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Author Topic: Bioware Austin.. damm more Dragons.. or Lightsabers?  (Read 341933 times)
Gutboy Barrelhouse
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on: November 27, 2006, 05:44:21 PM

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3155486
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

BioWare Austin Talks About Upcoming MMO
Being on South Park, building the right end game for an MMO and more.
by Shawn Elliott, 11/27/2006 
21 of 21 users recommend this story. 
As you've likely heard, the December 2006 issue of Games for Windows magazine (in stores now) features a massive cover story on BioWare's upcoming RPG Dragon Age (check out some first details on the game here). But as part of the cover story, the guys at GFW also spoke with BioWare's Austin studio to get the scoop on its upcoming MMORPG. While the team isn't ready to talk details or world settings, they did go into a lot of the philosophy behind the game. As one of the best RPG developers in the business, the sheer prospect of an MMORPG from the studio is exciting, so read on for some intriguing comments.
Games for Windows: The Official Magazine: How long has your new MMORPG been in development?

Gordon Walton, co-studio director, BioWare Austin: We announced the game around March, but we'd really started on it in the beginning of December 2005.

James Ohlen, creative director, BioWare Austin: We've got a lot designed -- we've got the GDD [game design document] done, we've finished more than three quarters of the detail design documents. We've got a couple prototypes up.

We've licensed [Simultronics'] HeroEngine. It's a very good engine, and we're very impressed with it so far.

And we can talk about the high-level goals: We basically want to bring what BioWare's famous for to the online space, and one of the things BioWare's famous for is storytelling ... and it's something that pretty well doesn't exist in the online space right now. Most "storytelling" in MMORPGs is just FedEx quests -- you know, you have to go get some eggs -- and it's presented in a format that's just a bunch of text thrown at you in paragraph for ... and that's not so exciting. We want to bring a level of storytelling that's equal to the single-player box games that BioWare has done. I think we can do that. One of the big challenges will be making our storytelling work in an environment that has multiple players.

GFW: It seems that one of the big challenges in a big multiplayer universe is that you can't really have the player shape the world like you can in a single-player game ... .

JO: Here's the thing -- you can't have a story that involves saving the world from the dark lord Sauron -- not that we're making a Lord of the Rings game, but I'll use LOTR as a good example. You can't stop the world from being destroyed by [Sauron], but you can do a lot of things that are personal to your character. You change how your character evolves over the game, the player's personal story -- and a player's personal story can be quite epic. It can involve parts of the world that, while they're epic, exciting, and interesting, don't change the landscape of the entire world for everyone else.

Smaug [from The Hobbit] is a good example. You can have a personal quest to kill an ancient red dragon; you can have a story that goes all the way through, and you can meet all these interesting characters, and eventually you end up killing the ancient red dragon. Other characters in the online world will know you killed a red dragon, but you haven't changed the world for them. And they can still -- especially when you use things like instances -- go on a quest that involves killing an ancient huge red dragon. We can change the player's personal story, and that gives players the sense they're having an impact on the game world.

Rich Vogel, co-studio director of product development: One thing we don't want to do is NPC Pez dispensers, as I call them -- go over there, dispense a quest, and then go "vacuum-clean" a zone. We want to make sure you listen to NPCs, because choices matter. And that's really important.

JO: There are lots of quests in a classic BioWare game that would work in an online world. You'd be surprised how few wouldn't.

GFW: One of the big problems with MMO gameplay is repeating the same content, or same instance if you're specifically talking about WoW, over and over again ... .

JO: That's something we don't want to encourage. We want to encourage players to continue to make progress in their story, to do new quests, consume new content, constantly move forward. The grind is not attractive in any way. Going and killing the same dragon over and over again is not something I want to do. There are lots of different ways to encourage players to move forward. Simply putting more weight on storytelling experience points is a good way to do that. In WOW, you get XP when you finish a quest, but the weighting on that is pretty low; there's not much benefit to doing that over finding the perfect monster to grind and kill. If those quest experience points were a little higher, it would make a lot more sense to go along with the story. Now, that's a very mechanical way to ensure players go along with your story -- the other way is to make sure your story is good, that the presentation is exciting, it's personal to the player, that the player has a lot of motivation to move forward in their story. That's not to say that experience and treasure aren't still important, though.

GFW: Are there things in the other MMOs -- whether yours or another developer's -- that you've worked on that you can see working here? Any "lessons learned"?

RV: I think the big thing is that making a quality polished product with good gameplay is key. WoW proved that. WoW didn't really innovate all that much -- it just did a very good job of polishing what was out there. [Blizzard] took the best and put it in their game. But we want to develop an experience that's a BioWare experience first and foremost. And for that, it's very important to have directed content ... especially if you want to get to a mainstream audience.

JO: And by directed, we don't mean linear -- we mean that you know where you have to go to have fun.

GFW: How many of your key staffers migrated from SOE [which also has a studio in Austin]?

GW: I don't know that we have a count. Some from SOE, some from BioWare Edmonton, some from other companies completely. It's not like we had to go knocking. Experienced people want to work on a product that can be successful.

GFW: Can you talk about where the game takes place? Is it fantasy? Sci-fi?

JO: We can't talk about the setting of the game yet.

RV: The key points that we're gonna do that no one's done before in an MMOG are bring story, character, and emotion to it. Decisions matter, and NPCs aren't pez dispensers, and you're not in a grind. You're really compelled to get on and play what's happening to day ... kind of like watching a series like Lost on TV ... putting page-turning in an MMO. It's going to be extremely challenging thing to do, believe me.

GFW: Another BioWare strength, aside from story, is character customization. For lots of reasons, most MMORPGs lock you into classes without a ton of flexibility, which conflicts with customization. What's your philosophy?

RV: It's really important to have roles in an MMORPG. If you understand your role in the world, and others understand your role in the world with you, then you can get group dynamics and social behavior. [Developers] can set up interdependencies, which promote social dynamics in a game. If you don't have that, then you end up with loners ... and the world breaks down a little bit. Now, you'll be able to solo if you like in our game, that's for sure -- it's one thing that WoW proved can work. But it'll be a choice whether or not you want to group or not. You run into problems when people feel they're forced to group up or raid to get somewhere in the game.

JO: And while roles are important for gameplay, the visual aspect of your character is an area where we can let player differentiate themselves. We are gonna have a good selection of visual customization. We're probably gonna have more visual customization than you've seen in a BioWare game before.

GFW: Repetition of the same instances and raid dungeons is a huge part on what constitutes "end-game content" when you reach a level cap in an MMO. What's your plan for end-game content?

JO: We have big plans for end-game content that we can't talk about because it's a major part of our design. We think it's a very important aspect of the game, and we don't want players to be stuck grinding through the same content over and over again -- I know when I hit level 60 in WoW, I pretty much quit. So whatever end-game model we have, it's not going to be that.

GFW: And what of player-created content? Player-built cities, player-run businesses, that sort of thing?

RV: There'll definitely be an economy in our game, like WoW. But is our game going to be a simulation? No. Our game is an entertainment experience.

JO: If we're going to create immersive, epic stories that are believable, that really goes against having a simulation-type world. Those two things don't go together well.

GW: And putting the onus on players to create all the fun is ... a challenge.

GFW: How big is your writing team? Can you explain your writing process?

JO: One of the things we want to do is create more story content than in any other BioWare game before, and we started a writing team earlier than in any other BioWare project -- more than twice as big, nine total, and they'll be on the project twice as long. The reason is that the world is huge and has tons of paths and options.

GFW: How do you select your writers?

JO: It seems you can't get a writer from the same place twice -- we've got one from Hollywood, one straight out of school, one who was a designer and programmer before he decided he wanted to be a writer. They send submissions created in the Neverwinter Nights toolset, and cull out the ones we don't like. Senior writers give feedback to the ones that make the initial cut, and the potential writers make changes and turn it back in. It's some of the harshest testing for any position at BioWare, really.

GFW: What are you all playing right now?

JO: I'm playing in a World of WarCraft group with a few of the writers. We're in a Horde group.

RV: WoW, and I've started playing a bit of Eve Online. It's extremely ... niche.

GW: I still play Ultima Online every month, and play World of WarCraft right now. But mostly console games.

GFW: World of WarCraft all around. What's that game doing best right now? What keeps you playing?

RV: It's a very polished experience.

GW: It's got the best interface of any MMO by a longshot. It has craploads of content. You're always being directed from quest to quest.

GFW: Are you worried about taking on the World of WarCraft monster?

GW: There hasn't really been anything that's been built to beat it yet -- but we just want to be competitive. We're not looking to kill WOW. Will some people who play WOW play our game? Of course. But we'd be better off if we got new customers, too. It's not a zero-sum game out there.

JO: Aside from BioWare, Blizzard is the company I respect the most -- and yes, WOW is an amazing game. But there's still so much room for growth, and WOW still has tons of room for improvement. It's not a genre that's going to slow down any time soon. MMORPGs are going to be taking huge steps in so many place I can see.

GFW: What's the biggest improvement you want to see happen in MMOs?

JO: I'm a huge story guy. I want to play in a world where I feel like I'm reading a good book, where I feel like I'm there. I have lots of fun with World of WarCraft, but it's not because of the story or characters. So if we made characters you could care about and believe in ... that would be huge.

GFW: So when will we be playing the "BioWare MMORPG"?

GW: Anything worth doing well is worth taking the time. It's hard to predict when it'll be right. It's important for use to wait and make sure it's right. That's gonna take some time. Everyone who's tried to cram one into a ship date has had issues -- been there and done that a couple times.

JO: We're gonna make the best game we can.

RV: "When it's ready."

GW: The fan base of BioWare would love to see a Bioware MMO. And this was part of the genesis of this -- it's the natural progression for an RPG company to try this medium. We're happy to work with world-class game designers who aren't just copying what's come before. We have a really good studio. We probably have the most experienced team in the business, as far as building MMORPGs. We're excited about we're doing. The moment we talk about what we're going, expectations fly through the roof -- then you have to be the second coming. It's very difficult to live up to expectations; they keep escalating while you're trying to finish what you started.

GFW: And what are your personal goals in all this?

GW: I just want to entertain a lot of people. We are story-telling creatures. Story really helps make entertainment experiences more accessible.

RV: I just want to be on South Park.

 

« Last Edit: October 22, 2007, 02:56:18 PM by Gutboy Barrelhouse »
tazelbain
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Reply #1 on: November 27, 2006, 05:54:37 PM

Whole lot of nothin'

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stark
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Reply #2 on: November 27, 2006, 05:55:19 PM

Wow, I assumed their sekret project was Star Wars.  I'm kinda sad now.

Quote
...you killed a red dragon, but you haven't changed the world...
Quote
We can change the player's personal story, and that gives players the sense they're having an impact on the game world.

I guess you are supposed to get the feeling you changed the world by having your quest log update, <sigh> same as it ever was.
Morat20
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Reply #3 on: November 27, 2006, 06:14:25 PM

What's the actual difference between "having killed the Red Dragon, and the world knowing you've killed the Red Dragon" (BioWare), versus having a badge saying "Has Killed the Red Dragon (SWG), and "Having the Kick Ass Red Pants the Dragon Drops" (WoW/EQ/Diku)?

None. He's talking about the same thing. They're just trying to package the shiny a little different. If choices do matter, then at least you're forcing your players to read the quests. Or the cheat sites.
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Reply #4 on: November 27, 2006, 06:31:29 PM

Killing smaug did not affect the world in any way shape or form, Gandalf was only around because he had nothing better to do  rolleyes

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WindupAtheist
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Reply #5 on: November 27, 2006, 06:52:02 PM

"Dragon Age"

Man, there's a title that screams "meh".

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Reply #6 on: November 27, 2006, 06:53:38 PM

I've mixed this interview with a giant glass of generic suck to make it more palatable. Wake me up when Obsidian dissolves and Black Isle reopens.
Morat20
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Reply #7 on: November 27, 2006, 07:06:30 PM

"Dragon Age"

Man, there's a title that screams "meh".
Dragon Age is their single-player RPG, right?

You know what I want. I want a dragon game where I breed dragons. Train them. Unleash them to fight other dragons. Fucking DragonTycoon. I want to create mighty hellbeasts and unleash them on the innocent. There aren't enough games where I can do that.

Maybe when Spore comes out, I'll make my fighting legions of custom dragons. I wonder if you can make flying creatures in Spore? Would seem a bit of an oversight if you couldn't.
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Reply #8 on: November 27, 2006, 07:08:12 PM

RV: The key points that we're gonna do that no one's done before in an MMOG are bring story, character, and emotion to it. Decisions matter, and NPCs aren't pez dispensers, and you're not in a grind.
*chuckle*

And when it was asked how to bring the story, character and emotion the answer is: instancing.

These guys don't have any good idea. They are left just envying WoW with the "me too!" attitude.

The game may be worth following only because there's Ubiq working on the combat system, and lately he seems more enlightened than usual.

-HRose / Abalieno
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Margalis
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Reply #9 on: November 27, 2006, 07:08:30 PM

You want Monster Hunter meets Pokemon?

Anyway this was boring generic tripe. The quests won't be fed-ex quests. Great. Isn't that what the WOW people said as well? We'll see.

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Reply #10 on: November 27, 2006, 07:11:09 PM

Having seen a bit of Bioware's idea of deep characters in Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Neverwinter Nights, and Knights of the Old Republic, I can sort of see what they're hoping to pull off in terms of more believable NPCs in an online game.  I'm just skeptical they can achieve as much in a massively multiplayer platform with multiple players interacting with the same NPC... well, there's ways, but it does redefine the rules a bit.

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Reply #11 on: November 27, 2006, 07:11:35 PM

In total agreement with everyone. Including HRose. Ubiq is the one element that stands out.
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Reply #12 on: November 27, 2006, 07:16:43 PM

You know? I think they found the recipe for the Endless Stream of Quality Content - No grind!

HIRE NINE WRITERS! Woot!

-HRose / Abalieno
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Morat20
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Reply #13 on: November 27, 2006, 07:20:43 PM

You want Monster Hunter meets Pokemon?

Anyway this was boring generic tripe. The quests won't be fed-ex quests. Great. Isn't that what the WOW people said as well? We'll see.
Me? Not really. I'd just like a slightly different take on things for once, if we're going to be stuck in fantasy. Dragon Age? Fine. Do something different with dragons.

While I'm on that -- I want ugly elves, barbarian halflings adorned in the skins of their dead foes, and claustrophic dwarves.
AcidCat
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Reply #14 on: November 27, 2006, 07:27:58 PM

"You change how your character evolves over the game, the player's personal story -- and a player's personal story can be quite epic. It can involve parts of the world that, while they're epic, exciting, and interesting, don't change the landscape of the entire world for everyone else. .... Other characters in the online world will know you killed Onyxia, but you haven't changed the world for them. And they can still -- especially when you use things like instances -- go on a quest that involves killing Onyxia. We can change the player's personal story, and that gives players the sense they're having an impact on the game world."

Haha. I know this has already been said in this thread but it bears repeating - they are really saying nothing here. They are basically describing the exact same thing that happens in WoW.

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Reply #15 on: November 27, 2006, 07:31:46 PM

What you can get out of reading this:

Bioware is making a MMORPG.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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Reply #16 on: November 27, 2006, 07:33:41 PM

You know? I think they found the recipe for the Endless Stream of Quality Content - No grind!

HIRE NINE WRITERS! Woot!

Hehe. I think they can have a great epic story and come up with all kinds of lore, but at the end of the day, that's not why most people play these games. I know I sure don't. Sure it can help set a mood and a background and add a bit of spice to the experience, but it is pretty far down my list of priorities. A "player's personal story" is something I think naturally happens in any MMO that you enjoy and spend a lot of time with, regardless of the quantity or quality of the ingame story/lore.
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Reply #17 on: November 27, 2006, 07:54:12 PM

Well, to be fair, most people don't play these games that way because there aren't any games that have really done it well.

As far as single player games go though, people are playing them for that kind of experience.

But yeah, emphasis on player created content/narrative/experience is important too.
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Reply #18 on: November 27, 2006, 08:08:01 PM

Is it dungeon keeper 3? No? Not interested.
Miasma
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Reply #19 on: November 27, 2006, 08:09:41 PM

Where does the article say it is a fantasy setting or that it has dragons?  He actually flat out refused to say if it is a fantasy or sci-fi game.
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Reply #20 on: November 27, 2006, 08:23:43 PM

Who cares, a contentless interview is a serious bad omen.  They might as well talk about the free golf clubs you get when you preorder.

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Reply #21 on: November 27, 2006, 08:28:10 PM

The only thing worse than grinding for endgame is grinding to hear the end of a story (as in, can't finish the end of that quest arc? What? You wanted to just hear the story?). You think an MMOG is going to have the pacing of Deus Ex? HhahahahahhhHahahahahahAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHh.


No.
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Reply #22 on: November 27, 2006, 08:31:25 PM

I think (hope) that what they mean by quest NPC's not being pez dispensers is that the quests won't be contracts, they won't be mathematical formulas, "You do x, and you get y, each time, every time, guaranteed" like they are in WoW and other games.  You get asked to do something, and you may or may not be able to, or it may alter your faction standings in ways you didn't think of, or the NPC quest giver may or may not betray you...  

First, each quest, you don't know what the reward will be, or the outcome, or the side effects, which is very nice in my book.  Of course, the answers may be posted on Thottbot within a week, but if they make the quest outcome depend on the state of the world, or the state of the other players, etc., it can be randomized some.  Maybe to the point where "you have to pay attention to what the NPC is saying".

Meh, we'll see if it's like that.  If it is, it should be fun.  They're promising a whole lot of entertainment, content, a lot of man-hours of coding that will be.

Oh, and it could be sci-fi...  they may have used dragons as an example just cause everyone gets what a dragon is and how epic of a "quest" killing one might be, without them having to explain anything.
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Reply #23 on: November 27, 2006, 08:31:28 PM

[edit] Oops. I mistook this for Dragon Age.

I'm confused.


I don't care if it's fantasy though. Just as long as they actually "fantasize". I can let dragons slide if there aren't orcs, goblins, dwarves, and elves.
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Reply #24 on: November 27, 2006, 08:35:29 PM

I started assuming what they'd do based on their segment of one of the AGC panels. They are firmly in the WoW-defines-success camp in this genre. To me that meant diku in a fantasy world, with the hopes of cannabalizing some WoW et al players because they wouldn't have the budget to get them all.

Not unsurprising really. Just a sign that modern MMOG companies need people not hampered by the rules of the late 1990s.
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Reply #25 on: November 27, 2006, 09:04:12 PM

This is what is strange, not just in MMORPGS or games but in nearly everything:

Many many people can on paper identify real problems. But very few can deal with those problems, or even attempt to deal with them!

So often you see dev teams say all the right things, then not follow through or either bother trying. Or you hear politicians identify some issue then ignore it. Why?

1. They are saying the right things just to play to an audience and have no intention of addressing the issue. They may not even think it is a real issue.
2. Outside pressure and the fact that it is a lot harder than they thought makes them abandon whatever intent they had.

I no longer care, AT ALL, when devs spout all the right things. This is the same crap you can find on any message board. Why are quests fed-ex? Why is magic the equivalent of a gun with magic bullets? Why can't I change the world and be the hero? (And how can you fake that?) Etc etc.

There is a total disconnect from people simply repeating these points and doing something about it. There is zero relationship. No dev today would say that fed-ex quests are awesome and that NPCs should be pez-dispensers. Yet they keep making fed-ex quests and pez-dispenser NPCs.

They have learned only to say what you want to hear and to claim they are going to solve problems before having bothered to think at all about how. I can't think of a single recent MMORPG that didn't claim the quests would be much more inspired and interesting and not fed-ex. It is just one of the things you say these days from your marketing bullet-points list.

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Reply #26 on: November 27, 2006, 09:35:02 PM


Fuck pre-canned story telling in MMOGs. Add the conflict and the stories tell themselves (oh sorry.. that's niche). I remember a lot of experiences I've had playing MMOGs but I can't say that I remember any specific pre-canned quest crap that isn't covered by the fedex label.


And for people complaining about fedex quests; let's see your examples of a quest that ISN'T a fedex quest. All pre-written quests are going to be fedex quests leading you around by the nose. LOTR is a fedex quest. The Hobbit is a fedex quest.

The very definition of 'quest' lends itself to being fedex.

#  The act or an instance of seeking or pursuing something; a search.
# An expedition undertaken in medieval romance by a knight in order to perform a prescribed feat: the quest for the Holy Grail.
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Reply #27 on: November 27, 2006, 10:17:57 PM

Bioware is good at not making storytelling completely linear. They at least give you TWO paths some of the time.  :-D Sure, it's still pre-canned, but it's like having a can of chicken soup on one side, and tomato on the other.

All that being said, rpg storytelling sucks for the most part. None of them do it as well as adventure games.....and that's a genre that isn't easy to transfer to the mmog medium.
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Reply #28 on: November 28, 2006, 01:46:38 AM


Fuck pre-canned story telling in MMOGs. Add the conflict and the stories tell themselves (oh sorry.. that's niche). I remember a lot of experiences I've had playing MMOGs but I can't say that I remember any specific pre-canned quest crap that isn't covered by the fedex label.

And for people complaining about fedex quests; let's see your examples of a quest that ISN'T a fedex quest. All pre-written quests are going to be fedex quests leading you around by the nose. LOTR is a fedex quest. The Hobbit is a fedex quest.

The very definition of 'quest' lends itself to being fedex.

#  The act or an instance of seeking or pursuing something; a search.
# An expedition undertaken in medieval romance by a knight in order to perform a prescribed feat: the quest for the Holy Grail.


In general, I agree. The MMO lexicon has corrupted the idea and meaning of the word 'quest'. In PnP (and literature), a quest is supposed to be a vast undertaking - a whole story arc, if not the overarching plot behind a character's story. A quest is supposedto be a grand adventure with sub-adventures and unexpected encounters along the way. Frodo's entire part of the LOTR trilogy is a single quest.

There's very little grand or epic about fedexing, and very few MMOs bother with a dynamic encounter/unexpected event system. I can think of COH, where multipart missions sometimes had enemies spawn and attack you in the street during travel, which was kind of cool the first few times it happened. (And really sucked if you were part of a large group that split up to travel. ;) )
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Reply #29 on: November 28, 2006, 03:34:14 AM

I'm particularly amused by the dumbasses who mistake the "dragon" examples (clearly just generic examples) for a super-secret announcement that the game will have dragons, and is therefore fantasy.  Maybe it will, maybe it won't but examples plucked out the air prove precisely zero.  If I were them I'd be deliberately misdirecting.

HRose's tediously predictable "oh they haven't hired me as lead game designer or taken my spoutings on board so it will be doomed" can be discounted as usual, of course, but tazelbain, do you really think it said nothing at all?  I mean, I don't want to hold myself up as an evangelist of close-reading or something, but there is a susprising amount there.  One massive element I took from it is that the player-run economy that might have been expected from people linked so closely to UO and SWG is going to be extremely limited, for instance.

The funniest thing is that an early, "we don't want to announce too much at this stage" type interview already has a few of the usual would-be pundits doomcasting madly.  The truth is that it looks like a bunch of people who made games before are making another game, and it might be good like some of their work or poopy like some of their other work, but at least they're not doing a Raph and aiming at 12-year-olds and housewives, so say thank-you for the attention and wait nicely, Fido.

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Simond
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Posts: 6742


Reply #30 on: November 28, 2006, 04:15:50 AM

Is it dungeon keeper 3? No? Not interested.
You're looking for a game called 'Dwarf Fortress'.

Anyway, this thread is more meaningless than usual for here - it was just an interview about a pre-alpha game with no setting information and a bunch of feel-good PR waffle, after all.

"You're really a good person, aren't you? So, there's no path for you to take here. Go home. This isn't a place for someone like you."
Gutboy Barrelhouse
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Posts: 870


Reply #31 on: November 28, 2006, 04:16:30 AM

The only reason I put "Dragons" in the subject line was to emphasize that this game in it's grand scheme appears to be more of the same and follows the winning WoW style. At some point in time a team will make a new game with a new kind of experience, sadly this team does not see it that way.
Trippy
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Posts: 23611


Reply #32 on: November 28, 2006, 04:37:23 AM

Bioware is good at not making storytelling completely linear. They at least give you TWO paths some of the time.  :-D Sure, it's still pre-canned, but it's like having a can of chicken soup on one side, and tomato on the other.
Those aren't really two separate paths over the entire game. It's the same path with a branch at the very end.
schild
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Posts: 60345


WWW
Reply #33 on: November 28, 2006, 04:38:23 AM

I would just like to say that Monster Hunter meets Pokemon would be a motherfucking godsend to MMOGs at this point. Hell, just straight Pokemon would.
Ironwood
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Posts: 28240


Reply #34 on: November 28, 2006, 05:39:23 AM


I no longer care, AT ALL, when devs spout all the right things. This is the same crap you can find on any message board. Why are quests fed-ex? Why is magic the equivalent of a gun with magic bullets? Why can't I change the world and be the hero? (And how can you fake that?) Etc etc.

There is a total disconnect from people simply repeating these points and doing something about it. There is zero relationship. No dev today would say that fed-ex quests are awesome and that NPCs should be pez-dispensers. Yet they keep making fed-ex quests and pez-dispenser NPCs.

Welcome to online gaming, Post-SWG.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
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