Friday - February 15, 2002
| The Lost Continents site has been updated again with some new media. You'll find two new screenshots, three new character animation movies and a couple of audio tracks. |
| GameSpot is focusing on the Night Elves units in its daily race oriented WC 3 feature tonight. Wanna learn more about "Keeper of the Grove" and such? Just follow the link from above. |
| Computer and Video Games has posted part No. 5 in a series of Sony Online Entertainment articles. This one is the 2nd part dealing with Lucas'/Sony's Star Wars MMORPG. |
| Mythic's major newswire, The Camelot Herald, has updated with the latest Q's and A's regarding Dark Age of Camelot. Follow the link to Sanya Thomas' Friday grab bag. |
| RPGvault is kicking off a series of Icewind Dale 2 designer diaries tonight. Click here for the first part, written by Black Isle's game design guru Dave Maldonado. Four new screenshots are to be found inside. |
Digital Nightfall from Through The Looking Glass (TTLG) has asked Arkane/Fishtank about putting up a vote for the game's box cover. Arkane/Fishtank supplied TTLG with two options (just follow link from above).
Here's some background info:
Arkane/Fishtank were kind enough (smart enough ) to ask TTLG to vote on the Arx Fatalis box cover (actually, I suggested it ) ... so we are presented with two choices.
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Hopefully they will use our advice. The more votes, the better, of course.
I've decided not to use a "neither" option, because they have to use one of these two images. Note that number 2 is actually the game loading screen. The final composition of either of these images (re: the game title, where it will be, what it will look like) is not yet known (i.e. number 2's title placement and appearance does not totally reflect the title on the box cover).
These images were drawn by none other then Denis Loubet, the artist who painted the Underworld 1 & 2 covers, as well as Shadow Caster and many others.
Box covers sell the game. Choose wisely.
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Same procedure as every Friday. A Morrowind site update including:
- A new book called "Night Falls On Sentinel" has been added to the 'Fiction section'. Making use of, i.e. reading, this book in the game increases your 'Blunt Weapons' skill.
- A new wallpaper showing off a place called "Dwemer Ruins".
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PlanetDiablo has news on a new version of Skull's Runic Hunter. It can be downloaded from File Planet. File size is: 358.7KB.
Here's what this useful little tool does:
Information: Skull's Runic Hunter is an amazing yet simple utility which can be used to easily reference Rune Item and Crafted Item Recipes, as well as statistics for runes, gems, set items, and unique items. Several interactive features set it apart from other referencing programs, such as its Gem Assembler, Runic Hunter, and Crafted Item Hunter.
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Worthplaying conducted an interview with one of the Polish developers working on "Another War', a very promising isometric WWII RPG game. Here's a bit:
Q: Lately the WWII has come to the scene of gaming world with Commandos2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and other titles...However no one chose the rpg-genre for this kind of scenery!Are you keen on history (and in particular of this period)or perhaps do you think classic medieval-fantasy setting has been a little misused by other titles?
Basically, WWII is one of the strongest images engraved in our minds. The whole team comes from Poland a country very deeply affected by WWII. Almost everybody had at least a war victim amongst family members. Even more importantly, WWII finished for us in 1989 when Eastern Bloc collapsed and our country started to recover from 50 years of the feudal oppression from totalitarian regime. So, our whole childhood was full of WWII, we had all kinds of movies and WWII heroes, we were taught about it and when getting older we started to realize there are very different visions of history, the one officially presented by our rulers and the one told by parents. This created almost schizophrenic dualism in reception of the reality and extreme need for a purification, catharsis as Greeks say. As creators we are trying to express things important to us using the media we know, we are gamers and games enable us to tell about WWII. We could live with a pacified, nice adventure for big boys where nobody gets really killed, blood smells like ketchup and love solves all problems but if i am to compare AW to other RPG titles the thing that hurts me is seriousness of other titles. You know, saving the world from a fireball throwing monster by using a magic potion fascinates me as much as a Power Rangers movie. With the difference there is much more irony in Power Rangers than in most games :-). |
We just received this media alert from Microsoft's press ageny regarding the release of a new trailer movie (1:10 min - Streaming ASX file) for the company's upcoming dungeon crawler:
ENTER THE DRAGON! NEW DUNGEON SIEGE TRAILER RELEASED
Microsoft today unveiled a spectacular new video trailer on the official Dungeon Siege site, at http://www.microsoft.com/games/dungeonsiege/. The one-minute-long trailer showcases many of the game's exciting elements, and ends with a stunning visual of a massive dragon raining down fire over an intrepid adventurer. Gamers who download the trailer from the official site will witness big-party combat complete with close-ups of exquisite details on the warrior, mage and archer characters. Gorgeous 3-D landscapes are also highlighted, including lush forest valleys, arid desert canyons and frosty ice caverns.
Dungeon Siege is an action fantasy role-playing game featuring an immersive fully 3-D environment. The game plunges players into a continuous 3-D fantasy world on a quest to stop a mysterious evil that has been unleashed. Beginning with a single character, players can travel through the world and gather a party of up to eight characters, or choose to face the challenge alone. The action role-playing in Dungeon Siege propels players into one over-the-top battle after another as the storyline unfolds. Dungeon Siege will be available in April 2002 for an estimated retail price of $49.99 (U.S.).
For more information about Dungeon Siege, visit the official Web site at:
http://www.microsoft.com/games/dungeonsiege/
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The Star Wars: Galaxies FAQ has updated with three new questions and corresponding answers today. All three entries deal with crafting and its effects on the economy.
Here's one of them:
5.20 How will the economy in Star Wars Galaxies differ from other online games?
Perhaps the biggest difference between the economy in SWG and other games is that there are almost no NPCs or other server systems that purchase goods from the player. This means that if you want to make money through manufacturing items, you should make items that other players want or need. In order to help manufacturers get their goods to potential customers, we intend to provide systems that facilitate buying and selling between players, including player-run vendors as well as commodities markets.
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The Tarant Daily has done an interview with Raphael Colantonio, CEO of Arkane-Studios, about their upcoming RPG Arx Fatalis. Can't let you read this without supplying a snippet:
How big is the world in Arx? Can you tell us of some of the places a player will be able to visit?
There are many locations to visit, although I think overall, the world is smaller than most RPGs in square feet, but not in hours of gameplay, we chose to have a smaller detailed well organised world with a lot of things to do, rather than a massive world where all rooms look the same: detail, variety and immensity are 3 concepts that are hard to get together with today's production values. So, in Arx, every shop is detailed, the castle, the tavern, then we make sure we have graphic universe that vary one from the other: the crypt, various natural caves, temples, snakewomen area, Troll encampment, Dwarf forge... |
| There is another Dungeon Siege movie (app. 11MB) t Spelletjesgarnaal. According to BluesNews, it features 7(!) minutes of gameplay footage... | | Source: BluesNews |
House o' Spank (whack whack) has done an interview with Jim Purbrick, one of the designers of Dragon Empires. Here's an interesting bit:
Zee: It is said that the game is designed so that you don't need a fast connection to play. This should please those still forced to use dialup. Can you elaborate on this? Will modem users still experience lag at all?
Fast, low latency connections become an advantage when players are required to make fast, twitch responses to actions. In order to allow dialup and broadband users to compete fairly you have to give players more time to respond to events. We've achieved this by focusing on tactical play. You don't block individual blows made by an opponent, but you can shift the focus of your attacks and defences in response to the attacks being made. This allows us to create a fair, but still interactive and engaging experience. Lag is dealt with by sophisticated prediction at the client which allows the client to start to show the results of an action immediately if it is confident of the outcome.
Zee: The game is meant to allow people to form clans, and for clans to battle other clans for glory and all that good stuff. What if a player wants to be a loner? Will they be able to, or is this something not really intended for the game?
Players will be able to play the game solo and still be affected by the clan versus clan games. Even if a player never joins a clan the world they inhabit will be constantly changed by the rise and fall of clans and cities. The ripples spreading out from the fall of cities will affect everything from the trade they can engage in and to the risk of attack from outlaws and monsters.
UPDATE: The link to the feature was removed because House'o'Spank is no more. The original link now leads to a porn site. |
| Austrian site Gamers.at has awarded Wizardry 8 with a 90% rating - still not convinced the game is great? Then you may rather go and play with your barby dolls then :) |
| A quite lenghty German Preview of Warcraft III can be found at 4Players. |
| A rather strange Shockwave Trailer for one of the upcoming Ultima 4 Remakes Elijah is up here. |
| ToTheGame has the world map from Might & Magic 9 on their site - including the names of the regions and towns. Great stuff, have a look! |
Lineage - The Bllodpledge gets reviewed at Computer and Video Games, although "bashed" would be a more fitting description, regarding their rating of just 40/100. Here's their conclusion:
Even compared to Ultima Online: Third Dawn it underachieves on a technological level, and if you bring games like EverQuest or DAOC into the equation, well, bye-bye Lineage. This, then, is not the game that's going to take the online RPG world by storm, despite its massive popularity in the Far East. |
With a rating of 63%, the review of Gorasul - The Legacy of the Dragon is a lukewarm one, and it gets even more apparent in this snippet:
Plus, even though Gorasul only takes about 20 hours to finish, combat still manages to get a little repetitive (there aren’t that many creatures to kill), and it has some pacing problems to boot. Most noticeably, there isn’t any convenient way to heal. You can’t order your party to rest, there isn’t any life- or mana-leeching equipment, and potions are expensive. So the game tends to follow a pattern of attacking creatures and then sitting around for a few minutes while waiting for your characters to heal. I’m an advocate of reading and everything, but when reading a book becomes part of the game plan for playing a computer game (like it did for me), then the computer game has a problem. |
| ToThegame has published some new screenshots from Heroes of Might & Magic 4. These screenshots are not taken from the limited beta version, and should reveal something new from the game... |
Our feature today is an interview with Claus Grovdal from Darkfall Online about their upcoming MMORPG. Thanks again to our new team member Logan for giving us the permission to reprint it from his newsletter. Beware, this is a rather long one, and full with detailed questions like this:
Q: Is the tradeskill system window dressing or a money sink? I.E. is the game set up so ONLY someone seriously gimped for fighting can obtain enough skills to become a master crafter?
Claus: We have no skill limits, so in theory you could be the best wizard, the best axe wielding fighter, and the best blacksmith at once. In fact our initial design of Darkfall stated that there should be no way to gimp your character. Nothing is more frustrating than spending 4 months building a character, then the developers patches say your weapon of choice, and you are stuck with a character that sucks in PvP. This will never happen in Darkfall, simply because you can then just pick another weapon, and within a few days you are on top again. |
An interview with Scott "Chupas Kabra" Herrington, executive producer for Shadowbane at Ubi Soft Entertainment, is online now at Shadowbane Warcry. Here's a part of this article:
J.: Is this a game you think you'd want to play?
Scott: That's probably the question I get asked the most about any game that I've worked on. Yes, it's a game I want to play (and am currently enjoying playing the beta versions!) But, that's my personal opinion. I know a lot of people in the industry who use that as a criteria for whether or not they'll make a game, but it's not something that I do. If that were the case, I'd make games that had a very limited appeal (appealing only to me).
I look at games I work on objectively and say, "This game is supposed to appeal to a certain type of gamer. Does it? If not, what does it need? How can it be made better?" Even if it's not a game I would play, say, a turn-based civil war strategy game, it's my job to make sure it's the best game it can be and has all the features that would appeal to its target audience. I didn't get hired to make a game I wanted to play, I got hired to make a game that gamers want to play. |
HomeLan Fed conducted an interview with Matt Frior from Mystic Entertainment about their MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot. Here's a bit from that:
HomeLAN - With the success of the game, there have also been instances of cheating in Dark Age of Camelot reported as well. How has Mythic combated cheating in the game and what further steps will be taken to combat cheaters?
Matt Firor - I don't want to give too much away, but basically everything in the game is logged. Given enough time, we can almost always find players who are using macro programs, speed hacks, and other methods of cheating. Our reaction when we find a cheater is always the same: we ban them from the game. We don't tolerate third-party cheat programs in Camelot. |
| Now that's a nice little thinge: Over at the Ultima Online - Lord Blackthorn's Revenge site, you can download a nifty program called UO screenmates. What is it, exactly? You get Lord Blackthorn and a female avatar on your desktop, and you can make them do different things like running, walking, daying, yawning and such. It's a 4.76MB download and makes the child in us happy :-) |
The latest Peek of the Week at the Eve Online site deals with the SCC, the Secure Commerce Commission, regulating trade in the game universe:
Before instantaneous communication from one star to another came into being, trading over long distances (between solar systems) was hazardous and time-consuming. Frauds and swindlers were in abundance, making trades with strangers highly risky. The time it took to find out what stations in nearby solar systems had on offer or demanded, plus the time it then took to strike a deal and ship the products to and fro, stifled space commerce so much that it was almost non-existent. Only the adventures were willing to risk their assets and even their lives by pursuing space trading, but the potential riches involved urged people on and made them yearn for a quicker, easier way to do business between the stars. Thus, once inter-stellar communication devices arrived they spread out like an epidemic and inter-stellar commerce quickly followed in their wake. |
The Lost Continents site was updated with yet another episode of "The Mask of the Mummy Queen". It's a fictional story of the game, reminiscent of pulp fiction stories, as this snippet shows:
he orb bounced squarely on the pressure plate. In instant reply, a black curtain of poisoned darts shot up and out. But McCaan was already moving. His hairy arms curled around Amira and Rose, shoving them roughly to the ground. Darts clattered off walls and ceiling, ricocheting blindly. The orb rolled on, a ticking echoing from inside.
Rose jumped free, pistol in hand, eyes locked on the gizmo sphere. As her finger tightened, McCann’s calloused hand reached out. The shot went wide, the bullet whining away down the hall. |
Just another one: Gamespot has posted a preview of Dungeon Siege, Gas Powered Games upcoming action RPG that gets praised like not many games before (in fact, I haven't seen a negative preview so far). Here's a bit:
And since Dungeon Siege is a hack-and-slash RPG, you'll fight by day, by night, over hills, under dales, and pretty much everywhere and anywhere else. The game uses a highly streamlined system that lets you quickly choose your weapons. Each of your characters gets four slots--a melee weapon slot, a ranged-weapon slot (for bows and thrown weapons), and two magic spell slots--and you can switch your active weapon with a simple hotkey setup. Dungeon Siege will also let you set down general strategies for your stalwart band of adventurers to follow. For instance, you can arrange them in different marching formations, like in many real-time strategy games and also in recent RPGs such as Baldur's Gate II and Icewind Dale. The game will also let you set behavior patterns for your party members--you can set them to hold their ground, actively pursue monsters, attack the nearest or most dangerous enemy, or let them freelance. |
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