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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

The Cast at Camp Matrix Online 38

Posted by Zonk from the best-councillors-ever dept.
Kate Thompson writes "The Boston Phoenix followed up the news that Matrix Online would be hiring live performers to play characters from the movies (Morpheus, the Oracle). The article looks at what qualifications you need to be an events implementer (or "imp"), how they get their scripts, and how Lawrence Fishburne felt about watching an imp play his part. Warner Bros. apparently has big plans for this - they consider the Matrix Online to be the 'fourth Matrix movie,' and they want players to feel like they're actually shaping the Matrix story. It's not clear, though, how far they'll really take that."
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The Cast at Camp Matrix Online More

The Cast at Camp Matrix Online

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  • Hard for them to do. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Seumas ( 6865 )
    It'll be hard for them to do once they've lost all of their players. I bought the game, played it for three days, deleted it and then spent a half hour on the telephone trying to talk to a human so I could disable my account (you can't cancel your subscription any other way than by calling their technical support lines).

    The game is boring. You can play for hours and hours and hours and be lucky if you come across another player. And there's not really much reason to party up with other players. And the cra
    • That's a shame the game is so boring. I was ready to update my graphics card just to play it. Guess I'll have to read some other comments on it. How are the graphics to it anyway?

      • Re:Hard for them to do. (Score:2, Informative)

        by Seumas ( 6865 )
        If you crank all of the settings up, it looks nice. It's absolutely not a GuidlWars or a World of Warcraft, but it keeps up with modern graphics, more or less.

        I don't understand why there are some people that are so fascinated with the game, because for three days, every mission was "go escort this new-jack to an evaluation center" and "go kill this guy" and "go kill this other guy and get a data disk" and "escort this guy over here". Then there's lots of looting bodies to get "chunks of code" that you the
        • I don't understand why there are some people that are so fascinated with the game, because for three days, every mission was "go escort this new-jack to an evaluation center" and "go kill this guy" and "go kill this other guy and get a data disk" and "escort this guy over here".

          Yeah, I know what you mean. You know what other game was boring? Prince of Persia. Man, I could hardly stay awake. Every time it's "swing from a pole" or "run along a wall" or "dodge the spiky thing." Snore! How many times do they e

        • But I've read comments online where people claim it's the greatest game they've ever played. Go figure.

          Those are the actors too !

    • The game is boring.

      As opposed to what? The Movie? Is that even possible? Do you have to sit there and kill the same mob 10,000 times over and over?

    • Re:Hard for them to do. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      sigh. Ok I'll bite.
      First thing to note is that this game is NOT for everyone. It different than anything out there. As a result, it has some good points and some bad points.

      If you get bored while doing missions (since some are quite repetitive), there is a lot more to do.

      Collector items hunting, contructs PvP, open PvP, Role Playing (hello?! it IS a mmoRPG after all), mob hunting in dungeons, code crafting, going through the extensive skills trees, exploring the area and finally, getting in a faction and
      • Actually, the reason I didn't stick with it is that I found it was EXACTLY JUST LIKE everything else out there. And I didn't personally run into any bugs or connect problems. I found that part decent. I just found that, more so than almost any other MMORPG I've played recently, the NPCs and missions were most inane.

        The code crafting was interesting, but bordering on unbelievably tedious.

        Of course, I wasn't insanely impressed by GuildWars, either. I bought it. I've played it. I don't dislike it... But I wo
  • All the actors play all the characters. I wonder if that also crosses genders.

  • Don't believe the naysayers ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jmays ( 450770 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @01:16PM (#12453297)
    The first post states that is game is boring, etc. after they played the game for a WHOLE three days.

    The world is so vast that you could not expereience all the content in three days. No way in hell.

    MXO is a fun game. If you enjoy the world of The Matrix movies, you will enjoy this game.

    There are a lot of comments about repetetive game missions. The thing is ... these people CHOOSE to repeat similar missions over and over ... they are not forced to.

    Join this game, invest some REAL time (more then three days) and immerse yourself. MXO is a very solid and fun game.
    • Here's a link [warnerbros.com] to my own impressions of the game after giving it a fair amount of my time.
    • The first post states that is game is boring, etc. after they played the game for a WHOLE three days.

      I've never played it, but if you are telling me it takes three days of playing to get to the good part, that sounds to me like a very boring game.

      I mean, even The Ring of the Nibelung let you hear Brunhilde belting out the famous Die Walkure theme by the beginning of the second opera.

      I think I'll stick with WoW, thanks.
      • I responded already to a post similar to yours with the following:

        "You've misunderstood what I said. The game IS fun right at the start. In fact, it contiunues to be fun as long as you want to play it because there is so much content. My point is, IF you are bored after three days it is your own fault ... not the games. There is no way you could experience all the content and fun in three day."
        • If a game doesn't provide any worthwhile gaming in the first 3 days of play, why is it reasonable to assume that there will be worthwhile content further down the line? If you can't get to any worthwhile content in the first 3 days, that's a pretty major flaw in the game's design, if you ask me.
        • Except the parent to my post, which I was responding to, was basically acknowledging that the first three days are not fun.

          He seemed to think it was perfectly understandable that somebody would find the game boring for three days, and leave without realizing what a gem it turned out to be.

          My reply was that if it takes more than three days to find it "not boring", then it is a boring game.

  • 13? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @01:20PM (#12453367)
    From the article:

    There's no industry standard job description for an "imp," and most of the 13 men and women on the team come from what Hewitt calls "unorthodox backgrounds." But he explains some of...

    Wait, wait. Back the fuck up.

    Thirteen? Thirteen people? That's it?

    Considering any MMORPG is considered a huge flop unless they get at least 100,000 players, how much can 13 people possibly impact game play for the overwhelming majority of players?

    13 People ammounts to a rounding error. There are zero live performers to interact with in this game. All hype, no story. Moving on.

    • Re:13? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by EvilMagnus ( 32878 )
      Exactly. Their contributions will consist of reciting pre-defined scripts at pre-defined locations such that any player nearby might possibly see it and go "oooooh!", and screencaps can be placed online afterwards for the %99.99 of the player base who weren't there.

      Actual *player* contribution to the progression of the story will be non-existent. WWII Online has more player impact on their world than MXO can ever have.

    • Re:13? (Score:1)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )
      I don't think I even saw thirteen actual *players* in the game, except for near the initial spawn. From what I have heard/seen/read, they have occasional "events" and that's when these people come into play. We're not talking about a non-stop, hourly or even daily thing though.

      The idea of having "actors" in this sense is good, but I thing the eventual goal of the first truly great MMORPG will be one in which there are no NPCs and every part is played by a player. Not a hired player - a paying player. A use
    • I don't think you understand. First, these 13 people represent characters that are very important to the core storyline. Second, all of the players of the game will interact with these people in some way. The more real and true the interaction, the more immersive and better the story.

      So, to say 13 average players couldn't impact a storyline is probably true. However, to say 13 central character with actors behind them can't impact a storyline when the storyline itself is built around them is a fallacy.
  • If you want to shape the matrix story...

    1. Go online and open a merchant account.
    2. Slap the matrix logo on every piece of crap you can find.
    3. Profit...

    That's the most substantive plotline of the Matrix.

  • Matrix Online sucks (Score:2, Informative)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 )
    It seems like they put a lot of work into their graphics, but in the end its not fun. The only thing you can do in the game is level up. The best way to level up is to run from point A to B to C. Its all waypoint running. I played through one of their live events, it was so dumb it doesn't get justified an explaination.
    • I've been playing a new MMORPG lately. It is called "Roaming Dragon," and it is currently in closed beta testing. It's pretty cool, instead of stat-based waypoint puzzle action, it is played with third person martial arts in a FPS setting. There are Fire Polar Bears and Sharks vs Dolphins. Basically, you align yourself with a faction, either the Sharks or the Dolphins, and you wage war to claim the Water Mountain from the wiley Water Wizards. They've implemented True A.I it seems, and when it isn't research

  • Disaster (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @03:07PM (#12455082)
    I played my share of (and assisted other people playing) "dynamic quest" characters during a stint as a guide in EverQuest. The response from the players was formulaic: Big Continuity Character shows up in a zone, with rumblings and zone/server broadcasts to get the attention of the players. When the players do show up, the Big Continuity Character has some lines to deliver, but since typing is a lot slower than speaking - and is far slower than the ADHD most of the players evidently have - the game spam quickly overtakes the plot, making it impossible to get anything out of the game unless one is logging their chat to a file for later processing.

    People start crowding around, severely increasing lag for everyone (including the quest actor, whose typing rate decreases sharply due to the video lag), and if the Big Continuity Character happens to be evil, two other factors increase lag even more: One, everybody thinks there's gonna be a fight, so they keep every buff in the spell book on themselves, meaning spellcasting spam is pretty much nonstop; and two, some people think that the only way to get lewts is to start the fight themselves, meaning that the quest actor can't get the lines out what with being attacked constantly.

    There are all sorts of people that show up at these events - some are intent upon getting whatever lewts and rewards they can, some see the hundreds of people standing around as a good motivator for committing the MMOG equivalent of whipping it out in public (i.e., chat spam, frequently strewn with vulgarity), and some try to roleplay with the character regardless of the obviousness of some other plot unfolding which doesn't involve that particular player. Only a few are actually there to find out what's going on.

    The result is that dynamic quests in a production environment are unfulfilling for all involved. Even when a guide or GM showed up in public and chatted with the players, the response was usually positive - but everything went downhill quick when a quest was involved.

  • The problem with MXO is the problem with SO many other MMORPGS... everyone wants to be the same person. For example, in Star Wars Galaxies, it's a Jedi. Sure there are a few diehards who play successfully as other characters, but most everyone wants to be a jedi in the Star Wars universe. In the Matrix, everyone wants to be "the One" (even though Neo is a hired character, you get my point). In any situation where there is one uber-character who totally kicks butt, there will be NO fun in the MMORPG worl
    • ... dude ... have you even played MXO? The early assumption (over a year ago) was that everyone would want to be The One. In practice however, that is not the case. You can excel at many different types of characters just like EQ and just like WoW. And you statement that "Neo is a hired character" is thus far false. Neo is not a Dev character that has made an appearence in game nor is he expected to.

  • Neil Stephenson would be proud. Can you say, "Diamond Age?"

    Now if we can only get The Oracle to raise our kids for us....

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