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  1. #1
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    Mechwarrior Online - Now on Steam




    http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/31/me...ical-mech-sim/

    After two years of near-total silence about the fate of the MechWarrior reboot, Piranha Games have announced MechWarrior Online, a free-to-play, team-based multiplayer BattleMech sim. It’s also going to tell the story of the Battletech universe in real-time, starting from just before the Clan Invasion of 3050. Each day, players will do battle on behalf of the universe’s major factions, and each day in the game will represent a single day’s action in the fictional Inner Sphere. It will go live in the second half of 2012.

    Mechwarrior Online (MWO) might be free-to-play, but MWO Creative Director Bryan Ekman and Piranha President Russ Bullock insist this is going to be a proper Mechwarrior game in the tradition of Mechwarrior 2 through 4, not a successor to the Xbox action game Mech Assault. Ekman says joystick support is a strong probability, and both call this a Mech sim.

    “I think it’s really the Mechwarrior you know,” Bullock says. “It’s fully first-person. It’s not a new interpretation. We’re modernizing things a little bit, I think we’ll get to those questions, but certainly it’s Mechwarrior.”

    Another major part of the game is customization and organizing into mercenary units, Ekman explains.

    “Players will be able to band together in the format of a lance, which is four, and they’ll be able to band together as a mercenary corporation for hire. That’s not unlike a guild. We have a whole editor and mercenary HQ for players to explore that allows them to customize the look and feel of their corporation, their membership, the structure of how they enter battle, the lances, their names, ranks, and all kinds of things.”

    However, in some very real ways, this is not the Mechwarrior you remember. And it’s a good thing, too, because Ekman and Piranha games have some very exciting ideas for how to make Mechwarrior more of a tactical sim and less of a shooter.

    “One of our core pillars is what we call ‘information warfare,’” Ekman explains. “Which basically boils down to controlling the flow of information on the battlefield. Whether it be your own information, or the information of your enemies. We want to make gameplay be less about an arms race, where you start in a light Mech but you really want to get into an assault Mech, because it’s the best thing there is.”

    The matches themselves will support multiple teams and multiple four-person squads (“lances” in Mechwarrior parlance). The primary focus will be Conquest mode, which will allow for more tactics and teamwork, but there will also be a variety of deathmatch modes available.

    Ekman also promises that while players will be able to buy items with real money, nobody can buy anything that will confer a tactical advantage. “Anything that would affect or give your a tactical advantage, you can’t purchase with real cash. You have to earn that by playing the game,” he says.

    Mechwarrior online features multiple upgrade paths, both for Mechs and pilots, but it should not be too complicated. As Bullock says, “If someone has played a combination of Mechwarrior, Call of Duty, and Diablo in their gaming life, they’re going to have seen everything that we’re offering for the most part.”

    Mechwarrior online, in keeping with the original games, will feature a variety of maps set across different environments and climates. In a universe where heat plays such a major role, with Mechs overheating from weapons fire and local temperature, that means different weather will make for very different tactics.

    But big difference from previous games will be urban combat. “One of the things we can do these days that previous games weren’t able to do well is urban combat,” Ekman says. “And it’s a cornerstone of MWO, this ability to actually fight in detailed urban settings.”

    You can find out more info from the official website: mwomercs.com. You should also stick around PC Gamer today for exclusive interviews with Ekman and Bullock, as they explain what happened these past two years, and go into detail about what Mechwarrior Online will be.

  2. #2
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    Day one purchase. I am a sucker for all things battletech.

  3. #3
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    Reserved my pilot name. Phelan Kell was already taken but I managed to snag Vlad Ward!

  4. #4
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    http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/31/me...es-the-series/


    MechWarrior Online developers share details, explain how MWO evolves the series
    Worried that a free-to-play MechWarrior might be a cynical cash-in on a beloved franchise? So was I. But after talking with Creative Director Bryan Ekman and Russ Bullock, president of Piranha Games, I was not only more confident about MechWarrior Online, but genuinely excited about the direction they are taking the franchise.

    Ekman and Bullock are serious Mech fans, and knew exactly where my questions were coming from. They were also crystal clear about one thing: this is the MechWarrior that PC gamers know and love. This is about taking the gameplay of MechWarrior 2 through MechWarrior 4 in directions those earlier games couldn’t even contemplate.

    Let’s talk about what MechWarrior Online is going to be. The first question on my mind as I read this press release is that, honestly, when I think MechWarrior, I’m thinking of, well, MechWarrior 2 through MechWarrior 4. Is MWO in that vein?

    Creative Director Bryan Ekman: Yeah, absolutely. From a gameplay point of view, it’s the online component of those games. It’s match-based gameplay. So you go in, you fight, and you come out. So in that sense, it’s absolutely true to the heritage. The way you control the Mech, and the way the Mech works, and the options available to you during gameplay are inspired by Mech 2 through 4. Anybody who has played those games will feel right at home playing MWO.

    OK. Does that mean it’s going to be in a Mech cockpit, playing from the first person?

    BE: That’s right.

    Russ Bullock, president of Piranha Games: Just a quick little filler there. I understand your question completely. And I think that’s the number one question a lot of fans have. They want to know if the game we’re making is going to be a MechWarrior product, or if it’s going to be some new evolution, or similar to, say, the past Mech Assault products.

    Very simply, I think we can just say, we are making a Mechwarrior game.

    Just for – Oh, hell, it’s PC Gamer. I know a million people are going to be asking this question: what’s the over / under on joystick support?

    BE: Haha. Very good. You got very good odds on joystick support. We will have announcements down the road talking about some more of that. But we are very excited about being dedicated to the PC platform, because of all the little tools and hardware and things we can do with it. Including joystick support, and advanced joystick support. So, yes, absolutely. We’re dedicated to it.

    So I remember when I talked to [FASA founder and BattleTech creator] Jordan [Weisman], it looked like the plan was to set it in the 3015 BattleTech universe. Why the shift to 3049?

    BE: We set the game in 3015 originally. And we really wanted to set it there because it was this time and place in the universe that didn’t have a lot written about it. And we could really explore some new characters and some new storylines and have some fun with that. It wasn’t a well-written area.

    As any BattleTech fan knows, there’s a ton of lore and a ton of history in this universe, and this was a great place to kind of restart and evolve the franchise.

    When we started to look at the F2P game, one of the core pillars that emerged was this concept of community warfare. The fact that this was an online game that’s primary component was going to be round-based combat. And how do we take that to the next level? How do we evolve that in a way that made sense in the MechWarrior universe? And that inspired us to set the game a little bit forward. A little bit further ahead in time, in the Clan Invasion era, because it allowed us the maximum amount of change on a regular basis.

    So we have this concept of the Inner Sphere, which is galaxy that the BattleTech universe takes place in. And there’s a lot change that happens starting in the year 3048 and right up until 3067. And we wanted our game there because our timeline is live.

    So the minute this game goes live, every day that passes in our world, it passes live in the Inner Sphere world. So August 1st 2012 is August 1st, 3049. And so we had a live content stream with a live, evolving universe going on as time progresses. We wanted to set it during that period of time because there’s a lot of change. The Clans come down, they invade, there’s the introduction of new technology. There’s lots of story pieces that are happening, and lots of territory change.

    So you’re going to be roughly following the outline laid-out in the novels and games?

    BE: Absolutely. So any date-time references that exist within the novels, so the time the clans first meet the Outbound Light, it’s going to be there. In fact, we’ve already referenced it. It’s already referenced in our Twitter feed that’s live right now, which is simulating what the players are going to experience once the game goes live.

    So all of the canon, all the stories, all the references will be distributed through this community portal that we have that is MechWarrior Online in the form of news stories, articles and – this is the best part – what players do. …So this allows the player, and their exploits, to actually become part of the what’s going on in the universe. So they actually contribute to the story and the timeline of the universe.

    And we take all the existing canon and all the existing story and we use that as a backdrop to initiate change and create conflict for the players to participate in.

    What about social options? One of the things that’s huge in the BT universe is mercenary outfits, elite regiments, they all have their own unit histories. Are players going to be able to interact with some of the Inner Sphere’s famous units and people? And are they going to be able to create their own units and histories?

    BE: I’ll answer the second half of that first, because I think it’s probably more important. Yes, absolutely. They’ll be able to band together in the format of a lance, which is four, and they’ll be able to band together as a mercenary corporation for hire. And that’s not unlike a guild. And we have a whole editor and mercenary HQ for players to explore that allows them to customize the look and feel of their corporation, their membership, the structure of how they enter battle, the lances, their names, ranks, all kinds of things.

    We really wanted to put as much control into the community’s hands as we could. They can create their own legends.

    http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/31/ex...g-mechwarrior/


    Exclusive Interview: Piranha’s Bullock talks about the rocky road to rebooting MechWarrior
    The MechWarrior community caught fire in 2009 when Piranha Games released a trailer for their upcoming MechWarrior reboot, and it seemed like all Piranha needed to do was find a a publisher and relaunch the classic MechWarrior franchise.

    But almost two years went by with no word on the project’s status, and no publisher picked it up. I talked to Russ Bullock, president of Piranha Games’, and asked about MechWarrior’s missing years, and how MechWarrior Online emerged from their struggle to find a publisher. He explains how Microsoft’s restrictions on the MechWarrior license made the property a tough sell, and how bad timing made a tough job impossible. Stymied by the traditional publishing model, Piranha started to take a hard look at whether free-to-play might let them make the game they wanted, without compromising its values.

    So how did you guys end up working with [FASA founder and BattleTech creator] Jordan Weisman? How did you guys know each other, and what sort of discussions did you have? What did you have in mind back then?

    Piranha Games President Russ Bullock: We didn’t know Jordan until I’d reached out to him. And this would be fall of 2008. As I expressed a few minutes ago, I’d been a fan of the brand for so many years. And running Piranha games at that point for nine years, I guess, since we’re about to be 12 years in business come this January.

    During those 9 years, I’d probably thought of Mechwarrior, and could we get the brand, could we make a Mech title? multiple times. Every year I would look into it. And it was just one of those times. I had thought: what’s going on with the brand. I would like to look into it, under the small off chance that there’s a possibility. This time, to my surprise, there was a possibility. We found some news article about how Jordan Weisman had licensed all the FASA brands back from MS and was looking to use the brands and keep them active.

    So I immediately reached out to him, expressed my interest, and we arranged to meet. Luckily, they’re just a couple hours south of us in Seattle, so fairly quickly, I think within a couple weeks, Bryan and I drove down and got to meet him firsthand. And that’s how it got started. It was pretty quick after that, within a month or two, we had a bit of a design and an idea of what we wanted to do, and just started to grow the relationship and move forward from there.

    I talked to Jordan quite a bit last autumn. And I know at the time it seemed like you guys were in the middle of a really long, excruciating process trying to find a publisher. One of the things he said that you kept running up against is that due to the restrictions on the license, basically that you could not make a game for PS3 / Wii, you were having trouble securing a publisher. Could you tell us a bit about what happened after that trailer came out, and why Mechwarrior went dark for so long?

    RB: That was both a great and frustrating time. When we released the video in the summer of 2009, it was really the culmination of a lot of hard work and it was a huge success for us. We were so happy to see the reaction the video got, and it really proved that the MechWarrior fan base was still out there, and they were huge. Bigger than maybe we had even hoped.

    So that was very exciting. We had a plan in place to release that video, drum up the interest, and then to set meetings with publishers and to follow up and to try and get a deal done. Going into that process, we knew we had some challenges. One in particular, which is what you just mentioned: we weren’t able to make the product for the competing consoles, Sony and Nintendo’s console. And especially with this type of game, as you can imagine, it was really the PS3. That was the kicker.

    So we knew that going in. But we still felt confident we could overcome it with the strength of the brand and the history of the brand, which said that no title yet had ever sold less than a million units. And that was with PC only! Or one console only, like say with the Mech Assault titles.

    So we went to all those meetings, the reaction was very strong from the publishers. But, in the end, the icing on top of it all was the fact that we were sitting in the middle of 2009, which was one of the worst economic downturns in a long time, especially in the gaming industry. So when it came down to it, with that restriction, here we were shopping the game to 3rd-party publishers, telling em it could only be a 360 / PC game, and ultimately it was a brand they were not going to be able to own. So as much as they wanted to make it, and many of them did, they just couldn’t justify spending the kind of money it takes these days to make a great product in the console world, and not be able to own that brand or ship it one those consoles.

    Maybe we didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, with those circumstances in place, it was just never going to happen.

    It was was something you were so clearly excited about, and you had this great trailer, and all the fans thought this was going to be a done deal. Do you think this was a bit of a business blind-spot for you? You were unprepared for what you were letting yourselves in for?

    RB: I think we’re pretty honest with ourselves. When you’ve been doing this for 12 years, there’s a lot less of those moments when you’re just blindly fighting against it all. Our eyes were wide open going in. I think we understood the risks and the problems. And it still felt like we could get it sold.

    And I think what the difference was, Rob, is that this industry changes so quickly. I mean, as developers, you can be out there talking to publishers and there’s a predominant message, say at one particular E3 or at a particular time of year. What publishers want, what they’re looking for, and how much they’re spending. And when we started this process, we think we had a had a sellable pitch. And just in the six months, eight months it took to go from starting the process, making the video, getting it out there, and visiting the publishers – everything had changed. In those eight months, we had really the full collapse of things with the 2009 downturn. A few other factors that just made a hard, but sellable item into one that just couldn’t be sold.

  5. #5
    Formerly BGTemp // TERA Fan
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    I will totally look into this. I always wanted to try out Front Mission online but SE never released it here >< so maybe this mech game will hit the spot.

  6. #6
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    Based on their timeline, the clans won't invade until 2013 if I understand it right, and if i understand the timeline correctly? Kind of disappointed, since I'm Wolf all the way...

  7. #7

  8. #8
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    Oh man

    OH MAN

    (Kind of sad it's not a single player game, complicates things on my end, but still)

    OH MAN

    I really need to get a hold of the funds to build a PC next year.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tekki View Post
    Based on their timeline, the clans won't invade until 2013 if I understand it right, and if i understand the timeline correctly? Kind of disappointed, since I'm Wolf all the way...
    Align with the Dragoons at launch?
    Or just think of the first few months as training, and scout for good players.

    I hope this manages to be a big success so it lasts a long time.
    Because 2031 is going to be BONKERS.
    (Though, they probably only have initial service planned up to Tukayyid)

  9. #9

    BG Clan?

  10. #10
    Burninate all the things.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tekki View Post
    Based on their timeline, the clans won't invade until 2013 if I understand it right, and if i understand the timeline correctly? Kind of disappointed, since I'm Wolf all the way...
    Phelan Kell encountered Clan Wolf in the periphery in 3049, so you'd be seeing things like the Outbound Light fiasco and the loss of Kell's lance around the launch of the game, along with a smattering of "hints" that something big is coming. The clans wouldn't start their invasion of the Inner Sphere proper until March 2013, though, yeah.

    I think this hits a bit of the best of both worlds, personally. A lot of 'Mech fans were looking forward to an Inner Sphere conflict when the game was originally set in 3015, since you never really got a chance to take part in the Fourth Succession War in the computer games. The atmosphere is just so different. 'Mechs are rare, and valuable. You get to really flesh out the various Successor States, which are pretty intense for anyone who hasn't had a chance to really get to know them. 3049 puts us around the time where Romano Liao is still repeatedly trying to kill her sister, Victor Ian Steiner-Davion and Kai Allard-Liao are graduating from officer school, Thomas Marik is dealing with his son's leukemia, and Jaime Wolf is training the Dragoons in Anti-Clan warfare.

    If you've never read the Blood of Kerensky trilogy, I highly recommend it. It basically covers the entirety of the Clan Invasion, and I thought it was exceptionally well done. I just went and reread the whole thing after the time period was announced. When the wolves do invade, we'll be seeing a lot of the most badass Wolf characters coming to the front, too. Phelan Wolf, Vlad of the Wards, Ulric Kerensky, and Natasha Kerensky are all involved in the invasion. I think it'll be pretty epic to watch the Free Rasalhague Republic fall in 2013.

  11. #11
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    Clan Star Adder. Hanson's Roughriders! Oh god, I miss those days.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Greatguardian View Post
    I think it'll be pretty epic to watch the Free Rasalhague Republic fall in 2013.
    This.

    I'm kind of hoping they allow a little more than just letting players start in the space of the five houses.
    So we can watch players who do not know what the fuck, choose to start in FRR, and get STOMPED.

    At least there will be Liao players to lol at.

  13. #13
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    I am in.

  14. #14

    I hope they come out with some form of controller for this game. Would be nice to have the joystick/throttle/foot pedals.

    Has anyone ever played the simulation in the arcade? I've only seen it once, I think it was in Miami. Looks kind of like:

    http://cdn.ubergizmo.com/photos/2007...-simulator.jpg

    Except the pod completely closes. It actually had different levels of difficulty for piloting. The most advanced had you use every switch and you could group your weapons and you pretty much had to control your own heat sinks and tell them when to flush coolant throughout the mech. Was really fun.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lucavi View Post
    Clan Star Adder. Hanson's Roughriders! Oh god, I miss those days.
    Quote Originally Posted by Brill View Post
    I am in.
    very excited for this also!

  16. #16
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    Is it can be Mech Warrior Online time nao kthx?

  17. #17
    Chram
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    WTT A lance of Star League-vintage Battlemechs for one Heavy or Assault-class Omnimech. This is a super deal, yo.

    Spoiler: show
    I'll throw in Terra too. Serious offers only.

  18. #18

    Man, you guys school me in this stuff. I just enjoyed the games but never really got into the lore and stories.

  19. #19
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    We need to set up a BG clan for this game, now !

  20. #20

    Wonder how many people from BG we will have from the forums playing this? I'm guessing we should have at least about what? 10 people? How many does it take for a full lance?

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