Gee, what do you think the big story was this week? Mebbe the surprise sale of one of the pillars of modern MMOGdom? Maybe it wasn’t a suprise to you, but I’m not that cool: I was floored.

The Big Story. — Paragon City’s New Mayor
The word from the official NCsoft site makes no bones about it: NCsoft acquires City of Heroes Franchise. The mega-MMOG publisher has purchased the intellectual property from Cryptic Studios, and will be setting up a new studio in the Northern California area to support it. Most of the development crew currently working on the ‘City of’ titles has made the jump to NCsoft NorCal, and players hopefully shouldn’t see much in the way of a hiccup during the changeover. In fact, they’ll be getting new toys.

A couple of other things from today worth noting:

• Wow Comic #0
• EQ2’s Third Birthday
• Animal Crossing MMOG Confirmed
• Guild Wars Art Giveaway (told you it would be cool)
• Rise of Kunark NDA Lifted

And, just as a note, you’re unfortunately unlikely to see anything from me on RoK this weekend/next week, because I’m going to be fall-out-of-my-chair busy. Call of Duty 4, Mario Galaxy, Assassin’s Creed, and Mass Effect are conspiring to make sure I don’t set eyes on a virtual world for quite a while. :)

I hope to return to my regular posting schedule as best I can next week, but we’ll see. Wish me luck.

You may have noticed from my occasional comments that I’m sort of a fan of the Shadowrun series. I took it into my head that my vitriolic comments might be of interest to others, and so inquired with the folks at 1up. I found that they were interested … and then proceeded to write the most unprofessional drivel that’s ever escaped my fingers.

Thankfully, time and editing heals all wounds. The article Running From Shadows: Why Shadowrun Made Fans Cry went up on 1up.com today, and I think it turned out not too badly.

This year’s release of FASA Studio’s Shadowrun FPS left a lot of people scratching their heads. Design and control decisions left fans on both sides of the PC/360 fence feeling cold. Tabletop players wondered why it wasn’t an RPG. And, of course, there were a lot of gamers who just wanted to see a new version of Crimson Skies. Surprisingly, the deepest disappointment seemed to stem from the game’s use of the Shadowrun license. As a tabletop role-playing game it never reached such high profile as the fantasy juggernaut, Dungeons & Dragons. Why then was the complaining and kvetching so loud? Why all the bad blood over what amounts to a relatively obscure franchise?

Just in case Monday’s chat with Scott left you feeling like I’m completely favorably disposed towards EverQuest 2, just know you’d be wrong. Last week my group had just about the most frustrating game session yet since we started playing EQ2. It made me fuzzy with annoyance, and had me muttering dark words of a vile nature under my breath. Think the dark tongue of Mordor, only every other word was ‘designer’ or ‘cactus’. As you may recall, we’re working our way through the content in Desert of Flames, and so far everything has been going swimmingly … err … sandily. We killed some crocs, braved some orcs, and the plan for last week was to check out what Maj’dul had to offer. In a word, the only thing it had to offer was PAIN.
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City of Heroes is no longer a Cryptic Studios venture. Bet you weren’t expecting that one, huh? The official notice is full of platitudes, assurances to the players, and statements about unity of purpose between Cryptic and NCsoft-NoCal.

But yikes. I … imagine … MUO is still going to be published by NCsoft, but that’s just one less firm link between Cryptic and NC. Fun to watch the gears turn, huh?

Additional: And now you get free CoV! And prestige! And a debt removal! Yikes!

Additional: Oh … MUO is a Microsoft-published project, Lum reminds me in the comments. Thanks Scott. :)

Sooo … goodbye NCsoft/Cryptic.

I always like GDC, but I usually only go for the ‘core’ days of the event (Wed-Fri). In 2008, I’m going to be in town all week. The reason? The Worlds in Motion Summit, which is explained by Simon Carless over on the GameSetWatch site. It’s (of course) an online games/worlds thingie, and is going to take place on Monday and Tuesday of GDC week. Fascinatin’.

The Worlds in Motion Summit is a definitive event tailored for the growing number of industry professionals and Fortune 500 companies developing interactive online spaces for both entertainment and commercial purposes. Discussion forums will delve into online worlds, social gaming and media and player created activity. These will provide insight for developers of all backgrounds into how the game industry is collectively building socialization into games and integrating personalization and player-generated content into gameplay — while widely accessible Web and networking tools are looking to the game industry for their way forward.

Alsoes: If you aren’t reading Worlds in Motion’s RSS feed, you’re missing out on a lot of awesomeness.

So, in one of the latest editions of the Virgin Worlds ‘cast Brent mentioned a new Warhammer Online podcast that he found really awesome after just one episode. Being a WAR fancier myself, I decided to check it out, and went on over to the website for Warhamma. Then I downloaded it on iTunes. Over the last week of gym-going I’ve listened to all three ‘casts, and I can now confirm that my friend Brent is *not* crazy here: Warhamma is really quite good.

I’m not going to say I was hooked from episode one … Ted still clearly had some fine details to get right. But the presentation was there, and his voice is really easy to listen to. By episode two, the slight audio hitching had been taken care of, and by episode three he had a really nice product on offer. I would like to heartily add my voice to Brent’s recommendation that you listen to Warhamma the podcast. My biggest hurrah about the podcast? It’s short! The average episode so far is about twenty minutes. Ted knows that the best thing to do is say your piece and then shut the hell up. Brilliant.

I even actually learned some stuff since Ted takes time to read through forums and junk, stuff I just don’t have the time/resources to do. In episode two he breaks down some revelations from a recent developer chat, and in episode three he describes the information from a recent beta update post to the Warhammer Herald, as well as an E For All interview. Hell, I’d read the Warhammer Herald stuff and I still learned something.

Episode four just went up today, so you even have fresh content to consume!

Just … Ted … buddy … one thing. You are never allowed to try to imitate an English accent ever again. It sort of veered drunkenly from Australian to … maybe Czech? I dunno. Anyway, don’t do that again. Please. Ever. And that really is Paul Barnett’s blog. If you want to hear what the funny English man actually sounds like, I can help with that.

Edit: Ted! Ted, Ted, Ted! Sorry Ted! :)

I had the utmost pleasure last week to speak with Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer for EverQuest 2, about the process of making their upcoming expansion Rise of Kunark. We gabbed for quite a bit, and managed to cover quite a bit of ground, including:

• Highlights for tradeskillers and soloists
• The seamless zone tech that didn’t make it into Faydwer
• What the team did with those extra four months of production
• The design considerations behind Veeshan’s Peak
• A discussion of the original uber-ambitious content schedule for EQ2 and
• The zone that didn’t quite make it into the expansion.

I particularly enjoyed his commentary on the process of ’selling a relationship’ to players:

My dad the professional sales guy, for his entire career, he was one of the good guys where he would always describe the bad salesguys as the ‘used car salesmen’ trying to get you on the one sale. The good salesguys are the ones who understand you’re selling a relationship. I’ve always thought about MMOs the same way: they are all about the relationship. If you are not selling the relationship, as in you want to provide a service over a long period of time, you need to get out of the business. There’s no room for people who don’t want to play that way, and there’s no room for people who can’t afford to play that way.

Lots and lots and lots more below. Read more