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."
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.
I may as well, any chance at playing a cyberpunk themed MMO thats actually good (As opposed to say, Neocron) is one that I don't want to miss. And if I play it, I want to know the lore. That and the whole concept of this world itself is making me want to pick up the books anyway.
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.
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?
I take it you've never read Otherland.
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.
So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth game... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
...Which is why it's going to fail spectacularly. The novels are a decent read, but the 'cyberspace' aspects of it are as shallow and cliche as marketing blurbs.
what it must have is some aspect of a hidden "otherland" built into it... but not mentioned or even hinted at by the makers.
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.
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.
Actually Anarchy Online had all that stuff a loooong long time ago (up to and including a scary overabundance of gender non-specific sexy clothes for your virtual crossdressing needs).
A pretty good MMO actually, for it's era...It's still around, and they've actually been pretty busy with expansions lately, but the core product is pretty dated. The major flaw of the game was twinking, imho, because everything was based on character stats, and there were ways to increase your stats dramatically out of proportion to your level...And since the pvp was level based, you could come across a guy who was the "same" level as you, who could squish you like a bug.
I think the most amusing one I ever saw was a guildie of mine who had a level 60 twink who could manifest a level 150 pet. That was his only skill, and yet it was more than enough...The 150 pet was more than tough enough to stand up to a few level 150 characters...At least for a while. What it did to people he could pvp with had to be seen to be imagined.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Disclaimer: I read the first book in the series and decided not to go any further and in the first book the main characters are just getting going in the virtual worlds.
Be prepared to spend the next several months or possibly years on it. I read all the books back to back and found them in dire need of editing. Some posters will probably jump on me and claim it was all about depth, but there was quite a bit of fat in every one of those books. Things that took far too long to develop and had an insane level of verbosity. Just like this post is getting to be...
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
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.
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