Originally posted by Outwalker71

 

World of the Living Dead (or WotLD) is a unique game that, by any other definition, stands as a Zombie Apocalypse Simulation.  It has elements of other types of games but stands on its own.  It is in depth, chock full of content, and definitively hardcore and brutal for those that enjoy a challenge.

 

At the start, you’re given the care of 6 survivors.  It is actually more difficult at the start of the game and can progressively get easier as you find other survivors that can be tasked to do more things such as scavenge for food, liquids, and weapons or just kill Zeds.  You earn Survival Points for both.  Those can be used to enhance your survivors and/or build Safe Houses to recover in which you must defend to prevent it from being broken into by Zombies or other players.

 

There is a PvP aspect to the game.  Factions are teams of survivors working toward a common goal: Surviving.  When the game goes live, I suspect that war will be most likely because the one thing about this game that is interesting is that the resources are finite.  When they’re gone, they’re gone.  So, you need to protect what is yours.

 

The PDA that has an interactive map on it that you use to move your survivors and give them commands.

 

If you are looking for a browser game with graphics and single-button action with limited depth and content, this game isn’t for you.  If you want a game that is realistic and will challenge your survival skills with loads of content, give it a try.

 

Closed beta is over.  Sign on in.

 

Don’t get bitten.

Wish this was advertised more I just stumbled onto this game tonight I'll take a crack at it like sim games :) and with zombies its a plus.

One of the gaming industry's preeminent minds took the stage for a speech at the D.I.C.E. summit today, and his talking points didn't disappoint technophiles.

A self-acknowledged tech geek who feels more comfortable speaking to programmers about topics like the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem than he does distilling his theories for general audiences, Sweeney is the brilliant mind behind the nearly ubiquitous Unreal Engine, which powers many current generation games. Like id Software's John Carmack, his influence is so great that hardware developers bring him into the conversation early on to benefit from his insight. For his "Technology and Gaming in the Next 20 Years" presentation, he casually walked us through some of his computations that lay out an aggressive pattern of technological growth for the gaming industry.

He started by talking about the limitations of human physiology, saying our eyes are the equivalent to a 30-megapixel camera and framerate becomes imperceptible to us beyond 72 frames per second. The highest resolution we need is 8000x4000 pixels, which is slightly better than the 7630x4320-pixel prototype television Sharp showed off at CES this year. The technology isn't here yet, but it's coming soon.

Computer graphics are the art of approximating that reality, and Sweeney thinks we'll see lifelike representations of everything from lighting, subsurface scattering, skin, smoke, and fog in the near future.

“Within our lifetimes, we will be able to push out enough computational power to simulate reality,” he said.

To reach the level where computers are capable of producing truly lifelike approximations, Sweeney estimates that we need roughly 2,000 times the computational power of today's best graphics hardware. This level of processing power still doesn't account for human thought, movement, speech, personality, or intent, so there is still a lot of room to progress with artificial intelligence on top of the idealized graphics. Sweeney thinks we'll need a few more console generations to reach this level of fidelity.

He thinks the future is even more promising when you consider the potential of emerging technologies like gesture control, voice commands, persistent networks, cloud computing, augmented reality, and the sale of virtual goods. As we start to tap the potential of these technologies, Sweeney believes the platforms will start to consolidate.

“Only question is whether a game runs in your living room or in a server,” he said. “It’s not going to change everything but it will make things more convenient for gamers.... Our industry's brightest days are yet to come."

Sweeney will be inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame tonight at the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards hosted by Jay Mohr.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/02/09/epic-39-s-tim-sweeney-lifelike-graphics-will-happen-within-our-lifetimes.aspx

Originally posted by WhiteLantern

Originally posted by firefly2003

Why is everyone so excited over this? Wait 6 months down the road when you will see the real indicator on how the population will be then and not now, the new shiny magical feeling of the game hasn't wore off the most casual players haven't reached 50 yet and are unaware of the glaring issues the game has currently.

 

 

Wait, wait wait! First, it was "wait till after the free month", then it was "wait till after 2-3 months", now it's "wait 6 months"?
 You mean to tell me that now I have to wait 6 months for this game to fail? Holy crap, dude! I'm a themeparker, my attention span is not that long.

[Mod Edit]

Where did I say that this game was going to fail after the first month? Nowhere... however if they don't fix the glaring issues that are blatantly out in the open for anyone with a brain can see then yes this game will lose its steam fast.

Why is everyone so excited over this? Wait 6 months down the road when you will see the real indicator on how the population will be then and not now, the new shiny magical feeling of the game hasn't wore off the most casual players haven't reached 50 yet and are unaware of the glaring issues the game has currently.

First playthru with a class is a great experience while leveling once you get to 50 and you decide to roll another you begin to notice that the world quests run together on that faction's side why would anyone bother to listen to the VO's a 2nd time thru with the same quest you finished on your last toon? Let alone 3-4 times, space bar thru it, the only thing that is unique is the seperate CLASS story arc, and it ends quite too soon leaving you once your 50 with the feeling of WTF? What now?

The huge faction imbalance of Imperial Vs Republic on nearly every server Republic is outnumbered 5:1 with the exception of 2 server which are RP servers.

The noticeable population drops on all servers with some migrating to the heavyiest server loads, 4 of our major guilds on our server disbanded completely and quit playing completely.

World PVP is dead at 50 on Illum due to massive imbalance of Imp vs Republic fresh 50's are advised to not even go to Illum, Republic is effectively locked out of Illum from doing their PVP dailies or doing world PVP period blocking Republic PVP gear progression a side effect of massive faction imblanace, and since patch 1.1.0 with the dailies change to Illum and Valor Increase for holding Illum objective, that day after the patch lead to 8hr exploit by the Imps farming Valor gaining fast ranks even going from rank 1-60 in that one period before on the forums a offical response was made by the dev team that they screwed up and had a emergency patch later that night that nerfed it giving the majority  factions on each server a massive gain on PVP ranks exploited to Battlemaster rank. No Rollback or punishments or bans were done.

PVP Warzone Daily and Weekly when warzones are won credit for winning the WZ is not credited to your daily or weekly (bugged) this is a huge issue atm. Warzones starting with imbalanced teams ex(6-8) which is a huge disadvantage to the team with less peeps, and their is a bug with the UI reset which allows you to bring in more players causing a bigger imbalance of teams gaining a huge advantage and explioiting your win for the match.

Republic classes animations are broke and slower and ability delays are a problem right now that will be dealt with in the upcoming March Patch, they recently had a patch that dealt with some ability delay issues but they still persist, some classes are worse than others with delays and slow animations that dont fire Trooper being the biggest culprit here. However when you play a Imperial character all animations and abilities fire correctly and on timely basis. (Have Republic and Imperial characters 4 - 50)

Hardmode -Nightmare-Flashpoints and Operations are borked with their loot table and Master Looter is broken atm , crafting mats won't drop off bosses etc.

The lack of Guild Functionality-(Guild Banks-Mail-Quests-Etc) The complete lack of community and no tools to foster community there is no reason right now to even have guilds or community cause everything from 1-49 isolates those players so much and the instancing  you rarely see anyone unless you on your prespective faction fleet station.

Lack of Class Balancing and absence of combat log, it seems to most people who are at 50 are wondering why since there is a combat log in TOR already but the dev team won't activate it for some reason is growing suspicion due to their favortism  toward the Imperial faction given most recently that its been revealed on our server 2 devs are members of a Imperial guild called Sith Happens has been pre-selected to go to the Guild Summit in Austin, Texas all expenses paid, a growing concern over demands wanting a full list of guilds going to this summit and how balanced is the faction representation going to be ? Or is it going to be guilds that Bioware that themselves play in the Live servers their guilds get to come to the summit automatically? Biased feedback that there will be yes, yes men to Bioware yes. With the neglect of any real class balancing namely the Sith Inquistor/ Sorcerer Adv Class ( a developer favorite several of them play Sorcs) have seem to skip any changes to Sorcs but have made a suprising change to Sith Assassins which werent even OP to begin with. And the aruguments on the Sorcs continue on the offical forums, when BW does do balancing they go over the top like they did with Tuesday's patch nerfing Agents and Smugglers into the ground. But what is even more fishy is that is seems they are trying to hold off on the combat log so people won't have the proper evidence to show proof that a certain class or players up to sheniggans wont get called on.

Lack of anti-cheat tools as of right now if your a smart player using hacks, memory editors, wont likely get banned read about how one guy got over 300 people that reported him on one character before they banned him finally.

Terrible customer support- TOR's customer support is based in India which leads to tickets being completely ignored or locked and ignored by the staff only way to get things resolved is by calling BW .

I can go on and on about the more glaring issues that are affecting the game atm , and this is first hand experience from myself and guildmates and other players across 4 servers I frequent on, I have canceled my sub today which ends on the 20th so if your just leveling up your first character and think everythings hunky dory thats fine but when you get to 50 you will see all the problems this game has and it has a lot of problems , and many people have been right about the game the whole time it is nothing but a single player with Co-op, the MMORPG features are barely working or nonexistant, basically a lobby game at 50 instanced play (Flashpoint-Ops-PVP)

38 Studios Defends Reckoning Online Pass

The Internet erupted on Friday when it was discovered that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning included an online pass that unlocked several single-player quests. 38 Studios Chairman and Founder Curt Schilling took the company’s official forums to discuss the decision.

Schilling said the House of Valor quest content is actually day-one downloadable content that’s free to everyone who purchases the game new. If you buy the game used, you’ll have to pay for it.

“It's clear the intent right?,” he stated. “To promote early adopters and [sic] much more important to me, reward fans and gamers who commit to us with their time and money when it benefits the company.

“Every single person on the planet could wait and not buy Reckoning, the game would hit the bargain bin at some point and you could get it cheaper. 38 Studios would likely go away.”

Schilling emphasized this is not a case of the studio or publisher trying to make more money, but rather rewarding players who purchase the game new.

"That's just how business works," he explained. "We must make a profit to become what we want to become. The only way we do that is to make games you cannot wait to buy! If we do that, and you do that, we want to reward you with some cool free stuff as a thank you.

"You can totally disagree with this and I am sure many do, so we'll agree to disagree. This is not 38 trying to take more of your money, or EA in this case, this is us rewarding people for helping us! If you disagree due to methodology, ok, but that is our intent.

"The industry is in a very odd place. The data coming in on used game sales is not saying the things many thought it should, or would. But companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how."

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/01/30/38-studios-defends-online-pass-for-reckoning.aspx

Originally posted by smh_alot

Originally posted by Ghost12

Theres a single player game that has all of the making of a sandbox...you may have heard of it...

Skyrim?

7 million copies sold.

Oh yeah, and thats with torrenting/pirating.

The "Theres no market for sandbox" is a myth. The reason why companies arent making sandbox MMO's is because of the success of WoW, plain and simple. The ultimate irony, being that when players leave WoW they want a different experience, not the same one.

Theres also another sandbox game - its F2P you may have heard of it - called Runescape, and is one of the most successful MMO's of all time.

 

It's kind of an odd comparison to reference a singleplayer game that is released on console as well. I mean, MW3 sold like 10+ million copies, this doesn't mean that an MMOFPS will automatically reach million+ players. People simply love good games that they're having a great fun time in.

 

As for sandbox MMO's, I think there's a reason why the themepark or game oriented design gained so much more popularity than the best of sandbox oriented design. Even after WoW, themepark oriented MMO's scored huge numbers of players, many of them even played those games after the first months. In my opinion, a purely sandbox focused design as well as a purely themepark focused design are both wrong, but the latter one appeals to more people than the former one by nature. The best design imo is where an MMO combines both sandbox and themepark focused gameplay elements.

That is where Wildstar and ArcheAge come in.

Originally posted by Ghost12

Originally posted by GMan3

Originally posted by Starpower

When are you going to get you are not part of a market worth catering too. Mainly because it's so small

     Truer words were never said. I understand that people of the more sandboxy crafting and selling persuasion want a game to play, but truth be told, you will never make a company a profit.  My suggestion is to find one you can deal with and try to live with it OR just quit gaming.  I really hope you go for the former instead of the later though.      

Lol.

Theres a single player game that has all of the making of a sandbox...you may have heard of it...

Skyrim?

7 million copies sold.

Oh yeah, and thats with torrenting/pirating.

The "Theres no market for sandbox" is a myth. The reason why companies arent making sandbox MMO's is because of the success of WoW, plain and simple. The ultimate irony, being that when players leave WoW they want a different experience, not the same one.

Theres also another sandbox game - its F2P you may have heard of it - called Runescape, and is one of the most successful MMO's of all time.

You forgot about this sandbox game as well.....

Minecraft Hits 20 Million Registered Users

If you're a card-carrying Minecraft player, consider yourself in good company. Markus Persson, the game's mastermind (better known by his online handle, Notch), tweeted that the blocky sandbox game has hit a significant milestone: 20 million registered users.

His first tweet was relatively mild, saying "Minecraft now has 20 million registered users. At 70 kg each, that's 25% of the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza." He followed it up with a slightly disturbing conversion. "At 4 liters per day, it would take a million years to drink 20 million liquidized humans. Just saying. I'll stop now."

Those registrations didn't all translate to paid users, which Notch noted in a similarly tongue-in-cheek stat. "23.23% also bought the game. Extrapolating, we find that 76.77% of the internet will register for things they don't want."

That's more than 4.6 million paid copies, if you don't feel like crunching the numbers yourself.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/01/14/minecraft-hits-20-million-registered-users.aspx

The evidence is pretty thin, but the twitter population seems convinced.

There are only two real pieces of evidence that have lead people to believe that Spark Unlimited is working on Star Wars: Battlefront 3. One, on its website Spark Unlimited lists in its job section that, "We are in production on an unannounced high-profile, popular game sequel for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC release." The other piece of evidence, is that it simply isn't flat out denying that Battlefront 3 is the title it is working on, on twitter. Every inquiry is met with a, "you'll have ask Lucas Arts about its franchises, we're just a developer, not  publisher," response.

It's not much to go on, but it's possible.

Spark Unlimited only has a few games under its belt with Call of Duty: Finest Hour, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, and Legendary. It seems more likely that they could be working on a new Call of Duty having experience in the franchise already, but twitter seems to think otherwise. We will know more next year when official announcements start rolling out.

Originally posted by Teala

Is anyone else sick of this WoW vs SW:ToR crap?  For the last few weeks it has been SW:ToR vs the world....I am so sick of SW:ToR I'll be so glad when it launches so these people will go play the game!

I'm sure tired of it, I've given up reading a lot of the posts made by users here anymore its either the same VS fanboy threads or the why F2P is better the P2P , frankly I just read the news and articles by the staff now every now and again I'll post something in the general gaming section other than that its the same ol crap anymore.

Why does it matter?

I bought both the Witcher 1-2 (Collector's Editon) I have pirated some games in the past to see if I would like then buy them, if not I would usually remove them off my drive, I play tons of games, and buy a lot of games as well, a proper test drive is what is needed at times to ensure the game is worth buying.

How many duds have you bought and turned out the game was horrible, you get stuck with a coaster and out of 40-60 $. I don't condone my pirating actions but not everyone pirates and just doesn't buy anything. I have done this for movies and tv shows as well and it has lead me to buy everything I downloaded.

Originally posted by wolvie3131

I can say one thing about the questing in this game.

  The way it is presented , I have never become so attached to my character so quickly or so thoroughly in an MMO or any other game so completely!

I found myself carefully checking over my choices, deciding how it may effect myself, or my companion.. I started with I am all about the credits Bounty Hunter, and after a major turn in events storywise, I found myself developing a code for my BH to follow.

I was quite sad towards the end to know my character I had explored and made these choices with was on the slate to be wiped.

ALL quests are get me this take this here kill x or y, its in the presnetation that makes the difference IMO.

 

Funny I know a Wolvy in my guild......

The first battle in Activision and EA's Call of Duty vs. Battlefield war might be over for now, but that doesn't mean the two companies don't have other chances to spar. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has fired a shot against EA/BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic, questioning the MMO's potential profitability.

Speaking at a Reuters Media Summit, Kotick said, "Lucas[Arts] is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars," he said. "We've been in business with Lucas for a long time, and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don't really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts."

Having dealt with LucasArts, Kotick's opinion isn't entirely without merit, but you'd think that the bean-counters over at EA already have things covered.

[via Gamasutra]

It's been a tumultuous journey for PlayStation 3 owners who were promised Battlefield 1943 for free with their purchase of Battlefield 3, but Electronic Arts is now making the game available.

Bethesda has released details on the first major performance patch for The Elder Scolls V: Skyrim.

As noted on the Bethesda blog, patch v1.2 improves a number of issues, including the texture loading problem plaguing Xbox 360 versions and the PlayStation 3 bug that would cause the game to chug as your save file grew.

The patch is currently available for PlayStation 3 owners in Europe and should be hitting North America soon. The update is planned to go live on Xbox 360 and PC on November 30.

Below is the list of fixes being implemented in this patch for all versions unless otherwise noted:

• Improved occasional performance issues resulting from long term play (PlayStation 3)
• Fixed issue where textures would not properly upgrade when installed to drive (Xbox 360)
• Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz (PC)
• Fixed issue where projectiles did not properly fade away
• Fixed occasional issue where a guest would arrive to the player’s wedding dead
• Dragon corpses now clean up properly
• Fixed rare issue where dragons would not attack
• Fixed rare NPC sleeping animation bug
• Fixed rare issue with dead corpses being cleared up prematurely
• Skeleton Key will now work properly if player has no lockpicks in their inventory
• Fixed rare issue with renaming enchanted weapons and armor
• Fixed rare issue with dragons not properly giving souls after death
• ESC button can now be used to exit menus (PC)
• Fixed occasional mouse sensitivity issues (PC)
• General functionality fixes related to remapping buttons and controls (PC)

Many Final Fantasy fans have spent years begging for a remake of the PlayStation 1 classic FF VII, but have you stopped to consider how the game might change in its new form? As confirmed by Final Fantasy XIII-2 producer Yoshinori Kitase, the team at Square Enix would likely make some big changes in a remake.

Speaking with Official Xbox Magazine, Kitase explained why he wouldn't be willing to do a straight port of all the content and systems of the original game:

"If I may speak as a game creator, if we were to produce a remake of VII, for example, I would be really tempted to delete things and add new elements, new systems or whatever because if we were to make exactly the same thing now, it'd be like a repeat.

"It'd be an issue of repetition and not as much fun to make such a game. So I'd be really interested in rearranging games or reshaping games into something slightly different even though it's supposed to be the same game. But if we did that, the fans might be disappointed or 'this is not what I was expecting' so in that sense maybe some might say that it's better to let memory be memory."

Kitase doesn't bring up any specific examples of what he would change, but one segment that fans often forget about is the bit where Cloud cross-dresses to infiltrate an enemy compound. I have a feeling that would be a little more difficult to pull off in a modern big-budget game in a way that doesn't come off as crass or silly.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/11/28/what-changes-would-ff-xiii-2-39-s-producer-bring-to-a-final-fantasy-vii-remake.aspx

PlayStation 3 owners were pumped to hear that Battlefield 3 would include Battlefield 1943 on the same disc. Except it didn't. Now, EA is being taken to court over the matter.

As reported by Kotaku, the firm Edelson McGuire filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of PS3 Battlefield 3 users, alleging EA "misled and profited from thousands of their customers by making a promise that they could not, and never intended, to keep".

A lot can change during the development process, and sometimes console exclusives are shuffled around or altered. However, after promising the free game, EA never announced that it was backing out on the deal until the game was out. In other words, many PS3 owners were given no reason to think that they weren't getting Battlefield 1943...until they bought Battlefield and found out that the bonus game wasn't on the disc.

We'll just have to wait and see how this turns out...but even if EA gets away with it, it was still a crummy way to treat its fans.

(Source: Kotaku)

Originally posted by Dragim

Good, that tactical light pisses me off.  I hate it when people on my team constantly shine it at me.

Also good people are getting banned, I think I may know what "glitch" they are talking about, but will not say it in the mmo forums as it is probably against the rules.  Just glad I never did it, hehe.

If you go to the BFIII forums there is a Player Wall Of Shame  Video there of people cheating across all platforms.And the name of the players as well.

Every competitive multiplayer shooter is going to be faced with the problem of cheaters; the best we can hope for is that publishers are vigilant with the banhammer. Thankfully, it looks like EA is staying quite busy taking care of the scum of the gaming universe in Battlefield 3.

According to the official Battlefield 3 Twitter account, hundreds of Battlefield 3 cheaters and hackers have been banned across all three platforms this past week. The account says they have "zero tolerance for cheating players" and will continue banning freely.

GameSpy reports that many of the banned players were likely using a glitch related to the engineer class that allows players to quickly build up an absurd score in the tens of thousands of points.

In happier news, EA also says that a Battlefield 3 patch is on the way. Amongst the issues being tweaked, the patch will lessen the power of the tactical flashlight add-on. No word on when this patch will hit, but the Twitter account says it's "just around the corner."

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/11/13/battlefield-3-cheaters-being-banned-patch-incoming.aspx

I just picked up my Collector's Edition this morning from Gamestop the damn box was bigger than a PS3 console box, the statue was super sweet and is now sitting in my corner of other statues from other collector's edition games and soon Darth Malgus will be joining them as well, the artwork book is extremely nice and the super giant map is super as well just can't wait till I have time to play the game :P