Jumpgate
Evolution isn’t the
only space-based MMOG warping into E3. style="font-style: italic;">Black Prophecy
made its appearance at E3 2010 this week and we were given a chance to
preview the game and even get a little play time with the latest build.
Combat in Black
Prophecy is indeed a much
faster paced experience with a kind of throwback to older space flight
games such as style="font-style: italic;">X-wing
and Wing
Commander with a modernized
twist.



Character creation was the first thing we got a look at upon our
arrival and it was pretty basic in its current form. You first choose
your gender and then you are presented with several sliders that will
allow you to choose your race. There were sliders for each of the races
that we saw, which included Asian, Caucasian, and African. You could
then move on to choose certain customization options for your
character’s appearance. This could range from subtle
appearance changes like tattoos for your character to a complete
environmental-style space suit and helmet.

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While you won’t get to run around space stations at launch,
we were told that the team plans to expand the game to include the
ability to leave your ship and run around stations, but that will be
post-launch content and we speculate part of the reason they are
including a fair amount of
character customization options.



Once you create your character, you will be thrust into the tutorial,
which will contain nine missions and take roughly 6-8 hours to
complete. You don’t have to do these all at once as
you’ll be free to take on other missions and come back to
finish up later.



If you love cutscenes and voiceovers you’ll be happy to know
that Black
Prophecy will have both.
Players will at times encounter parts of the game that will have
cutscenes and voiceovers to help along the story. The voiced cutscenes
were not in the game yet so we didn’t get a chance to see any
of the planned content during our preview.



One of Black
Prophecy’s biggest
features is the modular ship design. The ship we were shown and given
some time with had two wings, a cockpit, and four weapon slots, two
different kinds of missiles, and engines that could be slotted with
different items.  Each module that you change will have an
effect on the appearance of your ship as well as its performance.

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Ship combat maneuverability works on a weight system. As you add
certain modules to your ship it will increase in weight. So you can
have the option of using lightweight modules to allow your craft to
move with greater speed but at the same time you might not be able to
take much of a beating. On the flip side, if you use heavier modules
you might be able to take a beating but your maneuverability will be
hindered.



Combat can be viewed in one of three ways: first-person, cockpit, and
third-person view. In some ways the combat is very similar to the
classic space fighter simulation, style="font-style: italic;">X-Wing.
You can scan your enemies when close enough and target specific parts
of their ship. So if you want to slow them down you can hit the
engines. Once you scan an enemy you’ll get details about
their systems in the HUD (Heads up Display) and what percentage they
are currently operating at. Combat controls on the build we got to test
out were very responsive and easy to use. However, not all of the
features for ship control were in the game yet such as the ability to
do a ship roll. So our hands-on combat was more of a direct dogfight.



There are three types of play that players can choose to take part in:
PvE, PvP, and PvEvP.  PvE missions are instanced and will
allow players to perform missions involving NPCs. PvP is a direct PvP
battle with other players and PvEvP pits you against NPCs and other
players. Unfortunately, the client we got to preview and test
didn’t have other players. So it’s difficult to
gauge how massive the combat can really get.

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We also got to check out a player built station. These function as a
Guild Hall of sorts and groups of players can expand onto it by using
the various module slots on the station. The station that we got to
look at was fairly large and once modules start going into place it can
be used as a hub by other players for trading and getting quests as
NPCs will begin to show up. The modules require resources to build and
this is the driving force of conflict in style="font-style: italic;">Black Prophecy
as all players need resources and the best way to get them is by
acquiring resource stations. Just don’t expect other players
to just let you keep them.



Black
Prophecy has been in a small
phase of closed beta testing with somewhere around 100 testers for a
little over a month, but a representative from gamigo informed us that
the closed beta should be expanding within the next two to three weeks.
We were also given a tentative launch and open beta window with the
game moving into open beta around October followed by a November
launch. Black
Prophecy regionalization will
include: English and German at launch with French, Spanish, and
possibly Turkish to follow.