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Stargate MMO Announced
Adding to the growing list of S/F Massive titles on the market, Gamecloud reports that a studio called Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment will be attempting to bring the Stargate franchise to the Massive gaming genre. From the article: "Stargate Worlds provides players with a form of ranged combat unique to MMORPG that will take full advantage of modern and science fiction weaponry, cover, and terrain. Players will be able to form squads with their friends or use bots for players who want to go solo. Squad leaders will control maneuvers and objectives through an innovative combat control interface. Players may choose to create characters that are members of either the SGC (the Good Guys) or the System Lords (the Bad Guys). Characters are equipped with varied and mixed skills, with the choice to form such classes as Research, Combat Marine, Medical, Scientific, Diplomatic, Engineering, Archeological, and Exploration. PVP will be possible between the two alliances on many contested worlds, actually swaying the balance of power on those planets, and unlocking hidden content." No release date, and an ambitious plan. Hope it works out for them.
Hot on the heels (okay, not too hot) of JoWood's cancellation of Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. Excuse me if my confidence falters.
Hopefully this game will take place in both the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies.
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Personally, I love the idea of a Stargate MMO.. but am I the only one that thinks "Cheyenne Entertainment"'s website looks like a random collection of buzzwords targeting Venture Capitalists?
Damn, you beat me to it. Mod parent up for having a very insightful opinion. The Stargate Universe is vast. Almost as vast as the Star Trek Universe. However, the limitations on the Stargate Universe (there is, after all, only on SGC) will require that a lot of imagination be put into making this a successful product.
Speaking of which, I've been playing the fan-made Stargate Adventure a lot lately. It reminds me of how much I miss the old adventure games. For the longest time, Star Trek could only be done well as an adventure game. The final farewell to the Genre was the TNG: A Final Unity. Now that Stargate has taken Star Trek's place, I find myself yearning for a professionally done adventure game again.
I know it's pretty much hopeless, but if any game publishers are listening: We want a Stargate Adventure game! I don't even care if you make it 2D or 3D. We want an adventure game! Kapeesh?
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As DAoC and WoW have shown (among others as well I'm sure, I just only played these two), three factions seems to be a good minimum. Two is not enough, as any population imbalances become huge hurdles. Three (or more) factions still have population issues, but at least two smaller factions have the option of ganging up on the big guy, and once the big guy runs to lick his wounds, the small guys can beat each other up.
So far this sounds a lot like the Star Wars NGE, but hopefully done correctly. Good luck to them.
I'd spend all my time offworld, I don't think I'd be able to maintain my sanity when every few minutes the warning klaxon would be going off and that tech guy belting "Unscheduled offworld activation!" out over the PA.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
An expansion pack featuring the Ori would be cool if it added the ability to become a Prior (after a LOT of work serving the Ori).
They'd have to make it so that the required 6 hours of daily Prostration didn't have to be experienced on-line.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I believe that was his point - on different WoW servers, for a variety of reasons, the balance of power is immensely one-sided. Which means that the PvP aspects of the game tend to be heavily unbalanced, for all manner of reasons. Multiple factions mean 'politics' is possible in a meaningful fashion.
Of course, whether that would work well in Stargate is questionable, thanks to the fact that everyone, in general, wants to wipe everyone else out.
Hey in the same spirit of Richard Dean Anderson Television Shows, how about a MaGyver MMORPG?
Selma: Richard Dean Anderson will be in my dreams tonight!
Stargate is more popular outside the US than you may think, as far as I know it has more or less eclipsed Star in the Uk and the show has been very successful in Germany, not sure about other countries.
Maybe those will simply be the factions, and then under each faction, you can choose to be one or the other race?
e.g.
Jaffa Warrior with the System Lords vs. a Free Jaffa with the SGC.
Goa'uld vs. a Tok'ra (both implanted humans).
etc.
Then, over time, they can add in more races to each side and possibly add the Ori as a Third faction in a later expanstion.
Heck, they could do a CoV-esque quasi stand-alone game and add the Pegasus Galaxy so the City of Atlantis humans and Wraith can be played. Then, if you own both games, you can use the gate to travel back and forth between the universes.
This has a lot of potential. Lets hope they pull it off.
Nevrax have developed the GPLed "Nevrax Library" (NeL), used by Nevrax's own MMORPG; The Saga of Ryzom:
"NeL is a toolkit for the development of massively online universes. It provides the base technologies and a set of development methodologies for the development of both client and server code."
http://www.nevrax.org/
I can't really comment on it's usefullness though, as I haven't looked deeply into it - I'm not a C++ developer.
Just as you can be a gnome, elf or human on the Alliance side of WoW, you could be a human, nox or asgard member of the SGC side, or a jaffa or un'as member of the System Lords. Actually, most of the races have members on both sides of the conflict, so race might not even be the determining factor of which side your character is on.
I almost want to be a replicator (talk about an overpowered character!), but playing a lego brick just doesn't sound like the ultimate immersive game experience to me. Besides, we'd need a raid group of like a billion people to do much of anything. :-)
John
well according to the Cheyenne Mountain website..."SG-1 has more than 17 million viewers each week in 64 countries" sounds like its way more popular overseas than here in America.....but consider the source :)
J.
Physicist, consultant, science communicator