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Stargate MMO Announced

Posted by Zonk on Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:49 PM
from the another-one-joins-the-fray dept.
Role Playing (Games)
Adding to the growing list of S/F Massive titles on the market, Gamecloud reports that a studio called Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment will be attempting to bring the Stargate franchise to the Massive gaming genre. From the article: "Stargate Worlds provides players with a form of ranged combat unique to MMORPG that will take full advantage of modern and science fiction weaponry, cover, and terrain. Players will be able to form squads with their friends or use bots for players who want to go solo. Squad leaders will control maneuvers and objectives through an innovative combat control interface. Players may choose to create characters that are members of either the SGC (the Good Guys) or the System Lords (the Bad Guys). Characters are equipped with varied and mixed skills, with the choice to form such classes as Research, Combat Marine, Medical, Scientific, Diplomatic, Engineering, Archeological, and Exploration. PVP will be possible between the two alliances on many contested worlds, actually swaying the balance of power on those planets, and unlocking hidden content." No release date, and an ambitious plan. Hope it works out for them.
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[+] <em>Stargate Worlds</em> Beta Begins Oct. 15th 84 comments
Kotaku reports that the closed beta for Stargate Worlds, an MMO based on the popular Stargate television shows, will begin on October 15th. Registration is open at the game's website. Gamespy has some new screenshots available, and a Youtube channel has been opened for videos about the game. We discussed the early plans for Stargate Worlds a couple years ago.
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  • Why am I not excited? (Score:3, Informative)

    by kyouteki (835576) <kyouteki.gmail@com> on Tuesday January 31 2006, @12:54PM (#14608434) Homepage

    Hot on the heels (okay, not too hot) of JoWood's cancellation of Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. Excuse me if my confidence falters.

    Hopefully this game will take place in both the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies.

  • Great Idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yerase (636636) <randall.hand@NoSPAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday January 31 2006, @12:56PM (#14608456) Homepage
    Personally, I love the idea of a Stargate MMO.. but am I the only one that thinks "Cheyenne Entertainment"'s website looks like a random collection of buzzwords targeting Venture Capitalists?

  • Star Wars? (Score:3, Informative)

    by lexarius (560925) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @12:58PM (#14608489)
    So far this sounds a lot like the Star Wars NGE, but hopefully done correctly. Good luck to them.
  • Did the creators decide that stories about 4 or 5 elite SG-1 team members were boring, but stories about 40,000 or 50,000 random grunts would be exciting?

    Or did they decide that games which can be run as a standalone application sell for $50, but games which require central servers can bring in $50 + $10 per month for a year?
    • It's not reported as an MMORPG, just a MMO. I'm guessing something around the lines of a squad based first person shooter like Plantside. It could be a very interesting concept; however, I hope there will be more than 2 factions so conquest does not become one sided. By having 3 or more factions, alliance between powerful guilds (possibly squads in this game) could be formed to push back a faction that is in the lead.

      This could definately be very cool if done right.

  • One gate, how many players? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Winterblink (575267) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:04PM (#14608570) Homepage
    I'd spend all my time offworld, I don't think I'd be able to maintain my sanity when every few minutes the warning klaxon would be going off and that tech guy belting "Unscheduled offworld activation!" out over the PA.

  • Richard Dean Anderson (Score:3, Funny)

    by denverradiosucks (653647) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:14PM (#14608681) Homepage
    Hey in the same spirit of Richard Dean Anderson Television Shows, how about a MaGyver MMORPG?

    Selma: Richard Dean Anderson will be in my dreams tonight!
    • That would really rock, as it would require the game engine to be highly sophisticated. The player has to be able to use random elements of the environment to make bombs and other weapons, timers, communication devices, balloons, small animals, telescopes, warp drives, etc etc etc. And the game would let you Jerry-rig broken things with improbable objects that can work with enough creativity. Yeah, I actually do want to play a MacGyver MMORPG. :)
    • how about a MaGyver MMORPG?

      sounds like a Zork game
  • Ok, I'm not one for MMOs, but this I'll play. :)

    Any connection to the single player game that was supposed to be out in 2005? http://www.stargate-thealliance.com/index.php?flas h=1 [stargate-thealliance.com]

  • In an already crowded field. I wish them a lot of luck, but that laundry list of features sounds like it'll take a whole lot of development time, and as an "also ran" MMO, they're going to have a tough time recouping it.

    I wonder if it isn't time for someone to create a semi-generic "engine" for MMOs that developers could buy and modify instead of creating their own every time. Basically, a situation like the FPS market today. It would allow people to create niche games like this without breaking the ba
    • Nevrax have developed the GPLed "Nevrax Library" (NeL), used by Nevrax's own MMORPG; The Saga of Ryzom:
      "NeL is a toolkit for the development of massively online universes. It provides the base technologies and a set of development methodologies for the development of both client and server code."
      http://www.nevrax.org/ [nevrax.org]

      I can't really comment on it's usefullness though, as I haven't looked deeply into it - I'm not a C++ developer.
    • There *are*. I worked with some people who were doing an educational MMOG (believe it or not,) and we talked to a bunch of middleware providers, such as Butterfly.net, Big Planet, NDL, and so on. If you have somewhere on the order of $2 to $3 million, you can license pretty much a complete set of everything you need to make a MMOG.

  • I hope they don't get stuck in the old conflicts of Earth vs. Goa'uld, that conflict has sort of fizzled off with main offender now being Baal. The SG Universe has moved on, Replicators and now the Ori

    I'd love to see a MMO version of SG just i hope they don't make it crash and burn by limiting the gameplay to Good Vs. Bad, Earth Vs. Goa'uld. More involvement of other races (even if they're non playable) would be good. Asguard, Nox, even the odd descended Ancient/Altera

    Hell, how are they going to play At

  • You be the judge...

    Their idea isn't quite the same in detail as mine [slashdot.org]... but it is roughly similar. But then again so would any MMO-Stargate. Honestly I think it would take longer than 8 days to bake this idea enough to be able to make an announcement...

    On the other hand I've heard that the gaming industry is a cutthroat high speed race environment when it comes to new product development, so anything is possible...

  • And here is the obvious site [stargateworlds.com] for the game... ooo comming soon!

  • I posted a while ago wishing someone would make that (I'm suing!). This is fantastic.

    I just hope they pull it off right...and to do that I'll suggest a couple things.

    First, the stars of the series need to be able to be interactive. Possibly even accompanying you on instanced quests. Second, offworld sites should not necessarily be instanced. Part of the fun will be when forces are trying to hold a gate position, and reinforcements come on through to turn the tide of battle.

    Next....TELEPORTERS! Also, fl

  • Why is it that the name of the company that is making the Stargate video game is also the same name of the complex in Stargate??? The whois is also a bit odd with their eimail adress.
  • And the real Tau'ri cried out in simultaneous orgasm, then were suddenly silenced when they saw no release date.
    • Hopefully, there will be updates and expansion packs to address this, as there have been in similar games. On the whole, it looks like this could have a lot of potential....now it has the burden of living up to that potential.

      And the developer should just admit defeat now, then. I'm willing to bet actual money on this failing as miserably as Star Wars Galaxies, in that it will never ever be able to live up to fan expectations. Add to that pile: Star Trek Online and The Lord of the Rings MMO.
    • Damn, you beat me to it. Mod parent up for having a very insightful opinion. The Stargate Universe is vast. Almost as vast as the Star Trek Universe. However, the limitations on the Stargate Universe (there is, after all, only on SGC) will require that a lot of imagination be put into making this a successful product.

      Speaking of which, I've been playing the fan-made Stargate Adventure [the-underdogs.org] a lot lately. It reminds me of how much I miss the old adventure games. For the longest time, Star Trek could only be done w
      • Thanks for the link to this game. I've never heard of it before, but I'm downloading it now and I'm excited to give it a try. If you get the chance, check out Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy for PC/PS2/Xbox (I'd go with the Xbox version due to the controls being better on that platform). It's a modern take on the adventure genre, and it's a pretty good effort.
        • If you get the chance, check out Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy for PC/PS2/Xbox (I'd go with the Xbox version due to the controls being better on that platform). It's a modern take on the adventure genre, and it's a pretty good effort.

          Mmmm... way too "adult themed" for me. One of the best points about the classical adventures was their levity. As Stargate Adventure shows, the TV Humor can be translated pretty well to the adventure game humor. Creating a game that I would be afraid to show to my kids is not the
          • Well, that's certainly true. I could only play this after my kids had gone to sleep. I too miss the old fun adventures -- I grew up with Infocom, Sierra and Lucasarts, and I think it's a shame none of them exist anymore (the Lucasarts that lives on today is so removed from the Lucasarts of old, it's a whole different company.

            And yeah, that Atari logo is really stupid.
    • As DAoC and WoW have shown (among others as well I'm sure, I just only played these two), three factions seems to be a good minimum. Two is not enough, as any population imbalances become huge hurdles. Three (or more) factions still have population issues, but at least two smaller factions have the option of ganging up on the big guy, and once the big guy runs to lick his wounds, the small guys can beat each other up.

        • Yeah, but WoW only has two playable factions. It's not like you can be a goblin and work for the Steamwheedle Cartel. Admittedly, that would be very cool....

          I believe that was his point - on different WoW servers, for a variety of reasons, the balance of power is immensely one-sided. Which means that the PvP aspects of the game tend to be heavily unbalanced, for all manner of reasons. Multiple factions mean 'politics' is possible in a meaningful fashion.

          Of course, whether that would work well in Starga

          • For some reason in WoW, even though the Horde generally has fewer players (sometimes the imbalance is as bad as 2:1), they typically do better than Alliance in Battlegrounds PvP (Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin especially). I've always wondered if it's because they're a closer knit community, or because their faction benefits are better (Shaman > Paladin, racial abilities), or just get more practice (smaller queue time for BG).

            Then again, in world-raid style PvP, Horde tend to have problems since there's
    • At least you know they're leaving out everything from Stargate Infinity [imdb.com].
    • Maybe those will simply be the factions, and then under each faction, you can choose to be one or the other race?

      e.g.
      Jaffa Warrior with the System Lords vs. a Free Jaffa with the SGC.
      Goa'uld vs. a Tok'ra (both implanted humans).
      etc.

      Then, over time, they can add in more races to each side and possibly add the Ori as a Third faction in a later expanstion.

      Heck, they could do a CoV-esque quasi stand-alone game and add the Pegasus Galaxy so the City of Atlantis humans and Wraith can be played. Then,
    • "Good Guys" vs "Bad Guys" is only a description of alignment. It's not racial and does not mean that it's exclusively humans vs. go'a'uld players only.

      Just as you can be a gnome, elf or human on the Alliance side of WoW, you could be a human, nox or asgard member of the SGC side, or a jaffa or un'as member of the System Lords. Actually, most of the races have members on both sides of the conflict, so race might not even be the determining factor of which side your character is on.

      I almost want to be a

      • I almost want to be a replicator (talk about an overpowered character!), but playing a lego brick just doesn't sound like the ultimate immersive game experience to me. Besides, we'd need a raid group of like a billion people to do much of anything. :-)

        You wouldn't be a single Replicator but rather the hive mind of a swarm of them, like controlling a bunch of Zerg in Starcraft.
      • To keep the game interesting and the developers busy you should do it that way. I.e. Basic options to start then more as the game grows.

        You could also tackle in this game some of the sticky issues not handled in SG1 or Atlantis.

        I.e. Pay $1M, Sign an NDA and carry a Tocra around for a year. Get your Aids cure right here. And speaking of Aids. Remember those armbands that SG1 became immune to?

        BTW: What's the gate address for earth ?
    • The problem I've seen in most of the licenses franchises like this is that they tend to pick things that are too popular. For example the problem with SWG was everybody wanted to be a Jedi and everybody wanted to go whoop up on Darth Vader. The storyline is too well settled and the characters are too well ingrained in our culture. It makes it very hard to give developers some flexibility.

      With Stargate, yes there's a fan base, but Stargate isn't near the level of the Matrix, or Star Wars. But the univers
    • A Firefly MMO could be fun, with all the heisting and thieving and what not. Not to mention the possibility of playing as Alliance and trying to put an end to all the fun stuff.

      But a Lost MMO would be ridiculous. What would you do? Explore the jungle and develop your character's back story? Then when things start to get exciting, you have to take a break for a week or two before you're allowed to play again.

      I get what you're saying, though. Frankly, I'm tired of how many new games are MMOs. Take a look at m

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