Imagine your Sims had secret powers and battled horrors in the subway station. Imagine an MMO without levels or classes – instead, you get to pick a handful of cards from a hundreds-strong deck of powers and spells. Imagine it was as gorgeous as this:
Look, tanks! I mean, here is a Company of Heroes Online trailer with tanks in it. I mean, it details the three classes of commander and their areas of specialty: Infantry, tanks, and tanks. I mean, air force.
Bioware have announced ten more class specialisations for Star Wars: The Old Republic, with a few details on the role and abilities of each. There are two specialisations for each of the Imperial Agent, Sith Inquisitor, Bounty Hunter, Jedi Consular and Trooper classes.
My MMO history is kind of embarrassing: a past of abandoned, mid-level characters, lost in server limbo, untouched for aeons, unloved, abused by my insistence on visiting high-level areas no matter the physical toll. I just haven’t ever clicked with the genre. Guild Wars 2 seems to understand that there are players who don’t want to focus on levelling, or raids, or alts, and wants them to come in and see what all the fuss is about.
I’m in the the trenches at the Company of Heroes Online demonstration here at Gamescom. It’s on course for a spring release next year, and I’m finding out lots about the business model and how the free elements will stack against the paid bits, as well as getting a good impression of the game itself.
Isn’t being a Jedi boring? I mean, sure, you’ve got a laser sword, you can see into the future, your reactions and decision-making processes are heightened by exposure to an all powerful psychic force that grants you telekinesis and advanced healing, but man, don’t you just wish you either had a load of armour, or two laser swords? If only Bioware would announce exactly those two specialisations for the Jedi class in their upcoming MMO RPG Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Oh wait, what’s this?
PCGamer.com routinely features Developer Diaries: tales of what goes on behind-the-scenes in the development studios making your favorite games. This Dev Diary is titled “Electric Slide” and was written by our friends at Paragon Studios, the developers of City of Heroes and its upcoming Going Rogue expansion.
Going Rogue doesn’t launch for almost two more weeks, but we’ll take any excuse to give stuff away! So, because even super heroes and villains look cooler with a jetpack, we’re giving away 30 codes for jetpacks in City of Heroes! Plus, we’re picking winners for 10 Going Rogue codes–which grants you access to the entire game, no previous account/boxes required!
In comics, everything is a shade of grey. “It’s always been a comic book staple,” says Matt Miller, Going Rogue’s senior design lead. “The hero falls from grace or a villain sees the light and redeems himself.” Finally, players will be able to scribble goatees on their heroes and stuff hearts of gold in their villains.
Need for Speed World, the racing MMO from EA, will be making annoying revving noises at a stop light in time for a July 27 launch. You can pre-order it now to get early access to the game. So spend money now, and once you’ve already spent that money and you’re poor, find out whether you like it or not. Sigh. On the other hand, it’s got a not bad pricing model.
“Every week we plan to have something new for players to do,” Star Trek Online’s executive producer Daniel Stahl told MMOGames.com. Cryptic’s plan is to emulate the weekly, episodic “tee vee shows” that Star Trek was apparently based on in the distant past, before it was made into a movie for the first time ever in 2009.
Details of the full BioShock Infinite demonstration are at: http://www.pcgamer.com/tag/bioshock-infinite/
