http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/China-Wor ... 31653.html

WoW back in closed beta in China, blood and bones censored.

haha...bones are bad! They screw up the Chinese youth!

http://gamescom.gamespot.com/story/6215 ... mpressions

Impressions on APB. This game is currently planned as free to play, one time purchase grants access as long as the servers are kept up. Lets hope they keep it that way.

Oh, so a Guild Wars model? That's cool by me. I may be tempted by this... Shiny might even be tempted.

Going through some linkage on gaming blogs and websites. Found two interesting articles on the idea of a survival horror MMORPG. Check it.

http://blog.weflyspitfires.com/2009/08/ ... ie-mmorpg/

(also, longer and a few other ideas: http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/f ... l-MMO.html )

I think it's a very good premise. Some things would have to tuned for playability from what he proposes, but the general gist sounds very appealing. Thoughts?

I think it's excellent:

the object of the game would be survival. And there would be permadeath.

I've long thought about the conditions where such a thing could be implemented. One major drawback of games these days is the spawn factor. Dying is of no consequence since you respawn and try again. Now, with the fear of losing the character that youve spent hours / days with, that absolutely petrifies me, in an incredibly sexy way like being raped to death by a hottie. The zombie surivial theme would be perfect for this, making sure that the game mechanics are reasonable so as to ensure you die in a logical fashion and not due to some bug, exploit or boosted stats.

permadeath in an mmo? No way. Imagine spending 40 hours a week for 4 months on a character... you make a blunder and he dies forever. No way, I'd quit. I'd feel like I completely wasted 4 months of my life. I think permadeath is a horrible, horrible idea. Besides...what if you internet connection drops, or the game crashes, or the power goes out? Contesting a permadeath would be a horrible experience for anyone.

However, I like the idea of a survival MMO. Didn't read the link, but I could see small fortified outposts of humans with 'missions' that go out into the ruins and fight zombies. Higher levels would go further and further afield, or to more and more advanced outposts or whatever. You could do something like Guild Wars did, only less linear. It'd be awesome.

Yeah, there would be some problems with permadeath, one eloquently phrased by the first comment:



That does sound like a very realistic situation. But other than that, heaps of potential. In the zombie wasteland certain skilled laborers or tradesmen would become extremely valuable - like a guy who's good with cars/machines, someone who's great at finding plants and putting them to good medicinal use (both healing and non-healing), someone good at scavenging parts etc. They be real assets to the gun-toting survivalist, and you could even imagine some situations where two groups fight over one player with very high skill who, being tame at weapons and combat would wisely just go with whoever recruits him.

Instead of permadeath a very harsh system of character development would be better. No WoW-style shamans who're good at everything, but specialization. Maybe give certain veteran players the option to expand on some other skills after a while, but only up to a novice level. Meh, potentially great idea, but as long as we don't have the funds to finance it it's probably not going anywhere anyway, right? I know for a fact that games companies do not accept outside quest and game designs and dialogue samples unless specifically requested. They're mortally afraid of being sued for copyright breach once they open it and part of the suggestion is already in their game or resembles it very much.

Incidentally, new WoW expansion Cataclysm announced. I know I can be a bit of a WoW hater, but honestly, it looks pretty uninspired. Higher levelcap, 2 new races, flying mounts now in Kalimdor. Oh and world torn asunder.


http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/08 ... new-zones/

Wow makes me yawn. The graphics looked bad when it came out...

anyway, yes, if we want this sort of game to exist, we'd need to make it. I swear, some of you bastards need to take some programming classes, or at least 3d modeling and texturing. I'm not doing all the work myself.

Pfft flying mounts in Azeroth! Everyone will love Cataclysm just for that since they've been begging for it since TBC came out Agreed on the graphics though, look at that trailer compared to GW2... hehe. Pissed off too, they're going to get rid of Thrall and Cairne from running the Horde and put Garosh in charge. He's a dick! We're back at war with Alliance thanks to him! Grrrr. But yes, it's just a standard expansion really, that's what WoW does. The same old stuff every MMO has done for the past x years over and over and over again. Why would they change it, it makes them millions.

As for the permadeath, I generally feel the same as you guys, though I used to only play hardcore in Sacred (= you die you start again, tough shit). However Age of Mourning (which has been scrapped a while back due to funding) was going to have permadeath. Sort of. If I recall correctly, your character would actually age up from ~18 to ancient fart as you adventured. Whilst still young you would respawn as easily as ever but the older you got, the more likely it would be that your character wouldn't recover, and the tougher the fight was that you died from, the more likely you would be permanently dead.

However, if your character did die, you then created their 'heir'. Same as creating a new character except that based on what the dead character had acheived I think your heir would get advantages from the start. Not sure what they were now but it would probably be things like passive boosts to health, perhaps a more powerful starting sword or something. But you get the gist.

Oh by the way you're wrong, there is one MMO company that accepts outside quests/game designs/dialogues. Virtrium, the guys who run Horizons. They regularly put in player-made stuff and are even working on a way for people to make quests without any programming knowledge (though they of course will still check everything before it goes into the game).

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/chara ... line/52751

Champions Online, Im thinking on trying this game. Does anyone have a friend or have themselves played this already? Pity there is no trial version.

I have a friend who's playing it. I think he did the beta too. He loves it, but he's a serious MMO whore... he's played damn near every MMO out there, I think. He's also the one that told me that Lineage II was a good game...and man... it's not. So you may want to wait on some more reviews to come in before investing.

Peltz, the peeps over at RPS are getting a group together - not sure how well it's working though.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/08 ... -assemble/

Hmmpf, i think ill get Mass Effect for PC instead.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/thesecre ... eo/6216743

Here's the next CGI movie from The Secret World.