Friday, September 15, 2006

This Week in Gaming

  • Curt Schilling, famed ace of the Boston Redsox and Everquest junkie, has teamed up with Todd McFarlane and R. A. Salvatore, to develop Green Monster Games. As a Red Sox fan, and an avid Salvatore reader, I am interested in the progress of this MMO company.
  • New York Times, has the scoop on the highly awaited Nintendo: Wii release. $250.00, November 19th, 25 game titles at launch, and enough copies to avoid the major sell-outs of the 360.
  • It appears that the MMO Blogosphere is falling in love with a new Spanish MMO, PrisonServer... Just don't drop the soap guys, and you'll do just fine.
  • Blizzard has released an Interactive Map of Outlands, the new world in their eagerly awaited expansion, The Burning Crusade.
  • Everybody whose anybody was at the Austin Game Conference last weekend, which means I was at home reading about it. Rob Pardo of Blizzard received great reviews for his Keynote address on the success of World of Warcraft and the lessons that the MMO community can learn from that success.
  • Newsweek on Living a Virtual Life. They have put together a fairly balanced look at WoW, and they seem to be implying that normal, successful people play MMOs...
  • Heartless Gamer has a, well... heartless take on the four newly released Vanguard: Saga of Heros videos. MMO fans everywhere want to love this game so badly, and we can't stop wondering why Brad&Co. are working so hard to change that...
  • The 100 Most Influential Women in Gaming. We /salute you.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Cyndre,

If I could ask one question, and at would be to take the /beta/ out of the link to the mmocritic.com article. That is my 'beta' site and could be down at periods of days or weeks at a time. mmocritic.com has all the information as beta plus it will be 'stable'.

I too am looking forward to much more news out of this company as well. While growing up, Spawn was the first comic I bought, while in the US Army at Fort Bragg, NC so McFarlane has a certain draw to me that other comic artists don't have. R.A. Salvatore, what more can I say about his talen with the pen, it rivals the late Keith Parkinsons with the paint brush. Then there is the BoSox connection, well, not a big of a draw as I live in the Pacific Northwest and Portland, OR still has no major league baseball team.

It will be quite intresting to see what more we learn over the months and years about this company and its releation to Sony Online Entertainment.

Cyndre said...

Boon,
Thanks for stopping by, and the beta tag has been removed per your request.

My thinking on Green Mountain Games, is that it could not possibly flop worse than this Red Sox season, so it gives us baseball and MMO fans some hope for Schillings future :-)

I too was a fan of the Spawn era in comics, and have always had a deep respect for Mcfarlane. I am not certain how his experience in the comic genre will translate to my monitor, but I would imagine his creative genius, and unique artistic talent will make for a worthy design team.

The most exciting element of this company for has got to be the involvement of Salvatore. It is nice to see the heavy hitters (baseball pun not intended... or was it?) of the otehr creative industries that many of us have been fans of, getting involved in the MMO community. Maybe it takes a few companies like Blizzard and SOE to prove that its profitable, but I certainly think this type of involvement bodes well for the diversity and creativity of future gaming design teams.

Anonymous said...

We, EverQuest did get the late Keith Parkinson, do did their box art while commissioned for the company. While not Brad McQuaids first request, it was one that led to a friendship between the two. Later it would lead to Keith Parkinson taking a job as Art Director for Sigil Games and doing work for the upcoming game Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I have quite a few of his prints of those EverQuest boxes here at my home, and they are great. While you will find those who are glad that McFarlane is not doing Spawn anymore, I don’t think you will find a great argument against his artistic talent and style and these are the things I am sure the company will be looking to bring to the screen near you soon, and one reason I too will be following the development of the game, beside the below information.

R.A Salvatore was also commissioned by Sony Online Entertainment to write some novels about EverQuest, while I myself have not seen or read these books, nor am I sure they’ve been released at this time, you can see that he has gotten his feet wet so to speak in the massively multiplayer online games area of entertainment. It is rather sad that I am not an avid reader, but I find it hard to read when a book can’t draw me in, in the first few chapters. When this happens, I usually put the book down and may pick it up later to try and read it again or may never attempt to read it.

R.A. Salvatore has the opposite affect on my when I read, his books tend to keep me up late through the nights as I can’t seem to put them down, I am always trying to figure out what just might happen next. The Drizzt series is a great one for any fantasy reader to read through, and while I knew about Drizzt long before I attempted to read the books, through playing a Dungeon Master in the Forgotten Realms setting, the books still are a great read even after all the ‘other’ information I had about Drizzt. Also his attention to detail will add a lot more depth to the story of the game, the lore of the world Green Monster Games creates, and I am sure he will do quests as well.

Schilling, I know he is an avid EverQuest II fan and player, and Sony Online Entertainment has already used him to promote EverQuest II. I am not sure of his true feelings of the game or its game play, so I can’t be fully sure what he is going to bring to the company other than financial backing and a love of the games. I do with the company well. With the right talent, I am sure this company can do well, even with such a high profile board of directors.

Cyndre said...

Bruenor Battlehammer crits you for 4325 with Fastball of Necroplasmic Energy!

I haven't read Salvatore's EQ novels either, but I have never put much stock into books about games, simply because of the creative mold they are forced into. They really do not have much freedom to explore their world, without rampant fanboism debating the placement of every literary stone.