Previews

In the fourth of our five part "The War on the Impossible" series, we focus on Trinity, the next expansion to EVE Online. Due out this winter, CCP promises a complete graphics overhaul, a brand new client and a host of gameplay improvements. We preview them all in this article.

To get caught up on this series, you can check out Part One: Introduction, Part Two: Democracy and Part Three: Ambulation. Part five follows later this week.

"We have a focus in this expansion and its beautiful ships," said Chief Technical Officer Halldor Fannar. "I believe this is only the beginning."

The expansion is about more than just pretty pictures though. During a detailed presentation, Fannar explained that all those graphics would be made possible by a brand new client, which not only provides significant improvements for everyone in a traditional DirectX9 environment, but also paves the way for the future and DirectX10. The goal is not just to throw more polygons at people, but to take advantage of larger company resources to build a client that runs better as well.

Ready to learn more? Click below to get the scoop!

Call it what you want, "walking on stations" or "Ambulation". Next year, EVE Online is going to let people out of their pods and into the world. We preview both the artistic and gameplay plan for the expansion after next as part of our week long series of reports from last week's fanfest.

This is the third part in our series. To get caught up, you can check out Part One: Introduction and Part Two: Democracy.

When CCP looked at their game, they realized an overwhelming percentage of their subscribers were male and many people of both genders just could not relate to a game where people primarily identified with a spaceship, rather than a living being. As they continue to try to grow their game, they felt the need to fix the problem, but also did not want to change what made EVE Online so popular.

By design, Ambulation will not change the way people play EVE. They've gone to great lengths to ensure they don't waste their time with graphical representation of functionality already in the game, but instead create new gameplay for those who do wish to get off their ship and see the sights.

Read more after the jump.

Yesterday, we introduced the coming week of articles based on what we saw at EVE Online Fanfest and today we focus in on our first issue: The Council of Stellar Management. This is CCP's attempt to bring "deliberative democracy" to EVE and in true CCP-fashion, they not only presented their design, but invited a couple people to disagree with them and gave them microphones.

In this article, we describe the system, relate the presentations of Jessica Mulligan and Dr. Richard Bartle, the debate that followed the CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson and then finally our own take on the idea. Enjoy.

CCP then said the Council of Stellar Management exists within the "physics of the world", not to influence it. This statement though is a direct contradiction to the design presented earlier in the day, where the councilors were to serve as people, not players and to consider whatever the players want, which theoretically could and should include questions of game balance and design.

At this point, Mulligan brought up a theoretical example where the Goon Swarm convinces the council to vote that all ships be replaced with pink ponies. It's patently ridiculous, but not really inconceivable. What would CCP do, she asked. They admitted they would not make such a change, as they would need a good reason why and none could be given. However, they argued this would never happen.

Read more after the jump.

In the first part of a multi-part week long look, we introduce what we learned at EVE Online Fanfest held last week in Reykjavik, Iceland. There, CCP Games explained a wealth of information on the future of their virtual society, including a look at the upcoming Trinity expansion, the Ambulation and even a democratic initiative within the game.

Check back every day this week for a dedicated, focused feature on a specific aspect of the game's future.

"War on the impossible," is the company's latest mantra, according to CEO Hilmar Petursson. But, EVE Online has always defied expectations. It launched as a shell of a game to a very limited to subscriber base, yet while most games follow a very predictable life cycle, EVE refuses to quit growing. As of last week, the game has 197,773 subscribers, up substantially from last year. It creates a growth chart that looks more like Google's stock price than the typical bump and decline most games see.

Part of this success is how the world of EVE has taken on a life of its own. While most games divide their players between servers for technical and gameplay reasons, CCP capitalizes on the infinity of space and runs a world that recently hit 37,290 concurrent players logged in. The value of this is not just technical, and their Fanfest demonstrates the fact perfectly.

Read part one after the leap.

The Tabula Rasa Pre-order Head Start began when the servers went live on Monday. I got into the game on Tuesday and have been playing quite a bit since. Here are some early impressions of the game in its current state that will launch on Friday.

After logging in and creating a character, I found myself in the tutorial area, and no offense to Captain Burba, but I didn't want to skip past this first part of the game. After running a few short missions designed to give familiarity with the controls and interface, I made my way into my first combat with the Bane. The combat in Tabula Rasa is fast and dynamic, and even though it gives the impression of FPS-style combat, it's not quite that reflex/"twitch" orientated.

See the full Pre-Order Head Start Preview on the other side of "Read More".

SOE showed us EverQuest's 14th expansion, Secrets of Faydwer. It brings in some of the most innovative gameplay wrinkles anyone has tried in quite some time. Read on to see what's new in the original world of Norrath.

"We did more action-oriented stuff," said Senior Game Designer Ryan Barker.

In the dungeon, Barker showed off four examples. He turned down the fire-themed hall full of monsters, which seemed pretty straightforward. Along the walls are stone dragon heads, and as the players fight the enemies, these dragon heads shoot lethal flames across the hall. Players need to pay attention and time their progress or get burned to death.

Click below to read more.

SOE had a press event in San Francisco recently and there we saw EverQuest II's next expansion: Rise of Kunark. That game launches on November 13th and Lead Designer Akil Hooper took the opportunity to run us through what is to come.

The meat of the expansion, though, is for veteran players. The Kylong Plaines offer level 70-plus content so players can take advantage of the 10 new levels RoK unlocks (there are also more achievement points to collect).

"Instead of having a single zone with a single theme to it, we combined four zones into one larger zone so you can move into different areas without a loading screen," Hooper said of Kylong, and he wasn't kidding.

As he walked through this epic zone - of which there are four, with a total of 10 major unique regions - he took us seamlessly up a mountainside and out of a jungle into the snow. It looked natural - if compressed - and there seemed to be no trickery, as he turned to look down from those snowy peaks into the jungle below.

Read more after the jump.

At an event in San Francisco last week, Flying Lab Software gave us a rather unique twist on the usual Pirates of the Burning Sea demo. They concentrated exclusively on the supernatural elements of their game, something they had not often talked about before.

FLS understands some players come to their game partly because of its grounded setting and they were careful to ensure that those supernatural elements included were both within the legend of their setting, and completely and totally optional as part of what a player must do to advance. This means that while there are a slew of missions for players to enjoy that deviate a bit from what is strictly possible, characters can in essence choose not to believe in that kind of thing and avoid them altogether.

The supernatural elements of the game are confined both through story and geography. Players must undertake missions to experience that content and it is confined to specific areas. While there are "ghost ships" (players cannot capture them) in the seas around these areas, the majority of the content is land-based.

Find out more about the spooky stuff after the jump.

Today, Tabula Rasa on WarCry offers you an extensive preview of Tabula Rasa's class system, including mini-capsules on each of the classes in the game's unique tree.

Advancement takes the form of a tiered, branching profession tree! All of you start on even footing here with me, as Recruits! You will then have several opportunities for divergence and promotion as you advance! Each new class brings with it opportunities for training in specialized skills, abilities, weapons and powered body armor! Your training time, as measured in "ability points", is limited...there's a war on out there! Not every member of the same class will train in the same manner! You'll have tough choices to make, Recruits! Do you read me? DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'VE EXPLAINED HERE? DO YOU NEED ME TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE? All right then, here you go...

Click below for a comprehensive preview of classes in Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa!

Earlier this week, we released some first impressions of Fury based on our experience in Beta Weekend 2.0. Now, we have a full length hands-on preview of the game from this same weekend. Once again, Alan Hoover does the honors.

Trials are what you use to get your skills. You spend your hard earned Essence (mine wasn't so hard earned as cheaply stolen) to complete these trials to unlock new skills, as you unlock skills you raise in rank. Without even noticing, I progressed to Disciple, level 3 out of the 10 level s available. This meant I had more equip points so I could add higher armor and more skills. I decided I would do just that, but it would have to wait till the next day as I had to log out for the night.

Sunday arrives, all day I am thinking of Fury and playing my new Disciple character. Luckily for me Fury can be played casually and I wasn't falling too far behind the curve that I couldn't catch up. So, finally I get home with about four hours to go on the preview weekend. That's when I came to the realization I was facing a serious time restraint, because as some of you know, the Bossman , A.K.A. Tony Hilliam, Auran CEO, said they were going to reward players who achieve the rank of Adept or higher by giving them access to a new VIP account. Well this could be a problem as I was freshly Disciple and had a long journey to Adept (level 4) and getting my reward.

Read more after the click.

Over this past week, NCsoft has "relaxed" the Tabula Rasa NDA for members of the gaming press. I'm able to tell you this, because over this past week, NCsoft has "relaxed" the Tabula Rasa NDA for members of the gaming press (read it again, slowly). This means that any random internet boob, who happens to have a marginally recognized gameblog and beta access, can now get up on his soapbox, spill juicy details about the game, and editorialize his own agendas.

Hey, wait a minute. I'm a random internet boob with a marginally recognized gameblog and beta access!

Introducing this WarCry exclusive Hands-On Editorial Preview, and the first of many features to come that will start bringing Tabula Rasa into the light of day.

So, is Tabula Rasa a revolutionary game that redefines the genre and completely eliminates every negative aspect of the MMO experience as we've come to understand it? Will it also make thousands upon thousands of julienne fries? Well...no. It does, however, exhibit the hallmarks of evolution. It's the primitive beast of a genre learning to walk, and even run in places, and one doesn't easily choose to return to crawling after that. It is also pretty fun to play...that's important, right?

Oh yeah...and it has giant robots.

Click below to read the article.

Alan Hoover, our Fury on WarCry Site Manager, ran through this weekend's Beta Preview event and came back with some thoughts. He took a different approach, as we've written a few articles on gameplay itself and this time looked at some of the less publicized features the game has or will have.

The fire and brimstone is settling as this weekend's beta preview event has drawn to a close. Players sheathed their swords and headed back to the only grind in this game, that of real life. Fury will absorb you and it will occupy the time with its nonstop pvp action. It truly is a game you could jump into on your lunch break, or you could play a game before you head out to dinner with the family, and share your stories of the armor and riches you obtained by winning in bloodbath.

Read more after the click.

It's officially here, the end of our E3 coverage. Today we bring you two more pieces to cap things off. The first is a look at the NCSoft free-to-play hack'n'slash MMORPG Dungeon Runners.

"There's no epic storyline in Dungeon Runners, it's about little self contained nuggets of goodness," we were told.

The dungeons in Dungeon Runners are procedurally generated. Essentially, the team built pieces and lots of content. The computer just spits out logical combinations every time someone goes in. This isn't a hardcore game that someone can grab a map for off our website.

Click below for more.

Fury is a fast-paced PvP MMO from Australian developer Auran and upstart publisher Gamecock. It's due out on October 9th, but we got a chance to take a peek at the recent EIEIO event in Santa Monica, during E3. Find out what we thought:

At EIEIO, we played Bloodbath, the scalable free-for-all game. It can hold anywhere from eight to 32 players and puts them in a map appropriate to the number who show up.

When I last played Fury, it was at PAX last fall and while I had a lot of fun, there was quite a learning curve. This time, I was able to jump right in and with only a few hints on how to use my character, get my licks in. In fact, I actually won my first game, albeit against a group of fellow newbies.

Click below for more.

As we polish off the last of our epic E3 coverage, today's non-MMO preview is of Civilization Revolution, the console adaptation of the epic strategy franchise. Sid Meier took a hands-on approach with this game and at E3 we saw the Xbox 360 demonstration.

The "revolution" of this game is the way it handles victory conditions. My one complaint about the Civilization franchise has always been that at a certain point, it feels like there is an inevitable march to a specific victory. It's an epic game and not really full of twists and turns. They reworked that for Revolution. They believe that every single victory condition is now viable and, what's more, each civilization will likely have a chance at one of them each game. This means that while Napoleon goes for a conquest victory, George Washington might be on the very of economic victory, Ghandi a cultural win and Elizabeth I a space victory.

The game also has a bunch of ways for players to pull the rug out from under each other. For example, if Rome is about to take home the economic win, a player who builds "The World Bank" wonder ups the amount of money Caesar needs, but leaves it the same for themselves. A well timed World Bank could be the difference between a narrow loss and a dominating win.

Read more after the click.