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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.'"
I'm only interested if the PvP component involves throwing the other engineers into said turbine.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
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.
What Turbine got right with AC1 was the flexibility in character development. Rather than have fixed specific character types, you basically had templates that you could either follow or not. This allowed people to create any character type they wanted. Unfortunately it also led to screwing the pooch if you made a mistake in choosing your upgrades. For me, I liked my characters flaws, it made you think a lot more about what you were doing and how to do it.
AC1's doom was Microsoft. I was there when they came in and destroyed the volunteer team of helpers. I watched as the MS people came in and walked over those that built that team and ruined it. Ken Karl and his team of MS employees ruled with an iron fist and eventually MS disbanded the Advocate team.
AC2 was a total and complete disaster from the beginning and the fault lies squarely at the feet of MS. Instead of letting the game designers to their job, MS tried to make AC2 into something it couldn't be. I was in the Alpha and Beta of AC2 and from the beginning, they only thing it had going for it was eye candy. At the time, the visuals were just stunning but the game play was clearly going to be lacking.
Fortunately after the fiasco that was AC2, Turbine was able to buy back control of AC1 and kept it going. To this day AC1 will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the first MMO I actually enjoyed playing.
I was also lucky enough to get my name in the game credits for AC:Dark Majesty as a member of the Vanguard Team. My experience with the employees of Turbine let me know they truly understand gamers.