New DC MMO Interview (9-28-07)

[TheOkapi]

As a hardcore comic geek that somehow managed to straddle the line in choosing DC or Marvel, I am gonna have a hard time picking when the time comes. The world of Batman vs. the world of Deadpool. How do I choose?


Probably DC, because Cryptic makes pretty games, but that's all there is to them. I'll have to hope for more from SOE. Man, I can't believe I typed that.

edit: Now that I think about it, if one of them lets you be a villain, I'll probably go that way. I love being a bad guy.

[Zerai]

I must say I like Marvel better but really, it'll come down to the games.

[Zhaun's_Shade]

I'll put my money down that one of these games (license aside) will be a better gameplay experience than the other. I find it unlikely that both of these games will be great, in fact, its more likely both will be bad then both great. Sure some will cling to one over another just due to the license, but I think this will be even more direct competition than WoW vs. EQ2 I think.

As an aside, I wonder if Sony (and other developers) has learned the lesson from WoW/EQ2/VG that skilled art and a widely accessable engine is better than shooting for "next gen" graphics.

[Kidriot69]

As i used to be a hardcore comic geek, i'll have to go with Marvel Universe (Marvel MMO). Mainly due to the company thats making it has a great track record, plus the Marvel Universe interviews are very interesting...

They have seemlessly endless amounts of things to work with.

[Jhentar_AN|Trib]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

I'm sure the guys that made Bioshock cry themselves to sleep when they think of how good the game could have been if only the support was better.

hahahahhahahahaha, great call Twobit...damn epic and their unavailability

[Jhentar_AN|Trib]

And in regards to the rest of the thread, the way the industry has moved with relation to middleware has now gotten to the point that it's just not feasible for most projects to not use a high-end middleware renderee, be it Tech 5, UE, Doom/Quake, GameBryo, etc.

The amount of time required to get the equivalent of something like UE3 for use in BioShock would have taken longer than total dev time with the number of engineers working on it so you can either do that or budget in a licence and use that dev time for adding features to the middleware such as the water improvements, etc.

The game companies such as iD and Epic that initially started out with their own tech and have managed to keep it up to date over time can afford to continue to leverage off that but even they go to using middleware layers for things such as physics (eg Havoc) for the same reason as other companies licence from them.

Honestly, it would be great to have someone like John Carmack or Michael Abrash working for a team and be able to set them to creating a new gaphics engine for each project but it's just not going to happen for most teams so you take the next best option and just use their work as the basis for your project.

As Mob said, it's about checking out a few different techs and going with the best fit for your project while leaving the least amount of work to do retro-fitting it to your needs...some teams make good calls, some make bad as we've seen very publically the last year or so.

[Zhaun's_Shade]

I have always been a fan of licencing "middleware" and if I was developing a FPS I'd do it in a heartbeat. I don't follow 'The Industry' (lolz) like I used to but I think there is still a question unanswered for MMO developers:

Are there good "Middleware" engines for making MMOs?

I know that is what Cuppy's company is doing, but that sounds a few years away. What about right now? What MMOs have successfully used a pre-existing engine? I don't think Vanguard did. Is Lineage 2 the only one?

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Zhaun's_Shade

What MMOs have successfully used a pre-existing engine? I don't think Vanguard did. Is Lineage 2 the only one?

Mythic used the Gamebryo (formerly called NetImmerse) engine for DAOC, also seen in Morrowind, Oblivion and a ton of other games. They are using it for Warhammer as well.

Emergent Game Technologies: Homepage
Gamebryo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

AFAIK it isn't a complete MMOG middleware solution though.

[Lyrical]

Looks like we all know the outcome of the Marvel MMO. Its yet another MMO cancelled by Microsoft. So for those of us that want deep content in a superhero MMO and are sick of COH, the DC MMO is our last hope.

I was reading that Sony said this game was due for an '08 release. If this is true, you'd think we would have seen more info on the game by now. At what point does this game become no longer "Top Secret?" I have never seen such a shroud of secrecy on an MMO. We knew about EQ2 and WoW and their design years before they were released.

[Twobit Whore]

Didn't SOE recently say they had cancelled an internal project? Could be this one.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Didn't SOE recently say they had cancelled an internal project? Could be this one.

I hope not. I was looking forward to some competition for COH, so they would finally stop resting on their laurels.

To date, it seems as if the development of the Marvel and DC games have been very contrasting. Every article you read on Marvel talks about how the game was turning out to be a disaster and how the team couldn't stop arguing enough to make any progress. And the authors kept saying that internal sources were saying the game might be cut any day by MSFT (which turned out to be true). But everything we've seen on DC has been about how the dev team has learned from past mistakes, were taking their time and not rushing, etc. It would be a real shame if the DC MMO was cancelled also.

But there has been such a shroud of secrecy, we wouldn't know if the game was still coming out, or if it was ready for launch in March. I know there are employees from SOE that read this (including Smed). How about some type of statement on the game's future? Maybe we don't need a Vanguard level of pre-hype, but how about any info on the game (other than it will be on the PS3 and PC).

[Moontayle]

Jim Lee was heavily involved in the design process. I'm sure you could figure out if this project is still a go by proxy.

[kidgamer]

Posted from Gamedaily.com
February 11

Marvel Universe Online Canceled


In an interview with MTV's Multiplayer, Microsoft's Shane Kim confirmed that Marvel Universe Online, which was being developed by Cryptic Studios, has been canceled. Apparently, a debate between whether or not to use a subscription-based business model was part of the reason why development was stopped. The fact that the genre is also highly competitive lead to its eventual cancellation.

"Marvel and we have agreed to end development on the MMO," said Kim in the MTV interview. "It was an amicable decision.... It's just something that we felt that, for us and for them, it would be better if we ended development. Which is disappointing, because that had a lot of promise. But sometimes you have to make these decisions."

[Ssinurn]

I guess my question would be to the SOE insider types is - we know they are doing the Agency, and the kid oriented project that was mentioned, and possibly something else with micro transactions.

Do you think SOE really has the resources to put into both this and the Agency at the same time? I mean to me the resources used on those projects would be similar.

[Ceefo]

Agency is being developed in Seattle, DC in Austin, FreeRealms in San Diego. Each game is being done by a different studio under the SOE banner.