GameZig

Jordan Weisman, the founder of FASA Corporation and creator of the MechWarrior franchise has reacquired the license for MechWarrior back from Microsoft along with a few other properties previously in the FASA catalog.  He has taken his newly reacquired franchises back and launched a new game company to boot, Smith and Tinker.  While he hasn’t made official any news as for what he’s planning to do with MechWarrior and any of the other franchises, his new company is geared toward developing internet based games tied to offline products.  Does that mean an MMO?  Who knows, but it’s fun to imagine what it would be like.

Obviously a MechWarrior based MMO would be ultra cool but what would it really be like?  I guess the first question would be what would the combat be like?  Most traditional MMO’s are skill based games like World of Warcraft or Age of Conan, but there are good examples of games that are twitch based which have worked well like World War II Online or Planetside.  After playing the MechWarrior single player FPS style games I can’t imagine it being anything other than twitch combat.  But does that mean no skills to level?

Not necessarily.  There are always room to give players that oh so familiar feel of other MMOG’s.  The Mech’s you pilot for example, it’s possible to unlock other classes of Mech as you advance, being a good example of putting skills into the game.  Or perhaps abilities or addons like jumpjets or more advanced components. 

That could definitely lead to potential problems with higher level characters out classing lower level character just based on equipment, but in a twitch based system the lower level guys still have a chance to win in a fight, especially if several team up to take down a more advanced player.  In a system like a FPS - how long you’ve been playing or how high your level is has no impact on whether or not a newbie can land a hit on a high level target.  It would just effect what that newbie is hitting with - and you can bet even the lower level weapons will hurt.

But you can’t just have nothing but massive scale combat in an MMO, there has to be more.  Otherwise there is no point in making it an MMO is there?  Then it’s just another FPS.  If you include non-combat roles it adds even further to the skill based system that so many fans of MMO’s are used to.  You could have merchants or traders, scavengers or salvagers to go over the wreckage of fallen mechs to see if there is anything of value (like the MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries feature), engineers and mechanics to fix the mechs and other equipment.  Then the crafter roles which will be the ones building replacement mechs and weapons - along with any other items that will be available in the game.

To have a nice flowing economy and to keep things fresh and mix things up in the game - mechs should be permanently destroyable.  Mechs that are damaged bad enough to be inoperable on the battlefield but aren’t permanently destroyed should be able to be salvaged by the victor team or whoever happens along the wreckage.  Players who do nothing but fight in the game and have no means of income would obviously need a way to make money.  There are ways to do that.  If you wanted to do it right, you could institute an actual mercenary system where players could rent out their services for a paycheck.  If you wanted to go the easier route, you could just award a certain amount of money for every enemy the player kills.  Or obviously they could make money running missions (quests). 

What if a player runs out of money and loses their ride?  Well - we could be really mean and make them go learn another trade.  Or we could have a starter mech that is always repairable for them to start over with.  Maybe just a light scout class mech like the Raven or something in that class.  Single small laser and a light chassis - now go run missions!  Heh, there are lots of ways to do it.  But my point of this whole article is that if there ever was a MechWarrior MMO - it should revolve around two key things.  Combat and money.

A week ago I got that special email from the makers of Mythos inviting me to join their closed beta playground. Initially I had to create an account with the usual stuff; user ID, password, email, and etc. No problems on that end registration was simple and didn’t require any credit card information. Next came the download which was a surprisingly smaller than I expected 500mb (I was expecting something like 1 gig or more), but I have to remind myself this is still the beta and there’s plenty of room for expansion. After the download came the installation and about four total, end-user agreements that I had to agree to before I could actually install the game. Finally I installed the game and started it up.

There’s a long loading process for the first time you actually run the game. After the initial loading the game jumped right to the log on screen. I typed in my user info, and the gates of Mythos were opened for my playing pleasure. Like most MMORPG’s you create your character, which in Mythos there are four races: Gremlin, Cyclops, Satyr, and Human. There are also three classes to choose from: Bloodletter, Pyromancer, and Gadgeteer. We all know that every MMORPG has similar types of characters and classes, i.e. Bloodletters are your tanks (the guys who are big and can take a lot of damage). Your Pyromancers who are the mages or spell casters of the game. And then my personal favorite the Gadgeteers or your archer/rifler type of character class.

So how do these characters stand out you ask? Let’s just take a minute and discuss the art style and the type of image that is being portrayed within this game. The first race that jumps out is the Gremlin who has this fat cigar jutting out of his mouth, which instantly made me laugh with amazement, because it looks so cool. Now this Gremlin character instantly gave me the impression that this game is going to be one bad ass game to play. All of the characters have their own personal quirks that make them stand out as well as their own race advantages and disadvantages. Which I won’t go into detail about since its a little boring to read about character stats on a game you can’t even play. From the start the artwork portrays to you the feeling that this game is going to rock your socks off.

Okay, I made a human gadgeteer for my first character. In the beginning you are put right in the middle of a dark cave with one door to the north. So I click around a bit trying to figure out how the control skeem works and once I seem to get the hang of it I click on the door…BAM!!! Four skeleton soldiers come charging straight at me and I start shooting my gun at them and the bones start to fly. This is intense is all I have to say. I make my way through this small tunnel with a few more skeleton kills and come by another door. I open it up and once again I’m being attacked by a few skeleton soldiers and two skeleton archers in the distance. Lucky enough its not to difficult to kill all of them. I walk down this cave corridor and when I get close to another door two zombies emerge from the ground and start to slowly charge me. I blow their heads off (we all know that’s the only way you can kill a zombie) quickly open the door and there is another empty room with a little gateway for me to go through. I click on the gateway and a short loading screen pops up.

When I come back I’m in a little village standing next to a catholic type church, and a man is standing there with a question mark over his head. I click on him and he thanks me for cleaning out all of the demons in the building and pays me a few copper coins and rewards me with a piece of armor and some experience. Instantly I level up to the 2nd level with a bright flash and a little arrow at the bottom that begs me to click on it. So I click on it and a simple graphic menu opens giving me the option to increase my four basic stats: strength, dexterity, wisdom, and vitality. As a gadgeteer I want to make sure that my dexterity is very high so I put four points on it and one on vitality. There is also another upgrade section that opens below this window with a bunch of pictures and two separate skill points. I’m a little confused so I move my cursor over one of the images and a text bubble pops up with info on what this upgrade skill and that upgrade skill do for my character. Since I’m a gadgeteer I increase the efficiency of my rifle with the two points out of six making my rifle shots more powerful. Next he tells me I need to travel to a larger town up the road and so begins my online adventure.

I’ve learned that when traveling from place to place, the game generates a random mini area between those two areas in the game. This little random area is populated with monsters, treasure chests, and plants that you can harvest crafting materials from. These areas are full of baddies and lush bright landscape. Sorry, no doom and gloom here until you reach a cave or haunted house. When you play this game you do get the feeling of Diablo dejavu. Its a load of fun to play and the world is constantly growing day by day, as more areas are added to your world map. Another great thing about the game is that you can find some really cool weapons and armor just by adventuring. In fact I haven’t once bought a piece of equipment from a merchant yet, simply because the stuff I find is more powerful and better than what the in-game merchants offer.

It looks like this game is coming together very nicely and will provide hours of enjoyable play-time for everyone. More kinks and bugs are being found daily and everyone who is playing seems to really get a kick out of it. It seems like this game is going to draw a big crowd of fans and newbies alike. This game has a load of potential and should be up and running for everyone very soon. For now try to have patience for the release and pick up your old Diablo games and hack away some baddies.

By: Jared Kimball

Jared is a freelance writer and artist in his spare time. Feel free to visit is website: http://www.jaredkimball.com and check out some of his free artwork and put in a request.

Images provided with courtesy of Mythos.com

With the atom bomb that Mythic Entertainment dropped yesterday about the massive cuts for Warhammer Online it’s leaving many WAR fans in an emotional fog and just as many WAR haters saying, “I told you so”. It is a lot to take in for sure, I still can’t quite wrap my mind around whether or not this is going to be a good or bad thing. With only two cities instead of six, will the RVR aspects of the game, the stuff that the game was totally designed around work at all the same? Will players that aren’t a member of Chaos or the Empire feel the same connection to the game without a home of their own to defend? Will there be unbalance to the game with the loss of four key classes? So many questions left unanswered.

With the feeling of disappointment setting in so hard, I’m left to wonder if hyping a game as much as WAR or AoC was hyped and then let all the fans down close to game day is a good idea for MMO developers.  It’s the same story as has happened so many times before.  Then you look at other companies, the way they seem to be tight lipped about what they have on the burner, leaving fans to ponder what game they are even making.  Is that the way to go?  Will fans be disappointed more by loss of content like AoC or WAR or will they be more disappointed with finding out that Blizzard’s new next-gen MMO isn’t what they were hoping for?

Or how about Bioware?  There is a ton of speculation and so many directions they could go in with their Austin, Texas based MMO development.  The most popular, long standing theory is a Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG.  That theory had some fuel added to it recently when Lucasarts acquired some newly registered trademark names like Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Wars Legends, The Old Republic and Star Wars Sagas.  While those alone are not concrete proof, the names combined with the secrecy at BioWare and the description of the trademarks are adding some serious fuel to the fire. 

The patents reads: “Entertainment services provided on-line by means of global and local area networks, namely, providing interactive computer game software, interactive video game software and interactive computer games and interactive video games, all on-line by means of global and local area networks … “.  That could mean a bunch of different things, but it definitely lends to the MMO theory in a big way.

Which way is better?  Who’s to say?  Either way you go you’re going to leave someone bitter that it didn’t go their way, but I’m leaning toward the latter of the two options.  I think it’s better not to say what you are working on until it’s nearing completion for several reasons.

First, you don’t have to worry about telling fans what you are planning on including in the game until you are damn sure it’s going to make it in.  That’s not even an issue if you keep it secret.  Second, letting fans guess and fuel their own theories you get a good guage on possible future projects.  When people start screaming for a KOTOR MMORPG, you can be pretty sure you’re going to have a good subscriber base if you ever decide to make one, if that’s not what you are already working on.

Next, if you listen to all said theories, you can get ideas for features that your fans want to see and test to see if they would work before giving fans a clue whether or not that the feature was even considered.  In short, you basically get a lot more creative freedom without facing pressures and risking as much disappointment to your hardcore fan base.  There probably is no perfect formula and there certainly isn’t a perfect MMO out there yet or in development that will launch problem free.  But I think it makes a lot more business sense to not make promises you aren’t sure you can keep.  Then you won’t be in the position Mark Jacobs was yesterday, doing damage control for a big announcement when you could instead be announcing open beta for a game no one knew was coming.  For games like Warhammer or Star Wars, you don’t need to spend years building up a fan base community, those game titles inherently come with a huge fan base - better to keep it under wraps until your are ready for beta - my 2 cents.