Tag Archives: MMO

More art from the now-defunct Ensemble Studios Halo MMO has emerged, this time from the desk of Ensemble-contracted artist Dylan Cole. He recently posted two pieces of concept art from the videogame-heaven-bound Halo title, both of which focus on what Cole calls “Halo Universe City.”

Since “Halo Universe” is capitalized twice on Cole’s page, speculation holds that “Halo Universe” was the game’s title. Or maybe it’s not. Regardless, the concept art is quite a sight, and is well worth a look.

Shame we’ll only be looking, though, and never touching. Oh well.

Nintendo’s been bowling a near-perfect game lately, but even so, we can’t help but scratch our heads at a recent proclamation from one of its biggest moneymakers. In an interview with What They Play, Pokémon series director Junichi Masuda was asked whether or not Pikachu and his 492-mon posse might be making their way into an MMO in the near future. He responded:

“At this point, we’re not thinking of going in that direction. Trading is a core concept of Pokémon. So when you’re trading, you meet with a friend and decide which one you want and which one they want.

“I would like to emphasize real-world communication. You don’t see each other online.”

Recent Pokémon games have allowed players to trade their critters or pit them against each other in shirtless, weapon-free man-fights through the Internet’s reality-warping wizardry, so an MMO seems like a logical next step.

But then, we’re not entirely sure if designing a series about adorable cockfighting animals screams “logic” anyway. So yeah.

Realtime Worlds will looking to employ 40 good men and women be at GDC next week. Current openings are listed here.

Apparently the contract package should appeal to those wanting a position to help pay the bills without the long-term commitment–and you would have to relocate to Scotland.

“In contrast to many other companies and sectors at the moment, our biggest challenge is in recruiting staff of the caliber, and in the quantities we need”, said Realtime’s John Duthie. “Already 25% of our workforce comes from outside the UK because we aren’t able to find everyone we need here.

“Many companies have laid off large numbers of talented staff in recent months and we see GDC as a great chance to tap into that talent pool. With the economy the way it is, many people don’t want to think about committing to a permanent move, so what we’re offering is a number of contract positions for folk to come to Scotland, help us to a successful launch of APB, and then reassess their options when the economy is hopefully in better shape.

“We can take care of work permits process, relocation, housing – all anyone’s got to do is get along to our recruitment stand at GDC to kick off the process.”

You would be working on All Points Bulletin and another, currently unannounced project. The jobs come with a money, a 12-month contract, Visa costs paid, return flights paid, free quality accommodation, free healthcare, paid overtime, and paid holiday.

Wow. Fancy a move to Scotland, anyone?

Press release below.

More »

Lego Universe has been delayed, and will not be released this year as expected.

Lego is also unsure if the MMO will arrive in 2010.

“Within the company we have made a strategic decision within LEGO to make a delay of LEGO Universe. It will not be coming out in 2009,” said business development bossman, Mark Hansen.

“The reason is, we have a luxury right now, the business is going good. We have products launching that are not digital, the physical products, with them going so well we don’t want to take focus away from them.”

Lego Group’s annual earnings report will be released on Monday.

According to a post over on the World of Warcraft forums, lead designer Jeffery Kaplan will no longer be working on Blizzard’s behemoth, but will instead shift all his focus to the company’s “unannounced MMO”.

Jeffery states that he will still be involved in the future progression of WoW, but that day-to-day work on the game will no longer be part of his schedule.

“I still plan to be very involved with the future course of World of Warcraft, but will leave the day to day operations of World of Warcraft to my partners in crime, Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack,” he said.

“When all is said and done, WoW is still my favorite game. I play it every day. None of that passion is gone. If anything, it fuels the challenge of making our next MMO even better. We know we have some big shoes to fill.”

If Blizzard is pulling Jeffery off of WoW, that can only mean one of two things: the new MMO is not progressing as they had hoped it, or it’s going to be huge. More than likely the latter.

You can read his full post over on the forums.

A live event titled Night of Murder is to run in Warhammer Online from February 6-15.

The shindig is just one of many scheduled for the MMO.

Hopefully it will entice more players to return to the game, considering subscriber numbers have dropped from 750,000 to 300,000 since October 2008.

Full details are posted in the press release below.

More »

Sorry Hellgate fans – even the promise of a new expansion won’t keep your game of choice from getting the padlock treatment in 2009.

Community manager Diane “Tiggs” Migliaccio explained in a post on the official Hellgate forums:

“People are speculating and I don’t want anyone shocked on January 31, 2009 when the server and forums shut down and there is nothing.”

“Let me explain things a bit to see if it clears up any issues for you. [Expansion developer/publisher] Hanbit owns the IP and rights to publish anywhere other than the US and EU and I think the other territory is Japan. NAMCO owns the rights to publish in the US and EU.”

And that’s that. For now.

By Nathan Grayson

When asked about KOTOR’s RvR aspects and how they’ll work with respect to the game’s wildly ambitious story, lead writer Daniel Ericson said that the two will be completely intertwined.

“This is Star WARS,” he emphasized.

By Nathan Grayson

Straight from today’s KOTOR-splosion, lead writer Daniel Ericson claims that the KOTOR MMO will contain more story content than anything else BioWare has ever produced.

He reckons that gamers can even play it as a solo game (Read: not an MMO) if they so choose. Very cool.

More soon.

By Nathan Grayson

If it looks like WoW, but doesn’t play like WoW, is it inferior to WoW? No, says Warhammer Online senior designer Josh Drescher. He explained his stance to Destructoid, using the universal language of UK-influenced rock ‘n’ roll. And drugs.

“When we say we’re not competing with World of Warcraft we really do mean that. I’m going to steal something from our creative director Paul Barnett, so imagine this is coming with a Northern English accent — World of Warcraft is basically The Beatles, and if you set out to try and be The Beatles, you wind up as The Monkees. So, we really do just try and be a different type of product. We’re not trying to beat them, we’re not trying to replace them, we’re not trying to destroy them, we’re trying to be Led Zepellin.”

“We’re trying to offer you a harder, darker, heavier sort of experience. We’re trying to offer you the kind of music you’d listen to down in your basement with your friends, with a black light on and maybe some illicit substances. We are not trying to be the thing that you all slow dance to at your high school prom.”

Not a mirror image, but not a universe apart — could Mythic be onto something here?

By Nathan Grayson

NCSoft’s American president, Chris Chung, has admitted that factors such as variations in TV set-ups have made the migration of MMOs from PC to consoles a slow and painful process.

“I think there are a lot of causes that factor into good MMOs on a console,” he said. “These are elements like ‘does the person have a standard definition TV or an HDTV?’ You don’t have a good a resolution on regular TV, and a lot of games were hurting for that.”

NCSoft has a deal with Sony to develop MMOs for PlayStation 3, so it’s not surprising the whole subject is on Chung’s mind.

“Ultimately, we have to really optimize for consoles; we have to create an experience that’s suited for the [PS3] and supports the MMO element,” he added.

NCSoft is yet to release an online game for PS3. The full interview can be found here.

In this interview, Firaxis dev head Sid Meier has admitted the future may hold an MMO from the studio.

“I think someday I would like to try a game in that genre,” he said. “It really benefits from creativity and new ideas, but we’re still in the very early stages of exploring the possibilities of it. I certainly would like to play around with a MMO concept in the future.”

The interview centred on the impending release of Civilization Revolution, a console version from the long-standing strategy franchise.

In this chat with gamers on Jumpgate: Evolution, the space-based MMO newly confirmed to publication by COG, developer NetDevil has distiguished the game from CCP’s much-loved title EVE Online by saying its combat and spaceship control will be more fluid.

“Well obviously EVE is a point and click flight scenario and we’ll have free flight combat,” said a spokesperson. “That’s a large difference. Our space will contain both PVP and PVE models but we’re really not ready to release those details yet. I can say, that it will be fun.”

The game will be playable at Connect 2008 and will release for PC this year. Thanks, Blue.

Looks like the cat’s out of the bag. NetDevil’s Jumpgate MMO has been signed to Codemasters Online Gaming (COG), according to this. Sources had confirmed that the MMO to be revealed at Connect 2008 in Birmingham, UK, next month was set in space. Looks like there’s no guessing any more.

Our German isn’t so great, but in that quote COG VP Dave Solari’s saying something along the lines of, “We look forward to working with NetDevil and also in particular on launching this exciting project this year in Europe and North America.”

Way to go, Dave. Don’t blame us if our translation skills mean you were talking about something entirely different.