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Bethesda To Have An MMO-Dev Sibling
Gamasutra is reporting the exciting news that Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax has just announced they are opening a new studio dedicated to online games. It's going to be headed by Matt Firor, formerly of Mythic Entertainment. "Firor worked for Mythic for 10 years, serving as the producer for the company's popular MMO Dark Age of Camelot, as well as taking a lead role on all of the studio's other projects. Since leaving Mythic in 2006, Firor has worked as a consultant in the online gaming industry, advising publishers interested in entering the online market ... The studio is expected to continue to take on staff over the next 18 months in order to establish 'an entire MMO-sized team,' according to Firor. Specifics on planned subject and platform for ZeniMax's MMO have not yet been revealed." Fallout's MMOG rights are still firmly held by Activision so ... Elder Scrolls Online, perhaps?
>>Elder Scrolls Online, perhaps
How many MMORPG's with a sword and sorcery theme can the market bear?
One of the best parts of the gameplay of Oblivion was the thief skills. Any house you want you can pick the lock, steal goods and sell them to fences. Only the best thieves get access to the best fences. There's even a mythology around it: the mysterious Gray Fox!
Compare this to 99% of online games where thieves are universally hated on. The sneak skills don't work. The pickpocket skills only work on poor NPCs and mobs. Lock picking is virtually non-existent.
Virtual world designers hate thieves because they don't play the game in straight lines. They're not trying to get more kit or grind up levels. They're more like hackers, trying to find the interesting nooks and crannies of the game. Using the thief skills you can finish every mission in Oblivion almost without killing a single monster. Fine for a single player game, but how do you balance such awesome skills in a competitive online world?
How we know is more important than what we know.
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Just as long as this doesn't steal time, resources, or people from their single-player RPGs, I'm okay with it. But if it does, even just a little, I will detest it. I hate MMOs.
I believe rogue class characters in WoW have a backstab skill. Isn't that great of course.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Both DAoC and WoW thieves have this ability to backstab for quite a few years now. Other PC/NPC players' ability to see those "stealthed" thieves depends, I believe, on their perception skills and how quickly/slowly the thief moves.
Sorry, I must have missed the memo, but since when did Activision have the rights to do a fallout anything?
Iirc, when the Bethesda bought the fallout ip, part of the deal was that _Interplay_ had an exclusive license to do a mmog.
Says someone who has never been innocently picking an herb and then an instant later been dead after some random rogue nailed you with a crit that did twice your hitpoints in damage.
Say a lot of things about rogues in WoW, but you can't throw down on their combat and stealth skills (the rest of their skills, YES)...They are extremely solid. The main tactic against a rogue is to "outlast" his initial damage rush...If you can do that, you have a chance to counterattack while he is gathering energy for another couple rounds of damage spam, assuming he doesn't just use the vanish skill and jump back into stealth.
It's also interesting in that you have more than one valid path for rogue combat. You can be super stealthy, with the bulk of you skills dedicated to stealth and sneak attacks, or you can be more toe-to-toe combat oriented, with high speed attacks and nasty damage.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
FFXI Thief Sneak Attack/Trick Attack.
Everyone has one LOL.
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
Well, Origin had the honesty to classify those games as "Interactive Movies". And they made some of the best RPGs ever (Ultima VII is probably the peak of the RPG genre).
Anyway, the problem with Oblivion aren't the cutscenes (which are weak but thankfully few). The problem with Oblivion is they tried to make a "RPG" for 10 year old players with consoles. The result is a bit like trying to make an "intellectual" version of Mortal Kombat or a "realistic" version of Super Mario. It's just the wrong kind of approach. Oblivion would be a much better game if they did away with the pseudo-RPG elements (and the hideous, generally uninspired, buggy-as-hell "quests") and focused on the combat aspects. Oblivion is actually quite fun as a hack'n'slash game. It's just not a good (believable, immersive, consistent) RPG or "world simulator".
I agree with some of the posters above, though, the "Thieves' Guild" sub-plot is by far the best part of the game. It's almost as if it was designed by someone with vision, and actually playtested (something that I find impossible to believe about the rest of the game).
It still suffers from the hand-holding, just-follow-the-arrow, auto-balancing-enemies approach, though, and it still has some incredible bugs. For example, whenever you talk to a thief you have a conversation topic called "The Gray Fox", and they all tell you exactly the same thing, word for word... including the Gray Fox himself. Maybe he's just one of those people who like to talk about themselves in the 3rd person, but still, it's kind of confusing to see him doubt his own existence...