StarGate Worlds MMO

Tom

An Old Friend
January 18, 2008 - It's a powerful idea for a game, especially an MMO - an entire fictional universe built around the concept of shimmering circular portals that can lead anywhere. After 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1, there's certainly no lack of material for Cheyenne Mountain to work with when converting the fiction to the MMO space. We got a chance to speak with studio head Dan Elggren, creative director Chris Klug, and art director Howard Lyon about how their game is set up, how it'll play, and how it deals with the story, personality, and races of the Stargate mythos.

IGN: The concept of a Stargate MMO seems to be pretty good since you can basically use the Stargate to gate out to wherever. How is that being incorporated into the game?

Chris Klug:: Because we want to try to craft the player's experience, initially you'll get gate addresses you can use and over time you'll accumulate a bunch of gate addresses. Once you do that obviously you can travel to whatever world you have the gate address for but we're using them sort of as carrots to entice the player to move forward and get gate addresses to worlds they want to go to.

IGN: So a gate address would be something like a quest reward then.

Chris Klug:: Yeah sometimes it's a quest reward, sometimes it's just given to you when you get the quest assigned to you, it varies. Some of them are given -- again it sort of depends on the situation.

IGN: Could you just give a very general overview of where the game is set and how it relates to the TV show, or TV shows?

Chris Klug:: It's set in the same universe at coincidental places in the timeline. You'll meet characters from the show in the game, you'll be able to talk to them, they'll give you missions, you'll be able to play characters on either side -- the good guys and the bad guys.

IGN: Could you go over the process of how you start a game, how you create a character, what choices you have, and where you start out?

Chris Klug:: In an overview sense, you choose whether you want to be on the side that Stargate Command is on or you want to be on the side the Goa'uld are on. We have a basic set of archetypes on each side. You can play a soldier, commando, scientist or archeologist; there are humans on both sides. In addition you can play an Asgard and a Jaffa on the Stargate Command side and on the Goa'uld side you can play a Goa'uld and also a Jaffa.

IGN: Then where would you start out?

Chris Klug:: Each archetype starts out in their own location. For instance the bad guy humans start out in a world called the Castle. Each archetype gets set up in a short solo experience that defines who they are. We do this for a couple reasons. One, we want to carefully craft the opening few minutes of the game so we can handhold the players a little bit. Secondarily, we can't assume that the players of the game know the Stargate universe the way that a hardcore fan would so we're taking that time to introduce them to, for instance, what it would be like to be an Asgard or what it would be like to be a Goa'uld. If a casual gamer comes to the game, we're not expecting them to watch 10 seasons of DVDs.

IGN: No, that would be a steep system requirement.

Kevin Balentine (Senior Marketing Manager): But we could pre-package that. [laughs]

IGN: So race is basically tied to archetype.

Chris Klug:: Right, a scientist is basically a human. A Goa'uld is a Goa'uld that has a certain set of abilities that tend toward science and not so much toward combat, but it is the abilities and the mix of abilities that you choose that truly defines what your character can do in the game. And what happens is as you level up, abilities become unlocked, you get to make choices as to what abilities you want, and you proceed down an ability tree that is not unlike the talent tree in World of Warcraft, but more robust and deep.

IGN: Why is it more robust and deep?

Chris Klug:: There are many more abilities. Instead of being adjuncts to your character class like in WoW, they are the things that you do every day. So what happens in WoW typically, as a Druid, you get a certain skill, you get a certain spell list, and in addition to that you get talents that modify that spell list. In Stargate Worlds what happens is that the abilities are the equivalent of the spell list or the attack types, and you are picking your way through areas of specialty in those ability trees that define your character.

IGN: The archetypes themselves are self-contained then? At no point in the game can you merge archetypes?

Chris Klug:: Correct.

IGN: How's PvP going to work?

Dan Elggren: With PvP we're looking at sort of a staggered launch. We're going to start it off with some servers that are going to go through and just have the [PvP] flag turned on. We're going to slowly bring in events, battlegrounds, and that sort of thing, but it'll be staggered as the game progresses and grows.

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Theres been enough MMORG's about that successive ones will have lessons learned for them already. WOW is the toddler version, the Star Wars Galaxies MMORG was practically killed off when they dumbed it down in an attempt to get new players (and losing the hardcore players who weren't prepared to pay for the new dumbed down system)

When a monthly fee is around, it is going to take a decent game to draw in the players as compared to existing games that have free servers available for it. As much as I'd like to play games in the universes of my favourite shows, if they aren't good enough I just won't see the point.
 
I posted this as an interest item to talk about - I don't game online.
I lasted all of 2 sec when I once tried to hjoin a game of Unreal 2 Tournament.
Then I got a slur thrown at me and told to leave. I never will go back.
 
Well, I staff on a Mod for a game and handle admin duties on a few servers people are playing on and you do get human beings on them that can be obnoxious at times.

Even with my long history of online gaming I've gotten banned from certain servers for tking by accident. Bad coincidence when it happens too often in a limited period of time.

At the moment, we are seeing a lot of players in the servers and the forums who are behaving badly, it must be SAD or the cycle of the moon or something. I find that when I go online in the Mod I work on with an anonymous name I see a lot of trouble, but go into any community in the Real World and you see the same things really. Society has changed to the point where people will do things to your face that would be unthinkable in the past. It helps sometimes to have those admin powers to make those people disappear online!

But UT is a bit frenetic and not the best for a newbie to online gaming to get into. There are plenty of slower moving games out there requiring social skills and have real communities rather than the "frag you now, won't remember you tomorrow" types. Maybe you want to look into those instead. Like this particular MMORPG will be.

There's always a 14 day trial of Eve Online to try right now if you fancy space trading/combat on a massive scale, or plenty of others with trials, to dip your feet in. Eventually you'll find the type of game and community you can settle into comfortably.
 
Tim, Thanx for the words of encouragement and I may try one of those slower moving ones like you suggest.
 
"tking" is what? :confused:

I'm with Skwirl' for the most part when it comes to online games. I enjoy the occasional game with friends hanging out at somebody house where the intent is to "frag" and nothing more because it's all in fun but when it comes to online stuff I usually stay away from them.

Plus the fact that I can't see myself paying ~$10USD a month just for a single game.
 
I read on Gamspot that this game should have something for everyone. I play PC games but none that connect you to other users except for some of the ones on Yahoo! and MSN. Those don't really count. :smiley: I can't wait to try this one. I think it should be easier than RPGs. To me regular RPGs are hard because there is no physical world for you to actually see and interact in. Even just the sheer look of this game makes me want to try it. As a film major it intrigues me to see things like this.

I don't think there will be a monthly fee to play this game though. I haven't read anything that said it was going to be like that. I'm pretty sure it's going to be buy it out right and then just connect online to others.

That's all I have to say on that but there's a tid bit of info I want to see if you guys have heard about. They are doing a Get into the Gate contest for the game. You could win $5,000 and get your image or likeness incorporated into the game somehow. I think that is just so cool. I've been entering it since I heard about it. And entering couldn't be simpler. You just watch the show and get the code they show during the commercial and enter it with your info online. How easy. If you want to read up more about it you can follow this link. An Announcement from Stargate Command | Stargate Command

By the By this isn't a spam or add. I know if you have to say it then it is. But truly I think this will be a great game. I've played games that we self contained on your computer like this one will be and I loved them. I wish they still made ones like that instead of the whole play online thing with others. I can't really multi task like that when I'm playing a game. :smiley: Sorry I can be wordy.

an Official Team Stargate Member (by choice and not for the gain but the fun)
 
Interesting idea.

Shame modding Project Reality for Battlefield 2 is so difficult when it comes to faces or maybe us staff on it would stick our own faces in.

We are still deciding to use our own voiceovers in it at some point, I have been picked for the British Commanders voice, we still have to allocate Section Commander and Infantryman. Maybe we'll have a scottish and an irishman in there to represent the true 'face' of the Brit army :smiley:
 
Just a question about this MMO Stargate game, Is it all ground combat or do you also have the ability to fight in space, Build ships, etc even put Stargates on planets that didnt have them?

If not then i dont see the point in it, Cant be that hard to set up,

eg: a simple battle,
Start with some space combat, Winner will most likely have support from above, The loser will struggle but thats what happened in the series.

They should also put in building capabilties and if i may sujest, A ranking system, No use having 50,000 nubs flying around in Hak'taks and Dadalus battle cruisers, Will crash the servers, thus with ranking system only the best get them.
They could be ranked on leader ship skills, Battle skills (tactics), ability to complete a mission with minamul casualties in the shortest possible time etc

just my 2cents
 

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