Interviews

At AGDC, WarCry's Rob "Sabrehawk" Cox spoke to the Star Wars Galaxies team about their IP-driven MMO. For quite some time, SWG has been among the most controversial of games and at the conference in Austin, the team addressed the past, present and future. SOE Austin studio head John Blakey and Senior Brand Manager Debysue Wolfcale featured prominently in the discussion.

"What we're doing is, like the Beastmaster compared to the Creature Handler," said John Blakely, SOE-Austin's vice president of development. "The Beastmaster is a lot more deep, a lot more integrated into the gameplay, a lot more supportive of the other professions, and things like that.

"You know, being fans of the game ourselves, we wanted to get those things back in. but it's not just a revisit; it's an improvement. I mean if you look at the players who have returned during this housing pack up event, what you get is a lot of people saying, 'Wow, this is a lot better than CH.'

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As the new head of a company that's current mission is to find office space, Matt Firor wasn't exactly ready to spill all the beans on ZeniMax Online Studios at AGDC. A child of the same parent as Betehsda Softworks, there are some big expectations on this MMO startup, led by the former Executive Producer at Mythic Entertainment. While he wouldn't get into specifics, Firor was happy to share some of the guiding principals he brings to MMO development, principals sure to find their way into any product ZeniMax Online Studios ultimately develops.

All was not lost though, Firor did speak to us about some of the themes and principles the guide him.

"The game itself is not based on innovation, but has innovative features," he explained. At a conference like AGDC, there are usually two armed camps of developers. Those that believe the basic MMO is doing well and needs to be built upon and refined and those that believe everyone should do everything entirely differently. Firor is clearly a member of the former camp. He's happy to take lessons from games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft and put his own spin and innovative features into it, but he doesn't anticipate the reinvention of the wheel.

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Vivox is one of those companies that makes the future reality. As provides of VOIP solutions to games like EVE Online and Second Life, their mission sounds pretty straight-forward, but in reality, they're blurring the line between science fiction and fact. At AGDC we caught up on their company's progress and new features like voice fonts and text-to-speech recognition.

The second science fiction moment was their display of voice fonts. In a demonstration with a female member of the Vivox team, the same filters were applied to both our voices and in real-time gave us distinct, yet completely unrecognizable voices. They had three on display: a scratchy Orc, a booming Paladin and a squeaky Elf. All three were quite good, especially the Orc and the Paladin. The Elf had consumed a bit too much helium for my tastes, though.

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Stargate Worlds is on the verge of breaking out and flaunting its features and screenshots to the world. At AGDC 2007, we got the first trickle of the coming flow from Kevin Balentine of Cheyenne Mountain.

Now only roughly one year away from its intended launch in Q4 of 2008, the team is excited to finally get talking. So far, they've only released a handful of screenshots of some small areas. Expect that to change in a big way over the coming months.

The game has six factions players can play as. The "good guys" are the Stargate Teams (SGC), the Free Jaffa and the Asgard. The "bad guys" are the Op-Core, the Loyal Jaffa and the Goa'uld. Most of these names are familiar to fans of the shows, but the Op-core are a new invention for the game, developed in close consultation with the show's writers.

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Sanya Weathers - better known to most as the former Director of Industry Relations for EA Mythic under her maiden name Thomas - is hard at work on the guild-focused community portal GuildCafe. Recently, the company received some major investment and brought on respected people like Weathers in an effort to better service guilds. Find out what it's all about in this article based on an interview from AGDC.

First the disclaimer: Weathers told us that GuildCafe.com as it exists today is a prototype, which lacks much of the envisioned functionality. In other words, don't judge her by where they are now, but by where they're going.

Traditionally, large MMO guilds can spend hundreds of hours alone on recruitment. GuildCafe hopes to simplify the process. They'll allow individuals to create profiles for their gaming selves, complete with MMO resumes. Guild leaders can then sift, sort and filter to find the very best candidates for their group.

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AGDC 2007 (the conference formerly known as AGC) provided us the chance to discuss things with Mark Jacobs, GM of EA Mythic. In this first article, we look at his comments on Warhammer Online.

Does this mean EA Mythic's head believes they have a WoW killer on their hands? Of course not. In fact, Jacobs was emphatic.

"We're not going to hit the same numbers as WoW," he told us bluntly. Someone someday no doubt will, but to expect it of any product at this stage is wishful thinking. However, not expecting 8 million subscribers doesn't mean there isn't a lot of pressure. Jacobs told us he would be disappointed if Warhammer Online does not quickly become the second biggest MMORPG on the planet.

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Rich Vogel is best known as the Co-Studio Director of BioWare Austin, who are working on an unannounced MMO, but he also wears a hat that is a bit less public: member of the Austin Game Developers Conference advisory board. Vogel took some time to answer our questions about the newly renamed conference we're attending this week. Previously known as AGC, the popular MMO-centric conference was purchased by CMP, the same people who run the Game Developers Conference (GDC) each year in California. We wanted to know what the change in management means to that conference.

WarCry: First, can you tell us a bit about AGDC, its goals and your involvement with the conference?

Rich Vogel: AGDC was formed to provide a gathering place and educational opportunities for developers specializing in massively multiplayer online games. We have a lot of people in Austin developing MMOs and we wanted to highlight that fact with this conference. I believe we have the largest MMO development community in North America. I have been involved with the conference since the very beginning. My job this year was to develop the design track and provide the keynote speakers for the conference.>

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I got the chance to sit down and talk with Tony Hilliam CEO of Auran, and Adam Carpenter the Lead Designer of Fury at PAX recently. For those that don't know much about Fury, its genre is a bit hard to nail down. It has elements of an MMO, such as levels, persistent characters, acquiring items and money, with a very fast paced melee and magical battle that is much closer to a first person shooter.

WarCry: Can you explain how levels will work in Fury? Do you have them, and how does that fit in with the combat system?

Auran: We do have levels; however they work a bit differently than in most games. We have these abilities; there are over 300 in total that allow you to do different things. We don't have classes in the game, so everyone can be whatever they want. You basically choose your abilities you want to use right now, and head out. Any time in-between battles you can swap them out for others. So basically you can have different sets depending on what your group needs right now. The levels in the game are really just to introduce you to all these abilities. So you can start out with say 25 abilities to check out, instead of overwhelming you with 300. You can reach the top level within about 25 hours of game play, or 50 if you are really slow. So it's not that a certain level guy is so much higher than a lower level guy, it's just a way for us to introduce you to all the abilities over time without overwhelming you.

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YAR! Listen up you scallywags! As I was walkin about PAX among them landlubbers I found me some buried treasure! Ok, so it wasn't quite so buried, as sitting on a table, but no matter, I straightened me eye patch, and made haste to steal all the booty in that there treasure chest. As I turned to run as fast as me peg leg would let me, me arms filled with gold! Gold and gems! Gems as big as me fist I tell ya. A strong strapping lad stepped forth and prevented me escape with all that treasure! As I stood there waiting for the pirates, and ya, they be pirates for sure. I was waiting for them to decide me fate, when I gots to talking to one of dem. Turns out, his name be John Tynes, said he was some big producer on Pirates of The Burning Sea. Now while I wasn't able to get away with the booty, I did get away with something just as valuable! The elusive... Interview!

WarCry: In the demo you have running, we can see our avatar running around cities, sword fighting and the like. How much game play will be devoted to the avatar, compared to when we are on our ships?

John Tynes: There are a couple of different designs to our avatar game play. One is simply running around town, so running around to buy supplies, pick up missions, going to the auction house, that sort of thing. That you will do all the time, that's very common. The sword fighting game play will probably be about a third of your time, compared to ship combat. I say that because about a third of our missions are going to be avatar combat missions. So that's roughly the break down.

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EVE Online is the MMO version of a Cinderella story. They have shown how a company can take a game that quite frankly didn't have a stellar launch, and completely turn that around. EVE continues to grow, and gain new players all the time. I got a chance to interview Noah Ward, the Lead Designer for EVE while at PAX in Seattle.

WarCry: What can you tell us about the upcoming faction conflicts in Revelations 3, and how will it affect existing corporations?

Noah Ward: Well if you really want to stay out of it, you will be able to stay out of it. You can let the empires have their wars, and stay out of it, but if you want to join up and pick a side, you will be able to do that. So originally the design for faction warfare would be like solo members would sign up, but we got such an outcry from the community, that people wanted to stay with their corporations; and we don't want to break up those social groups. So now we are going to allow corporations to sign up together and pick a side. We are now not going to allow people to be on opposing sides in the same corporation. We felt that just didn't make any sense. So a corporation has to choose, and everyone has to fit the requirements, and yes there will be some sort of standing requirements.

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I got a chance to sit down with April "Cuppa Jo" Burba at PAX and ask her some questions about NCSofts upcoming game Tabula Rasa. I want to thank April for taking the time out of her busy schedule to answer my questions, even one or two absurd and silly ones. Thanks again April!

WarCry: With the Logo's in the game, and having to go and search for these things, what about people that just want a shooter? Do they have to do the whole Logo Gathering thing?

April Burba: Well, there are some Logos that you have to have. But we have missions for those, so you will go and talk to a guy, he will tell you where to land, and point it out on your map for you. So the ones you absolutely have to have, you are going to get a mission for it, it will be clear where to go. There are other logos for things like, they might open certain doors, or they might help you with certain puzzles, or they might allow you to read stuff that has been written on walls.

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In another Obsidian developer profile Q&A, we hear from Justin Cherry, the Art Director for Neverwinter Nights 2 and the Lead Artist of Mask of the Betrayer. This article looks at the man himself, is role in development and path to the industry.

WarCry: What's a typical work day like for you?

Justin Chery: Generally, I come in and get caught up on the morning emails, have a quick meeting with the artists, and by then it's time for my favorite part of the day, lunch! Afterwards, it's a combination of working on tasks and making sure the other artists are all good on what they're doing.

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Tabula Rasa's twice a month Q&A series gets back on its feet with the return of Community Manager April Burba. Today, Site Manager Scott Clark asks about a range of features that players would be interested in as NCSoft's big project runs down the home stretch.

WarCry: A game like Tabula Rasa seems to thrive, more than other MMOs, on unbroken, fast-paced battlefield combat. What form will the proposed death penalty take, and what considerations have been given to avoiding downtime that might take players out of that action?

April Burba: We do have a death penalty of stat reduction for a short time after you respawn at a hospital. You can purchase Res Trama kits at the hospital to eliminate the stat reduction, so you can get back to the action quickly. You can also take a Res Kit with you in case a friendly res's you in the field.

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Lunia is an MMO on the way to North American shores. One of the latest to join the adaptation craze, we find out about what it offers from Kim Young-Gook, Chief Executive Director of Allm. Games Department.

WarCry: What makes your game stand out?

Kim Young-Gook: It's the different play style.

It has been quite a while since online multiplayer games brought so much fun to the gaming world. But the booming online game market brought so many copycats following one or two very popular online gaming styles into many beings only to fail. We knew that unless we tried something entirely new, we wouldn't have any chance to survive. We approached our game design with new perspective. And that is, I think, mainly the reason why we are getting attention from the gaming world now.

Gamers get excited when they discover new experiences. And I don't say that only Lunia gives these fresh experiences, there are great games which have totally new and different game styles. Lunia wishes to be shoulder to shoulder with one of those great games.

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In Part 3 of SWG WarCry's interview series from SOE Fan Faire 2007 in Las Vegas, we talk with SOE Producer Lorin "DeadMeat" Jameson and SWG Lead Designer Thomas "Blixtev" Blair about the state of SWG, it's future and what makes the current development team tick. Be sure to check out Blixtev's shoes ... they're hawt.

Click the video link to the left to check it out, and don't forget to take a look at all our Fan Faire coverage, plus a few extras.

 
Part 1: SOE Director of Community Relations Alan "Brenlo" Crosby

Part 2: SWG Systems Designer Mark "Tunso" Halash and SWG Events Manager Jason "Pex" Ryan.