The latest news regarding the upcoming MMO; Jumpgate Evolution Online has just arrived.  Since E3, NetDevil has begun looking further into the PvP aspect of the game.  The game’s player vs player combat is currently being tested a tweaked.  NetDevil promised that we would see some more info regarding the PvP next month, and have assured us that this is still going to happen as planned.  The game’s progress is said to be going good and we can expect to hear even more PvP info later this year.

Jumpgate Evolution still has a ways to go, and to make sure it reaches its release date faster, the engineers over at NetDevil are currently tweaking the technical aspects of the game.  Things such as network traffic load and stability are being tested.  This is being heavily focused on at the moment, so that when the game is released it will immediately be able to support massively scaled battles.   Along with these network tweaks, some additional AI improvements are being made on the side.  Good on ya NetDevil,  I mean seriously, who wants to be attacking an enemy that might as well be a potato sack.  I certainly don’t.

Some event sectors and UI improvements are also being touched at the moment.  Unfortunately with all the work keeping NetDevil busy, we won’t be seeing them at this years PAX.  We can only hope that because of the games absence, we might be seeing a beta some time in the near(ish) future.

Keep your fingers crossed for more news on Jumpgate Evolution.  In the mean time, head over to the official post for a sexy wallpaper and a complete fansite kit!

The ability to speak to nations (The Solrain Commonwealth, Quantar Paths, The Octavian Empire) other than your own has become a topic of interest within the JGE forums. Currently, nations are unable to engage in communications with other nations, in his forum post, Lance explains that this is a very intentional exclusion within the game. These nations are basically in all out war and only interact with each other through combat. If given the ability to speak to other nations, the feel of the game would be completely different, nations would have a tougher time being prideful, which is an integral part of the game.

Lance reflected upon successful MMORPG’s such as Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) and World of Warcraft (WoW). Midgard vs. Hibernia vs. Albion in DAoC created battles of epic proportions in the Realm vs. Realm system, and the great rivalry between Alliance and Horde in WoW is only better fueled because players cannot speak to their enemies.

“We also don’t want to provide any in-game tools that could allow for any sort of “espionage game.” Rampant paranoia, defection or collusion weakens nations and undermines the team feeling of ‘we’re all in this together.’ If you prefer a game that provides for spying and back-stabbing then JGE may simply not be for you. Jumpgate is about the war, and about being part of a strong nation. Anything that goes on outside of the game will obviously be beyond our ability to police, but we’re not going to provide any in-game mechanisms for this undesired behavior.”

For more information on JGE communication you can visit their forums.

Space and Sci-Fi fans unite! Jumpgate Evolution, a new interstellar combat MMO from NetDevil has been gaining momentum in the weeks since E3 2010. The game is being touted as a combat-oriented one, and on the same coin, capable of  large-scale (100 vs. 100) warfare. In contrast to the popular incumbent, Eve Online, Jumpgate Evolution will center around twitch-based combat, and forego a heavily statistical approach in favor of a more streamlined one. That is to say, the developers want the player to focus almost entirely on battling it out, as opposed to non-combat (crafting and trading) systems.

Daeke, the Community Coordinator over at the Jumpgate official forums, recently compiled a list of user questions, and opened up about some of the broader aspects of the game.

Expected features:

• Massive, fast-paced space battles
• Pure combat focus
• Faction-based interaction
• “Event Sectors”
• Globally accessible banks

Daeke warns, “You’re not a space trucker, you’re a fighter pilot. JGE is a completely new animal. If you want a true space simulator, this may not be the game for you.”

The shot takes us to the Quantar sector where an Octavius fighter is weaving and scouting his way through. It looks very cool, although it sort of looks like the ship is anchored directly into that milky-wayish looking thing in the background. I’m sure I’m wrong and its actually tied down to the very awesome Deep Space Nine looking space station behind it. Carry on NetDevil!

Jumpgate Evolution is slated for release on August 31, 2010.

This week the minds behind one of NetDevil’s current projects, Jumpgate Evolution, released a Community Q&A video. Taken during a small conference at E3, the video answers a number of questions about the game’s goals, battles, and gameplay.

Perhaps the most interesting answer dealt with the question of ship stats vs. skill, and which was more important. The answer was essentially that both were required to cement a player’s chance of victory. Said one of the Jumpgate Evolution developers, “If I’m a (level) 50 and you’re a (level) 10, you can still do damage to me but I will take you down eventually. You will need at least five (level) 10 buddies to defeat me.”

The developers also emphasized that Jumpgate Evolution is an objective-based game, and “not just a bucket of shooting”.

Jumpgate Evolution is a sequel to 2001′s Jumpgate: The Reconstruction Initiative. Set in space, the game features twitch-based combat and collision detection. NetDevil has not yet announced a release date.

If there are two things I like, they’re space ships and shouting. This video, provided exclusively by G4TV, has both. This trailer introduces the Jumpgate Evolution Octavius Faction, and gives fresh cause to be excited. Jumpgate Evolution has been a long time in coming, but let’s hope that when it finally arrives it inspires us half as much as this rousing orator.

For more information on JGE, visit the official site.

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.

I hate to be the one to say this, but lifetime makes the most business sense. After much hacking on calculator keys, I figured out if you played for 3 years and paid monthly you’re blowing $540.00. If you went by way of 6 month payments, you’re paying $360.00 to play a superhero. Now, if you are playing for that long, as a life time subscriber your breaking even at the 13 month mark if you’re paying monthly. How many games did I dribble out monthly or bi-annual payments to? A lot.

This isn’t a new option offered by MMORPG studios, two years ago Turbine offered “founders” (people who played from the beta stages) a $200.00 lifetime subscriber offer, a hundred dollar discount over the regular rate. They both have a similar pricing plan; let’s look at it on paper:

• Lifetime:            $ 199.99 plus extras.
• 12 Months:       $ 59.99 (save $29.99 woohoo!)
• Monthly:           $ 14.99 (normal mmo rate)

Now comparing this to Lord of the Rings that offered a lifetime subsctiption from it’s release in 2007.

• Lifetime:           $299.99
• 12-Months:      $143.40 ($11.95/month – Save 20%)
• 6-Months:        $77.70 ($12.95/month – Save 13%)
• 3-Months:        $41.85 ($13.95/month – Save 7%)
• Monthly:          $14.99

Even though Champions is the better deal, it looks like taking the lifetime plunge makes hella sense to me for both games. I know players that have played from open beta and didn’t take the offer back then and they are sorry. Also there are players that have left and glad they didn’t, knowing that they weren’t “LOTRO LIFERS”. What would it take to make a player a lifer for their mmo of choice? I know that there are a few games already running that I feel would be great candidates for lifetime memberships.

The top five best candidates for MMORPG’s Lifetime subscriptions:

5) Phantasy Star Universe: I recently ranted about Sega’s fumbling of this popular sci-fi franchise. But I feel that for $9.99 a month, players would be happy to plunk down $100.00 to not having to fiddle with monthly payments, ever. To update you on my status, I found PSU on Newegg.com for $9.99 and ordered it; it should be here next week. A good friend of mine mentioned this game while we were discussing the topic, I haven’t played it yet but I am told that the playerbase is very loyal; we will see.

4  Darkfall: Love it or hate it, I put Darkfall (which I call the JR Ewing of the MMO world) on this list for pure chance that Aventurine will get their act together and clean it up. Darkfall has a lot of potential, and if it were to get harnessed would be a pvp powerhouse. Do I think that it will last long enough to break even versus paying a monthly, I don’t know. But it would be interesting to see how many people (if any) signed up as life timers.

3) World of Warcraft: Been around from 2004, been running for almost 5 years now. If you paid bi-annually then it made more sense to go with a lifetime subscription. But they don’t offer one because Blizzard thinks they will make more money, and they are right. I know a few guys that played from beta and are still going strong; they are self proclaimed wow-lifers. What would make a lifetime subscription sweeter to guys like them, if they offered any and all future expansions free to life-timers? Wouldn’t that be nice? Not a chance.

2) Everquest 2: Another MMO that’s been around since 2004. Has a strong player base and people continue to return to EQ and EQ2 time and again. Undoubtedly, it’s a classic and would be great as the “fallback game” when people are ‘tweening mmo’s. $200.00 to be able to log into Norrath freely? Why not, it’s like those old pair of jeans, yeah those with the hole in them, the comfortable ones you can’t bear to throw out. That is the feeling I get from the EQ community, they feel comfortable and “at home” there.

1)   EVE Online: Older than wow, older than EQ2 and has a growing player base of 300,000 users. Could a lot of those accounts be second accounts, yep. There are players that have over 200-300 million skill points that qualify for lifer status. Paying a onetime and I mean onetime charge for EVE keeps the monotonous, “oh I have to buy a game card A-GAIN” out of the game. I also know of some players that return once a year for 5 days, claiming that they “play” the game. Now they don’t have to worry about being blessed with free time from CCP, they can say they are player all they want, just log in to train skills. In 5 years they can probably fly anything.

Also paying another monthly bill can be a pain. One thing that EVE offers that if somewhat different is the option to use player earned currency or “isk” to buy PLEX’s, another form of monthly subscription. If they offered Lifetime PLEX’s for say $10 Billion isk, would players jump at the chance? I afraid so, and the scary thing is that some players can afford it; if you have that much money then you qualify for this program.

But you can’t deny that paying even $300.00 for EVE makes a lot of sense. I am now an official EVE player, my skill queue that I set up on EVEmon runs into next year. If they offered me a lifetime subscription, I couldn’t pay it with in game currency if it’s in the billion ranges, but I would definitely dig into the wallet for a lifetime sub. Hey, if I want some downtime and play another game or a try a new beta, all I would have to do is to log in, fill the passive training queue and be on my way. EVE is game that you don’t have to keep pressing W in order to advance in skills, I like that option; you could say that EVE made a lifer out of me.

Now what new, upcoming games would you like to see offer lifetime subscriptions? These are the top five best candidates in my opinion.

Top five future titles I would like to see offer lifetime subs.

5)  Jumpgate Evolution: Will not be the spiritual successor to EVE, but looks like a darn good dogfight shooter. If they implement a static world and real MMORPG elements could be the sci-fi shooter hit of the year.

I’m looking forward to trying this one out when it gets released in…maybe…probably….I don’t know for sure, September. I’m sure it will capture the hearts of the old Jumpgate players, and there are a surprisingly a lot of them. If they can hold true to the old design and add some improvements they might have some long term loyalty from the old player base.

4) The Secret World: Funcom’s Top Secret level-less and skill-less MMORPG in development is set to be released 2012. I’m not sure if the world is going to be around at that time, but I’m looking forward to playing this one. A horror based game set in current times in realistic backgrounds, sounds smecksy. Just point me to New York, thank you very much.

I have played some of Funcom’s games, I think that they might be learning from old mistakes and might get it right this time. It’s an aggressive, unique genre for an MMO and the marketing campaign they have started has already gone viral. If members of the TSW forum figure out all of Funcom’s puzzles that they keep throwing at them, it will keep them busy until 2012; we have some lifer quality players there. After all that work, will they pay $200.00 to do it forever? Go on the forums, those guys are either dedicated geniuses or obsessed madmen, either way they I think they would go for it.

3) Mortal Online: Open world PVP seems that is making a strong move to the front of modern MMORPG’s. Swedish game company Star Vault has a chance to capture Dark fall’s runoff, they seems to be very polished and professional so far. They keep in contact with their active player base; seem open, honest and sincere. These are good qualities when addressing their customers, and some of the main ingredients that Dark fall’s staff lacks.

On those qualities alone they have already acquired a good reputation for an indie studio. They are working hard on Mortal Online itself, if they can get it right, clean up the bugs and make a AAA rated title they have a shot to be one of the major nails in Dark falls coffin. It is a prediction that I am making. Now if they combine all of these, I am sure that some of the “Hardcore PVP” crowd will have no problem dropping some dough like I just dropped you, and wow you dropped a nice sword, kthxbye.

2)  Aion: I like the subscription plan for the Chinese version of Aion. Pay for the time you are going to use alleviates a lot of the wasted time that you use up when you are not playing. But what if you didn’t have to worry about wasting time? That’s because you have the rest of your life. From what I’ve seen Aion is a very well made, polished title.

Aion quickly surpassed 3 million players in China and Korea alone; they have the chance of doubling that here. American’s although are creatures of habit and if they find something that they love will want to own it and not worry about micromanaging MMO timeshares. If anyone has reserved the collectors edition for $20.00 over the regular box price, they are defiantly lifescriber™ material I could see lifetime subscriptions making a big hit here, am I right Avsok?

1) Star Wars: The Old Republic: Oh yeah, it’s going to be that good. And I could just imagine all the old Star Wars Galaxy players and millions of Star Wars fans flocking to this game. And even if they get it half right off the beta, people will be soulbound to this game faster than Yoda whips out his lightsaber.

Even for $300.00 I think that players will buy a lifetime sub before they even played Star Wars: The Old Republic. That’s because I see the dedication of Star Wars fans, they are fans for life and even if they can capture that spirit, they will have a loyal playerbase for a life. I just hope that don’t screw it up like…cough…cough…cough, but I don’t think they will, I feel the whole industry learned from SOE and Bioware is just a better studio IMO.

There is a darkside to having a lifetime subscription though. If you can think back to 2007 and remember how Flagship Studios offered Hellgate: London “founders” or lifetime subscriptions for $150. How would you feel if you were a Matrix fanatic and your servers are about to be shutdown? I’m sure that must hurt and they might regret doing it, but I feel that sometimes when the pros outweigh the cons just go with it. If your love your game that much, or just have the money to blow, take some of the guessing out of it and sub for life.

And wear it like a badge of honor. I subbed or life on Hellgate: London, I got my money’s worth and still don’t regret doing it to this day. I just don’t trust Bill Roper as far as I can throw him, but I will still admit that $200.00 for at least 3 years of Champions Online might be the best deal in town. All they have to do is keep it running that long, crosses fingers for all Champions Lifescribers™

What game would you play for life?

Play safe,

Ink

Today Codemasters accounced that Jumpgate Evolution has hit a lankmark of 250,000 plus beta signups, making it the biggest ever beta signup for them.  While 250,000 is an impressive number, it does not necessarily translate to sales.   Age of Conan broke the 1 million mark for beta signups, the largest beta signup ever, then bombed after it’s launch due to many many gameplay issues.

On the flip side, it does mean there is at least interest in the game.  I’m burned out on fantasy MMOs, so this one is on the very top of my list.

Jumpgate Evolution, currently in the Friends and Family testing phase, is an immersive space adventure that allows players to choose from one of three playable Nations and engage in an intense action-packed gaming experience.

Aside from Tabula Rasa, the last 5 or 6 MMO’s I’ve played have all been fantasy based and after Darkfall I’m now officially burnt out on fantasy games.   I’m now moving on to Sci-Fi or any other genre that doesn’t have swords, horses, medieval armor or bows.   Luckily for me Jumpgate: Evolution and Champions Online are right around the corner.  Jumpgate is set to release next month June 16th and Champions Online later in July.

I’ve made my opinion on Champions Online quite clear, I don’t really like it, but Jumpgate looks awesome and is definitely the game I’ll be picking up first.  On the off chance that Jumpgate is horrible, I might try out Champions depending on what other people are saying about it.  Then there’s also CrimeCraft and Global Agenda, two other non fantasy based MMORPGs set to release later this year.   So I guess I timed it just right cause there’s a slew of non fantasy games coming out.  Hopefully I’ll find a home somewhere, I crossing my fingers for Jumpgate.

On a side note, I’m just realized I’m awesome at graphics, I mean just look at how professional that image is.