Nintendo apologizes for their E3 Media Briefings - As they should! Hmmph! Okay, it wasn’t THAT bad but it was pretty lackluster and definitely aimed at a bizarre market. Satoru Iwata comes right out and states “If there is any perception that Nintendo is ignoring the core gamers, it’s a misunderstanding and we really want to get rid of that misunderstanding by any means,” Iwata said. “We are sorry about [the E3] media briefings…”

Champions Online Trailer - Lots of gameplay that I think looks incredibly boring.

ESA reveals that E3 will return in 09 - Good. I think E3 is a solid convention and we could use less near-useless fan-service and more serious informative events. Those who dislike the new E3 are either the big cash cows who could afford the old BS or punks looking for free t-shirts and posters.

Funcom stock is tanking - I wonder why?

EA CEO says investors don’t care about quality - DUH! That’s business. It’s not exclusive to EA. It has no bearing on their games. It’s simply the mindset of business. They care about earnings per share. To them your character and what he can do in-game means nothing. However, if the leadership of a company can provide a plan that both leads to quality and profit then everyone can be happy. PS: Players are not investors. We are consumers.

DemiGod Trailer - DotA but better… Where do I sign up?!

WAR Ships Sept. 23 (in stores Sept 24) - Thanks for Squigbert for this one. Looks like further evidence that we are indeed going to be playing WAR by late September.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I think I’m going to like this new mini-feature because I’ll be able to comment on a broader scope of topics much more regularly. By all means link to something you found interesting over the past few days. We’ll see how it goes.

Civ Revolution on the 360

I finally found another console game that I can sit down and enjoy for hours on end! Graev and I have owned Civilization Revolution since it released on the Xbox 360 July 9th, except I never bothered to play it because I’ve been so busy. Yesterday I found a block of time with nothing else to do so I sat down and decided to give Civ Revolution a try. Short version: I love it! Long version: It’s a lot more user friendly than the past version I’ve played on the PC. The first thing I noticed was how the game requires less micromanaging. You’re not having to worry about the health or happiness of your civ - yay. I’m also enjoying the graphics. There’s something about them that feels slightly more light-hearted and less serious; if you’ve played it you know what I mean.

In my game yesterday that lasted about three hours I was playing as Genghis Khan, leader of the Mongolians, against Queen Elizabeth of England, Shaka of the Zulu, Isabella of Spain, and some really whiny Aztec guy who kept threatening me if I didn’t teach him the alphabet he would crush my backwards people into the ground. Hah! It was because of this annoying Aztec man that I decided to play for a domination victory which requires me to take all the enemy palaces in military combat. Just my style actually. I decided to start off slowly and do a lot of exploring and early expanding in order to get a strong economy going. It actually worked really well. I had more gold the entire game than I could spend even if I wanted to. Where I was strugglign though was in my research options. I wasn’t really paying attention to what research trees I was following and before I knew it I had a bunch of smart people with no means of defending themselves.

England took advantage of this weakness and sent a massive army my way. It took me by surprise because I was playing on easy mode! Easy mode ai isn’t supposed to send armies! They’re supposed to sit there and look dumb while I invade. This encounter with England forced me to pay attention and I teched up to gunpowder very quickly. By now though everyone had realized my weakness and began demanding I give over my technology and knowledge or be crushed. Since I’ve never been good at sharing, you can imagine how many enemies I made. I lost four out of seven cities within minutes and all was about lost until my army of rifleman was done. They alone pushed back England’s archers and simple medieval mace men back to their palace where I smashed them into pieces. By now several of my rifleman armies were complete and I began work on Knights and Catapults. (I know right? Knights and catapults when I have Rifleman, heh).

Suddenly the peace offerings were starting to flow in and I decided the charade was over. I declared war on all of them and kept my people under my iron fist of despotism. To war! It wasn’t long before my military units had seen enough battle to get them several upgrades. I had Ninja catapults and Ninja rifleman (Ninja means they’re extra good at attacking cities) and lightning (2x actions per round) artillery and all that good stuff.

Very fun game! I can’t wait to get online and play against others in the multiplayer mode over Xbox Live. I’m a little worried about how long people will take on their turns since the entire game is turn based. There will probably be a time limit though.

Definitely check out Civ Revolution on the 360 if you like these types of games. It’s good old fashion fun.

Turns out two of the guys were from High Voltage Software and were giving the other two guys (who happened to be media) a preview and hands on of The Conduit. They turned to us and said “Hey, feel free to watch and check it out” as they got everything setup and going. At the time I had absolutely no idea what this game was about but I decided to watch anyway while one of the guys from High Voltage Software began playing. Immediately I realized how amazing the graphics were for it being on the Wii. Second I noticed how incredibly cool the weapons and gameplay appeared to be. Third I realized how awesome the control customization is in the game. Then I had to know more.

It turns out that the guys did not have any floor space or room in the Convention Center. They were showing the game at one of the hotels nearby which actually was not all the uncommon - even Bioware was showing Dragon Age: Origins at the Sheraton. Anyway, the guy from HVS told us all about the game and was incredibly down to earth and quite the opposite of some of these devs who think a bit much of themselves. Truthfully when I first saw these guys I thought they were media because they had that “you’re one of us guys” air about them.

The gist of The Conduit is that it’s a classic alien invasion story where you’re trying to save Washington DC from an invasion. No wait, don’t stop reading! I know what you’re thinking but trust me it’s not as cliche as it sounds. Here’s a quick rundown of the story:

In the near future, Washington, D.C begins to experience several strange phenomena. A mysterious flu-like virus, “The Bug,” sweeps through the region, causing high-security buildings to be left understaffed as government workers stay home to try to avoid catching the disease. Months after the initial outbreak, a terrorist attack destroys part of Washington Monument, and only weeks afterwards on September 11, a presidential candidate is assasinated by another terrorist cell disguised as her Secret Service detail, heightening national tensions.

Following these alarming events, a secretive organization known as the Trust realizes that the capital has become the epicenter for an extraterrestrial attack by an alien race identified as the Drudge. “John Adams,” the enigmatic commander of the Trust, directs a newly inducted Trust agent codenamed “Mr. Ford” to infiltrate the area and find the truth behind the sudden attack. Along the way, Mr. Ford must overcome the onslaught of the Drudge, a group of traitor Trust members led by a man calling himself “Prometheus,” and virus-infected humans under the Drudge’s control. In the end, Mr. Ford will discover the horrifying truth of how far the conspiracy reaches.

The game is using the Quantum3 Engine which allows the game to utilize pipelines and shaders and… well it makes it look like a game that belongs on the Xbox 360 or PS3 while still being exclusive for the Wii. The weapons that we got to see were some of the best thought up out there. One gun in particular uses these glowing orbs and the guy peels back this layer of alien skin or something and puts a new orb in to reload. The animation was really cool. Another one of the guns apparently needs grubs or slugs or something else really alienish. One gun in particular sounds very cool - it has two crosshairs and when you fire it sends out two projectiles. If one sticks into something (or someone) you can use the motion controls of the Wii to get the other crosshair’s projectile to wrap around. We were also told that The Conduit has all the usual machine guns.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this game. For the first time ever I might actually enjoy a Wii shooter.

Special thanks to creative directors Eric Nofsinger and Matt Corso for being in the right place at the right time - the E3 makeshift cafeteria - and giving me the opportunity to learn about your fantastic game.

Recommended material if this sounds interesting:
IGN’s E3 preview of The Conduit
The Conduit manual pictures
The Conduit Trailer

When asked about the reasons for taking out the cities and essentially the content with them, Mark explained to me that the cities which were removed had not even been developed as living cities like The Inevitable or Altdorf. “They were just cities with NPCS, auction houses, banks, that sort of thing. They weren’t the focus of RvR in the way they are now”, Mark said while describing the state of the removed content. This is a huge misconception that I believe drives most of the confusion for people. Back before the living cities system was thought up the capital cities were going to be nothing more than better looking cities. Mark explains their transition saying, “What we decided to do was, what if we took the cities to the next level. These cities have so much more content than the original cities that multiplying by three doesn’t cut it. These cities have somewhere near 100 quests each either leading to them, in them, or leading out of them. We weren’t going to have that before. They have rvr, public quests, and dungeons centered around them.”

If it isn’t clear yet, the cities removed from the game were never going to adopt the living city model. So, in reality, we didn’t lose any content. Mark clarifies this exact statement by saying, “People said we were going to cut out content; One guy said we were cutting out 2/3 of our content. But wait a second, this is the end game. All the tiers were in tact 1-4 and the only thing we cut out was a city that was originally going to be there to be sacked. We never talked about doing all these other things with the city”. Mark went on to say something that I really feel says it all: “I’ll happily cut 2 cities that you can run around in on each side for one massive city with tons of new content, more than we would have had before, where RvR is centered around the city. That is an absolute no brainer.” [Read the full article]

That clears things up 100% for me as to why they cut the cities and I hope that people can finally understand and move on.  You’ll find Mark’s thoughts on the classes as well as balance and the open group system in there as well.  If I can find the time I’ll transcribe the entire interview in Q/A format for you guys.

Thanks again to Mark Jacobs.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Hodges, Product Manager of Jumpgate Evolution, to discuss NetDevil’s upcoming mmorpg set in the great expanse of space. Since the game is still deep in the alpha stages of development, it’s not uncommon for fans ofmmo’s to know little or nothing about Jumpgate Evolution. There are three main nations or factions in the game: The Solrain Commonwealth, a people corrupted by greed and the thirst for power; The Quantar Paths, a spiritual people united by the fundamental belief that human destiny lies among the stars; and the Octavian Empire, best described as the “Klingons” of Jumpgate as Tim put it. …

One of the most intriguing features in Jumpgate Evolution is the twitch based combat system. Players will be able to engage in dogfights and employ tactics usually reserved for action games. One such tactic was briefly showcased for us when Tim Hodges took his fighter up against a battle station and out maneuvered the barrage of attacks with his ship’s agile nature. Although we were only shown a small fighter ship in our preview, we were told that several classes of ships such as shuttles, fighters, light fighters, haulers, and even larger ships are in the works. This should make for amazing space battles where the larger ships run block allowing for the smaller fighters move in. When asked how players will gain access to these better ships we were told about the licenses system which acts as one of the several forms of character progression in JE. [Read the full article]

Both Graev and I were really impressed with Jumpgate Evolution.  It’s one of those games that you can see in person and know immediately how much potential it has so long as the developers don’t screw it up.  Know that feeling?  You can look at a game and say “woah, that’s cool!  Now if they did THIS it would be perfect!”.  I had those feelings several times while checking out the game.  One example of the potential is in the twitch based combat.  It truly is a free moving space ship fighter game where you can get into dogfights and go against big space station-like deathstar feeling missions.  However, right now in development it lacks the subtle details that could make it great.

One detail in particular is Graev’s idea for them to make it ever so slightly more sim.  If players could transfer power from weapons to shields or shields to engines or give their weapons more power then not only does the game become more dynamic while keeping the relative ease of accesibility to new players, but it becomes a heck of a lot more interesting as well.  What if you were being chased in a dogfight and couldn’t shake the enemy?  Then put power to the aft shields!  What if you’re needing to get away?  Power to the engines!  The system could naturally balance itself because you are literally making other systems weaker to boost one.

Tons of potential here again with ships.  Ships right now have a single health bar and take general damage.  That could prove to be a very good thing or a terrible thing in the long run.  When pressed for information and questioned about adding weak spots to ships they were hesitant to say much more than “we’ll look at that in beta”.  Hopefully their desire to keep the game so “accessible” will not be their undoing.

From what we saw of the battles there is tons of potential for big and “epic” pvp fights with huge ships running block for smaller fighters.  This could finally be that “sci-fi space dog fighter” mmo that I’ve been wanting but I’m hesitant to get too excited about it just yet.  The game is still so far from being ready  which was evident in the preview and mention of it being pre-alpha.

I have to say though, for their (once again) big emphasis on accessibility for hardware and gameplay the game looks (aesthetically) fantastic.  It’s full of color for being a space game and has a very stylized look.

Keep your eyes on this one folks, it could be really good.

I’m not claiming foul play here or anything, but it’s definitely confusing as to why the game looks one way in videos and so much better in person.  Maybe it’s just me.  I actually liked what I saw in the videos as you’ll recall.  I was just shocked how much better it really is.  Anyone else who has seen the game in person agree?

No complaints from me though.  I’m psyched at how good it looks.

It was only by chance that I even got to see Left 4 Dead let alone get hands-on time actually playing.  I had an hour to blow between appointments and was wandering the convention center looking for some interesting games being shown.  How the conventer center was setup is each publisher/company/whatever had a room of their own.  Inside these rooms the companies would have big screen HD tvs, computers, consoles, arcades, or whatever was needed to show their game setup.  There would be decor all over the rooms (which really weren’t that big at all) and at the front would be a receptionist to check people in for appointments and that sort of thing.  Oh, and each room also had tons of food and drinks that the companies would offer to anyone freely.

Back to Left 4 Dead.

Okay, I came up to the Valve room and it donned on me that I had totally forgotten about L4D!  Walking in we told the lady at the desk that we didn’t have an appointment but would like to come in and at least get a look at the game.  “Sure, No problem at all come on in!  Help yourself to some food and drinks!”  Heh heh heh.  Don’t mind if we do!

When we got into the room Valve was just beginning a demonstration of the game for four people with appointments.  The appointment basically gave you 15-20 minutes at the computers with hands-on play with a member of the Valve team instructing you on what to do.  (You can hear him describing stuff in the video.)   Valve was extremely welcoming and happy to talk about the game even with us peasant folk without an appointment.  When the appointment was over we were allowed to jump in and play while while the next appointments arrived.   Very grateful to Valve for their hospitality.

Left 4 Dead looks amazing, plays amazing, and has me extremely excited.

Graphical Improvements
• Adding lighting by hand and polishing the graphics
• Finishing the entire world before going back and touching up

Macro Customization
• They’re taking a page out of the FPS book by having silhouettes be the main identifier. (Think back to DAoC when you knew who someone was just by looking at them from a distance)
• Over 400 armor sets in the game
• “We want you to feel like you can look like your class right from the beginning” was said in reference to armor sets and various outfits your characters can wear.
• Metallic dyes will be in the game using full spectrum of color
• I asked and Adam confirmed: WHITE DYE will be in the game! They have finally figured out how to get this working properly.
• Over 114 different dye colors based on Games Workshops paints for the miniatures.

Inevitable City and general city notes
• Special NPCs will appear from the Warhammer lore as capital cities increase in status rank. We got to see a few of them and they look absolutely amazing.
• The King encounter (he looks cool by the way) will be more than simply a “tank and spank” encounter. While fighting the Chaos king you’ll see voids opening around you and the floor breaking apart with chaos swirling all around and the pillars in the room falling. Adam sounded really excited.
• Cities have level 20 and level 40 dungeons

PvE
• There are no instanced raid dungeons.
• Most dungeons are public where anyone can enter and fight but the bosses are instanced. (Adam made mention of Darkness Falls here though the details evade me)
• Most group content is designed for 6-12 people. King encounters are “one of the only” encounters that require a larger group of people. Adam expressed Mythic’s sentiment again that raiding isn’t the direction they’re going.

Mounts
• Players can get a mount of their own at level 20.
• “Rent a Mule” mounts with charges available pre 20.
• We were shown the Chaos horse (Looked freaking amazing)
• Summoned just like mounts in WoW. Open bags, clicky, poof you’re on the mount.
• Mounts can be customized with armor, colors, and that sort of thing. Think macro customization like I talked about earlier.
• Mounted Combat and Flying Mounts are not completely ruled out but they’re not something Mythic is thinking about doing right now. Definitely not at launch (duh).

RvR Notes
• NEW ADDITION TO THE GAME: RvR Fortresses. These “uber keeps” (quote from Adam) of “RvR Goodness” (quote from Mark Jacobs) act as an additional barrier between players and capital cities. They have also replaced the Capital cities in the battlefronts that had theirs taken away. These will offer very interesting RvR encounters.
• A realm must capture 2/3 Fortresses to make the enemy Capital vulnerable.
• Sets of gear will be spread throughout these fortresses so players will have yet again additional sets of armor to strive for from various locations in the WAR world.

Scenarios
• We were shown Nordwatch and got to see the game in action as Adam played with real beta testers.
• The combat looked fluid, polished, and extremely fun.
• In this particular scenario Adam played a Zealot and we got to see the role of a healer in action as he healed and cast offensive magic at the enemy players.
• Adam’s Zealot was only level 2 yet he was able to hold his ground against level 7 players because of how scenario’s work - they boost player’s abilities so that everyone feels on equal footing. It was working quite well.

The Open Group System
• A new feature just introduced that will allow players to open a window and see who in their region wants more players in their group.
• Joining a “open group” is as simple as clicking the “join button”.
• The Open group window shows how far you are from the prospective group in real-time travel time.
• Can see who is in the group
• Currently no filter for groups to use (IE: Only want healers) but that is more of something you would see in the regular LFG window. Open groups truly are “open”.

UI
• Completely modable with LUA still
• Default layout editor comes with the game so that players can adjust the layout of their UI to their liking. This will never break with patches. (Hotbars are currently being worked into this system)
• UI Mods are all local to your computer
• I pushed for more information on whether or not UI mods could change the functionality of the default game and Adam went into details:

- Certian “Hooks” (modding lingo) will not be allowed
- It is inevitable that some people will get around these hooks but they’ll be taken care of.
- Nothing like WoW’s “Click to cure this automatically” or “cast this based on that”.
- “Nothing that automates gameplay at all” will be allowed.
- There will be basic macros allowed in-game.

Final thoughts

Warhammer Online looks amazing. The gameplay that we were shown would take up several pages of explanation just to do it justice. It has come a very long way since we were last shown the game at a convention. Mythic Entertainment is passionate about the game and it’s showing in the final stages of production. WAR is coming sooner than later. The NDA will drop here within just a few weeks and, baring any problems with the guild beta, open beta/release can’t be too far behind.

The Vault has published my writeup for the Warhammer Online preview at E3 2008!

“In light of the recent announcements that Mythic would be cutting four classes and four cities, we really didn’t know what to expect as we sat down to have a chat with the team from Mythic Entertainment. Going in with an open mind, we were taken on a guided tour of all the new features in WAR by Adam Gershowitz. First stop on the tour was The Inevitable City where Adam showed us several high profile characters from the Warhammer IP who will make an appearance in the game once cities reache a certain status rank. Next we were shown the King’s throne room and given a brief explanation of the fight. Players can look forward to more than a simple encounter. While fighting the Chaos king portals to other dimensions will open sucking players into the void while chaos explodes all around them and the pillars holding up the room will begin to fall all around them. These things are just a taste of what players can expect from the more prestige PvE encounters in the game.

We were then introduced to the incredible additions Mythic has made to character customization. Mythic has taken the approach of Macro Customization by taking a page out of the FPS genre where a character’s silhouette says it all. “We want you to feel like you can look like your class right from the beginning”, said Adam as he described the various sets of armor players can obtain for each and every class. Referencing Dark Age of Camelot where players could often be picked out of a crowd from a mile away simply by what they were wearing, Adam told us of Mythic’s plan to feature over 114 colors for dyes drawing inspiration from Games Workshop. And yes, White dye WILL be in the game!” - Read the full article at The Vault Network

I’ll be publishing my notes very soon that are more of a “Everything we learned about Warhammer Online from our Preview at E3″. It will be bullet point format and read easily like notes. You can expect that up within a few hours at most.

I will also be publishing the contents of my interview with Mark Jacobs soon. This is where you will find the details of exactly why they removed the cities and classes from the game (the best explanation I’ve heard yet) as well as information on the open group system and lots of other WAR goodies.

Enjoy! And please feel free to ask questions about my impressions of various aspects of the game. We were shown a lot.

I’ll start by giving you a rundown of how the day went.

Graev and I headed to the convention center a little early this morning (about 30 minutes early) to check out a few games and just chill outside of the EA room. On our way to the EA room we crossed paths with Paul Barnett and Josh Drescher! We stopped and greeted each other for a minute and then continued on to the EA room. Paul mentioned something about looking for Batman swag (I hope you got some Paul! SoE had a cool Bat signal pen). About 10 minutes later Paul and Josh walked up to the EA room and talked with us again. This time they were joined shortly after by Jeff “the” Hickman and the party was complete. This lasted about 20 minutes before it was time for us to go in for our EA appointment.

As we were entering Mark Jacobs walked up at the same time and we introduced ourselves to him. When I said to him “Hi, my name is Doug Lundberg” I didn’t see any reaction from him. Then I mentioned “I’m Keen or MeanKeenLurikeen” and I got a reaction. “Ohh, you’re Keen!” he said. Woot! Mark Jacobs knows of me. /nerd moment. After the introductions he walked us in personally to Mythic’s area of EA’s room and presented us to Adam Gershowitz. Adam spent the next 30 minutes demoing the game for us and showing us tons of great things. I’ll be writing up all those details in my article for the Vault but let me just say…. OMG the game is awesome guys. It’s come so far and words don’t describe the pure and simple joy I’m feeling that WAR is turning out to be everything I had ever hoped.

After the demo I spoke with several other devs and then was told that Mark Jacobs would answer any questions I had for him. For me this was my opportunity to get to know the guy a little bit more and ask him some of the questions that you (my readers) and the community wanted to know. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t have enough questions for him since Adam Gershowitz answered over half of them in the demonstration of the game but nevertheless my interview with mark lasted 36minutes and 15 seconds. I’ll include the info of the interview for you guys in my Vault coverage and probably take my time transcribing it for later.  I have a whole new level of respect for Mark.   He’s such the opposite of arrogant like some people think.  He’s incredibly honest and one of those people you know are “real”.  He cares about WAR - that much is unmistakable to me.   It was a pleasure getting to meet and talk to him.

After all the WAR stuff we had some time to look around at the rest of the games. I really couldn’t take my eyes off WAR except to get a demonstration of SPORE from one of the Maxis devs. ANOTHER awesome game that I’ll talk more about later when I’ve had more than 30 seconds to breathe.

I have all this information swimming in my head and I almost don’t even know where to begin. I need to sit down and get to work on my writeups that way you guys actually have information and not just me saying how awesome it all is… btw, did I mention how awesome WAR is?