All Posts by Stradden

MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh recently attended an Open House for Sony Online Entertainment's Seattle offices where they are busily building the spy-based MMORPG, The Agency. Today, Koh brings us up-to-date on the game, its rating and more.

SoE took advantage of the 2008 ION Games Conference this year and had a media open house for The Agency at their Seattle offices.  The Open House started at 7:00pm and the last panel ended at 6:00pm, so a few of us hoped that there would be food.  There was.  Food, drink and a couple of booth babes, representing the U.N.I.T.E. and ParaGon agents.  I looked around for burly Duncan but was doomed to disappointment.  The presentation though, was no disappointment despite their showing the same trailer from CES 08. 

Media and friends were treated to a display of the concept art of The Agency, a small tour of the studio, many artists and devs to speak to, many whom sported a temporary ParaGon tattoo for the night and of course, the presentation by Lead Designer, Hal Milton.

Read it all here.

At a recent press event Erling Ellingsen and Gaute Godager gave gathered journalists and fans a look at combat in Age of Conan. In part two of the video, we get a look at spellweaving and mounted combat.

At a recent press event Erling Ellingsen and Gaute Godager gave gathered journalists and fans a look at combat in Age of Conan. In part two of the video, we get a look at spellweaving and mounted combat.

Check it out here.

At a recent press event Erling Ellingsen and Gaute Godager gave gathered journalists and fans an overview of character creation and the opening cinematic for Age of Conan.

At a recent press event Erling Ellingsen and Gaute Godager gave gathered journalists and fans an overview of character creation and the opening cinematic for Age of Conan.

Check it out here.

NCsoft has been kind enough to supply us with a pair of developer diaries discussing the rework of Magma Caverns. In this first diary, Lead World Designer Michael Hutchison gives us his take.

The rework of Magma Caverns was undertaken as part of our team’s efforts to make each area of the game as consistent as possible with the other areas of the game. We’re always looking at ways to make the players’ entire experience in Tabula Rasa feel as polished as possible, and to improve upon areas that might not hold up as well as others. With Magma Caverns, we felt we had a really great opportunity to make dramatic improvements to map flow, mission design, visual interest, and overall quality of presentation. I am here to talk about my perspective on what Magma Caverns was and what it will be, with Deployment 8, coming up soon.

As we considered the area more, we got excited by some new ideas, and the prospects of making some notable improvements to the map and its missions for the players. We were motivated by a few main concerns, which guided our criteria for the re-work. Among them: that the instance should offer more level-appropriate content, that it should have a tone in keeping with the storyline, that its conclusion should be more satisfying, and that the visual points of interest should be highlighted in more dramatic ways.

Read more here.

MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood has updated his blog with a launch day entry for Age of Conan. Part preview, part pure personal opinion, Wood talks about the elements that help him to decide on an MMO and tells us how AoC stacks up.

Well, today is the day that many have been looking forward to for quite some time. For some, it has been as long as five years. In case you have been living under a big ‘ol MMO rock for the last few months, and don’t know what I’m talking about, today marks the launch of Funcom’s Age of Conan.

To celebrate, or perhaps commemorate the event, I decided to write this little entry in my ever-expanding blog. No, this isn’t an official review. I haven’t spent nearly enough time in-game to properly review the game. What I can do though, is put together an article on my thoughts about the game from my experiences in Closed Beta and in Early Access.

Let’s start by talking a little bit about Funcom’s beta. I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim the Fileplanet Open Beta to have been a bit of a gaffe on Funcom’s part. By that I mean that it shouldn’t have happened. My opinion may have changed if they had called it a Fileplanet Preview or something similar, but it left a bad taste in the mouths of some people, being told they had to pay for a beta (actually, they weren’t paying for the beta, they were paying for a Fileplanet membership, but why muddy this with logic?), and then being brought in for an extremely buggy experience (not that everyone was having the same bad time. Personally, I hardly crashed at all and experienced very little lag).

Read the whole entry here.

At the recent ION conference, MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh had the opportunity to speak with Joe Ybarra of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's Stargate Worlds. The pair talked about the progress of the game, and a little bit about subjects like beta and mini-games.

Joe Ybarra is one of the original game producers for Electronic Arts.  His roster of achievements in award winning games include Bards Tale and Starflight, and his MMORPG credits include Shadowbane and Matrix Online.  At the 2008 ION Games Conference, I finally tracked him down for a chat about Stargate Worlds which will be published by FireSky, a subsidiary of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment.

“How,” I asked Joe Ybarra, Senior Vice President of Strategic Operations at Firesky, “did you get involved in making Stargate World?”  I wanted to know how a small software company that started out as Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment ended up with an IP like Stargate and the cooperation with MGM studios for an MMORPG.

Read the article here.

Today, SOE has announced a new card set for their Legends of Norrath trading card game. The new addition will be known as "Oathbreaker" and includes over 250 new cards.

Today, Sony Online Entertainment is set to announce a new card set for their Everquest spinoff trading card game, Legends of Norrath. The new card set, titled “Oathbreaker”, is the fourth set to join the game since it began. The new Oathbreaker set will launch on June 19th and will be the last set to release before the game’s $100,000 World Championship event at Gen Con Indy (August 14-17).

Read more here.

At a recent live presentation of Funcom`s Age of Conan, Gaute Godager and Erling Ellingsen demonstrated the player built cities that are one of the perks of guild membership in-game, a unique process that closer recalls games like The Sims or Age of Empires than it does any previous MMO.

During a recent live presentation, Age of Conan's Gaute Godager and Erling Ellingsen told the gathered fans and media about player crated cities in the soon-to-be-released game.

 

Watch it here.

At a recent live presentation of Funcom`s Age of Conan, Gaute Godager and Erling Ellingsen demonstrated the different forms of combat in their game. In part one of the presentation the guys talked primarily about the melee combat combo system and the aimable ranged combat.

Combat Part One During a recent live presentation, Age of Conan's Gaute Godager and Erling Ellingsen spoke about the different kinds of combat in the game. In part one of this video, they talk about ranged and melee combat.

Read more here.

For those of you who may have been hoping to get your hands on a Collector`s Edition copy of Funcom`s Age of Conan, you;`re out of luck. In a press release issued today, the company announced that the CEs have sold out.

Durham, USA – May 19, 2008 – Funcom is proud to announce that the Collector’s Edition of Age of Conan is now completely sold out in all markets. The exclusive edition was announced in January, and has since topped retail charts at numerous retailers. In some markets, the Collector’s Edition has been sold out for weeks, and as a result additional boxes were made. These are also sold out, and the total print run stands at 111.000 units. Lucky customers may still find some copies on retail shelves, but no re-orders are available.   

Additional retail figures for the standard edition of Age of Conan are also highly impressive. In total, Funcom is shipping around 700.000 copies of Age of Conan on day one. This impressive figure for a PC game is powered by equally impressive pre-order numbers. As a result of the tremendous interest and recent order increase, Funcom has not been able to fulfill all orders of Age of Conan in several markets due to current server capacity limitations. Extra orders of servers are now in place to facilitate for handling of more customers.  
 
“Everyone in Funcom is delighted and humbled with the historical pre-order numbers for Age of Conan. If the information we have is correct, they represent the highest pre-order number for any global launch of an original PC game, ever, including the original World of Warcraft launch,” said Morten Larssen, Funcom’s VP of Sales & Marketing.

More than one million unique visitors visited the Age of Conan websites last week, and as a result of the great interest in the game, Funcom's early access offer was swiftly oversubscribed. The three day early access program was a limited offer reserved for pre-order customers. While Funcom scaled the servers above anticipation, player demand surpassed expectations. As the Early Access servers launched last night, the servers and game held up exceptionally well. As the game launches properly later this week, Funcom expects additional large numbers of customers to enter the game.   

All the positive signals are naturally not equal to eventual success, but early indications from the press points out that the game boasts unique qualities. The very first review for the game gives it a 9 out of 10 score from Game Reactor, the Nordic regions largest gaming magazine.

While Funcom is thrilled with the early success of Age of Conan, and proud of the game launching this week, the company regrets to inform gamers that the DirectX 10 version of the game will not ship with the initial launch. As Microsoft’s DirectX 10 is undoubtedly the future of PC gaming, Funcom has decided to ship only the DirectX 9 version at launch, giving the team more time to focus on building a DirectX 10 version worthy of Microsoft’s great vision for the future of PC gaming. This postponement will let Funcom include even more features in the DirectX 10 version of Age of Conan than originally planned.

The DirectX 10 version will be premiered at the German Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, August 20 – 24, 2008. A special preview showing off the advanced graphics made possible by DirectX 10 technology will be unveiled this summer at nVidia’s NVISION event in San Jose, California, August 25 – 27, 2008.

Age of Conan launches 20th of May in North America / Oceania and 23rd of May in Europe. More information about the game can be found on www.ageofconan.com   

Read more here.

It seems that North America and Europe won't be the only ones to enjoy the RvR goodness this Fall when Warhammer Online launches. Today, the company announced that Australia, New Zeland and parts of Southeast Asia will see a simultaneous launch as well.

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ (WAR) will ship in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia simultaneously with the North American and European Fall 2008 release.

In addition, WAR will also feature a dedicated server in Australia, ensuring the best game play experience possible for players in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and other Southeast Asian territories. Players will still have the option of connecting to North American servers.

"Warhammer is a worldwide franchise with a strong following in Australia and New Zealand. By placing our own server down under and running customer service out of EA Mythic, we can ensure that when we launch WAR, Oceanic players will experience the same quality of game play and customer service as North American players," said Mark Jacobs, VP and General Manager of EA Mythic.

Based on Games Workshop’s epic and longstanding tabletop fantasy war game, WAR features revolutionary Realm vs. Realm™ (RvR) game play that immerses players in a world of perpetual conflict. WAR is scheduled for launch on the PC in Fall 2008.

To learn more about the game, please visit www.warhammeronline.com.

To keep up-to-date on all the latest news and features from WAR, sign up for the monthly newsletter at www.warhammeronline.com/newslettersignup/.

More on WAR here.

The folks at Funcom have provided us with new screenshots from Age of Conan, the highly anticipated new MMO that will open its doors on May 20th.

Check out all six here.

While attending a launch event in Oslo, Norway, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood had the opportunity to speak with Knut Avenstroup Haugen, the composer of the Age of Conan soundtrack.

 

MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood speaks with Knut Avenstroup Haugen, the composer for Age of Conan

Check out the feature here.

Firesky's Superstition Studios has a new studio head. Firesky may seem like a familiar name to some as it was recently announced that their first project is Stargate Worlds (and are a subsidiary of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment).

Superstition Studios is currently working on a new MMORPG project.

MESA, Ariz. – May 15, 2008 – Shane Lacy Hensley, the senior writer behind the successful City of Villains MMORPG and creator of top pen and paper RPGs like Deadlands, Weird Wars, and Savage Worlds, has been named studio head of FireSky’s Superstition Studios. Prior to the promotion, Mr. Hensley was the creative director of Superstition Studios.

“Over the last 9 months, Shane has built Superstition Studios through the hiring of a small team of very talented individuals,” said FireSky Senior Vice President of Product Development Rod Nakamoto. “The creative minds in that studio have already surpassed our expectations in their early work. With Shane’s leadership, success is a given for Superstition Studios.”

Prior to joining Superstition Studios, Mr. Hensley’s most recent work was on the award-winning City of Heroes and City of Villains MMO. His tabletop work includes several novels, miniatures games, and card games, as well as the Army of Darkness RPG, the Killer Instinct collectible card game, the Fields of Honor miniatures game, and his own Weird Wars RPG. He has won numerous awards in game design including Best RPG for Deadlands and for Savage Worlds.

Superstition Studios hasn’t announced Mr. Hensley’s next project publicly, but he has assured his fans that they will be very excited to see what’s coming next. All games developed by Superstition Studios are expected to be published by FireSky.

Read more here.

The folks from Cabal Online have announced that as of yesterday, players can engage in nation vs nation warfare on their new Nation Server.

El Segundo, Calif.- May 15, 2008 - Beginning Thursday, May 15, players in OGPlanet's massively multiplayer online role-playing game CABAL ONLINE will be able to engage in warfare on a colossal scale with the launch of the Nation War server.

The Nation War server will be dedicated to the epic battle between the two nations represented in CABAL; Capella and Procyon. Each day, at 6 p.m. Pacific time, 100 warriors from each nation will struggle to overtake outposts controlled by massively powerful guardians, kill off the invaders from the other nation, and ultimately take control of the opposing nation's capitol to control the battlefield.

"We're continuously developing new ways to engage and challenge CABAL players," said Don Choi, COO of OGPlanet. "This massive battle between opposing nations will take player vs. player combat to a whole new level."

In order to enter the Nation War server, players must have leveled their characters to at least level 95, and must pay 1,000,000 Alz (CABAL's in-game currency). After a 30-minute preparation period, during which players can organize themselves, stock up on their needed items and plan strategies, the battle begins.

During Nation War, players' characters automatically receive greatly increased health, and are dressed in their respective national uniforms for easy identification on the battlefield. Each team begins the game with a set number of points, and as outposts are conquered and occupied, points are accumulated. These points can then be used to activate Force Towers, and Legacy Weapons which can be wielded by players during the battle will appear.

The Nation War will end when one nation overtakes the other nation's base and destroys all its enemies. If neither nation accomplishes this goal, points earned by killing enemy players or by occupying enemy bases and neutral outposts will decide the winner.

Once the Nation War has ended, each participant will receive Alz and items proportionate to their contributions to the war. On Saturdays, as well as designated special occasions, Mission Nation War will take place. Every member of the victorious nation, not just those who actually participated in the fight, will receive rewards after these special battles.

Read more here.

Originally posted by Thor79

You know...it usually helps to post a link to said video. I'm getting nothing.

Try the link...

The folks from NCsoft have sent along this new video featuring the Midnight Squad, an NPC group of heroes that are featured heavily in CoH's Issue 12. Recently, we featured a developer journal on the same subject, and today we show you the team in action.

The folks at NCsoft have provided us with this new video featuring the Midnight Squad, a group that will make their appearance in Issue 12.

Check it out here.

The folks at Funcom have provided us with new screenshots from Age of Conan, the highly anticipated new MMO that will open its doors on May 20th.

Check out all six here.