The sheer flood of information coming from GDC 2010 is mind-boggling, and I am sure we are all having trouble keeping up.  I know I am.  I’ve been on the fence about Star Trek Online since its release, so I’ve tuned in to any and all information on the title coming from GDC.

According to a Massively interview, virtual trekkies will be able to select a new playable race “within the year.”  Better still, the decision will apparently be up to the players.

Craig Zinkievich said:

There’s a huge amount of the dev team right now interested in doing Romulan. I think the Borg would be really interesting as just something totally different, totally different gameplay. There are a lot of really cool mechanics, a lot of really cool things you can do there. Really, if you’re in the MMO for the long haul, there are going to be a lot more playable factions, you can’t stop with those two. There’s Jem’Hadar, you’re going to be going to the Dominion, there’s Cardassians [...] so many playable factions that we can and will be releasing with the game.

July has been selected as Star Trek Online’s next big update, one that is to include numerous community requests.

We know that we just had a player survey when you first arrive at the site, and, like, ship interiors. [Players] want a whole lot more there, want a whole lot more functionality, why are other players coming to my ship, what’s going on there?

There’s a big huge outcry for first contact missions, diplomacy missions, more non-combat within Star Trek, so we’re really making sure with that July update we’re really focusing on that.”

Hopefully Cryptic Studios can deliver what the community wants. More importantly, I hope that Cryptic doesn’t let the community ruin its own game.  What race do you want to see this year?

Star Trek Online is available at Amazon for only $30 as of press time.  A deep discount.

NetDevil’s Scott Brown created a new thread on the official community forum to let the community know that the game is alive and well.  In fact, his bullet point list details some of the drastic changes that have been made since missing its original release date.

-”Battlespace” returning to more of its simulator roots from Classic, really a place to practice not advance. I know this will make some of you happy in that advancing will only happen in “real” space not instant action type playing. I still hope to have some achievements/leader board materials form here but not likely to have any equipment or pilot advancing type effects.

-Lots of work on missions. With the new design team map layouts, mission stories, the types of things you do in missions, etc is all MUCH more interesting and varied than ever before. The kinds of things we can now do is very advanced.

-Better faction definition. The stories in the game really tell all about your faction and why you are at war with the others. The story is also darker than before with many of the missions you fly feeling more gray than the typical black and white always doing the good thing type story.

-PvP. Lots and lots of work on systems for PvP, new maps, new game play, new forms of advancement, player built battle stations, capturing sectors, etc. The scope and feel of the massive space battles you will be taking part in against other players will be, IMHO, what really sets us apart.

-AI functionality. Tons of work on making the AI both the right difficulty (it was way to easy before) and also varied in behavior.

Looks like a handful of core systems and mechanics have recieved complete overhauls.  Consider my interests perked, for the second time.

With so many changes in the works it is no wonder why Jumpgate Evoltion is still without a release window.

THQ hasn’t even released a final name for the upcoming Warhammer 40k MMOG, but that doesn’t stop the company from talking about it.  And as my most anticipated MMOG, I won’t stop the information from flowing.

Brian Farrell, THQ’s CEO and President, went on record regarding the pricing scheme for the title.  Farrell told IGN that the game is being designed to support the North American/European preferred method of a subscription, and the Asian preference of microtransaction/time-based simultaneously.  And odd choice, given that many top-notch MMOG are subsidizing subscription numbers with microtransactions even in the West.

Farrell cautiously side-stepped the cliche term of being a “WoW-killer.”  A smart move considering that every title that has attempted such a thing so far has failed to topple the behemoth.  Instead, he feels that the built in fanbase from previous games – board and video – and the dark sci-fi world will allow his company’s new creation to be successful alongside World of Warcraft.

“World of Warcraft is a great game, but as you know in entertainment, there’s always the juggernaut and that means there’s opportunities out there for the right MMO, said Farrell. ” What we love about the Warhammer 40K MMO is that it’s different in that it’s a sci-fi, futuristic-based world. We’re not competing directly in the orcs and elves fantasy environment that World of Warcraft is in. We can differentiate ourselves.”

Warhammer 40k will be fully revealed at E3 2010.  I’ll have coverage for you.

Players frothed at the mouth over incredibly high prices for items such as an additional six bag slots for $20.  Ouch.  gPotato initially said ‘tough,’ standing by its decision.  It appears the company realized its mistake, as it has announced a reduction in prices to key items, including the aforementioned bag.

List of changes in the item shop:

• Vial of Perfume reduced from 75gP to 25gP
• Large Perfume Kit reduced from 1350gP to 300gP
• Holy Rune reduced from 1500gP to 1000gP
• Rough Dragon Hide Backpack reduced from 2000gP to 600gP
• Small Deposit Box reduced from 1500gP to 1000gP
• Small Bag of Crystal Chips reduced from 250gP to 100gP
• Medium Bag of Crystal Chips reduced from 1200gP to 350gP
• Potions reduced from 250gP to 200gP

A gP, or gPotato, is $0.01, so the Rough Dragon Hide Backpack has gone from $20 to $6.  A more reasonable $1 per slot.  The changes put the desirable items more in line with other F2P shops, like the one I broke down for Runes of Magic.

Seeing as Allods Online has so much competition in the field of F2P games, the damage may already be done.  Is the reduction enough to draw people back in, or are the potential customers that left during gPotato’s stonewalling a lost cause?

The developer has backpedaled, but now a show of good faith is needed.  My idea – offer a discount on gPotatoes for a limited time to try to win over the angered players.

The patch includes a few additions that were highly requested by the playerbase including:

• A much needed friends and ignore list.
• New Conquest zones that have times more convenient for the international community.
• Increased plate drops, used for crafting, by 50%.
• Items can now be repaired.
• PvP maps can be chosen, and players can filter PvE for “balanced” groups or the quickest group possible.
• A report function has been added, tweaks have hit the AH, and numerous other small tinkers and improvements have been made.

View the full patch notes here.

The patch addresses some of the cons that I listed in my first impression of Global Agenda.  Hopefully the rest are in the planning stages.

Global Agenda will be down for patch application between 11:00 AM EST and 3:00 PM EST.  Patching should happen automatically through Steam.  The Public Test Realm will be (mostly) available during the downtime of the live server.

February 2 saw the release of two MMORPG.  Both have subscription fees, both offer PvP and PvE content, they include guns and are set in science fiction universes.  The similarities pretty much stop there.  Cryptic Studios’ Star Trek Online is geared to satiate the hungered trekkies out there, while Hi-Rez Studios hopes to appease the Team Fortress 2 crowd.  The main content, philosophies and core mechanics couldn’t be more different.

Global Agenda starts players off in an optional tutorial that explains the basic features of the game, squad-based third person shooting.  The developer used this normally boring ordeal to explain the world, how the player came into existence and their reason for being.  It’s a creative way to introduce players to a game, one that tackles two problems.  First off, it details the absolute basics of the game – movement, jumping, crouching, etc.  Things that MMOG players know.  Thanks to the interactive story running alongside the tutorial players are not bored to tears.  I rather enjoyed learning about the world as I was making my escape.  Too bad I haven’t seen any interesting blend of gameplay and story since.

Pros:

• Gameplay polish – Too many MMOGs are being released with all sorts of bells, whistles, trinkets and garnish, but no meat and potatoes.  Global Agenda has offered polished gameplay since the closed beta period.  PvP combat is fast, accurate, relatively lag free and well diversified.
• Mission briefings – Mission briefings are exactly what they sound like.  Short, non-interactive descriptions of the various PvP locations that a player may find themselves a part of.  The briefings not only describe the objective(s), including a fly-by, but why the scenario is an important asset to claim.
• Timed missions – It doesn’t matter which you enjoy more, PvP or PvE, both types of combat are timed.  This may annoy some players, but it definitely gives everyone a sense of urgency to finish the goal.  Players seem to be a lot less likely to stand around in PvE, and far more aggressive in PvP when there’s a clock winding down.
• Bit-sized gameplay – The combination of instanced and timed mission along with Global Agenda’s own matchmaking system means that gamers can get in and out of a play sessions very quckly.  Global Agenda is a title that is easily digestible in small bits, and easy to level without a guild.  That makes it a good game for casual players until level cap.
• Payload – As characters level up they unlock additional items to equip on their character.  Gear only offers small upgrades, so a player’s defensive and offensive skills are paramount to the success of a mission.  The diversification is as extreme as a few teched out items, or a jack of all trades character.
• Semi-dynamic encounters – In damn near every MMOG, running the same dungeon gets boring as soon as the players learn the ins and outs of pulls, encounters and line of sight abuses.  The developers at Hi-Rez Studios mix it up a bit by changing the positions, mobs, pathing, level layout and even bosses for each instance.  Traps and environmental damage make dungeons even more replayable.
• Stable server & quick support – No MMOG launches without its issues, some game breaking, others just tedious.  Global Agenda’s launch was relatively smooth.  Little to no lag, no queues and with enough population and level distribution to carry out any mission in the game.  That being said, there were small issues present.  Most of them were quickly hotfixed and patched the week of release.
• Diverse PvP arenas – Global Agenda launched choke full o’ PvP arenas.  Players can join a good range of scenarios including payload, attack and defense, king of the hill, objectives and escort.  And soon we’ll be able to decide what we want, instead of it being random.

Cons:

• Stupid AI – The artificial intelligence for the PvE NPCs is atrocious.  Robots can easily die before reacting.  They may hide or cower in plain view and they’ll die to the traps in their own facilities.  Sorry, but these robots and elite assassins should know they’ll get squished or melted in their own facility.
• No world or universe – The Mission Briefing feature I touted above would make you think there might be a universe, but there isn’t.  There’s no where to walk around and take in the sights.  Even Dome City, the game’s home base, is incredibly boring.  There’s lore sprinkled in from the website and a dash in the PvE system, but the briefings will deliver the majority of context the game has to offer
• Ranges on guns – Global Agenda’s successful ad campaign lambasted the cliches of most MMOGs, but the game has some itself, including range.  Various, but not all weapons, have undisclosed range limitations.  It’s incredibly annoying when a weapon is fired and it doesn’t reach the intended target.
• Uninspired specialization trees – One way to specialize your character is through skill trees.  By selecting one tree over another a class can change quite dramatically.  For example, a medic, your typical healer, can morph into a healer that can deal a dangerous amount of poison damage to the other team.  The specializations are nice in theory, but the talents within them are uninspired.  Want to heal more, then select Beam Heal Boost (+4% healing), or Jetpack Power for addition flight (-50% power cost).  Then move on to Beam Healing Boost II (+6% healing) or Power Pool Increase (+50% power pool)!  It’s not only a lack of interesting spells, but a lack of spells in general.  In fact, if you ignore the tiers of spells, then the healing tree only offers seven unique options.
• Lose of XP – Losing XP as part of a death penalty is one thing, but losing it to a disconnect or crash is another.  If a player is dropped from a PvP or PvE match for any reason they are sent back to Dome City.  Their place in the battle isn’t reserved for when they return, and it isn’t filled either.  Because Global Agenda awards XP upon the completion of a mission, getting dropped means you’ve been robbed of whatever XP was coming to you.  It doesn’t matter if you left in the first ten seconds, or the last, nothing is awarded.  I’ve been stripped of XP around a dozen times now.
• Crafting – It’s clunky, time consuming, expensive and unfriendly.  Thankfully, Hi-Rez is already working on an overhaul.
• Non-unique characters – Compound the boring skill selection with few cosmetic options and you have many characters that look exactly the same.  There are costumes available, but few players bother to pick them up due to costs and because the outfit isn’t that different.
• Poor windowed mode optimization – One of the loading tips is that the game runs in Windowed Mode.  It does, it just doesn’t run all that well.  The game will sit on top of the taskbar, you’re forced to alt-tab out of the game to capture your mouse, it has uninspired taskbar art and defaultly spouts its sound whether the window is active or not.  I can’t find a way to stop the sound either.  All of the issues are minor, but they need to be addressed.
• Bad auto-grouping – The various auto-grouping techniques employeed by the multitude of MMOG developers have often been hailed as one of the best features of their respective games.  Hi-Rez Studios’ effort is not in that category.  I understand that getting people in a mission quickly is the utmost priority, but I am willing to wait a few minutes to avoid three medics or three recons in the same foursome.
• Tutorial – The introduction was great, but that’s all it was.  There’s far more complex features, tactics, abilities and choices that are left unexplained in Global Agenda.  The title needs additional tutorials to help new to intermediate players morph in to powerhouses..

I’ve yet to get in to a solid guild/alliance to really dive into the Alliance vs Alliance part of the game.  I was lucky enough to partake in some AvA matches with developers and players during beta, and it was fun.  Essentially, AvA battles are large scale PvP missions against pre-made groups.  I’ll have more on AvA for you as I gain more experience.  To me, half the fun in AvA is making the tactical decisions on the hex grid.  It forces the leaders to be true officers.

The core of Global Agenda offers a well polished, fast paced battle against player combatants or not-so-smart NPCs.  The game shines when you’re in the heat of battle against other opponents.  The rest of the title is lacking in comparison.  That being said, Hi-Rez Studios gave players two months of free play while the company works out the kinks.  I’ll be around for at least that long.

Check out the rest of our Global Agenda coverage here.

Two weeks ago I specified a few reasons why I was going to walk away from Champions Online when my subscription expired.  Normally, I try to look at the positives of a situation, but my experiences with the game, Cryptic’s handling of it and the future plans didn‘t sit well with me.  Or the rest of the playerbase, as a few readers explained their issues with the game in the comments section.

Last week, Cryptic backpedaled on its decision to offer paid for high-level content.  Champions Online – Revelation, what the company claims is a “full-fledged expansion,” didn‘t go over well.  The decision was reversed after people like us spoke our minds about paying for content in a game that is lacking just that.  Commentator Snorlax returned to the post to pose a very good question:

“Do you see yourself coming back now that Cryptic has backpedaled on their paid content pack/expansion and put out some olive branches to the community?”

Initially, no.  The company lost a good amount of my trust, the damage had been done.  But Cryptic followed up last week’s olive branch with another State of the Game address that focuses on the free “expansion.”  Costumes, perks, and additional lairs are always welcome additions.  Two bullet points really caught my attention – Adventures Packs and Monthly In-Game Events.

Adventure Packs are story driven packages that are playable at “nearly any level.”  That will make them perfect for all of the altaholics out there (and casual players).  Personally, I am excited to see the story part take shape.  Who wouldn‘t want to battle with “villains both new and established.”  The more Foxbat the better.

If there’s something that small companies and small MMOGs excel at it’s usually community.  Cryptic Studios is looking to be a large part of that by joining us side-by-side.  We’ll be seeing a lot more of the developers in the virtual space they created thanks to the monthly in-game events.  Dates, times and details will be announced as they happen.

Cryptic, you’ve got about a month to win me back.  It’s been a good start.

Champions Online – Revelation will go live in mid-March.  More information will be revealed when the official mini-site launches this week.

Sick of elves, orcs and high fantasy?  Aliens, spaceships and warp drives got you down?  Normal people doing weird things bore you?  Would some good old-fashioned tank-based destruction liven this party up?  WarGaming.net certainly hopes so, because the company announced an all new F2P MMOG based on that very premise.

World of Tanks will band 30 players together and task them with achieving victory on the fields of PvP battle.  The game is to feature over 150 armored vehicles, ranging from slow, infantry supporting pre-WW2 tanks to the blitzkrieg machines of WW2 and the versatile war machines made up to and including the Korean War.  The vehicles come from the top three tank creators, the United States, Germany and Soviet Russia.

Fear not, you will not have to stick with just one mechanic means of destruction.  Players can house an “endless number” of vehicles in their garage, and all of them can be upgraded.  Turrets, chassis, guns, engines, radios, ammo types and even crew members can be upgraded.

Unlike WarGaming.net’s tactical Massive Assault Network, World of Tanks is set to offer fast-paced battles.  Modes include mini-campaigns steeped in history, tournaments, and massive Clan Wars (the end game) that span “hundreds of provinces.”

“A wise gentleman once observed that men had the same relationship to tanks, as women to SPA treatments: an all-eclipsing love, hardwired into the genes,” says Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.net, “That’s why we are coming up with Panzer MMO.”

World of Tanks is expected to release in fall 2010.

Seems like some PR person realized how successful Global Agenda’s marketing strategy was.

That’s exactly what the maker of the recently launched Global Agenda did yesterday.  Even though the game has had a relatively smooth launch, Hi-Rez Studios is extending the free 30 days through March.  That’s your incentive.  Todd Harris followed that announcement up by explaining what’s in store for the Commonwealth’s immediate future.  Based upon early community feedback the company will be adding the following features by the end of February: a Friends/Ignore list, the ability to chosePvP queues, Repair Kits (gear is currently unrepairable), and new AvA zones timed for other time zones.

There’s many more issues that Hi-Rez has to deal with in the game – window mode optimization, being removed from missions on disconnects/crashes, thus losing XP, etc – but the communication so far has been superb.  Further ahead Hi-Rez promises additional content of all types (PvP, PvE, AvA), tweaks and overhauls to crafting, loot and prestige.

I mentioned in my “Why I Quit Champions Online” post that I believe MMOG companies and players live in a symbiotic relationship.  By giving the companies money to fund the entertainment we want we are providing services to each other.  It’s still early, but Hi-Rez has my trust, and thus my money, for now.

Icarus Studios’ little experiment known as Fallen Earth, LLC, and its MMORPG Fallen Earth have been bumped up to version 1.3 today.  The developer continues to surprise the MMOG sector with Fallen Earth by putting out additional content quickly.  The new patch’s highlights include raising the level cap (only by one level),

“Our goal for this project was to make gameplay more enticing and challenging for new Sector One players as well as our veterans in Sector Three who have reached level 45,” said Project Manager, Colin Dwan.

Dwan reveals that some of the content in the new patch acts as a setup for v1.4. “The purpose of Deadfall Point is to encourage players to assist in pushing back the radiation boundaries, acquiring access to the Deadfall territory, which mysteries will unravel later this year with patch v1.4,” said Dwan.

Patch v1.3, “the first of several developments planned for 2010,“ also includes some lesser additions, “more than a dozen new encounter areas and several creatures typically found in higher-level territories of Sectors Two and Three.”

Now is as good a time as any to sign-up for Fallen Earth’s 10-day free trial.