At NY Comic Con, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood caught up with Steve Dausner of 38 Studios. The two talked about the company's unannounced MMO and some of the expectations that come along with it, bother for their big-name stars and the rest of the team working on the project.

At New York Comic Con, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Lead Content Designer Steve Danuser from 38 Studios about the MMO that they are making in the Boston-area studio. For those of you who might not be familiar with this relatively unknown (they haven't announced even the title fo their game yet) development studio, some background may be required.

Some time back, it was announced that Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, was a huge fan of MMOs, particularly of EverQuest II. Being a fan, he even did some promotional work with the folks at SOE. From there, we learned that he was beginning his own MMO development company. Not only that, but he was also bringing together two of the hottest names in geekdom, artist Todd McFarlane and writer R.A. Salvatore.

Read more here.

Cant wait to hear what the game will be...here goes to wishing for a Steam Punk MMO ^^.

~HappyGaming

Id be willing to put money that it is going to be a fantasy mmo... and that darkelves will be involved somehow :)

actually, it is going ot be a fantasy MMO. I reported on that ages ago. as far as dark elves go... well, maybe, but Salvatore's experie3nce goes way beyond just Drizzt.

I was wondering when MMORPG would get an interview with 38 studios. I'm glad you guys said your going to be following them now.

Interesting, I never was actually expecting to see this get off the ground!  Just seemed way out there at the time, but the story-driven idea sounds great if they can pull it off!

Im Completely stunned that Curt Schilling is into MMORPG's...thats amazing. Hopefully...with Curt's money he'll develope an extremely in-depth game.

OMG!  I'm stoked to experience what Salvatore writes and McFarlane designs.  Should make for some great characters with strong spines and good looks.

(just  don't make it 'level' based, skill based like UO/EVE please!)

Years ago, when household computers were a rarity and before "the internets" took off, I played PBM (Play-By-Mail) games. One of the games I played was story-driven. It was great, but there was a problem: all stories must come to an end sooner or later, but when the story ends, so does the game. The company in question didn't want to lose their cash cow, so they kept stringing the story along... until eventually all the founding players quit, and new players were reluctant to start the game because who likes tuning into the middle of a movie?

A story-drive game would be very difficult to make. I'd love to give it a try, but conceptually I don't understand how it would work, given 1) all stories must end and 2) people play at different rates and at different times.

This is going to be terrific! Lotta 38 Studios news lately, when is mmorpg.com going to set up a page so we can indulge in crazy premature speculation?

why do i keep reading his name as "Steve Dinosaur"

Fantasy MMO... oh well, another pass for me. I wish I was like most and that swords and Dragons were my thing but sadly, Steam Punk is much closer to what I like lol...

YES  R.A.Salvatore story mmorpg in a fantasy world  Its like dream come true for me. I probably read all his books i could lay my hands on and just cant wait  

I guess GL to the dev team :)

If theres one thing that the MMO market has learned over the last 2 years is that big names on a dev list do not guarantee an MMO to be a surefire hit above all others, the same goes for other names like "Garriott" and "Mcquaid".

Sure these guys in 38 Studios are respected in their own fields, but this is a new ball park.  But, a "vision" is nothing more than just a vision, if you don't have the necessary experience and know how to turn it into a reality.

Until we see results, I'll reserve judgement for now. 

Oh great, another story based fantasy MMORPG.  Hopefully it will be more of a sandbox and not like Lotro or DDO.  Its completely ridiculous when you have hundreds of thousands of players playing through the same story events day in and day out.  Help!  You must save the world!  That guy that just came before you already saved the world actually... but you can do it again!  And the guy after you can save the world as well!  In exactly the same way!  Everyone is special!  MMORPGs shouldn't play like single player RPGs. 

Hopefully when they say story driven they mean something more like Asherons Call where every month there is a development in the story.  Every now and then a one time event.  Not a MMORPG on rails. 

And if they insist on going the fantasy route, I hope they develop their own unique races and fauna instead of rehashing elves, dwarves, and dragons yet again.

Originally posted by Burtzum

Oh great, another story based fantasy MMORPG.  Hopefully it will be more of a sandbox and not like Lotro or DDO.  Its completely ridiculous when you have hundreds of thousands of players playing through the same story events day in and day out.  Help!  You must save the world!  That guy that just came before you already saved the world actually... but you can do it again!  And the guy after you can save the world as well!  In exactly the same way!  Everyone is special!  MMORPGs shouldn't play like single player RPGs. 

Hopefully when they say story driven they mean something more like Asherons Call where every month there is a development in the story.  Every now and then a one time event.  Not a MMORPG on rails. 

And if they insist on going the fantasy route, I hope they develop their own unique races and fauna instead of rehashing elves, dwarves, and dragons yet again.

With Salvatore behind the story and McFarlane behind the art I think we can expect a bit more than a simple rehash.

On a related note, I've been looking at some of the work that the 38 Studios art team has done for this year's dominance war, and it's actually pretty impressive.

In my mind MMORPG is a newone to me, you can play a game with other players on the internet and also make friends. competition is the vital element in the game, so I like MMORPG.

@ Burtzum:

But how would you actually implement a game in which multiple people COULD all save the world, yet in different ways? Say you've got 1,000,000 players playing your game, you're going to have to come up with 1,000,000 different evil overlords/diabolic rituals/armies of doom/portals to hell/etc etc all in the same world.

That's one pretty f----d up world, wouldn't you say?

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see an MMO where each player drives the story, but I don't see how it could actually be made...

You can almost be guarenteed that there will be Elves, Dwarves and the like in the game 38 makes. And you can be pretty sure about Dark Elves as well. 
I read a interview with R.A. about the game and when asked if Dark Elves would be in, he didnt say yes, but he did say that he sees no reason to stray away from what he is known for.

From what i have heard they are going to try to make this a into the whole package deal, MMO, Books, Comics, Figures, etc.

I have hope for this game, but not too much hope.

This release and the MMO by Bioware (Forgotten Realms PLEASE, sorry to all you who hate fantasy but i love Forgotten Realms) are what i am really looking forward to some real info on.

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Originally posted by Melf_Himself

 

But how would you actually implement a game in which multiple people COULD all save the world, yetin different ways?

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You wouldn't. Not in the way you were suggesting. I wasn't suggesting that. You could have the devs implement a unique quest during some months.

An example from Asherons Call: For months these floating crystal shard enemies were appearing in the world. There were some larger ones in the depths of dungeons that players were killing, for the challenge as well as the rewards that doing so gave. You could only kill them once. And it was a huge undertaking. Whoever did the most damage had their name broadcast on the channels. And got "phat lewt". But throughout the months there were books found that hinted that these crystals were the only thing keeping an evil god at bay. Trapped in a prison. Several were destroyed, and then one month access to the last one was put into the game. Half the players wanted to destroy it for the "phat lewt" and the fun of it, despite the warnings, and the other half of the player base tried to defend them from the rest of the players. The dungeon containing the last crystal was restricted to players who had “sworn allegiance to Bael'Zharon” (in gameplay terms, activated their character for PvP). This allowed the players to decide the outcome. Some monarchies decided to band together and organize a 24/7 defense of the crystal. Monarchs who were trying to get through and destroy the crystal were messaged by Bael'Zharon and given powerful weapons to help them fight their way to the last crystal. On 6 servers the shard fell. On the 7th the defending players were still holding strong. So the devs helped one of the attacking players on that server, spawned powerful NPCs to help the attackers to destroy the defending monarchies. Actually I think some of those NPCs helping the attacking players were controlled by devs.  I think they STILL had trouble defeating the defending players. But Turbine unfortunately had decided to force the same outcome on all servers so there wouldn't be a divergence in the story from server to server. So eventually the last server had their crystal destroyed as well. Turbine gave that server a unique statue to commemorate that server's extraordinary defense.

Therein lies the problem with that method though, diverging servers. If you have multiple servers things can get very complicated for the devs. Even a forced outcome as in Asherons Call is more interesting than trying to allow all players to feel like they are the one true hero though. If your game only had one massive world (server) like EVE online, then you could write the story to have two possible paths and let the players move it in one direction or the other. It would still be more work than making an online single player RPG and calling it a MMORPG.

I think these epic monthly installments of stories as in Aherons Call, combined with the tools for players to make their own story and gameplay as in Eve Online, would be ideal. No game has been perfect yet. MMORPGs are still a relatively new genre. But making them play like linear single player games just boggles my mind.

heres an article about the Asherons Call event for anyone who is interested:  http://www.ethblue.com/acpaper/page2.htm