MMORPG-Champions Online Interview May 9th

Bill Roper has a fairly epic history. Through the ’90s he was director at some company called Blizzard, and had a key role on the development of Diablo, StarCraft and yes – WarCraft.

After his golden years at one of the world’s largest development companies, Roper branched off to form his own studio; the ill-fated developer of Hellgate: London, Flagship studios, which eventually went bust last year.

That there is a story far bigger than most game luminaries ever get. But now the WarCraft man’s back to head up development on promising MMO Champions Online at Cryptic Studios – and perhaps take on his old studio at their own game.

We sat down with the man for a chat…

What stage of development are you at with Champions Online? It must be almost done…

Bill Roper: Yeah we’re almost done. The release date is set for July 14 [note: the date has since been confirmed for September 1 in the US and Sept 4 in Europe], so we are in the bug hunt/polish phase, where our bug testers rate each mission after they play it. So what we’re doing right now is taking to 25 lowest rated missions, and then kicking those back to the designers for tweaking. It’s all on track though.

As an iconic figure in the MMO world, how have you found yourself working on Championships Online?

Roper: It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve worked on so many sci-fi or fantasy-based things that working on a superhero game is really cool. You can get away with everything.

What brought you to working on Champions Online?

Roper: After we closed Flagship studios – the company I had for five years – I was looking for whatever my next opportunity was going to be in the gaming industry. I actually just wanted to get into the beta for Champions Online. And through a mutual friend of mine, I ended up having an email with one of the designers and he emailed me saying he wasn’t sure he could get me into the beta because it was closed to industry. I said that I was technically not in the industry right now – because I was between positions. He was like: “Really? Maybe you should talk to my boss.” So I came in and met the CEO and directors, and they said they’d love me to come and work on the team. So when I was given the opportunity to choose which product I wanted to jump onto, I chose Champions – I played Champions as a kid so I was familiar with all the concept and ideas.

So it was in beta phase before you joined the team?

Roper:It had been in closed ‘friends and family’ beta for a while.

So how has that restricted your influence on the game’s development?

Roper: A lot of the biggest things I’ve been able to do is offer a fresh eye. When you’re working for while with a team it’s very easy to get your head down and be focused, and there are certain things you don’t think of. So it’s good to bring in experience from other games, play it for the first time and ask a lot of questions, and distil some of the game’s features that were going to take far too long to develop in the way they’d laid them out.

That’s the kinda thing I use to do at Blizzard – come onto a project in the last six to 12 months and basically help get it out the door and make sure the right elements are happening. It’s been a refreshing change because at Flagship I was the CEO so I didn’t get to develop much.

Would you ever consider going back to Blizzard should the opportunity arise?

Roper: Sure. Blizzard’s an incredible company. If there was something that made sense to go back there I wouldn’t be closed off to it, but I think that it’s sure to be interesting. I’m sure it’d be an amazingly different place now.

How did the disappointing performance of Hellgate London and Flagship’s closure affect you, and what have you taken from that?

Roper: It was really difficult. I think the biggest problem with Hellgate London was that we tried to do too much. We had a single-player game, that was also free multiplayer, but also had a subscription element, it shipped in 14 languages simultaneously, and there were all these different versions on different operating systems. Then it also had really top-end graphics but we also did low-poly versions of everything.

The list went on and on and ultimately it just meant that we were spread far too thin, we didn’t have nearly enough time to really do what would have probably been the more important things in the game.

So at Cryptic I take that and I now ask what parts are actually vital to the game – throw away the parts that aren’t important. Don’t worry about supporting all these varying elements – things that can seem like a really idea at the time, but add a lot of distraction to the game.

I think the other big thing that I learned was that my career, while important, isn’t my life. I was very personally invested into flagship. When the game didn’t perform as well as we wanted – considering all the hype around the game and company – I think people took that incredibly personally. And when the company could no longer be sustained, I saw that as a failure of me, not the company. Most companies fail, and we’d surpassed most start-ups because we’d actually shipped a game.

What I really learned is that, what we do [as games developers] is great, it’s fun, and we should be doing everything we can to make the best game possible. But we’re not curing aids or sending someone to the moon. We’re making videogames. It’s okay to go home at the end of the day and not be obsessive over your job. You can make good games without it becoming your entire life.

Champions is headed for 360 as well as PC. Has that placed any restrictions on development?

Roper: Not that much really. We’re still waiting for Atari and Microsoft to hammer out business details for how it will operate on the 360 as an MMO. We knew when it would be out on PC so one of the pushes we had was to really focus on the PC interface. It’s got to feel good for PC players using mouse and keyboard.

Previously there had been a big focus on getting to feel great working for both platforms. All of the mechanics, though, really work fine, we really didn’t have to compromise anything graphically on PC and the comic shading we’re using translates exceptionally well to 360.

There’s nothing we’ve done from a technical or gameplay standpoint that to prohibitive to be on 360, and we haven’t compromised what we want the game to be. It helps knowing from the beginning that your game is going to be on a console, and that your design is fun and rich that works within the hardware specs.

Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast was perhaps the last hugely successful MMO on consoles. Are you hoping Champions Online will do the same for the current generation?

Roper: I hope so, and I think that it can be. Console gamers have a good history of liking super heroes, and I think that consoles are ripe to get a good MMO now. On a daily basis I’ve had to think about how to make that happen, and that’s a big challenge.

On the PC it’s pretty much an open platform. If you run the servers and you build the tech you can host people online. Whereas on consoles, other people own the platform, so there all sorts of business details to sort out. But I don’t have to worry about that, I just try to make the game great, and I really do think it’ll be fantastic on consoles.

360 is a closed platform, which is often touted as key difference between it and the PS3 which is far more open. User created content will play a big part in Champions Online – how will that fit into MS’ usually tight policies?

Roper: I don’t really know that we have a lot of restrictions on that. I think those are issues that Atari and MS are hammering out right now – how often we can release updates and how it will work.

I think the thing that’s good about our Nemesis system is that it resides within the game as it’s shipped, it’s not separate or a DLC component, which gets around a lot of the concerns you might have when you look at Xbox. You are adjusting things that are already in the game.

The fact that there aren’t really a lot of MMOs on consoles is not due to developers not wanting to make MMOs for consoles, and I think that console players would love to be playing MMOs. I think it’s just that it’s always a higher-level question that has to be sorted out at a corporate business level. How will it all work? For example, MS has a lot of restrictions on the 360, and they work really well for 95 percent of titles, but I think MMOs fall under that five percent where we break all the rules in terms of how we have to interact with our customer.

360 owners already have to pay for Xbox Live Gold accounts. So there must be an issue over getting them to pay again for MMOs with subscription business models…

Roper: I’d imagine there will be.

Would a PS3 version of the game ever be considered?

Roper: Sure. I’d love to have us release on every platform conceivable. At this point, I’m sure it’s all about figuring out how to make an MMO model work on consoles.

And you’ve chosen the 360 as the first to try it on?

Roper: The 360 is basically a PC in a box, right? So it’s a lot easier to do that. The PS3 is a whole different development platform, but we’ve been talking with PS3 development teams who can at least do the engine conversion. It’s something we’ve been exploring. I know everybody in the team would be ecstatic to get the game out everywhere we can, because the more players the better.

You’ve been quoted as saying that World of Warcraft is now so polished that efforts to challenge it would be futile – or words to that effect. It’s dominated for almost five years, do you see it dominating for another five?

Roper: I think it’s difficult to know when it’ll stop being dominant. I think there’ll be a window that will open that’ll allow another game to step in. That’s what WoW did to Everquest. Everquest was winding down, Sony was focused on Everquest 2, there weren’t any other real big MMOs in the pipeline, and the idea for WoW was originally “we’re going to make the best Everquest that’s ever been made”. It’s the same gameplay model, but polishes everything and gets rid of everything that didn’t work.

I think the difference is that the next game that comes along and captures that imagination is going to be a game that does something different – a game that offers some other really compelling thing in an MMO space for players to do. Because I think it would be near impossible for someone to say “let’s make the best WoW you could ever make and get rid of things that don’t work”, because that’s what Blizzard already did.

But making something that takes advantage of the fact that WoW has opened up the MMO genre to a massive amount of players, especially in the West, is where other people developing MMOs should look to. It’s not about “How do I make the next WoW”, it’s more about “How do we make a great MMO that we know a lot of people will want to play, and have something different that’s compelling and interesting.”

WoW has a lot of players, but when you talk to some of these players they’re like “yeah, I play, but there’s not a lot else to play”, they try something else and then they come back. Maybe WoW will dominate for another five years, maybe only for another year. Who can tell?

Thanks to Computerandvideogames.com for the great interview. The Turtle is getting excited for this one guys!

MMORPG- Star Wars The Old Republic Trooper Development

SWTOR’s Trooper development and morale abilities

BioWare’s lead combat designer Damion Schubert discusses creating the Trooper class today over at the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website. It’s not too difficult to understand the heart of the Trooper: he’s got a huge gun and makes everything in his path explode. The difficult part of the Trooper was making it something that could go toe-to-toe with Sith both in the actual game and in players’ minds. It had to be cool, exciting and a whole lot of fun to play.

Of course, as Damion points out at the end of his journal, the Trooper isn’t all about massive amounts of firepower. The class packs an assortment of morale-themed party buffs too, which are able to strengthen himself and the party. While this feature was assumed on our part, this is the first we’ve heard of morale-based class abilities.

MMORPG- Torchlight goes MMO

E3 2009: Torchlight will morph from single player game to MMO

Coming from the desginers who made Diablo, Mythos, Mythos II and Fate, we’re expecting quite a lot from their new title, Torchlight. This classic Diablo style 2D hack-and-slasher can in every way be considered the spiritual successor to Mythos, and in some ways even more closer to the original Diablo. For instance, Torchlight is a town with another world underneath it — that and it’s going to be a single player RPG before it goes MMO. But rest assured, it will go MMO in a year to a year and a half.

First, we’ll discuss features that will exist at singleplayer launch later this year, then we’ll cover the new elements planned when the game expands into a massively multiplayer game. Check it all out after the jump along with gameplay footage, complete with Felicia Day of The Guild trying her hand at a beta version of the Action RPG.

Gallery: E3 2009: Torchllight

Torchlight will have pets that can fight with you, they never die and have their own inventory. We thank Runic Games for this design choice, because it means as players we won’t have to constantly check in on our little monster’s health — instead, we’ll be able to focus on beating the living mana out of our enemies.

The class we were able to get our hands on was the Destroyer. This class summons a shadow worm that attaches to your back and attacks anything nearby. We thought it was pretty wicked, actually. The game will be very modder friendly, which is a big bonus for the game’s community. Things such as skills, quests, level cap, art and levels will all be moddable — and the system is much like Unreal’s drag and drop modular functionality.

Twelve to eighteen months after the single player release, Perfect World will launch the free to play MMO version. Planned features for the online game include more character customization, more character classes, mounts, PvP (both personal and territorial) and randomly generated dungeons. They will also add social features like marriage, buddy lists, chat features and world events.

Until they get that out the door, you’ll have the single player game to hone your skills.

MMORPG- Champions Online- Bill Roper speaks

E3 2009: Bill Roper on character themes and customization in Champions Online

The superhero MMO genre has been ruled by one game and one game alone for the past five years: City of Heroes. NCsoft’s title being quite literally the only game in town for superhero fans is about to change, with competitors like DC Universe Online and Champions Online on the way. We have a good idea of what to expect with DCUO given the recognizable characters the game incorporates, but what of Champions Online which is based upon the Champions pen and paper RPG?

We’ve wondered what Cryptic Studios will do to differentiate Champions Online from the competition; Massively had a chance to sit down with Bill Roper, the game’s executive producer, to discuss that question at E3 2009

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Gallery: Champions Online Main Gallery

Part of the answer for Cryptic Studios is to allow players flexibility in terms of theme with their characters, while ensuring that the game mechanics fully support those style choices that players make. Letting players create themes for their heroes and keeping the system open enough to maintain their individual style is key.

Roper points out some of the design challenges of applying thematic concepts to game mechanics, particularly with what every player will likely care about the most — their powers. A broad topic, certainly. So Roper explained how this specifically applies to the travel powers in Champions Online.

Roper likens travel powers to driving in gears — third gear is top speed for pure travel, getting attacked drops you down to second gear, and fighting is you in first gear. It works out well in PvP on a number of levels, not the least of which is that players can go full burn to escape combat when needed. Some travel powers like Burrowing give a stealth bonus, but remove the ability to attack. But Acrobatics is perhaps the best example.

“Players have said with acrobatics that even though you don’t run as fast as super speed and you don’t jump as far as super jump, it’s cool, it’s really thematic,” says Roper. Using the driving analogy, acrobatics has the fastest first gear so players that are fighting with this style can move the fastest in combat. Players into martial arts and melee will use Acrobatics to engage and disengage, dodge, and so on. It remains thematic for ninja-style players and ties into the game mechanics well.

Acrobatics sounds fun, but what about teleportation? “Teleport breaks everything,” Roper says. That is, it would if they just slapped it into the game and moved on. Fortunately, Cryptic Studios has put a lot of thought into this. For players who aren’t necessarily physical types, Teleport would be the most efficient transportation power in the game, allowing them to bypass mobs and enemies and remain untargetable. If left unchecked, though, Teleport powers would be overpowered.

“It immediately breaks all the rules,” Roper continues. “You have to start putting restrictions in — you can’t go through walls and so on.” Cryptic Studios had a clear goal of departing from the Teleportation game mechanics of City of Heroes where you click a point to ‘port over to it; they decided to create a system where players step into a nether realm and move through it (while still needing to navigate surroundings and terrain like anyone else), emerging in another location. From the perspective of onlookers, the character (not Roper’s own words here) pulls a Nightcrawler sort of *bamf* to a new location.

Another aspect of the travel powers is that for explorer-types, there are many explorable areas players can potentially reach. Keeping a step or two ahead of what the gamers can think of doing, where they can end up going, has been a challenge for Cryptic Studios with Champions Online.

Continuing on the topic of themes running through the game mechanics, Roper discusses how this carries over to all aspects of the game, as many as Cryptic has been able to accommodate. For instance, Roper points out that Champions Online will have themed crafting areas that feel like an ideal environment to craft a certain type of item.

“It’s amazing how thematic our players want all of this stuff in the game to be,” Roper says. “We’ve done a lot of extra work on the item side to make sure that players who have a certain theme for a hero in mind can match that theme with the items they get in the world. You can’t just drop leather armor or cloth armor. You have to be able to ‘drop and upgrade’, give them a defensive benefit that’s not a piece of armor. A spell, a serum, nanobots…” he adds, giving just a few examples of loot.

This ties in with the ability to control how you look and how your powers manifest, a key feature of Champions Online. A player may pick up an item, a piece of armor for instance, that wouldn’t fit with his or her particular style. It can still be equipped but not displayed, imparting the benefits without detracting from the character’s look.

On the customizability of powers, we knew it would be possible to alter the color and style of a given power’s emanation, but the system goes far beyond that with “power replaces.” Roper gives the example of a melee-type character whose powers are visually linked to a particular type of blade, like katanas. But perhaps further down the road a player finds a scimitar that looks better or ties in with the character’s theme nicely. The player can easily change all of the character’s sword-based powers to use this new weapon and take on this new look.

So while players are given the flexibility to really customize their character’s theme, they’re not locked into those early choices. A character’s theme can evolve and be refined over time as they progress in Champions Online.

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MMORPG- Runes of Magic New Player Race revealed

This week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, Frogster announced Chapter II of Runes of Magic – The Elven Prophecy, and began showing part of the new content, including the new region of the “Weeping Coast.”

As the name suggests, one of the main elements of “Chapter II – The Elven Prophecy,” will be the introduction of Elves as a playable race, with a huge new background story, new regions and many new quests.

According to legend, demons of human origin, having degenerated into underworld beings under the influence of the runes, forged an alliance with the nagas in ancient times. Together, these evil forces brought war and devastation to the world of Taborea. An alliance of elves and humans succeeded in banishing the demons into the void and drive back the nagas behind a magical wall. However, when elven prince ‘Sig’aylas’ removed the holy sword ‘Arclight’ from the wall to defend his human true love, the wall was destroyed and the naga threat flared up once again.

There will also be two new character classes in Chapter II. These two classes will add to the already huge possibilities of the dual class system.

If you’re not interested in testing out a new class or race, you don’t have to worry. New challenges await all experienced players in the form of challenging dungeons, raid instances and new PvP modes. Chapter II – The Elven Prophecy will also raise the level cap to level 55 for all characters.

Another new feature will be the pet system which will let you actively train your virtual companions, so that they can help you in future battles The ambience of the game is also being enhanced. The new regions will especially demonstrate the new enhancement, but so will the original territories, all of which will benefit from an improved graphics engine. Sound and music in the game will also receive attention from the renowned sound studio, Dynamedion, to further enhance the game experience.

In August, we will begin to deliver the first content from The Elven Prophecy, including the new “Weeping Coast“ region. At that time, the level cap will also rise to level 52.

Just as the original version of Runes of Magic and all of the updates to date, Chapter II – The Elven Prophecy will be a free download.

The release of Chapter II is planned for September 2009!

Besides new Screenshots you can find a brand new trailer for Chapter II – The Elven Prophecy on our website.

MMORPG- Heroes of Telara

PC

There’s a big trend for computer games to have cloud processing. The action of having everything done server side is really interesting for people who own crappy rigs. Unfortunately, what makes waves are services that have an all-or-nothing approach, like OnLive. Trion World Network, Inc. has a different approach to this upcoming technology, especially with their game Heroes of Telara. Instead of having everything done serverside, all the content and updates are done on the servers, whereas graphics and audio are done clientside.

So what makes this a big deal? Well, since the content is done on the servers, that means story and gameplay updates can be done any time Trion decides. Say that Trion wants to have a dragon randomly attack a town and destroy a building, they can do it without releasing a big update to the game. If that dragon goes on to rampage throughout and destroys the town, tough poopie. That town is gone. SUX2BU.

Other than that rather interesting feature, the game looks really nice. Sure, you are going to need a PC that can run it at the highest settings, but once you got that, this game looks good, with really nice draw distances and a rotating night/day cycle that goes through a complete cycle in 7 hours.

Really, it’s too early to make any sort of judgment about Heroes of Telara. I mean, it looks nice, and there are some ambitious plans for the game. We’ll just have to follow up when it’s closer to release in 2010.