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Cryptic Talks Star Trek Online's Space Combat, Away Missions, and Competing with WoW

Norman Chan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0600

We chat with Craig Zinkievich, executive producer at Cryptic Studios, about making a game for Trekkers and competing with World of Warcraft

Set 30 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (the last film before the J.J. Abrams reboot), Star Trek Online puts you in the shoes of a captain in a newly sparked war between the goody-two-shoes Federation and savage Klingon empire. The promise of exploring the final frontier, massive space battles, and obscure Star Trek references fills us with geeky glee. We went down to Cryptic Studios’ offices to play the game and quiz Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich to ensure that fans of Star Trek and MMOs are getting the best of both worlds.

Maximum PC: It looks like Star Trek Online is focusing more on action, as opposed to boring bits like interstellar diplomacy.

Craig Zinkievich: The game is set in 2409, about 30 years after the events of the Star Trek: Nemesis movie. A lot of stuff has happened since then. The Borg have returned to the Alpha Quadrant, bent on assimilation. The Romulan Empire still exists, but they have to deal with the fact that they don’t have a home world – so there’s a power vacuum there. The most important aspect is that the Kitomer Accord – the treaty between the Klingon Empire and Federation – has broken down. In STO, you play either as a Captain in Starfleet, the military wing of the Federation, or the Klingon Defense Force.

We’ve really tried to make the content in Star Trek Online feel as though you’re in one of the Star Trek shows or movies. You’re never just in one place. You can be on a ship, get a distress call, beam down to a planet, then beam up to a satellite that’s on fire, and finally back to your ship for a climactic space battle. You’re constantly moving between ground and space to really get that cinematic feel.

The biggest challenge in creating STO is that it’s two whole games—you have your ground combat and your space combat. But the game demands it; you have to go back and forth, and I think it’ll be the strongest aspect of the game.

On Space Combat

CZ: Space combat is very much like the shows. It’s not a dogfight—you’re not zipping around. You’re in huge 1,000-meter starships with hundreds of crew onboard. In the shows, it’s all about tactics and positioning. It’s about bolstering a shield that’s taken damage, transferring power from your deflector dish to your weapons or engines at the right time. It’s about knocking your enemy’s shields down with phasers and taking them out with photon torpedoes.

Each ship has four directional shields – though some of the smaller ships only have one shield. All weapons in STO have facing and firing arcs to them. For example, a ship can have forward facing photo torpedoes with a 90 degree arc, and two phaser banks with broad-side arcs. So in battle, you would flank broadside along your enemy to use both phasers to knock down enemy shields and then turn toward the enemy to finish them off.

MPC: Is the point of the battle to destroy the ship?

CZ: Yes, because it’s wartime, the battle does come down to destroying your enemy’s ship. Most of the time, they don’t give up at the end. There are certain instances there the enemy will surrender to move the story along, but most of the time it’s a fight to the death.

MPC: How does respawn work, then, if your ship is destroyed?

CZ: Well, first and foremost, it’s a game. We thought of a whole bunch of different ways to do interesting things for respawn, but it really came down to getting players back into the action. You don’t lose your ship [if it blows up]; you just respawn at the beginning of the map with a little damage done to your systems. But overall, we don’t want you to spend 80 hours getting that Sovereign class vessel, get owned, and then lose that ship.

MPC: How does your crew and shuttles factor into the gameplay?

CZ: Each ship has a crew bar, which affects your hull regeneration rate – how fast you can repair systems that get damaged. There are certain powers that allow you to send boarding parties to other ships with shuttles, which takes crew. You can even send healing parties to repair other vessels during co-op.

The really cool powers come from your bridge officers. Like the shows, it’s all about the people—who’s there on the bridge during a crisis defines how the ship deals with it. You have a roster of bridge officers (starting off with one) that you can upgrade over time. These guys are like MMO pets, but taken to the next level. You name them, customize their look, give them equipment, and level them up with new skills and specializations. And the skills they have really end up defining what role you play in missions.

Some skills include tractor beams, which can hold enemies in place during combat, or high yield torpedoes that deal super damage. Each officer has one ability to begin with, but as you level them up, they get up to four skills. Each officer seat can also be upgraded, too. Officers in Ensign seats can only use one skill, while those in Lieutenant or Commander seats can activate more of their skills at once. With bigger ships, you gain more weapon slots and more bridge officer seats as well. The maximum is six officers with 12 skills total.

MPC: How does ship upgrading work?

CZ: Players start off with a generic Light Cruiser ship. Several hours into the game, you replace that with one of three different classes of ships – Engineering, Science, and Tactical, each with five tiers that you can advance through. Every ship has weapons, deflector shields, impulse engines, and Officer seats, all of which can be upgraded. But when you actually reach a different tier of ship, you get a new ship [of that class] entirely.

MPC: Can you re-spec your ship in the middle of the game?

CZ: You can change ship classes at any time if you want to try a different style of play. You just use your Starfleet “merit” and buy the ship at a Space dock. You don’t lose the previous ships that you had, either. You’ll always have the Light Cruiser, for example, if you wanted to use it for a specific mission. One night you could use a Defiant class ship for a quick space battle, and the next night, you could change to a Science class ship – the healer – to support your guild. You can really change what role you play on the fly.

MPC: So there are 16 different ship types in the game?

CZ: Yes, there are 16 total configurations total, from three ship classes with five ships in each tier, plus the first Light Cruiser. But within each configuration, we want you to be able to customize your ship’s appearance.

MPC: Like designing your character in any other MMO.

CZ: Yes, but still want you to be able to look at somebody’s ship, and know what configuration and class that ship is in.

MPC: Does the game have the “hot rod” style Enterprise from the new Star Trek movie?

CZ: [Laughs] No, we don’t have the new J. J. Abrams “hot rod” ship in the game yet, but we do have access to that in terms of our license. We’re focusing on filling out and rounding out what [the Federation of] 2409 looks like.

[Craig then loads up several ships on a computer, including ones based on the Intrepid, Excelsior, Miranda, and even Prometheus classes that will be recognizable to hardcore Star Trek fans.]

Our artists have done a fantastic job designing these ships and the elements that’ll let you customize each configuration.

Away Mission Gameplay

MPC: Let's talk about the ground-based away missions.

CZ: When you go down to a ground mission, you always play in a five-person away team. If you’re playing by yourself, you beam down with four bridge officers. If you’re teaming up with other players, you’re going to all go as captains.

MPC: Sounds like that would be against protocol!

CZ: Yeah, it’s funny. You have protocols like the Prime Directive, but those things never come up in the shows unless they have to break them! So, yes, you’re constantly breaking protocol by beaming down, but it wouldn’t be fun just to sit on your ship.

But this is another one of those places where you can change your style of play depending on which Bridge officers you slot. You can choose to bring medical officers if you’re playing with a Leroy Jenkins-type player one night, or bring a tactical officer if you’re going on the offensive.

MPC: Which player in a party gets to decide who to bring down, if you’re not playing with a full roster?

CZ: The team leader gets to assign which players go in the away team slots, and who has control of extra slots.

MPC: And the biggest group you can play with is five players?

CZ: Exactly, it’s five people per normal instanced team, which is the same for instanced space battles. There are larger persistent areas, like large fleet actions, where you can have dozens of ships. The same goes with large away missions, where you can have several teams [of five players each] on one planet at once.

Bridge officers on the ground are fully-functional MMO pets. They’ll follow you, use their abilities, and go into combat. If you want to, you can micro-manage them. You can tell them to stay in one spot, be aggressive, and even set their targets before combat. You can ask them to use special abilities on the ground, like healing or setting down minefields. Ground combat is fast-paced run-and-gun. It’s about maneuvering around your enemies and flanking them from the side, which does more damage. As a Captain, you can equip yourself with two weapons that you can switch at will, including melee weapons and martial arts skills.

MPC: And what kinds of things are you doing on away missions? Just killing everyone?

CZ: Just think of all the myriad things you’ve seen in an episode of Star Trek. For example, after you dispatch Klingon ships above a planet, you may have to beam down to the planet to save the locals from the Klingon landing party. Some missions ask you to recover artifacts and others have you following people back in time.

MPC: What type of loot will you be able to collect from missions and random exploration?

CZ: With bridge officers, they all have a paper doll that needs to be equipped with armor, personal shields, weapons, and other tools, which you’ll find on your missions. The same goes with your own character avatar. There are plenty of items and loot that you’ll find within the game, which you can sell or trade at spaceports. You can even find potential bridge officers.

MPC: Like an alien that you meet on a random world.

CZ: Yes. Another one of the loot items that is very important on the ground missions is your kit, which is a career-limited loot item. The kit gives you really cool powers on the ground, like Security Escort, which lets you beam in extra NPC characters for this mission.

MPC: A bunch of red shirts?

CZ: Exactly! They should have a much higher aggressiveness factor. These kits end up defining your role. Medical science players can deploy stasis fields with their medical tricorders. And over time, as you level them up, each kit can have up to four powers.

MPC: Will you be allowed to team up with friends who are at a much higher or lower level than your character?

CZ: The missions themselves are set level, and you can bring in a range of levels to play in them. Like City of Heroes, we have a sidekick system that lets your team scale to one level, with the experience rewards scaled along the same line as well.

MPC: What will be the level cap for the game?

CZ: We don’t have levels, per se. We have five ranks in the game, ranging from Lieutenant to Admiral. Each of those has 10 sub-ranks, so that ends up being 50 “levels.” And that’s indicated by the pins on your uniform, just like on the show.

MPC: You mentioned spaceports. Do you mean space stations like Deep Space Nine?

CZ: There are several large social hubs within the game. Earth Space Dock is probably the largest one for the Federation. That’s where you go to repair your ship, visit the auction house, and get access to new ships. There are major ones like Deep Space Nine, and minor ones like Memory Alpha, which have similar amenities.

MPC: Sounds like you’re including a lot of details from the shows.

CZ: In almost all of the content that we’ve made, there are Star Trek references, like a familiar character’s grandson or something that was alluded to once in an episode. We have pretty hardcore writers who end up getting all of those references in.

The Genesis Device

MPC: In terms of art assets and content creation, how much of that is crafted by designers and how much is randomly generated?

CZ: If you’re going to make a Star Trek MMO, you’ve to let players boldly go where no one has gone before, right? So we needed to make hundreds and thousands of planetary systems that you could explore. We did that by creating a Genesis game engine that could procedurally generate maps and systems.

Not all of the content is automatically generated. A good deal is first procedurally generated, and then given to our artists to hand-craft to coincide with story-driven missions. The pure procedurally generated content is more for exploration, when you want to make contact with someone who’s never heard of the Federation before. Genesis has been a really powerful toolset that allows us to create the foundation for our artists and designers to add the really cool content, as opposed to spending their time on the more boring tasks.

MPC: Do players then experience the same content or see different worlds when completing mission on their own?

CZ: The main episodic story content will be the same for all players. There are also Patrol missions, which will also be the same for everyone. But the exploration content, when you go to star cluster, for example, will be different for each player. There may be some similarities, but you’ll end up seeing different stuff.

MPC: How much of the Star Trek universe can you explore?

CZ: The game is split into four hubs – Federation/Klingon (where you start), Romulan, Cardassian, and finally Borg at the end. We liken each of these hubs to a season of Star Trek, each season with a set number of episode missions based there. Each will have major and minor story arcs, as well as one-off episodes. There’s an overarching story arc for the whole game, so that always shows up in each hub, story-wise.

Each hub is split in sectors, where are high-level maps that you’ll use to fly between planets and spaceports. This is one of the persistent areas where you’ll see hundreds of ships flying around, in addition to the large fleet action zones.

Making the Game Appealing to Star Trek Fans

MPC: What kinds of compromises did you have to make for this to appeal to both MMO players and Star Trek fans who might never have played an MMO?

CZ: There are some compromises we’ve had to make, license-wise, like adding many phaser weapons variations [in addition to the two main types in Star Trek canon]. In terms of gameplay, our goal is to make a really deep MMO that doesn’t scare away someone who has never played an MMO before. For example, the power-level interface has a complex mode where you can move individual power bars, but there’s also a mode where you can use preset power levels for offensive or defensive stances.

MPC: Do you base the content on materials like the Star Trek technical manuals and the Klingon language?

CZ: We definitely use the technical manuals to get the scale right. We don’t have plans to translate the game into Klingon, but who knows, maybe we’ll figure out a way to get the community to localize it for us.

MPC: What about playing as the Klingons

CZ: We’re not ready to reveal too much, but the Klingon gameplay will be drastically different from the Federation. It’ll open up a couple of hours into the game, and will be more PVP focused.

MPC: Is there going to be a lot of interaction between the two factions?

CZ: Yes, through the PVP and the indirect PVP gameplay throughout the Neutral Zone. But the storyline on the Klingon side is not the same as the one on the Federation side.

The 800-Pound MMO in the Room

MPC: When you’re designing a new MMO, how do you design it to compete with World of Warcraft?

CZ: I don’t know if there will ever be another World of Warcraft [-sized game]. The fact that WoW has so many subscribers is awesome, because it’s exposed so many people to MMOs. Whether or not there will be another game that gets millions upon millions of subscribers isn’t really [our concern]—we didn’t sit down and ask ourselves how we could steal WoW subscribers.

We first asked ourselves how we could make a decent MMO, how we could develop a reasonable business model, and have reasonable expectations. And then, we tried to make it the MMO that the Star Trek universe deserves.

MPC: And what business models work, if you don’t want to compete with WoW?

CZ: You can look at games like Warhammer and Conan, which launched with a few hundred thousand purchases. You can have a pretty nice business with a few hundred thousand users, or even fewer. So, I don’t think many people going into the MMO market sanely think they need 10 million subscribers to make money.

MPC: Is it a chicken-and-egg scenario where you need to have enough subscriber revenue to make new content to attract new subscribers?

CZ: Definitely. There’s a barrier. From our experience, if you don’t break 100,000 subscribers at any point in time, your game tends to just go away. Most games that don’t break that 100,000-subscriber mark tend to just be flashes in the pan. But once you do, you tend to get a really solid fan base with enough revenue to keep adding to the game, and things go pretty well.

MPC: What do you think about different business models, like opting for micro-transactions instead of subscriptions?

CZ: We like the subscription model, and will probably be using that in the near term. We are looking at micro-transactions and how that would work – Star Trek will have micro-transactions, but most of those will be cosmetic things. Some will augment gameplay, but won’t replace any gameplay.

MPC: Is there a risk in Cryptic having multiple MMOs in the market at the same time?

CZ: I don’t think there’s a risk as long as long as the products are different. If we were making fantasy MMO after fantasy MMO and competing with ourselves, we’d eventually run into problems. I also don’t think that we’re banking of people to play our games based on our name, either. We just want to make games that we want to play, and hope that other people will want to play as well.

MPC: How do you determine the long-term plans for an MMO, given the uncertainty of success?

CZ: We don’t have life spans on our games, and we go into the first year with an expansion and update plan. That being said, though, from our experience, the longer you plan ahead, the more likely the plan is useless, because the subscribers will tell you what they like and dislike, and what they want to see more of. So, even though we put a plan out there, we have to be flexible and listen to our captive audience. Which is kind of the cool part about making MMOs. [Once it’s released], it’s not just us making the game—everyone contributes.

Cryptic has also provided five keys to the Star Trek Online closed-beta going on right now. Post a comment on our Facebook page, under the Star Trek Online post, to get your name in the random drawing. We'll pick five readers to receive beta keys on Monday, November 23rd, at noon PST.

Freeware Files: ASCII Zombie Games, Nethack Doom, and Huge Space Adventures!

David Murphy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0600

There's one thing I think of when Daylight Savings Time hits: zombies. Seriously. All that extra time in the dark just fuels the undead flames for an eventual takeover by our semi-bulletproof, plant-hating masters. It only makes sense, then, that I use this weekly freeware roundup column to provide you with some kind of effective training for fending off the gruesome hordes. And beyond that, you'll also find a few more fun freeware games to busy yourself with as the angry, moaning masses slowly overwhelm your pitiful human defenses.

Now that we've established the plot, let's check out the titles!

DoomRL

It's no secret that Nethack is one of the greatest roguelike games of all time. Roguelike, for those not in the know, is a word that's used to describe this particular gaming genre of ASCII-based dungeon crawls. The "rogue" part of the description is actually a game--a 1980s graphical adventure title that's widely regarded as being one of the first of its kind. In this interesting little mashup, we have a combination of Nethack-style gameplay with plot elements from the popular Doom game, which is itself widely regarded as being one of the biggest catalysts for the first-person genre style of gameplay.

Like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, these two titans are meeting in an epic battle of text-based dungeon stomping. And yes, this game even comes with achievements of-sorts.

Download it here!

Darkwind

Fans of the MMO genre will surely remember that one failed attempt at a vehicle-based shooter that pretty much went from launch to death in short order. I believe the name of the game was Auto Assault, a far more alliterative title than "Darkwind." Still, this turn-based title is what you'll have to work with if you want to relive the glory days of driving around and killing stuff. And if that's not your bag, be sure to check out the game's economic functions as well. Hey, someone has to drive the truck.

Download it here!

Bombie Zombie

I know, I know--this is the game you were waiting for this whole time. Well don't let me take any more lengthy paragraphs to explain the subtle nuances of this zombie-killing game. In Bombie Zombie, there are a ton of zombies running around. Your job is to kill them, only... you have but one weapon to use: land mines. If only classic Atari games were this cool.

Download it here!

Strange Adventures in Infinite Space

This space exploration game is a bit of a misnomer, because it's not quite as infinite as the title might have you believe. Actually--for better or worse--the game is designed to take only 15 minutes or so to make it through each playthrough. Like a Diablo dungeon, every new adventure you take starts with randomized variables, making no two space explorations entirely alike. More than 21 ship types and 70+ weapons, gadgets, and other ship add-ons await you!

Download it here!

Magnello

Lead a ball into a hole. It's the classic theme behind any number of puzzles you can find in the real world today. But here's a twist I bet you don't come across as often. In Magnello, the ball is magnetic and the hole is electric. And did I mention that the levels are far more challenging than you might except from such a simple concept? Yeah. Grab your nearest stress-busting device and give Magnello a whirl.

Download it here!

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. Befriend him on Twitter, especially if you have an awesome app or game you're dying to recommend!

Study: Female MMO Gamers Five Times More Likely to be Bisexual

Paul Lilly — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:00:30 -0600

If you're a male gamer who has been looking for love in all the wrong places, it might be because you're spending too much time playing MMOs. Or, depending on your fantasy woman, maybe that's exactly what you should be doing. You see, not only is nearly half of the Everquest II gaming population female, but they're apparently much more likely to be bisexual than non-EQ II players, online surveys suggest.

According to no less than 2,400 completed web-based surveys, females account for 40 percent of the EQ II gaming community. The surveys also found that female EQ II players display "an unusually high level of bisexuality," more than five times that of the "general population."

"These are not people who are following strict gender stereotypes," said lead researcher Scott Caplan. "I think what you would find in this population are going to be people who are in other ways less traditional than the majority population."

The respondents received an in-game item in exchange for completing a web-based questionnaire about their gaming habits and lifestyles, which has led some to question to the validy of the results.

Image Credit: Fanpop.com

Dreaming of Massively Multiplayer Open Source

David Murphy — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:00:00 -0600

Remember Myst Online? You shouldn't. GameTap shut the servers for the fumbling MMO in the beginning of this year, leaving plenty of fans of massively multiplayer online puzzle-solving out in the cold. Until the rights were returned to Cyan Worlds, which promptly promised to resurrect the MMO under the clever acronym of MORE -- the Myst Online Resurrection Experiment. Which was all fine, until funding difficulties killed the project once again. Which has since been resurrected again (surpassing Jean Gray's record), this time as a result of Cyan Worlds turning the entire Myst Online platform over to the open source community.

Strangely, this is the first big announcement from any of the "larger" MMOs that involves open source in any fashion. When an MMO dies, it usually dies for good, regardless of how persistent the fan base is toward resurrecting the fallen title into a working project.

The curious part of Myst Online is that Cyan Worlds is going to host a server with all of Myst Online's data for its fans to use. It's quite a conciliatory gesture, especially since other dead MMOs that live on through fans and private servers usually end up having to extract engineer the materials themselves. As Ars notes, this is a great way to keep the game from dropping off the radar for good. The code release will invariably lead to a bunch of rogue servers, but even in this, Myst Online could find a larger base -- imagine a version of the game that's been customized to a completely different experience entirely? Don't discount the coding tenacity of rabid fans. Cyan Worlds certainly isn't.

We mentioned this being the only MMO that's gone the open source route. We can't think of any officially released MMOs that' have dumped their code to the community like this, but that's not to say that the gaming world is devoid of open-source MMOs:

Shown above, PlaneShift is a larger title that's attempting to push an art direction comparable to a modern-day retail MMO. The game features GM events, trading and crafting, and a separate "death realm" that you have to escape each time your character meets the reaper. All that, and it's an open-source title! This game is ready-for-download, unlike plenty of other open-source MMOs that exist more in idea than reality.

Crossfire isn't an MMO in the modern sense of the word, but it harkens back to the MUD era with its simple graphics and archetypal role-playing gameplay. The fact that it's still around in development since its creation in 1992 shows the strength of the open-source community to cling to projects. If people are still tweaking and adjusting a game like this, the sky is practically the limit for a robust title like Myst Online.

Speaking of originators, WorldForge is one of the earliest open-source MMO engines to be released with full-fledged graphics. The giant framework was primarily designed to help developers create alternatives to Ultima Online (if that helps to give away its age), although scant alternatives have actually been created since the framework's launch. You can check the full list here, which can be accessed using one of two 3D clients found here (Ember or Sear). Still, bookmark WorldForge's homepage if you like watching the efforts of a giant community working hand-over-fist to incorporate new functionality into an evolving MMO concept.

PlaySpan Gets $16.8 Million to Make MMOs Even Worse

Paul Lilly — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:02:40 -0600

Are you smarter than a 5th grader? No, we're not talking about the TV game show, and instead we're referring to little Arjun Mehta, who while in 5th grade came up with the idea for PlaySpan and founded the in-game commerce network the next year. The service now serves as a micro-transaction payment system for virtual goods in over 200 different games.

Little Mehta and his father Karl Mehta, the company's CEO, received a big cash infusion for PlaySpan, announcing this week the company has raised $16.8 million in Series B funding from Easton Capital Group, Menlo Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, and STIC Investments, in addition to other undisclosed investors. That brings PlaySpan's total funding up to $24 million, which the company says will used to expand into Europe and Asia, and grow its global publisher and userbase.

"Online games publishers and social media application developers are looking for new sources of revenue byond traditional advertising and subscriptions," said Karl Mehta (PDF). "We are enabling a new business model in the form of micro-transactions for users that prefer the pay-as-you-go model."

While the free-to-play genre has turned into a bit of a misnomer given the prevalence of cost-driven upgrades and character capabilities, PlaySpan represents an improved business model over earlier attempts that were often setup without the publisher's permission and plagued with fraud.

Image Credit: PlaySpan

Warhammer Online Reaches 750,000 Players in Less Than A Month

Nathan Grayson — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:10:09 -0500

Quality may not always happily skip hand-in-hand with sales (See: Psychonauts, and then go buy it, please), but when it does, we wear unnaturally large smiles, ecstatic that there's justice in this cold, depressing world. You can imagine, then, that our pearly whites are on the verge of breaking free from our unhinged jaws thanks to Mythic's announcement that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has lured 750,000 players into its overtly war-packed world.

"Thanks to our players, the war between the Realms continues to escalate at an incredible pace," said Mythic co-founder and general manager Mark Jacobs.

And he's not just spouting nonsense from his PR-approved book of hyperbole either; Warhammer's 750k sprint has topped those of both World of Warcraft and Age of Conan, who reached similar numbers within three months and two months, respectively.

But don't start ordering Waaaagh Kool-Aid as a refreshment for WoW's funeral just yet. It should be noted that boxed copies of Warhammer Online came with a free one month voucher, cancelling out the game's subscription fee for a limited time. With the game's money vacuum soon to be fully operational, will players stick around for another month?

We sure hope so. Warhammer seems genuinely different from other MMOs, and it'd be a shame to see it sink. Also, gaming just wouldn't be fun anymore if we couldn't constantly tell our friends "It's 'hammer time," before darting off for a play session.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Tom Edwards — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:05:27 -0500

Our help was needed—again. Such is the fate of a hero. In the world of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures all manner of fishermen, pirates, merchants, guards, beer wenches, and assorted ne’er-do wells require assistance. This motley cast of characters imbues the game with a vibrant sense of life; we just wish that they showed even a bit of initiative and took care of some of their own problems. We were tasked with passing along loads of messages in order to drive the story forward, but in truth, we quickly lost interest in the game’s narrative, as it simply took away from the game’s finest achievement: its fighting system.

During your adventures, you'll kill enough wolves, bears, crocodiles, tigers, and scorpions to make Martin Perkins weep from his grave.

Eschewing a turn-based format, Conan uses a real-time combat system that allows you to take on multiple foes; icons show how strongly each part of an enemy’s body is defended, and you choose attacks and combos that focus on a foe’s weaknesses. Particularly effective attacks reward users with a splatter of blood across the computer screen.

While Conan’s melee combat system is innovative, the rest of the game follows typical MMO conventions. You choose a race and class that falls into one of three basic categories: (tank, damage dealer, or healer) and complete a variety of missions to level up and gain ever more powerful items. While castle sieges and some quests require you to be part of a guild, it’s quite possible to complete much of the game solo. This pick-up-and-play attribute adds to the game’s appeal, allowing you to jump in whenever the mood strikes without having to compare schedules with a half dozen compatriots.

Conan launched with a variety of minor bugs and irritations, but the development team has implemented fixes in a timely manner, assuring we’ll stick with the game—at least until we reach the level cap.

Orcs, Elves, and Commander Shepard!

<a href="/david_murphy">David Murphy<br /></a> — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:36:56 -0500

Mass Waauuuggghhhh.

I got a chance to check out two big games last night: EA Mythic's much-anticipated MMO offering, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, and BioWare's "port" of the award-winning Xbox 360 RPG, Mass Effect. Both titles look interesting -- in the sense a reviewer uses that word to note when something looks both cool and flawed. I'm nevertheless excited to get some extended playtime (read: final versions) of both, and I think gamers will be excited by what's to come in the next few months.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning

While I wasn't very impressed by the gameplay per se, given that level 1 "newbie" quests do not an impressive demo make, I think that the Mythic folk have certainly made some progress towards creating a game that isn't just a carbon copy of that Warcraft thing.

How so?

It's been known for awhile now that Warhamer is going to be a bit more PvP focused than your average MMO. I was a bit suspicious that this would turn away a good chunk of players who don't like being smacked with a purple Warhammer of Asskickery every time they venture out of their starting zones. But my chat with EA Mythic Content Director Destin Bales helped alleviate my newbie fears: the game's mission-themed PvP content is stratified by leveling groups, so you'll be competing with other players near your abilities. And high-level players attempting to gank in newbie zones get turned into chickens. No, really. Chickens. It's a clever, albeit zany way to deal with griefers.

Player-versus-environment gameplay coexists alongside the PvP and realm-versus-realm offerings, with the latter giving options that are similar to Warcraft's battlegrounds. Just click a button in the corner of your HUD to signify that you're ready to go, then go about your normal business. The game will pull you into the fight once both sides have enough evenly matched players. You can still contribute to the realm-versus-realm gameplay through normal PvP and world-battlefields, but these scenarios will give you a chance to go about your PvE ways before jumping into a bigger fight.

What isn't so familiar is Warhammer's focus on the "grand struggle" between its factions. No matter what species of character you roll--Orc, Elf, Chaos... thing, et cetera--you'll be able to join the fight between the individual factions. You aren't just limited to, say, fighting Chaos if you're a Human. These epic conflicts are set up in a push-pull kind of environment. You win a battleground area by amassing more victory points than the other side through your PvE, PvP, or RvR actions. You'll then push one step closer to the enemy's capital. Sack that, and you'll get a set time period of complete and utter insanity to burn the place to the ground, destroy objects, and generally make a mess of things.

After 24 hours have elapsed, the previous defenders are given the chance to retake the city with the help of a little boost, or buff, to ward off the conquerors. According to Bales, the game will progressively make these buffs higher and higher until the city is recaptured--at some point, he joked, a level one would be able to take our a level 40 (the game's top experience level).

Speaking of, I also asked Bales how Warhammer is planning to stave off player boredom: the endgame apathy that sets in once you've hit the proverbial content wall. The game will include a separate Renown system that will track your exploits through 80 levels of experience -- in essence, it's the PvP version of an MMO's typical experience bar. And Warhammer will include a large amount of stats-tracking that's also tied into experience and rewards. Yes, that means achievements: you'll get bonuses for killing x amount of a race or joining x battlegrounds, for example, and the game will track seemingly everything you do (or kill). Chickens included.

When I actually got to sit down and run through Warhammer for a bit, it made me feel like I was playing a better version of Lord of the Rings: Online with less-entrancing graphics. The designers are still working on adding more effects to the game -- lighting in particular. But nothing I saw, strongholds included, made me weep tears of joy and immediately cancel my WoW subscription (had I one).

Of course, Warhammer is still in Beta, so these are the earliest of comments based on a grand total of five minutes of playtime. I think the Warhammer designers have touched on a new style of gameplay that could conceivably coexist alongside the mighty World of Warcraft--everyone loves battlegrounds, after all. And I'd much rather feel like I'm contributing to an effort all Ahn'Qiraj-style than farming random trash mobs to appease a random questgiver. Time will invariably tell: look for Warhammer to hit in Fall.

Editor's note: Altered some of the wording from the original article's posting to better reflect the contributions one can make to the game's RvR content -- this ain't Warcraft, folks!

Mass Effect

As a loyal member of the Mass Effect 75-hour club, I'd like to think that I have a certain expertise with this game that few others have been able (or crazy enough) to achieve. That said, I was quite impressed with the PC "port" of Mass Effect. Although it's not really a port in the sense that I'd normally use the word--the game is a carbon-copy of the Xbox 360 version at its core, but the upgrades to the user interface and graphics are enough to set this title apart in its own spotlight.

You access the improved UI by slapping the space bar on your computer -- up pops your quick-launch options, AI commands for your teammates, and your weapon selector, amongst more options. It's as useful as the game's new inventory system, a much-needed improvement over the critical unwieldiness of the Xbox 360's inventory screen. Selecting (and selling) your equipment and upgrades takes far less time now, although I still wish there was some kind of sorting option to rank your items by name, power, or selling cost.

The improved graphical upgrades to the game upgrade an already mesmerizing experience. Everything just looks crisper and more defined--I enjoyed my (fourth) romp through Noveria as much as my first. While the game itself can be tedious and long for those who have already sunk days' worth of playing into it, I think the upgrades and tactile joy of using a keyboard and mouse to shoot baddies might be enough to pull gamers in for one more romp through the galaxy.

BioWare has also separated the camera from the rear of the Mako driving sessions. Driving the mini-tank is a little tougher using WASD controls instead of an analog stick, but being able to spin around your viewpoint without the butt of your tank wibbling back and forth is a welcome improvement.

Mass Effect contains the same in-game achievements as its Xbox counterpart, only the title itself isn't Games for Windows. Thus, you'll have to show off your efforts at ridding the galaxy of the Geth on the Insanity difficulty to friends that come over -- there won't be a way to display this on the Internet for all to see. Bummer.

We'll have a review of Mass Effect in Maximum PC's August issue, so be sure to check out the final verdict then!

Mass Effect's new UI packs every option imaginable in an easy-to-navigate display.

The inventory system has been redesigned to better fit the PC experience. Now that's how you make a game cross-platform.