This Persistent Life #9

E3 is upon us! What can we expect from the MMO scene?

So E3 isn't what it used to be. If you ask anyone who's been there for work, this is a very good thing. Personally, I'm not going to miss the onset of vertigo walking from appointment-to-appointment. Old school E3 was one of those things that sounded like a lot of fun in theory, and I suppose it was, if you were simply there to hang out. But I never got to do that, and in its old form, it was torture for someone who had to work under daily deadlines. But enough about that.

There's one thing that looks like it isn't changing from the show-as-we-knew-it: the sheer volume of games on display. This year sounds like it'll be a decent one for MMOs, too. What can you expect? Well, here is what I'm personally excited to see.

#1 Warhammer: Age of Reckoning

It's been a long time since I've seen WAR, so I'm pretty excited to see the latest version in action. I really dig the Warhammer fantasy world, and I know that Mythic will pour the requisite amount of TLC on the game's PvP to ensure that it's great. Frankly, it's a toss-up between WAR, and Age of Conan as to what game will break my WoW addiction (provided the next expansion doesn't "wow" me enough to reinforce my addiction, har har). Both Funcom and Mythic are proven in regards to making great games; they just need to open up their betas already!

#2 The Secret World

Though there's next to nothing out on this one yet, the premise sounds enticing. It draws heavily from the world of conspiracy theories and the occult (think The Da VinciCode meets H.P Lovecraft) and it's real easy for me to be drawn into this sort of stuff. Appropriately, Funcom is leaking info about the game's mythology by means of an ilovebees-style alternate reality game. It's been going on for a while, but you can catch up here: http://www.darkdemonscrygaia.com/. The cool thing about these ARGs is that lazy people like me can wait till all the super hardcore folks track down all the clues, and just read their results in compilations like this one. Arguably, that's missing out on half the fun, but it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. Anyway, The Secret World is supposed to be in concurrent development for PC and Xbox 360, which is a good indication that it will bring to the genre some new (or at least fresh) ideas. This being at E3 is just wishful thinking on my part; Funcom has neither confirmed nor denied that it would be on display. Let's hope it is, though!

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment