This could just be an interesting coincidence, but I also think it answers a number of questions about Cryptic’s MMO development strategy.

Jack Emmert

In July 2009, G4TV asked Cryptic’s Chief Creative Officer (and fan favourite punching bag) Jack Emmert how many players Champions Online needed for success:

G4: Speaking of it being successful, when you’re launching an MMO, like how many subscribers do you need in order to survive or thrive?

JE: Well, I think that number is the number for success is over 100,000 for us. If it’s over 100,000, I’m skipping the light fantastic. The break-even point is somewhere below 100,000. And that’s obviously depending upon – every MMO is different – depending on how much money is spent on it. But, clearly, we mark 100,000 as success.

More recently, in November 2009, MaximumPC asked Cryptic’s Executive Producer on Star Trek Online Craig Zinkievich about STO’s business model and the number of players it needs to attract:

Craig Zinkievich

MPC: Is it a chicken-and-egg scenario where you need to have enough subscriber revenue to make new content to attract new subscribers?

CZ: Definitely. There’s a barrier. From our experience, if you don’t break 100,000 subscribers at any point in time, your game tends to just go away. Most games that don’t break that 100,000-subscriber mark tend to just be flashes in the pan. But once you do, you tend to get a really solid fan base with enough revenue to keep adding to the game, and things go pretty well.

It is interesting that both men mention that 100k figure as a key subscription point for their MMOs. It could just be a nice round figure they both plucked out of the air, but I think the potential also exists that Cryptic is aiming to build MMOs that break even at around 100k players, with development budgets to match. In an industry where MMOs need 500k players for success or might spend over $100 million developing a MMO, aiming to be successful at the lower end of six figures might seem like a lack of ambition. However, I see such a plan as a very intelligent given the number of high profile, big budget launches that have since failed to find and keep a sizeable audience.

If Cryptic is going down this path, it explains the reduced development time (2 or so years for STO, 3 or so years for Marvel Universe Online / ChampO), the reduced time given to open betas / testing (expensive to operate), the reliance on an evolving internal development engine (cuts down development time and costs) and the introduction of official microtransaction channels (the C=Store increases per-player revenue over just the subscription fees, meaning a lower subscriber base is required for profitability). It also explains the multiple MMOs in production at one time – Cryptic could be attempting to avoid having all its eggs in one basket by having a number of different MMOs on offer, all profitable at a ‘low’-yet-substantive active subscription figure.

This isn’t to say that Cryptic wouldn’t want to develop a MMO that attracts 5 million players and sees everyone rolling around in cash. It’s just that they aren’t betting the entire studio on only one title to do it.

But What Would Atari Do?

If this was Cryptic’s plan, would Atari have signed off on it? Doesn’t every publisher want to create the next World of Warcraft?

Maybe not Atari. Going back to the original press release of Atari’s (then Infogrames) acquisition of Cryptic, a key focus was on Cryptic’s lower development costs and in creating “unique, high quality MMO games on 18 to 24-month cycles“. It would be impossible to create the next WoW in 24 months even with an existing game engine, so (unless Atari is incredibly unrealistic) they must have some kind of acceptance for the minimum 100k players per MMO for a number of different, rapidly developed MMOs. Cryptic is Atari’s MMO developer / online platform provider, so it unlikely Cryptic is operating completely free of its owner’s control and developing MMOs for 100k players while Atari doesn’t want any less than 1m active subs.

When Cryptic announces its next MMO – rumours of Cryptic’s Neverwinter Nights exist, although I still think that MMO market is open for a dark world / horror MMO that Cryptic’s development art has hinted about for over 2 years (or longer) – it will be interesting to see if they follow the same pattern of rapid development and release (next title due in 2011, according to those same rumours).

Or the 100k figure could just be a coincidence and I’m reading too much into it.

Let’s see how uploading one of these lovelies works…

Monastery Grounds

~ Lord Firkraag

Dragon Age: Origins is a glorious amalgamation of every RPG I’ve ever played. I mean, really — all of them.

Of course it’s taking things right back to Baldur’s Gate with the party control and the pausing, and then putting the Neverwinter Nights direct movement control and pulling the camera around with the mouse, just like Drakensang. Also like Drakensang is the infinite plot-items inventory, that is apart from the main inventory. A part of me really likes this; it means you don’t have to worry about dropping loot for quest items, you don’t have to worry about them being too heavy, you don’t have to worry about them generally cluttering the place up. But another part of me is railing against having an infinite inventory, which goes completely against my realism sense. Yes, yes, it’s not meant to be real, but… It’s a tough one. I think the majority of players will call me nuts for saying that.

The plot is laid out just like Mass Effect. You do a little bit of starting quest (your chosen “origin”, and then some other stuff), then you get given four missions to complete in an order of your choosing. Once those are done, you lock back into one big mission to catch up with and kill Sovereign– Hurrrrrr.

The origin stuff is relatively slick, but by the time I’d chosen “Human” and “Warrior” I only had one option to pick from. Robe Cousland was born — looking absolutely nothing at all like his parents or his sibling(s?), indeed, hardly even dressed for his station. He’s bald and has a small beard (delightfully similar to my real beard, no less), but I’d have thought even worse for a noble,  a huge face-tattoo. To quote Paul Denton of Deus Ex, “I’m pretty certain we don’t have a stitch of DNA in common with either of our supposed parents.” Couldn’t they at least have modified their facial features to match me just a little bit? I’m quite sure such dynamism is possible.

Isn't he sexy?

The conversation system is pretty much Mass Effect too; people pace about occasionally, lips are synched (but nobody has yet solved the shouting issue — there are plenty of shouting moments where the serene face is warped into a grimace but the mouth remains moving calmly), responses can be chosen (though the radial menu is exchanged for a classic list of responses). Very Deus Ex, really. All dialogue is voice-acted except your character’s lines, which I find somewhat annoying — you go through the entire game never once being addressed by name, by anyone. My noble father called me “pup”, Shale from the DLC (we’ll get to that later) called me “it”, but that’s the best you get. Even after sleeping with Leliana (we’ll get to that later), she never called me by name. Yes, yes, voice acting increases immersion and whatever, but they could at least have given me a fixed nickname to go by. Insert rant about the need for quality speech synthesis in games to replace real actors.

The world map reminded me a lot of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, with the little “clay” tiles to represent places. One thing that really got me about the map, though, was the presence of large sub-world-maps; upon entering Denerim, for example, you get another world map with more little tiles floating about on it. Slick.

There are more little things, that have jumped out at me along the way as being from other RPGs, but those are the main ones.

I should remark that it took me a good thirty hours to complete the game. Dragon Age is fucking massive. To compare, a super-completist run of Mass Effect at a reasonable difficulty level takes about 20 hours (including Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station). The game claims that Robe has only experienced under 50% of the game’s content. Since I’m an achievement-whore (and I’ve been told that achievement-points can be turned into DLC-buying points), there will be repeated playthroughs. Value-for-money ho!

Yes, downloadable content. Chicks seem to dig that shit these days; right out of the box (yes, apparently DA was delayed so much that two DLC packs were ready to go at release time rather than afterwards), I got The Stone Prisoner and the Blood Dragon Plate (which will come with me to Mass Effect 2 when that rears its beautiful head). The Stone Prisoner introduces a bonus party member, Shale, who is a golem that is generally quite fun to have around. Complete with weapon and armour crystals that only he can use, plus gifts and banter. The second DLC, Warden’s Keep, is hard-wired into the game but not present — it, and The Stone Prisoner, add achievements. But the worst thing is that after a while a little bastard quest-given for the Warden’s Keep story crops up in your party camp with a glaring exclamation “take my quest” mark over his head, and of course, I can’t take the quest without buying the DLC. As I mentioned earlier, achievement points can apparently be exchanged for DLC, so this mitigates the annoyance somewhat — but it’s still just a little bit underhanded. I wonder if people that didn’t get The Stone Prisoner out of the box have a similarly niggling prop slotted in?

The Blood Dragon plate is pretty useless. I spent the first ten hours frantically trying to get the 38 strength required to equip the breastplate, by which point the rest of the armour (which can be bought from your portable merchant) had been completely superseded. The breastplate was pretty bitchin’, though, and remained better than most stuff until level 17 or 18.

I want to complain about variety. There’s basically only one set of ruins props; green lighting and some tree roots, and you have the elven ruins in the forest. Blue lighting and some snow-drifts, and you have the Andrastean ruins in the mountain. There aren’t particularly many types of enemy either (I remember how Drakensang boasted that it had 70 enemies… I pulled more than that out of my buttocks for This Wreckage; maybe I’m just spoiled by Warcraft III, or is it a symptom of increased detail meaning there just isn’t development time to produce a lot of models?) — you get darkspawn, a few demons and undead, some spiders… Though I did thoroughly enjoy the little velociraptor-like dragon kiddies.

I said “want” to complain because I actually can’t — they’ve followed my value-for-money-squeeze-every-drop-out-of-every-resource philosophy to the letter. The behemoth that they have achieved is truly immense — I haven’t played a game this big since Morrowind. I am extremely satisfied with what I’ve been given for my hard-earned (heu heu) cash. I’ve paid £34.99 for far worse games.

Uni might not be so satisfied, since I basically spent my every waking moment playing Dragon Age since I bought it last thursday. I’m also proud that it’s an 18 and I didn’t get ID’d — remember how I got ID’d when I bought Loki, Tomb Raider: the Angel of Darkness and Sonic Heroes (a 16, a 12 and a 3 respectively)? The shop assistant tried to sell me a strategy guide, which I scoffed at, then a games controller. I told him I was a mouse-and-keyboard man.

Yeah, we need to talk about DA being an 18. The game is covered in blood. I mean, it’s everywhere. It’s on the loading screens, spreading everywhere while you wait. It’s on the map, dribbles of it marking your path as you travel (to be waylaid by quests, Baldur’s Gate II style). And, if you’ve even looked like you might have entered combat, it’s all over your party too. Persistent blood splatters on characters are hilarious, yes, but when it’s a uniform speckle all around (shouldn’t my front be dripping and the rest be relatively clean? Do rats even have that much blood in them? Shouldn’t spider blood green or something?) it’s a little bit silly. Not to mention nobody remarks on it when you walk up to them absolutely sopping wet with the stuff.

So it has bad (but really, what doesn’t?), and it has good. But the good massively out-weighs any niggling little complaints. This is what the PC gaming industry needed so badly — a massive shot in the arm that just couldn’t work on a console (apparently the XBox version is absolutely dreadful. I’ve got a full mouse and keyboard and I don’t know what’s going on half the time, though playing with a rumble-pack would be cool). It’s Baldur’s Gate, it’s Mass Effect, it’s Morrowind and Oblivion. It’s Deus Ex and it’s Drakensang and it’s Neverwinter Nights. It is a masterwork.

I think I’ve said everything I want to say.

The verdict: Dragon Age: Origins is fucking awesome. Buy it now… Unless you’ve got a lot of work to do.

The real test comes next: the editor.

I’m ready, sir.

Yes. Yes, you are.

W październiku 2002 roku Aleksy Uchański i Marcin Przasnyski wraz z grupą zapalonych redaktorów (m.in. Dariusz J. Michalski, Michał Nowakowski, Tadeusz Zieliński, Krzysztof Papliński czy Jakub Kowalski) reaktywowali pierwsze polskie czasopismo o grach. Ich cel nakreślony we wstępniaku był jasny: przywrócić wiarę w dobre teksty, przypomnieć na czym polega radość z inteligentnej lektury.

Wydawcą pisma został Axel Springer Polska (znany polskim graczom m.in. z takich tytułów jak Play czy Komputer Świat GRY).

W pierwszym odnowionym Top Secret mogliśmy przeczytać łącznie piętnaście recenzji  takich tytułów jak m.in. Aliens vs Predator 2: Primal Hunt, Age of Wonders II, Beach Life, Disciples 2, MotoGP czy Zanzarah: The Hidden Portal. Oczywiście nie obyło się też bez recenzji wielkiego hitu tamtych czasów, gry pt. Nina Kroniki Agenta: Tunele Afganistanu .

Redaktorzy TS’a donosili w obszernych tekstach o nadchodzących hiciorach: Counter Strike: Condition Zero, Hitman 2, Icewind DAle 2, Neverwinter Nights czy No One Lives Forever 2.

Jednym z hitów numeru był ośmiostronicowy poradnik do Warcraft III (co ciekawe: w spisie treści podano zły numer strony) przygotowany przez Dariusza Michalskiego.

Nowością w tego typu czasopismach (tj. poświęconym grom na PC) był dział Tapeta, jak pisali redaktorzy: Coś dla oka. Nowe gry chwalą się piękną grafiką. Tutaj podziwiamy najlepsze z nich. I przyznać trzeba, że był to dział niezwykle efektowny. Szerokie ujęcia m.in. z trzeciego Dooma mogły przyśnić się  po nocach, a i zmęczeni gracze uciskiem szkoły/pracy czasem po prostu wolą zawiesić oko na jakiejś ładnej grafice w dużej rozdzielczości.

Inne działy nowego TS’a to News, Tipsy, WWW, Techno, Forum, Tylor (…humorystycznie) i dobra publicystyka zamieszczona w Varii i słowie od Martineza.

Całość kosztowała 15zł, a poza tekstami nie brakło też dwóch płyt CD (na jednej z nich pełna wersja kultowego Thiefa).

a

Kilka zrzutów z niniejszego numeru:

So recently I have been playing the hell out of Bioware’s lastest epic, Dragon Age Origins and I have to say I am extremely pleased with it. Compared to the other two games I recently got, Torchlight and Borderlands, I have not been able to stop playing or eve in some cases THINKING about DAO.  I have only played it for about 11 hours thus far and according to the stats screen I have only played 14% of the game.  Think about that.  11 hours…14%.  I cannot fathom what else lies in store for me at this point!  I figured that I should review this game twice, once after my initial 10 hours which would be now, and then again when I finish.  So lets begin.

Graphics:
So lets start with something that is the first thing you are gonna notice.  The visuals.  I don’t mean just the character design but the whole world.  Now some people have mentioned (Gabe from Penny Arcade for example) that they have been underwhelmed with the visuals.  I myself have not.  I expected a realistic “gritty” fantasy world and that is at least in my eyes what I got.  The areas are highly detailed, and while they appear similar, its just because that is the architecture, which I feel is fitting the world.  Also the character designs are extremely well done and I can see the various facial expressions each of my party member makes.   I would rate graphics a solid 8/10.

Music and Sound:
Ok, now on to the sounds of the game.  I am not sure who composed the soundtrack for this game, but so far I have found the music a joy to listen to.  When the mood of the game changes so does the music, which helps the tense situations.  The voice acting is also very well done.  I have yet to feel the need to turn the sound off to avoid the voices as I do sometimes with other games, and after 10 hours of hearing them talk thats saying something.  Overall, a 8.5/10

Gameplay:
Next up we have the actual gameplay of the game. How the systems work, interact, and play with each other.  This game truly is a spiritual successor to Baulders Gate and even the original Neverwinter Nights.  The game can be played close up, over the shoulder 3rd person like World of Warcraft, or Isometric a la Baulders Gate/Icewind Dale.  I personally play it like WoW, just because I am so used to that style now.  The movement controls are even like WoW so its very easy for me personally to move around.  You basically right click on things to interact and the loot system is very WoWish as well.

Now, as for customization (which is an RPG staple!) you have 3 basic classes:  The warrior, rogue, and wizard.  Seems kinda bland right?  Thats what I thought at first, right up until I discovered the Specializations.  You see, each class has 4 specializations that they can unlock, and you get to choose 2 of them (once at 7 and then at 14th level) with a Specialization point.  You can save this point if the specialization you want is still locked (Yes you have to unlock them)  They stay unlocked for every playthrough though, so you can unlock all of em the first time around and then play again without having to hunt them down thankfully.  For example, when my Warrior hits 14 he will be a Templar/Champion.  You basically have talent trees that you work your way up to unlock attacks and abilities (unless you are a mage, then you have Spell Trees).  You also have a easy to use crafting system and also skills.  Your skill point progression is of course based on your base class (Rogues have the best!)

Overall the gameplay is solid and excellent, and I am finding it harder and harder to stop playing.  9/10.  There is some issue with Party AI but like FFX you can actually set the AI using a “Tactics System”.  I have yet to touch it as it scares me deeply.

Story and Characters:
On to your party members and the story of the game.  I saved this for last because there is so much to go over.  Firstly, unlike previous Bioware games there is no alignment meter.  None, nada, zip zero zilch.  You have to perform your actions without knowing how it will effect the world.  Here is a perfect example of a one such dilemma, which is a SPOILER!

You will eventually visit the town of Redcliffe to seek aid from the Arl (think Earl).  When you arrive the town is besieged by the walking dead.  After assisting the town in surviving an attack, you enter the castle which is where the undead originated.  Once there, you discover that the Arl is poisoned and sick, his wife is alive, and their child has magical abilities, and is possessed by a demon.  You are left with the following choice:  Kill the child, ending the threat immediatly.  Use a rogue mage who you might have freed to perform a ritual letting you enter the realm that the demon lives in, but having to sacrifice the mother (willingly) to power the spell, or seek aid from the Circle of Mages a days travel away to do the SAME ritual but without needing to sacrifice the mother.  These are your ONLY options as the child ran before you could catch him to incapacitate him.  Which would you choose?

I am not going to tell you what I did, although suffice to say I am regretting it now.  But choices like that are the standard in this game.  There is sometimes no clear right or wrong action, and you can make your party members angry depending on what you do.  And it is possible to lose them forever if you anger them enough.  I mention this because each character has a distinct personality and likes and dislikes.  So far the cast I have uncovered are varied and unique, each a different flavor.  Alistar for example is a very sarcastic ex templar and the only other surviving Grey Warden.  Morganna is an coldly logical beast, and a bit of a tease.  Lilliana is a slightly niave ex assassin turned religious nut.  And there are a few more characters I have yet to unlock.

The story thus far is Darkspawn (think orc looking dudes) have once again risen from the depths to threaten the world and its up to you and your team to unite the world and beat them back.  The game is open ended and you have various options on where you go and in what order.  I love nonlinear gameplay.   Overall I would give this a 10/10.  Amazing story thus far and I am just getting started!

Overall the game is top notch and I suggest it to anyone who wants a classic RPG.  Get it for the PC thought.  I cannot imagine playing this on a console.

Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins comes out next week, and I am slowly falling into its marketing traps, seeking out all available information about what the company has termed the “spiritual successor” to one of my favorite game series of all time, Baldur’s Gate. Perhaps for my own interest – and no one else’s – I decided to set down the major Bioware releases and where they fell during my life.

• Baldur’s Gate, December 1998. Published by Interplay. Wikipedia suggests it released in November but I have vivid memories of the developers announcing the game went gold in December. At the time, I was living and working in NYC, and traveling to Maine every other weekend to stay with my girlfriend (now my wife ). She had hoped to buy the game for me for Christmas, but it didn’t arrive in Portland until a few days after that.
• Baldur’s Gate 2, Fall 2000. Published by Interplay. Melissa and I had gotten married in May and moved to Washington DC. We were renting a one bedroom and occasionally talking about having children. I don’t remember any troubles finding the game, but I have such fond memories of it.
• Neverwinter Nights, June 2002. Published by Atari. Our first child had been born the previous fall, and we were now renting a house in DC. We’d passed the Virginia bar in February and were working in our law firm’s Virginia office, which meant that I worked close to a mall – and thus close to a games store. I recall the very long line at Electronics Boutique, waiting for the Fed Ex to deliver that evening’s shipment – this was still before the age of mandatory street dates and Tuesday releases.
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, November 2003. Published by Lucas Arts. We bought a house the previous May and moved to Virginia from DC; I left the law firm and went in-house with my current company. Our second child was born in the fall.
• Mass Effect, November 2007. Published by Microsoft. It’s funny to see this timeline and realize that four years passed between KotOR and Mass Effect; Bioware did release another game, Jade Empire, during that time, but as I didn’t have the original Xbox, I never played it. Our third child was born the previous year, so this game also breaks the pattern of coming out during the same year as when one of our children was born. (And no, no children arriving with Dragon Age, either.

Kind of neat to chart it out like that. I think of myself having played more Bioware games, but the reality is that I’ve only played four, and played them for many, many hours.

Nå skriver jeg på en PC jeg aldri har blogget på før, nemlig min gamle. En søt, gammel stasjonær Dell jeg kjøpte i tiende klasse for å game på The Gathering. Oh yes, I’ve been there. I andre eller tredje klasse kræsja den litt, så jeg formaterte den da. Og så funka den ikke på en stund. Men det gjør den nå! Derfor tenker jeg at, siden jeg likevel ikke bruker denne noe særlig, kan jeg installere Linux på den. Så jeg laster ned Ubuntu as we speak (jeg er passe dum, da. Det kommer en ny Ubuntu i overmorgen), og så skal vi ha det kjempefett. BioWare har jo til og med gitt ut en Linux-ting til Neverwinter Nights, så jeg tenker jeg henter det neste gang jeg er i Bergen. Som jeg har savna det spillet.

Og så skal det vel nevnes at forrige innlegg var innlegg nummer 100. Det er litt kult. Det har jo bare tatt over et år. Dårlig bloggfrekvens her, ja. Vel vel. Det får gå. Jeg er jo så opptatt med andre ting.

Men la meg fortelle om min kjære Bea. Dere som har vært på ett av de to rommene mine (dvs. hybelen i Bergen og rommet i Asker),  vet at det har en tendens til å bli litt rotete. Men det ville ikke min kjæreste, nei. Før jeg ble innlagt, ryddet hun hybelen i Bergen, og nå de siste dagene har hun fullstendig gjennomryddet rommet i Asker også. Som muligens var verre enn Bergen. Ja, faktisk.

Selvfølgelig vil jeg jo ikke helt ha det sånn. Hun kan da ikke bare gjøre alt for meg mens jeg knapt gjør noen ting. Men sånn blir det. Hun jobber i en slik fart at jeg bare blir stående og måpe (eller sittende og lese gjennom en gammel skolestil. Kjent fenomen for flere der ute?). Jeg får helt bakoversveis, og de eneste gangene jeg kommer tilbake til virkeligheten, er når hun spør meg om hun kan kaste noe. Jeg må selvfølgelig nekte, for alt er jo minner! Og så må vi småkrangle litt om det, og så klarer vi å forhandle oss frem til loftsløsningen. Rare greier. Uansett, rommet mitt er helt strålende ryddig nå, og det har det ikke vært på flere år! Så Bea, jeg elsker deg. Ikke bare for det ekstreme ryddetalentet ditt, men for alt du er og alt du gir meg. Ikke sånn materialistisk sett.

Og forresten laster jeg heller ned Linux Mint. Droppa Ubuntu.

I have been thinking on this for a little while and am wondering… what difficulty level do you tend to play games on? There are a huge variety of opinions on the matter out there, from the ‘You aren’t a gamer unless you play on Hard [or Hardcore, or whatever the top difficulty is] to the ethos I follow: ‘Play on whatever level makes the game fun for you’. This tends to make me an Easy difficulty player, though sometimes this can backfire.

The way I see it is that I play games to relax and have fun, not to work. If Hard difficulty makes the game feel like a chore, then it isn’t fulfilling its role in my eyes – there are, of course, exceptions due to how different games code their difficulty levels. For me Easy difficulty levels tend to provide the most enjoyment for the time I put in, I don’t care for a ‘grind’ to get through areas/quests/missions – this isn’t always a good route to take though, as there are some games that Easy difficulty just takes away any tiny sense of danger (which I like a little of, though I hate my characters/avatars dying on me – I also don’t care much for a complete cakewalk). One of the games like this is Sacred 2 – in Sacred 2 I always start out on the easiest level (Bronze) but after about 10 levels move on to the next step up (Silver) because then enemies start scaling to your level better (and provide slightly more of a challenge w/ better drops, but not an insane difference). Sacred 2 does its difficulty different from some other games  though, you can change difficulty ‘on the fly’ without having to go through the trouble of exporting your character (a standard in the hack and slash scene).

Another game that offers true on the fly difficulty adjustment is Neverwinter Nights – I always start on the easy difficulty here, but I am again amongst the minority on this. In NWN enemies do less damage, and you do more (rather than it affecting their levels or HP amounts) on the easiest difficulties – for me, in this game, it is best to start out like this… however the game is balanced on Normal difficulty so it can seem to be way too much of a cakewalk early on, whereas for me Normal can be frustrating against some of the earlier ‘boss’ enemies.

Other games change the loot drops/rewards based on difficulty – reserving the ‘best’ loot for the higher levels; I can see the reasoning behind this (Risk v Reward) but it also means that I will never see the best loot in many games, which rankles a little bit; though I have no plans on changing my gaming style just to get better gear in a game. The upcoming Dragon Age: Origins will have a friendly fire mode that is off on Easy, on w/ 50% damage in Normal, and fully on from there – this has put me in a quandary. Why? Well, because I actually like the strategy behind not roasting my own team mates w/ an AoE spell… but I don’t necessarily want to deal with the increased grind of a higher difficulty level. This game will cause me to at least try Normal difficulty to start with I think.

Now, don’t get me wrong – if I ‘beat’ the game on one difficulty I will indeed try it on another level, though it has to be a good game to get me to try it again to begin with; If it is a game that gets me attached to the character, there is more of a chance of replay on a higher difficulty – though that leads to a catch 22: If I get attached to a character then I don’t want to see them die… c’est la vie eh?

Now to my couple of readers that drop by now and then.. what difficulty gamer are you?

(You don’t have to comment, you can use the poll in the left hand corner)

Sneaking in a quick post before my deadline…it’s 11pm.

Busy day…cleaning, errands, calculating XP from awhile back that has been sitting undone, etc…

I have made some slight progress on a DZP task…I started playing Neverwinter Nights again. I decided to abandon my ranger for something a bit more magical…a bard. I’ve never played a bard before, so this should be interesting. I’m making her quite charming- very different from my grungy ranger. I am hoping to take incredibly advantage of the “persaude” option this time. I have yet to choose my henchman, but I will be picking someone who can fight for me. She does manage to use the crossbow though, and fairly well.

We are playing D&D tomorrow- the main group that is still stuck in the Mournland. I plan to make them unstuck tomorrow, so we can move on to new things. I think the games will be much more frequent now that summer has come to a close and people are back on campus on a regular basis.

I am trying (unsuccessfully) to convince people to go to the zoo with me on Saturday. I’m trying via facebook. Well, they don’t know what they are missing…I can get 1 other person in for free with my membership.

I’ve seen a few websites on this recent lawsuit that Turbine has filed against their publisher, Atari, and the whole thing sounds like a James Bond film, albeit corporate instead of the world. All in all, I found the reporting somewhat confusing, as to who had what motives, and what exactly was going on. So I decided to set up a new section of MMO Fallout, “In Plain English”, where things can be spelled out clearly and in context the average user can understand.

Here’s a breakdown:

• Turbine: Developed Dungeons and Dragons Online
• Atari: Sold the sublicense for DDO and Advanced DDO to Turbine. Also acts as publisher

Turbine claims that Atari did not make a reasonable effort to promote Dungeons and Dragons Online, despite Turbine paying hefty royalty fees. In Turbine’s claims, Atari took the money and hatched the plan that it would declare the license agreement null and void, and one of two possibilities would then occur: Either Turbine would be terminated as part of a shakedown, or use the situation to benefit from its own competing product.

In Plain English: Atari wants to cut Turbine off of Dungeons and Dragons Online, terminating their license agreement, and maintain the title itself. Atari may be trying to kill Dungeons and Dragons Online to focus more attention on its publishing and promotion of Champions Online, or possibly a Neverwinter Nights MMO.

Just a quick note to let you know that my next Neverwinter Nights mod, We Linger, is almost complete. It’s shorter and more abstract than Breaking the Loop, and is intentionally focused almost exclusively on dialogue. I’m really happy with the way it’s shaping up.

Por fin. Ayer logramos jugar la party en red que teníamos pendiente al Neverwinter Nights. Solo estábamos Mike y yo, y aunque me habría gustado que hubiese estado alguien más, la partida mereció la pena.

Y eso que en un principio parecía que iba a resultar un fracaso más estrepitoso que los de Marron, porque pese a mi exhaustiva organización, tuvimos algunos problemas imprevistos para hacer funcionar el juego, aunque finalmente los resolvimos de forma milagrosa (por milagrosa no me refiero a que interviniese Dios, me refiero a que lo solucioné yo, pero no sé muy bien como).

Jugamos el módulo que yo mismo hice hace unos meses, y pese a que la aventura era corta, nos dio para estar toda la tarde hasta finalizarla. Bueno, más o menos, porque después de programar el módulo a toda velocidad sin prácticamente probarlo, fue todo como la seda hasta el final, donde una puerta mal programada nos impidió completar la misión final.

Escenas memorables:

• Mike y yo berreando al arrancar el juego.
• La primera trampa de estacas (activada por Mikel, por supuesto).
• La aparición en la aventura del conde Fruger, pariente del infame conde Ruger.
• Mi personaje matando a un Ogro con un afortunado disparo de arco mientras huía de el.
• La muerte lenta y dolorosa de la Puka.
• La misión del abuelo pervertido.
• Mikel reventando (literalmente) goblins a hachazos.
• La aparición estelar de Hans Topo.
• Mike gritando: -Monos! Hay monos!
• Nuestra peluda y gigantesca mascota.

Esperemos que para la próxima no pase tanto tiempo, y que se apunte más gente.

Doctors On Call

Q: Let’s talk about the future. So we’re past E3 now, everyone has made their major announcements for the year. Did you guys have a chance to see what Microsoft and Sony had to show off?

Ray Muzyka: Yeah. I got a demo of Project Natal before E3. So I got to check it out hands-on at EA with some other folks, and I thought it was pretty cool. We didn’t get to go to the Microsoft or Sony booths unfortunately because we were booked in meetings, but I read some of the announcements and saw some of the feedback and responses. It’s very interesting. And Natal looks exceptionally interesting as a platform extension. I think it’s a really powerful idea.

Q: Do you think it applies to you guys? Is it something you’re looking at?

Ray Muzyka: It could, yeah. I think it applies very much to an emotionally-engaging narrative and a story-driven game. Fulfilling characterisation more completely in games is I guess a way to achieve that. So it’s something we’d be interested in exploring. We haven’t made any announcements or anything, but it’s an intriguing technology that I think we’d want to see more of and see what we could do with it.

Q: Do you follow that vision, that destroying that barrier to entry for the consumer is, for lack of a better term, the way of the future?

Greg Zeschuk: I think it definitely is. I saw this one really great example, you put a videogame controller in the hands of someone who has never played a videogame before, and they’re lost. They can’t do anything. Then you give them a Pac-Man controller, and it’s easy. And then you give them the opportunity to swing a tennis racket with a Wii controller, and that works too. It’s really just obvious that the thing preventing us from branching into a broader audience is the interface, is the ability of how you access the content. All the stuff this year has been really interesting, because everyone’s got the same idea, which is the right idea for breaking down the barrier and expanding the audience.

Ray Muzyka: I think it’s two dimensions. One is breaking down the barrier, the interface barrier for lack of a better way of describing it. The other one is actually seamless emotional engagement. Making people feel something emotionally on a deep level the same way novels, cinema, movies, television…the very best of other artforms in the field can. If you can do both things, then I think games have the potential to be one of the most powerful forms of entertainment and art, because of the fact that they’re interactive and you’re the actor and you’re having the experience. But both things are essential to be successful.

Q: We recently spoke with Lars Buttler of Trion, who is pushing the idea of server-side MMOs…

Ray Muzyka: Like where the world changes based on player choices?

Q: Yeah. How do you guys feel about that?

Ray Muzyka: I think it’s an exciting concept. It’s nice to know that your choices have consequences, and that’s something that BioWare has been trying to put into all its games as well. We want the player to feel like their choices have momentous impact on a personal level and on a grand level as well. So that makes the world feel that much more alive and interactive and fulfilling.

Greg Zeschuk: I think there’s another dimension to that. If you have a server that exists separately from the game client, it actually allows you to interact with it with all sorts of clients. You can go in there with an iPhone, with a PC, with a console.

Ray Muzyka: Network interoperability.

Greg Zeschuk: Yeah, and all of these things actually create a new dimension of play.

Q: Do you think a good, meaningful story is possible in an ever-changing world that all users can change?

Ray Muzyka: I think a great story is possible, because if you think about it, the narrative is actually possible in multiple directions. There’s a social narrative between players, there’s the external narrative outside of the game with social networking. And then there’s the internal narrative of the choices you make, and then there’s the internal narrative of the story arch being created and kind of evolving over time, both on the player’s user-generated content and the way they make choices and their impact on the world, but also the developers actually create a story arch that has some kind of purpose or overarching goal to it. So you can look at it almost like an onion with multiple layers of narrative, and that’s one of the reasons why I think interactive fiction is so exciting, because it has those multiple layers that aren’t really possible or as achievable in a more passive, linear medium. They can have good stories as well, but I think there are different kinds of narratives that are deeply exciting, in some ways more exciting, in non-linear fiction.

Q: There’s obviously, as we’ve discussed, a growing trend of trying to grow the gaming audience. A lot of it has to do with hardware, for now, but do you think narrative in games, just by their nature, can grow the gaming audience?

Greg Zeschuk: They definitely do. Story is the most common, fundamental thing that we all share. It’s there from the beginning of human time, sitting around the campfire telling stories is an entertainment form. Movies are an extension of that, and games are now becoming an extension of that. I think it’s exciting to see where we are right now, because the technology is getting to the point where barriers are being broken down, and we are able to explore stories in different ways. For us, it’s gotten to the point where it’s real. You’re looking at these characters that are believable, and you can actually engage with them. It’s exciting because I think we’re past infancy, we’re in the toddler stage now. In the past ten years we’ve gone from really tiny pixely characters to Commander Shepard. Ten more years, who knows. It’s crazy.

Q: You are very much a story-driven company as far as your creative output. But your output is also – correct me if I’m wrong – almost entirely sci-fi and fantasy. Is it too soon to have more contemporary stories in games?

Ray Muzyka: No. We’re interested in a variety of settings. We’ve already pursued a few different ones too. Jade Empire was very different for example from Mass Effect or Dragon Age. We are interested in contemporary settings. We haven’t announced anything on that front, but it’s safe to say that we think it’s rich with possibility as well.

Q: I guess what I’m getting at is, when do we get to the point where there’s for example a romantic, story-driven game on a sort of AAA scale?

Greg Zeschuk: The romantic comedy in game form?

Q: Yes, exactly.

Greg Zeschuk: That’s a great question. I think we’re actually getting to the point where the acting is almost there. We talk a certain amount internally about whether you need to have combat as part of the experience. Are there possibilities to actually start separating pieces of the game and actually tailor it to the audience? Certainly the core gaming experience, folks that are used to playing games over the last ten years, they want to have those battle moments, and the fighting. But there are different audiences that would maybe just enjoy the story. I think it’s actually possible. I think the interesting thing about it too is I don’t know if it’s even necessarily a technology thing. I think once we’ve got the breadth of audience available to us, there could be really good opportunities created by different people coming to games that are story-driven. And primarily, that’s the main thing.

Q: So it seems like you’re saying it’s too soon for that.

Greg Zeschuk: No, I think we’re pretty much getting there right around now.

Ray Muzyka: I think you look at the last 20, 30 years of the industry, saying the videogame industry took off in the 80s, where we are now is almost like the mid-point of maturation of the industry. It’s almost like we finally got our camera built in the movie sense. It took a long time, decades in the movie industry, where we went from black and white to talkies to the point where we actually started to get rich acting and direction and the subtle moves of camera and things like that that are now accepted practices. From that point on the industry just flourished, and I think the videogame industry is at that point now where you’re going to start to see this blossoming of all kinds of really cool, multiple dimensions of different kinds of settings and genres and kinds of characterisation as the gaming industry moves from early adopters to early mainstream, to the mainstream who are now embracing games as their main form of entertainment. It’s exciting to be in the industry at this time particularly with something as compelling as emotion and engaging narrative. For BioWare that’s our vision, to really create these stories and characters that people believe in and they get emotional reactions to. They feel something. We’re excited about it.

Q: Can you tell a meaningful story in a game without any text or dialogue?

Ray Muzyka: Sure. You can have different kinds of narrative there outside dialogue and characterisation as well. If you look at a game like BioShock, a lot of the narrative delivery there was exciting to us because it was delivered through the environments and interactions and how the character experienced the world, which was pretty neat. We were inspired by that, and are trying to do more and more of that ourselves. We did before, but we’re looking more closely as there are other ways to deliver narrative in games. And frankly sometimes the more subtle ones are the more powerful, the ones that leave a lot to the imagination. So it’s almost gone full-circle from the old text adventure games back in the 80s where there was a lot left to the imagination in terms of what things look like to now where we have some dialogue and some text sometimes but it feels like you’re wandering through a real environment, whether it’s a fantasy or science fiction world, or through China, or whatever setting it is that we’ve created for players. If you can make it feel like it’s natural and seamless, then the possibilities are only really limited by your imagination.

Q: Have you seen much of the sort of indie experiments in telling story through gameplay? Have you seen Passage, for example?

Ray Muzyka: No, I don’t think I have. There’s a lot of experimental design by students, like at GDC with the Student Showcase, there’s a lot of really good stuff there. I try to make a point of checking that out every year just to see what they’ve come up with. That fresh perspective just shocks your sensibilities. And that’s one of the exciting things about games as well, with new platforms like iPhone and handheld and browser-based games, there’s a lot more opportunity to drive narrative in new ways.

Q: If you can narrow it down to just one thing you’d like to see happen in this industry soon, what would that be?

Greg Zeschuk: I’d probably have Star Wars: The Old Republic out. That would be the one thing. That’s my answer. (laughter)

I mean, I’m sort of facetious about that, but at the same time, I think it’s interesting because I think it’s really going to surprise people. You play it, and it’s interesting because you can really easily solo the game, or you can play in multiplayer. And the solo experience, the character acting, the dialogue flow is like Mass Effect, and you completely forget you’re playing an online game. And then your buddy shows up and you’re like, oh yeah! Hey, let’s do this together now. It’s really interesting because it sort of breaks new barriers. For us in many ways it’s the next evolution of storytelling, of sharing these stories and having the flexibility of playing together and sharing these stories.

Q: Ray? What would you like to see?

Ray Muzyka: I think this goes back to the original question of what are the things we need to do to really nail the experience for the mass market audience in games. One of them is removing the barrier of entry, with things like seamless control systems, or ways to enable you to play games in ways we haven’t thought of and are still learning how to do. And the other is really getting that emotional engagement there through the content. So it’s a hardware issue and a content delivery issue. If you can solve both those things, I think then you can actually make truly emotionally-engaging narrative where whatever setting you choose, it will feel right. It will feel like there is an aspiration there, that people will want to get into that fiction. I think we’re there, I think we’re very close.

Q: The industry has this classic discussion what seems like every year at GDC of how to tell an engaging story while giving the player a sense of freedom, how to tell the story you need to tell without holding the player still. Obviously you guys have gone to great lengths to approach breaking through that barrier, but do you feel like there is more to be done?

Ray Muzyka: Yeah, it’s an artform, really. You have to do it in a way that…you really don’t want the player to be aware that they’re even going through a pre-made story world. But of course there has to be one if you want them to have a pre-constructed experience. You can have a free-form open-world exploration game, where you don’t maybe need as much pre-made story, and that’s valid. But I think it’s cool to merge both together, where you have a lot of open world exploration, and that’s one of the pillars in our games. But you also have story, and that’s another of the pillars in our games. If you can merge them together and kind of guide the experience with a very gentle hand that allows players to kind of go off the beaten path and then come back to it, then they feel like they have freedom. And that’s one of the benefits of games, is that nonlinear freedom of interaction.

Thanks gamesindustry.biz for the great interview. Later this week I will be running down the top 5 best Bioware games ever in a spcial feature to the beloved developer. Stay tuned.

Source: A former employee’s resume spotted by the online game-info crate-digger behind the Superannuation blog.

What we heard: BioWare is a busy company. Besides this fall’s high fantasy role-playing game Dragon Age: Origins, the Edmonton, Alberta-headquarted developer is prepping the high sci-fi role-playing game Mass Effect 2, which scored a GameSpot E3 2009 Editors’ Choice Award. Another winner was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the massively multiplayer RPG from BioWare’s Austin, Texas, studio. To help out, the company also recently opened a branch inside the Montreal campus of its corporate parent, Electronic Arts.

This week, information surfaced that the prestigious shop may be working on yet another all-new IP. During one of its semiregular sweeps of the Internet, Superannuation picked up on the resume of a developer who worked as the “Principle [sic] Lead Designer” of “an unannounced ‘AAA’ project” at BioWare.

The designer left just this past April–long after the existence of all BioWare’s current games were made public–meaning the title is likely still under wraps. He described his work on the project thusly: “Responsibilities include[d] the creation of a new IP and managing a team of designers, writers and level designers.” (Emphasis added.)

The official story: Multiple requests for comment sent to BioWare had not been answered as of press time.

The Turtle is very excited about this folks and I can only hope that we hear something about it before the year is out. I will peak my head out of my shell and let you turtle-heads know if I hear anything else.Stay Tuned.

BioWare takes the opportunity to reveal the full system requirements for the PC edition of the upcoming RPG, Dragon Age: Origins. Check it out:

Windows XP Minimum Specifications

OS: Windows XP with SP3
CPU: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.4Ghz or greater
AMD X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8Ghz or greater
RAM: 1GB or more
Video: ATI Radeon X850 128MB or greater
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Windows Vista Minimum Specifications

OS: Windows Vista with SP1
CPU: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.6Ghz or greater
AMD X2 (or equivalent) running at 2.2GHZ or greater
RAM: 1.5 GB or more
Video: ATI Radeon X1550 256MB or greater
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy) 20 GB HD space

Recommended Specifications

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz Processor or equivalent
RAM: 4 GB (Vista) or 2 GB (XP)
Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

The Turtle can not wait for this one folks! Very excited

In this special E3 demo, we get some hands-on time with the console version of Dragon Age: Origins, and we check out its sexier side.

EA has been more than generous with the upcoming BioWare role-playing game Dragon Age: Origins. Since the game was announced late last year, we’ve been privy to numerous hands-on sessions, covering the game’s combat, character development, adventure parties, and even a siege. So it was no surprise that EA has managed to pull a new rabbit out of the hat at this year’s E3. In a behind-closed-doors session at EA’s booth, Dragon Age: Origins lead designer Mike Laidlaw demoed previously unseen gameplay footage and a short hands-on session on the Xbox 360 that, far from the blood and gore that we’ve seen before, showed off the game’s more romantic side and gave us a chance to test the game’s console control scheme for the first time.

As we’ve learned before, Dragon Age: Origins is a fantasy-themed RPG that sees you take on the role of a Grey Warden to lead the fight on the humans’ side against an invading horde of creatures called the Blight. The demo that we were shown was designed to let us in on a couple of secrets: firstly, it’s not all about bloodshed; secondly, there are dragons in the game, and you do get to fight them (and ride them for a little bit). We started out at our Grey Warden’s party camp, where we were introduced to Leliana, a red-haired, soft-hearted citizen of a lower class who is madly in love with us. It seems that each character that you are allowed to interact with has his or her own personality, which you must work with to build a particular kind of relationship. To tease her, we go over to Morrigan’s tent, a young sorceress who likes to flirt. After giving her a gift and acquiring points for your leadership and magic skills, she invites you into her tent. Here you have the option to go in or return to Leliana, who is no doubt watching you with bated breath. This is just one of the many moral decisions that you’ll have to make along the way; although these moral decisions are not marked in any way, they become obvious in the dialogue that you have with different characters in the game. If you happen upon a group of thieves, your party will leave the decision of their fate in your hands.

In this case, our Grey Warden decided that he wanted to see what’s inside Morrigan’s tent. Inside, a cutscene reveals us embracing a near-naked Morrigan, who is moaning and panting. As the two kissed, the game demo cut off, and we were told that we’d have to wait to see the full build to know what happens next (but we can guess). We’re told that this scene occurs hours into the game, at a point in which our Grey Warden has put a lot of time and effort into building these relationships with those around him. No doubt it’s harder than it looks, but we couldn’t help but notice how easy it was to convince Morrigan to sleep with us. After this scene, our Grey Warden heads back out to the campsite, where Leliana has seen everything and demands an explanation. Again, you must make a moral choice: soothe Leliana and agree to be her man, or ditch her and go back to the fiery Morrigan. We chose Leliana, and score game points for relationships and love.

We were then shown a part of the game earlier in time than the first sequence, in which our Grey Warden encountered and fought a dragon. The battle took place in a field of grass where members of our traveling party joined us against the dragon. The dragon, as can be expected, breathed fire and was hard to take down, even with five people using swords, arrows, and magic against it. Given that you can switch to and between up to four members of your party at any one time, our Grey Warden used this opportunity to switch to a sorceress, who is able to shape-shift. Once playing as the sorceress, we turned into a giant spider that was small enough to get beneath the dragon and bite its legs. As this was happening, we switched to our Grey Warden again, who was able to use the sorceress’s distraction to jump on the dragon’s back and drive a sword through its eye, finally killing it.

After the demo, we had some hands-on time with an early stage of the game on the Xbox 360. This was the first time we’ve seen this game on a console, so we paid close attention to the control scheme. Our objective in this short session was to find a particular item with another member of our party. We walked through a forest, encountering and collecting items, before coming across a wolf and a cave containing giant spiders in a fight. You can assign six different weapons to your control scheme, pressing the X, Y and B buttons to access them, and A to use them. But the combat here proved very slow. Pressing A near an enemy seemed to do nothing. It was only when we were under heavy attack and standing almost under an enemy that our weapons finally worked. Holding down the left trigger let us switch between weapons, whereas the right trigger brought up the weapons menu, which shows you what weapons you have at your disposal. There is also a stealth mode that you can access if your skill set allows for it by pressing the X button. A is also for using items, and collecting and storing them in your inventory.

Dragon Age: Origins is shaping up to be an impressive and dynamic RPG with loads of combat and character development. We also received confirmation of its release date. It will be out October 20 on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC simultaneously.

Top 10 mmo’s all time

1.Everquest- Since it’s release in march of 1999 it has defined the genre of what we call MMO’s. The WOW of it’s day.Everquest has had far reaching influence from WOW to it’s own sequel EQ2. No other MMO has had the impact on the industry as EVERquest.Spawning countless spin offs on multiple platforms and across all media. Now running in it’s 10th year and showing no signs of stopping.This really is the number one.

http://everquest.station.sony.com/

2.Ultima Online-The grand-daddy of all graphical mmo’s. Released even before the mighty Everquest (1997) Ultima Online was the first mmo to reach 100,000 subscribers. Ultima online is a sandbox type game allowing the player to create craft train and fight. The game is noteworthy for it’s PvP.It is still played today by thousands of players.

http://www.uoherald.com/news/

3.Asheron’s Call- Some would  agrue for this to be the number one spot on our list. Boasting highly original monsters and game design this ancient game is still running today with a rabid fan-base. Many elements of Asheron’s Call were radically different from most mmo’s including a world that was not divided into level zones. Also the character’s level doesnt determine the out come of a battle but the skill and gear of the player does. (At the time that was unique) The Vassal system was a great addition as well. Asheron’s Call was and is a more complex offering than most other games on the market.

http://ac.turbine.com/

4.World of Warcraft- World of Warcraft. What can be said about the 800 pound gorilla of MMO’s. Played by more than 11.5 million people today, even after being on the market for 5 years now, this game is an unstoppable force in the industry. Hardcore gamers and Hardcore MMOers may scoff at having this game at  number 4 but it deserves it.  Blizzard does what they always do in game design. They take a genre that people like and polish it, make it run on anything and make it accessible to everyone. MMO’s before Warcraft were looked at as a more hardcore, elitist genre occupied by uber gamers with uber amounts of time to spend on them. Warcraft removed alot of the time sinks required by most MMO’s. World of Warcraft has opened the doors for a new generation of MMOers. They brought in people who have never gamed much less MMOed.That is the sign of something special. WOW indeed.

http://worldofwarcraft.com

5.Dark Age of Camelot- DAoC is still the Turtles pick for how to do PvP in an mmo right. It was not a free for all but a structured world were Realms fought Realms and what you did in player combat mattered. The game stuck a little too close to the fantasy staples in PvE but the classes, the world and the combat was and is still a cut above what many games,including Mythic’s own Warhammer(sorry fans), attempt today. If you like PvP and have not played Dark Age of Camelot do it now. Seriously go do it.Now. GO!

http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/

6.Final Fantasy IX- Bringing the detail of the Final Fantasy universe to the mmo space was a challenging task but one that Square was able to do. Not only on the PC but also onto consoles. The game is a grouping mmo all the way and makes to bones about it. Solo friendly it is not but that is a design choose that has served them well.With the recent reveal of FFXIV online the future of this game could be in trouble.

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml

7.City of Heroes- The first real super hero MMO came out and from the begining became the darling of the MMO world. With the best character creation system on the market you were really able to create the super hero of your comic geek dreams.The mission structure is perfectly contructed like you are playing a comic book. With the addition of the Villians game and user generated content this game still has legs but is going to see formitable competition from the likes of Champions Online and DC universe Online.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/

8.Runescape-Arguably the second biggest MMO in the world with a reported 8.5 million players. What is amazing about that number is they have no players in Asia. The area that encompasses the most of Blizzards WOW subs. This is the largest free to play mmo in the world. Featuring realtime combat and no classes to pick when creating a character. Players are given freedoms that many pay to play games cant offer. Running in Java the game runs on basically any computer which, I am sure, does’nt hurt it’s numbers.Runescape,like Everquest and WOW, is responsible for thousands of gamers being introduced into the world of MMO’s.

http://www.runescape.com/

9.EVE- Hands down the best space/sim mmo on the planet. With a depth that scares lesser gamers this MMO is a masterpiece of design and execution.More of a true virtual world than most games. With great politics and graphics you really feel a sense of immersion not felt in other games. The developer CCP is one of the best developers of MMO’s ever. They are a company that takes the concerns of their players serious. If you have not played EVE go do so right now!

http://www.eveonline.com/

10.Guild Wars-I know alot of people do not consider Guild Wars to be a ‘real MMO’ but I think it. You play on line,group with other people, do quests, it has PvE and PvP it has classes and skills and dungeons. I say if Dungeons and Dragons Online is an MMO than so is Guild Wars. What makes Guild Wars such a great game was how many things about standard MMO’s they took a chance to change. Sure the level cap was too low but with a new game released every so often,which could be played without the one before it new content was not a problem. They took a chance with no subscription fee and it payed off selling millions. They added the ability to hire party members if you did not have friends to play with. They took a chance with making everything outside of towns instanced so that you and yours could go adventure with griefers or wait. The highly anticipated Guild Wars 2 will be coming soon and looks to follow in the footsteps of the first games.

http://www.guildwars.com/

Well there you have it friends. Blueturtlecafe’s list of the top ten MMO’s of all time. There were some notable selections left off the list and a couple honorable mentions that I list below. There were also some arguments as to the placement of some of these either higher or lower but in the end I am happy with the list. Any comments are highly encouraged and please, let the Turtle know what your top ten list is in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Honorable mentions:

1. Star Wars Galaxies- if it had stayed the way it was before the changes it would be in the Turtle’s top 5 but after the changes it does not make it to the top ten.Still if your a die-hard Star Wars fan you should at least experience it.

2.Everquest 2- Say what you will about this ’sequel’ but the amount of content in this game is staggering. Plus the variety of locals and the quality of the sound and graphics for a 5 year old game is still on par with the best out there. With more voice overs than anyother MMO out today, this game was a little ahead of it’s self and had the dubious honor of releasing so close to World of Warcraft.
3.Lineage 2- This game has alot of content and alot of options for the player to experience. If only the game was not so grind heavy.

4. Lord of the Rings Online- Great production values, solid game mechanics and possibly the best Lore of any game out there.  A solid, if uninspired, AAA MMO.

5. Neverwinter Nights- I know this is not an MMO but Neverwinter Nights allowed the player to create an mini MMO with the Aurora toolset that Bioware provided. Hundreds if not thousands of persistant world servers are around and played today. Providing everything a commercial MMO has to offer. With recent rumors of a possible NWN MMO being released in 2011 (as the Turtle was kind enough to let you know about   Those fans may yet get their wish of a true Neverwinter Nights MMO.

6. Vanguard- After one of the worst launches in MMO history this game has actually been able to pull itself up and dust off most of those nasty bugs and become a solid MMO experience. With a huge, non-instanced world, a ton of classes and races and flying mounts this game is one of the best pure group dungeon cralwers around today.

finally..7. Age of Conan- This game is another MMO that suffered from a bad launch. It has made great strides to please it’s fans and has since added alot of the promised features at launch. With arguably the best graphics in the genre and a brutal in your face type of realtime combat it offers a different take on the standard fantasy mmo.

Well thats all for now Turtle-heads I will be back next week with the next top 10 list so stay tuned and please feel free to leave your comments!

A couple of weeks ago, we posted word that recent Atari acquisition Cryptic Studios was working on breathing life into several Atari legacy titles. Now we’ve got a few more details to share.

Sources tell us that the developer is working on a massively multiplayer online (MMO) version of “Neverwinter Nights” with an eyed 2011 release.

Details about the project are unavailable, naturally, as it is an unannounced title. But this reportedly was the primary reason Atari was interested in acquiring Cryptic late last year. (The developer is currently working on “Champions Online” and “Star Trek Online”.)

Based on the third edition Dungeon and Dragons rules, “NWN” is a well-loved franchise. The first installment of the role-playing game was developed by fan-favorite Bioware in 2002. A sequel, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, came out in 2006 to slightly less favorable, but still solid, reviews.

Part of what made the game unique was its robust multiplayer component. Many players built persistent worlds, capable of hosting up to 75 players – in essence, mini MMOs of their own.

The new game represents a very big bet for Atari – perhaps as big as the company’s continued existence.

MMOs take a lot of time to develop properly and cost a lot of money to create. And Atari’s cashflow problems are well known. The company could currently be financing the game with the recent sale of its of a sales, marketing and retail distribution business to Namco Bandai.

Once it’s finished, though, things get even harder, as the “Neverwinter Nights” MMO will face some stiff competition.

“World of Warcraft” holds the dominant position in the MMO genre by a country mile, with over 10 million subscribers. The MMO graveyard is filled with titles that have tried to go up against it (see “The Matrix Online,” “Tabula Rasa,” etc.)

Additionally, with Bioware now owned by Electronic Arts, the company will not have any hand in the game’s creation, which could cause doubt among the franchise’s fans.

The Turtle is a huge fan of Neverwinter Nights. The first game is my all time favorite rpg and I am very excited if not a bit hesitant about this one.

What say you? Does a “Neverwinter Nights” MMO hold appeal for you? And does Bioware’s lack of involvement make you wary? Sound off in the comments below.

Here’s my latest Neverwinter Nights module, “The Two Princes of Heart and Head.” The mod introduces players to the kingdom of Rosaceae, a nation targeted for destruction by its neighbors and whose beloved monarch lies sick on his deathbed. To rescue the land and its people the player will have to unravel a complex web of shadowy love affairs, childhood regrets, and political intrigue.

Download Neverwinter Nights: The Two Princes of Heart and Head