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Warhammer 40k MMO...
StephenB.2006
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
FPS? That makes sense to me. Given the company involved and the wonderfully violent nature of the 40k universe. Unfortunately, MMOFPS games aren't really my cup of tea and tend not to stay in the market for long.
RTS? Given the success of Dawn of War and its expansions and the nature of the actual tabletop game, I can see a company trying to crank out some strange MMORTS sort of thing. How would that work? Hell if I know.
RPG? I just can't see it. Okay, presume that everything is restricted to a single planet. Now, restrict everything to a certain span in the timeline. Remove vehicles (make them unpilotable, just terrain), limit races, and maybe you've got something that they can actually develop but I can't see it selling in that form.
RTS? Given the success of Dawn of War and its expansions and the nature of the actual tabletop game, I can see a company trying to crank out some strange MMORTS sort of thing. How would that work? Hell if I know.
RPG? I just can't see it. Okay, presume that everything is restricted to a single planet. Now, restrict everything to a certain span in the timeline. Remove vehicles (make them unpilotable, just terrain), limit races, and maybe you've got something that they can actually develop but I can't see it selling in that form.
An object at rest cannot be stopped!
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"WE HAVE DUDES WITH BIG GUNS IN BIG ARMOR. We may also have some other stuff maybe if that's not your thing. What are you some kind of freak? Here you can play eldar"
You either played beta, or just read about it. AO work(ed)s quite well.
Besides, ork and guard? Generic.
Hopefully they have the sense to add in a few of the more diverse armies in addition to those, otherwise good lord. Is there any game out there, fantasy or not, that doesn't have orc(k) vs humans?
Getting old.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Switch: nin.codes/roldford
And Gaunt's Ghosts.
And Space Marines.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "typical" but I really disagree with this. IMO AO is and was great. Sure it had it's downfalls, but what MMO doesn't? The primary reason behind it not being as popular as many of the fantasy MMO's lies less with it's content and more with it's setting. It's easy as hell to make a generic fantasy game and throw in orcs and elves and voila, you have a game that anyone can "get". Science Fiction on the other hand is a far more picky subject. Many people are very attached to their own favorite sci-fi universe (Dune is my sci-fi of choice), and don't take as kindly to differing views of the "future" or whenever or wherever the book/movie/game takes place. Hell, look at Star Wars vs. Star Trek. There's no good reason to even compare the two, they're so far remote from each other that they're not even comparable. But people still do.
Anyway, this is primarily why it's hard for a game company who makes an origional IP like Anarchy Online with Rubi-ka to get people into it. If you had taken AO and thrown it in the Frank Herbert universe and altered the graphics/classes to accommodate and left the game-play intact? Huge hit, and would still be.
There's no reason that guns should be viewed any differently than say...spells, from a mechanics point of view. They both have reagents, both have prep time, and both can do serious damage. Look at City of Heroes/Villains as a good example of this. The AT's and power pools stretch far across genres, and show that not only can the different things work, they can even work together.
Besides that, AO like any MMO is community based. WoW is currently the only MMO I can think of off the top of my head (except FFXI levels 1-10) that you can pick up and play and have fun without knowing anyone, or what. Every other game out there, AO, DaoC, AC, SWG ANYTHING, you need to know people or quickly meet people, otherwise you're going to be bored as hell. Game play can be identical from a single player console game and an MMO, but the MMO requires the playerbase to fill in a lot of the gaps that a single player game can fill with cutscenes and other stimulation.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
To me, that makes the most sense. Though i'm sure there will be killteams, playing as a squad leader or platoon leader is the most appailing choice. Then, instead of forming squads. you would form compagnies or regiments. As many of you said, there's no way a guard can stand up to a SM, Ork, etc times a hundreds if they get close range.
Going for players as army leaders would be a great way to differ from everything else, make it epic and stick to what WH40K is all about, with the possibility to do kill teams and the like, maybe even rogue traders and inquisitors, for those who likes their games complex and twisted.
Just as long as they don't try to rip off Star Wars Galaxies is fine by me. They should check that game and do the exact opposite of everything in this game.
To be honest, i guess playing a dreadnought is a tyranids swarm or orks line does sound nice
I don't know...I wan't a 40k MMO, I wan't a futuristic MMO that doesn't make my eyes bleed, but I'd rather not GW whore out such a good universe just to turn over a $, and that's what GW is known for.
To make this game truly worthy of the license, the ESRB rating would have to be "M" or "A" and I don't think GW would be willing to loose so many tadpole gamers and their parent's $.
In closing, I'd rather not see a compromised "family fun" 40k MMO made. DOW is fine. Fire Warrior was okay. WOW in space will suck, suck hard, and suck long Trebeck.
Z
1.) The population of a game in no way correlates to how fun it is. Fun is purely subjective. For instance, I think all the GTA games are steaming piles of cow shit, but they sell like candy and people love them. No accounting for taste here. Games that are critically acclaimed run the gamut from being wildly successful commercially to total commercial flops, even if the game was great. AO, after it's initial stumble garnered pretty glowing reviews but has always had a relatively low population. Also, at the time there was no WOW, and the numbers for AO at launch were pretty typical of MMO's, barring "big" ones like UO and EQ (Not even going to get into Asian games). WoW has a HUGE population but there's those who really dislike it as a game, and particularly as a MMO for individual reasons. For them the game was unsuccessful. I'd rather play a game with 50k people that I have a blast in than one with 8mil people because it's popular.
2.) My point wasn't that simply making a game based on Dune would be a huge hit, my point was taking a game that has great depth of gameplay and is really fun, IMO AO, and replacing the setting with dune, would have been a big hit with gamers. Commercially, who knows? Obviously branding means nothing to the quality of a game, the past 2 decades starting with E.T. on the 2600 is a prime example of that. Many licensed games suck, but then again, as of late, there are many that are excellent. Sadly there's no middle ground here. MxO just out and out blew as far as gameplay goes, but it did sell fairly well initially. Again, comparing it to other like-MMO's and not WoW because that's just not realistic.
3.) Your point about how guns are used is pretty poor. Battles are handled a particular way in MMORPG's, and thats what is popular right now. MMOFPS's have been tried with very minimal success, and if you think a company like THQ is going to buck the trend and attempt a MMOFPS you're sorely mistaken. They're in it for profits, not for artistic freedom. No, 40k will be a typical MMO, and there will be guns, and they'll work like guns do in any other MMO that uses them or similar weapons. People who play MMO's absolutely do not expect hit detection or other twitch skills related to a FPS, so there's no reason to assume that just because you handed them a gun instead of a icebolt, they'd expect it to "handle" differently. No, they'll expect to hit auto attack and do whatever the gimmick for that games battle system is. "The vast amount of evidence shows us that turning the use of a gun into a passive thing in an entertainment medium is a recipe for failure" was pulled directly from an ass somewhere. And you have to consider CoX in the discussion because fact is, it is popular, and it works. Plain and simple. Ignoring it to try to make a point just doesn't work. Many classes in CoX have guns in one form or another, and for example Assault Rifle powerset in Blasters handles very similar to Ice Blast. The fact that it's a gun is more aesthetic and is there primarily for RP and concept reasons.
40k is prime for this sort of use of it's guns because 1.) there is no "skill" in the tabletop game as far as FPS twitch skills are concerned. You measure your distance, place your blast template and roll the dice for hits. Which is, incidentally, identical to how MMO's of today handle battles. IF 40k is to do itself justice they'll allow a player to control a squad instead of an individual, manually upgrading and managing the units within. Likely, when in a battle you'd manage the squad similar to managing an individual unit in other MMO's, but the fact that is what 40k is is squad based warfare (you can play a quick 500pt game with 2 squads each, and often it's far more tactical and fun than a full 2000pt game) means that if they don't allow you to either control a squad or require small groups of players to play as a squad, then they have failed miserably in their design. It's one of the reasons I don't think the Warhammer Fantasy MMO hit the mark, though I will still try it out before passing my personal judgement; and if 40k misses this opportunity, it would be sad.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
And again, your use of subscription numbers to deem AO a failure in all avenues because of it's commercial success isn't very strong. As I stated in my previous post, there are numerous examples of games that were not only critical successes but were wildly popular with the small amount of people who played them, but financially were flops. Does this make them a failure? According to you yes' according to people who care about what they're playing and if it's fun to them apparently not. I'm not going to keep reiterating the fact that financial success and subscription numbers says absolutely nothing about how good a game is. This is something that has been proven time and time again with video games and your poor argument isn't going to change this fact.
Your point about games with guns is a pretty blind view on gaming in general, according to you there's MMO's and FPS's and no other games use guns well. You can just take a quick glance at countless games on consoles including: Final fantasy 7,8, x-2, 12, (soon 13), all the Devil May Cry games, Dark Cloud 2, etc etc, for games that use guns in ways far different than typical FPS games and they work well. Those games and many more completely disprove your assertion that gamers don't want or like games that include guns but in a "passive" sense. To ignore them and their success critally, commercially and in general with the gaming public doesn't help your arguement.
You keep pushing the supposed premise that turned based sci-mmo's fail. Aside from AO, which I'm just dropping because we're both obviously biased, name some that prove your supposed point? Aside from SWG which is debatable if it's sci-fi or not, there haven't been any MMO's in a sci-fi setting that weren't done by very small studios that had any financial backing. So, the case has yet to be made on this subject that you've chosen to pass judgement on with absolutely no evidence.
Regardless I can name a single game to totally disprove the viability of a MMOFPS. Planetside. You can argue up and down poor execution, support whatever, but the base fact of the matter is, there is no real way to suppress skill at the game type to dictate a new player with a "level 50" player in a FPS. With Panetside all "levels" do is allow you more points to use for weapon groups, at the highest command levels you could do stuff like call down orbital strikes. Whatever. Fact of the matter is, there's no reason for the average player to pay a subscription fee for a MMOFPS because the game play at level 1 will be identical to the game play at level 100. It's still a FPS and nothing can be done to add or detract from that from a game play standpoint without seriously alienating the player base. Sure. ideas like forced missing at low levels, weaker shots, whatever for a level 1 character vs a higher level one, but all that "mechanic" would do is piss off players and make their skill seem worthless because it diminishes the value of skill in a FPS which is the primary reason to play a FPS vs. as you deem them "turn-based" games.
Because of this fundamental concern, I think FPS MMO's aren't financially viable for a company because there's nothing they can do to keep subscription numbers up and make money. That's one of the primary reasons Planetside failed. Why pay to play a weak MMOFPS when you can play a game like Battlefield for free? It's rare that you'll ever be in a situation in a MMOFPS that allows more than 64 or 128 players in a "field" due to technical and population reasons, so what could a MMOFPS offer than a standard FPS doesn't? Even down to community, there's little a MMO could add to a FPS that players don't already implement themselves. Do you really need a continuous avatar to communicate with your guild/teammates in a FPS? Most people use Vent/TS when playing and keep in touch with clan/guild forums, same as in a MMO.
So as a player, the idea of a FPS version of 40k might appeal to you, but in practice it would just be another FPS because FPS's at their core are identical and without changing them so drastically as to no longer be a FPS, don't need a MMO setting.
As a player of 40k the idea of a FPS version of it (it's been tried btw), is insulting and ultimately very poor use of the license. There is nothing about 40k that lends itself to being a FPS and in fact the "twitch" and fast paced action of a FPS is completely contrary to everything 40k is. Everything about 40k is about squads and tactics, and if the MMO ignores this and focuses on an individual and fast paced action then hell, whats the point of even using the 40k license, you can just use any generic setting for that without sullying the 40k universe. Hell, as you've stated, licensing doesnt do anything for a games "success" so why would they use this setting that has nothing to do with a FPS to introduce that type of MMO (which has already been introduced and shown to be not viable)?
I don't know that you've really considered the implication of your statement that a squad based mmo is "too limited" and to then be a proponent of a MMOFPS which is inherently limited in scope and potential; it seems very ironic to me.
People play MMO's for depth of character development and community, not necessarily in that order. A FPS as a MMO couldn't support either very effectively without alienating the playerbase or forcing unnatural gaming limitations on the genre that people who would be attracted to it (FPS players) would hate.
Lastly the games you listed that "took their subject in a different direction" are mostly the opposite of this. The fantasy setting of Warcraft and the emphasis on hero units in WC3 showed that WoW was perfectly viable and far from a stretch as far as concept is concerned. Using Star Wars in a strategy setting is again, really close to the source as can be seen in the large scale battles in all of the movies. The setting itself and the size of the universe lends itself perfectly to RTS. GTA? Ok, besides the fact that the "source" is terribly shallow and limited, where else would they go with it than an action game? If they had done a Kings Quest type adventure game with the source that would have been a stretch. It would also suck, but still a stretch. Praising it for letting you run around and steal crap is like praising water for being a liquid instead of a solid. I have no idea what Arkham horror is.
Anyway, we're obviously just not going to agree on any of this. We're apparently two totally different sort of gamers and like different things and see the industry differently. Life goes on.
EDIT: tried to make it not as hostile sounding, that's not my intent, just debating a point. And fixed some flow.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
o.O
sorry.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Publisher extends deal with Games Workshop to include a massively multiplayer online title from Austin-based developer Vigil Games
http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6166560.html?sid=6166560
Sadly, they would never do this.
I really would rather see a 3rd person perspective than 1st.
But I would like to know how they will make it to lure people not to play space marines? How they will introduce the other races/armies of 40k into the game, there are people who prefer a race like orcs over the rest.
But in the end it's a wait and see attitude for what they will do.
Now with EA's track record with online games how they handle the Warhammer side of the license I think will say allot for how loose of a leash Games Workshop will give THQ for 40k
But I'm sorely disappointed they would make one to begin with.
As far as I know, Planetside is the only other MMOFPS in realtime out there, and like someone else said, it was the execution that was poor in that game and not the general concept.
I've been waiting for a decent mmofps for some time now, I just hope they can pull this off.
I want to mow orks with mah predator
AO sucked because it was released as a buggy and unbalanced piece of crap that got worse before it got better.
From its release to its first expansion pack it was just a horribly buggy game without much merit. The first time I quit about 3 months after release was because I couldn't solo a mob that was 3 levels below me at level 75 (200 was max lvl).
T hen the first expansion "The Notum Wars" was released, this introduced what I consider the best world PVP I have ever participated in and for a year AO was the funnest MMO I have played. It had Unique content, PVP, Classes, and one of the most tight-nit communities of any MMO I have seen(and the Guns worked fine as an MMO mechanic, just imagine having Hunter ranged skills being more of a theme than melee in WoW).
And then they released the 2nd expansion and it was a buggy piece of crap again(still not as bad as release).
Funcom had really good Ideas about how to make MMOs fun, and I think Conan is going to reflect all the bad experiences in AO they had to learn from.
That being said, I got high hopes for a 40k MMO. FPS seems the most likely idea, but an AO style system can be really fun. All I really care about in the end is getting to play with some oversized guns.
-BW
The first MMOFPS would (almost certainly) be 10six, released in 2000. In actuality, it also had major RTS elements, though any combat was done from a first-person perspective (including ordering your robotic troops around). It failed after a while, though was revived as Project Visitor, which also isn't doing very well.
The only rational for seeing heroes on tapletop is that...the tabletop is "really" the middle of a battle. At best it's weak, but palatable because you can use your imagination. Sadly, it's unlikely that an FPS could portray this amount of grimly awesome future warfare which is really the main selling point of the 40k license.
Maybe GW already realizes this because they haven't touched any of the several FPS mods in development, for example (http://www.battlefield40k.com/index.php), which will probably be fun but lack that 40k spirit.
There is currently a table top rpg based in the 40k world that does a really good job of translating 40k into a workable rpg form, Inquisitor. it may not have been a hit, probably to due the mini's being different and somewhat odd. but it worked in that it took the major battle out of the universe and pitted you against other people in small world battles. this could be a possible route for THQ to go as it would fit with how most other mmo's work. the down side, you would almost never see a space marine, as if you go by the fluff a true space marine could take out a squad of guard single handedly, they are way more powerful than 40k makes them seem.
http://www.dust514stats.com
Tank + spank + heal spam is a fairly silly system in general, and would be extra silly applied to a WH40K setting.
If that game ever allows for a situation where your standing there repeatly clubbing something with a power fist 20 or 30 times to drop it... Hell no.
I'm not seeing how they could make it an 'massive' FPS. If fleet battles in EVE are any indication, there isn't the technology yet to handle hundreds of people fighting in the same gamespace at speeds acceptable for a FPS.
Granted, not 100s these days, but way back when having 100ish dudes fight over a bridge and stuff was epic. Didn't lag much either.
I guess 50 vs 50 could be alright. Used to playing EVE so when someone says 'big' battle I'm thinking 200-300 players per side, so 50 vs 50 sorta feels like a frisky skirmish.