Tagged News: features

Book 12 hits the Lord of the Rings Online live servers tomorrow and after a recent interview with Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel and Director of Communications Adam Mersky as well as a hands-on demonstration of the new content, we provide this preview.

"This is true in all games. Players are constantly torn between: do I get to wear the really, really fun goofy; or really, really elegant; or really, really flashy costume and get to look the way I want to look or do I get to have the armor stats that I need to go into combat?" Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel asked rhetorically.

The outfit system is unlocked at level 20 and uses a combination of actual items and cosmetic items. Each player has a maximum of two outfits (essentially templates) to begin with, but unlike regular equipment, the actual item is no longer necessary once locked into an outfit. Say for example, a player finds a special robe they really love the look of, but it's too expensive to just keep and not the right fit for their character. They can add it to an outfit, save that template, then sell or trade that robe to another player. As long as they don't tinker with that outfit, they can show it off to the world long after the item is gone.

Read more after the jump.

After having come back from Oslo, Norway, and settled back into "life, the norm", I'm as enthusiastic as I ever was about 'Age of Conan':

"Now we are on the final stretch, with the goal plain in sight."

This fortnight, we learn that the "Rome wasn't built in a day" philosophy also applies to game development.

Earlier today, news broke that SOE had partnered with Live Gamer to replace their existing Station Exchange service in EverQuest II. This company specializes in a platform that facilitates the exchange of virtual items for real world currency.

In this article, we hear from SOE CEO John Smedley on what this deal does for their gold farming, fraud and secondary market problems and from Live Gamer President Andrew Schneider on what their service provides.

What's more, as these claims accumulate, the company must pay penalties. "We have been fined; just the fines alone are over a million dollars, and a lot of those are from Station Exchange," said Smedley.

In response to these problems, SOE announced today that they have partnered with Live Gamer, a company that specializes in the integration of secondary market solutions into existing MMOs. The company, founded by veterans of gaming and financial services, operates a single platform, which they hope will extend across multiple games and companies.

Read more after the leap.

This week's "Community Column" from Sean Bulger looks at the concept of pre-made player factions in games and how they enhance or effect community.

In light of the current 'political season', so to speak, I would like to take a look at one area of gameplay in MMOs that truly does have a strong impact on player communities: Player factions. Now, when I speak of something like factions, I do not specifically refer to guilds. Rather, factions are groups of players within a game that are, generally speaking, opposed to each other, and/or have some sort of conflict or even more political relations with each other. They are also often encouraged by gameplay.

Many games see aspects of factions such as these within them. Dark Age of Camlot, World of WarCraft, EverQuest 2, Final Fantasy XI, PlanetSide, and even games such as EVE Online and ShadowBane have various types of factions that players can join and/or create.

Read more after the jump.

Former SWG WarCry staffer and current SOE programmer Matt "AdeptStrain" Boudreaux gives us an inside look at the animation system within SWG in this latest developer diary:

Once the artists have created the various bone animations, we need a way to assign those assets to objects in our world. This is where our designers come in. Our designers actually have a great toolset to decide which animation should be played, depending on the type of weapon the player is using, the skill they are using, and many other factors.

Click below to read the rest.

Sean Dugan, the Lead Content Designer for Stargate Worlds, penned a new journal that looks at the period in which Stargate Worlds is set. There has been a movie, a couple TV shows and all sorts of debate on how the game would fit into the established canon. In this journal, we find out exactly where the MMO takes off from.

Each choice has its own appeal and limitations. Start early in the series and you are limited by show canon. Create an alternate reality and you undermine the feeling that people are in the 'real' Stargate universe.

Eventually, we realized we needed to find a space for players where they could interact with their beloved show characters but not to feel overshadowed by them. Where players can credibly move from planet to planet through the universe without being totally hampered by the awesome might of the enemies they are facing. Where they can access cool off-world high technology without losing the grounding in modern day military science.

Read more after the jump.

Jonathan Steinhauer looks more deeply into the phenomenon of level based games in "Breaking the Level Barrier, Part 2". This follows his piece two weeks ago where he first examined this topic.

That's not to say that step learning doesn't exist. But it is generally found in activities were you either can or can't do a thing. For example, in the quest to fly, the Wright Brothers didn't gradually fly. The first time occurred in a single instant and once that was achieved, they could repeat the feat (although I would argue that the gaining of knowledge that enabled flight was still slope-learning). Some growth in life tends to be a blend, such as studying mathematics. The gaining of knowledge and skill in math occurs on a learning curve, but there are "steps" along the way, such as basic addition and subtraction, Trigonometry, and Calculus.

Read more after the leap.

In their latest Developer Log, NetDevil's president Scott "Scorch" Brown talked about Jumpgate's journey from a personal obsession to an advanced and highly polished reincarnation, appropriately titled "Evolution":

When we started Netdevil 10 years ago to create Jumpgate Classic, we were just a handful of people. Most of us were still working fulltime jobs, but every free minute we had was spent developing the game. For us it was the game that we always wanted to play. At the time the most popular space games were Elite and Wing Commander and those games were our inspiration.

Jumpgate Classic was a true labor of love and because of it we have some great stories to tell. It really shaped us as developers and we gained a lot of experience from it. We often joke that the game was finished on passion alone. Well, passion and a lot of Pizza...

Knowing what we know today and being in possession of much better resources then we were 10 years ago, we felt very confident that we could make a much better game that was based in the Jumpgate universe. A game that would be really special. Thus, the decision was made and Jumpgate Evolution was born.

Read More for the full log plus the latest released screenshots!

FreeRealms is a new adventure for SOE. They're making a browser based MMO with free-to-play, microtransaction and subscription elements; and they're targeting young girls. Does that sound like SOE? Not exactly, but they no doubt hope to expose a whole new segment of the market to MMOs and give some of their regular subscribers an option to play with their daughters.

As this game works through popular web browsers, it also made sense to make a Facebook-esque network so players could show off their collections, customization and information. These are not sites for the player, but definitely the character. It's no fun to collect if people cannot brag, and the overarching site lets people do just that.

They also made customization a major theme of the game. Despite the fact it's in a browser, the game is fully 3D and has as many character customization options as one would expect from a traditional MMORPG. Players can be humans or fairies, for the initial launch. Each race has an impressive array of options, and an even more impressive number of clothing options.

Read it all after the jump.

Sean Bulger's community management driven column this week is called "Emergent Gaming". He looks at the upcoming trends in gaming and how that relates back to the community.

This could appear in several different forms, one of which is known as emergent gameplay. Emergent gameplay has been a popular phrase lately. Effectively, it is players doing something with a game that the game wasn't actually designed for. Races in MMOs, creating pictures with gold in Lineage 2, or using grenades to launch vehicles or players in the air in spectacular ways in FPSs, are all prime examples of this.

In fact, there are some games out there, and in the works, that are built entirely upon the principle of emergent gaming. They aim to give players tools, as opposed to game systems, with which they can create their own gameplay.

Read more after the jump.