Marvel Universe Online

[Dfense75]

Hey all. Not sure how many of you know about this. Right now in the works is a MMORPG called Marvel universe online. Its being produced my Microsoft and Cryptic Studios(The guys who brought us City of Heroes). No details are available atm in regards to the actual features of the game or any real news at all. Now besides being able to of course create your own heroes and interact in the Marvel Universe. It has been said they are working on a way to implement using the ENTIRE Marvel library of characters for people to play with. This very well could be the first real game where we could actually play with Alpha/Omega characters. Again not sure how many of you have expierience with MMORPG. But the way they think being able to use existing characters would be giving the players the chance to create small servers(much like an instance in World of Warcraft) where the only active people would be the ones invited into it. Currently they said the game will be playable for Windows Vista and X-box360. The 2 systems will share the same servers and be able to interact with one another. Personally I love games. Being able to play with the Alpha/Omega roster would be a blast. I will do my best to keep you all informed of news regarding the game. Im also going to attempt to get on Beta testing for it so I can contribute to the game as well. How much fun could it be if a bunch of us all jumped online and got to play with our favorite Alpha/Omega characters together. Im psyched about it!

[Damien]

Hmmmm. You say I can fly around as Beta Ray Bill or Namor and beat the crap out of people?

Sweet.

[Dfense75]

Been waiting for an update on this project for some time now and just got a small tidbit. Apparently the game world itself is almost complete. The United States is complete and they currently woking on the Canadian wilderness and Provinces. This project is still a couple of years away from completion but should be a blast for any Marvel or MMO fans. I was excited to head that Canada was going to be a part of the game world. I can only assume that Alpha Flight will be as well.

When I know more you will know more.

[varo]

great news dfense, where did you hear this? last i heard they where canceling the game entirely.

[Dfense75]

On the marvel message boards under the new games section. Someone posted a link from a comic convention interview with the parties making the game. They had stated where they are at with the current status of the project. The cancellation was just speculation based on the fact that cryptic and marvel are releasing NO info on the game. MMOs tend to be very very secretive at this stage of develpoment and rumors always fly.

[varo]

cool. thanks. i have been tracking this game since it was announced and was very bummed when i heard of the possible cancellation. very much looking forward to this.

[Dfense75]

As am I Varo. Im gonna make every effort to get into Beta testing for this game. When info on that starts to surface ill post it here. If you havent already seen it. You can see a tease trailer for the game on http://www.crypticstudios.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=82&Itemid=34

[Corvus]

On the marvel message boards under the new games section. Someone posted a link from a comic convention interview with the parties making the game. They had stated where they are at with the current status of the project. The cancellation was just speculation based on the fact that cryptic and marvel are releasing NO info on the game. MMOs tend to be very very secretive at this stage of develpoment and rumors always fly.

Well, that and the fact that Microsoft was apparently canceling a certain number of games, some of which were known, and some of which weren't. Couple that with Cryptic selling their entire City of Heroes IP to NCSoft (and the entire CoH staff moving to NCSoft, into a new studio NCSoft set up for them), and then Cryptic shutting down their forums and blogs on their website, you end up with all sorts of speculation that the project, if not Cryptic itself, is dead.

There are also rumors going around that Cryptic is the new developer for the Star Trek MMO, after the previous developer lost the license, and then layed off a bunch of employees.

[Corvus]

On the marvel message boards under the new games section. Someone posted a link from a comic convention interview with the parties making the game. They had stated where they are at with the current status of the project. The cancellation was just speculation based on the fact that cryptic and marvel are releasing NO info on the game. MMOs tend to be very very secretive at this stage of develpoment and rumors always fly.

Well, that and the fact that Microsoft was apparently canceling a certain number of games, some of which were known, and some of which weren't. Couple that with Cryptic selling their entire City of Heroes IP to NCSoft (and the entire CoH staff moving to NCSoft, into a new studio NCSoft set up for them), and then Cryptic shutting down their forums and blogs on their website, you end up with all sorts of speculation that the project, if not Cryptic itself, is dead.

There are also rumors going around that Cryptic is the new developer for the Star Trek MMO, after the previous developer lost the license, and then layed off a bunch of employees.


Well, tacky as quoting myself is, it seems like this was a time where believing the hype was a good idea.

Why Marvel killed MUO (http://kotaku.com/354886/why-microsoft-murdered-the-marvel-mmo)

Apparently, they defined success as "being as big as WoW" which is such a stupid assessment of the MMO marketplace its hard to credit. WoW is the Galactus of the MMO world. There are multiple successful games with 100-150K subscribers that do well.

[Dfense75]

:cry: All I can say is this. I have been a player of MMO's for years. I played Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, and World of Warcraft. WoW is currently a juggernaught in the industry. They are currently at 10 Million subscribers when any other MMO out there never reached more than 1 Million. Now im not going to get into why WoW is very over rated yet very successful at the same time. But here is why Marvel and so many other MMOs since WoWs release have failed.

You do not have to be #1 to be a success in the MMO industry. Here is an example. Look at Wal Mart and how big they are. No one competes with them as they would not come close. They saturated the market place with their stores and sell affordable products. Now lets look at Nordstorms department store. A long running very successful usually mall based department store. That is renowned for its customer service and profitable operation practices. Nordstrom will never compete with Walmart in volume or amount of store locations. But they also dont want to.

There is no point in competing. They recognized to be a success. They would develop their niche and hold to it. Marvel, other existing MMOs, and to be released MMOs cant and dont need to compete with WoW to work. They only need to develop a strong working product and develop their niche in the industry.

Marvel fails again.

[Manikin]

I agree for the most part. WoW is huge and over rated. But what made it what it is? It was the first MMO to bring RTS gamers into the MMO world. The success of Warcraft and Starcraft pulled people into WoW because they wanted to know how the story would develop. I personally found it unimaginative and shamelessly built on the foundation of what Games Workshop had already established. Any other MMO out there shouldn't be comparing itself to WoW, because the majority of them are not built off of previously successful RTS games.

MUO would have been much bigger than even Marvel could have known. My reasoning for this is the genre. There is really only one super heroes game out there, City of Heroes. Comic fans have only that one outlet to create their own characters and play them in an online setting. CoH is very popular, I loved it and still do, but it is an extremely limited game in terms of heroes powersets. If Marvel has just released MUO it would have drawn the majority of comic readers, gamers, and most of the high level players from CoH into that world with the promise of allowing them to remake the characters they loved creating and playing in CoH and playing a whole new game. It could have been huge.

Hell, I even worked on a project with a few colleges to build a new pilot project MMO called "Capes & Cowls" because of how profitable that type of MMO genre could be. The game would have over 200 powersets at launch. Sadly, like most projects of this type, funding became a problem :P

I know...the name is pretty weak, but it was just what we used for the project.

[Corvus]

Heh, Capes is something the enemies in City of Heroes often refer to the player-heroes as. This was really odd before the first update to the game, as they didn't have capes in at launch as they hadn't got them looking right at that point.

The Microsoft attitude is so silly. Its like someone saying "unless I can get the same market share as Coke, making a new soft-drink isn't worth it" I'm pretty sure that anyone with 5% of coke's sales is probably rolling around in a swimming pool full of cash.

[Dfense75]

Yeah im seeing more and more news about it officially being cancelled now. Truly sad I was so looking foward to it. I left WoW some months ago and Im playing Star Wars Galaxies again for the moment. Ill more than likely be giving Age of Conan a try. It looks pretty good so far. What MMOs if any do any of you all play? If so what server?

[Manikin]

Yeah im seeing more and more news about it officially being cancelled now. Truly sad I was so looking foward to it. I left WoW some months ago and Im playing Star Wars Galaxies again for the moment. Ill more than likely be giving Age of Conan a try. It looks pretty good so far. What MMOs if any do any of you all play? If so what server?

WoW is on the decline now, I am playing EVE Online and am beta testing for WarHammer Online. I think War is going to take quite a bit away from WoW in terms of active subscribers. I have played just about every other MMO since Lineage2. I used to play SWG until they dumbed it down so that anyone could start as a Jedi/Sith lvl 1.

[Dfense75]

How is EVE Online? Dont know anyone thats playing it. But I have been looking for a good SciFi based MMO. I left WoW a few months ago and recently went back to SWG. Yeah its not what it once was(not even close really). But its Star Wars. Warhammer visually looks alot like WoW in what little I have seen. Although it does sound like Warhammer will have a very nice PvP system. Let me know what you think of Warhammer as you continue to test it.

[Manikin]

How is EVE Online? Dont know anyone thats playing it. But I have been looking for a good SciFi based MMO. I left WoW a few months ago and recently went back to SWG. Yeah its not what it once was(not even close really). But its Star Wars. Warhammer visually looks alot like WoW in what little I have seen. Although it does sound like Warhammer will have a very nice PvP system. Let me know what you think of Warhammer as you continue to test it.

Eve is fun. Been playing it for a few years now, on and off. It is very laid back as there is almost no grind to the game. Skill train while you are offline. Warhammer is quite fun and yes it looks like WoW. Though the reason for that is because WoW looks like WarHammer. Games Workshop, the makers of WarHammer, sued Blizzard after Starcraft for copyright issues and won. :) Warhammer has been around for 25 years now.

The PVP is going to be very cool in the game, and the classes/races in WAR will be much more complex and less template than WoW. The visuals are much nicer IMO, and your character will look much less like a clown-warrior in multicolored armor. :)

[Dfense75]

From what I hear Warcraft 1 back in the day was originally supposed to be a Warhammer game that Blizzard was commisioned to make. If thats indeed the case that would explain alot of the similarities. Some of my friends are gonna give Warhammer a whirl and I might as well. Although I have to admit I find Age of Conan the most appealing atm.

[Corvus]

Looks like I'm MMO news monkey this week.

MUO is officially dead as per one of the guys from Microsoft quoted in the article I linked. And for further confirmation, it is no longer on the Cryptic Studios (http://crypticstudios.com/) webpage as under development.

However, it seems that they're going to be making an MMO based on the Champions (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6186008.html?sid=6186008&part=rss&subj=6186008) pnp RPG.

[Manikin]

http://www.champions-online.com/devblog/2_20_08

[Dfense75]

Im signing up on the forums. My name will be the same. Thanks for the links guys.