West Karana

Exciting MMO news lands in my inbox; I pass it along.

Cryptic is dropping prices in their “C-Store” for the holiday weekend on existing items. Emphasis on existing; they also announce that the Galaxy X/Galaxy Dreadnought class cruiser will soon be available in the shop. This is the three nacelled Enterprise-D variant that Riker commanded in the future segment of The Next Generation’s “All Good Things”, and in particular is the ship that @Longasc has been trying to earn via getting people to sign up. Well, it’ll be in the store soon.

No word on if it will just be a re-skin of the regular Galaxy-class cruiser. If it is, that would be somewhat unfortunate, as the Galaxy-class cruiser is not a rear admiral ship. Since the Galaxy Dreadnought will be the only cruiser that can use the super-damaging dual cannons, a lot of admirals may find themselves downgrading.

Should be a monster in PvP.

STO Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich is saying goodbye to Cryptic to spend more time with his kids. That’s definitely a good reason, but I can’t help wondering if he’d still be leaving if STO had been a wild success.

City of Heroes unleashes its Super Booster Pack V: Mutant. This mini expansion adds Tron-like glowing armor sets to your repertoire, new costume change emotes and Secondary Mutations for your heroes with mutation-based powers. Looks very cool — like EverQuest, City of Heroes never lets its age stand in the way of innovation.

CCP is giving away a Primae, a planetary resources hauler, to every current EVE Online player. These one-of-a-kind ships have special cargo holds for the resources you get from your planetary command centers, and is the fashionable ship of choice for experienced atmo-skimmers.

These irreplaceable ships PROBABLY won’t be targets in Hulkageddon III. Probably.

Runes of Magic announces their patch 3.0.2, which includes a new instance, the “Warnoken Arena”, two-seated mounts, a new pet system and new public events. They are also having a discount on Diamonds (cash shop currency) for the US Independence Day weekend, though in deference to their non-US players, they have taken special care to not mention the holiday.

The iPad/iPhone MMO Pocket Legends announces their lates expansion, Alien Oasis, Part 2. This expansion raises the level cap to 45, adds all new gear, and continues the saga of anthropomorphic bears, cats and hawks as they struggle to survive in a world gone mad.

I need to get back to playing that game….

The folks at Perfect World Entertainment announce double experience for the Independence Day weekend in Perfect World International and Battle of the Immortals.

I can’t help but think a battle between immortals would probably take more than one gaming session. “WHY… WON’T… YOU… DIE!!!!! Oh yeah. Immortal.”

Aion announces free character server transfers and server merges. This isn’t a bad thing; PvP-focused games require very active servers, because if there is nobody to kill, half the fun evaporates.

Aion’s next expansion, Assault on Balaurea, will raise the level cap and continue the epic, world-shattering story of the devas of Atreia as players battle back against the bloodthirsty NPC faction.

And … that’s all the time I have this week. If you’re in the US, enjoy your Independence! If you’re in the UK, enjoy not having to take responsibility for us! If you’re anywhere else, just enjoy!

Another week, another truckload of gaming press releases.

Bioware announces their new downloadable content for their Dragon Age RPG, “The Darkspawn Chronicles“. Meant as an alternate story — one where your character from Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening dies during the Grey Warden initiation — here you command the forces of the Darkspawn against the remnants of the forces of Light, led by the man who wouldn’t be king, Alistair.

Complete the module, unlock an item in the main games. And hey, you can buy some replica swords with which to terrorize your friends, family and co-workers. THAT won’t get you arrested. Perfect for slaying any stray Darkspawn you happen to meet on the bus.

Jolt Online announces a new toolbar for their Legends of Zork browser game. The toolbar will let you keep track of your character when you aren’t playing the game, but are in your browser (IE and FF only, folks. Sorry, Safari and Chrome users) where… you could just load the game up if you wanted to see this information. I wondered idly on Twitter if this apparently useless add-on had some nefarious purpose. And I got a reply!

@JoltOnline went on to explain:

We get happier players, and happier players are more likely to keep playing our game (and buying stuff). It’s that simple :P

If you’re a Legends of Zork player, and want to install this toolbar, well, Jolt will give you 60 extra action points per character on your account. My gameplay these days is pretty much limited to seeing how my Accountant sidekick is doing with my stash.

I found out that there was ALSO a toolbar for XFire that can detect you playing browser games, but it only works in IE, so sorry everyone who prefers another browser. It also optionally loads plugins, like music players and stuff, which you likely don’t need. I use Chrome, so toolbar authors hate me. Or something.

Swords and ships MMO Florensia wants us to know about all their new and fancy outfits. Outfits are nice, but I always liked the sea game better than the rather standard land game.

I doubt I need to mention EverQuest II’s new $25 mounts. The uproar has been amazing, especially since Blizzard’s own quarter Benjamin horsey of last month was hailed by millions as manna from heaven. Fools and their money are soon parted and all that. Can’t use the cash cats in most dungeons and on most raids. I wonder if they can be used in the battlegrounds? Anyway, if you have a fin and a couple sawbucks to spare, here’s a place to spend it.

I think everyone should only refer to money with slang. I’ll go first.

KingsIsle uncovers another shadowy figure from their forthcoming Wizard101 expansion, Celestia. The huge crab, dressed in shell armor and carrying a wicked polearm, looks menacing enough. If Celestia continues the trend of new Wizard101 worlds, we’ll have to kill approximately a million of these critters at half an hour per fight.

Dragonspyre is SO TEDIOUS.

Anyway, that’s all the barely relevant stuff from this last week. If you’re a game developer and want to send me press releases, please do! I love getting mail!

When Law & Order starts its 21st season this year, it will become the longest continually running drama on American television — surpassing previous record holder, Gunsmoke.

Law & Order is both a police and a courtroom procedural. In the first half of the show, a crime is discovered and a police investigation leads to the arrest of one or more suspects. In the second half, prosecutors build the case against the defendants and attempt for a conviction in court. Law & Order’s emphasis on realism and cases inspired by the news of the day — “ripped from the headlines” — has made it an enduring hit for a generation.

Good show, but how can it POSSIBLY be made into an MMO? Most every MMO involves players indiscriminately killing everything that crosses their path. Crime-focused games in real life settings, like Grand Theft Auto, make heroes of murderers and criminals. Past that, how can a show that follows a formula (opening theme, cops nab crooks, ka-CHUNG, prosecutors put them away, closing theme) be made fresh and interesting throughout a long MMO grind?

The only possible way to do Law & Order right — to make a game that the millions of Law & Order fans the world over could enjoy — is to drastically depart from what we would normally think of as an MMO.

For Law & Order, we’d have to make it more like… a game show.

Still here? Hear me out. By game show, I don’t mean a vacation and a new car and pointless trivia questions and a live studio audience and funny costumes. I’m thinking more of two or more random people asked to complete a task about which they have limited or no information and yet must still come up with the correct solution under severe time pressure.

Players join the game as either Detectives, Lawyers or Jury.

Detectives can play solo or in a group, and are given a crime scene. There’ll be one or more bodies, and a bunch of various bits of evidence. Some of it will be important and some of it will be trivial or false leads — it’s up to the detectives to figure out which is which and to construct a scenario from it. The game will generate a half dozen potential suspects; the detective players will discuss the evidence among themselves and choose a suspect. They can then go on to another case or hang out in the social hub for detectives.

Lawyers can also play solo or in groups. They get cases from a pool filled either by the game or by detectives (and can potentially be re-used as a kind of player-generated content). The cases contain whatever information the detectives placed in them — evidence, their suspect, any notes. Players can take cases as either the defense or the prosecution; in either case, they spend money to purchase the testimony of NPC expert witnesses to connect evidence to the suspect, or to disprove that connection. This would be very similar to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney courtroom. Players must choose the right expert witness and give them the correct evidence to consider — a forensic anthropologist and bone fragments, for instance.

Once both sides have presented their cases, their time ends, and the case is referred to a jury.

Juries are chosen randomly from all players — it’s jury duty, and it’s the quickest way to gain influence in the other two spheres. Drawn again from a random pool of cases that have been argued in the lawyer phase, jury members would vote guilty/not guilty. The jury phase would be a single player option. The player gets the case, reads it, chooses a verdict, and moves on. When enough votes have been obtained, the game closes the case. If the verdict was guilty, the detective and prosecutor players get extra influence. If the verdict was not guilty, the lawyers for the defense get extra influence.

It’s important to note here that the guilt or innocence of any particular suspect is never known for certain, but there would be periodic recognition of those players who were the most accurate.

Influence is the currency of the game. Detectives earn influence by investigating crimes, collecting evidence, choosing suspects and by eventually having their suspects convicted. They spend influence to eliminate weaker suspects or evidence.

Lawyers earn influence by preparing cases for juries and eventually winning their case. They spend influence on expert witnesses.

Juries earn influence by voting on cases. They earn more influence by being on the winning side. Jury members don’t spend influence.

Players can choose to play in any of the three roles as often as they like and change whenever they like. Their influence follows them from role to role. A typical player would spend a certain amount of time as a juror, deciding cases and building influence, then play as a detective or a lawyer, earning more influence and spending it wisely to increase their chances of success.

It would be a casual MMO meant for jump in/jump out gameplay.

The largest challenge here is one common to all MMOs, which is — don’t make my having fun depend on someone else. Hence the disconnect between the three areas of play.

An equally significant challenge is making the game fun in all three area. Investigating a crime scene would be fun for a fan of police procedurals, but how could the courtroom case be made fun at all? Arranging evidence and calling expert witnesses, perhaps discussing the case with the opposing attorneys? The rewards for playing this phase should be very significant. At the very LEAST, the costume choices for being a lawyer should be the BEST.

The jury phase would be the quick influence generator to get those cases finished so everyone up and down the line can get the reward for a closed case and obtaining their conviction (or freedom for defense attorneys). Jury Bots could be a problem.

Anyway, tomorrow we head to a land of spandex and neon as we explore Tron: the MMO.

MMO devs fire broadside press releases at my inbox, and I inflict them on others. We’ll suffer together or not at all.

Actually, let’s start off with a non-MMO offer. The Humble Indie Bundle from Wolfire Games collects five acclaimed Indie games (including the addictive building game World of Goo, underwater fantasy Aquaria, innovative platformer Gish, rabbit beat’m'up Lugaru, and horror adventure game Penumbra Overture. Until Monday, you can get all of these games AND donate to Electronic Freedom Foundation AND Child’s Play … at any price you want, divided between charities and the developers any way you want. This is a can’t lose deal — I was up till 2AM last night playing World of Goo… on my Linux box.

Oh, yeah. Every one of these games works fine on your Windows PC, your Mac, or your Linux box. No DRM, you can install these games on every computer you own. (Unfortunately, not the iPad). So go to the site, pay a buck or fifty, get these great games.

If you’re tired of always having to seek out monsters for XP in Atlus’ Neo*Steam, relax! With the opening of their new Guild Magnusseum, the monsters will come to you. Take your high level characters and their friends and see how long you can last. Increased experience and unique weapon rewards await. Atlus has also added a new dragon mount for the kids, and are giving away another pair of steampunk goggles, so get in game and check it out. They have a calendar of all their in-game events. It’d be cool if more companies did the same.

Sony stats their full-court press to publicize their new Move controllers, super Wii-motes that will revolutionize gaming in much exactly the same way Nintendo did with the Wii. Some of the videos I’ve seen look impressive, but there are none of those videos here. This e-mail ends up being nothing but a tease that will likely only draw more comparisons to the cheaper Wii.

Dungeons & Dragons Online is having a sale on their 32 point builds, extra inventory space Veteran Status and more. If you’ve been waiting for a sale to snap up items in the DDO store, now’s your chance. Still waiting for Drow to go on sale….

JoltOnline, they of Legends of Zork and Playboy Manager fame, are moving into the Facebook gaming arena with their satirical take on Farmville, Farm Villain. You can do such family-friendly things as run a meth lab on your farm, discover dead hookers buried beneath the fields, spread mad cow disease and other hilarious hijinks. Head to Facebook to start distributing radioactive corn to your neighbor’s pigs today!

Runes of Magic announces their Patch 3.0.0 which raises the level cap to 60, adds a new adventure zone and a “Whack the CM!” event which will probably be over before you read this. Lots of new stuff, yadayadayada, full details here. Double diamonds in their cash store, so that infamous $10 mount is now only $5. Because paying more than $5 for a virtual horse is madness.

It’s Welcome Back Weekend time in Star Trek Online! If you’re an ex-subscriber and want to see if STO has earned your return, log in and check it out. They also are now offering a new free trial, and if you’re interested in subbing after that, see Longasc. He’s trying to earn Riker’s three-nacelle’d Enterprise by getting five folks to sub.

EVE Online has more information on their upcoming Tyrannis expansion, due on the 18th. Sure, they tell you all the facts about planet mining and so on, but they also include this trailer. Watch it. Would I watch a full length EVE movie? You bet. In 3D. I would SO BE THERE.

EQ2′s Halas Reborn patch is due out on the 25th; log in around then and you get a free supercute kitten pet. It’s an entirely new starter area, so this is really the best time to get in on the ground floor — it’s the one newbie zone in the entire game guaranteed to be full of people!

Wizard101′s May Newsletter is up (and has been for some time, I’m just lazy). It discusses the new advanced pet training (now on Test), some extra-curricular reading for fantasy-loving kids, and helpful tips on staying safe online.

Guess that’s it for this week! See ya next week for another Assault on the Inbox.