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Buffy MMO Announced, Firefly MMO Delayed
Zonk brings word that Multiverse, the developer who in 2006 acquired the rights to make a Firefly-based MMO, has announced that a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer MMO is now under development. An interview with Corey Bridges from Multiverse seems to indicate that the Firefly MMO, though delayed, is not dead. He also provides a few details on what the Buffy game will be like. Quoting:
"What we're doing with the Buffy game then is releasing it in stages. It will first be a flash-based virtual world, with the full Multiverse server behind it. ... So it will start as a 2D flash-based MMO where you can go on missions and interact with other players. This will extend even once we have the 3D client working, where you can both interact with players using the other point of view. We're going to have these shared spaces where 2D and 3D people can interact. All of this will come out in phases, with staged gameplay coming out. We're sort of blazing a path with this concept, and we're really interested in what this might mean for players of the two versions. ... I'd love to get [a public beta] out to players by the end of the year."
This seems like kind of a flimsy IP to base an MMO on. Aren't there dozens of better choices?
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NO MO' MMO's!
Seriously, I ain't got time for 'em, does anyone else? Just getting through a great single-player game like Oblivion kicks my ass, let alone this multi-player time-sink crap.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
We will release the Flash game and then this project will die because we can't make any money off that.
shared spaces where 2D and 3D people can interact
So what do the 2D players see when the 3D players jump?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
... it will ... so it will start ...this will ... once we have ... we're going to have ... all of this will come out in phases ...we're sort of blazing a path ... I'd love to ...
To be honest, DNF has a lower vapourware coefficient.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
We're going to have these shared spaces where 2D and 3D people can interact.
We already have that here on Slashdot whenever an evolution-related story crops up.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It's called Eve Online. http://www.eve-online.com/
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
Man, what is the point of going through all that trouble? This reeks of wasted effort spent on getting the 2d side up and running, assets they can't re-use, and the trouble of bridging the 2d client over to the 3d client. Seems like a huge timesuck to me.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Do they think I'm 16?
Really, I'm 14. I just have this account that says I'm 16.
--If you believe THEM, wait'll you get a load of this . . .
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
How did this get modded up past the firehose? Buffy, Firefly, and MMOGs have nothing to do with-
Oh, wait.
I'm flattered and everything, but I'm not sure I really lead the sort of life that's all that worth making an MMO about.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Both of those MMOs sound nice. But if you really want my gaming dollars, how about one taking place in the Dr. Horrible universe?
(Every five minutes your in-game chat would have to rhyme, of course.)
JJ
Most MMOs focus on two concepts: a unique combat system and different skills to level. A Buffy MMO sounds interesting enough, until you realize that the developers would have to stray too far from the TV series in order to make it a good game.
First, the combat in the Buffyverse has always been minimal. Buffy explains in painful detail to the vampires why they can't win, and she'll kick their heads in if they try anything. Once an episode, one of them tries somethings. Buffy kicks heads in. End of episode, at least as far as fighting goes.
As for skills, well, there's not much of that in the series, either. Buffy has always been killing vampires. It's what she does. Giles is always the librarian who has read every book on the occult, but still never notices anything wrong until someone points it out first. +3 intellect/+1 cluelessness. But I am getting silly here.
The point is, the game will either conform to the Buffyverse, or the game will distort the Buffyverse to make it work. Either way, it cannot end well.
how about an mmo with actual four-dimensional character classes?
granted 5 dimensions might be a little hard for people to wrap their minds around as a playable character, but a four-dimensional character would be neat.
you'd have the capacity to attack from multiple directions at once, adjust yourself to the specific needs of an encounter, etc.
Does he really expect anyone to play a flash game? Or even pay for it? Might as well make it a facebook app where you "complete offers" to power up your character.
If you don't get the Firefly MMO back in full-time production, then I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
-Summer Glau
...from QuoteAddict:
http://www.quoteaddict.com/quotes.php?search=buffy
DON'T YOU DARE ACT SUPRISED SLASHDOTTERS!
Any generation that can make a "Desparate Housewives" game and a sequel to "90210" deserves whatever nonsense MMO they birth!
I've also see a BRATZ video game, too many Barbie games to count, and about 200 old crappy FPS games based off the old Doom and Doom 2 engines. I've seen really bad attempts at serious Murder-Mystery games (Myst and Phantasmagoria being a few of the exceptions to the wave of shit they put out in that genre).
"Garbage in, Garbage Out. Counts for data, and counts for life"
Face it, there is the future of the gaming industry. I bet they'll blame the low subscription rate on the conviently leaked source code and demand the government subsidize them due to the evil pirates.
Down down down, right down the shitter only twice as fast as the movie industry's slide into irrelivance...
Books: they don't crash, do need hardware upgrades outside of the occasional new pair of glasses, and so far none of the books I have read have any class imbalances except "Last of the Renshai", the hobbled warrior class was WAY OP'ed!!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Spacesim genre on PC has been basically dead since the late great FreeSpace 2. Okay, there was Freelancer which was semi-decent, but nothing compared to the old great hits like Tie Fighter, best of Wing Commander, Privateer, Tachyon, Independence War or even all the way back to Elite series.
Do not even start about recent flops like Tarr Chronicles, SpaceForce : Rogue Universe or even the entire X series. Eye candy and insance technical requirements bundled with unworkable control schemes not a playable game make. ( A side note: EVE is not a space sim, not the kind that im talking about here )
Now Firefly universe would be a perfect setting for Privateer-like game. You dont even have to be goddamn revolutionary game designer to pull a triple-A hit on this. Just use the best gameplay elements of the past, make a good story ( hey its not like good sci-fi writers are hard to come by), half decent graphics and playable controls and you have a sure winner on that currently barren field.
Yes, i we know Elite 4 and Infinity ( infinity-universe.com ) will be ready Real Soon Now (TM) but i dont think advances in life prolonging medicine are happening fast enough to tide all us space simmers over until then.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Um, more like boldly going where angels fear to tread. At best you're going to create a shitty little flash game that acts as a teaser for the full-fledged client, and then discover that there is virtually no reusable code between the two. Nobody's done this before because it's a bad idea on its face-- at best, you're wasting precious coding resources on hype, which is what your PR department is for.
Screw Buffy (or, rather, that cute red head lesbian), bring on the Firefly game! Much more interested in it than Buffy.
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
translation:
wow, we can't program a 3d client worth shit yet, and/or our 3D artists suck ass.... but hey, we have a nice server... so we'll put up a quick shitty 2D client because we're out of money and don't want to fuck up our good IP on a bad launch.
We're going to have these shared spaces where 2D and 3D people can interact. All of this will come out in phases, with staged gameplay coming out. We're sort of blazing a path with this concept, and we're really interested in what this might mean for players of the two versions.
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't Ultima Online available in 2D and 3D clients?
-- Religion is not an exact science
you know when people are high and they come up with really great ideas like breeding and selling hamsters? This sounds kinda like one of those ideas...
both series were crap. just give it up, star wars geeks. come just us in the human race where we don't need to indulge in trite fantasies to have a good time.
The Firefly MMO was in private beta but they couldn't seem to figure out why just as you were about to ding level 3 the game would exit abruptly and show you a confusing array of cutscenes from the rest of the content...
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
If I absolutely had to choose one, it certainly wouldn't be a Buffyverse. I don't even see how you could populate the game world realistically. I mean, how many Slayers can you really have? Does everybody have to be some red-shirt vampire? What is there to do? Do you need to collect money? Why? To pay for bigger stakes? Everybody but Cordelia was broke most of the time and that worked out just fine. And Sunnyvale is pretty small. . . In the first episode, it was put plainly that there was only one club in town and that things were pretty limited. Do you get points for doing homework and being bored?
Whereas the Firefly universe is. . , well, it seems like the hands down most logical choice for a multi-player game universe. Spaceships, collecting money for vital supplies, lots of different and fascinating character classes, goods trading, shoot outs, futuristic cities, floating cities, desert towns, reavers and evil empires. . , I mean, jeez! It has absolutely everything!
This silly decision sounds like it has one of two sources. . .
1. The marketing gurus are simply counting heads and trends in terms of disposable income dollars and goth-girls with free time, (which frankly is silly since the fan base has all grown up since Buffy was a hit, and are probably less likely to be such huge fans).
2. (And this is my personal opinion). The same forces over at Fox which deliberately deep-sixed Firefly for its anti-government, pro-revolutionist sentiment, (again, my opinion), aren't about to allow the same to get another toe-hold with some potentially massively popular game.
Whatever. I don't play video games, and thank goodness, because the people who got these properties sound deeply uninspired and planning-impaired. What a shame.
-FL
get past the 2d/3d crossover stage and to the done stage.
While I have no hopes at all for a good Buffy game(I'm bias, I thought the series sucked) I can see where the could move it more global and have 'Vampire Empires'. I think making it more like angel might be wiser. Many demons running around, most of them neither good or bad along with the vampires would create more story opportunities.
I'm bias, I really enjoyed Angel.
They could incorporate destinies as personal goals.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Pray tell, what the fsuck is an MMO?
And why the fsck does it take 30 seconds to post to slashdot with this fancy new-fangled ajax commenting system? Damn that sucks.
Salut,
Jacques
"shared spaces where 2D and 3D people can interact"
Twin Skies is already doing that, except that it's releasing a full 3-D world alongside a complimentary set of flash games and interactions for the world. They've already demo'd it at PAX. They've already proven they can do it. The BTVS team doesn't sound like it knows how it is going to pull this off yet and may be making it more of a gimmick than a useful feature.
I hope in the Buffy MMO you can wander into Lorne's club and play a karaoke minigame, something like the singing portions of "Rock Band". It would fit perfectly.
Fighting
Agility
Strength
Endurance
Reason
Intuition
Psyche
So there! 8-p
seriously? Lets make everything an MMO.
Just announced! Slashdot MMO! play any one of 5 classes informative, funny, insightful, interesting, troll!
Epic level cap of +1 to +5! Ability to ignore comments I mean players below level 2!
Seems to me these guys are like the people they get on X-Factor or s got talent - and they claim they are world masters, but when they get up there they are terrible.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If you play an MMO based on a movie/TV show where there's a very small number of super powerful characters, then everyone wants to play the game as those characters and be super-powerful compared to everyone else. But you can't do that well in an MMO because not everyone can be uber. Obviously everone wants to play as a vampire slayer (or a vampire, I guess) just like in Star Wars Galaxies everyone wanted to play as a Jedi.
I think something like a Harry Potter MMO would make more sense. You start off with little to no powers but earn them at every level, and you can make every character go through the same levelling (i.e. Hogwarts school). It would make more sense that the main character (you) is just like everyone else in the game.
Most American action movies don't really lend themselves well to MMOs because there tends to be a single hero character with clear advantages over everyone else. Hard to model that in an MMO.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
......."So, in order to spend our current budgeted allowances, we are going to shove something out there, in a totally unfinished state, so much so, that the players will be our ALPHA testers, on live, permanent servers. We need to prove that, from the beginning, we have a solid player base to validate further spending. If the money comes in, then we will spend more."
Destined for doom, before birth.
And I assure you, it also wasn't the designers' idea to have players start out at level 2, then advance through levels 3, 6, 7, 8, 4, 5, 9, 13, and 1, in that order.
Failing spectacularly on two fronts simultaneously .. I thought the Flagsip guys had already blazed the way on that one, but guess not?
I have spoken'eth.
...it will be Ultima Online then? Because I remember how well the mixed 2D and 3D content worked for them.
Warcraft has become so big and is such a cash cow that everyone is salivating. But they started out with a killer licence, developpers with a track record of making good games, a lead programer that came from the "house of kick ass".
Good luck to everyone trying to be the next big thing. how is Matrix Online doing by the way?
Aimed at whatever Fox executive decided to show Firefly episodes completely out of order.