General Discussion

Having your blog entry eaten by a java glitch when you hit "Save" isn't a nice feeling and I want to kill something.  Which isn't bad considering that I'm at E3 and will be able to do that at virtually most any booth.

So... recap.  Day One Over.  Do my feet hurt?  Yes.  Do I hear sympathy?  No.

"Man... you get to go to E3?"
"Yes. It's work."
"But you get to go to E3!"

Such is the life of a Games Writer.  I arrived yesterday at mid-day and went immediately to my appointments with only a little wandering between them.  Instead I worked on my articles and did so again in the evening.  On to the games.

Pirates of the Caribbean Online (PotCO) and Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS) are the two upcoming Pirate themed MMOs on the horizon, and they are like day and night.  PotBS emphasized naval combat simulation.  You need to have skills such as "Tacking" and "Nimble Sails" and need to know when to apply them in light of the prevailing wind.  PotCO gives you unlimited ammo for your cannon and employs a "Voodoo" system.  Oh, and you also can cheat at cards.  But that's enough of a teaser, my article will be up soon, promises Dana.

Unleash the Fury by Auran Games was a bit of a pleasant surprise.  "How does it look?" asked Dana as we compared it to Guild Wars.  "It looks fine." was my response.  My article published here is necessarily short for an E3 preview but I intend to head on back to get some hands on time so I can properly give you guys a better preview of this game.  We were given a full run through which included the different branches or schools of abilities and information on skills, as well as descriptions of archtypes and strategy.

For a game that's still in recent development, the run through we were given was particularly thorough.  But as I reminded Dana, the type of game with battlefield instancing, allows the company to produce a vertical demo, allowing players to participate in an eminently playable demo of one of their war zones.  GuildWars had a playable demo 3 E3s before they actually launched.

I attended the Mythic party with Jon and Dana.  Mythic is one of those companies I like.  I admire their success in localizing their games internationally, they are gracious to the press and responsive to their fans.  They also have couches and aren't LOUD.  I plunked myself down on a comfy couch with Mythic staff after a long day with drink in one hand, plate of sushi in the other, feet on coffee table and enjoyed watching the Warhammer demo and kibitzing.

So what does Warhammer look like?  To be fanboi-ish... it's WARHAMMER!  Graphics and modeling remain true to the table-top game, and we were treated to Orc, Goblin and Dwarf action.  It was like seeing the best painted miniatures you've ever seen come to life.  The invited press were also given an "exclusive" peek at the Orc transportation system.  Orcs travel by trebuchet.  You may not always get to your destination alive... but you got there!

So that was my day.  Apart from "chocolating" Jon so he felt better (typical Show fatigue & not eating for too long symptoms) and jumpstarting his appetite for dinner and teasing Dana about the number of times he got carded.  I got to meet - for the first time in most cases - the other members of the MMORPG writing staff at E3.

Carolyn "Sylvene" Koh out, hoping this "Save" works and wishing all a Great Gaming Day!

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Players on the same server mingle and interact in town areas called Sanctuaries. Since players on the same server are not pitted against each other, there isn’t a sense of fraternizing with the enemy. There is no interaction against the “enemy” except in war zones, and it is the servers that will have a ladder system. Auran hopes that this will encourage players to share their experience with their fellow guilds on the same server and foster the server community. More ideas to strengthen community and guild ties are still on the drawing board.

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I can't believe I missed this when I was browsing Auran's Fury homepage. This is one of the freshest ideas I've seen in a while. It could get a whole lot interesting via this route. Has server architecture recently improved so this can happen? Such as have bridge servers being the Combat Zones while the native's non-instanced zones are in another set. Theoretically the only difference is the physical implementation. e.g., If in WoW the Alliance and the Horde are on different servers outside of their cities. It would require a lot of zoning. The hardware to implement something like this must be up there. I can just see the amount of redundancy necessary to do this. Then again I haven't seen a real MMORPG data center. Either way, that's a cool feature.

Yeah most of the members in Warhammer Alliance got a good laugh over the Ork transportation method too.

Shaggs said that the interview with Mythic was today right? Good luck with it.