Quick e3 mmorpg notes:

Nobunaga · Toomuchtimeonhands Joined: 11 Oct 2002 Posts: 932

mmorpgs galore! Here is some upcoming games that may spark your interest and if you want more in depth details look fir it yourself!

WoW-looks like its gonna live up to the hype but don't expect it to come out until late next year. The graphics are amazing and gameplay is very fluid. I played a Druid who could turn into various beasts including an eagle, black panther and Grizzly and rode a Gryphon (used for travel in lieu of teleportation across lands) and saw several different zones that had landscapes that were reminiscent to something you would expect from a Tolkien novel. This game is going to have something for everyone and Blizzard promises to have a full time staff that will be providing epic encounters/on the fly quests on a full time basis and when I mentioned that Verant promised the same thing, the devs just laughed and said "we're Blizzard and not Verant" with a wink. Anyway,the game looks great and it will have a random unique item generator similiar to diablo so the virtual penix factor will be there. It will have pvp zones similiar to AC.

Mythica from Microsoft is another mmorpg that may spark interest for many as well. MS dumped Turbine after their botched attempts at a mmorpg and decided to make one in house and what makes this game unique is that it will allow for virtual spaces so that players/guilds won't have to directly compete over content. This is something that players such as Fendryl have longed for but the dev team refers to them as Private Realms. Interesting concept and I look forward in seeing how it turns out.

Horizons-back from the dead! Spoke at length to James Jones, President of Artifact and he told me that he was able to obtain additional private funding to keep his dream alive and FINALLY revamped their previously inadequate engine (which is why he got funding!) to a new and improved version. They have publishers now as well in Atari domestically and NCSoft in Asia and he expects to go Gold by this fall with beta occuring sometime in June so if you haven't already done so, apply to beta here. http://beta.istaria.com/ They didnt have any working models and just had a what seemed to be a very dated trailer so who knows if this game will truly come to fruition but we can only hope!

Warhammer-Another solid looking mmorpg that will incorporate the ability to befriend pcs to fight with you giving one the ability to command a legion of friendly pcs in race or guild wars in either pve or pvp events. Seemed likes possibly crossing a rts with a mmorpg. Looks interesting and the graphics were pretty solid.

A growing player in the mmorpg world is a korean company named NCSoft. They are funding and developing a ton of mmorpgs from City of Heroes, an RPG called Guild Wars in addition to Horizons. Only f*****g annoying thing about them was Lord British of UO fame (who now works for them) running around their booth with 2 morons yelling "make way for the Lord" every 2 seconds. One game made by ncsoft that sparked interest however was this game called Lineage 2. The original lineage was the most popular mmorpg in asian but this incarnation at least graphically is quite impressive and shows how good korean artists are. The setting is medieval but the individualization and detail in the sprites are beyond compare. Not sure how gameplay is but it certainly was the prettiest game among the mmorpgs character wise at least.

Final Fantasy XII. Seems fun, complicated and lots of things to do just like the regular final fantasy series but I have no clue how it will translate into an online game. I'm sure everyone and their mother will buy it though.

DAoC has yet another expansion with Lost City of Atlantis theme. 20 pve zones that all realms can play in but the realms don't interact with each other. Level limit will be raised but in the guise of skill levels a la "aa" abilities. and 3 new races.

EQ2 and Star Wars Galaxies. They had movies once again in lieu of working models probably because their servers aren't stable enough to run it more than 15 minutes at a time like it is in beta. f**k Verant!

Non-mmorpgames of interest. Doom 3 and Halo 2 are f*****g amazing and will be must buys when they come out. MSG2, RE2 look good . Played AA and bf1942 secrets weapons of ww2 expansion representing EA against some soldiers and gamefan editors and kicked their asses. ^^

Ciao for now!

Quick e3 mmorpg notes:

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