COD4: The New Maps Revealed

I'm was slow on noticing all the descriptions on these (mainly since it'll be a while until/if we ever get them), but for you PS3 and 360 people, check out the maps you'll be paying for. (*snicker*) OR, if you STILL haven't picked the game up and want to play for the console, pick up the Game of the Year ed with a token for the map pack included:

Great news, Charlie Oscar Delta!

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will soon gain some new battlefields in the form of a Variety Map Pack. The new downloadable maps will be available on Xbox LIVE® Marketplace in early April for 800 MS Points.

The critics are buzzing about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's new additions. See what IGN , GameSpot, TeamXbox and GameSpy had to say about the new Variety Map Pack. While you're there, don't miss the first gameplay footage videos of the new maps.

Below is a description of each of the four new maps...Check them out!

Individual DLC Map Descriptions:

Broadcast
Its size and alternating routes make "Broadcast" great for large team games. A large, multi-story television station with plenty of window vantage points creates the perfect setting for floor-to-floor combat. The station is surrounded by extensive outdoor areas consisting of a long parking lot, surrounding buildings with sniping hiding spots and side-rooftop access to the top and bottom floors of the television station.

Creek
A large wide open village in the woods, "Creek" consists of heavy foliage, great for sniper cover: a deep ravine offers an excellent vantage point for ambushes; an underground cave offers an alternate evasion route; and various multi-floor houses populate a patchwork of connected farmland. This extensive open map is great for snipers with plenty of natural coverage consisting of rocks and trees. There are various routes for advancement from both high and low vantage points over and underneath the hillsides. Another great map for large team games.

Chinatown
A modern revision of the classic Call of Duty "Carentan" map, "Chinatown" takes players to the foggy downtown district of a Chinatown. A night time setting, the cityscape is well lit by the full moon and the glow of brightly colored lanterns and neon lights from local businesses. This district offers a variety of open-street and interior settings, perfect for fire fights throughout the connected roads, courtyards, antique shops and markets within it. Great for all game types and players.

Killhouse
"Killhouse" is an enclosed warehouse made of plywood structures, mock-ups and speed-run courses used for training, creating the right mix of obstacles for small team games or free-for-alls with a variety of soft and hard cover points spread throughout the entire ground level

Also arriving soon is the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Game of the Year Edition, giving gamers the chance to experience the intense cinematic action of the original game while expanding the online experience of 2007's top-selling game by including a free token for the Variety Map Pack. The Game of the Year Edition is scheduled for release at all retailers nationwide on April 3rd.

We have PS3 news as well. In addition to confirming that the Variety Map Pack and Game of the Year Edition are headed to the PS3, we are happy to announce that the New PS3 Patch is Live!

Check out the improvements the new PS3 patch brings below:

• New Kill Cams - Everything that can kill you has a Kill Cam now: grenades, airstrikes, claymores, C4, M203 Rounds, RPGs, anything. Jump online, get owned and check them out. They're awesome, especially Grenades and M203 shots that go across the map and through a window.
  
  
• Improved Sniper Accuracy - The Sniper rifle accuracy has been improved. Your crosshair will be a better representation of where your shot will ultimately land. Try out a sniper class today and up those head shots!
  
  
• Improved ACOG Scope Accuracy - ACOG scopes accuracy on any weapon has been improved. Test it out, throw it on one of your classes and give it a go.
  
  
• Upgraded Spectator Cam - Now when you're a spectator you have the option to follow in 3rd person or 1st person. As well as rotate 360 degrees around the player you're watching. Next time you're dead in Search and Destroy, watch your teammates do stuff you know you could do better!
  

Additional Start Spawn Locations in All Maps - Added a minimum of 9 extra start spawns on each side of all maps

Hey Soldiers, We need your help deciding who the Photoshop Contest winner is. Just for voting you'll receive 1000 points!

WAR: Release Delayed to Fall 2008

Oh noes! What if AoC gets smart and delays too? *cry* Anyhow, you can read the full discussion about the delay at the Warhammer Alliance forums, but I've also included the dev only comments below.

First off, Mark the Dev's opening post:

Folks,

So, I'm going to go ahead and create a topic here in which I'll be happy to talk about the change in release day and other associated subjects. As usual, I'll ask people to be polite and I will be so in return. Below this paragraph I have included some questions I expect you'll ask with some answers in advance. Please take the time to read this Q&A before asking me a question in return. I hate to be rude but I don't want to have to answer the same question again and again. Also, please read the entire thread (or at least my responses in it) before asking a question for the same reason.

And please, if you are going to use this thread to either outrage, disappointment and/or anger (real or feigned), I ask you please to do that in another thread. This topic is for people who want to talk to me about the delay, the reasons behind it, the effect on WAR, etc. As I said in the Eurogamer thread I expect lots of visits from trolls (just as we got the last time) from other games looking for an opportunity to pile-on because of this announcement.

Mark

1) When’s the release date? We are only prepared to say that the game will launch Fall 2008. Given the highly competitive nature of the MMO industry right now, we feel it is best not to establish a set launch date at the present time.

2) Will you still be able to launch the European and North American versions of the game simultaneously? That’s always been our plan for WAR and nothing about this delay endangers that at all. Actually, it gives us a little more time to make sure that everything is ready to go at launch.

3) How’s the beta going? It’s going quite well. We’re getting tons of great feedback and overall, we are quite pleased with the game’s progress. Given the rather complicate nature of MMOs in general, and the fact that WAR is both a PvE and an RvR game, getting it right at launch is paramount to the game’s success.

4) Do you think you are going to hit this release date? About as sure as we were the last time, which means that we’ll be sure that we’ll hit the date when the game goes gold master. Our confidence only increases the longer we are in beta.

5) It seems that WAR is taking a long time to develop, is this true? Mythic began work on WAR in Fall 2005. Even with this delay, if the game launches within the new window it will be only a three-year development cycle. That is far less than most other MMORPGs ... other than Dark Age of Camelot, of course.

6) How does EA feel about this delay? They feel the same way about it that we do, sad but supportive. We all would have loved to release this game in the 2nd Quarter but it wouldn’t have been a great game at launch we know it can be. A good game absolutely, but not great. Our CEO has been a vocal proponent within EA and spokesmen outside of it of the need to improve the quality of all games, including EA. We are thrilled to be happy to help meet his trumpet call.

7) It’s going to be a pretty crowded couple of quarters in the MMORPG space, why do you think WAR is going to be able to stand out? One of the lessons from developers like BioWare and Blizzard is that you can’t rush a great game to market. By taking the necessary time to make WAR a great game, we feel it will be able to stand out in any season. We would rather release a great game in the fall then a good one any other time.

Do you see any positives in the delay of the game’s release? Yes, lots of them. Extra time for polish, more time for iteration and a chance to be one of the standout products of the biggest selling season for the industry.

9) Why did you announce the date now? We could have waited to announce a delay, and in doing so take advantage of the hype surrounding the of the Collector’s Edition to sell a ton of copies. However, that has never been the way we’ve done business and that is not about to change now. We’ve always told the community that when a delay was necessary we would tell them right away, and we’re doing just that. I wish I could say all other developers do this but the fact is that they don't. We did what's right for the game but delaying the release and what's right for the community by announcing it now.

10) Will this have any effect on any other overseas launches for WAR? This has no impact on our plans for Asia.

First response to someone from the gallery:

I hate to sound like a broken record but it's pretty much the same reason we did it last time. In our schedule for WAR we had reserved a lot of time to polish the game (animations, RvR balance, UI, etc.) and during the last phase of beta it became apparent that while we could have completed the game by the end of Q2, we wouldn't have had the time to polish the game the way we wanted. And with our key competitor being the 2-ton gorilla known as WoW, going out into this market with a rushed game would not be a good idea.

Now, does this mean everything was perfect in Beta? No, of course not, that's why it's beta. The great news coming out of beta is that we don't have to make huge changes to the game. We will be tweaking things, adding new things, etc. over the rest of the development cycle but beta didn't reveal any major holes, issues, etc. that are the reason for this delay.

As I've said before, the key to success in the MMO market is having a great game at launch. That's was our plan from the beginning and that hasn't changed. If it takes us a little longer, it takes us a little longer.

As to the /respect, thank you. It actually was an easy decision. That's why I was telling people not to preorder until this event happened and why we never, ever wanted any store to leak the information before the event. If we had wanted a leak to drive sales we simply could have held off announcing the delay, sold through all our CEs, and then go WHOOPS! But that's not how I and Mythic do things.

Mark

And another response where the dev goes on to answer some questions from the gallery regarding the delay:

Folks,

Zyzus:

1) You stated this next release date is set in the mud, however.. Do you have an opinion on having any other delays after this new one? Like, do you believe this will impact the release significantly, by numbers of players, etc.
Still set in mud. We have no intention of releasing anything but a great game. We've worked too hard on it already, GW expects it, the community wants it and EA bought us in the expectation that we will make a great MMORPG. I've made lots of promises and I intend to keep them.

2) Is this delay caused mainly by the feedback from the beta, or overall feelings from the team? Or combination of both?
It's a combination of a lot of factors just like the last time.

3) Is this a polish issue, or more so a gameplay issue. Or once again, a combination of both?
Combination of both.

4) Is this going to impact the Collector's Edition of it at all?
Nope.

5) How is the developing progress going for the game, is it more than 50% done?
Lot more than that or we would be saying a Fall 2009 ship date.

6) Is this going to be impacting the availability of the game in Australia when it's released?
Maybe, maybe not. We were only planning for a simultaneous release in North America and Europe so the extra time *might* allow us to get servers up elsewhere earlier than we intended. As I've said in other threads, setting up Oceanic servers is a possibility but I don't want to promise something we can't deliver on.

Genesis885:

1) eta. When will we see more of an outline for it?
Soon we hope, depends on how the next stage of beta goes.


Fexxe:

1) Have you consideret making the beta an open-beta, since you now have more time on your hands?
Lol, I don't think we have more time on our hands since we are using it to finish the game but no, this doesn't change a thing with our plans for open beta. We have a good group of beta testers and we're getting lots of good feedback. Making it an open beta at this point would be a huge mistake as it would take even more resources and would, most likely, not result in a lot of new feedback but just a lot of the same.

Aenigma:

1) Will the push-back have any effects on Open Beta, or on the lifting of the NDA
Only by delaying it a bit. When we delayed the release, other things in our plan get pushed back. Now, I'm hoping we'll be able to lift the NDA sooner than you might think because of the delay but that'll depend on how well the next stage of beta goes.

Anomader,


1) Were there any particular aspects that stood out as just not being ready?
Nope, not at all.

2) Do you worry that delaying it too long could be counter productive?
Yeap, this isn't too long. Keep in mind that only one successful MMORPG has ever been developed in less than 2 years, DAoC. And I'm also not aware of any other successful MMORPG which was developed in less than three years (AC, EQ, EQ2, CoH, WoW, UO) and a whole lot of ones that took a lot longer and failed. WoW proved that lots of extra time + polish + smart decisions + game design = success so since WAR hasn't even been in development for 3 years now, I'm not at all concerned.

3) Finally, do you have plans in place to sustain hype over the coming months?
Yeap, keep the beta test going and keep telling people about what's in the game. If people like what they hear, they'll be excited about the game. If they don't, they won't. It's as simple as that.

Tianzi,

1) Is there specific new content on par with the keep siege system that is being added in this period that otherwise would not have been?
Maybe. Won't be anything big but it might be an expansion of some things that we would not have had time for otherwise. No details yet of course.

Filogreek:

1) I have been wondering though, will the upcoming WOW expansion affect the success of WAR, taking into account this new delay?
Well, they are the 2-ton gorilla in the PC market so only a fool and/or a liar (and I'm not either) would say that when it releases it won't affect us. All I can worry about is making sure that WAR is great and then everything else will fall out as it may.

Mark

Folks,

OmegaGryphon

1) Let's hope that they won't do a TR and recreate the game from scratch.
LOL. If we did that you'd find me wandering the streets of downtown Fairfax mumbling incoherently to myself about things like Chaos, Order, Destruction, etc. There is 0% chance of us doing that and I never say 0% unless it is truly 0%.

2) how will this effect the costs/expectations of sell when the game does hit the stores?
It won't. Our development costs go up of course but the extra time is so small in the scheme of things that nothing will change from our end in terms of what the subscription price will be. As far as sales forecasts, a lot depends on the competition and how good the game is, as always.

3) How much more of a audience would it need to be consider successful and be able to sustain early MMO that is always rocky?
I don't talk about what are forecasts are other than to say that they are low compared to WoW and higher than DAoC's forecasts. We're not trying to create a WoW-killer (most of the WAR fan base would be unhappy if we did) and EA agrees with us on this. Now, if I wanted to try to create a WoW-killer, I certainly know how to but WAR isn't it and, in the end, I don't believe that one game could kill another successful game.

4) Also please tell me that you won't do a Tabula Rasa and only finish low level zones.
Well, I can't talk about TR but I will say that is certainly not our intent or our plan. It certainly would be counterproductive to what we hope to accomplish with WAR.

Mongoose:

1) Do you plan on shutting down the Beta for any length of time for one last 'retooling' of any major elements or is it pretty much all about polishing out those last remaining tool marks at this stage?
The opening and closing of beta will continue to go on just as it has gone on for months. We're currently down right now while we prepare the next phase. Allowing the beta testers to take a break and allowing the devs to focus on all the feedback we already have is a great and proper way to do things and we see no reason to change it now.

2) I only want to implant one other small thought into your brain before I depart........Lizardmen vs Skaven in Lustria
LOL.

Greenwald:

1) But seriously - does it ever concern EA Mythic that they will lose a portion of their fanbase with these delays?
Nope because we know we will lose subscribers if we release a game before it is ready. As I said the last time, I'd rather have the fans pissed at us now than pissed at us when we release the game. So, if it's a choice between losing some fans now because we have delayed the game, we're willing to do that because nothing matters more than releasing a great game. After all, as has been pointed out numerous times, WoW had delays and a much, much longer development cycle and it worked out pretty well for them. The same is true for lots and lots of great games. If we build a great game than the fans will be happy and they will want to become subscribers. If we build a mediocre game, fans will be pissed and they won't want to become subscribers. Simple as that.

2) Similarly, what does EA Mythic plan to do to KEEP the fanbase already present?
Same thing we've been doing. Working our butts off to make a great game and letting people into the beta, doing lots of interviews, etc.

Vadimer:

1) Do you not want to launch a game back to back to another game?
I believe other company's release dates when they go Gold Master and not before.

Meanrock

1) Play some music, give us some trivia from the automated voice, remind us that our call is important to you.
I think we have done that in the past and are doing it right now. I think our action(s) surrounding this release date delay prove how important the community, our fans and our supporters are to us and to me personally. I doubt you'll find many example of companies doing what we are doing now and me getting up to post at 7AM is, ahem, quite special. The only thing I detest more than seeing the sunrise is having to work around that same time. As my posting history shows, I'm a late-night/way-early morning person. Must be why I like the Vampire Counts eh?

Disciple:

1) will guild beta start in the next month or 3?
We'll "Unleash the Guilds of War" (hey, new obnoxious catch-phrase!?!) when we are sure that we've done our best to ensure that the game is ready for such a large and experienced group of players.

Soundblaster:


1. Is it possible more content will be added with the extra time ,as in content that was planed from day one and may have been taken out?
Nope. We need to get what's in and on the schedule great before we go add anything new.

2. Will this Delay have an impact on other EA Mythic titles/ expansions this year( UO , DOAC)?
Hope not.


Paragonn:

1) There will always be things that can be made better/refined. Is this not what is happening here/could happen or are there actually significant changes that need to be made?
Polish, iterate and balance. Thankfully we are not having to yank out tons of stuff and redo it all. That would be bad.

Vid:

1) With this delay is there anything you can share about it that you haven't already shared
Not today of course but sooner than I was originally planning on with the new schedule.

DesmOnd:

1) by polishing do you mean graphics, animations, gameplay and such?
Yeap and more.

2) And is there any confirmed price on the CE?
There will be.

Rmedies:

1) here's a whole lot of old clips out there ... any chance you guys can feed us fresh game footage to keep us Oooing and Aahhhing for the coming months?
I think that makes perfect sense and we will do that. Especially when Altdorf comes online.

Mark

There's more, but the page loads so damn slow. I'm sure a lot of people who "quit" WoW are pounding it right now. (Along with their heads against the wall.)

COD4: Yellow Fever (Chinatown) Coming to the PC?

This is possibly some good news. That's right. Despite reports earlier on that we PC users should not be expecting to see the new official maps from the COD4 Variety Map Pack, it seems that we'll be seeing them after all, albeit later on.

Better late than nevah!

According to 402's blog:

Right now plans for the PC version are unannounced but we are working to bring PC users the same content in the future, however logistics are being worked out on how to make that happen.

Maria's Bakery, come to me! <3 Big Wong. People who know know what I'm talking about.

I wonder if we'll be required to pay as well?

PotBS: Trial Keys Available (Steal Them From A Friend)

I let my account expire after...urm...getting bored, but if you know folks who forgot to cancel theirs, now's your chance to try out the game for 14 days:

Invite some Friends to Play PotBS, Monday!

03.21.08 by Aether

This Monday we will be unveiling the Pirates of the Burning Sea Buddy Key Program, which will allow customers with active accounts to invite three of your favorite people to join you on the Burning Sea for a 14 day trial – free!

The three keys will be generated just for you, and can be used at any time. The trial doesn’t start until the keys are entered, and they don’t expire until they’ve been activated.

Rhaegar will be providing download links and instructions for you to claim your three buddy keys on Monday, so keep your eyes on the headlines!

Enjoy, won’t you?
Aether

Me, I might just pick up "Rainbow 6: Vegas 2" for the PC up instead.

GI Joe: Snake Eyes! Yatzee!! More Casting News

I feel like I've been more interested in crappy movies than games lately. But how can a nerdess resist when they splash pictures like this over the internets:

You can read the original USA TODAY article here, but as for the other casting bits from the article:

Channing Tatum (Step Up) plays all-American team leader Duke. Rachel Nichols (Alias) plays the crossbow-wielding Scarlett, Marlon Wayans is paratrooper Ripcord and Dennis Quaid is the commander, Hawk. On the evil-doer side, Sienna Miller plays the raven-haired Baroness, Christopher Eccleston is Destro, the arms dealer who hides behind a silver mask, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock From the Sun, Brick) plays multiple roles, including the Cobra Commander.

And yeah, that's Ray Park aka, Darth Maul. Scarlet + Snake Eyes, sitting in a tree. Yay.

Street Fighter 4: Location Test Going on in Japan

Sad face. :(

It's going on this weekend in Japan so if you're there (hehe) get to Osaka! Still, it's not like they need to translate a lot so it'll be here soooooooooooooooon.

The official website is below:

http://www.capcom.co.jp/sf4/

Ryu looks...strange. But it's possibly because they spent all their time animating Chun Li's thighs of doom. Yay.

Street Fighter the Movie: Cast Details Confirmed

At least Chun Li is somewhat AZN. Woot. And yes, no matter how crappy the reviews are, I'm definitely going to watch this!

More Street Fighter Cast Details

Source: Capcom Co., Ltd.

March 20, 2008

Capcom Co., Ltd. today confirmed the main cast for its live-action Street Fighter movie based on the popular video game series.

The story revolves around Chun-Li, who will be portrayed by actress Kristen Kreuk ("Smallville"). Michael Clark Duncan plays Balrog, Neal McDonough is M. Bison, Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas is Vega, Chris Klein plays Charlie Nash, and Rick Yune is the mystical Gen.

The film will be made in conjunction with Hyde Park Films, and will be distributed by 20th Century Fox for a scheduled 2009 worldwide release.

The Street Fighter movie is only one of many projects Capcom has planned to celebrate the 20th anniversary of "Street Fighter." Summer 2008 will see the Japanese arcade release of the much-anticipated "Street Fighter IV."

"Street Fighter" was first released in 1987 to critical acclaim for its innovative features. This was followed up in 1991 with the smash hit "Street Fighter II," which broke records by being available in 500 thousand arcade cabinets and selling over 25 million units on home systems. These records cemented "Street Fighter's" reputation as one of the most popular fighting game series of all time, and ensured that the fighting genre would become a staple of the gaming world.

Moon Bloodgood, Edmund Chen, Cheng Pei Pei and Josie Ho also star.

Blargh: Sickness

So, yeah, I'm sick.

BLARRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

No, COD4, I'll be back one day. I promise!!

Simpsonize Yourself!

I'm sure that as always, I'm the last to learn about stupid shit like this. But I couldn't help it!




Go! Go Simpsonize yourself before they take it down!! (Just click on the "CREATE YOUR SIMPSONS AVATAR" button.)

See what boredom can do to a person?

Gamers Get Their Kicks From Dying (WTF!?)

So, I was visiting the COD4 boards like a lemming when someone posted this article about gamers preferring to die rather than kill...that is, the kill gives us a sort of "arousal" effect where killing gives us...urm...guilt? Well, I don't know about you, this would certainly explain a bunch of COD servers I've played on lately where people seem to willingly run into your fire to give you uber K/D ratios (after which they normally ban you from their server but oh well).

Seriously though, the studies can say all they want but I DEFINITELY get more "arousal" from launching an RPG into some dolt's face than vice versa. *purr* Or better yet, flattening them PPPPPPANCAKE style. Wahahah.

Gamers Get Their Kicks From Dying

Clive Thompson 03.10.08 | 12:00 AM

What a death scene looks like on Halo 3.

I can't count the number of times I've died.

I can't even count the number of ways I've died. Like most gamers, I've been slaughtered by AK-47-wielding terrorists, poisoned by eldritch spiders and blown up with alien frag grenades. I've also been impaled on medieval swords, ripped limb from limb by dinosaurs and impassively stomped by 20-story-tall, walking war machines that barely noticed my existence.

Yet here's the thing: It's possible that these deaths have been among my most enjoyable game experiences.

This is the fascinating argument of a new paper by Niklas Ravaja, a scientist who has done pioneering research into the emotions of gamers as they play. In "The Psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violent Video Game Events" -- published in this month's edition of the journal Emotion -- Ravaja reaches an amazingly counterintuitive conclusion: Gamers don't like shooting their opponents, but they're suffused with pleasure when they themselves are shot dead.

"It was," he tells me when I call him up, "quite a surprise."

I'll say. For his experiment, Ravajas took 36 gamers and wired them up with several sensors that minutely recorded their emotional states, including electromyographic activity in key facial muscles and skin conductance levels. Then he had them play James Bond 007: NightFire, a first-person shooter that was, at the time, a pretty realistic videogame.

The results? When people killed an opponent, their electrodermal activity shot up, while their faces registered distress. "That is, instead of joy resulting from victory and success, wounding and killing the opponent elicited anxiety, anger or both," Ravajas said. When gamers themselves were killed, in contrast, the sensors detected "positively valenced high-arousal affect," he said.

Dying was, in some way, fun.

Ravajas isn't entirely sure why gamers feel this way, though he has theories. If we feel distress when we kill an in-game opponent, it may be because it violates our ingrained sense of morality; we know killing is bad, even when it's virtual. (Interestingly, this stands in contrast to much desensitization theory. Psychologists worry that killing too many virtual enemies numbs you to violence; Ravajas finds it "reassuring" that gamers seem to be resisting this numbing.)

His much weirder experimental result, though, is our thrill at dying. Ravajas thinks this might occur because getting killed is "transient relief from engagement": A first-person shooter is so incredibly stressful that we're happy to get any respite, even if it requires being blown to pieces.

This makes a lot of sense to me. When I play a shooter like Call of Duty 4, the emotional current flows like this: I'll be racing through a war-torn building, hunted down by cackling terrorists, and watching as the blood leaches into the periphery of my vision. My stomach's in knots, and I'm frantically looking for cover when boom -- I'll stumble into a room full of guys with shotguns and get a face full of pain.

As I watch my corpse crumple to the ground, sure, I feel annoyed. But my annoyance isn't as powerful as my sense of release: I can feel my whole body unwind. Indeed, I'm often so wrapped up in the game that I don't even realize how badly I'm clenched up. I may not want to die; but for the sake of my mental health, I probably need to.

Yet, not all deaths are equal. This sounds strange to say, but there are games I enjoy getting killed in more than others, because some designers have a much better sense of how to craft an aesthetically -- and ludologically -- satisfying death.

My hands-down favorite is probably Halo 3 in online multiplayer. The instant you die, the game switches abruptly from the first-person perspective to third-person. Since the physics of Halo are pretty kinetic, often -- after a grenade kill, or a really moist punch to the face -- you watch as your corpse goes pinwheeling gracefully through the air, arms and legs flailing in the grip of rag-doll physics.

This is, in essence, much like the out-of-body experiences people report during near-death moments. Even better, really, because Halo gives you a very high degree of camera control; while I wait to respawn, I'll poke around like a curious ghost, dispassionately examining my former human shell. It's an oddly graceful moment of Zen, and it works in beautiful contrast to the fight-or-flight riot of battle.

Most shooters execute this third-person shift, of course. But Bungie has made it into an experiential tone poem. You could think of it as "the architecture of death," and game designers ought to pay more attention to it. Because one thing's for sure: We're all going to die.

Over and over again.

A tip of the hat to Brandon Erickson for bringing this study to my attention!

TCoS: Release Set for the 2nd Quarter of 2008

Da da dan!! Finally moar news about this from the horse's mouth:

Hello TCoS Community members! Time for an update on this little project of ours called The Chronicles of Spellborn.

We have recently started the final tests for The Chronicles of Spellborn. Beginning of last week, a new phase within the internal beta phases has been initiated with a brand new version of the game. Up to now these tests have performed very satisfactory, so that they can be expanded pretty soon to larger participants groups like enlisted community members. Server stress tests have been successfully completed by our team in Autumn already.

Thus we expect a release of The Chronicles of Spellborn in the second quarter of 2008. Based on the test results of the next weeks and the upcoming series of Closed Beta tests, we will announce the beginning of the Open Beta and then specific release dates for each territory.

To conclude, I’d like to remind you to make sure the email address you used to register on our website is working and not full, for, who knows, there might a nice little email coming your way.

For the Oracle !
_________________
*Mirage*
PR Manager
Community Manager
The Chronicles of Spellborn

Looks like if AoC tanks, we'll have tons of other choices, including Aion, WAR and TCoS too. Wahahah. Is the drought finally over?

The starting area vid:

AoC: A Few Things to Tickle Your Fancy

As much as I try not to get excited about "Age of Conan," given the MMO drought, I can't help it! First, take a gander at the the new trailer:

And now, check out this article from Computer & Video Games:

Six months ago, Conan looked to be in a spot of bother. The beta began, and the players let out a unified "Erk". The problem? The combat. In trying to move away from the standard MMO fare, Conan's esoteric approach to online fighting left many players bemused.

Now, only about four months from the delayed release date, it's that element of the game that's seen the most work.

The good news is that it's still different enough from every other MMO to be interesting. The better news is that it's very easy to play. Perhaps even too easy. Every enemy in the Robert E Howard-inspired game has three points where they can be attacked: left, right and above.

These are shown by semi-circles floating about them when targeted. If you hit them on the left, they'll defend that side, maybe leaving the right exposed. Exploit this, and take advantage of your ever-increasing set of skills and the combo system, and you'll be employing a degree of tactics not seen before in MMO battling.

We're a bit concerned that combat might now be too simple at the start, but we're reassured by Funcom's promise that it will get more involved by the time the game launches, with combos present from the very beginning.

The story gets equal standing with the combat as the focus of development. Taking the lore from the Howard books, rather than any iteration of the comics or the unbearable Arnie movie, Funcom are placing the narrative firmly at the centre of things.

Along with two dedicated full-time writers, there's a team of eight people solely writing quests, and another responsible for managing the lore. There'll be 800 quests ready at launch, and surprisingly few of them appear to be timesink "kill 30 rabbits" nonsense.

In fact, some genuinely inspired ideas are being touted, including solving murder mysteries, and stealth quests requiring you to sneak over rooftops and eavesdrop on NPC conversations. The large team is there to ensure quests have meaning in the game, linking them to the story, giving you the motivation to complete tasks.

This becomes even more detailed with the Destiny Quests available to you at night time. These focus on learning more about your character's mysterious background, and should create a far greater sense of your presence within the world, with a history going back before you created your character.

This idea of there being reason behind actions is prevalent throughout. NPCs are having their heads filled with big old lumps of behaviour, so rather than standing stupidly waiting for you to clonk their heads in, they'll be getting on with busy-work. Guards will have extensive patrol routes, relieve each other from duty, even gain a sense of ambition until they're willing to go exploring, and naturally get drunk and then go for a pee up against a wall.

All this can be used to your tactical advantage, as you and your buddies tackle enemy camps however you see fit.

While Funcom's previous MMO, Anarchy Online, might not have won a giant audience, it does seem to have taught them the value of details. Conversations, for instance, are far more involved than in previous MMO offerings.

Rather than clicking through the cutscene, or choosing "yes" or "no" to a quest, in Conan you'll have BioWare-style conversation options, so you can choose the attitude with which you approach situations. In fact, be rude enough and you can talk your way out of a quest.

It won't dramatically change the progression of the game, and there's no shifting between 'dark' and 'light' or anything similar, but it's a nice touch that lets you feel far more involved in proceedings.

Guilds look to be getting a decent chunk of attention too. Once you've reached level 40 (of 80) you'll be able to start doing some serious crafting. But rather than just churning out attractive hats, this will allow you and your guildmates to establish a large, instanced base for celebrating your glory, with as many as 150 players sharing the space.

It's an amusing goal to aim for, and there's a small tactical advantage too, as the area offers opportunities for resource gathering, which will come in useful for PvP action.

Then dozens more details present themselves. Over 100 voice actors have been used for the NPCs, and from our brief play, they're pretty decent. It's a hefty relief to hear a Scottish accent in a game performed by an actor who's at least visited the country, even more so one who can offer an authoritative and impressive brogue.

There's a day/night cycle, which affects the behaviour of the NPCs. There are 2,500 animations for male and female characters, with hundreds of emotes to match (including getting drunk and the subsequent peeing).

What remains to be seen is whether the many years of effort will connect into a coherent and engrossing MMO. The combat, while much improved, will still provide an obstacle to new players merely by dint of being different from World of Warcraft.

We'd really like to see Conan succeed - hell, we'd really like to see any MMO different enough from WoW succeed. The open beta starts any moment now.

I'm so completing my work early! With a May 20th release, Open Beta really WILL be soon!

Super Smash Brothers Brawl: Wow wow wiiii waaa!

Just picked this up a few hours ago for the Wii and we're having tons of fun so far. I ain't gonna' lie...the controls do take a bit to get used to on the Nunchaku controller, but nothing a bit of mashing can't fix! (Wahahaha.) Oh, but it is controller compatible if you're a total spaz.

Anyhoo, here's the official site:

Smash Bros. DOJO!

I definitely recommend it! And if you don't have a Wii, go pester one of your friends to pick it up! GET TO THE CHOPPA!! DO IT NOW!!

More KOTOR Rumours For Your Face!

From 1UP.com:

Possible Star Wars KOTOR MMO Evidence Surfaces

Anonymous tipster adds to the growing pile of speculation.
By Steve Watts, 03/06/2008
After BioWare and LucasArts made a deal last year to work together, the internet was ablaze with speculation about a new Star Wars MMO in the works. It makes sense considering the popularity of the Knights of the Old Republic series from BioWare and the much poorer status among fans of the non-BioWare Star Wars Galaxies. We more recently reported that the game was in fact a new MMO set in the KOTOR framework, a claim that was quickly denied by Electronic Arts.

Today, a tipster contacted 1UP with portions of a script for what was said to be a "Star Wars online" game. The script's description of the game reads:

"This is a role-playing game set in the historical past of the Star Wars universe. Jedi and Sith battle across the galaxy with the power of the Force and are joined by soldiers, politicians and nobles. Players must choose the destinies of heroes and villains in a thrilling and dangerous universe."

Historical past? Jedi and Sith battling across the galaxy? To we Star Wars nerds, that sounds quite a bit like the "Old Republic" timeline, which BioWare Senior Writer Drew Karpyshyn helped flesh out with the KOTOR series and by penning the Darth Bane novels.

The script goes on to show an exchange between the player and a character named Fuse, a naive bomb designer. The portions of the script that we received are fairly heavy with dialog, which isn't typical for an MMORPG, but it does read very much like a script to a KOTOR game. This could mean that the two projects are still separate. On the other hand, the game was described to the tipster as an MMO, and "heavy dialog" is practically BioWare's calling card.

1UP contacted LucasArts about the script pages we saw, but unsurprisingly their response was not forthcoming: ""We don't have any comment beyond what we've already announced."

This isn't quite a smoking gun blaster yet, and our contact isn't Deep Throat; but the script looked legitimate and the style and tone of it shares a lot in common with the BioWare games we already know, including the more recent (but fairly similar) Mass Effect. We'll keep you posted as more news surfaces.

Could it be!? I certainly hope so!!!

RIP: Gary Gygax :(

A great day of sadness for nerds all over (especially the ones that remember red and gold boxes) as Gary Gygax has passed away. :( Ahh, how many hours of fun did we have hearing, "You have entered Deleeeera's tooomb." As stupid as DDO became, that was an awesome voice over!

Gary Gygax, Game Pioneer, Dies at 69

By SETH SCHIESEL

Published: March 5, 2008

Gary Gygax, a pioneer of the imagination who transported a fantasy realm of wizards, goblins and elves onto millions of kitchen tables around the world through the game he helped create, Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis. He was 69.

Ray Stubblebine/Wizards of the Coast, via Reuters

Participants last summer playing Dungeons & Dragons at a game convention in Indianapolis.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Gail Gygax, who said he had been ailing and had recently suffered an abdominal aneurysm, The Associated Press reported.

As co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, the seminal role-playing game introduced in 1974, Mr. Gygax wielded a cultural influence far broader than his relatively narrow fame among hard-core game enthusiasts.

Before Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy world was something to be merely read about in the works of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert Howard. But with Dungeons & Dragons, Mr. Gygax and his collaborator, Dave Arneson, created the first fantasy universe that could actually be inhabited. In that sense, Dungeons & Dragons formed a bridge between the noninteractive world of books and films and the exploding interactive video game industry. It also became a commercial phenomenon, selling an estimated $1 billion in books and equipment. More than 20 million people are estimated to have played the game.

While Dungeons & Dragons became famous for its voluminous rules, Mr. Gygax was always adamant that the game’s most important rule was to have fun and to enjoy the social experience of creating collaborative entertainment. In Dungeons & Dragons, players create an alternate persona, like a dwarven thief or a noble paladin, and go off on imagined adventures under the adjudication of another player called the Dungeon Master.

“The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience,” Mr. Gygax said in a telephone interview in 2006. “There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.”

When Mr. Gygax (pronounced GUY-gax) first published Dungeons & Dragons under the banner of his company, Tactical Studies Rules, the game appealed mostly to college-age players. But many of those early adopters continued to play into middle age, even as the game also trickled down to a younger audience.

“It initially went to the college-age group, and then it worked its way backward into the high schools and junior high schools as the college-age siblings brought the game home and the younger ones picked it up,” Mr. Gygax said.

Mr. Gygax’s company, renamed TSR, was acquired in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast, which was later acquired by Hasbro, which now publishes the game.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Gygax is survived by six children: three sons, Ernest G. Jr., Lucion Paul and Alexander; and three daughters, Mary Elise, Heidi Jo and Cindy Lee.

These days, pen-and-paper role-playing games have largely been supplanted by online computer games. Dungeons & Dragons itself has been translated into electronic games, including Dungeons & Dragons Online. Mr. Gygax recognized the shift, but he never fully approved. To him, all of the graphics of a computer dulled what he considered one of the major human faculties: the imagination.

“There is no intimacy; it’s not live,” he said of online games. “It’s being translated through a computer, and your imagination is not there the same way it is when you’re actually together with a group of people. It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, ‘Because the pictures are so much better.’ ”

Call of Duty MMO in the Works?

w('o')w

Would You Play a Call of Duty MMO?

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick floats the idea at an investor conference.

by Ryan Geddes

March 4, 2008 - Speaking to a group of investment analysts today, Activision CEO (and soon to be Activision Blizzard president and CEO) Bobby Kotick said the company is considering turning its Call of Duty franchise into a massively multiplayer online game.

Kotick briefly touched on the idea in answer to a question at the 2008 Morgan Stanley Technology Conference about how merging Activision with Vivendi Games might open up new opportunities for both companies.

Before closing its deal with Vivendi (which owns Sierra and Blizzard), Kotick said Activision looked at five years of data on U.S. publishers' attempts to break into the MMO market. Most resulted in failure, cancellation or low profit margins. By teaming up with Blizzard, which has proven its online mettle with World of Warcraft, he said Activision can not only pull in WoW's subscriber base to strengthen its balance sheet but also to learn from the company's veterans how to undertake new projects.

That could include tapping Blizzard talent to figure out how Activision might take Call of Duty in an MMO direction, Kotick said. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, developed by Infinity Ward, was a huge hit for Activision in 2007 and routinely appears at the top of Xbox Live's weekly list of most-played games.

Kotick only touched briefly on the CoD MMO idea and went on to discuss the future direction of the Guitar Hero franchise, which will likely see user-generated content and more tie-ins with Vivendi's Universal Music Group going forward.

Let the rumours fly!! FLY~~~~~!!