Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Malakili]

  Just....   
Housing Video

If you're on the fence about this game, after watching that video you likely won't be.  Has to be the baddest ass housing implementation on a viable AAA MMO I've ever seen.  errr, maybe tied with SWG.

God damn it.

[luckton]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/22/pax-east-2013-a-first-look-at-wildstars-high-low-and-housing/#continued


SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

Also, the Massively article details a leveling zone IN SPACE!  So there you go.   

[Venkman]

Played this for a bit at PAX East. Felt like a WoW clone. That's not necessarily a bad thing of course. WoW may have run it's course for me, but the fundamentals are still sound.

Played about 10 minutes, not nearly enough to get the gist. MMOs don't really shine well at limited-attention-span conventions So none of the longterm stuff that's interesting about Wildstar really has a chance to come up at a show. They had a pretty sizable booth for it. Kinda like they really want to invest to make it successful or something 

[Mrbloodworth]

Voice overs and acting throughout?

[Venkman]

Not that I could see. Some here and there, but it was in all that forgettable variety, like stock phrases on click but the stories told in text. I could be remembering it wrong. It was the first booth I hit simply because of where it was.

[luckton]

I think I'm over the whole "fully-voice acted quest dramatics" thing.  SWTOR showed that in the end, it really doesn't matter, and you'll just end up ESC through the cutscenes anyways.  TSW did some fine stuff with quest intros to get you at least interested in doing the quest and maybe seeing it to it's conclusion, plus the scripted lore from characters was neat.  But if I could trade that for a better DX11 client + some better fleshed out gameplay, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

[Goreschach]

I think I'm over the whole "fully-voice acted quest dramatics" thing.  SWTOR showed that in the end, it really doesn't matter, and you'll just end up ESC through the cutscenes anyways.  TSW did some fine stuff with quest intros to get you at least interested in doing the quest and maybe seeing it to it's conclusion, plus the scripted lore from characters was neat.  But if I could trade that for a better DX11 client + some better fleshed out gameplay, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

What I don't understand is why nobody has combined this with the WAR style Tome of Knowledge. Instead of having actual dialogue, have the quest text be narrator based and let the player turn on, pause, rewind, whatever through the TOK. It'd be a lot cheaper to just bring in a few narrators rather than dozens of VA's.

[Malakili]

What I don't understand is why nobody has combined this with the WAR style Tome of Knowledge. Instead of having actual dialogue, have the quest text be narrator based and let the player turn on, pause, rewind, whatever through the TOK. It'd be a lot cheaper to just bring in a few narrators rather than dozens of VA's.

Isn't think pretty much what Diablo 3 did with the tomes you could find? Some also played when you killed something new.

[Goreschach]

No idea.

[satael]

Dungeons & Dragons Online has the "dungeon master" do some narration whenever you enter an instance. Some were actually pretty decent (though not the Gygax one)

[Venkman]

I finished caring about fully voiced over in MMOs during EQ2. It's because of the game play. VOs are great for RPGs because there's a fair chance it actually does add to the immersion, drawing you into listening. For MMOs, you know it's just window dressing on a "go to X and do Y" thing. Until the core moves beyond tasks, I'd rather they spend the money elsewhere and not incur the residuals to SAG or whatever.

The narative idea for a TOK works though. And yea, that's about how it was in D3 iirc.

[Furiously]

My problem vo's is it can totally turn me off from playing a character.

[Ghambit]

The VO's in Defiance are pretty much all I need.  There is just a voice in my comm (with an avatar in the corner) paraphrasing what I read in the mission text or embellishing a sudden scripted event, and that's it.  Perfect.  Wing Commander style.

[Mrbloodworth]

My problem vo's is it can totally turn me off from playing a character.

Its not my player having VO I care about.

[Tarami]

I don't want anything in my MMOs that will be hard and/or expensive to continually produce. Voice-over being one such thing. I want patches and expansions to feel as equal in quality to the original content as possible.

[satael]

I don't want anything in my MMOs that will be hard and/or expensive to continually produce. Voice-over being one such thing. I want patches and expansions to feel as equal in quality to the original content as possible.

I'd like/settle for one or two good voice actors doing narration whenever appropriate (the actor really makes a difference which you can hear in audio books). Going for a full cast vo is far too costly and cumbersome for most MMOs.

[Kitsune]

The problem with no VO in this instance is that they're playing themselves up to be all Ratchet and Clank-ish, and maintaining the sort of humor they're trying to associate themselves with in the trailer ads requires voice acting.  You can't have a wacky moment with dead silence in place of witty banter, it's just plain not gonna work.  They need voice actors, and good ones at that, we're talking some of the bigger names from the cartoon market, not George from accounting's brother who does a funny voice at the holiday party.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yep. Great VO and "character" game is going to suffer if its just text. Never seen an engaging Pixar film that was soundless and subtitled. If you want to see how much may be lost, watch any video put out yet and turn the sound off and captions on.

[luckton]

WALL-E had a complete lack of any vocal dialogue for the first 22 minutes.  Just sayin' 

[Mrbloodworth]

No it didn't. He had audible noises through ought. That was part of his character, that IS his voice. This game has already presented very strong characters and voices to match as part of the package. It will be jarring if that just stops and you are reading Wow like text everywhere.

[Fabricated]

I dunno, Morrowind was fairly immersive and its NPCs would throw WALLS of text at you.

[waffel]

Have all the VOs you want, just let me click a check box in settings to disable all of it.

[HaemishM]

  Just....   
Housing Video

If you're on the fence about this game, after watching that video you likely won't be.  Has to be the baddest ass housing implementation on a viable AAA MMO I've ever seen.  errr, maybe tied with SWG.

Holy fat faced monkey fuck. 

[Zetor]

There were some pretty awesome, evocative, and immersive COH MA missions, and the authors only had text to work with.

Also, as a MUD builder, this is the point where I tell all the voiceover people to get off my lawn. 

[HaemishM]

EQ2 was also my clue that voiceovers were better in practice than they worked in theory. For an MMO, they are just crazy talk. Until such times as the worlds ARE evocatively real, are something we can experience rather than quest hubs, loot bags and drones, there's no need for scripted voiceovers because it's just expensive and not worthwhile.

[Nebu]

For an MMO, they are just crazy talk. Until such times as the worlds ARE evocatively real, are something we can experience rather than quest hubs, loot bags and drones, there's no need for scripted voiceovers because it's just expensive and not worthwhile.

Anyone remember SWTOR?  How many millions were wasted on voice acting? 

Love the housing stuff.  LOVE IT!

[Nonentity]

Someone shot the 40ish minute press demo from PAX East.

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

stuff about housing and some of the higher level zones

[Kitsune]

For an MMO, they are just crazy talk. Until such times as the worlds ARE evocatively real, are something we can experience rather than quest hubs, loot bags and drones, there's no need for scripted voiceovers because it's just expensive and not worthwhile.

Anyone remember SWTOR?  How many millions were wasted on voice acting? 

Love the housing stuff.  LOVE IT!

I wouldn't say it was wasted, the voice acting was great.  It's the rest of the game that they fucked up.

[Stormwaltz]

Holy fat faced monkey fuck. 

I do hope they use this as a box pull-quote.

[Samprimary]

SWTOR's whole voice acting idea was great and was a worthwhile investment for a triple-A take at trying to be a new major MMO

too bad about the rest of it, innit

[HaemishM]

Holy fat faced monkey fuck. 

I do hope they use this as a box pull-quote.

I should have put in TM. 

[SnakeCharmer]

This actually looks really freaking fun.  Have been loosely following it for a while, but starting to get kinda giddy for it.  I get combat is pretty typical MMO, but it is 4 toolbars full of abilities MMO or more like 8-10 abilities that really shine with positioning and being smart about what you use when/where?

[Nonentity]

This actually looks really freaking fun.  Have been loosely following it for a while, but starting to get kinda giddy for it.  I get combat is pretty typical MMO, but it is 4 toolbars full of abilities MMO or more like 8-10 abilities that really shine with positioning and being smart about what you use when/where?

http://wildstar-central.com/index.php?threads/how-do-you-feel-about-limited-action-sets.1225/

Looks like limited action sets have been mentioned. I also saw footage of a guy camming the PAX demo on two different characters - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veB3Qf6dvgE&sns=em

[Pennilenko]

http://wildstar-central.com/index.php?threads/how-do-you-feel-about-limited-action-sets.1225/

Looks like limited action sets have been mentioned. I also saw footage of a guy camming the PAX demo on two different characters - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veB3Qf6dvgE&sns=em

That dude looked terribad at playing.

[Ghambit]

This actually looks really freaking fun.  Have been loosely following it for a while, but starting to get kinda giddy for it.  I get combat is pretty typical MMO, but it is 4 toolbars full of abilities MMO or more like 8-10 abilities that really shine with positioning and being smart about what you use when/where?

http://wildstar-central.com/index.php?threads/how-do-you-feel-about-limited-action-sets.1225/

Looks like limited action sets have been mentioned. I also saw footage of a guy camming the PAX demo on two different characters - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veB3Qf6dvgE&sns=em

That OP made an interesting point about in-combat meditation.  Normally you cant switch skills during combat but a (very) few games have meditation or pop-out-of-combat ability, wherein if undisturbed you can swap abilities.  I'm all for limited sets but only if they have such a meditation ability; which for me is a damned awesome feature - reminds me of a typical Mage in a tabletop game.