f13.net

Here's the most recent concept art (http://www.verticalwire.com/images/uploads/images/0001/0274/lego_wallpaper.jpg?1214955977). They call it a wallpaper. Whatever. I thought the onion bulb was maybe supposed to be their heads but really it's just some crappy shape. Anyway, I've cropped the picture because I have a problem with it. Yea. Shocking. I know.

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/39720/screenshots/lego%20universe/pr_wallpaper.jpg)

wtf.

Ok. I'm trying to come up with some WAY for this picture to be OK. Lego guy walking through fantasy forest. I don't want to make assumptions, but there's nothing lego about this at all. Not even 1%. That shit right there is a damned lego guy in a diku fantasy MMOG. I really really want to think that Netdevil learned some HARD LESSONS from making that Auto Assault trash. But apparently not. Or at least, this was a terrible goddamn piece of art to reveal. I don't even know what to say. Well, other than: If I went back in time and brought my 10 year old self back to 2008 and showed him this art, he would buy a plane ticket, make a visit to net devil, and somepeople would be hit with a knuckleduster. This is just embarrassing. Who is doing their PR? Ugh. /cry

Let's talk about Lego Universe and what it might've been, once upon a time.

How peculiar.

I'm really at a loss trying to fathom what they're trying to say with that picture.

So far I've found an apple, a hammer, three fish and a lamp.  I'm sure there must be more.

That Legoland has surprising few Legos in it?

You dumb bastard.  It's not a schooner, it's a sailboat.

Im going to give my "WTF" on this one too.

And also ask, is this real? really?

It should look more like this:

(http://www.blockland.us/Media/01%20Screenshots/betaCity2.jpg)

(http://www.blockland.us/Media/camping.jpg)

Incase anyone cares, thats Blockland (http://www.blockland.us/index.asp?p=Home)

I think that tree is bleeding.

Sooo.... they've never played ANY of the various Lego games out there, hm?  And I don't just mean "Lego Star Wars" or "Lego Indiana Jones."  My kids have several racing/ building/ puzzle games that, gee, look like Legos.

Fuck.. I thought that was the ONE part they would get right.

If Star Wars Galaxies didn't have any Star Wars, and Dungeons and Dragons didn't have dragons...

I had to look at the picture for 30 seconds before I even saw the lego part of it.

Pro-tip: The appeal of lego stuff is stuff made out of legos!

Seriously, how do they manage to get shit so totally wrong.


Someone find a picture of the failboat, but made out of Lego's.

You clipped out the toilet seat from that wallpaper.

See without that bit of context, the image looks awful.  But, once you realize the game is *in* the toilet, it all makes sense.

Long live Netdevil.

OH IT WAS A TOILET SEAT. OH MAN. Sigh. I have a vision disorder. Too busy focusing on the wrong instead of the right.

I can't stop laughing at that picture. It's so surreal, it's brilliant.

That Lego man needs to Get off the Road!


There's clearly a ringwraith about to come down that path

Does everything really need to be an MMORPG?

Apparently, yes.

To be fair thats the worst of the concept art, there are others on the site that are a bit more ... legoish

best one is here http://universe.lego.com/en-GB/NewsNetwork/Story.aspx?id=75980 (http://universe.lego.com/en-GB/NewsNetwork/Story.aspx?id=75980)

you can see from the comments the kids like it, only one comment says the tree should be more legolike.

You know what the concept art should be? Pictures of things constructed out of Lego's!


Someone buy the artists a few giant buckets.

For some reason I get a kick out of thinking that the Lego man in that picture must be going, "Where the fuck am I? Why is everything so non-straight? Is that a tree?".

Um, this response makes no sense to me:

Why do people keep giving NetDevil projects to work on? Why?

Brain, hurts.  :uhrr:

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/430002180_e3b2368d3c.jpg)

=

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/up-comfortseat-bariatric-toilet-seat.jpg)

=

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/Picture4.png)

=

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/auto-assault-free-update.jpg)

I liked Auto Assault. :(

This is a key insight into the NetDevil creative process: it's powered by hard core, hospital grade drugs.

It's worse than that; they're implementing the stuff people asked for.

on that originally linked page (http://universe.lego.com/en-GB/NewsNetwork/Story.aspx?id=75980) located next to the tree house insanity and the 'inspiration behind it' quote is this snippet of brilliancy:

:ye_gods:

Bionicle != Lego.

Wait... So this game is actually going to be good?

His point is SWG and D&D were terrible. Lego Universe without legos, using his logic will be terrible.

Please try to keep up! We've worked hard to attain this level of snarkiness.

Or Morfiend is broken...

We have an AC2 fan here also.  Perhaps you two should make a club.  You could hand out cards and recruit those Neocron fanbois that are still in denial.

I liked AC2 and Vanguard for the first month.  Be nice damnit!

You should really change your avatar.

I went from Richard Feynman to Stanley Clarke to Gordon Ramsay.  WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!?!

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/1070292287_dishChef_s.jpg)

Or it was late (on 4th of July) and while trying to be funny, missed the original joke.

/headhunginshame

What Do You Care What Other People Think?   

Thanks for the reminder.

You aren't sick are you Signe?

The more i think about it, the more it seems there already is a working prototype for LEGO 'universe' MMO -- Second Life, with its ultimate sandbox approach, the stuff being built from selection of pre-defined shapes and ability to use custom scripts to put some life in the made objects.

But then you see what people use Second Life for and... welp. :ye_gods:

So you're saying you're not interested in seeing life size Lego dildos?

http://www.dailygame.net/news/archives/008150.php

Still weird.

(http://www.dailygame.net/images/screens/LEGO-Universe/LEGO-Universe_concept1.jpg)

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Weird, but quite as horrifyingly so.

To be fair, that looks very much like Lego as I remember it.




But what I'm remembering may well have been a fever spawned nightmare about Lego that the 8 year old me had once that came about after ingesting two tabs of LSD with half a bottle of cheap scotch.

What is even more weird is the way you damn crazy Americans keep referring to the pieces as Legos.

That concept art looks like it's from seed

 :uhrr:

Have a related video. (http://www.mmorpg.com/showVideo.cfm/videoId/1270) (<--MMORPG.COM WARNING!)



No.

Its more like they are trying to put a square block in a round hole.

I watched that video this morning. Honestly, what the hell is "terrain generation" in the classical sense doing in my Legos?

Kinda my point. They seem to be adapting the "lego"s into standard MMO and gamming conventions (and engine techniques), instead of adapting standard MMO and gamming conventions into the LEGO universe, hence the really odd look. Terrains (Hightmaps)? That shit should be blocks. Same with every other item in the game, every where.

Its not dozers.

(http://www.wherearemytoys.com/pandj/legacy/html/images/dozer3a.jpg)

EDIT: Had to read that a few times to see if i made any sense.

I wish I'd known it was possible to be a Lego Certified Professional.

Apropos of nothing; the guy in the cube next to me worked with Feynman for several years at Thinking Machines.  So, if you count internet people you're down to 3 degrees of separation on that one.

Edit: Yes, I've been drinking.

See? I vote that Nebu should go back to Feynman and complete ze circle!

P.S. Also drinking.

Whats absolutely hilarious is that they are going to drive the system requirements for the game through the roof for absolutely no reason.

Imagine what the polygon count for a lego tree is, and then what it is for a realistic looking tree. Why would you want to intentionally raise the polygon count of objects in your game when it actually makes them look less like the IP the games is based on?

Fucking game should've been cel-shaded. And should've been a crafting game. >_<

Should've been a dungeon crawler with player-built dungeons.   :drill:

For a hundred dollars, they automatically ship you all the bricks and diagrams needed to build your own real-life model of your favorite questing zone.

$100? Have you ever bought legos? Try more like $500

It would depend on the size of the area.  I'm sure they've already got prices for all the individual pieces, so they could charge you appropriately for whatever dungeon (or subset thereof) you wanted to get.

OR!  They could make it factional/economic PvP with player-built keeps made of bricks you'd have to mine from resource nodes in controlled territory.  Give special bonuses to factions with the best-looking keeps, determined by binary vote (a la those "funniest picture" gadgets) at each login.

Please. Just create the dungeon online and pick up both the pieces and the printed instructions at a Lego store in a Mall Near You!

Don't know about Lego Universe, but Lego Deutschland is up and running.


(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3045/2792204484_2fe4d163e3_b.jpg)

(Pic taken 2 weeks ago during my random traveling around Europe. I literally stumbled on it.)

Life-size Lego bricks would be awesome.

I could build a house out of them, then change it up when I got tired of its layout.  Maybe a castle next week, or my interpretation of Dwarf Fortress with lawn dwarves.

To be fair, it seems like they are following the style of Lego:star wars, and Lego: Indina jones franchises.

I'm going to pull out my imaginary Life-Sized Lego Markup calculator and estimate that your house would end up costing around 12 billion dollars. 

Since when are we fair? This is the interwebs.

Is the Lego biergarten open?  There had better be tubas, accordions and legohosen.

Why make Lego Universe completely unlike Lego Star Wars? 

 :heartbreak:

There you go.

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3148/2800701607_99b2a05c90_o.jpg)





Now that we are here.... am I the only one who thinks what's happening in this picture is wrong?

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3223/2800702229_c49dec7220_o.jpg)

Wonder if this will be in the soundtrack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0lJvGwGjjM

1up has some new images of this.

Perhaps I'm becoming a softy in my old age but it actually looks pretty decent. (Considering it's a fucking lego game I mean)

They do have a US-Theme park with fast food and cowboys

Nothing can come close to the experience of shroomin' at the lego store. No MMO will ever be that intense or alive.

Here's the link that you were too lazy to include in your post.  (http://www.1up.com/do/media?cId=3157726&sec=IMAGES)

Still looks pretty light on Lego.

Gameplay videos... Here's Part 1 (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/ces-10-lego-universe/60652)

The other parts are in that link.  

Interesting.

edit:
Game Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU9bUVoZfYA&feature=player_embedded)

Ok, kinda want to play this >_> Awkwarrrrrd.

Part 4 shows a cool area that reminds me of Mario 64.

I like this game.  I grew up on legos so I think I'm going to give it a shot.

Goddamn.. no leveling; unlocks only AND you can have over 80,000 bricks on a character for a "build anything you want" mode? Fuuuuck I'm doomed.

That builder tool looked pretty damn slick, too. 

Yep, I can foresee playing this with my daughter for hours.

Not good. I can see myself trying this especially after the video clip. It couldn't be worse than Toontown or WAR could it?

More importantly... it's Lego - the brand name is going to carry this a long way.

No one here has ever questioned the brand name, we've only questioned Net Devil and their shoddy track record. Third time is a charm though, right?

I'm in.  Other than driving games, I play Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones more than any other title on my PS2. 

Yes... I still play on a PS2. 

That PA comic was pretty funny, I remember having a good laugh back then.

Movies look surprisingly cool, and I'm in the crowd that still builds LEGO too (and the kids love it), soo... I'm kind of sold already.

hey hey hey hey hey hey guess what guess what

I have been a drywaller since I was 13. On feb first, i make my first ever real career change and start working with NetDevil on this game

it's so crazy. it's amazing. i'm amazed. it's such a cool gig!

Gratz fellow industry insider! What will you be doing there or is that still sekrit?

lego drywall?

Edit: Also gratz SamPrimary

Heh, this does also mean it's your first and last post in this thread  :wink:
Congrats on the job!

Awesome dude! You relocating?

Can I have your stuff? I need drywall to finish a bathroom.  :grin:

Good shit hope it goes well and eventually leads to some awesome games for us to play, remember to stay somewhat jaded and skeptical so that if you ever rise to a position where somebody might listen to you your still capable of pointing out some of the stupid shit all games try to do.

This lego game looks amazing in videos, too amazing to be real.

I live 20 minutes away in boulder! I don't even have to relocate. I'm amazed. this is more amazement happening.

you can still have my drywall though.


Actually the type of whinging skepticism that this site jammed into my head repeatedly served me well in explaining during my interview how in the hell a drywaller is in any way appropriate for getting my new job. thanks guys, you're the best.

Remember, always submit your QA reports in the form of a cartoon.

Grats man.

Random Netdevil question, how hands on is Scott Brown?  Not that you would know, I'm just curious.  He seemed like a cool dude when I spoke to him for a few minutes at a Comic Con.

I am sure he is pretty cool. I am sure I have met him, or at least walked by him plenty of times. Who knows!

Anyway.

I'm definitely having fun being a complete lackey scrub for the first time in my life since I was about 20. I'd talk about the game but blah blah NDA

NetDevil: Have you got any game design, programming or MMO operations experience?

Samprimary: No, but I know my way around a brick.

NetDevil: You're hired.

Don't get me wrong -- I would make the world's crappiest bricklayer.

I didn't think "I know my way around a drywall" fitted in with the Lego theme as much though.  :grin:

(http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/5004/0204001221.jpg)

Modigliani is teh awesome.  :drill:

Sure is, except that's Mondrian. Who is more awesome.

The playing with legos is actually extremely fun. For a couple of days now I have very precisely wasted the entirety of my alloted break time collecting legos, then tooling around with them on my lunch break.  I'm hardcoded to always want to be working, always, so it's hard enough to get myself to take the time I am allowed not to work and not work through it and augh

But yes, the legos help with that.

I already have a prototype for a frank lloyd wright stained glass piece. But it's a pretty grandiose scheme. It'll have to wait till I can start showing up early.

Goddamnit, that was a serious fucking brain fart. Mondrian is who I meant. I can't even claim fatigue or drunkenness, just impatience.

Beta signups are available now: http://universe.lego.com/en-us/Beta/Default.aspx

Eh, what the hell, I signed up.

They messed up the confimation address in the emails for account creation. https://account.lego.com missing

I signed up as well; this game looks pretty amusing.

Why, yes NoScript, I will allow lego.com to run scripts.

:awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

I can not imagine trying to play this game and having to group up with the core audience.

I will laugh if you "have to group up" in this period.

Has anyone else downloaded and played with the Lego Digital Designer tool yet?

http://ldd.lego.com/download/default.aspx (http://ldd.lego.com/download/default.aspx)

Amazing! You can build your own set, design your box art, auto generate instructions and then order it online :drill:

Oh no, this will be trouble for me.

That's got to be better content than half the MMOs on the market.

Downloading now - and thinking of ringing my brother to get all my lego back off him

Which is why I will not be downloading this.

I downloaded it.

I opened it and promptly deleted it. The amount of money I would spend would be just too much, it's pretty much precisely what it needs to be. I'm scurred.

Oh wow.  :drill:

I know it's terrible.  If I had this 20 years ago or so as a kid I would be in heaven. 

I just threw together a quick house in about 30 mins to play with it.  Yes, it is awesome.  The build guide it auto creates is excellent.
In view mode, you can change background (with sound), take screenshots, even explode the model and watch it re-assemble.  What a neat toy.
The ability to custom order you own creations is friggin genius.  I wonder if you can use this outside of the Lego Universe game or if they just incorporate it into the game itself.

I wish I had the digital designer tool as a kid.

My parents are glad I did not have the digital designer tool as a kid.

Please rip all the good bits from minecraft (http://www.minecraft.net/), for 'free form construction' worlds, please. Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCJeH0aKAhU) ahoy! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=robIDVtUC7I)

Small scale construction is all fine and dandy, but BIGGER IS BETTER! If you push for a gary's-mod-esque addition to this game, you will get subs. I will sub. I will also love you forever.

(http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/ratman/LDDScreenShot1.jpg)

The screenshot tool doesn't seem to capture the background.

Soooo, beta invites went out for this today.  Check your e-mails.

There is an NDA.

 :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

I think I forgot to ever sign up for this one.  :heartbreak:

:drill:

It might take a while to get it like... :grin:

Alas, my streak for not getting invited to betas that I forgot to sign up for remains at 100%.  The same percentage, ironically, as for those I did sign up for.

 :woot:

 :grin:

 :awesome_for_real:

By the way, I am totally looking for your pure, raw, unalloyed responses and criticisms to this game. Both with and without consideration or regards to the game's target audience. Feed me. Feed my PM box.

I'm not sure that it's too late to sign up, as I received an invitation to sign up for Beta on a different email than the one I actually signed up on.  So if you haven't already signed up, try it, you might be surprised.

:oh_i_see:

I just got my closed beta key - sadly it's in Euro time...  I'm going to have a few late nights with this I think.

They are lobbing another round of beta invites...I just got one minutes ago.

Hey, avatar flashback.

Fileplanet has a beta invite thing going for this now.

Think another round went out, got one yesterday

Same.

Friend got me a key form Comic-con.... joy ^_^

If someone gets a key they don't want to use, I'd be interested in it. My kid is currently obsessed with all things Lego.

I think this game will be like crack for little kids - in my limited experience it is a much better game than Free Realms which would seem to be the sort of thing it would be competing with.

I should not have opened this thread.  I definitely should not have read what Ingmar wrote.  I did, and the only thing I can do at this point is SQUEE and pray I forget about this game before it destroys my life.

I need to try it again with the new version but Ingmar is probably correct.

You're very correct.  Plus it's Legos.. so it's proving to be crack for me as well.  Could just be that it's new, but I can't stop playing and often want to kick my son off to get in a few hours myself.

Preordered.  I don't do that for MMOs.  Or anything, really.

I got some beta playtime in this past weekend but it was very little since SC2 came out 3 days earlier :P  Dam you SC2!!!

But but but...NETDEVIL!  :ye_gods:


 :oh_i_see:

I pass a giant shrine to Auto Assault on the way to my desk. It's a big life size combat dune buggy crashing in a post-apocalyptic diorama.

Someone put Patrick the Starfish in the front seat, which really makes the piece.

pics or it's just internet trash talk!  :grin:

Has anyone tried this thing yet?

I haven't played since beta... Nothing to really capture me.

I only got to the ninja realm, but it seems like the only truly creative thing you could do was build a useless home base. Everything else was just typical MMO fare.

One video explained how you had to get even your name approved (presumably so kids can play this). I'm going to assume that if I were to, in true goon fashion, make a lego dong, I'd get permabanned. :cry:

Good. :-P

Until your name is approved your starting name is created by selecting from list of word you combine to form a 3 word name. Chat in game is done the same way sort of like auto word replace while entering words on a phone but you have a small dictionary and can not use words not in it. Very kid safe.

6 months of beta they had a area in the interface for changing key bindings but it was always empty. You could change settings in a xml file hidden away in your user folder but invert Y mouse setting was not used from the file. In March a CM posted it was actively being worked on in game changing but at release the interface option for controls is still empty according to the first look article I read.

You would just not get your moderation approved were you to try to make a dong-filled property public.

Playing, having a blast.  But I like to collect things.

Took way too long to get my account key but I have put a little time into it for the past few days.  It's crisper and smoother than beta, some things moved around and generally it has more polish.

Basic gameplay out the starting gate is the familiar quest stuff: collect this, build that, smash those.  Soon enough you claim a property and can build something.  Later on you get to do other things but I have not managed to advance that far in my limited time.  Eager to try out the racing.

Being a bit aware of what to expect, I chose the castle sets from the beginning quest rewards and at the moment have a good start on a front wall, plus a few trees.  I'm pleased that the build interface has been made easier, at least I think so since I seem to be able to use it now.  Placing models is MUCH easier in release.  I almost built some stuff out of raw bricks but I didn't have the time for it just then.  Also I am just scratching the surface of BRICK COLLECTING.

Names, by the way... I selected Element and it was approved within minutes, replacing whatever my three-part name was.  You can keep your three-part name if you like, some of them are pretty neat.

Received my Soft Launch Test t-shirt today, plus a timecard for one month.  Rock.

Three Wolf Moon shirt in LU?  Get.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/three-wolf-moon-lu.jpg)

they tried so hard to get rid of that. SO hard.

I disapprove of "they" and "their" effort. :oh_i_see:

n'way man I was definitely on the side of keeping that shirt. We prevailed.

If anyone still has any interest in this, like if they want to get their kid hooked on mmos or something, price has been cut in half.

GO GET YO BABBY CRACK

I hate you.  I may have to give this a shot now that I've finished my second run through DA: Origins. 

I went over to my brother's house over the holidays, and he has an account for himself, and another for his oldest boy.

From the few minutes I watched each of them play it, it did indeed look like typical MMO fare, as has been stated previously. My nephew goes in for outfits, and has no problem whatsoever with deleting an established toon so that he can re-roll as a different faction. (I guess the factions can get different looks?)

My inner mmo-cynic was wailing "Oh my god look at that inventory UI, there's no way to sort or group, it's just a giant list of icons!"

Also, my brother told me that the game makes new shards to handle population overflow, similar to CoH and Guild Wars. But, you can't move freely between the shards. So if the two of them are logged on at the same time, it's blind luck if they can actually play together.

I have been working up the pressure needed to post something about the inventory needing filters of some type, at least for the blocks.  Probably what makes me hesitate to free build more than anything is the belief I will get a blurry-eyed headache squinting at those little icons trying to find that one piece that I want but am not sure that I have.

As I have not made any in-game friends, I cannot comment on the multiplayer features of LU.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/brad_waaah.jpg)

... they never fixed inventory organization, did they.

Fixed or implemented?  The backpack has three-or-four tabs and if there's a sort or filter on any of them, I have missed it.  Might be in the property menu, I suppose I will have to go look.

I checked in the "brick" tab of my backpack and there is actually a filter system.  Selecting/deselecting various attributes for the filter work like - wait for it - Legos.  Now to go to my one lonely property and try to build something from raw bricks, only to find I am missing that one piece. :awesome_for_real:

It's just like play with real Legos!

So...is it fun?

Fun is subjective.  I had a blast in the beta as did my son.  It's super ezmode combat, almost exactly like the Lego series of console games (shock.)   It's still entertaining, just don't look for much depth on the game side of things and enjoy wacking baddies collecting bricks and free building.

If all you want to do is free build and can't stand the Lego games then I'd recommend the Lego Design By Me tool from the official Lego site. (http://www.lego.com/en-us/createandshare/default.aspx)  It has the bonus of being able to create your own set and ship it to yourself with custom box art and everything.

It's a decent diversion.  The MMO stuff is the expected kill ten things and collect ten drops, do these things to get into this faction, etc.  If you hate that stuff, there you go.  There are achievements and car racing, which I assume no one hates.  The main (and important) way that it deviates is with the build system.  Using prebuilt models or raw bricks, build shit on your property.  If you want, you can buy bricks from the brick vendor rather than smashing the environment to get them, but I find the smashing to be a lot of fun.

Gazillion sells Lego Universe back to Lego; layoffs reported at NetDevil. (http://au.gamespot.com/news/6300875.html?tag=latestheadlines%3Btitle%3B6)

I guess the near complete silence around LU was for good reason. Also interesting that Brevik mentions that Gazillion is "focus[ed] completely on internally-published, free-to-play game businesses" which would seem to refer to Fortune Online and not to the Marvel-based properties.

LEGO is pretty much eating it on this to save face on the company line and not throw LU (and ALL of its team) to the wind. When all is said and done, though, I don't think they want to think too much about what they invested into this project.

I would expect them to wind down LU slowly and quietly.

My favourite quote was: (http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/24/lego-group-purchases-lego-universe-and-dev-team-from-gazillion/)


"Yes, it was always our intention to build up a development team around Lego Universe, launch it and then four months later sell that title and most of the developers to Lego. It's massive success at a dedicated MMO development studio is sure to continue under completely new management who don't really have any MMO expertise. Please come and play our online Diablo clone. "

The mood over there is remarkably grim. Anyone talking about this who got a ride over to LEGO from this move is feeling wildly stressed, mildly to wholly distrustful of management, and many confide that they have a claustrophobic itch that they get from now effectively knowing you're on an effectively tanked project that's now being quietly wound down to keep from being too public a disappointing mark on the company brand.

The people who are stuck with NetDevil, on the other hand, are feeling wholly fatalistic.

I had a pretty wonderful six months there and still have the impression that Lego is a really upstanding company (albeit unfortunately naive to have gotten invested with NetDevil), but sometime in the eighth month I had a divinely revelatory interaction with my manager, asked some questions, tested these answers versus things I could observe, and realized that it was a really, really, excellent time to get the hell out of dodge. So I quietly kicked my own business back up, made some emails, sat back, relaxed, and waited for my contract to end and be declined renewal.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/sad_cat2.jpg)

I liked it, and furthermore it's gotten me to buy more real Legos.

Good! Legos are awesome.

It makes no sense why this isn't a F2P title. Add a "BUY CUSTOM LEGO CREATION" button to the homes, encourage players to look at other players' homes, and LEGO sells even more.

(http://i.imgur.com/Qf9VB.gif)

The word "Lego" is singular. Always.

There are so many crazy rules about the proper use of the brand name that even you're doing it wrong. It can't be Lego, it has to be LEGO. In all caps. Always. It can never be used as a generic term or in the plural or as a possessive pronoun, and the use of the word LEGO has to be accompanied by a capitalized noun (making the proper plural LEGO Bricks).

And we were grilled on this. They were pretty anal about it, to no avail. We just kept calling them legos. If you ask what your kid is playing with, he's going to say he's playing legos.

No, not really. It's always been "playing with Lego" since I was a kid at least.

...

You know what? I bet this is another 'US vs the World' grammar thing like Math/Maths.

It's been "playing with legos" since I was a kid.  I bet I'm older, so I win.  Nyah! :-P

And who the hell uses 'Maths' except to sound like a lolcat?

English speakers outside North America.

maybe? there were billund, denmark guys literally from lego headquarters who would call them legos, and were just as likely to grouse about it if they were given crap for not properly capitalizing/punctuating/formatting them as "LEGO Bricks"

I regard "math" like "soup" except that there is only one type of math.

Ryan Seabury, ex-NetDevil on why "I'll never make another MMO" (http://kotaku.com/5803598/i-will-never-make-an-mmo-again). You'll have to wipe the kotaku off it.

It's probably nothing new to most here, but I did admire that a man who's likely made multiple millions of dollars from the sale of NetDevil can come out and proclaim developer freedom in the indie scene.

Lum retorts. (http://www.brokentoys.org/2011/05/24/writing-words-like-a-boss/)

Let me fix that for you.

That dude is an asshole for all the reasons Lum detailed. It needs to be reiterated: NetDevil sucked, has always sucked and was always going to suck forever and ever. Amen. They never released anything good.

Call me when the guys from Blizzard get out of the biz and talk about how they're never making another MMO again. This is Gaute Godager or Mark Jacobs talking shit about a sub-industry they failed in.

I really, really want to know the way he gets 'over 100 hours of fully explorable and interactive 3D content' — even the kids I knew playing this game (for all of a week) had seen the game in pretty much its entirety in under a day of play, or they never got through the content because they got frustrated/lost after nimbus station and quit. This counts seeing all the worlds and experiencing the minigames. Is 100 hours supposed to be an optimistic estimate of the time an average user was going to put into working on already covered activity and locations in-game? Because the average user (especially the average target demographic user) was bored/frustrated with it and back to playing Minecraft well before then, I would wager.

My personal rule of thumb is that I divide all dev provided 'hours of content' by 4. Sure, there might be 100 hours of content if you repeat the same mission 100x, or absolutely have to grind out 70k items to get that epic achievement, but that's not me.

... mostly.

There's just so much wrong with what he's saying on a basic level!

- "It's [MMO] no longer a meaningful label." No. Absolutely not. It is still a very meaningful label. If you can't distinguish between an MMO and a game that features some degree of 'social feature layers,' that's not a problem with the label.

- "No one cares if something is "single player" or "multi player" or "massively multiplayer" anymore." Even removing the absolutes and saying "Most people don't care ..." I can't wrestle this into being plausible.

- "At NetDevil, we were never that interested in safe, cookie-cutter projects." This showed, but not in a way I imagine he would like to admit.

- "Are you a developer out there, working hard on some corner of a "AAA" title, on the edge of burnout?  Why not get together with a buddy or two in whatever off time you can squeeze, and make something for fun." — Is this his earnest recommendation for a person edging at the abyss of burnout? Is he confusing the risk of burnout as a very specific, very cripplingly real psychological crisis with just being 'worn out' or perhaps 'feeling overworked?'

Really, I think what needs to happen is that there needs to be a sincere and honest postmortem of Lego Universe, if not of NetDevil entirely. He mentions some 'impossible' standards enforced on the game development by LEGO and it's like he's pushing the desire to push some frustration on LEGO for having regulation on the project that made it impossible to succeed, and I want to know where ND's perspective was on this.

You probably know better than I how much of NetDevil still exists.

I laughed the other day when Gazillion's President David Brevik (ex-Blizzard, ex-Flagship) was asked if Jumpgate Evolution was being worked on. He couldn't comment officially.

It wasn't a question about release, or features, or gameplay and it was from Gamasutra, so it was played fairly straight. It was a basic question to find out if the title was even being developed and he couldn't comment.

I honestly don't know why ya'all (including Lum) are harshing on this guy. One man's opinion from the other side of burnout. It comes down to his statement about wanting to do more than 5 more games during his career. I'm sure his burnout is in part due to the meager successes they had. To Modern Angel's point, it's not like someone from Blizzard is complaining. Heck, we can't even really get developers from SOE to complain. He might want this to be an indictment of the industry, but it's really just an indictment of himself staying too long.

Farmville isn't an MMO, nor is Modern Warfare 2 (though I would debate Lum's assertion that you don't play MW2 to level up... if you played MMOs for a decade :) ). But there are so many conventions established in MMOs moving to other genres. And those genres are only taking the things that matter. Farmville isn't an MMO, but FarmTown before it was to a degree. And YoVille was, as were a few other early Facebook games.

None are really are inspiring iteration anymore, because the players don't really want it. What they want is what the mass market in those genres are grabbing: the MMOs parts that matter (achievements, currency, persistence, MTX, pretend-shared experiences mauybe).

Meanwhile, MMOs are WoW and a bunch of small titles for a specific audience that isn't growing at nearly the percentages as other types of newer platforms/genres.

That's fine for the players because we love it and are happy to pay. But it's tough for the developers when they watch their publishing (and then marketing/PR and sales) dollars go to other things that are cheaper to create (by orders of magnitude) and therefore less risky to try, while also being less life-sucking when they fail.

That I believe Ryan Seabury's point. He wants to go where he thinks the hype is and the risks are less. He also says the hype isn't as much on MMOs as they were, but that's probably more because of his own lense. I think he's chasing a bubble, and too much of his view of MMOs is because of the not-big success they had. But that's just me.

He fucked up car combat in an apocalyptic setting.   He fucked up space ships with lasers pew pewing each other.   He even fucked with LEGOS.   I think you should at least be smart enough to understand why geeks might dislike him.

This, right here? This is why. I've never had a game infuriate me like Auto Assault. I'm still mad about it. I guess I got Dark Wind to soothe me, in the end, but that's not quite enough.

Thing is, if the guy had delivered on something, anything, that was good or had sticking power I would feel differently. If the guy just released ONE thing worth a shit and then said, "Man, these are taking too long. I want to check out other stuff" we're talking a completely different angle. As it is, this is a never was, not a has been, talking about how it's all oh so foolish to make MMOs and he needs a break. That's him projecting the failures of himself and his studio onto the vast future of the industry, which is silly.

Because he decided to post an "u all suck, I quit" post and how he's moving onto the true calling of indie / casual titles?

I completely agree that MMOs cost too much for a single roll of the dice every 3 - 5 years. But the "I didn't like NetDevil's new culture" was a bit rich when ND has handed Lego Universe (his title) off to LEGO because it totally failed to attract players to it in numbers. And because he very likely cashed up in the sale to Gazillion if he is indeed a NetDevil founder, which makes his "if you grunts have a spare hour after grinding code for companies like NetDevil, why don't you make a fun game you'll like" a bit disingenuous.

I mock the letter because I find it dishonest.

You could dislike Seabury for the Tiny Penis (http://www.brokentoys.org/2001/07/26/net-devil-developer-griefs-majestic-players-author-arcadian-del-sol/) thing (thanks again to Lum) but that was 10 years ago.

Going F2P in August (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/21/lego-universe-going-freemium-this-august/)

Awesome.

Because, uh, I mean... my son is really into Lego and, uh... I he might like to play this.

I like to phrase it as "USA versus the whopping 25% of first-language English speakers who aren't from it" when this topic comes up. It really seems to stick in the craw of certain Brits on another forum I frequent.

Off-topic post is still off-topic, even two months later.

And it's dead. (http://www.joystiq.com/2011/11/04/lego-universe-will-end-in-january-2012-offices-closing/)

Here's everything of substance at the link:

Someone should warn Smedley. 

Is this the part where we go into a 20 page dissertation about the rise and fall of Lego Universe a la SWG?  :grin:

I'm not surprised Lego Universe didn't succeed as a F2P product. Target audience for Lego is young, much younger than a traditional MMOG like EQ2, and much less hardcore of an audience.

Isn't it essentially the same audience that Toon Town and Free Realms was targeting?

I'm not surprised Lego Universe didn't succeed, full stop. Going F2P was just the last in a series of maneuvers to try to get any sort of revenue hike from that game before they invariably had to close it down.

Well, this sucks. Now I have a few friends out of work, probably!

Yes except the main joy of lego is building and in this one you had to grind for parts.  Even after you had parts you'd still have that niggling feeling of "Why am I doing this online with this frustrating interface.. why wouldn't I just do it with the real bricks sitting around the house?"

'Why am I not just playing minecraft?'

Minecraft is so much more like what I expected Lego Universe to be than Lego Universe turned out to be.  I think I played it for about 2 hours.

Why is it that there are so many lego games yet none of them let you build stuff out of legos?

Legoistics

The best laid plans of mice and minifigs.

I've no doubt that was the original prerogative, but available means and chosen ends often dilute that a significant degree.

With Minecraft still in the gaming public's eye and clones of it still nipping at its heels, now would be the absolute perfect time for Lego to put out a Lego-branded Minecraft-alike with various bricks instead of 32x32 cubes. Made properly it could rake in a shitload of money and there's always the possibility of futher exploitation via DLC.

I can only imagine that Lego hasn't done something similar yet out of fear of weakening their core plastic brick business.

There's always Life of George (http://george.lego.com/).

Does any game have a decent "build with legos" interface?  This is the issue I had.

I got so good at building in Lego Universe, but it involved using a bunch of really weird workarounds such as gaming the camera position vs. zoom to slow down the rate of camera travel. I miss the things I managed to wrestle out of build mode, but apparently they would be impossible to create in the final release.

I don't think Lego's own Digital Designer even has a decent interface and that's a tool whose express purpose is to sell you many more expensive plastic bricks.

My son played the F2P alot. I think they should have allowed greater access to the zones for free players and somehow added microtransactions instead.

As it was F2P was more like the Warhammer Online endless trial than a real F2P option.

Im shocked, I thought for sure targeting a demographic without available credit would for sure drive the microtransaction system into a frenzy!