id Software John
Carmack And Todd Hollenshead Speak on Game Informer is part one of a
two-part series that catches up with two of id Software's co-owners during
CES 2007 to discuss a variety of topics, including progress in their new IP:
"Yes, the in-house development project that we’ve been working on is all new
technology. It still has some roots in the Doom 3 technology, but almost
everything is new in there. We’re still not talking about exactly what the
project is, but it’s a new IP, it’s diverting a little bit from the standard
id formula and it’s not just a first-person shooter. Technically, it’s build
around an advancement over the MegaTexture technology from Quake Wars. Where
that was applied just to the terrain, the version of the new technology
applies it into everything, so we can have that level of rich detail on all
the surfaces on the entire world. That’s the push that we’re making with
graphics technology. The gameplay is somewhat different from anything that
we’ve of done before. The company is pursuing Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake
franchises with other partner developers and all, but we’re trying to
develop a brand-new franchise with this new one. Hopefully, we’ll be talking
about that sometime this year, and we’ll be able to go ahead and come out of
our own little cone of silence about it."
Hellgate: London The
Hellgate: London Online Q&A on Shacknews offers the promised
conversation with Bill Roper of Flagship Studios (even though he still says
"we" when referring to Blizzard) on multiplayer Hellgate: London,
demonstrating why he gave them the impression there will be subscriptions
involved: "We'll probably have some kind of detail in the next month or two
as to our pricing model, but the design is both a standalone as well as an
MMO, so we want to be able to hit both markets just like we did with the
Diablo titles. There are a lot of people that in some instances actually
can't get online, and there are also people who are online but for gaming
they aren't sure if they want to make that commitment to pay the monthly fee
and go online. They can get the game and play the standalone, and get 30 or
40 hours' worth of gameplay. If they like that, they can go online and we'll
have a good ramp of some kind for them to go online and check out some of
the services. Exactly how we handle that, whether it'll be a trial or
whether they can check out some of the game for free, we're still hammering
out the final details. Then beyond that it will be pay to play, and again
we're about a month out from announcing more on that. But what you're
getting with that service is you're getting 24/7 customer service, secure
servers, databases, and the biggest thing is that you're getting continuing
content. We'll have a full dev team that's on the project from day one.
Actually, right when you buy the game, when it launches there will already
be content available that you can't get in the single-player--additional
monsters, areas, all the community and economy things, you'll be able to
form guilds, auction houses, all those things you expect from MMOs."
EverQuest II The
EverQuest II Q&A on EverQuest 2 WarCry is an article-format conversation
with SOE's Scott Hartsman about the future of their MMORPG sequel.