I've played most of the CoD series, and clocked a lot of online hours with MW1, MW2 and BLOPs - but can someone please tell me what MW3 brings to the table? It is literally just a map pack for MW2 with a few minor tweaks.

In some ways, it's actually a step back from BLOPs, with the interesting game modes (Gun Game etc.) relegated to private matches only.

The worst thing is that these massive sales figures will just convince Activision that they are doing the right thing by churning out the same product every year.

Have you ever worked in the IT industry? No one who did would ever say something like "software should be stable"

Servers require maintenance, otherwise, why would there be such a role as a system administrator? Servers that are only being run to support old games with small playerbases are a waste of resources, both in terms of hardware and the work by sys admins required to keep them running smoothly.

It's just simple business. There's nothing to begrudge EA over this.

Done right, I'll admit that I would probably pay for a CoD MMO.

What I think of as being "done right" would be something along these lines;

- Game setting is of two global super powers at war by proxy (Vietnam style conflicts)

- Players take on the role of special forces operatives from either side of the "Cold War".

- "PvP" would obviously be the main thrust of the gameplay, with persistent territory clashes directed by the developers.

- Games would feature similar modes to the existing CoD game types, but would be properly integrated into a believable story mode. For example, capture the flag would be changed to something like "Escort the VIP".

- Complete integration of the Spec Ops mode from MW2 into the game so that players can join up with friends and take part in spec ops scenarios which have a real effect on the persistent game world.

- Expansions could take the form of new conflicts in different parts of the world (new factions, new locations, new weapons etc.)

- No classes - I think this is a really poor part of MMOG design. Just allow players to make their own templates out of what's available.

- Actual gameplay must remain totally twitch based. No crappy "accuracy" skill which affects your shots.

- The ability to specialise in different skills at higher levels - for example, becoming an AC130 gunner, or being given access to high powered sniper rifles etc.

- Maybe even a mix of the Spec Ops and PvP game modes - for example, a scenario in which two players take the roles of opposing chopper gunners and have to protect their own AI troops from the other gunner.

So, this "surprise" announcement..

- is not of interest to XBox or PS3 users
- is not Episode 3
- is rumoured by an anonymous source that it will be Source 2 / HL3
- will not announced by Gabe, as he won't be at e3

I find it hard to reconcile the Source 2 rumour with the statement that it will be of no interest to console users. It would be an odd move for a company of Valve's size to go PC-exclusive on their next big engine launch. That just doesn't add up to me.

Personally, I'd love to see a new "Orange Box" style product containing;

- Half Life 3
- Black Mesa Source
- Portal 2

I think it's probably a given at this point that Ep3 is no more, and has been rolled up into a hypothetical HL3.

Who do you think you guys are kidding? Every single one of you who has said on here that the dedicated server issue convinced them not to buy them game is talking out of their ass.

You will all either buy it or, more likely, pirate it.

NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRD RAAAAAAAAAAGE!!

If you read the court documents, Take Two are trying to get a restraining order against Apogee to prevent them from destroying or altering any of the source code or assets of Duke Nukem Forever.

They also want the source / assets handed over to them, so it sounds like they intend to take the work that has been done and hand it off to another developer for completion (presumably to some sort of timetable this time round).

Don't hold your breath for this one though, the case isn't likely to come to any conclusion for a year, and if Take Two are successful, except at least another 18 months before anything resembling a final product could be released.

Duke in time for Christmas 2011?

UO never had levels - only skills and stats.

I was talking to the people who were saying they wanted a demo before the game came out so they could see if it was worth playing etc. The priority for the devs should be the final product until it has shipped.

And besides, no one except the developers themselves have any idea of the particular architecture of their product. For all you know, the way that this game has been designed is extremely difficult to "demo"-ise, whereas maybe Crackdown was not. That's no reflection on the intellect or skills of the developers - it's just the constraints of their initial design decisions.

This comment was edited on Apr 22, 05:58.

All you dummies whining for a demo realise that the quality of the final product WILL suffer because of the time invested in producing the demo, right?

Software development is a hideously complex process, especially for games of the scale and scope of something like Fallout 3. Saying that all they have to do is "section off part of the world and write a few fun quests" is goddamn retarded. That's weeks upon weeks of design, development and testing work that could have been better used fixing bugs with the main product.

Get a damn clue before going off on these stupid rants.

As far as I know, the mod uses the code of that "welding gun" from the alpha, but with lots of bug fixes and stuff. Not 100% on that though, haven't downloaded it yet =)

Please. Playing through the game once was horrid enough, keep your shitty game to yourself Id.

HUR HUR, LOOK AT ME MAW, I'M POSTING ON THE INTERNET!

"Computer Gaming World gave it the coveted Coaster of the Year award"

Yeah, CGW gave Ultima Online the same "Coaster of the Year" award in 1997, and that game is still 225,000 subscribers strong nearly seven years later.

Seems like a pretty good endorsement to me ^_^

You have to be a current or former UO subscriber to take part

Maybe Satan sent them from the past through the hell portals with his zombie legions.

For God's sake, this leak will barely hurt Valve at all.

Think about it.. if any retail developer tries to use parts of the Source engine, they can kiss their asses goodbye, so licensing sales are safe enough. Furthermore, box sales of HL2 will not be affected, because the leaked version contains barely any real content besides the e3 demos and some scrappy map fragments.

The only *real* problems that Valve face are with people creating cheats, hacks and finding loop-holes in Steam.

Filing Chapter 11? I don't think so somehow.

UO's subscriber base is at an all time high. There's over a quarter of a million active accounts at the minute.

Today's announcement is a huge disappointment for me personally. I've been following the progress of this game for over two years (it has gone under various guises, such as UO2.0).

The last thing I ever expected was a class and level based skill system, private zones, and playable elves, pixies and fuzzies. It's a terrible let-down. I just hope that we hear something else from the event before the end of the day that changes my mind.

No offense, but if you're "deceived" into buying UX:O because you think it's a single-player game then you're an idiot. Who in their right mind would buy a game without knowing what it's about?

Anyway, EA are a corporation who want to make money. They are exceedingly good at doing so, and they know that online games are the future. Thus, they are investing as much as they can in UO, they want it to become the market leader. They are quite confident that the UXO addition to the service will significantly boost their subscriber numbers beyond the current figure.

Sure, it was a shame that they let the single player Ultima series go out with a whimper, and have clamped down on some other single player franchises, but it's just business to them. Ultima Online is their flagship product in this area, so they're finally starting to give it the treatment it deserves. All the better for the quarter of a million players of UO who each give them $13 a month. Sorry to disappoint everyone, but UO is stronger than ever, it's not "dying" as seems to be the popular opinion on general games pages like this one.

EA know exactly what they're doing, you just seem to have misunderstood quite a lot of the history of OSI/EA.

First, Garriot certainly did not fund U9 himself, EA grudgingly made the game because Garriot kept bugging them to.

Anyway, they decided 6 months after UO came out that they should start work on UO2 because the first was a success. After 3 years though, the game was still a year from launch, was fundamentally flawed in a couple of key areas, and even if it did ever get finished, it was going to cannabalise the now very successful UO (Garriot, Starr Long etc. all tried to discourage UO2 from being started for this very reason). So EA canned it.

However, they knew that they could not compete on the market with UO forever, because of the bad image it still had from the early days and the unimpressive graphics. So they decided to start making a "UO2.0" (not a sequel, but rather a huuuge upgrade). There were some leaks about this back in Summer 2001.

Recently it was discovered that "UO2.0" is really known as "Ultima X: Odyssey". This UX:O game, while a free-standing MMORPG in its own right, is actually a massive upgrade to the Ultima Online service as a whole.

The current thinking on various fan-sites is that it is an online game that takes place in the world after the events of Ultima Ascension (this is a neat way for the developers to create a brand new, fully 3D version of Britannia whilst keeping the fiction of UO consistant).

There are also rumours that characters from UO can be brought forth into the new game, but still nothing official on that yet. Just wait 3 weeks, there's going to be massive amounts of information on it then.

Not gonna link 'em, but I found the pictures in question, and it looks great.

I'd advise against looking for them though, because I just spoilt the last-boss for myself by doing so, which is a shame because it looks so damn cool. Ah well, serves me right