Alganon

[sidereal]

Thoughts?  Just heard of this.  In beta.  Launching around Halloween.

Site

The naming is painfully trite generic fantasy (Evil races use lots of x's and k's.  NO ONE HAS EVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE), but the graphics remind me of Dungeon Runners in a pleasant way.  Might be the font. 

Also:

Character Progression in ALGANON is based on four core system. Actions are what characters carry out during game play, such as a special attack or a tradeskill, etc. Abilities represent a point-based distribution system allowing the character to focus on specific class-based specialties. Skills are the underlying methods of growth in utilizing certain areas of class-based focus, such as a character's skill in swords, or a specific profession. Studies are the core support base for all other systems, allowing characters to grow over time at the same rate as all other players.

[Musashi]

lol at the ui.

[Malakili]

lol at the ui.

Since everyone loves the WoW default UI so much, i mean WHY NOT?!

[Severian]

Well, the male cameltoe on the home page is novel.

[Ixxit]

Wait a minute...... This is David Allen's ( Horizons, Demise, and Moria) new project I heard about years ago that he started  after he left/ got kicked out of Artifact.  
I had no idea that they got this far with it.

Well.....  good for him.

[ashrik]

The graphics reminded you of something that wasn't World of Warcraft?

[Trippy]

Dungeon Runners has a cartoony style reminiscent of WoW's, so no.

[Sheepherder]

Yes, but that screenshot is just obscene.

[Sobelius]

Heh. Their banner is brazen enough to claim "a unique fanatasy realm..." or some such. Then you go to the screenshot section and the UI shot is WoW. Almost literally. Color for color, window for window. I mean, c'mon folks. Did they license the UI from Blizzard or something?

[Sheepherder]

Starcraft II: Blizzard SDK hasn't launched yet.

[kondratti]

Is the world still called Asheroth?

[Ashamanchill]

Buddy in that one screen shot seems to be questing in the Barrens there.

[Venkman]

Heh. Their banner is brazen enough to claim "a unique fanatasy realm..." or some such. Then you go to the screenshot section and the UI shot is WoW. Almost literally. Color for color, window for window. I mean, c'mon folks. Did they license the UI from Blizzard or something?

Back in the day, people were mocking DAoC's UI has a ripoff of EQ1's, particularly with the addition of / commands. MJ even said in response (paraphrase): "our players are going to show up having been trained by EQ1, why we would do a UI any other way"?

Say what you will about the person or the game, but that is a very realistic statement. Nobody expects a non-promoted fantasy stereotype small-ish MMO to capture a jillion new people off the street. They're entering a genre already mature, and hoping to cannibalize a chunk of existing players. If your whole game is a knockoff of the most popular one in the space, then yea, you're looking to purposely ape all the features to ease the barrier of entry.

This is about the only interesting thing I can see in this game: that it's so uninteresting 

[Simond]

Alganon was more fun when it had the original world map, complete with "Tanglevine Valley", "Karr'gath", "The Lair of Ixonya", "Zul'Nak" and "Blackrock".

[raydeen]

http://www.alganon.com/uploads/screenshots/Misty_Ghost.jpg

I was going to make a crack about Misty Ghost and how I've seen all her videos, but then I noticed Lame Zombie in the background and that just took the cake.

[Mrbloodworth]

The editor is hotness.

[Tannhauser]

Blackrock is still on the map.    You know what? This is on my radar, I mean the guy brought us Horizons right?  How bad can this be? 

[Koyasha]

The mechanics of the original Horizons before all the shit went down and it turned into the horror that it eventually became were actually pretty interesting.  Robust and involved faction systems, no locked sides, ability to choose your allegiance and that sort of thing.  At least, the mechanics as they were described at that stage were interesting.

But they tried to do way too much at once.  Plus David Allen got kinda screwed on the business side of it, from what I understand, so about the only resemblance the "Horizons" we got bears to his original game and the information we had way back then is 'you can play dragons'.

Some of the original Horizons ideas kind of shine through in Alganon, but it really does look like a supremely unambitious project.  Sure, it's better than the supremely overambitious project that the original Horizons was, but seems a little too far in the other direction, now.

Oh, and for anyone interested in back then, I still have this one height comparison chart.  With all the races they were planning on putting into the original game.  Mind you, each of these races was meant to play significantly differently and I think a lot of them had unique "classes" planned (I say "classes" because if I remember right it was meant to be a class-less game).  Supremely overambitious indeed.  I wish I had more of the documents from their old website describing the races, the mechanics, and the world, because it was really rather interesting.

[UnSub]

Perhaps David Allen has learned that if you can't 110% guarantee delivery of a feature, it is better to never mention it? I mean, I love MMOs that promise the Earth, but thus far a lot seem to delivery just Zimbabwe.

[Musashi]

Then they have to nerf it to East Timor due to the imbalances it caused.

[Sobelius]

The mechanics of the original Horizons before all the shit went down and it turned into the horror that it eventually became were actually pretty interesting.  Robust and involved faction systems, no locked sides, ability to choose your allegiance and that sort of thing.  At least, the mechanics as they were described at that stage were interesting.

But they tried to do way too much at once.  Plus David Allen got kinda screwed on the business side of it, from what I understand, so about the only resemblance the "Horizons" we got bears to his original game and the information we had way back then is 'you can play dragons'.

Some of the original Horizons ideas kind of shine through in Alganon, but it really does look like a supremely unambitious project.  Sure, it's better than the supremely overambitious project that the original Horizons was, but seems a little too far in the other direction, now.

Oh, and for anyone interested in back then, I still have this one height comparison chart.  With all the races they were planning on putting into the original game.  Mind you, each of these races was meant to play significantly differently and I think a lot of them had unique "classes" planned (I say "classes" because if I remember right it was meant to be a class-less game).  Supremely overambitious indeed.  I wish I had more of the documents from their old website describing the races, the mechanics, and the world, because it was really rather interesting.

Horizons had a couple of other things that *nearly* worked and that I wish would make it into some other MMO:

1. Database-like interface to inventory, auctioning and purchasing. Customizable searching, sorting, filtering -- all kinds of goodness I haven't seen anythng like it except in the ultimate database-interface-game (EVE).
2. Crafting where you choose/design the visual components of the object you're crafting. For example, you choose the sword pommel, guard and blade appearance (in addition to stats). More interesting than just stamping out a completely pre-made foozle.

Neither of the above were perfect, and the crafting wasn't fully implemented when I played it. Oh well. Memories of the indescribable lameness of fighting giant maggots with abilities that were half-baked and bugged beyond belief, and an overall UI that sucked (and not in a good way). 1999-2004 were interesing years in MMO-land...

[Yegolev]

Well, I liked the flexibility of the HZ UI.  Too bad they "fixed" the game, it might have been OK.  I quit when the resource nodes started fighting back.

[Severian]

A few beta keys here.
http://www.mmogamer.com/10/09/2009/alganon-private-beta-key-giveaway-20-keys

[Nonentity]

Keys for this piece of garbage lovely game are now up on Fileplanet.

[tmp]

Seeing more screenshots from it now with the beta going and whatnot, this seems to be Limbo of the Lost Online.

[schild]

But, but - Burrgle Buckethead.

[Sheepherder]

Is it just me, or is the Bloom / HDR in that scene OH GOD MY EYES, I CAN'T SEE ANYMORE.

[schild]

It's absolutely just you.

1. That's at the low end of the spectrum for Bloom.
2. As far as I can tell there is no HDR, just poor lighting.

[FatuousTwat]

That is a lot of bloom? I guess you never played Guild Wars?

[Signe]

Will there be angels?

[Lantyssa]

Or dragons?

[Signe]

Allen did the angels and Bowman did the dragons, right?  I'm not sure that even between the two, they could make a good MMO.  Not that they'd ever get together again although that would be interesting to watch.  I'm sure Allen would beat the snot out of Bowman.  That sort of bitterness might make you strong enough to go seriously stabby on your nemesis.  I wonder what ever happened to David Bowman.  Does he still make games?  Or is he living in a cardboard box at the bus station?

[raydeen]

Steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river.

[Mrbloodworth]

What is unique about this game?

[Signe]

What is unique about this game?

I think there's an NDA so you would know as much as anyone would be able to tell you by looking at their website.  Just by looking at that, it seems you can learn some things offline and there's a somewhat more involved social system set up.  And there might be angels.