Slashdot Mirror
THQ Announces Warhammer 40K MMOG
In our interview with the Warhammer Online team a while back, there were questions as to why we weren't going to be seeing a Warhammer 40K MMOG. Several people seemed quite keen on the idea. Well, for those people: your time is now. THQ has announced they'll be developing Warhammer 40K into a MMOG and mobile games. Gamasutra reports on comments from Kelly Flock, executive vice president of worldwide publishing for the company, about their plan to work with Austin startup Vigil games on the project. Says Flock, "We realized this is one of those few properties that has a high level of interest from the hardcore gaming community, which could be a great launching point to turning it into a great mainstream mass-market MMO ... We're not out to replace World of Warcraft, we think we have a unique offering in the same category that will get its own share of attention if we deliver properly on the gameplay mechanics we'll build our own audience." Flock demures from offering a timeframe for release of the game, saying they're not even going to try to pinpoint a development schedule yet.
is that they have a little trouble keeping that kind of ultra-violent, soul crushing story line interesting to players over the long term.
Everything I like about 40K involves big armies, lotts of drama, and massive casualties. Not the best fodder for a MMO.
Two cents inserted, I go!!
-GiH
There is a Warhammer Fantasy MMOG currently under development. That's probably what you are thinking of. On the other hand, this announcement is about a Warhammer 40k based MMO, which is GW's other Warhammer line. One is high fantasy and lends itself more to RPGs, and the other being gritty sci-fi.
I hope the game comes off like the sub game inquisitor, where you play more as individualistic characters (Inquisitors, Assassins, Rogue Traders, Eldar Rangers etc) rather than just being a soldier or space marine. I get the feeling that if they put the option to be a space marine out there everyone will do it and it will be over saturated just like the table top game. On the other hand, if they don't they will be missing out on a huge part of the market for that game. Perhaps they should consider doing what the Star Wars MMO did with Jedi. You can't start as one, but instead have to get an offer for training and earn it somehow. But then again being a space marine wouldn't be a great deal of fun in an RPG (shoot, shoot, shoot some more) so perhaps they could stick to the specialist chapters like the Grey Knights and Deathwatch who actually have abilities/powers to keep them interesting.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Nonsense. Try thinking a little bit outside the box.
Sample classes could be that a Space Marine is a character who is moderately tank-like in nature. Rather than having a player play a guardsman, you instead play a squad leader, and you have 'pets' of guardsmen who fire on your behalf. There's a basic "x number of guardsmen = 1 space marine. roughly." rule of thumb you could go by, and scale that up as characters level, until you become able to have 'pets' as a Commisar such as tanks, heavy artillery, or the equivalent. and the marine works their way up to, say, Terminator armor, or a single rhino/land raider.
If you don't assume one troop unit = 1 player, and break things up, the game could get quite interesting.
I also found that statement funny, but for a different reason.
Imagine a musician announcing that they're not out to replace Britney Spears. Imagine slashdot announcing that it's not out to replace CNN.