I haven’t got my hopes up too much on the upcoming Sci-fi MMOs, yet despite the closure of Tabula Rasa this year and the “maybe/maybe not” status of Stargate worlds, there appears to be a strong selection of games in the pipeline. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the greatest fan of Fantasy genre MMOs, I play them and enjoy them, but I still yearn for alternative genre games that take a step away from swords and spells.
So I’ve been keeping tabs on a few sci-fi MMOs and thought I’d start to cover them over a few weeks.
One of these games is Global Agenda which has been leading a courageous charge into the void that Tabula Rasa left in it’s wake, with it’s “No Elves” movement. This interesting game aims to mix PvE and PvP elements along side the persistence of a MMO, pitting two global agencies against each other. I like the idea of bringing PvP into the mix at an early level, rather than bolting in on like many MMOs have frequently done.
After having a browse around their website, news stories and FAQs, the game is certainly aiming to pack alot of features that they hope will draw players into the game, whether it’s the global Strategy or the Shooter element that will attract gamers to this title, only time will tell.
I have a few reservations about GA that I hope won’t weight to heavily on it’s overall game-play and appeal as it keeps up the drive to bring people on-board with a proposed stunner of a game.
- First up is the rather generic four classes, that could have been based on any number of FPS like Team Fortress 2, there are mentions of subclasses but the branded character classes are pretty straight forward. It appears that you progress and level a character effectively unlocking your path and group role. Will mimicking the classes that have been the backbone of fantasy MMOs work for a futuristic game setting? Is it too restrictive? Will having dedicated healers just make them the main target during PvP matches no matter the match type?
- My second issue was that the standard PVP matches sees groups up to 10 players (#faq). Really this game is gearing itself heavily for the console market with planned versions for the XBox,PS3 & Wii. The high level raids will have 60 Vs 60, which I think will really strain the limits of the current generation consoles having to display 120 characters all at once not including the landscape, gunfire and scenario.
- Will we be able to have Console and PC gamers fighting alongside each other? If not will we be able to at least fight toward the same global target?
- Currently descriptions of the game label it as a FPS or MMOFPS when in-fact the game-play will all be in third person perspective. This is saddening really as it seems to be a gimmick to attract FPS gamers into an MMO (#Ref)
- In the alliance Vs alliance global struggle, how many will care, how will things be coordinated? Planetside suffered from “too many cooks” problem, where everyone had their opinion and wanted to go to different locations. This meant splitting the fight and numerous and we’d end up no-where and with nothing to show for it. I’ll be watching this one closely to see how Hi-Rez plan on keeping focus on the objects that are required.
Of course these elements aren’t set in stone and may already be changed or altered from the original blurbs and information supplied, so I shall observe the games progress, and I hope that I start to set elements that make me want to pick this game up as a possible long term investment and enjoyable game.