MMORPG-APB and EA

We knew that Realtime Worlds, the company behind the urban crime MMO All Points Bulletin would have something to announce and show at E3 2009, we just weren’t sure of what to expect. That announcement came today at the Electronic Arts press conference. Imagine our surprise when Realtime Worlds creative director Dave Jones (who you may know as the creator of GTA and Crackdown) appeared on stage to announce that EA will be publishing All Points Bulletin. The announcement was followed up with a rather stunning trailer, depicting all manner of urban badasses. Tattoos. Fast cars. Lots of guns. Criminals and Enforcement fighting for the streets in a vast, open urban environment. The game will accommodate 10,000 players per world, divided into 100 player district maps. If you’re a fan of games like GTA and Saint’s Row, you will be blown away by All Points Bulletin.

All Points Bulletin has a newly revamped site, with screenshots and a game features page, and now hosts an APB video podcast from the developers. The game is slated for a PC release in early 2010.

MMORPG- Champions Online Hands on!

Early Game Hands-On Preview

A first look preview at Champions Online from our hero inside the Cryptic Studios Beta.

“Think console…not mmo….”

All would-be super-heroes should remember this advice as they approach Champions Online. Yes, Champions Online is an MMO, but the game is much easier to play and enjoy when approached with a console mentality. Due to its reliance on character positioning, fast reactions and selective targeting as an essential part of combat, the game plays much more like an action console game than the average “click and get a sandwich MMO.”

Granted, there are times where combat is more straight forward (i.e.: “ get x and give to y”), but for the most part gameplay, especially when solo, requires a little more thought. Heroes need to consider how they’ll get to their enemy (route) and which ones to attack first. Ignore this advance, and the game becomes a lot harder to play. At first, I felt like it would need a friend just to finish the tutorial, but once I took the console gamer’s approach, it was as if I had pressed the easy button.

Recently, I had a chance to explore the Champions Online Beta and gather my impressions. Do keep in mind, though, that all of these elements are subject to change.

Character Customization

Cryptic Studios is best known for their work on City of Heroes, so comparisons between the Champions and CoH character creation systems are inevitable. Most players could spend hours rolling new characters in City of Heroes. The options were incredible. Honestly, I never had so much fun in that game as I did just making characters. It was fun and intuitively structured. Champions Online has a lot to live up to.

The first choice of any would-be super-hero is what kind of hero they will be. In Champions, they call this the character’s “origin.” Options range from a powerhouse (think “The Incredible Hulk”), to an untouchable (more like “Spider-man”), or anything in between. Whatever origin chosen ultimately sets the new hero’s base stats and dictates what kind of hero they are likely to become. So, if the goal is to have cat-like dexterity or the hit points of the Terminator, choose wisely. While this choice dictates a path, players gain more points over time. That big powerhouse could get a little more nimble, if they don’t mind sacrificing some hit points.

The next step for new heroes is to select a Power framework. These are similar to archetypes in City of Heroes. With 18 power frames to choose from, heroes can choose to specialize in archery, fire damage, martial arts, dual blades, telekinesis, or munitions, among others. Basically, it determines the way a super-hero kicks ass. Again, though, Cryptic has made this system very flexible. Just because someone starts in archery, doesn’t mean they can never learn how to shoot a gun. Every skill and power is available to every player. It enables people to experiment and create truly unique characters. It also doesn’t force anyone to start over to try a new toy.

With the character fully tweaked under the hood, it’s time to get to the fun part: looks and costume! Simply put, Champions will do more than meet the expectations of City of Heroes fans. It will blow them away.

The level of customization borders on ridiculous. For example, there are four different colorization options for each piece. Take the chest gear for example. The game allows details like a knife belt across the chest, but what’s more, enables full color customization of belt, knife blade, sheathe and hilt. It really made the process unique. One of the most impressive features was the ability to customize a piece of gear to show specifically on the character’s right arm, leg or hand and then do something completely different for the left side. Another thing to get excited about is the improved selection of robotic appearances. The attention to detail in this system is amazing.

Customization doesn’t just end at the costume, though. Players can change where powers originate (head, hands, chest, sword, etc.) and create separate builds and roles, which they can easily swap out based on circumstance.

That’s not to say that the system is quite ready yet. A few elements are less than thrilling. The tabs (for head, chest and foot sections) found on the left hand side of the creation area are a little clunky and unintuitive. The interface in CoH was a lot sleeker. While I was impressed with the color options available and the detail available, there could have been better explanation of how each of the four colors alters the design.

There is definitely room for polish and improvement, but with a few months before launch, Cryptic has time. The creation experience presented a fun and dizzying array of options, it just needs more tweaking and a little more elegance to really bring it home.

Inside the Tutorial

Like every MMO released these days, Champions Online features a quick tutorial that introduces the elements of the game.

The tutorial walks new players through a few easy missions, introduces basic movement, interaction with NPCs and quests. More importantly it draws hero’s attention to some of the features in Champions that are new and interesting, especially for those familiar with other MMOs.

Combat

I chose to create a character with the dexterity of an Untouchable origin and the power framework of a martial artist with dual wield. I received my first mission from a local NPC and headed off to a back alley to attack some qularr pods.

In combat, abilities stack and rely on each other. For example, my basic attack builds up endurance, which I can then expend by using some of my more advanced and deadly skills. If my endurance gets low, I can just continue to auto-attack with my basic attack skill until I have enough endurance built up to once again try something fancy. Some skills also deal more damage as they are “powered up.” More power equals more damage or time duration.

Another skill essential to surviving Champions Online is the ability to block an incoming attack. When fighting a mob, a special graphic icon will sometimes appear above the enemy’s head. This indicates that they are about to unleash a power attack. Players can (and should!) block these attacks, either by hitting the shift key or clicking the block icon on the hot bar. Trust me, this is a skill you want to use every time you see a mob getting ready to open a can of “whoop-whoop” on you. It can be the difference between immediate death and a minuscule amount of damage.

Less fun is the need to manually maintain attack range. Once a target is selected, players have to walk up on their own. It sounds like a small thing on paper, and makes sense given the importance of planning a route in Champions, but it can be extremely frustrating.

For example, if a melee character is paired with a ranged hero, this can be problematic. If the ranged caster steals aggro just as the melee hero is about to unleash a power attack of their own, it burns it. The mob runs towards the ranged character and forces the melee character to reset and give chase.

Players who have experience with console action games should adapt more readily than those who are used to just jumping into the fray and hitting an attack button. Situational awareness and selective targeting are key to survival. At first I found the tutorial difficult to complete without a partner to help with damage output, but with my new approach, my success at solo combat increased dramatically.

I enjoyed watching my character execute combat styles gracefully and fluidly. The sound of metal blades as they slide against each other and slice a mob in half was especially pleasing. I appreciated the skill involved not only to time my skill selection and execution, but also the need to block fatal blows. It was a bit difficult to manage my aggro as a melee damage dealer when paired with a ranged attack class, but that was not a game breaker.

Missions (or Quests for the rest of us!)

The tutorial missions slowly move players from basic movement introduction tasks to more advanced tasks such as saving citizens. Very quickly, they introduce open missions and instanced storyline arc mission areas.

Open missions are very similar to public quests in Warhammer Online. Basically, a characters enters an area and is informed of the objective at hand. Everyone in the area can contribute to the success or failure of the stages. At the end of the open mission, players are granted experience and rewards based on their overall contribution to the entire open mission event. I like this particular approach to harder missions that may have more advanced rewards, because they don’t force people to sit around and find a group. Simply walk into an area and play. Once characters reach level five, and have successfully participated in an open mission, they are asked to report to Champions HQ. This is basically an instanced mission objective with some nice cinematic cut scenes. This scenario can be soloed if players choose their targets wisely and watch where they stand.

There is a nice variety of missions that players see right off the bat in game. They include typical “get x and bring to y” missions, open missions, instanced missions and, further along in the tutorial, players get to participate in mission chains that eventually lead to an instanced scenario and escape from the tutorial area.

Environment

The first thing that went through my mind when I entered the game was, “graphic novel.” The rendering is a little gritty and dark and while City of Heroes had a comic book quality and appeal to it, the artistic style of Champions takes that to the level of a graphic novel.

One of the most outstanding features is the ability for the player to interact with the world around them. See a trash can? Pick it up and huck it. Kick rocks and pieces of rubbish that are strewn about the area. In fact, I kicked a rock over to a ledge and punted it, watching as it bounced off the wreckage of a helicopter. Some elements, like kicking rocks, may seem more fluff than actual utility, but the ability to grab objects and actually use them as weapons is just…plain…fun.

Conclusion

Champions Online is fun and offers just enough differences between it and its costumed competitor, City of Heroes to be fresh. The skills and combat are a challenge and ensure that the player will be actively engaged in combat and game play. The ability to interact with the environment provided another element to the game that made the experience more enjoyable, and the inclusion of travel powers almost immediately removed a lot of frustration. Players are able to travel in an efficiently and heroically right away, they don’t have to wait until level 14. If the early areas of Champions Online are indicative of what is to come, then Cryptic Studios has a solid game on its hands.

Thanks to MMORPG.com for the hands on report!

MMO-Huxley

MMO FPS Huxley Goes Free-to-Play

During E3 publisher ijji.com has announced that MMOFPS Huxley: The Dystopia has gone free-to-play and will be supported through microtransactions. It was also announced that the planned Xbox 360 version of the game will not be cross-platform with the current PC version.

You can pay-to-demo Huxley by trying to get a CD Key through the Fileplanet beta.

Looks like the first microtransaction supported title for hardcore gamers.

MMORPG-Heroes of Talara Interview

Interview with Chris Mancil

While at E3 Trion Worlds revealed that for the past few years they have been working on Heroes of Talara, and new fantasy mmorpg that is expected to launch in 2010.

For many years, the only thing anyone knew about Trion Worlds was that they had raised a lot of money. At E3 2009, the company finally revealed their first major MMO project, an epic fantasy game called Heroes of Talara.

“At its heart, Heroes of Talara is about making heroes,” said Chris Mancil, the game’s Director of Community Management.

It’s a line many games have used, but Trion has a new idea on how to achieve it. On top of regular MMO quests, one core feature of the game is dynamic quests where players should have a chance to change the world and get recognition for it.

For example, in the demonstration they presented, imps and demons began to attack a town that the character had just left. There, was essentially a giant quest open to everyone in the area, regardless of level. There were groups of imps and they had lit the town on fire. The quest was not instanced at all and the town was significantly different. On the fly, Trion was able to swap out the buildings for ruined, burning structures without so much as a loading screen.

Both lower and higher level characters could contribute to the quest in their own way. Even if a character was brand new, they could help out through fire fighting while higher level players tried to take down the demonic invaders.

Eventually, once enough demons were killed, a giant demon appeared. Whoever killed it (or did the most damage) gets recognition across the server as a Hero of Talara.

Once the demon had been taken down, immediately fireworks began to go off and the townspeople returned to the city to cheer their new hero. The fires were out, the buildings restored to their former glory, ready for another day. However, while the snap was sudden, Mancil did point out that had no one saved the village, it would have been destroyed, which could unveil a new line of quests, just as its rescue could.

While the version we saw was abbreviated, Mancil said that the eventual goal is to make this style of content accessible to hundreds of players simultaneously and that even the players who do not necessarily kill the demon get some kind of recognition for their contribution.

These kinds of quests happen in three ways. They’re not live events, in that GMs would need to enter the world and play the demon. Instead, they can either be triggered through a timer, a trigger in the world or the random decisions of the Trion team.

“Every time you login, something is new,” explained Mancil. They want to create a world that goes beyond the regular day-to-day MMO experience and encourages players to react and take on world altering events.

They also are giving the players a lot of flexibility in how they approach these events. Rather than make new characters each time someone wants to try a new class, a single character is capable of being any of the game’s traditional fantasy RPG classes. At any point while in town, they can simply swap with the click of the button. Each class, though, has its own level. It’s not as if players can jump from level 50 Cleric to Level 50 Rogue, even if they had not levelled up that far as a Rogue. They need to level each individually. During the swap, they also automatically change gear, although exactly what happens with inventories between classes is not yet decided.

On top of this, the game focuses heavily on subclasses. The best loot in the game is subclass cards. These can be employed on the fly, regardless of time or location to alter the core of the class to suit the group or encounter at hand. For example, a Warrior is generally more of a tank type, but when alone, he can turn himself into a Berserker to fight multiple monsters at once. Then, later on, when fighting the epic demon, he changed into a Summoner type to bring in multiple skeletons after it became apparent that melee wasn’t going to cut it.

The theme of heroism returns in the way combat happens in Talara. There are two major differences from the average MMO. First, the NPCs are rarely if never wandering around aimlessly, waiting to be killed. They have their own goals and motivations. Players tend to find bandits skirmishing with guards, not sitting around a camp fire. The second is that as each player wants to be a hero, they better damn well fight like it. The combat is one vs. many, as players take on many monsters at a time. In our demonstration, the warrior would knock back multiple enemies with a giant, stylized staff. Beyond this, though, the combat is intended to be very familiar to fans of MMOs. It uses special abilities and hotbars.

Artistically, the game makes a lot of nice strides forward. Humanoid enemies have expressions on their faces that actually change. No longer do they look like wax figures as they blindly smack players. The game’s artistic style is stylized, but “realistically rendered.” The effect is a very detailed, high-fantasy world that looks full of life. When they say stylized, they don’t mean cartoony or World of Warcraft. This is a much gritter artistic vision.

The game also has a very deep draw distance for scenery on the horizon, all of which is able to be explored. When something is visible over the hill, players can actually walk there. For example, they showed us another zone, which seemed to have its own theme, but was only distantly visible.

Trion is also very proud of their server technology, which enables them to do things like swap out entire towns for burning ones on the fly. It also has dynamic load distribution, which means that if one player is in one are and 100 are in another, their servers will react and provide the area with 100 players more processing power, which should improve their performance.

Heroes of Talara is scheduled to enter Beta testing very soon and Trion hopes to launch it in 2010.

Thanks to Mmorpg.com for the great interview!