Great read Scott, as always. :)

Very glad to see you writing here, very nice addition to the columnist team. :)

Originally posted by Sortis

So if I wanna be the best hero i should play the best dps class so i can deal more dps and then get more recognition? How lame is that?! The job system is gonna be gimp as hell unless they somehow avoid the almighty Ninja crutch that FFXI had. Meaning for those who havent played FFXI. Having a subjob system was a pain in the ass considering if you just wanted to play a Black Mage(wizard) then sorry to bad in order to be the best black mage you can be you have to play a White Mage(healer) which is a class you may want to play or absolutly dread! When most anyone gets into an MMO they decide upon a class they want to play like a Rogue and then take off. When they hit level 16 they dont want to have to feel the need to go do a subjob quest and then level a class they have no interest in just to keep from being what the game considers gimp. Ok guys lets go level our warrior and experience the same exact content all over again now so we can get that increase to power. Not to mention eventually some classes in that game actually required a multitude of sub jobs aka Monk. What a joke. So in short if they make it like FFXI's job system then I honestly wont give it a second look, same thing goes for FF14. To those who dont understand I apologize. You have to go truely experience this monster of a problem for yourself before you can truely be this disgruntled. Not to say that everyone hated this system, but for those who dont have alt-idis it is a nightmare!

I think you may be misunderstanding how it works... Either that or I (along with a lot of other people) misunderstands it...

From how I understand it, you're not "merging" the 4 classes when you level each of them up... They're independant entities... You aren't a Warrior with some healer abilities on the side, you're just a Warrior, unless you go to town and switch to the Healer, then you're just a Healer. Basically it's the same thing as logging your Warrior toon out and logging your Healer alt in. Different skills/abilities, different armor/weapons, etc. And also from what I can tell, it's completely optional, if you only want to level up the one class, then fine.

Well, having played both Hellgate and Mythos pretty extensively... I definitely felt HGL had problems, tried to do too much and didn't really nail any of it, more of a jack of all trades type of game. Mythos on the other hand I greatly enjoyed, it was shaping into a very fun game. So I'm definitely looking forward to what they can do with Torchlight.

(Sorry for the late response, I could have SWORN I replied to this email a couple weeks ago, dunno what happened...)

Indeed, community@mmorpg.com emails come to me, not the moderators. Also, when you reply to the emails you get notifying you of a warning/ban, they also come to me, not the moderator who took action against you.

I get through the emails as quickly as I can, given there are quite a few more of you guys than there is of me. Some times I get a couple days behind, but overall I stay pretty much on top of the queue. I try to respond to just about every email I get, with a couple of exceptions. If you feel the need to come out the gate blasting and cursing me, detailing where I should go or what sexual acts I should perform on myself, then I don't bother. However, if your email is civil and polite, and you request that I look into your ban/warning I'll do just that. And I'll get back to you about it.

Now all that being said, on the average day I get several hundred emails, on "bad" days I get over a thousand. Sometimes emails get lost in the tubes. If you email me and don't hear back within a couple days (assuming the above stipulations) shoot me another. But don't spam my email because you haven't gotten a reply after 15 minutes or at 3am in the morning. I don't sleep much, but occasionally I do need some. ;)

They hinted at other forms of conpetition/conflict but wouldn't give details. I'm working on getting their CM set up over here with an official account to answer the occasional question for you guys. :)

The problem really has nothing to do with the OS. I was experiencing the same thing in Vista Home Prem 64. I have a friend who was getting the same thing in XP.

None of us has figured out exactly WHAT is causing it, contacting support was really no help in my case. However, the fix posted above DOES fix the problem. Or at least it did for me and everyone else I know personally who was experiencing it. I've also read many posts on the FR forums from people saying it worked for them as well.

Originally posted by SwampRob

Well written article.

Not to sound trollish, but I don't get the MMO part of this game.   It seems to me like it's a single-player game with it's online aspects being the ability to trade with others, the ability to "visit" other players' cities, and a leaderboard of some sort.   Obviously there's no combat, so it's like.... competitive modding?

I could see it being fun from a creative standpoint, but I really don't understand the MMO part.   I'm guessing there's no 'teaming' of any kind, which is certainly odd for an MMO.

 

Nope, you don't sound trollish at all, a perfectly common mindset. And in my opinion, that's the mindset that is hampering the MMO genre. We've become so accustomed to the "traditional" type of MMO that most companies aren't willing to try something new, and most players overlook/disregard anyone who does as not really an MMO. It's definitely something we have to get past for this genre to truly grow IMO.

This wouldn't be the first MMO without combat. As for teaming, that's what the trading aspect of the game is at it's core. You have to work with other cities around you to do certain things. Sure, it's definitely more of a cooperative rather than competitive MMO. But at it's core, is it really any different than a "traditional" MMO that doesn't have PvP? You have things you need to do in Cities to progress, like building more office type businesses for your executives to work at. As opposed to questing in a regular MMO. You seek help from other people in Cities to provide the resources you need to progress your city... As opposed to seeking help from other adventurers in a regular MMO to help you complete a quest arc to progress your character.

Right, and I wasn't talking about PvP types of "conflict" above either. I know you were referring to him and not me, just wanted to make sure my own post was clear. :)

Originally posted by lethys

 Add armies!!  Rawr!  In all honesty though, I think they should implement some sort of competition system, I know that the site features one city every however often, but it seems like every MMO but this is really trying to make me be the best at something....GW makes me try to be best at GvG, WoW tries to make me best at dungeon raiding and gear, EVE tries to make me be the in the most profitable situation I can be in, but there are forms of competition and being the best at things such as combat in that as well.  This game seems to lack that....everybody is just hunky dory in their cities with no real conflict.

 

Add some conflict, maybe the ability to band with other cities to form countries, and also add some violence.  Honestly, cities are made in the first place so that we don't have to be ganged up on by wildlife when we go hunting for berries.  Also, cities are the reason we have armies, to protect our interests in the cities from others.  This game seems to really miss out without some sort of combat, even if it isn't player controlled, but just the playerr has to buy the army's mats with currency or tokens.  Then the most prosperous cities would eventually take over, but since you can't stockpile resources, then new cities that would band up could eventually fight back and get bonuses from the GEMs.  All in all, this seems like such a great MMO.  If the game were anything like what I described, the I would DEFINITELY pay $15 a month to play.

Well for starters, it isn't going to be $15 a month, more along the lines of $15 for 3 months. They're really looking at this as more of a secondary MMO. The type of game you play in addition to whatever you "normally" play, be it WoW, EVE or whatever.

Also, there are some other aspects of competition as well. Not only will there be the occasional featured city, but there will also be "live" contests. Something along the lines of whichever city gains the most population change, or money gain, etc over the next X days will win a rare blueprint.

And they also hinted at other forms of conflict/competition but wouldn't let me in on the details, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Originally posted by Enigma

game idea looks great!

They need a better work environment. Reminded me of a gold farm warehouse lol

Well, they're in the middle of Paris... I'd say there are definitely some upsides of their work environment as well. :)

Originally posted by Xondar123

That last picture looks like Baltimore city hall.

That's exactly what it is, if it's the screenshot I assume it is. (I took these while playing the game at the Monte Cristo studios). They held a community contest a little while back for people to submit pictures of their town's city hall. Some of the submissions were selected for inclussion in the game. Baltimore was one of them. I also got to see London and Sydney's, and also Los Angelas' Court House. There was also even a contest for people to submit pictures of the exterior of their own houses, with the winner's being modeled and included in the game.

Thanks all. Glad you liked the article. I had a blast getting my hands on the game, definitely still some work to be done on it, but even in its current state it was fun. Really nice to see something new breaking into the MMO genre. If anyone has any questions about anything specific, I'll see what I can do about answering it, but no promises. :)

I know this is REALLY short notice, but we just finished working out the details.

I'll be heading to visit the Monte Cristo studio to get some hands-on time with Cities XL this coming Friday. If you have any questions about the game, post them here and I'll see what I can do. :)

This is a system that I've been meaning to get to for a while now.

Unfortunately this is something that kinda fell through the cracks when Taera left and I took over as CM, we never got a chance to go over it and so I really have no clue as to the details to most of it.

That being said, I'll be looking into it and filling in the gaps where I can and rework the system in some other places, etc. Feel free to post any suggestions you might have to the system and we'll see what we can do with this thing. :)

Come on gang, there's no need for this type of thread. Locked.

No one said anything about stronger...

Actually almost every one of the guidelines I've laid out to the mods were exactly the opposite...

Less locking of threads, and when they ARE locked, required post stating why it was locked, less stronghandedness with the bans, etc...

I'm not trying to lock things down, I like the freedom this site has always had. Unfortunately some people go out of their way to abuse that. Finding a happy medium is a lot harder than most people realize. We're definitely trying to get there, especially in 'hot' areas like the Darkfall forums, but it isn't an exact science, there is no immediate "make it perfect" switch we can throw.

This is definitely a priority right now. Early next week I'm bringing in a new batch of moderators to help out. And I've also been going over some guidelines with the current moderators to help make things more gooder around here.

I agree with the above, while I did greatly enjoy F3, I definitely preferred F1 and F2 more. But I think that had a lot more to do with standards at the time of their respective releases. Back in the days of F1/F2, those games stood so much higher than their competition it wasn't even close. Now days, the overall standard as been raised so high, it's really hard, if not impossible, for a game to stand out as much as they did back in the day.

Also, for the record, Bethesda already has an MMO in the works, for a year and a half now or so, at their Zenimax Online Studios office in Maryland, headed up by Matt Firor of Mythic/DAoC fame:

http://www.zenimax.com/zol_pressrelease08.01.07.htm

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Kunou

I'm curious about all the dislike shown here towards Bethesda's entry into the Fallout series... I personally loved the game, and also loved the first 2 as well. I've also seen several polls on various gaming sites asking which Fallout game people thought was the best, and across the board Fallout 3 has won, by a LARGE margin. It one MANY game of the year and various other awards throughout the industry... So why all the hate? (Like I said, just curiousity, I'm definitely not trying to tell or prove anyone they're wrong.)

 

Hmm, my friends who are Fallout fans where all dissapointed, however the guys I know that loved the Elder scrolls games loved it.

I don't think people here hate Bethesda but having the creator of the serie do the online version is not a bad idea. I am sure it will look better if Bethesda do it but the question is still if it will be a true Fallout MMO, fallout 3 kinda fellt more aimed to younger people than the first 2.

I rather prefer that Bethesda is working on a online version of Elder scrolls instead and leave Fallout to Interplay, I wouldn't mind playing both those games

I guess I must be in a minority then... I was a big fan of the first 2 Fallouts, but haven't really been a fan of the Elder Scroll series since 'Arena', which I still say was the best and they've gone steadily downhill since. Oblivion was one of my least favorite games of all time... So I'm definintely not a fan of Fallout 3 just cause I'm a Bethesda/Oblivion fan. And I also generally don't care for FPS games, so that can't be it either...

I'm curious about all the dislike shown here towards Bethesda's entry into the Fallout series... I personally loved the game, and also loved the first 2 as well. I've also seen several polls on various gaming sites asking which Fallout game people thought was the best, and across the board Fallout 3 has won, by a LARGE margin. It one MANY game of the year and various other awards throughout the industry... So why all the hate? (Like I said, just curiousity, I'm definitely not trying to tell or prove anyone they're wrong.)