Firefly MMORPG Announced 309
bishiraver writes "Multiverse has announced that they have gained rights to a Firefly Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Multiverse is a company started by several former Netscape employees, and they have developed an engine/network that works for all of their games. They intend to break into the MMO industry by being an MMO publisher of sorts. By standardizing, they can provide a less expensive alternative to the tens of millions of dollars and several years it takes to currently develop an MMO. They have said they will hire out a studio to build the game for them. Corey Bridgets, Massive's Executive Producer, says: 'If you're doing science fiction, you have to really think it out and create an incredibly rich environment that is compelling in its own right, and worth exploring and going back to week after week. That's what Joss Whedon did with Firefly.'"
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The music really helps to intensify the culture infusion forced on this society. It also blends the old west sound, asian sound, and typical "western music" sound extremely well. There's also a lot of emotion expressed in the music. The Ballad Of Jayne and the show's theme are both, in my opinion prime examples of this.
The instrument combinations are extremely unique, which helps to represent that people were just kind of thrown out into the rim and whatever instruments were around was what they used - atypical sounding or not.
In the several times i've watched the seasons of the show, I've always taken particular note of the music adding greatly to the weight of a scene. So, I respect your right to criticize it, but as an avid musician and music consumer, I have to respectfully disagree with your statement.
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Why don't they have the simple technology to simulate the lasers shots and explosions like they have on Star Wars with their on board computers to give the pilot a better 3D spacial reference of the battle with sound effects?
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Mal: zomg lazerz pewpew
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Could have been worse, it could be the theme to Enterprise!
Re:But... Just play the game... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But... Just play the game... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But... Just play the game... (Score:4, Insightful)
back to the actual topic: if they do this game right, i think it will kick ass. i loved firefly, and its a great setting for a sci-fi MMO. however, firefly has some rabid fans, and if this games sucks, they will _crucify_ this company for f'ing up firefly..
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Then again, picking on
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And yes, I am a nerd. I'm aware, thanks.
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Then I imagined it being read in a Comic Book Guy voice.
Now I've got to clean the coffee out of my keyboard.
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OMG! Firecrack! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:OMG! Firecrack! (Score:5, Insightful)
But that doesn't mean graphical MMORPGs must suck. One that is great will be Myst Online: Uru Live. [mystonline.com] I say that with such certainty because we already got a taste of the evolving storyline with the original beta in 2002 - 2004, a detailed account of which can be found here in an in-character manner. [theurulives.com] You can also find a film documentary in several parts here. [thegreattree.com]
The big difference between Uru Live and the Matrix Online was that Uru realized you don't need to go around killing people. They also realised that when you first enter an area it can be very confusing and daunting, and so Cyan Worlds limits it by limiting what you can access at first both because areas aren't open to players, but also because areas need a puzzle to be solved before you can go to the next area. This was a problem I had with the Matrix Online as I was allowed to roam free as I liked in a very large area. Although the maps did help alleviate this, I found they actually did too much and took away the challenge in finding out what to do next and so the only challenge was killing people or stopping someone from getting killed. It became very repetitive, which is something Uru Live realises and avoids. Instead each puzzle is unique and there is no leveling so there is no repetitive gameplay (although there are things you can do more then once such as Ahyoheek). [theurulives.com]
However the big differences between Uru Live and Matrix Online was that the Matrix Online felt like it was completely empty of other players. I logged on and I saw no other players around. Perhaps I was simply in the wrong area. However Uru Live does away with that problem by having an introduction that explains where you can go if you want to play alone or where you can go if you want to find other players. It also has only a couple of places you can go to at the start one of which has players. The Uru Live beta has nowhere near the amount of players that Matrix Online does (it is after all a beta that has limitations on who can play) and yet it felt like it was the more heavily populated. I remember when I first logged onto Uru in 2003 I very quickly not only found another person, but I found a character being played by someone. [theurulives.com]
Unfortunately this MMORPG Firefly sounds more like Matrix Online then Myst Online: Uru Live.
I am trying a new one (Score:5, Funny)
Mom says there are bad people out there, and they can hurt me. But my friend Bill says that there are real girls at the mall that I can talk to.
I am going to try it. Call 911 if I don't come back.
Re:I am trying a new one (Score:5, Funny)
Some things to remember:
All I could think of for the moment.
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If I had a box at home that could run it, i'd ditch ffxi for it right now.
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I'm simply pointing out that people who buy a game have a bias to like it (which is actually a point you made).
I'm now asking, if their opinion should be ignored as well. It seems perfectly logical to me that if you're going to ignore someone's opinion in the first situation, surely you should ignore the opinion in the second situ
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Let me correct that then. I agree with the point aussie_a has made so far, which I think is this: You should avoid speaking in absolutes, except when absolutes are warrented. An example of an ok absolute is "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light". It means what it says.
Saying "no one who hasn't payed for a mmorpg is worth listening to" is far too strong a statement. Saying "It's often the case that one has to pay MMORPG's longer than the free trials to decide it's merits" is far more ac
Re:OMG! Firecrack! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course, by saying that nobody who speaks in absolutes has valid points, you've made an absolute statement. So i guess you're wrong.
Of course, now that you are wrong, the GP could possibly be right. (it would appear that you could be right again too, but since you being right necessitates you being wrong, you can't be right).
(i know that what you really meant was that b
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by saying that nobody who speaks in absolutes has valid points, you've made an absolute statement.
I did not say that. I simply said "You may have had valid points, had you not spoken in absolutes." What I meant was that in this particular instance, speaking in an absolute makes the point invalid (although he has since clarified his opinion). You might interpret the meaning behind my statement to be something else, but that is reading into what I said, not simply taking what I said at face value.
(i know that what you really meant was that by speaking in absolutes he made it easy to disprove his assertion by finding one contradictory example, but i thought it was funny.)
Fair enough :)
Re:OMG! Firecrack! (Score:5, Interesting)
So the question is how do these people think they can get the depth and sophistication of EVE to draw people away from characters they've already put at least a year into developing. My answer is that I doubt they can for a very long time; EVE is very complex and very well thought out plus by the time this mob have a game out EVE will probably have the FPS areas added. I really can't see myself moving away from it for a simple name branding of Firefly on another game.
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Landing on planets has to be a loooong way in the future.
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Because it did so well. (Score:5, Insightful)
It has an almost cult following these days, and those will be the ones playing it. Depending on the marketing for this (and I doubt there will be much), it may survive for a year or so before being scrapped.
Earth & Beyond was a great MMO, unfortunately, little to no marketing, and just a sort of "Die Hard" fan-base to live on. It just wasn't enough. I suspect this will play out similarly. Historically though, Sci-Fi ish MMOs don't tend to do very well.
Well, not compared to their Medieval-esque counterparts anyway.
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Re:Because it did so well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seemed like it wasn't just me that played it, and thought "Huh, this is kinda lame. Think I'll stick with EQ."
Though some of my friends that kept playing it off and on when they got bored have informed me that it's gotten significantly better, though still doesn't enjoy near the following of successful MMOs.
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Re:Because it did so well. (Score:4, Insightful)
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(Some of the same happened for Star Trek too -- the ratings while the show ran was nowhere near the claims of people having watched it when it happened.)
Ah well, without saying whether the show
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How many people actually *watched* the show when it first aired? At *least* hundreds of thousands.
I would be very surprised if any significant percentage of the people who've claimed to have watched the series on Fox are liars.
DVDs (Score:2)
Re:Because it did so well. (Score:4, Interesting)
Oddly, another of Joss Whedon's shows brought up this very issue:
I saw a 15-minute clip of the pilot episode at a convention. It must have been the wrong 15 minutes, because it left me with no interest in watching the show when it aired. A year or two down the line, I got talked into watching it on DVD. It took a couple of episodes, but I was hooked. Soon I wanted to get my own copy of the DVDs. This happened all over the place, hence the post-broadcast fan buildup and successful DVD sales.
What's interesting is that the fan base that drove the Firefly DVD sales didn't translate to Serenity movie tickets. It did OK, but wasn't the massive success people were expecting. But I recall hearing somewhere that Serenity also did fairly well on DVD.
Re:Because it did so well. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that can only mean one thing. The game better be released on DVD.
TV Execs and SF. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey TV Execs, we SF fans will watch re-runs just as faithfully as mundanes watch new shows. Remember that "Star Trek" show that you wanted to cancel? Ten feature length films, five spin-off series, shelvesful of books, $$$ that almost slipped through your fingers. So, go ahead, run the old Doctor Who episodes in prime time and just watch the numbers. How about feeding NASA-TV footage, or the Jetsons, or Thunderbirds, or the Prisoner, or Planet of the Apes, or...
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Funnily enough, running the Jetsons or NASA TV on a SCI-FI channel could actually prove to be profitable. However unfortunately there are other things that are MORE profitable. And so NASA TV and the Jetsons reruns will get canceled for those more profitable items. Science fiction television shows doesn't appear to be one of the top profit makers. And so eventually all but the most successful sci-fi shows will get canceled for the larger profit makers. If television channels were onl
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That's why SciFi is more likely to succeed if it can fit easily with the real world or other established formats. (eg
Have you SEEN Dr Who? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if the Execs would invest the $$$ in writing instead of gloss, they would see a much larger return on their investment.
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I have however watched the show from DVD, and found it enjoyable. Not -oh-my-god- enjoyable, but better than most tv-series.
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That said, there is absolutely no way for me to be impartial when it comes to Firefly. I really loved that show. Hell, I'm not one to get caught up in flights of fancy, but I loved the characters--I actually cried a bit when one of the main characters died. It actually ma
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Eivind.
Re:Because it did so well. (Score:5, Informative)
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Everything about the Multiverse project screams "half-assed" to me, from their bad copy to their vaporware examples to their ridiculuous, sycophantic jargon in TFA. Using a terrible screenshot was a cheap but effective way of highlighting that not only do they not have a snowball's chance in hell, they appear to be lacking in taste, class, technical skill, and attention to detail. I'd be really happy if I'm proven wrong; Firefly is one of the best sci-fi shows in my book.
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Heh. I.e., the wrong part altogether? (Score:5, Insightful)
- The sheer quantity of content there. Compare the surface of WoW, including instances, to, say, NWN2. And NWN2 was a long one. A SP game is meant to be played for 10 hours, maybe even 50 hours in some cases (e.g., NWN2), while a MMO is meant to be played for 6 months on the average. (That's about how long it takes for an average player to get bored anyway and quit. Mind you, like with all averages, some quit after a week, some stay for 6 years.) So you actually have to have content for all that time. Even if it gets more time sinks at the end, you have to, you know, still keep people there and excited by the time they get to the endgame grind, or they won't be goaded into it.
And while sheer terrain surface can be algorithmically generated, the next parts can't:
- Quests and scripting. A world which is just populated with hordes of respawning monsters to kill repeatedly, just doesn't cut it any more. You may find your 10,000 player niche that way, but you'll never be the next WoW. The aspect that the world is essentially a static one is a turn-off. It takes much work and scripting to get the player to suspend disbelief and believe "yay, I saved the elven girl" just as he watches the next group member standing in line to deliver the same cure again.
Ok, so it's not that bad, but you want the quests to be _interesting_, and _believable_, and make the players feel like they've discovered a bit of the story or background or whatever. Copy and paste, mass-produced quests... well, ask Sony how well that worked for EQ2.
- Balance. It's not just for Blizzard any more, folks. In a SP game it's less problem if everyone plays the Godmode class, though even there it _will_ piss off everyone who picked the Pussy class and can't even get to an enemy before being nuked. But in MP a game where everyone plays the same class is boring. Doubly so if it has PvP.
Worse yet, in SP you can give the player a known mix of party NPCs, so you can know what abilities combine with what other NPCs ability. In MP you can have (and _should_ have, because otherwise again it's uninteresting) all sorts of possibilities to combine the abilities of any two classes. Is there some uber combination you've never foreseen?
Are there some items which are horribly unbalanced? E.g., if, say, you give players an ice sword which applies a slow effect, what happens when 5 players with ice swords hack at the same NPC? Does it stack, effectively being able to freeze someone solid for as long as you wish? Does it stack with other slowing abilities, like a mage's Slow spell? If not, do your items make a class completely obsolete as the same spells and effects are available from items? Does it stack with, say, applying an ice oil to that sword? What is the trade-off if I use that sword, compared to another?
Basically, balance is more work than most companies realize or are willing to put in their game. But it makes a hell of a lot of difference.
- Support. If your whole game's premise and repeated business incentive is that it's a persistent world, and people should get attached to their possessions and character, then you'll have to deal with whatever unfair stuff happens to their character or their equipment. Don't underestimate the costs of that, because few things piss a player off at your game than falling in some hole and the understaffed support not answering for a week. And it's not only because of getting attached to that, but while in SP you'd just curse and reload a previous save, in a MMO you don't even have reload.
- General code quality. E.g., did you make sure that the game glitches don't double your support requests? E.g., if in a SP game it's possible to duplicatee items or money, well, (A) it doesn't affect anyone e
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Re:Because it did so well. (Score:5, Informative)
Three of the games you named make up less than 3% of the mmorpg market combined. World of Warcraft and Lineage I/II are the only signifigant forces. (source MMOGChart.COM [mmogchart.com])
So yea, there's plenty of room for more competition and plenty of low marketshare games to cannibalize. Whether it can happen with Firefly, I can't say. Someone can and will, though.
~Rebecca
Not even a game announcement yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Until they actually announce a studio willing to develop it and sign the final licensing contracts this is not news. A vague wish to hire someone else to develop a firefly game (which they don't even own the concept of), for their homebrew freeware engine is not a frontpage slashdot story (unless the crappy homebrew engine happens to run on linux).
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This could work. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:This could work. (Score:5, Funny)
And in true Fox tradition, you start at level 20. When you make 25, you drop back to do levels 5 though 10, then 32 to 37, then back to 11 to pick up your first skill bonus. After playing levels 42-47, 13-18, and 26-31 you finish up with levels 48-59. When you qualify for 60, your character gets dropped back into the tutorial and you choose which class you want to be.
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it really amuses me that the word in the image (the one you have to type in when you arent logged in before you post the comment) is satire.
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The fingers should be eaten separately.
I predict.... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait...
snarkth
Sign me up. Right now. (Score:3, Interesting)
One word... (Score:4, Funny)
This may be the first online life-sucking game I subscribe to.
MMOGs are hard to get right (Score:2)
A cost-saving MMOG framework just doesn't seem likely to equal "fun".
Advancing the Story, Exploring the Characters (Score:5, Insightful)
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Standardizing (Score:2)
By standardizing, they can provide a less expensive alternative to the tens of millions of dollars and several years it takes to currently develop an MMO.
I dunno, but when I think 'standardizing' I think 'making everything the same'. Generic. It's a good thing for some things (like data formats), but MMOs are already widely criticized already for often being the exact same mechanics with a different wrapper over the
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Nothing got the FPS to take off like standardization. One core for all of them to share, then each new game is different. WWII FPS, modernish FPS, futuristic FPS, zombie/demon FPS -
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Still May Not Happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Three weeks after it goes live (Score:5, Funny)
Never underestimate the stamina, wherewithal, and sheer terrifying focus of horny nerds.
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Failed Show, Failed Movie... (Score:2)
This franchise has yet to succeed in the media it has been developed.
Basement dwellers unite! (Score:2)
rather limited (Score:2)
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Go check out the new video [eve-online.com] (link is to a
Cleanup on aisle 5.. (Score:5, Funny)
Paul (Score:4, Interesting)
Yay! So instead of each MMO being a drastically different experience we can expect all the MMOs from this company to be horrible rehashes of their prior product with some new graphics. As if the MMO market wasn't becoming flooded with crappy games already, now we can expect this company to churn out horrible MMO's at a rate of 1 or 2 a year!
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Re:it'll suck. (Score:5, Funny)
And suddenly, all the
The bartender ducks behind the bar, and the theme to 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly' can be heard in the background.
Them's fightin' words, mister.
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everyone's favorite consumer good sucks.
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I wouldnt mind playing with a Kaylee either...but i think i'd like one at least around 18 or 19.
I wouldnt mind playing with an Inara, or a River either.
I'm up for a few rounds with a Saffron too.
That show had more than its share of beautiful women playing fun characters.
(before anyone complains that i left out Zoe, i have a firm belief that it is best to leave Morpheus' wife alone.)
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This is the EXACT same issue the TV shows must dael with, and that has been done successfully.
I can think of several ways to do this, so I am sure there are game makers that could figure it out as well.
No (Score:3, Insightful)
Writers who are browncoats would be good, artists who are browncoats wuld be good, not developers.
So What I am saying is:
I am a developer, I enhjoy the world, but am not a browncoat*. Can I have a job?
*I perfer to wear Hawaiian shirts to firfly events.