Slashdot Mirror
Turbine Planning Console MMO
Turbine, the game studio that developed Lord of the Rings Online, said they are working on MMO products for consoles, for which they plan to provide details early next year. Kotaku notes that Turbine is also looking at incorporating user-generated content in future games. Quoting:
"Turbine has the license to make MMOs based on the Tolkien universe until 2012, with options to extend until 2017. ... Turbine has its eye on open worlds and user-generated content, too: 'We're working on tech to let people... enable self evolving worlds,' [Turbine's communications director Adam Mersky] said. 'The idea is, we have these immersive, beautiful 3D worlds and they're designed by professional artists — but how can we let people create content in those... without "suburban sprawl," allow them to create gameplay environments.'"
Did anyone else read that like an Engineering practical? A game where the idea is to plan the construction of a turbine in a huge team?
failure.
Asheron's Call 1 was an awesome game. I'll always be a fan of theirs because of how awesome Asheron's Call 1 was. The game was strangely imbalanced... But that was ok because the devs were constantly making new content. So while you could use imbalances to become very powerful, the devs could throw new monsters at you that are on your level. The biggest downfall to AC1 was AC2. AC2 had such a bad combat system that armor did basically nothing. If you create a MMORPG, make sure your combat system is tight.
God spoke to me.
When I read the title of this, I thought it was an article about the return of muds :)
You mean another one.
Considering it is Turbine you might be right. They took two of the biggest names in geekdom and basically came up.... meh
They go out of their way to congratulate themselves on how they don't release subscriber numbers yet those who watch the industry put it into perspective, when you have nothing to gloat about it makes it obvious in its own way.
The reason AC1 has held on for so long is because no other MMORPG is like it. If you ignore the dated graphics you will see an engine and game created by people who liked to play games. They created this game out of their love of gaming. It was a game created by gamers for other gamers.
Whereas AC2 was a game created by programmers for themselves. It sure sounded as if they enjoyed it more than we did. Great cities of emptiness which were nothing more than monuments to the developers.
I figure their going to consoles is just admission they don't have what it takes to cut it in the PC centric MMORPG world. Their clients ever since AC2 have "felt" sluggish and their UI development is horrid at times. A mish mash of themes and badly setup panels.
Now before people clamor around and claim a mmorpg and a console don't mix I have two words for you.
Guitar Hero.
Why not release a mmorpg with its own dedicated controller? Though I fully admit the idea of playing one without a keyboard feels wrong the fact is people are getting very used to voice chat in game. So a dedicated controller and voice chat alleviates the need of a keyboard very nicely.
Lets just hope Turbine's next game doesn't have NPCs who don't look and walk like zombies from a living dead movie. (this is a reference to lotro where the npcs do not have the full animation or graphics of the player and hence have dead faces and walk like someone shoved a corncob up their arse)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I don't really know why this hasn't hit off already with things like Phantasy Star. It seems like a great idea to me, an MMORPG always seemed like it would work brilliantly on a console unlike an FPS or RTS where a mouse and keyboard are far superior for speed, accuracy, etc. Maybe it's the general monthly fee that comes with the MMO genre that puts people off.
Don't panic
I was thinking "console" as in "command line." So that'd be MUDs, then!
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The first company that puts out a decent MMO for a console knows that they'll be tapping into a HUGE market and a lot of money. I still can't understand why so many companies have decided to forgo making a console MMO in favor of yet-another-PC-only-WoW-killer-that-will-fail. Most bizarrely of all has to be Bioware, which recently announced a Knights of the Old Republic MMO that will be PC-only--this in spite of the fact that KOTOR made almost all of its money on consoles and that their is already a PC-only Star Wars MMO (Galaxies) that was an epic fail an money-sink.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Much better self-evolving game
Wurm Online
Its also cross platform!
Why Turbine? They have never had a true hit MMO. They may have the technical capability and experience to build one from scratch, but that's not the same thing as truly understanding exciting gameplay.
I'm stunned at the number of MMOs that are still being built around the tank/healer/DPS model. Though City of Heroes has the "tanker" class, they also have a "controller" class specialized around controlling big groups. This frees melee to do a lot more damage.
Kind of odd that all these guys in armor with swords are the wimpy ones, offensively. Hint: Do away with tanks and rely on pure controllers. Make melee single-target savages like the scrapper, as they should be. Not just a "tricky" melee who backstabs, or, gag, an unarmored, unarmed guy who magically punches "real hard". No, real sword and armor leads the melee battle in damage.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You want a controller? Try playing the Captain class in LOTRO... Turbine moved away from the 3 class system when they included burglars and captains in LOTRO. The basic system still includes a tank (Guardian), DPS (Hunter, Champion) and healer (Minstrel), but the other 3 classes don't really fall into those categories. I'm not sure what you define as a hit MMO. LOTRO did fine... until Conan, and after that WAR came out... It remains to be seen if people will head back to LOTRO when the Mines of Moria expansion comes out on the 18th. Personally, I think Turbine will do fine with this, as long as they can come up with an innovative idea that will make people want to at least try it. I'd prefer an innovative idea that results in a new fantasy, scifi or historical game rather than a MMORPG based on an already established storyline such as LOTR, Starwars, StarGate, Matrix...
Somehow, I don't think people are going to be as excited about buying a $100 special controller that doesn't make them *feel* like a rock star, or in this case, a generic fantasy adventurer. Maybe if the 'controller' in question were a suit of armor or something...
The *Hero games work because the controllers are tangible artifacts of the genre, and uniquely tied to the flavor of that genre. Few people are going to buy keyboards for their consoles - as is already well demonstrated.
Of course, in ten or twenty years, the difference between PC controllers and Console controllers will be negligible.
[Ego]out