Slashdot Mirror
Otherland MMO Announced
Eurogamer breaks news that German games publisher DTP Entertainment will be making an MMORPG based on Tad Williams' Otherland series of books. As anyone who has read the books will know, this could be an interesting new spin on virtual worlds. Quoting:
"For want of a better soundbite, let's call it the first cyberpunk MMO: a virtual world about virtual worlds, in which your avatar is an avatar, the NPCs play NPCs, and you explore a multiverse in which you might be in realistic historical surroundings one minute, and cartoon fantasy ones the next. Everything changes, even your own appearance, and nothing is even pretending to be real. ... You start the game as one of those consciousnesses in a place called the Land of the Lost, a nightmare scenario which you're trying to escape. You'll run, be killed, and reborn in a 'baby' state as a simple, low-rent sim (though we suspect the game won't be using that term, for obvious reasons) - a blank, featureless avatar that can be male, female or even neither."
I may have to pick up a book or to and get familiar with the story line.
if I were able to see further, it was because I stood on the shoulders of Giants -Newton
Wake me up when a mutant is using hypnotic mind-control to make me believe I'm actually in the game. Until then I don't think this is going to be a particularly compelling MMORPG.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Boss: Okay guys, we have to come up with some better ideas for this new MMO.
Producer 1: I think we should go for the most realistic historical surroundings!
Producer 2: That's boring! How about a cartoon fantasy world?
Four hours later
Boss: You still haven't made a decision.
Producer 1: Oh yeah we have. We're gonna do both!
Boss (disheartened): Both?
Producer 2: Yeah! It'll be a completely open world, totally unfocused! A sandbox! The user makes the choices!
Producer 1: With open-endedness! And it'll be like...so, meta-
Boss: Oh, for fuck's sake. Just throw in a bunch of crap stolen from BladeRunner and call it 'cyberpunk', then it will sell.
Producer 1: You're the boss!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Oh my GOD, that is the most awesome news I've heard all week!
No, wait, the other thing. Yet another MMO, cause, you know. There's totally not enough of those around.
Wake me up when... eh, I'll wake up when I'm ready.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
The onion did a piece on "World of World of Warcraft", where players play a character sitting in a lonely basement playing warcraft. The "your avatar is an avatar" part reminds me of that, though technically they imply different things... and actually that statement doesn't imply much...
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/warcraft_sequel_lets_gamers_play
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
You forgot to answer the most important question.
No, I think the summary answered that already. It implied that this should be sufficiently different enough from WoW that I could enjoy both games.
I played LotRO and it was feeling too much like WoW so I quit. Same with Warhammer. Buggier versions of WoW. I have high hopes for this as it sounds like the concept, classes & lore will be far enough away from WoW to provide me with entertainment.
This is going to shock and appall you but there can be multiple successful MMOs. You might think you need to invest all your time in one but I have often played multiple and enjoyed them.
You don't need to kill WoW to be successful, just try being original and a lot can happen! I only hope they don't cash out, release early, screw the users and just let it die after they've doubled production costs like so many others.
My work here is dung.
Those were some good books, but the "it's all a dream" aspect of the setting can lead authors into self-indulgences. Essentially, there are no rules for the world. That was the major problem with it. Also, since "it's all a dream", a lot of the drama seemed false. The real characters were interesting but most of the time spent with the dream characters is just that many more pages of inconsequential stuff.
The "no rules for the world" quality would destroy an MMO. You can't just change the rules all the time or all the players will just hang out in the part with the most advantageous rules.
It sounds rather neat, I may have to go start reading the books. I never played Second Life, mostly due to the entire island owned by the bloody furries. Nor did I play The Matrix: Online because it seemed so bland.
This, on the other hand sounds very interesting.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
So, any fans of the SF/Fantasy genre out there who can say why Otherland? Why not Steven Erikson's Malazan Empire? Robert Jordan's Wheel of (too much) time, Tolkien, or Terry Pratchett for that matter? What makes Otherland more suitable than the others?
after RingTFA, my questions are the same as the article writers: how is any of this stuff more than changing the name of common MMORPG elements? Like, you get "code" that "alters the fundemental reality of the world" from killing monsters, doing quests, trading, balhblah. Maybe I am being skeptical (along with the author of TFA), but it sounds a lot like other games where, say, you have to grind monsters to drop spell components, or gear, balhblah. I like the sounds of "leveling up" changing into "learning how to modify the code" but if it does the same thing in the end... That being said, the grapics look cool, and hopefully the wide range of areas actually feels like a wide range of areas, not just cyberglacier, cyberruins, cybervolcano, etc.
I will be replying the daylights out of this thread since I really liked the series.
It is a tetrology of 4 books, all gorgeously detailed! I really liked that a crucial feature is two AFRICAN characters as lead heroes! One from a modern province, and one a classically trained Bushman.
Tad W. does a brilliant job of showing how the Old Bush Ways could provide crucial insight into our modern era.
I hate MMO's, but I'll probably have to get my own little corner of this one solely because of the books.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm not knocking the content since it sounds like a neat idea but maybe put up a story when they are farther than the "will be making" phase. Like when they hit the "have funding" and "are in development" phase. Otherwise this is less newsworthy than the pseudo-cancelled (pseudo because it was never truly started) Halo MMO.
I think I "will be making" the first Super Mario FPS. Maybe I should create and post an announcement so I can get on the front page of slashdot?
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I mean the whole point of Otherland was that people got trapped there ... does that just mean they wont cancel your credit monthly if you quit?
Make sure to give both the books and the MMO the benefits of the doubt. I am prepared to accept if the publishers wind up with only a mediocre translation.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Given the fast raise of OS X marketshare in colleges and universities, where the actual gamers are, I still find it incredibly short-sighted that companies continue to insist on making Windows-only games.
Dual-booting is not an option since Macs don't come pre-installed with Windows, and people don't want to pay for yet another OS, split their hard drive in two partitions, etc. We buy Macs to use OS X, there's no actual need to buy a "gaming OS" on top of all that.
Does Windows has a higher total marketshare? Yes, of course, but that also includes all the corporate desktops which will never be used for gaming.
I think we need to have something cleared up. I keep seeing people refer to the "lore" of Otherland, but that kind of misses the point. Otherland doesn't really have "lore" in the same way that things like WoW, LoTR, Warhammer, or even StarTrek do. The basic premise of the book was that the internet has evolved to the point where everyone interfaces via a direct neural interface and it's experienced as a immersive 3d world with avatars etc., but that something weird is happening and some people are getting "stuck" in the virtual worlds. This is similar to the premise of .Hack, but very different in other ways. Anyway, there's really only 2 bits of "lore" I can think of from the books that could conceivably be brought across. The first would be the major antagonists from the book, which is a fat man and a skinny man that hunt the characters across the various virtual worlds (always wearing an avatar that matches them in some way, for instance the fat man as a toad and the skinny man as a praying mantis). The second item would be the use of certain gestures to perform various actions, such as moving fingers in a very specific pattern to open a portal to another world. It's important to note however that in the books when the characters get sucked into the virtual worlds and lose their ability to log out, the worlds also stop responding to the standard gestures.
Anyway, the important thing is, that for the purposes of something like this MMO, Otherland isn't really a single world with lore, rather it's more of a meta-world in which the players randomly get dropped into one of many worlds each with their own lore.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Life's a Dream.
It is by Dream alone I set my life in motion. It is by the juice of green tea & absinthe that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by Dream alone I set my life in motion.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
what it must have is some aspect of a hidden "otherland" built into it... but not mentioned or even hinted at by the makers.
so there's no coherent universe, history, storyline? sounds like a really shallow book if that is true.
In a strange way, the slashdot summary actually sounds a lot like second life.
haven't tried any MMOs, They look too addictive.
I won't play this
I really like the books.
I won't play this.
I won't play this
I won't play this.
I won't play this
I won't play this.
I really like the books.
I won't play this
I won't play this.
i really like the books.
i will play this.
You know how it is with these MMO designer types: "Confident, cocky, lazy, dead." My God. Why is that quote still taking up space in my head?
Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
There is, but all that occurs outside of the virtual world this is going to be based on. The storyline is also not applicable, as in the books the main characters are investigating why people are getting trapped in the virtual world and once they themselves become trapped attempting to work their way out of it. As several others have already commented, the virtual world parts of the book are really very shallow because it's mostly about them attempting not to get killed long enough to make it to the next world. I would say it's comparable to trying to convert something like Portal into an MMO. There's a story there, and I don't think anyone would argue it's a pretty good story, but it's sort of a one shot thing. Sure the gameplay mechanic could be carried over, but the story itself is no good for an MMO setting. Likewise the over-arching story from the books, what made them good, is no good for an MMO setting.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
They made tried to make "The Street" from Snow Crash?
Meet new people, and kill them.
This makes me want a DonnerJack mmo.
You forgot to answer the most important question.
42
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
It sounds like a game about Second Life, where you get to play being Ordinal Malaprop or Cubey Terra, for people who don't have enough skill... I mean telemorphic ability... to be Ordinal Malaprop or Cubey Terra.
"let's call it the first cyberpunk MMO: a virtual world about virtual worlds, in which your avatar is an avatar, the NPCs play NPCs.."
.hack beat them to it by a six years.
If that's the defintion of a cyberpunk MMO, then
At first I thought it said Outland MMO... Oh well.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The way you describe the getting stuck in worlds and having to change worlds reminds me of that movie with John Ritter where he buys Cable from the devil. He gets sucked in and tries to survive all the different channels going after the remote to escape.
Stay Tuned is the name of it.
Actually the are dozens of Lore inside the Otherlands. One Lore set is a Pelio-American/Mayan society that advanced so far as to outpace European encroachment, that is to say that the dominate power in the world is in fact a modern Mayaian empire. Another uses a modified OZ storyline where Scarecrow, Tin Man, And Lion are warlords and the Dorothy is a messiah like figure of myth (this lore then branching out to many other aspects of the areas) Otherland is a separate "internet" more like an "internet2" some inroads possible from the public but primarily a private venture, in fact, the purpose of the Otherland is to ***SPOILER*** let those in power download their minds into a world of their own creation. One person builds a kingdom of insects, another location is a "World house" where a library is like unto a country. Worlds imagined from OUR cultural experiences. So to say that Otherland has no lore is perhaps not accurate.
like many other SF/Fantasy series, Otherland started strong, but it became obvious in the second volume that the author hadn't thought it all through and just started making it up as he went along (ala George Lucas).
there should be an exception to copyright rules that would let someone step in under these circumstances and write the sequel that the initial story deserves.
as for the online game aspect, why should we expect it to be anything other than one more level grinding bore with pretty graphics? when it's gotten to where character classes have generic descriptions (tank, etc.) no matter what they are supposed to represent, all that's left is changing the pictures.
MMOs have become a lazy way to make games.
Wrong. The most important question is:
"Will it run Linux?"
Hmmmm.. no, sorry! It is:
"Will it run in Linux?".
factor 966971: 966971
"Driving Over Miss Daisy" was the highlight of that film.
No, don't make a game based on "Otherland". Create "Otherland".
Outside of the neural interfaces I think we have the computing power or cloud power to create an environment that is like Otherland. Personally, I would say Second Life is already there, but it's too focused on just being a better chat room IMHO.
They need to create a place where anything goes within a certain constraint of game physics / tools with a couple of core rules.
Take something like the old world MOOs where there are central places created by the main "company" and then allow players to build their own worlds attached somehow.
Sure you will have quality issues of some worlds / rooms being basic, but some will be awesome.
I'd even go so far as suggesting that you allow external servers to exist, etc...
You would of course have some issues with:
-violence, some people don't like it
-sex, including child versions there off
-age based access control to areas for the above
-plenty of other issues
Honestly, I don't think the people of this world, especially the US, are ready for such an open ended game. Far, far to many puritans and close minded people who want to push their nose into other peoples business. The Koreans or Japanese will probably come out with something like this first.
My .02$
Or, will it run on linux, AND run linux?
Kinda like how in a few fantasy games they poke fun at themselves by having the characters play video games.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
The basic premise of the book was that the internet has evolved to the point where a few people can interface via a VR interface and it's experienced as a immersive 3d world with avatars etc., but that something weird is happening and some people who are connecting to a very specific location, eventually dubbed Otherland, are getting "stuck" in the virtual worlds, even though they aren't using neural interfaces.
Fixed that for you. Did you even read the series? Your description is way off.
Otherland isn't really a single world with lore, rather it's more of a meta-world in which the players randomly get dropped into one of many worlds each with their own lore.
You're missing the most important bit - Otherland itself. Each "world" within Otherland has it's own masters who have ideas about what that world should be, and created it as such. The rest are mostly just fronts for something similar to the internet. It would be foolish not to include this concept - and perhaps some of the neat worlds that Tad Williams envisioned - in such a new MMO.
It should also be noted that the rest of the net is small by comparison to Otherland - which is the only place that people are actually creating *worlds* instead of just *sites*. I can't see why this wouldn't also be true.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I really liked the books, but I think they will translate quite poorly to an MMO. Still, it's worth a look. And Tad W need to write more!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The storyline is also not applicable, as in the books the main characters are investigating why people are getting trapped in the virtual world and once they themselves become trapped attempting to work their way out of it.
Hmm, that part of the story line sounds applicable to me. A virtual world that is very difficult to log out from sounds like a dream come true for a paid-subscription gaming company! :-)
One of the main characters in Otherland is a seasoned MMO player who spends all his time gaming, and only stops playing the game when another sneaky protagonist hacks his game to send him on a quest outside of the game, but still in virtual reality. One of... I emphasize, ONE OF the virtual worlds they all get to is a 100% accurate, realistic, and living ecosystem simulation of Middle Earth, of the Lord of the Rings variety. ONE OTHER of the virtual worlds is a 100% accurate, realistic, and living ecosystem simulation of ancient Egypt, and the entire Nile River Valley. ONE MORE of the virtual worlds is an endless House, with eternal carpeted stairs, bookshelves, rooms, bannisters, roofs, windows, etc etc etc and the characters are about 2 inches tall. The only way anyone could make anything resembling Outland would be to link all current and future MMOs together inside a great big meta-MMO. I don't see how this would be possible.
"The basic premise of the book was that the internet has evolved to the point where everyone interfaces via a direct neural interface and it's experienced as a immersive 3d world with avatars etc."
That's not quite correctÂâ" the book (actually a four-tome series) is set in the near-future, and there's no such thing as direct neutral interfaces. They just use VR goggles and body suits suspended in special tanks.
Since the book has the protagonists making there way across many completely different and unrelated MMORPGs and other virtual worlds (including a Medieval fantasy game like World of Warcraft), I have difficulty seeing how a single MMO worth playing can be made from all of this.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Ever since I read the series I have done periodic checks of the web to see if anyone has setup a version of the Treehouse even just as a forum.
Either no one has "borrowed" the idea and run with it, or they have and stuck close to the origins in making it super exclusive and very hard to find.
It will be interesting to see how this concept is translated into the game. Maybe it will be where the actual game developers hang out.
Drunkeness is an electron free version of virtual reality.
90% of them are horrible implemented with bugs on release. No story beyond starting area. Terrible concepts of everything. Horrible non immersible worlds with instanced zones...
The more hype, the more they suck. Leading to huge failures after launch. Most people quit, and many are so disenchanted they return to WoW, even if they had quit the game before!
Strangely no one has posted http://www.tadwilliams.com/ which has its front page turned over to news on this new game including a huge amount of artwork and many of Tad's thoughts on the project.
The console .hack games were simMMO. I guess this is the next level of recursion?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
IIRC, that's not quite true. In the books, there are direct neural interfaces, they're just way out of most of the character's price range.
Maybe I'm really really stupid and can't quite grasp what's happening in the MMO market but it seems to me that successful MMOs are based on original IP while soso or downright sucky MMOs are based on licensed IP. Also I thought it is quite obvious what the next big MMO needs to have: player generated content done RIGHT. So how's about this, game devs: do an MMO with player generated content and a minimal (just enough to provide a 'theme' to the game world) IP as far as story and background goes. MMOs and story do not go together and the problems plaguing the genre all stem from the fact that designers feel the need to have a story as centerpiece. Instead of designing crutches aimed at hiding the fact that every other person in the game world can kill Overdreadlord Monsterkill how about you build a big playground where people can actually develop the story themselves?
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
I'd argue there are many main protagonists. He was just one of them. They all meet up in the end, and his particular storyline was very good, but you could just as easily say that Paul Jonas was the main protagonist, or Renie. He writes all these characters with plenty of insight and description of their mental states and decisions, so they're equally important.