f13.net

Ok, so you are at the E3. What about going to hunt some infos?

On Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2006/05/12/wanna-try-a-mmo-the-first-hits-free/) they say that both DR and Exteel will be available for free anticipating the "free model" that SOE was planning to do later on. Through RMTs and content purchase.

If it's true this is a huge news. Or at least I wasn't aware of this.

If this is the E3 request thread.

@The Warhammer Mythic Booth

Force a Dev to confirm there are no levels and it has a career system.  Nasty whispers that the design has changed to be more like a certain Blizzard game.

Get Paris's autograph!  :heart: Be sure to use latex gloves to handle anything she touches though.

(http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/cpress/20060512/capt.e051199a.jpg)
Paris Hilton blows a kiss to a screaming fan while signing autographs at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. (AP Photo/Ric Francis) (http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20060512/ca_pr_on_en/paris_hilton_game_geeks_1)

... I just noticed the link in that url has game_geeks in it.  Fair enough.

An even more impressive and yet subtle set of letters within the url in boldface and capitalized below:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20060512/ca_PR_ON_en/paris_hilton_game_geeks_1

I'm fairly sure I'm allowed to say "yes, that is correct". I'm about 90% sure they're going to a RMT revenue model. I'll doublecheck today if I remember.

I would still hit it. I would wear a body condom, but yeah.

They didn't say anything about RMT. But Soccer Fury, Exteel, a tennis game tentatively titled Smash Star, and Dungeon Runners are free to download and play. At some point it's going to cost money somehow. They have not decided on a revenue model.

Did Paris gain a little weight?

In her case, this is a good thing.

Yeah her boobies look bigger.

Push up chaps, push up.

Push up chaps sound like disturbing legwear.  Control top hose would look better.

Just got back. Exteel was my big point of interest at the NC booth, and here's what I have to say about it:

I wanted to like it, I waited a year for more information, and I'm simply not impressed.

You're correct, there is no subscription. Possibly because they knew they couldn't charge for it. Exteel isn't an MMOG. It's an third person shooter. There are missions in which up to 16 players (8 per side) fight on a map. There's nothing around that. At all. You pick a battle map, it gets filled, you go. There are rankings and whatnot, but no linking world. It's like EA's Battlefield 2 servers.

Controls are twitch-based. The people there were hammering the mice and keyboards.

RMT. Lots of it. More mech types, better weapons, and so on. And here's the rub; the guy who spend $500 on uber equipment? He can be thrown into the same maps as a bunch of people who've spent nothing. There will be private maps (they were vague on the details), but the default is the random matchup. Anyone with disposable income gets a better chance to win.

Environments are completely non-reactive. That bus you keep tripping over is melded to the landscape. Your two-story mech can't punt it, and you can't blow it up. It's just there, and you have to go around or over it.

The only bright spot is that there is some detail to the combat. Like an FPS, fire can be blocked by intervening objects. Many of the mecha have shields, which can be angled forward or to fore-port / fore-starboard. If your shield isn't facing the right way, it won't help you.

Really, what it reminds me of is the single player Gundam games, like Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam. I could deal with that, but combined with the "buy your way to victory" subscription model, it really leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Are you assuming that the money spent on the product will go immediately toward better upgrades/equipment, or did they imply that?

Not that there's a ton of other stuff to spend it on, but they could still offer varying maps, different models, etc.

RMT is a Korean thing. They have not decided what the final American subscription format will be. But having spoken to Garriott at last years AGC, I really don't think RMT will be where Exteel goes. I see that happening with Smash Star first and then, maybe it'll be added to things like Exteel. Dungeon Runners and Soccer Fury I see as added benefits to getting an NCSoft playpass thing for all their games. They could easily bump the price up a buck or three each to have them thrown in.

After they explained the FPS style, I asked why people would pay for a gameplay style they can already get for free. The woman I spoke with said the money would come from added content. "Like Guild Wars' expansions?" I asked. No, not in terms of big boxed expansions. More in the lines of purchasing access to items. I threw out, "So, new mechs, new weapons, playing on new maps?" She said yes, though she could have meant all of that, or just one item. I then specifically asked whether people who'd bought better weapons would be seeded into the same maps as people who hadn't, and she said yes.

Well, all the NCSoft told us that they hadn't nailed down anything about the business model of these things except "free to download, no monthly fee, we'll charge for something content related", but we may not have received the full story.

As always, I suppose it requires we wait and see whether this would be an issue.  Realistically, the game doesn't need to support people who weren't going to pay for anything anyways.  It has to find that balance between offering nothing for paying players and offering paying players so much that they cut out new users who may have come through the free system.  Obviously it won't be perfect, anywhere on that scale loses some players, but I think they could pull off a profitable balance.  This would especially be the case if they pushed out their own Access Pass to all their games and gave me, a paying CoH subscriber, ample reason to spend a few bucks on Exteel.

You have to have boobs for a push-up to work though.

But hey, she looks....better.

Sigh. Nevermind.

I liked Exteel myself.  It was alot of fun to play.  It took a little getting used to in using the extra rocket bursts like speed boosts.  I like that left and right mouse buttons operate left and right weapons and that you can overheat if you aren't careful.  I had a great time sliding around a building part and using LOS against someone that had a bigger gun until they were a burning heap on the ground. 

I think it will do well because it is a sort of jump in, jump out have a blast (literally) sort of game.  I enjoyed playing it and enjoyed that it was a mindless sort of pursuit but a fun sort of mindless pursuit.  It reminded me of playing SHOGO M.A.D.  I love mech battles though and I saw a few other games that had some great mech types of battle.  Battlefield 2142 for one comes to mind.  I'll definetly play for the free d/l though. ;)  Money and time are limited so I'll take what I can get.