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RPGuides eingestellt

erstellt am 20.01.2010 um 00:23 Uhr von Pandur

Mehr als fünf Jahre sind vergangen, seitdem ich RPGuides ins Leben gerufen habe. In dieser Zeit haben zahlreiche [RPG] Board Mitglieder geholfen, die Seite zu pflegen und Guides zu schreiben. Zwischenzeitlich bin aber nur noch ich, Pandur, übrig geblieben und wie ihr die vergangenen Monate sicherlich gemerkt habt, kann ich die Seite nicht alleine aufrecht erhalten. Meine Freizeit reicht so gerade, um die von mir beaufsichtigte World of WarCraft Sektion halbwegs aktuell zu halten.

Mit dem Erscheinen von Dragon Age im vergangenen Jahr, hatte ich eigentlich gehofft, mich vom MMO Sektor zu lösen und mich wieder den klassischen Single-Player-Rollenspielen zuzuwenden, um RPGuides neu aufleben zu lassen. Aber der Dragon Age Vertrieb hat mir bzw. uns relativ schnell klar gemacht, dass in der Marketing-Kampagne zwar eine gewisse Unterstützung für Fanpages vorhanden ist, aber die großen Magazine doch deutlich besseren Support erhalten und unsere Guides somit überflüssig sind.

Nachdem somit auch die letzten Kollegen das Schiff verlassen haben, habe ich ebenfalls meine Konsequenzen daraus gezogen und stelle die Arbeiten an RPGuides nun ein.

So lange die Werbebanner durch eure Besuche / Klicks die Serverkosten abdecken können, wird die Seite mit ihren existierenden Guides weiter online bleiben. Die Sektionen ohne fertige Lösungen werden jedoch verschwinden und Änderungen an jeglichen Inhalten sind aber logischerweise ebenfalls nicht mehr zu erwarten.

Abschließend möchte ich allen Kollegen danken, die sich im Laufe der Jahre um die zahlreichen Sektionen gekümmert haben.

Im Speziellen möchte ich da selbstverständlich Armin "Avantenor" Luley danken, der sich jahrelang um zahlreiche Spiele und die Pflege der Seite selbst kümmerte. Ebenso Ole "C-Real" Karnatz für seine Aufopferung für Neverwinter Nights.

Darübeber hinaus gilt mein Dank:

Benjamin "TheDarkShadow" Reschke
Eugen "FleurDuMal" Dietrich
Iris "McCrazy" Deubener
Johannes "Zauriel" Fabian
Kai "AnTeevY" Hillenbrand
Martin "Dying Despot" Mai
Oliver "Novil Ariandis" Knörzer
Peter "Palahn" Krüger

Und letztlich selbstverständlich Andreas "Monti" Bytzek für die Programmierung unseres [RPG] Boards, welches von der Schließung des Portals unberührt bleibt.

62 Kommentare

TOR: Die Focus-Test-Anmeldung hat begonnen!

erstellt am 29.09.2009 um 22:46 Uhr von Pandur

In den vergangenen Wochen hat sich das Gerücht um einen SW:TOR Beta Test wacker gehalten und nun letztlich zumindest teilweise bewahrheitet. BioWare hat auf der offiziellen Seite die Anmeldung zur Star Wars: The Old Republic Focus-Testing gestartet.

Wir werden die Tester aus der Star Wars: The Old Republic Community anhand verschiedener Kriterien wie etwa Systemspezifikationen, Alter und Wohnsitz auswählen. Weil das Testprogramm Feedback aus der Community benötigt, braucht ihr ein aktives Star Wars: The Old Republic ("TOR") Community-Benutzerkonto, um teilnehmen zu können (keine gesperrten Benutzerkonten). Für die Teilnahme müsst ihr mindestens 18 Jahre alt sein und der Spieltestvereinbarung zustimmen, die Teil der TOR-Community-Registrierung ist. Benutzer, die die Anforderungen erfüllen und für das Testprogramm ausgewählt wurden, werden von uns per E-Mail kontaktiert (also schaut, dass eure E-Mail-Adresse aktuell ist!).

Die wichtigsten Fragen zum Spieletest findet ihr in der passenden FAQ

Update: Bedauerlicherweise ist die offizielle Seite zwischenzeitlich durch den Ansturm an Bewerbern momentan offline:

Danke für Deinen Besuch auf www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.de. Wir nehmen aufgrund des überwältigenden Zuspruchs zur Ankündigung des Spieltests zur Zeit einige Änderungen an der Seite vor. Wir bitten Euch um Geduld, und später noch einmal vorbei zu schauen. Wir nehmen an, dass die Seite in den nächsten Stunden wieder online sein wird.

TOR: SWTOR is in a year far, far away

erstellt am 29.07.2009 um 09:51 Uhr von Pandur

Massively hat einen zweiseitigen Bericht über den vermutlichen Erscheinungstermin von BioWares MMORPG The Old Republic zusammengestellt. Den Spekulationen zu Folge werden wir erst 2011 in der geliebte Star Wars Welt leben können.

Nobody – not even BioWare – knows the game's exact release date, you can bet on it. Yet the developer most definitely has a clear-cut release window, and what's even more likely is that it's something they're keeping a close eye on. Keeping close to a schedule and meeting goals is of the utmost importance, especially with gargantuan projects the likes of this game.

The shockingly high production quality of the developer dispatch videos certainly rings true of an MMO that's closer to release than suspected. BioWare has done such an amazing job at making it look as though they're deep into development, but looks are very deceiving. A game of this magnitude definitely requires a respectable amount of time. Even Blizzard reportedly took four-to-five years to nurture World of Warcraft into release state. Presuming SWTOR has been in development since BioWare Austin was announced in March of 2006, the game has been in development for a little over three years.

So other than those already given, why do I think the game isn't coming until the first half of 2011?

TOR: Interview @ TenTonHammer

erstellt am 28.07.2009 um 13:02 Uhr von Pandur

Die San Diego Comic-Con haben einige Online-Magazine genutzt, um BioWare zu ihrem ersten MMORPG zu interviewen. Bei TenTonHammer gibt es nun ein 3-Seitiges-Interview zu Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Ten Ton Hammer: You often talk about how story really bolsters the gameplay experience; do you think its ever limiting in anyway? Do you think the game could be more popular if you took a more WoW type of story route?

Jake: I think there's a misconception out there that believes that all you do is sit around and watch story the entire game long. I think if you carved out the percentage of passive story versus activities that you engage in while you play, there would be a vast majority going towards the activity side of the ratio.

We understand that the guys at BioWare have been making MMOs for a long time. One of the things that I think everyone is trying to sell in MMOs is the idea of story. We believe in story, and we believe in the fans that like story. But if you don't like story, you're going to be able to play the game at your own pace the way you'd like to play.

The game is a story-driven game, but people should give it a shot. The cynics should come in and try it, and the people that love story will definitely have a ball with our game.

Dallas: It's our job to make sure that you don't want to skip the story. That's what we're trying to achieve, y'know?

Alexander: I also want to take a shot at the content versus story suggestion. You look at a game - to pick a random example - like Bioshock. How much of that game is story and how much of it is context? If you remove all of the audio logs and all of the overhead stuff, you don't get a smaller game if you remove that. You would just have a game with much less context to work with.

People look at Bioshock and they react to it emotionally. The context is there so that everything you see and do in the game is meaningful on a different level than just "Can I shoot this bad guy?"

TOR: Interview @ MMORPG.com

erstellt am 28.07.2009 um 12:59 Uhr von Pandur

Bei MMORPG.com könnt ihr die Mitschrift eines SW:TOR Interviews nachlesen, welches die Jungs auf der San Diego Comic-Con geführt haben:

We spoke on the nuances in the classes next. Gamers may play the same class, but may play them very differently. At character creation, players choose to be Light or Dark, but regardless of their class and affiliation, players make decisions along their career that shift them toward the light or dark, and the powers they attain will reflect that.

Qui-gon Jin was brought up as the definitive "grey" Jedi. He is a Jedi, but was one who would do things his way. As to whether one could tip over to the other, Dallas would not confirm nor deny if that feature was in the game.

...

You don't spoil your character with a single decision. It is a cumulative effect. Of course some decisions are more monumental than others and we saw that in the play through at E3 where the decision to kill or not kill the Shuttle Captain changed the entire game play experience for the player. Just remember... it is a Bioware game. You will also have companion characters that will be affected by your decisions. At this time in the development of the game, we are only told that the usual MMO features will be in game. Yes, there will be PvP in game, with the mechanics revealed at a later date. Crafting, auction houses and the galactic economy will be in game. There won't be permanent death, but the death mechanic is also not something they are ready to talk about.

"We don't want to talk about features we ourselves have not decided upon or fleshed out," said Dallas, "We don't want to tell you something about the game that may or may not change three months down the road."

TOR: Preview @ GamesRadar

erstellt am 08.07.2009 um 12:12 Uhr von Pandur

Die Jungs vom GamesRadar haben ein vierseitiges Preview zu BioWares kommender MMO Revolution zusammengefasst.

BioWare aim to fill ToR with this kind of mission to a truly extraordinary extent. Each of the six player classes will have an entirely unique, entirely separate story and series of quests. If you were to play each class in turn, you wouldn't repeat a single mission, or see a repeated location.

It gets better. Each of those campaigns is the equivalent of one of the previous KotOR games. A grand adventure for each of the six character classes. Each of those campaigns is fully voiced, with multiple paths (and every dialogue choice is spoken. This is probably the largest voiceover project the games industry has ever undertaken). It's a big, big, big game.

What BioWare are delivering is the largest expansion of detail within the Star Wars universe ever conceived. They’re fleshing out one of the least detailed periods of Star Wars history, where Sith and Jedi existed in mutual antagonism for centuries - the galaxy teetering on the brink of war, having already suffered many catastrophic conflicts, culminating in the sacking of Coruscant itself - the galactic capital.

TOR: Interview @ Gamasutra

erstellt am 19.06.2009 um 18:54 Uhr von Pandur

Die Interviewflut der E3 nimmt kein Ende. Der neuste Sproß stammt von Gamasutra, welche das Doktorenduo Ray Muzyka und Greg Zeschuk zu ihrem Entschluss, Star Wars: The Old Republic vollkommen mit Sprachausgabe zu unterlegen und der Konkurrenz, welche sie auf dem MMORPG Sektor begegnen, interviewt haben.

How do you approach a voiceover project that big? Even for a studio that's done a lot of that already, this is an unusual scale.

RM: Well, it's been integrated into our production pipeline right from the beginning. Again, it's definitely not an afterthought or something we're tacking on. It's a core part of how we're developing the story and the narrative, and the tools are all enabling this as well.

We have people who are pretty familiar with building large games in terms of the amount of voiceover -- getting that localized and making sure it all fits together really well. We joked that this is like Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and beyond, and it really is, in terms of the amount of content, the amount of story, and the number of worlds to explore and things you get to do.

If you look at it from that perspective, we've done this kind of thing before. This is certainly an order of magnitude more complicated, but 15-plus years of experience is certainly helping us get there. And LucasArts, again, is a great partner. They have great audio capabilities and a lot of experience in crafting worlds in Star Wars.

BioWare Interview

erstellt am 18.06.2009 um 17:47 Uhr von Pandur

Das Doktorduo Ray Muzyka und Greg Zeschuk haben den IndustryGamers in einem dreiseitigem Interview Fragen zu Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2 und Star Wars: The Old Republic beantwortet.

IG: So what do you feel is the next step needed to advance storytelling in games?

Zeschuk: I wish we knew. [laughs] It's a continuous evolution. It's hard to describe but I feel like we're always looking at new stuff. Some of it is just the quality of the acting, and how much non-verbal stuff you can do [with animation].Secondarily, we talk about narrative living in different spaces, not necessarily just the story in the game, but also the action - what's the story of the battle you just had? So I think [storytelling] is expanding and with Dragon Age: Origins we're trying to pull that personal experience you have and surface it onto the community sites so people can share each other's journeys - it's like the Facebook of role-playing. ... It's about getting people connected. That's one of the exciting things about where we are right now; more and more we're living in this highly connected world, so every game you make has to consider that. That's the big thing, that concept of narrative among different people and how they share it.

Muzyka: The social narrative outside of gaming is exciting because it affords you having a longer term connection with your fans, whether that be sharing what they're doing with one another, multiplayer, downloadable content that you can sell to them, or getting them engaged in being co-creators of the experience with toolsets.

TOR: Video-Interview @ IGN

erstellt am 17.06.2009 um 23:20 Uhr von Pandur

IGN hat BioWare Austin's Richard Vogel and Gordon Walton auf der E3 interviewt und das Werk jetzt in Videoform online gebracht.

TOR: Video Interview @ AusGamers

erstellt am 15.06.2009 um 23:03 Uhr von Pandur

Die Flut der E3 Eindrücke nimmt kein Ende. Jetzt haben die Jungs von AusGamers ein Preview und ein Video Interview zu BioWares Star Wars: The Old Republic veröffentlicht:

Chief among these touted features is BioWare's idea of a more tangible story element that actually offers direct story arc trade-offs based on in-game decisions - an element that hasn't really been fully explored or exploited in the MMO space. There's also the voice-over stuff, where, for the first time ever in a MMO of this scale, full voice support for characters and story have been implemented, obviously equalling 100s of hours of speech (and a huge cast of voice talent).

But beyond concepts of emotionally charging the player, there are also key MMO staples here that not only tether the sheer model of this title as a contender for your hard-earned subscription dollars, but also keep things familiar and moving forward. PVP, item-management, player progression (XP-related), skill-trees, farming, crafting, trading and grinding are all present, and then some - in fact, with all of the staple elements playing nice alongside the progressive elements, it's arguable Star Wars: The Old Republic is the most ambitious massively multiplayer online role playing game ever conceived.