As previously reported, Arenanet hosted a “Designing Dynamic Events” Panel on the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, last week. Visitors had the chance to team-up with designers and journalists to create a series of quests. For those of you that don’t have the time or wish to see the whole 90 minutes of designing, the following might be interesting. Massively.com wrote a nice resume about the event. The author is not getting to deep into the details so those who’d like to get every single detail you should check out the videos or visit Timberland Falls when the game is finally released.

see the videos

read the Summary at Massively

On the official DC Universe Online Facebook page Chris Cao (Game Director) told a little about a game session with Jim Lee (comic artist) and Jens Anderson in a vlog. They were in the “Justice League of America Watch Tower” and have been fighting against escaped super villains. The fans used the opportunity to get rid of the questions they have in mind and posted them into the comments. Jens Anderson took the time and answered the questions and posted a few new details on the game.

Character creation will be ongoing throughout the game with our appearance collection system and real items with stats forming a great fusion between form and function. This means less choices upfront but more meaningful ones as you go through the game. It’s a far cry from starting in rags and a loin cloth like in fantasy MMO’s but it also isn’t a fluff fest of everything which takes away the impact of getting cool stuff in games you can show off to your friends

Jens Andersen wrote: These give you an idea of some of the features and content we have in the game. We don’t have time to make a video for every little thing we want to mention because it takes time away from getting the game done. Additionally, everytime we… show gameplay it has to get approved. In these quick videos we get an opportunity to tell you about gameplay, content and features in a format similar to an answer someone might get in an interview or at a panel at a con. I don;t all of a sudden pull some gameplay footage out of my backpocket if someone asks a Green Lantern question. They are a little more free form and informational, not meant to dazzle with video but still get some new info out to the public. For those of you who appreciate the extra info (visual or no) we’ll keep these coming. For those of you that think they are some kind of foul desert, well…don’t click on this particular video style we put out, maybe, perhaps? Just a thought.

Michael Buchanan wrote: If anyting Green Arrow has been over rated for quite some time. He has no powers and no really compelling arch enemy or origin story and yet he gets quite a bit of play in the comics and got WAY too much in Justice League Unlimited. Pairing him with Black Canary (to me) was always less about him just having a love interest and more about trying to make him halfway interesting. Without her, he’s just a preachy flower child trying to hook up with chicks while battling low rent villains and railing against corporate America.

Jens Andersen wrote: ‎@ Michael I love GA. I think the run they did where they amped up his hand to hand skills was awesome. I also really like what they are doing with him in the Brightest Day storyline. That forest in the middle of Star City where tech doesn’t function and he is an outlaw…very cool! Green Arrow has a movement power. He is, without question, an acrobat (in our game terms). He uses grapple lines and swings around, scales up buildings and leaps from roof top to roof top. In combat he attacks from all angles and reacts with agility and quickness.

Keith Powers wrote: Thats great Jens and thanks for answering.:) That being said though are you guys ever going to let us see how the character creation works? I would think in a Super Hero MMO this would be one of the first things to show off. Yet here we are… 2 months from launch and little to no info on it. Sorry if I sound asshat like it is not my intention.:)

Jens Andersen wrote: ‎We’ve talked about character creation a ton. Character creation will be ongoing throughout the game with our appearance collection system and real items with stats forming a great fusion between form and function. This means less choices …upfront but more meaningful ones as you go through the game. It’s a far cry from starting in rags and a loin cloth like in Fantasy MMO’s but it also isn’t a fluff fest of everything which takes away the impact of getting cool stuff in games you can show off to your friends. We’ve also talked in detail about the way you put characters together to form a unique hero. Weapon, Movement Mode, Super Power, Personality, Origin, Faction, Body Type, Gender, etc. The main trinity of those is weapon, power and movement mode that make the largest impact on your character up front. As for showing it, we are constantly refining the aesthetics of the UI to keep ourselves and our many partners happy with it. So, until the team gets the go ahead to show it we’re talking about the functionality, which hasn’t changed and the details are accurate, and waiting until we get the go ahead to reveal it. I can’t elaborate more than that because there aren’t any more details to share.

Will Valentine wrote: ‎>>> DCUO developers.. I am excited in hearing how much of a good time you’re having playing DCUO. It heartens me to know that things are going well and according to plan. However, there is one thing I’d like to point out and that is that n…o matter how excited or thrilled you are with how the game is developing the only true measure of how successful your progress has been is via the input of your future beta testers and gamers. So please allow enough beta testing time before release. I’ve beta tested many mmorpgs and in my experience developers don’t allow enough time for beta testing before release. This unfortunately causes for some very unhappy subscribers who want to enjoy the game experience but to only become frustrated at developers at releasing a game that just doesn’t work. It may work ok but just think how much better it would be if just that little bit of extra time had been devoted to beta testing… Peace

Jens Andersen wrote: Word Will, we agree. But also keep in mind we are an action console game and an MMO mixed together. So, we want as much beta testing as possible but we also take the best practices of console games which usually don;t run beta testing what so ever, they use internal testers. And those game’s turn out just fine.

Jens Andersen wrote: Basically what I am trying to say is that a quality game is a quality game whether or not it has 1 year of beta or 1 month. The foundation has to be there for beta testing to make a difference. Ours is there, I see it everyday. Beta testing is always helpful but only as helpful as the testers in it. If people are simply looking to play the game for free before it launches then a year long beta test won;t be much better than 1 month beta test.

Billy Thibou wrote: Problem there Jens, is that internal testers only test for coding bugs, they rarely do in depth online testing for Human Destruction aka cheaters/hackers. Making sure the lines of code run smoothly is way different from stopping everyone fr…om using the one weapon/skill that unbalances the game.I’m hoping everything goes well. I’d hate to buy this game and then quit it three months later because of poor design. And I say that because I don’t plan on or want to make Superman. I want a normal skilled guy (like, dare I say, Green Arrow?). I don’t want to HAVE to give him a movement power, HAVE to give him aan energy blast, HAVE to give him anything else to make him fun to play. These are issues that need to be balanced and implemented or else you’re gonna have Superman City on your hands. ‎

Jens Andersen wrote: @Billy My bug reports say differently sir. So I have to disagree with you there. I get plenty of bugs that are crazy off the wall things we overlooked in the data that designers need to tweak this way or that.

Will Valentine wrote: Thx for the input Jens I wholeheartedly agree with your point re internal game console testing and how games usually turn out fine. My thoughts are the difference is that with an MMO gamers are usually asked to pay for a subscription. Wh…ilst it is acceptable to put up with certain game flaws there comes a point when one would think ‘Hang on a minute i’m paying them $15 a month and these issues could have been addressed earlier or they taking too long to be addressed’ In which case let me look for another mmo that might be more complete and to my liking. Am sure you’re aware of one major mmo release this September and another mmo has an expansion coming out probably before the year end. Next year 2 more major mmos are set for release.. That’s enough of me ranting, you get my drift i’m sure

Jens Andersen wrote: Not sure what kind of thinking you are referring to. Perhaps you are focusing on my use of the word console? We test avidly on PC’s. When I say internal I do not mean onsite. We have huge multi-player battles with folks from all over th…e company located in SD, Colorado, Arizona, Seattle, Austin and other locations in the US all on the same server. The server performance is top notch. We are not in any way screwing PC gamers. My responses here were in regards to what these videos are meant to accomplish. They are brief and informational so we can keep building and testing. The game is being beta tested right now with lots of people internally, and believe me, the rest of the company is not shy about telling us what we need to adjust. hehe. Anyway, I came on to explain the style of these videos and our goals with them. So, I’ve done that, and a little more. For now I need to get back to the game and fix this bug i have with Giganta…on PC and PS3!

Bryan Manradge wrote: yep thinking all of these guys are Console players…I think they are marketing more so towards PS3 now…thats why 90% of the tiny game play vids they have are all from PS3 game play. And if this game does not bring it….It will be free2p…lay in less than a years time…. …Example AION awesome at launch around the 6-7 month in they went from 24 some odd NA servers down to 6 lol Exact same thing happen with WARHAMMER MMO… But being they are tapping the console with the MMO market, they may last just a bit longer…PC enthusiast will chew this game up and spit it out… so whether its now or later the community will speak…and hopefully they will root for you and not against you… *sigh*

Jens Andersen wrote: ‎@Bryan I suggest you go take a peek at a site like DCUO Source and check out the huge amount of videos for PC and PS3 alike as well as the interviews that address a lot of your concerns. The fans over there have kept a very large running post on all of our information downloads and events. Facebook is a fun site to interact with everyone on but forum sites will give you easier access to past information.

John Hopkins wrote: Im looking forward to DCUO and i know your focusing on the big heroes/villains but i hope we’ll get to interact with the lesser known heroes&villains such as booster gold for example or plastic man

Jens Andersen wrote: Booster is in there. Plastic Man is on hold until we get the awesome stretchy in.

Here is The Opening Trailer of Fallout New Vegas. According to various people it is featured in this month’s qore, the subscribtion based online Magazine in the Playstation Network. so it is semi-leaked, i’d suppose. The Graveyard scene accentuated by the Sinatra tunes has already been in the New Vegas Trailer in July

(Video: Schau dir dieses Video auf der Seite des Artikels an)

]]> http://leakerz.net/wp/2010/09/10/fallout-new-vegas-opening/feed/ 0 http://leakerz.net/wp/2010/09/10/final-fantasy-xiv-making-of-a-realm/ http://leakerz.net/wp/2010/09/10/final-fantasy-xiv-making-of-a-realm/#comments Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:37:23 +0000 Michael 'Zoot' Oppenhauser http://leakerz.net/wp/?p=3675

This is the  seventh Episode from the Making of a Realm Series. This Time , Akihiko Yoshida, Art Director of FFXIV, is speaking about what the ingame designers wanted to achieve. Release is set for 30. of September

Below is the Earthrise gallery embedded and equipped with 10 new Screenshots from the Earthrise Beta.

[Mit PicLens anzeigen]

MMORPG.com spoke to the three content designers Jeff Grub , Colin Johanson and Leah Rivera. Of course , the main focus of the interview was set on the content, but among that, they cover topics like the Personal Highlights of the Game and  the features like world PvP , the dynamic content , Personality System and how Guild Wars 2 try’s to bring people closer together during their gameplay to make MMO’s  with real massive multiplayer interaction along the whole Storyline.

Colin Johanson:

Definitely the Dynamic Events system for me too. For me it is a slightly different reason than Leah, although that is a great reason, for me it is about the community building tool that it serves. I think if you look at MMOs the really frustrating thing is that I am playing this game online with thousands of people and I don’t interact with hardly any of them. Maybe with the people on my friends list or in my guild and that’s it. In old school MMOs you didn’t want other players around you because they were kill stealing from you or they would get in the way of the stuff I was trying to do. That can drive a player nuts. I play these games to play with other people, why am I playing this game if I don’t want people near me? The events system just draws people naturally together and you feel this camaraderie with the people you are playing the game with. Whether you talk or not or form a group or not, our hope is that it will happen in events, but even if you don’t you still feel a strong sense of community with the people around you while doing the events and I just really love that.

read the whole interview at mmorpg.com

An article about the newly confirmed  Neverwinter Nights game heading our way has surfaced, and explores what we can expect.

Cryptic studios are behind the wheel for this title and hope to successfully bring the world of Neverwinter  online.  Though in this case online doesn’t mean MMORPG.  They were also careful to differentiate it from your normal RPG games that might have DLC as a type of online support.  So what is it exactly?  Cryptic’s COO Jack Emmert had this to say in an interview with RPS.

It’s an online multi-player game, an OMG. But what makes it unique in the industry is that we’re putting it out there like any other fantasy RPG, like Dragon Age or Oblivion, but we’re going to be supplementing it with content, month after month.

Maybe with these other games you will get a DLC here or there, but it’s not continual and there is no persistence. What we’re doing is taking the living, growing elements of an MMO, and attaching that onto a traditional RPG experience. That’s why this OMG model is relatively unique. A sustained effort to grow the game like in an MMO.

However  he was also sure to point out that this will NOT be an MMO either.  There will be persistent zones like MMORPGs but don’t expect them to be as populated or as big as.

So it’s enough that you will run into others, but it won’t feel crowded. The focus here is on the co-op RPG experience, so we want you to be able to meet new people, or meet with friends, but then get on with adventuring. You will get to that from the persistent zones, although these contain  story lines too. Some missions will take you into instances off of these persistent zones, and sometimes you will just stumble across them. It depends.

Neverwinter Nights has been a game faithful to the D & D rule sets, translating pen and paper figures and mechanics into the digital realm of games.  Never quite twitch and never quite turn based, this new venture plans to keep this same tradition Emmert explains.

It’s not turn-based, and it’s not isometric, but that old school model was our focus to start with. Secondly we wanted the game to be immersive, so we want the experience to be inspired by games like Oblivion and Dragon Age, and to take a cue from fantasy products that created incredible worlds to delve into. Thirdly we wanted it to genuinely represent a D&D experience! We looked at the 4th Edition rules and tried to make sure that we could bring that alive as much as was possible with our tools.

The original title and it’s successors were known for it’s epic and hour eating single player campaign, but perhaps one of their best features was the ability to create your very own content via the editor that all of the iterations of the game came with.  These player made adventures ran the gamut in size.  Anywhere from small adventure packs only including one dungeon and light dialog to absolutely huge and immerse worlds, teeming with NPCs and quests.   While Cryptics version of this tool may not be as powerful as those provided in Dragon Age they still plan to give us plenty of options to help populate the persistent infrastructure they have set up.

It will be flexible however, there will be assigned behaviors and assigned dialogues and so on.

Once you’ve created that, the creator will be able to attach that to pre-existing entrances, or even attach it to contacts, NPCs in the Neverwinter persistent world. Players will be able to click on them, talk, and then launch into a UGC mission.

So one has to wonder, with a persistent world and monthly updates as well, how is that going to affect our wallets.  In a previous interview with Gamasutra, Jack Emmert stated that that has yet to be decided.

I can guarantee you that we envision this as an online product that will continue to grow over time, that we continue to add content to. So whether it’s subscription fee, whether it’s free-to-play, whether it’s microtransactions, whether it’s pay-by-the-minute [laughs], whether it’s some sort of Ponzi scheme that I haven’t figured out, I don’t know

Despite my own excitement however doubts lingers.  Can Cryptic deliver on a product that will bring in and retain a customer base that Atari will be happy with?  With their recent MMO Champions Online, and more prominently Star Trek online, having floundering subscription numbers, will they be able to do good by this esteemed series and it’s fans?  Only time will tell.

You can read the whole article at VG247.

Massively spoke to Dave Noonan , Tera’s Lead Writer at En Masse Entertainment about the recent Changes in the Demo they brought to PAX 2010. The Demo included a new Area with Argons

Argons?

The Argons are a race that appeared in Arborea many years ago. None of the races, neither the Humans, Castanics, Aman, Popori, Baraka, nor the High Elves were able to repel the Argons single-handedly. To rid the world of this evil, the six races of Arborea formed the Valkyon Federation. Humans, the founding race of the Federation, acted as the means to rally the other five races, and bound them together into a force able to meet this threat.

Also , they speak about the End Game content , which is a very anticipated Topic, but unfortunately Dave couldn’t reveal a lot since they are currently working on it extensively

See the whole Interview at Massively

Argons Quote via (terafans)