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MMO Gaming Expansions Released, Announced
News regarding two new expansions to Massively Multiplayer Games today. Thanks to Gamespot for the fascinating news that Asheron's Call 2 will roll out a new expansion sometime in the future. This announcement was anticipated after Turbine's purchase of Asheron's Call 1 and 2 from Microsoft, but no firm details had yet to be announced. Meanwhile, Yahoo has the press release on Planetside: Aftershock's release today. The waning FPS massive game has finally been reduced to the reasonable price of $20. The new offering includes the core game, the first expansion, and a new expansion that incorporates mechs into the game.
Also announced that there will be expansions, as soon as it gets out of beta testing.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Just wondering if anyone plays it. I didnt like the beta.
Planetside is having a hard time for two reasons: 1. Most new FPS games coming out support up to 64 players on a single server, and the netcode is good enough that you don't need a T3 to run a server. It's hard to pitch the idea of $13 a month to a gamer who can buy Battlefield Vietnam once and play on packed servers for free. 2. The Planetside dev team cut out pretty much everything that had anything to do with an RPG during the beta testing, so there's no long term goals, no "loot", no personalization of player stats... It's purely an MMOFPS. There's no role-playing aspect whatsoever, so you're not gonna appeal to the usual MMO crowd. I mean, the people who wanna shoot stuff buy a (free play) FPS. The people who wanna roleplay buy an RPG. And the people who wanna be elf mangina play EQ or Lineage II. :)
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Planetside: Aftershock isn't an expansion, it's just a bundle of Planetside with the (rightfully) maligned Core Combat expansion. They mechs they're advertising (BFRs) on the box are free to any subscriber that has Core Combat.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
Gamespot is nothing more than a corporate shrill.
AC2 died before birth. A horrid beta where the developers ignored the constant and loud complaints that all proved true in release.
The hubris of the AC2 developers killed the game. Immense cities in which no building was enterable served no other purpose that being monuments to the developers. Even their first liason to the public spoke of coming down from the ivory tower to the unwashed masses (ie the players)
AC2 died because Turbine stopped responding to their fans. AC2 failed because Turbine made the story more important than the fans. They forced the players to adhere to the story instead of becoming the story.
Turbine, particulary Jessica (it) hates negative comments about their game. Going so far as requiring fan boards they deem to visit to remove the posts and posters else suffer exclusion from developer interaction.
Turbine is also where the phrase "Exploit Early Exploit Often" came about. They are the only MMORPG company to ACTIVELY allow attended combat macros (AC1). This software (know as decal) listens and acts on the incoming client stream to automate much if not all of the game. It reveals things not normally known to the client and all of this is done with the knowledge and tacit support of Turbine. The new expansion for their first game even caters to the abusers of attended combat macros by support levels unreachable by other means.
One big worry about MEO was that within a week everyone would have the ONE RING
Turbine is just proof that even the most inept can stay in business.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Well PlanetSide will go down the tube anyways because UT and BF offer pretty much massively multiplayer without a monthly subscription or anything, and the mod capabilities are way higher. AC is nothing special, an expansion to an MMO is nothing really new. Mostly just getting you to shell out 30$ for something a programmer doodled with in his spare time...
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At this point, I've played Planetside for 18 months. So my opinion is colored by the fact that I've done everything in the game while watching things change, and thus know what I'm talking about.
If Planetside is 'waning', I've never noticed. Most nights, every place where a battle could take place, is seeing some sort of conflict: the only variation is scale of a battle, which ranges from a couple skirmishers to 100+ combatants a side. I can step onto a server and jump into a firefight in anything from 20 seconds to five minutes, tops. I spend nearly as much time in a server browser, and that usually doesn't deliver.
PS also has every game type. For stealth combat, it has infiltrators. For air combat, it has aircraft. For FPS fiends, join an infantry or paratroop outfit. For RTS fans, find a good outfit and work on being an officer.
The only people who regularly complain about balance issues are the people who would find something to complain about anyway. These are the same people who gripe because things aren't handed to them, because their means of playing the game isn't inherently superior to all other forms.
As for character customization, it's called certifications. Its an FPS, sure, but at least it doesn't need cookie-cutter classes like BF.
"PS has no tactics" my ass: who sees 500 people and assume that, somehow, there isn't a social aspect to how they interact? The interaction is there; you just don't see it.
Most of the problems with AC could be blamed on microsoft more then turbine. If you go read thier original info on AC2 it was going to be an improvement on AC1. After microsoft took a more active role it became a bad would be EQ, DaOC clone.
Since turbine purchased the game they have been removing alot of the macroing, other stuff of that nature and punishing/banning thoses that do expoilt them. However while combat macroing may be a problem is a shop bot a problem?
As for AC2 and building, the game is set in a post destroied world, who cares that you could not enter most of the building? There was nothing in them, nor anything that was required to be in them. Thier purpose was to was eye candy. SWG was worse then AC2 in this with huge cities with no-enter building and no one complained thier, but then again thier is alot more to complain about in SWG then the childish desire to look in empty buildings.
AC2 was a failure because microsoft wanted a DaOC/EQ game, then to top it off they released way to early before they had time to add content for even play test the classes. the reason for this was that the thinking at microsoft and turbine was that AC was never the major commerical success was that it came out after EQ. If they had come out before EQ they would of gotten that crowd, so they were rushing to be SWG. SWG put out a release date, they bet it by 1 1/2 months then SWG delayed. Same battles you see happening with WoW/EQ2, who will be released first and in the most acceptable shape.
BTW, decal does not "reveals things not normally known to the client" the way this software works, it is take the information already send to the client and makes it more easier to access the data by the user, the client has to have access to the data for the user to ever get it. Actually decal is more a framework that makes the stream information,both to and from the client software, more easily accessible to other people who have written decal plugins which perform the actions.
Excluding the framework, you can also find similar software in EQ, SWG, DaOC, and any MMORPG that has any population. WoW already has one and it is still in beta. Thier is no way to stop this, encryption will not work since people have access to the end user machine where the data is decrypted . Until you move all MMORPG to unmodable console boxes they will be around.
AC1 got the "Exploit Early Exploit Often" tag from when there was a bug which they determined was not a major problem they would fix it but not roll back or punish the players who benifited from it. When you have major updates every month or every 2 months this happens alot and tag sticks. As opposed to say DaOC or EQ where you have few major updates so while the same thing happens but since the happen less often it is forgotten about by the time the next one happens. CoH is starting to get the same tag because they are putting out updates before the memory of the exploites from the last one has died down.
Well, bridges and factories cannot be destroyed BUT Tech plant generators and AMSs and cavern links and much more. And that has big consequences on the result of the fight. There is plenty of strategy in PlanetSide. But without laying your eyes upon it you won't see it of course.