The game is currently in closed beta testing, with no word yet on an open beta date.  Can’t wait until February?  Closed beta applications can be submitted here, and who knows, with a little luck perhaps you’ll have your chance to boldly go where no man has gone before.  Ya know, before everyone else does.

I’ve been spending some time out in the wild internet savanna recently, and the sheer variety that I’ve come across has prompted me to ask myself a question.

Basically I’m just wondering what exactly it is that makes one game a Massively Multiplayer game while others are simply classified as regular online games. I’m not here to be a snob about it or anything, it’s simply something that I’ve noticed.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning here, that generally speaking almost every game that has come out in this particular genre for the last ten years has been in some fashion modeled on EverQuest. That’s not inherently a bad thing, EverQuest was a fantastic game, especially for it’s time. Heck it’s still kicking today, albeit with a much smaller crowd than it used to have. The one downside to that however, is that when you have everything trying to be the same game you end up with a very bland gaming landscape.

Zip ahead a few years and you have the same thing, except you can replace EverQuest with World of Warcraft. Once again, not a bad idea to see what the winners are doing, but it gets boring when they’re all the same.

And that’s the train of thought that brought me to my little “huh” moment. Basically, these days, I’ve heard a number of people, not many mind you, but some try to say that games which are indeed legitimately massive in many senses of the word, and certainly multi-player in at least some cases, that take place online, are somehow not Massively Multiplayer Online games. Somehow it seems we’ve created a situation for ourselves. Some people believe that you’re not playing an MMORPG unless you have an action bar and levels and gear, and if it doesn’t look like something that they’re familiar and comfortable with it should not be included in the list of games that you can find on a site such as this.

Now if that was as far as the problem went I would be happy to ignore the folks who say that and take care of making my own judgement about games individually. However, it happens that the people who make these games do end up hearing from the people who have a very narrow view of what this genre is, and since this is by no means an industry with fat margins (excluding Blizzard; but let’s not go into the outliers right now) they become just that little bit more risk averse. And when they get that little bit more risk averse they become a little less willing to try something that might be new and might work, and might just be the thing that makes all these games into solid gold ROCK HARD AWESOME!

If you’ve ever read any of my other articles, or any of my reviews you’ll know that one of the first things I’m going to bring up is story and plot and writing. And you’ll also know the second thing that I’m going to bring up is what a game or system does differently. I bring these things up in this order before all the other more mundane aspects because I honestly believe that these are the things that are most important in judging a game, not only from the aspect of how fun it’s going to turn out, but also how it contributes to the body of work that is the art (and yes, I do mean art cause I’m a nerd that way) of video game design.

Basically think about if nothing had ever been added to the first person shooter formula for twenty years, since Wolfenstein. There is absolutely NO WAY the genre as a whole would be as big as it is today if all we got was a prettier Wolfenstein every nine months. Even the sports franchises from EA, which are notorious for being re-releases and roster updates tend to add something every few iterations that makes the game deeper and just a little more involved. The same thing should be true for our beloved online games, but currently many of the developers are just a little bit afraid to try something radical, or even slightly off message.

More than a little of the problem is due to the production of games as a whole becoming more and more costly, with MMO projects being even more so; and the hit driven nature of the games themselves. It becomes difficult to predict just what’s going to take off, and I understand that I just also wish that more dev houses were willing to try new things like Cryptic, or Hi-Rez with Champions Online or Global Agenda (Of course it’s really easy to say that when it’s someone else’s money, but we’re talking about ideals here).

The one thing that I think we, as players, can do to help this process though, is to perhaps widen our vision and our nets, and allow a little more latitude in what we try. I know there has got to be a few people out there like me that are happy to have a game which features a tagline of “No Elves”, but even the people who like their Elves, I implore you to be a little more adventurous in your game choices.

One other thing that I think we can do, that I will likely expand upon on another day, is stop marrying ourselves to games. The forums are lousy with this; go into any community you like and you’re almost certain to find in the top two pages, if not the top page, some small group of individuals debating over which game is better and how the other game should never EVER be played under any circumstances, because it’s not the game they like. Seriously, this kind of display is infantile, if you try it and don’t like it, fine, stop playing it and shut up about it, but the key to that particular situation is to TRY IT!

There has never been, in any situation I have been able to find, a game that actually and actively prevented you from playing another game AS WELL AS the one you are so worked up about. Saying that you can only play one game, and this happens with online games more than most I find, is nothing more than ridiculous fan boy talk, no matter how level headed you sound.

So to nutshell for everyone, all MMO’s don’t need elves, try new stuff, and you can play more than one game at a time.

Looking forward to getting some discussion going on how Hub and spoke games and instance focused games aren’t “true” MMO’s now.

Until next time!

The Pet Store FAQ has this to say regarding their decision to go with an out of game, real money pet:

The Pet Store provides a new way for players to obtain unique companion pets outside of the game, which is something that has been requested by many players who enjoy World of Warcraft’s non-combat companion

Currently there are only two pets to choose from, the Lil K.T. and the Pandaren Monk, but more are assuredly in the works.  Though they are they are purely cosmetic companions, one has to imagine  that the collectable nature of WoW pets will see a great many of the little critters sold.

It should also be noted, to Blizzard’s credit, that, until December 31st, for each Pandaran Monk pet sold 50% of the $10 purchase price will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

For further details be sure to check out Pet Store FAQ.

Hot on the heels of such services as WoW’s FigurePrints comes a new service officially sanctioned by Blizzard that allows you to make custom poster prints of your World of Warcraft Characters. Print Warcraft allows you to create your own completely cusomized poster your personal character.

You can chose from predeveloped templates for your poster or create your own using various backgrounds, logos, borders and poses. Pricing starts at $17.99 USD for the smallest 12×18 poster maxing out at $29.99 USD for their 40×27.

The site is getting hammered quite a bit since opening, but I had the oppurtunity to play around with it this morning, and it look like s a pretty cool service. They have links to some sample images, but I am really interested in seeing what a finished product looks like. If you happen to get a print of your character made this holiday season, shoot me a picture to take a glance at to ryan@mmogamer.com

Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report, released yesterday, cited the self propagating, data mining worm Taterf as one of the major emerging threats, with a rise of 156% in the last six months.  The virus specifically targets users of MMORPGs, and along with keylogging, packet sniffing, and other assorted shenanigans, it attempts to determine your MMO login details.

The report had this to say about the virus:

Taterf, with detections up 156 percent since the second half of 2008, targets massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). These attacks rely less on social engineering to spread, and more on access to unsecured file shares and removable storage volumes — both of which are often plentiful in the enterprise. Taterf’s impressive growth underscores the need for organizations to develop guidelines for removable drives (such as thumb drives) and evaluate how connections are made to outside machines.

As usual in the fight against viruses, the best offense is a good defense.  Be sure to keep those virus/malware scanners running and up to date.  Worried you’re already infected?  Grab Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool.  And cross your fingers.

Between now and November 18^th, any new user signing up or any current user who extends their membership with a multi-month (3, 6, or 12 month) subscription will receive Mirkwood, free of charge, on its December 1^st release date.  Already a multi-month subscriber?  Just keep your account active for the month of November and you won’t need to pay a nickel for the new expansion.

Turbine is also offering an Adventurer’s Pack, with the following perks:

• Shared storage: A storage space capable of storing 20 items accessible by all your characters on the same LOTRO server/world.
• Extra Character Slots: Two additional character slots on each LOTRO server/world that become visible once all other exisiting slots are filled.

The pack runs $19.99 and will be available, along with the expansion, on December 1^st.

Steve sits down with Alan Crosby, formerly SOE’s Director of Global Community Relations, and current Senior Producer of EQ2 to discuss the ten year history of the EverQuest franchise.

Topics include the changing tastes of players over the years, the prospects for an EverQuest 3, keeping the game on store shelves, and the next ten years to come.

The MMO Gamer: First of all, for those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, could you please introduce yourself to us and tell us a little about what it is you do at SOE.

Alan Crosby: I am Alan Crosby, and I’m the Senior Producer on EverQuest 2. I’m essentially the shepherd of the game.

The MMO Gamer: EverQuest has been around now for over a decade now, having hit its tenth anniversary back in March.

In terms of the online gaming industry, EQ was released when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, and yet it still survives into the present day.

How has the game managed it?

Alan Crosby: It’s done very well, it continues to grow, it continues to add expansions, new features, new content.

Its customer base, the community out there is very loyal, very passionate, and they stay around and keep playing, and demanding change.

We try to give them the change they want. They’re the main reason that the game has been around for ten years.

Yeah, we continue to put out content, we put out an expansion every year, we put out live content every few months, but it’s the players and their passion, their friendships, their social bonds that keep this game going.

The MMO Gamer: Do you have any figures as to how many people, in total, have played EQ over the years?

Alan Crosby: The total is somewhere over two million people have played EverQuest during its ten years.

The MMO Gamer: And do you know off the top of your head how many people have been playing it, consistently, for each of those ten years?

Alan Crosby: We pulled those numbers, I don’t have them readily available, but we actually announced it on the website for the tenth anniversary, some of the people who have been around since the beginning.

The MMO Gamer: Are there bronze statues of them in the middle of Freeport by now?

Alan Crosby: [laughs]

The MMO Gamer: What about the development side? Is there anyone still working on EverQuest who’s been there since the beginning?

Since the 989 Studios days, with Brad McQuaid at the helm?

Alan Crosby: I’m not sure if anybody from the original team is still on it. We have people from the original team still in the company.

Roger Uzun, for example, started with the original EverQuest team at 989, he’s now on the EverQuest 2 team. But I don’t know if any of them are still on the EQ team.

The MMO Gamer: EverQuest was pretty much the father of the MMO expansion pack, which, as you said, you used to release every six months and you’re still continuing to release on a yearly basis.

The base game, by the standards of the time was very large to begin with. Which makes me wonder just how large it’s gotten now, with all of those years of expansions under its belt.

Alan Crosby: I don’t have the number on-hand, but we did release how many square miles it equates to in the real-world on the site. But it is enormous. I dare say it’s the largest MMO out there in terms of land space.

We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 zones, each of them unique, each of them different with their own flavor.

And, we’re actually hard at work on the seventeenth expansion pack right now.

The MMO Gamer: EverQuest is also one of the few Western MMOs to have spawned a sequel. Asheron’s Call 2 notwithstanding, I wouldn’t include that because it did not long survive.

We’re currently at the point in EQ2’s lifecycle, around five years after release, where it was coming out during the lifecycle of EQ1.

But I haven’t seen any indications from SOE that an EverQuest 3 is in the making. Instead, you seem to be moving away from your roots, the traditional fantasy MMO, into more varied genres and age demographics.

Is this a trend that’s going to continue into the future? Will players ever see an EverQuest 3?

Alan Crosby: I can’t say whether you’re going to see one any time soon… I do know that we have not given up on the EverQuest franchise.

The brand is strong, in fact we now call it the EverQuest Universe, and we’re continuing to work on EverQuest 1 and 2, adding expansion packs and new content.

Eventually, I’m sure there will be some announcement… I’m not sure when, I’m not sure when work will begin… but this franchise is not going away.

Continued on next page…

The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), a regulatory body of the Chinese government, suspended their approval of Activision Blizzard’s The Burning Crusade (the latest version available in China) today, citing “gross violations” of regulations.

The GAPP has asked the Chinese WoW operator, NetEase, to stop collecting fees and to suspend registration of new accounts.  Currently the WoW battlenet gateway still appears to be accepting registration – so it is unclear how (or rather when) the ruling will affect players.

Turbine plans to run a live event throughout the day to celebrate the milestone, which makes it an excellent time to take advantage of the 14-day free trial.  Take a nostalgic journey through the lands of Dereth, or give it a whirl for the first time.  After all, how often does an MMO make it into the double digits?

Turbine has also released a slew of new anniversary wallpapers, and is running a user-made video contest to celebrate.  Click here for details.

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In review:

• Dedicated
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Do you fit the bill? Drop me a line at siam@mmogamer.com and let’s talk!

I had read some blurbs about SOE’s 10th Anniversary EverQuest Hardcover, and thought it sounded great, and with EverQuest being the first MMO I started with back in ‘99, I thought it would be a great present.  Unfortunately the local Borders and Gamestops were all out of it, so my loving up wife picked up me up a copy of World of Warcraft: Rise of the Lich King. It’s been a good read so far, but I wish that EverQuest book had been in.  Then I stopped to think… 10th anniversary….

I’ve been playing MMO’s for nearly 11 years.  Six of those years were spent in the world of Norrath, almost eight if you count my dabbling in EverQuest 2. And in between all that time, I’ve had my nose in almost everything that has come out since EverQuest originally launched.

That’s a long time. A decade. I guess you can say I’m hooked on the MMO genre. From the looks of subscription numbers around the world, I’m not the only one.  And looking at the coming release list, from Star Wars: The Old Republic to Star Trek Online, it doesn’t look like the genre is going to fade anytime soon.

That’s when it hit me, I’m getting old.  Now I know, I’m sure that many of our readers our over the age of 30, so don’t take offense.  But when I was 19 and I loaded up Everquest, Lanys T’vyl server, I met people from all ages and all walks of life.  I gamed with some of those people for years, met them in real life even.

But at 19, playing a MMO with people a decade or more older than me, I thought it was a little strange.  Here is a genre that brings people from all walks of life together, to have fun in a social environment.  But even then, I tended to think differently about the older people I was playing with.  Only being 19, I thought it was strange that people in the 30s or 40s or even older, would want to play a game like this.

But now that I am 30 and still playing MMOs, I realize that I am slowly but surely becoming one of those “older folks.”  My gaming habits have changed over time, I cant spend four to six hours a night farming Kael Arena.  I have a family and kids that need attention.  I can’t log in at server up to hit 3 day timed spawn contested mobs, or mobs that just had insanely rare spawns.  I have a full-time job now.  And yeah, it does kind of bum me out that I don’t have as much free time as I used too, but at the same time games are becoming more short play time focused, allowing us to get more done in shorter periods of time.

And along with those 30 long years, comes other things.  My son is getting close the age that pretty soon here we can pick a game and play together.  My wife and I used to play City of Heroes together, and while I don’t always think she had a great time with her husband the crappy healer getting her killed all the time, it was still something that I wouldn’t have experienced if I hadn’t gotten older and the genre wasn’t around.

Even though I am 30, I don’t feel like it, especially in game.  It’s amazing that after playing MMOs for 10 years, at times I can still feel like a 19 year old noob trying to run through Kithicor forest from Qeynos to Freeport.  And while sometimes it is very strange to meet someone in a title that is like, “whoa, dude u r 2 old 2 pwn”, I can understand to some degree where they are coming from.

You hear a lot of people decrying what seems to be a design change from the original MMOs.  What I mean is going from hardcore grouping, long hour raids, extreme time commitment quests, to more casual oriented solo content, dungeons that are mini sized bites, and better rewards for people who don’t have hours upon hours to spend on content.  But the real question is this:  Are developer’s really just making easier games?  Or are they learning that a large part of the player-base is like me, an aging gamer with increased responsibilities?

There will always be a schism between people who work very hard on advancing their characters, and those that want to be able to have fun with less commitment and yet still make progress. You see games being designed from the ground up to cater to the casual crowd, and you even see some developers going back retroactively and trying to make titles more accessible. EverQuest is a good example of this. I used to spend hours just waiting to find a group to spend even more hours grinding out XP.  While nowadays if players just want to log on and go do something, they can just hire NPC mercenaries to help fill empty spots.

I am still hoping to get a copy of the EverQuest 10th anniversary book, but until then let me ask you this:  the MMO is a great genre.  It lets people from all corners of the world, and all walks of life adventure together.  But just how does age play a roll in how you game?

Topics

• Guest: Keren Kang
• 4Story Newbie Package Giveaway
• Global Agenda Announces Pricing Model
• Tim Cain/Carbine Studios Interview
• The Agency Interview
• Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Star Trek Online Closed Beta Starts

Hosts & Guests

• Jeffrey Philipp
• Steven Crews
• Keren Kang, Producer of Warrior Epic at True Games Interactive.

As always we appreciate your feedback! You can also send us your questions or topics you would like us to discuss by dropping a comment here or sending an email to podcast@mmogamer.com.

Remember to subscribe!

I find myself recently spending a great deal of time with Champions Online, and having fun with it if that can be believed. Though there are a number of things that I can say about it, there is one particular thought that came to mind over the course of my playtime.

It all began when I found myself chuckling at a pair of mission contacts. I hail from the great white of Canada you see, and anyone familiar with what I might generously call Canadian culture (if I can stretch the term a little bit) will likely know of two fellows by the name of Bob and Doug McKenzie.

For those not yet initiated in the finer points of Canadian televison they are two brothers that ever so accurately portray what the rest of the world sees Canadians to be, what with the liberal use of “Eh”, and a rather intense fascination with beer. I mention all of this because as one of the beginning zones happens to be in Canada (which I was also pleased to see), I came across the McKenzie brothers as mission givers, albiet with less focus on beer, but the “Ehs” were out in full force.

Between that and hearing one of the greatest evils in the Champions universe proclaim that we heroes were “Less interesting than rival MMO”, I realized that perhaps the most under rated aspect of what makes a game fun is it’s personality.

I don’t mean to say that a game can get by without having something interesting to do while playing it, but rather the proper attitude can make something that was a fun diversion into something enjoyable on a whole other level.

The field of persistent online games has grown to a rather impressive size since it’s inception as a hobby for the nerdiest of nerds, and there are now thousands of titles out there of various quality and production value. One thing that the standouts all seem to have in common is a sort of sense of humour, perhaps a self awareness. It’s a vague and incorporeal quality to be sure, the sort of thing that you can’t point to and say “That, we want that in our game”.

The one thing I can say with certainty, is that for me, any game, in fact anything really, that takes itself too seriously tends to lose my interest before too long. I’m sure that says more about me than any industry, but I honestly don’t think I’m that strange, and I suspect that many other people out there would also find games that play everything completely straight are in some small fashion stuck up their own rears.

My own thoughts on the subject are probably strange, and most likely completely wrong, but I’m the one with the keyboard here so I’m writing them down anyway. I feel that one of the most important parts to keeping online games entertaining, and keeping people playing them, is immersing them in the game world and letting them feel like a part of it. Strangely, I often feel that playing the entire contents of a game completely straight, and taking everything as serious has the opposite effect of bringing the player out of the world. I know that sounds a little unintuitive but stay with me, I have thought about this for all of thirteen seconds so I consider myself an expert.

The problem I find is that immersion is tied very strongly to the suspension of disbelief, and in a great many of the games out there, we’re asked to suspend quite a heaping portion of disbelief. The elf with the magic staff tossing around magical balls of fire that don’t ignite people, and the big guys in the armor getting stomped on by dragons and getting up to take another punch. These are the sorts of things that are common place in the fantast world, and simply don’t jive with our experiences. For a time putting all that aside is no problem, but after a while it always feels to me, like the game is asking a lot and I lose interest.

On the other hand, tasteful nods to the nature of the medium and subtle hints that the game is aware of the inconsistencies, again quite unintuitively, make me feel like a member of the world without having that sense of cognitive dissonance. For me it’s not so much that bit of flirting with the fourth wall allows me to be one of the people who “get” the in joke.

All of this, however, is quite contingent on subletly and tastefulness in execution. There’s a certain light touch required when skirting with “meta”. In my opinion this is one of the few places where there is a definitively right way and wrong way to do something. There are enough examples out there that I’m sure I don’t need to make a list.

Essentially, in my humble opinion, if you’re going to joke around with your players perception of the game, you don’t want to be heavy handed about it. I’m sure it seemed clever when someone decided that they wanted to throw in the line “Hey, it’s almost like we’re being controlled by an outside force” joke, but I personally think that particular style of joke doesn’t finagle with a users suspension of disbelief as it does hang a lampshade on it. That’s all well and good if that’s the joke you’re going for, but you have to know when you’re making fun of yourself, and when you’re trying to ease the tension of the wild situations taking place inyour game. Likewise for things like “That doesn’t seem physically possible” or explicit mention of UI elements or mechanics devised to work around technical difficulties.

I said up above that the feeling was vague and hand wavy, and here is why. Pretty much anything else is fair game. Granted most everything is going to be related in some way to the elements of your game world and their inconsistencies and strange elements, but as long as they’re related to the gaming experience as opposed to the players experience, you can easily make players feel much more comfortable when they find themselves thinking that something doesn’t work out just right, because everyone else in your game world feels that same way.

Now those bits are the subtle bits, the parts that just make you think “Hey the developers thought of everything” or perhaps “Hey at least the developers thought of something” depending on your opinoin of a game. Things like that can add hugely to the “personality quotient” of the game, for lack of a better term.

The other thing that one might consider for making people smile and enjoy themselves while playing, is to jettison self importance and dignity entirely. Just cast them overboard, push them out the airlock, tie a brick around their feet and let them sink. Some of the most incredible gaming memories I have are of Space Quest and Monkey Island. Again maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to be frusterated and depressed when I’m doing something in my leisure time, I want to smile and laugh and chuckle.

Trion World Network

• Sr. Environment Artist. Redwood City, CA. (USA)
• Senior Tools Programmer. San Diego, CA. (USA)
• Associate Character Technical Artist. Redwood City, CA. (USA)
• Sr. Environment Modeler. Redwood City, CA. (USA)

Gargantuan Studios

• Technical Director. San Mateo, CA. (USA)

Sony Online Entertainment

• Brand Manager. Austin, TX. (USA)

ArenaNet

• Senior-Level Graphics Programmer. Bellevue, WA. (USA)

BioWare Austin

• Gameplay Programmer. Austin, TX. (USA)
• Contract Senior VFX Artist. Austin, TX. (USA)
• Customer Service Manager – Global Services. Austin, TX. (USA)

Gazillion Entertainment

• Sr. Linux Systems Administrator. San Mateo, CA. (USA)
• Project Manager. San Mateo, CA. (USA)
• GameBase Assistant Producer. San Mateo, Ca. (USA)

NCSoft

• Console Programmer. Seattle, WA. (USA)

Turbine

• Senior Software Engineer – Game Engine. Westwood, MA. (USA)

ZeniMax Media

• Senior Web Developer. Hunt Valley, MD. (USA)
• UI/Scripting Programmer. Hunt Valley, MD. (USA)

Via Gamastura.

Global Agenda (one time purchase – $49.99 MSRP) includes:

• Creation of up to eight different agent characters
• Character visual customization
• Access to all combat weapons and devices
• Cooperative Player vs. Environment missions against the Commonwealth NPC faction, AI-controlled enemies, and Boss Fights
• Matchmade Player vs. Player missions with five different game types and over 20 unique maps
• Character progression through 30 levels
• Achievement and unlocks system for individual characters
• Player Inventory for suits, flair, dyes, upgrades, and loot
• Virtual Reality practice fighting area
• Vendors and accumulation of in-game currency
• Text chat with multiple channels
• Built in voice chat during missions
• Ability to join an established player-created agency
• All play is on our single-shard, hosted server environment to ensure convenient and consistent gaming experience.
• Ability to sign up for one free month of subscription at registration (credit card required, can be cancelled at any time)

And this is what is included in the optional subscription fee package:

Global Agenda: Conquest ($12.99 per month, $11.49/mo for 3 month, $9.99/mo for 6 month) includes:

• Access to Alliance vs. Alliance (AvA) World Domination gameplay
• - A massive scale campaign between player created agencies and alliances over scarce territory and resources on a persistent world map.
• - Attack and Defend Territories in zones that match your agency’s schedule
• - Agency and Alliance Management – Create and maintain persistent player groups and officer ranks
• - Creation and Upgrading of Facilities – Control production and output
• - Base Raids – involving up to 60 players per side; coordinated between 6 different strike teams within linked territory instances
• - Agency Achievement System, Leveling, and Recognition
• Auction House with bidding and buyouts
• Mail System
• Upgrade Text and Voice chat to support multiple channels and strike teams
• Player Crafting with blueprints
• Additional character customization options including elite character suits, dye colors, and seasonal flair
• Ongoing Co-Op content at max character level
• Ongoing AvA content, multiplayer PvP content, and new social areas

Visit the Hi-Rez website or the Global Agenda website to find out more.

Read on as the two discuss matters of heroism and villainy, time devoted to story versus combat, the misconceptions of it being a “Massively Single-Player Role-Playing Game”…

And, of course, why anyone would want to play something other than a Jedi in the Star Wars universe.

The MMO Gamer: First of all, for those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, could you please introduce yourself, and tell us a little about what it is you do at BioWare.

Blaine Christine: Sure. My name is Blaine Christine, I’m a producer at BioWare Austin. My job is primarily interfacing with LucasArts on all aspects of the game.

The MMO Gamer: What does “interfacing” entail? I’m sure some of the more hardcore fans hear that and picture George Lucas sitting atop a tower, meddling with knobs and dials and playing you like The Sims.

Blaine Christine: [laughs] I wish it was that cut-and-dried. Typically it’s myself interfacing with the LucasArts producer, Jake Neri, on pretty much a daily basis for everything about the game.

It’s them essentially looking at the game at whatever state it happens to be in, looking at the artwork, anything that’s going into the game, or website, or any other aspect, and giving us feedback.

Essentially just collaborating with us on making the game great.

The MMO Gamer: So then, how does one go about making the game great?

Blaine Christine: [laughs] Well, I think for BioWare the formula is distilled down pretty well, at this point.

Our lead designer, James Ohlen, has been with BioWare for eleven plus years, he was the lead designer on Baldur’s Gate and many other games.

In terms of quality and what goes into making a true BioWare experience, I think he is the key reason we’re able to succeed, and head in the direction that we’re heading.

But really, as with any other game it’s about really great planning, great design, but it’s also about listening to feedback that comes all sources.

Whether that’s from LucasArts, from within our own company, or eventually when we get there hopefully opening it up to fans to play, and listening seriously to the fans and their feedback to help us make a great game.

In an MMO I think it’s key to get feedback from as many sources as possible. It’s such a big undertaking, it’s not quite as simple as some other games, where you can plop down a focus group and have them look at it for a short period of time.

Looking at that feedback is critical.

The MMO Gamer: Ever since TOR was first announced there’s always been a very big emphasis on heroism; you, the player, aren’t just some regular schlub who wandered in from off the street, you’re a hero! Everything you do is heroic!

But if you’re an “evil” character, say, playing a Bounty Hunter or a Sith, wouldn’t you be a villain, not a hero?

Blaine Christine: [laughs] I certainly can’t deny that.

I guess what we mean by hero is not necessarily in the good guy sense, but hero in the you feel like you’re taking on a ton of enemies at once, your storyline is impactful and meaningful… you don’t feel like you’re being sent on quests to collect ten boxes for some random vendor.

The MMO Gamer: So you can play as an antagonist, the story for the “evil” classes doesn’t just swap names and places around from the stories of “the good guys”?

Blaine Christine: I would say yes, very much. The storyline for the Sith Warrior, if you want to play a bad guy, he is a bad guy.

Your storyline as it goes through, he’s not a nice, friendly dude. You see that in the gameplay footage we’ve released, where you get the choice to save or kill the captain.

These are heavy choices, and if you strike him down, you get dark side points that are going to influence how your character develops, influence how the rest of the story goes. You kill somebody, they’re not there later.

The MMO Gamer: That morality system, the dark side and light side points, seems to be carried over directly from Knights of the Old Republic. But in the MMO, what is that actually going to do?

I would assume that with the breadth of content you’re dealing with the story can’t change all that much, even if you’re all the way light side playing as a Sith Warrior… you’d still have to be out there doing bad things and killing people by nature of its being an “evil” class.

Blaine Christine: The best answer to that is it’s going to be similar to the other games we’ve done. If you look at KOTOR and how that worked out, if you played light side versus dark side, there were distinct different in the story, and distinct differences in how your character developed.

It’s going to be very similar to that.

The MMO Gamer: But in KOTOR, it was the exact same story regardless of what you were playing. A Jedi Consular had the same story as a Jedi Guardian. Here you’re dealing with a lot more variables.

Blaine Christine: That was sort of the thing where yeah, all of the classes were bound by that one story, which is not the case here.

Each of our classes has a distinct story, but within each of those stories, if you go light side or dark side, there would be differences similar to what you saw in KOTOR.

The MMO Gamer: So you could play a fully light side Sith Warrior or a dark side Jedi?

Blaine Christine: Absolutely.

The MMO Gamer: Interesting twist. Being a Sith and going around saving kittens?

Blaine Christine: Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Continued on next page…

How to Participate:

1. Click here to get your key.

2. Click here to sign up and login to the game.

3. In the game, click ‘Cash item’ then click ‘Bank’ to retrieve your newbie package.

4. Now simply enjoy 4Story.

- 50$ Cash point is awarded to 2 players who achieves 25 lv. within 14 days. (Random selection)

- The winner announcement will be made on the 29th of November at 4story official homepage.

For more information about the game, visit 4Story’s official website.

For more information about the game, visit the official League of Legends website.

Topics discussed include the “stickiness” of session-based games, striking a balance between FPS and MMO players, and whether or not The Agency even falls under the definition of a traditional MMO at all.

The MMO Gamer: First of all, for those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about what it is you do at SOE.

Lorien Gremore: I’m Lorien Gremore, I’m the Lead Producer on The Agency. I’ve been with the project for a couple of years now… a little bit more than that, actually.

What I do is I lead the production team, we help to coordinate across all the different disciplines on the team, making sure people’s work comes together appropriately on time, and moves through the process of pipelines, distribution, and delivery.

The MMO Gamer: This has been a recurring theme that I’ve been bringing up in my interviews with SOE, and I’d like to bounce it off you, as well:

It almost seems to me as though the company is trying to distance itself from its roots, the more “hardcore” traditional fantasy games like EverQuest, and move towards focusing more on games that can appeal outside of the MMO genre, like The Agency, for instance.

Lorien Gremore: I think it’s a wonderful philosophy that SOE is taking right now. We’re seeing something that indicates that there are more stories to be told, really.

Everybody loves classic fantasy, I love Lord of the Rings, for instance. You can’t get more classic than that. People love a good sci-fi classic, as well.

But there are simply more stories to be told, and the fact that we are engaging in a modern, exclusive, dynamic world, that is optimistic and vibrant with lots of rich storytelling and missions…

It’s just something that we’re bringing new to the space, and it’s such an interesting genre and theme, I think it engages a lot of people’s imaginations right away.

The MMO Gamer: Where I was going with that is, it almost seems as if the age of the 5,000 hour, soul-sucking, life-consuming, quit your job and stay home to play it MMO is coming to end.

And now the “session” MMO, the bite-sized 30 minutes at a time MMO, is up and coming.

Do you feel that The Agency is the—I don’t want to use the word vanguard—the leader of the charge toward this new phase, if you want to call it that?

Lorien Gremore: We definitely try to deliver fun now with no waiting, that’s one of our mottos.

We definitely want to make sure that you have the option of jumping in, jumping out, having a quick experience, or a long-term experience if you’re looking for one.

There’s lots to do in The Agency, there’s lots of different varieties of gameplay available.

This is something we hope keeps people engaged, but also allows people to feel like they’re specializing, doing what they like to do, and able to do it fairly quickly.

You can jump in and do a mission in a few minutes, see how that worked out for you, and then maybe do a longer mission next, team up with a bunch of friends and do an epic mission.

These are all options we’re trying to offer players. We’re not trying to lock them into hours, and hours of long raids and things like that, that you might be tired of from other games. It’s not our speciality.

There’s fun to be had in those things, and I certainly enjoy them on my own personal time, but that’s not the game we’re making, here.

We’re specifically trying to create something that gives people a little more of the options that hopefully they’re looking for, right now.

The MMO Gamer: The flip side to that is, the advantage that the soul-sucking life-consuming MMOs have, is that they’re soul-sucking and life-consuming. They have huge, I guess the technical term would be “stickiness.” People play them for a very, very long time.

There are people, for example, who have been playing EverQuest for the entire decade that it’s been out.

One of the concerns I have as a player about this new breed of “thirty minute at a time” MMOs is, I would use the analogy of Tetris:

Tetris is a great game. You can download it any time you like and there it is, you play for 30 minutes and then put it away. But, most people don’t play Tetris on a constant basis for ten years at a time.

How do you get that stickiness, and keep players coming back month after month within the shorter timeframes you’re aiming for?

Lorien Gremore: I think it’s replayability that really helps us there. Since you are what you wear in The Agency, you have the option of playing any of the roles that are available to you based on your outfit that you choose before each mission.

You could play through a mission as a stealth role, and then play through it again as a combat role and get a new experience that way. You may also want to replay a mission because you didn’t get the highest level of rating on that mission.

So if you got a bronze the first time through, you might think, “Well, it’s fun to have the bronze, I can go on and now do the missions that that bronze level unlocked me, but I might want to go back and redo it through the silver rating or even the gold rating to get more goodies, more rewards, more advancement.”

That’s a really valid type of gameplay. I look at some other shooters out there, that people are replaying the same maps for years at a time.

My husband plays Halo all the time, and replays the same maps over, and over again, because they’re still engaging, because they’re designed for a particular type of audience that enjoys the replayability of it, because there’s such a dynamic that comes from smart AI, smart players, doing smart things, cleverly planning out their attacks and things like that.

We’re trying to offer a lot of that in The Agency. You can see in our demos that there’s a lot of planning and strategizing, working together with different skill sets.

Your experience even in the same mission as the same role might be completely different depending on who you took through that mission with you.

If you were taking a support character with you and were playing a stealth character, you might have a totally different experience than if you brought a combat character.

There’s a lot of replayability there, and there’s a lot of reasons to replay. You might find new secrets and clues, you might have a collection you’re going for in terms of intel or operatives.

So there’s a lot of engagement from the rewards you can get through replayability, and there’s also the engagement that you can actually get through the fact that we offer different types of gameplay, via the combinations of skills and outfits, roles, gadgets, all of that good stuff.

Continued on next page…

Topics

• Alganon Beta Key Giveaway
• Steve’s Interview with Nexon America’s Min Kim
• Steve’s Interview with Russ Brown, VP of Heroes of Telara

Hosts & Guests

• Jeffrey Philipp
• Siam Choudhury
• Steven Crews

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