SGWNews:01/02/07 Happy New Year!

From Stargate Worlds Wiki (SGW)

Article at StargateWorlds.com

by Khatie

Welcome to a new year, Stargate Worlds Fans! Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment developers share their predictions for 2007 at Ten Ton Hammer!

In his final "Loading..." Blog for 2006, John "Boomjack" Hoskins shares predictions from many developers, including a few from Stargate Worlds!

Read the blog and predictions here, at Ten Ton Hammer!

Predictions from Stargate Worlds Developers for 2007:

From Rollin Hafner, 3D Artist:

My MMO Resolutions

I resolve to add 50% more Llamas into every game. Most of them will be hidden in unexpected places. Lookout! There’s one behind you!

I resolve not to have any more freakin elves in an MMO, ever.

I resolve to stop using endless lists of internet jargon and lame acronyms to communicate. It’s noobish, IMO, lol :-P

I resolve to stop naming characters things like Durnak, Elwind, and other names that sound like Tolkien sneezing while drunk. I further resolve not to name characters things like “ikilledyou”, “your_mom” or “Im_a_noob”.

I resolve to advocate quests that do not involve the mass slaughter of an area’s natural wildlife. Is 20xp worth the destruction of an ecosystem?

I resolve to answer the question “why did this random animal I just killed have money and a leather vest for me to loot?”

I resolve to have shopkeepers and innkeepers who aren’t perpetually glad to see you and wishing you safe travels. What drugs are these people on?

I resolve to have more random musical numbers in the middle of game play.

I resolve to bring back sprites and midi files to games, starting with MMOs.

From Raph Robbins, Junior Content Designer:

One of the greatest achievements of the Stargate SG-1 television series was how it broke down many classic sci fi constructs into manageable chunks which could be easily understood—and identified with—by the casual viewer. This was done by providing clear, simple emotional hooks which allowed the audience to become invested in what these characters were getting themselves into. “Seth” was about Jacob Carter learning to swallow his pride and mend his relationship with his son. “Affinity” was about the community’s natural mistrust towards outsiders, and how people of all walks are victimized by this mindset. These are things that speak to our innermost drives, and resonate on a level beyond the hard sci-fi mentality.

This is one of the many reasons the show was able to last ten years, and it is our responsibility to provide the audience with storytelling that fits this mold. Good storytelling resonates with the audience and elicits an emotional response. It is served by the text, but is not just the text. One of the unique challenges will be finding methods which allow us to accomplish this in the MMO space.

So, my resolution is to help provide our audience with a great story that they can relate to, and perhaps even find relevant on a personal level.

From Mike Whiting, Artist:

I think it is going to be very competitive for second place behind us. But seriously though, I think everybody is going to try and follow WOW’s formula (classes, races, leveling, talents, instances, etc.). I think that people are going to have to do something extraordinarily creative to supercede any one of us, the competitors. I think we are doing some very cool things, and our game will rock. Other than that, the big names like LOTR will make tons of money, but we’ll see if they can mix it up at all, and do something great.

From Jason Bucher, Lead Systems Design:

MMO gaming in 2007 – Hopefully we see more niche based MMOs with developers and publishers pushing away from the EQ/WoW paradigm that has dominated this market. EQ2 also needs to fix its combat by slowing down player and mob movement in order to empower some of the more interesting tidbits of their game design. I also want to see MMOs give more respect to crowd control and how it can affect a gameplay system instead of using the watered down WoW approach.

From Jimbo Younkin, World Builder:

See MMOs done right on a console like the XBOX 360.

From Nick Heitzman, Lead Artist:

My New Year’s Resolution for MMO gaming is to play even MORE in 2007; Somehow juggling EverQuest 2 and WoW Burning Crusade in harmony, before adding Lord of the Rings online to the juggling act.

Predictions would be that the Burning Crusade will be amazing; EverQuest 2 will continue to improve and develop in depth and breadth; EVE Online will maintain it’s slow rise with Revelations and beyond; Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar will be awesome, and hopefully evolve into a living, breathing Tolkien world; That MMO popularity will spread even further, and eventually become a mainstream social activity bridging countries, cultures and lifestyles on an even more massive scale than they do today.

What I’d change or fix in MMO’s? No grinding or unnecessary downtime at all! I’d much rather be doing a hundred simple quests which take an hour each, that I can eventually complete – than a minute of senseless creature killing just to level. When I am questing, PvP’ing, or exploring and I am gathering experience, honor, etc. – I do so effortlessly and almost invisibly – so I am pleasantly surprised when I ‘ding’ while solving some situation for an NPC, etc. Instead of marking the progress on my experience bar with each kill while estimating level time, and mindlessly slaughtering over and over.

From Max Stewart, Director of IT:

Predictions:

WoW will burst onto the scene again with the release of Burning Crusade. Millions of current players will return and a smattering of new players will sign up. Smattering of course being relative, a WoW “Smattering” is still several hundred thousand players. This new burst of steam will result in a stability nightmare for the game itself, chances are servers will be down, long login queues will return. However I predict this burst in interest will be short lived.

A handful of new titles will launch, most will be in unfinished or incomplete states. A few will launch, possibly even achieving 250k-500k subscribers however, none will be considered a success because they failed to reach WoW like proportions (despite the fact that all major titles targeted for next year are deliberately niche products and that 250k subscribers is very profitable). This will result in a resurfacing of the “is the market saturated debate”. WoW will see a subtle decline in overall subscriber base, though Blizzard will not need to worry as the numbers are so large (measured in millions) that the losses won’t matter much.

All of this will combine to put a tremendous amount of pressure on upcoming titles, like ours, to perform or revolutionize the industry. There will be increased pressure from players to see “something new” “something different”. A few titles like Pirates of the Burning Sea or Age of Conan may deliver, assuming they launch stable and bug free.

Things that need changing or fixing:

Successful MMO’s have the same failings. WoW’s end game, eschewing PvP, is identical in many regards to EQ1’s, a game built 8 years ago. Muscle up a huge raid force of real people and kill an evening. To succeed at this level of play requires a tremendous time and real life commitment, this fact will come to a head as the real barrier to entry for MMO’s and the major reason they are not “mainstream”. The most enjoyable elements are the smaller group play and I would like to see new titles, or existing ones, find a way to make more challenging small team game-play. Focusing on great “co-op” experiences of single players games, dissecting what makes 2-6 person play so appealing and pushing that forward. Find a way to allow smaller groups of people to work together at independent times.

In other words, you can still need 40 people, but have them break out into separate groups and accomplish their goals at their own pace, not requiring 4-6 hours an evening, 5 nights a week to “compete”. If done correctly, the hardcore can still excel, making game skill just as important, if not moreso, than time. It’ll all boil down to content, how fun the content is.

On a more personal note, I’d like to see Everquest 2 add new classes. It’s been 2 years, its about time. That game needs a swift kick in the “new” buttocks and new classes is the way to go. Preferably four new classes, a return of the beastlord from EQ 1 and more. I’d like to see it focus on more single group content and more diverse challenges for guilds, a return to the guild based raids would be nice, allow guilds to earn ranks in something other than guild level.