Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

As we were viewing the Opcore concept art, the question was raised concerning the playable characters and how exactly a player might become a better combatant even if they’ve decided upon the Archeologist archetype. “We have specializations that a character can progress down to learn some of these other skills that they may not be immediately proficient in,” Kevin said. “We haven’t announced anything on these yet, but we’re going to be showing when the time is right.”

The Opcore are like the evil counterparts to the SG-1 team.

After that question, I switched subjects as I had been thinking about what Kevin had said about jumping back and forth between Stargates. In my mind, this sounded like a system that could be instanced fairly easily, so I asked Kevin about it. “We’ll use instances where it makes sense,” Kevin said. “It’s not going to be an instance every time you go through the gate. When you do instancing on a massive scale, you’re actually taking the ‘massive’ part of the game out of typical MMOGs. We want people to feel like they’re part of something big. But there will be parts of the game where instancing makes sense.”

The idea of a story-driven game certainly was important to Kevin and he wanted to express that to us as we viewed the screenshots. “We want to tell a story,” he said. “We’re not shooting for quests that you’ll find in a fantasy game, where an NPC tells you to go out and kill 10 of these creatures. Then you walk…and you walk….and you walk. You kill 20 of the creatures to get the 10 items that you need, then you walk back. And you do this all over again.”

“In Stargate Worlds, not only are our quests better, but you’ll have access to the Stargates,” Kevin continued. “Even in the show, all the action takes place around the Stargate; you go through the Stargate and it drops you right in on the action. You’re going to get a mission that drives the story forward then go find out what’s happening very quickly. You’re not going to need to walk and go hunt down 10 animal ears to progress the story.”

Stargate Worlds will allow you to reach the end game levels without entering into combat, if you so choose.

On top of the quick story-driven gameplay, there’s also the underlying facet of puzzle-solving that we discussed with Stargate Worlds guru, Joe Ybarra, back at OGDC. I wanted to follow up with Kevin on the puzzle-solving aspect of the game and asked him about how puzzles were going to be solved inside actual quests. “It’s going to be a combination of puzzle-solving to advance the story and puzzle-solving to simply unlock doors, chests, and other items,” he said. “As an additional comment, it is possible to go from your first level to level cap without entering into any sort of combat. If that’s what a player wants to do, it is possible.”

Being a fairly combat-oriented player, I instantly asked whether the inclusion of that much non-combat gameplay would leave me with nothing to do in certain areas. “No, there’s going to be plenty of action to go around,” Kevin said. “Like I said, it’s possible to do this, but it might not be the fastest way to get through the game.”

Finally, staying on the combat motif, I was curious on whether CME had made any sort of official decision regarding the PvP in Stargate Worlds. When I talked to Joe at OGDC, he mentioned having to fight over contended battlefields, but that seems to be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to PvP. Kevin, unfortunately, couldn’t offer anything new. “There will be PvP in the game,” Kevin said. “We haven’t announced any details on the system yet.”

Thanks again to Kevin for guiding us through the new screenshots, and I look forward to the time when CME can discuss every little detail about the upcoming MMOG, Stargate Worlds!

---