC09: Massively previews Huxley, a hybrid sci-fi MMO and FPS

    by 
    James Egan
    James Egan
    03.30.2009

    Huxley: The Dystopia is a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter (MMOFPS) in development at NHN USA. We haven't heard much about the title since mid-2008, so we were happy that NHN USA was willing to sit down with us at GDC 2009. We spoke with Andy Hong, Huxley's Project Manager, who showed us some of the basic concepts behind the game. Huxley is a persistent world built upon Unreal Engine 3 foundations and is a game that differs from many of the MMOs we cover at Massively. Like other titles entering the market such as Global Agenda, Huxley is a marriage of the twitch combat of a first person shooter with classes, skills, trading, banking, and player housing we associate with MMOs. "At the core of the gameplay in Huxley, at its heart, it's an FPS," says Hong. But the depth of the rest of Huxley's gameplay, not limited to its quest and crafting systems, makes it a title quite unlike any pure FPS. %Gallery-48874%