Jim Lee To Direct DC MMO

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Sunday February 26, 2006 @05:17AM from the omg-bbq dept.

Kotaku has a press release stating that Jim Lee will be Executive Creative Director for SOE while they develop a DC-branded Massively Multiplayer game. Jim Lee is best known for his work on Batman and the X-Men series of comics. From the article: "SOE will be developing and publishing a game based on the DC Comics universe for next generation gaming platforms and the PC. It is expected that Lee will serve as Executive Creative Director on the game, bringing his artistic flair and talents to the world of online gaming for the first time ... said Jim Lee; 'The truth is that I love gaming as much as I love drawing and telling stories and look forward to bringing the DC Universe to life for players and comic book fans all around the world.'"

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Cheap knockoff by Luigi30 · 2006-02-26 05:26 · Score: 1

So they're making a cheap knockoff of City of Heroes, banking on the DC name to sell it? No thanks.

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1. Re:Cheap knockoff by ch1a · 2006-02-26 05:34 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Wasn't City of Heroes a cheap knockoff of the DC universe in the first place?
  
  --
  
  --Just because you can doesn't mean you should--
2. Re:Cheap knockoff by dc29A · 2006-02-26 06:01 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  So they're making a cheap knockoff of City of Heroes, banking on the DC name to sell it? No thanks.
  
  This is made by the company who was too incompetent to capitalize on the Star Wars franchise. With EQ2 SOE has proved that it has lost contact with gamers. When EQ2 came out, it had many glaring gameplay issues and retarded rules like party member death penalty is shared by group. So if you had a dumbass in your group, you all paid the price. Not to mention it was a grind fest and you were forced to group. Star Wars Galaxies ... well ... it's pretty much dead. EQ is dying. EQ2 is stalling, no new growth. Matrix Online (they picked it up) is pretty much dead too.
  
  Why would any franchise holder trust this company is something I don't understand.
3. Re:Cheap knockoff by __aaclcg7560 · 2006-02-26 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  No, it was a cheap knockoff of the Marvel universe.
4. Re:Cheap knockoff by Kelbear · 2006-02-26 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  This was my first reaction as well. I'd love another superhero game. I loved CoH but ultimately exhausted the game's content.
  
  CoH had a difficult premise to pull off and succeeded beautifully in creating superhero-ish combat(while IMO failing in the other gameplay aspects like missions and loot). They pulled out a huge variety of powers that were each useful and continued to be useful throughout a player's life. The attacks you begin with are still useful in the end-game. Upgrading a power wasn't just leveling to keep the power equivalent to your current level, but each added level makes it more powerful than it ever was. The powers themselves all had unique graphics and in almost every case, a twist to make the power unique. This had the end-result of a player with a multitude of unique and useful abilities to call upon, all of which added to the feeling of being a superhero.
  
  It was a prodigous accomplishment. It was creative and unusual, trying its best to new things in order to fix problems that appear in other MMOS(and it wasn't always successful).
  
  However, I have doubts as to whether or not SOE can do the same. Its track record after EQ has been less than exemplary. These sorts of setbacks make companies want to lower risks and trod the well-beaten path. A lot of risks need to be taken to do a superhero game well. SoE is very familiar with what they need to go through to create an MMO in terms of technical issues. But as for gameplay and immersion in a superhero setting, they're on unfamiliar ground, just like any other developer would be.
5. Re:Cheap knockoff by mikaelhg · 2006-02-26 10:38 · Score: 1
  
  Why would any franchise holder trust this company is something I don't understand.
  
  The age-old reason: the decisionmakers have zero personal contact, experience and understanding with the subject matter.
  
  You can run a commodity business like that, but not an pure entertainment business.
6. Re:Cheap knockoff by adyus · 2006-02-26 12:50 · Score: 1
  
  I think it's because people tend to think of all this as a business. As long as players like you and me log on to see what the game is like, they can show off that much more new users, making the MMORPG an attractive business venture. Think of it this way: at least games have gotten harder to beat, now that you even have to handpick your team members... :)
7. Re:Cheap knockoff by forgotten_my_nick · 2006-02-26 22:48 · Score: 1
  
  Actually it wasn't a cheap knockoff of either.
  
  In the case of the Marvel suit basically Marvel employees logged into COH and then made copies of famous heroes and then claimed that COH were infringing trademarks. This isn't actually true of course. The system allows you to build pretty complex heroes (although Hulk doesn't require much thought). It got thrown out because of that.
  
  Although COH if you do break copyright/trademarks or impersonate a real person they blank your character and give it a genericHero12345 name. The only exception to this rule I ever saw was the numerous Vote Bush type avatars that were spamming popular areas in the game during the previous elections. Oddly enough the Kerry type avatars didn't survive very long.
  
  Some intresting things that may come out of this.
  1. COH Terms of Service state that if you create a character in COH, then they own all rights to it (providing it is not copying someone elses work to begin with).
  2. Marvel have already said there won't be any Batmen/spidermen/etc copies in thier game and they would be more likely to spammed with peoples favorite hero then COH would. I would suspect Marvel to be more pedantic in this regards.
8. Re:Cheap knockoff by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2006-02-27 04:50 · Score: 1
  
  IIRC, it was even worse than that early on. Supposedly there were /-commands that would set your costume to pre-designed perfect duplicates of various Marvel characters.
  
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9. Re:Cheap knockoff by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2006-02-27 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  All right!
  
  I can't wait to see how Superman-level "tanks" can't dish out as much damage as Batman-type Rogues. Or how Superman-like characters with flight max out at 40 MPH.
  
  And I'll grant that CoH has magnificent travel powers -- high speed, and early level achieved, compared to stupidity like the mule-amblin' speed of WoW's Lear-jet cost "horse", level 40. Plus it's a true 3D world with integrated 3D travel, unlike WoW or EQ or SWG any other number of embarassments where "flight" is just you running along the ground, translated 6' up into the air.
  
  Yes, I hope this game at least takes three lessons from CoH:
  
  1. True 3D travel powers, and high speed, and early on, for little or no cost
  
  2. No hyper-nerfs completely re-writing the game, ala the "Enhancement Diversity" super-nerf. I quit because of that, haven't been back.
  
  3. Magnificent character customization, including sliders so you can make a nice J-Lo @$$y girl with a thin waist. You "straight, what are you, gay?" guys can run around behind your finely-toned muscle d'erriers for hours. I'll take a Jennifer Lopez circa "Selena" days any day over that. But with a Sela Ward face with Sela's kinked eyebrows, black hair, and dual pigtails. And strappy heels and fishnets. Yeah, isn't Zatana and Black Songbirdwidow or whatever fishnet-wearing women?
  
  Plus the three sliders, in vertical order: MAX, MIN, MAX! Don't forget those sliders!
  
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10. Re:Cheap knockoff by forgotten_my_nick · 2006-02-27 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  First I have heard of that. Where did you get that information from?
11. Re:Cheap knockoff by BlindS!de · 2006-03-01 06:22 · Score: 1
  
  IMO, SOE does have one diamond in their rough: PlanetSide. I know this will stir up a hornet's nest with the fanboys of CS, UT and the like, however it's by far the best multiplayer FPS experience I've ever had. Nowhere else will you find tanks, delivery/support vehicles, planes and ground forces all controlled by separate players, with battles that can have literally hundreds of players.
  Yet you never, ever heard about this game. They never advertise or promote, online or off. Yet despite keeping it under the radar, the game maintains a modest 50k membership. I've had a membership since launch, and I won't drop it till they close it down, or a better MMO FPS comes along. The development team was great, but has gone thru a lot of changes over the last year. I suspect it has something to do with the reasons that SOE games generally suck, but only the developers themselves would know.
  It really ends up being more evidence that SOE stinks; they push crappy games, but let the ones that lack corporate "market traction" idle, despite delivering a good experience. Someone needs to go in, take out the suits, and put the artists back in the driver's seat.
12. Re:Cheap knockoff by Derkec · 2006-03-01 07:59 · Score: 1
  
  I used to play some planetside and it was a very interesting experience. I had some of my best MMORPG and FPS experiences there. The problem was that they were seperated by long stretches of dull play and one side easily routing the other. I'm glad I played it, but have no regrets quitting.
  
  By best two experiences were:
  
  1) There was a sprawling conflict on a continent. I got in with an infiltration team that was harrassing an enemy base that was serving as a support and staging area. We snuck in, capped the base (involving a long firefight) and then went off and hid. The inevitible counter attack came hard, but we were just down in the basement telling ghost stories. Our opponents left to do whatever nefarious deeds they had to do, so went back upstairs and recapped. Cycling through this five times was a blast.
  
  2) This was a massive firefight at a base we were defending. There had to be 200 players involved. Enemy vehicles were all over, but anytime they tried to penetrate the base, they got blown up good. I spent a good while shooting out our front gate using the wreckage of an enemy tank as cover. We eventually lost, but size and pace of that battle was spectacular.
13. Re:Cheap knockoff by AgentDib · 2006-03-01 08:28 · Score: 1
  
  I played PlanetSide in beta as well as for the first couple of months. It is fairly successful at copying the tiered strategy present in other unusual MMOs like Shattered Galaxy, but two serious faults caused me to cancel my subscription.
  
  1) There's not enough emphasis on balance. While occasionally even numbers will meet at a specific spot, that is the exception rather than the rule. Why should I spend 75% of my in game time either getting steamrolled by superior numbers or having to hunt for enemies to fight? I can simply log onto a FPS and jump into a 16/16 or 32/32 match right away without all the wasted time.
  
  2) More importantly, the cone aiming system is a disaster. By introducing the randomness in projectile movement they manage to do a decent job of masking the fact that everybody is playing with a fairly high ping typical of a mmo. However while the randomness may be realistic in warfare, it is so annoying and alien to the hardcore FPS crowd that they move on really quickly.
First dibs... by Txiasaeia · 2006-02-26 05:39 · Score: 1

...on Batman!

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Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
1. Re:First dibs... by kalirion · 2006-02-27 02:30 · Score: 1
  
  All right, I'll be The Living Tribunal. Wanna PVP?
  Actually, nevermind. You'd probably have the anti-Living-Tribunal spray in your starting kit....
DC MMO by Distinguished+Hero · 2006-02-26 05:41 · Score: 4, Funny

When I read the title, I thought they might be talking about Washington, D.C. In fact, I think that might actually be a better idea for a MMO.

--
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
1. Re:DC MMO by C.Maggard · 2006-02-26 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  It'll just be filled with the standard "deliver campaign contributions to white house from Halliburton" fedex quests that we've come to know and love.
2. Re:DC MMO by supabeast! · 2006-02-26 06:49 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  You've apparently never been to Washington. A Washington, DC MMO would mostly involve drinking coffee while talking about politics with ivy leage grads, boring cocktail parties, and avoiding the urge to shove tourists down escalators.
3. Re:DC MMO by supabeast! · 2006-02-26 13:50 · Score: 1
  
  "I'd say the DC one sounds more interesting. At least the dicks around you would be smart dicks."
  
  Touche - you've pretty much pointed out why I'd rather chat with Washingtonians that start playing Warcraft again.
4. Re:DC MMO by ahem · 2006-02-26 17:01 · Score: 1
  
  Why avoid the urge? That sounds like the most fun part of the game!
  
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  Not A Sig
5. Re:DC MMO by Benwick · 2006-02-27 04:19 · Score: 1
  
  Ooh, I wanna be Marion Barry! ...Or drag up, as the perennially ignored representative voice Eleanor Holmes Norton!
6. Re:DC MMO by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2006-02-27 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  I wanna play the unionized government worker who sits in the elevator all day and pushes the buttons for people!
  
  Yes! The elevator stopped on the magical 13th floor that doesn't exist! Increased padding for my chair! Who rules now? Take that, "Fires of Heaven"!
  
  (Two months later)
  
  Son of a bitch! They nerfed the padding to be only 40% as soft as it used to be!
  
  Ok, admit it. People would actually play that character. Actually, a Hobo/Bum type character who got points and better skill at searching thru trash would be even more fun to play. You could get bonus power ups by seeing how close you could penetrate into DC's "green zone" around the White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court areas, before the cops got you and booted you into the surrounding disadvantaged neighborhoods. Cool! I got another powerup by successfully spitting down from an overpass onto a Congressman's car as he traveled to his home in Virginia!
  
  Yeah, and then you could have Elite professions based on Hobo, like the elevator sitting person, or people paid to stand in line for lobbyists.
  
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7. Re:DC MMO by SamSim · 2006-03-01 02:06 · Score: 1
  
  Washington D.C. already is an MMO. Except for the O.
  
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  qntm.org
Stories versus games by dcollins · 2006-02-26 06:01 · Score: 1

Making stories and making games are on opposite ends of the creative continuum. I predict failure. And more failures as long as traditional story-based entertainment conglomerates continue to think they can cross over into games without seeing the radical differences.

--
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
1. Re:Stories versus games by Chabil+Ha' · 2006-02-26 07:35 · Score: 1
  
  I disagree. I think the best games incorporate a meaningful and involving story AND a fun gaming experience. Take for example some of the more successful RPG's on the NES and SNES consoles like the Final Fantasy series. What made these games great was not just the game play, but the drama and excitement of wanting to know how the story line was going to be advanced. Nothing was quite more exciting, for example, in Final Fantasy IV (that's II here in the US), to find out that Golbez is Cecil's brother. How about that for irony?
  
  Then you go over to the FPS series. What made the original Half-Life exciting? Not just from shooting aliens and Special Ops guys, but how the story was unravelling concerning the Black Mesa incident. Same for Half-Life 2. It was exhilerating to see what had happened since the first game.
  
  Now, the real challenge about this game is not making it just like any other MMO game where you run around and kill--it's going to be "how can we advance the super hero story" in a highly dynamic, non-linear fashion, and make the gameplay fun too. You can't separate them and they're not mutually exclusive. A really good game worth playing over over, like watching your favorite movie again and again, incorporates a good story AND game play.
  
  --
  We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
2. Re:Stories versus games by Mike+Markley · 2006-02-26 13:26 · Score: 1
  
  Golbez is Cecil's brother
  
  Thanks for ruining it, asshole.
O Rly by Lord_Dweomer · 2006-02-26 06:11 · Score: 1

The thing that made City of Heroes a good game was that their world was set up under the premise that super heroes were EXTREMELY common. In the DC Universe, while heroes aren't exactly rare...they are unique. They are personalities. This problem came up with the Star Wars MMO as well...you can't have everybody running around as Luke or Vader. Unfortunately, I don't really see this game succeeding unless they can address that problem or have a REALLY cool power system that blows CoH out of the water.

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1. Re:O Rly by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2006-02-27 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  > This problem came up with the Star Wars MMO as well
  > ...you can't have everybody running around as Luke or Vader.
  
  And, worse, simultaneously you can't not have everybody running around as Luke or Vader. Being a Jedi is 95% of the attraction, with the remaining 4% wanting to be Boba Fett (like my son), or, for very old-school RPG'ers like me, the remaining 1% being an "Exquisite Leotard" dancer just for the pure novelty of it.
  
  Yeah, you can't let everybody be a Jedi, but you can't not, either. Bad choice for game designers.
  
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Re:SoE can ruin anything nice by dc29A · 2006-02-26 06:11 · Score: 1

Still best of luck to them, quite a crowded market.

Crowded market? Everyone said that before WoW was released. Boy did WoW proved them wrong. IMO it's not crowded, if a company can make an innovative game it can get a good share of the MMOG pie.

I think WoW proved that a few gameplay styles/mechanics sell if done well:
- Fast Avatar advacement, people don't want a game to become a job.
- Fast gameplay, button mashing is fun for many.
- Accessible raid content, raiding can be fun if not difficult or if doesn't require an army.
- PvP.
Uh... by Jordanis · 2006-02-26 06:19 · Score: 1

How do you make it the 'DC' universe? In the case of Star Wars, there's lots of attendant setting stuff and other trappings to make it recognizable. But DC is a modern-era 'verse (for the most part). The thing that makes it recognizable is the characters, which leaves two possibilities: the canonical characters will have all sorts of story and stuff going on around them, making the PCs secondary, OR we have a case where the most powerful players are these giant Mary-Sues that go out and save Superman and fight The Joker etc etc. That screws with the feel of the 'verse by introducing characters that no one has ever heard of and making them the focus, in essence. This can be pulled off, if done carefully, but the kind of careful that makes it unlame involves novel-length work. And we're talking about MMO power players, here. Also, hero density is going to be an issue. The DC 'verse has, what, a few dozen heroes on the entire bloody planet? Few enough that crossovers are a special event. Between the reduced world size necessetated by modern technology, and the increased player base, running into another hero is going to be about as common as seeing drunk frat boys in the beer aisle at 1 AM. The territory that a lone superhero normally encompases is really big; a whole city and the surrounding area. I suppose that instances can go a long way toward solving that, but you can't instance the whole world. Then it stops being MM. But if you've got a crossover every issue, then suddenly you've got CoH/CoV. I think what they're going to end up with is a CoH clone with copyrighted characters duct-taped on as bait.
1. Re:Uh... by troff · 2006-02-26 10:51 · Score: 1
  
  > Also, hero density is going to be an issue. The DC 'verse has, what,
  > a few dozen heroes on the entire bloody planet? Few enough that
  > crossovers are a special event ... "uh", indeed. Not to be picky, but have you actually READ any DC titles?
  
  There are a few dozen heroes who just tried out for the JLA's last recruitment drive. AND they spun off a reserve. The Titans have a record of "a few dozen" in their own historical ranks. According to the DC1Million, there'll be a dozen Supermans alone in the next few centuries. How many Supergirls are there now, three or four?
  
  "Special Event"? Annual crossover arcs are - well, annual. Almost every month there's at least one title with a guest character on the cover.
  
  When they DO have their annual crossovers they usually have some hero gathering on the (now apparently wrecked JLA moonbase) where the biggest halls are completely filled and some people need to sit on the high galleries above.
  
  Remember that the "Kingdom Come" Else/whateverthehellWorlds was set only one or two generations later where there were so many superhero-powered children there were DAILY turf-wars over most of the planet.
  
  "Secret Files" used to run "pages" from a celebrity magazine - devoted to superhero celebrities. If there are so many superheroes in the DCU they can run a celebrity magazine... ... and that's all just in DC-bloody-America. Forget the fact that there's the rest of the world as well.
  
  I only read three regular DC titles now (Green Lantern, Flash, JLA). All this, I can see just by reading the three regulars.
  
  "Hero density" is already an issue. And in more ways than one.
2. Re:Uh... by Jordanis · 2006-02-26 19:57 · Score: 1
  
  It does sound like an issue already. The thing is, it sounds like it's already getting pretty silly.
  
  Here's the thing, though. The 'DCverse' is going to have a wider draw than people who read a fair number of comics. I mean, it's Supes and Batman. Everybody knows them. But what a lot of them /don't/ know is how crowded the 'verse actually is, because for a fair number of people, their main experience with the characters is probably via movies or TV. So it will feel screwy to them. I'm just not sure you could really sell a game entirely based on the fact that Superman is an NPC. Then again...
3. Re:Uh... by elrous0 · 2006-02-27 03:39 · Score: 1
  
  it sounds like it's already getting pretty silly
  Wait until you see just how gay those costumes look when you actually have to wear one. What looks great on a stylish comic book page will look like a Village People costume in a MMO.
  -Eric
  
  --
  SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
4. Re:Uh... by Jordanis · 2006-02-27 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  Oh man. Now I'm seeing this whole line of B-grade superheroes, stretching from horizon to horizon, their costumes as manifold and as eyesearing as the stars in the sky... and then they all start to dance. Augh.
  
  o/~"We suck too much to be in the Juu-uuustice League..."o/~
5. Re:Uh... by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2006-02-27 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  > Wait until you see just how gay those costumes look
  > when you actually have to wear one. What looks great on a stylish comic book page
  
  I beg to differ. Rogue's green-and-yellow clownsuit (especially with trenchcoat (!?!?) over it), or Wolverine's blue-and-yellow monstrosity are hardly fashion statements on actual comic pages.
  
  Wolverine vs. The Thing, The Actual Version
  (Imagine underline characters here that don't violate the lameness filter)
  
  The Thing claps his hands together, WHAM! Wolvie falls unconscious. The Thing picks him up and blows into the earhole, vacating the skull of all contents. Time: 8.6 seconds.
  
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Re:SoE can ruin anything nice by Aladrin · 2006-02-26 06:32 · Score: 1

Innovative? That's just a bonus. All an MMO needs is to be fun. I've played more than a few, and most don't last me more than a month or 2. The latest crop has lasted mere days. (Thank goodness for free trials.) The Saga of Ryzom was slated to be my next MMO until they decided that fun wasn't worthwhile, and taking 6 months (!) to level up your character should be the minimum.

--
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Go DC! by SyniK · 2006-02-26 10:51 · Score: 1

A Dreamcast MMO! AWESOME! Those crazy hackers will never let it die!

DC? DC Comics? A DC Comics MMO? Bullocks!

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-Tom
1. Re:Go DC! by istewart · 2006-02-26 11:44 · Score: 1
  
  You know, if I could play as Harvey Bullock, this game might actually be interesting.
2. Re:Go DC! by pisdtal · 2006-02-26 12:27 · Score: 1
  
  Jim lee, thats Stan Lees kid right? (Quote from a Bloodwolf cover)
  
  --
  We admit all this to insure disbelief
3. Re:Go DC! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2006-02-27 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  If I could play as Sandra Bullock, this game might actually be interesting. Long black hair, creamy white skin, full red lips, yeah, yeah...
  
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wow by Premo_Maggot · 2006-02-26 23:37 · Score: 1

Why did I think that DC stood for dreamcast, I gotta move with the times I guess.

--
Good karma sticks to me like velcro on a piece of plexiglass.
Move along, citizen.
Re:Good Luck SOE! by cluke · 2006-02-27 04:21 · Score: 2, Funny

Apparently, what is going to happen is Batman and Superman are going to start franchises. You pay up and receive your starter kit, (lycra, tights and underpants) and you can be the fully licensed(TM) Batman(R) or Superman(C) in your local franchising area.

Batman(R) and Superman(C) look forward to working with you to unleash your mutual synergy and craft moneymaking opporutnities! All this requires is one low, low monthly fee. Order in the next ten minutes and receive your complentary DVD of Bruce Wayne's motiviational seminar!
Re:you need to catch up on DC! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2006-02-27 05:40 · Score: 1

Yes, but "who wants to watch little men lifting little weights?"

As CoH and every fantasy RPG out there has learned, even the squishies can't be that squishy, hence squishy casters can stand there and take gigantic gatling gun fire and only suffer a few points of damage. And casters can cast spells while doing this, or while a 10 foot tall, 4000 lb. fighter is crowning them with a giant, 200 lb. blade.

So I guess Batman'll be able to stand with Superman vs. the same threat, no kryptonite needed, for more than 1.6 nanoseconds.

Sigh.

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Re:Good Luck SOE! by multiplexo · 2006-02-27 12:24 · Score: 1

Apparently, what is going to happen is Batman and Superman are going to start franchises. You pay up and receive your starter kit, (lycra, tights and underpants) and you can be the fully licensed(TM) Batman(R) or Superman(C) in your local franchising area.
Batman(R) and Superman(C) look forward to working with you to unleash your mutual synergy and craft moneymaking opporutnities! All this requires is one low, low monthly fee. Order in the next ten minutes and receive your complentary DVD of Bruce Wayne's motiviational seminar!
Wow, that's almost an obSimpson's reference to the Homie the Clown episode. And of course it's even more appropriate when you consider that in the episode Krusty lights a cigarette with a burning copy of Action Comics #1. OK, I'm officially pathetic for being able to recall all of that off of the top of my head.

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cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Great idea by Aexia · 2006-03-01 07:37 · Score: 1

But only if I can create a character in the mold of Judge Scalia!
Re:SoE can ruin anything nice by Olix · 2006-03-01 20:31 · Score: 1

Play EVE Online. With an average player age somewhere in the mid twenties, it is a slower and more involved MMO. No level grinding, either.
Re:SoE can ruin anything nice by ccherlin · 2006-03-02 19:03 · Score: 1

You're kidding me, right? Blizzard expanded the market with WoW, but not in a way that's accessible to anyone but themselves. Unless a game comes out that is phenomenally better, the market for any other MMO has, in fact, shrunk. Why? Everyone's still playing WoW. Until WoW becomes old hat and enters the mass exodus stage of the MMO lifecycle, I don't see a game, much less a SOE game, doing any better than any pre-WoW MMO.

I say this, of course, as a devoted Blizzard fanboy. Yeah, I could be wrong. Am I? Not likely.