This podcast ran short, so to make sure it ran at least an hour, the guys ramble about the games that are coming soon. It’s good padding, but still padding.
Enjoy!
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think.
Formerly Green Monster Games, 38 Studios is growing a large pool of talented folks for their MMO endeavor. First, we heard R.A. Salvatore (writer of the Dark Elf series) was heading over to work on a story, art direction by Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn) and now Irena Pereira from Blizzard and a sound designer, Aubrey Hodges.
Hodges has done sound for games like Kings Quest, Quake and even Madden NFL. Pereira was a World of Warcraft interface designer which allows us to invision a bit about what 38 Studio’s MMO may look like from a user interaction perspective.
The MMO, currently titled Copernicus has a tentative launch date of 2010, which seems short for a full MMO design but they’ve been hard at work for roughly two years. Not too shabby a team for a privately held company founded by baseball star Curt Shilling.
It’s important to note Shilling is an avid gamer and loves massive multiplayer online games. What else does a man with a lot of money do as a side project? Fund a company based on the hobby he loves! If anyone knows the best directions and qualities of an MMO it should be an experienced team guided by someone with a passion for the game genre.
We’ll have to wait and see!
Read on for the full press release
Myst was published by Brøderbund Software, developed by Cyan Worlds and created by two brothers that did the design and directed the game (it was, much like a movie).
The original game was released on the Macintosh (in 1993) and then later ported to Microsoft Windows and Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Jaguar CD, AmigaOS, CD-i, 3DO, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS.
“Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses an enchanted book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as “Ages”. Clues found in each of these Ages help reveal the back-story of the game’s characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.” (wikipedia)
The game was a success, no doubt, and was considered the best selling PC game of all time until TheSims dethroned it. Besides mind blowing graphics, at the time, Myst helped move the game and PC industry along by selling CDROM’s. The game required a CDROM, which was rare at the time, and I recall them bundling Myst with some CDROMS or hyping it as “you need a CDROM so you can play Myst.” On more than one occasion when a person game to me asking what they should get to show off their new (costly) CDROM I would say “you need to try Myst.”
The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them(wikipedia)
Franchise sales: 12-million copies (first Myst game alone in the franchise, 6-million), pretty impressive eh?
You don’t have to be a huge Myst fan to know how it changed the industry, grew the medium of CD-based games and entertained millions. A real gamers thinking game!
To hear our full impression of Myst, checkout the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 77.
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“The Grind”
With Wrath of the Lich King arriving last week it only made sense to jump into the new content “Lich King” style. Although we had initially reacted to the beta, playing the final content was much more fun with all of our guild and friends to play along.
It only took a few hours to get my new Death Knight to level-58 beyond the starting area and into the real world of Azeroth. Upon reaching the main city (Ogrammar as we’re horde) I picked up two new professions to make me a bit of dime: mining and skinning. This is where the beauty of the Death Knight fell apart…
A level-58 character has a few options open for exploration with the Burning Crusade content being the most desirable starting point. However, quickly it became apparent that my professions of mining and skinning were useless in Hellfire and other Burning Crusade areas. Why? Professions start with a value of 1. The last expansion requires your professions to be roughly 300 before you can utilize them.
My level-58 Death Knight has no experience in the ways of skinning and mining, what has he been doing all his life? Apparently killing innocent people in small villages throughout the Eastern Plaguelands. My anticipation with leveling my Death Knight died knowing I’d spend the next few days hunting mines and killing animals as if I where a level-10 toon.
There I was, a high level character trolling Crossroads and Thousand Needles hunting for copper and tin and skinning all the low level creatures I could find. Why didn’t Blizzard consider this when they allow you to create a level-55 character on day one? If we don’t go off and grind our way to a profession level of 300 we might as well not even pick professions at all.
I was not alone in these findings, along my path I found several Death Knights with skinning knives and mining tools looking for open opportunities to cut into the earth or the dead animals skins all around them. Sure, we can kill a cat in seconds flat but the “grind” is what we wanted to avoid, this is what characters spend their first twenty levels doing!
After three sessions of mind numbing grinding I’ve managed to reach a skill of 340 in skinning and coming upon 200 in mining. Mining is still too low for high level game content so I must whisk myself away to noobville every so often to catch a few mythril nodes and pray for a gold deposit along the way.
This may not be a bug in the Wrath of Lich King expansion but it sure is an annoying design flaw.
Hi guys.
Sorry for not leaving a comment on the last episodes (the one you read in this episode was months ago ^^), i was very busy the last weeks with business stuff and some personal issues. Anyway, thanks as always for the episodes and your effort you are putting in to each episode. I respect that very much!
Regarding the topics in this episode: I did not play Civ since …. i think Civ 3? The game is good, but its taking so much time …. sadly i dont have that much time 🙁
I played Life is strange 2, God of War (the old ones because i want to play though all of them before i play the actual one), Overwatch, Borderlands 1 (never played any Borderlands before) Hearthstone and a lot of Magic The Gathering Arena. If my friends are online, we like to play some Apex and/or Division 2 as well. I want to start Blood Bowl in the upcoming days, because i played the Board Game .. 20 years ago 🙂 I also pledged for “Ant Stream”, the retro streaming platform (will be live for early access on may 28th) … i hope this will be good 🙂 Did you heard of it ? What do you think of pledging video games / pc Games in general ?
Regarding the Apex update: the Havoc is ONLY playable with the turbo Charger .. without that it is absolute unplayable 🙂
Did you heard of Splitgate- Arena Warfare? This seems to be a new Arena Shooter which combines Halo and Portal (i think Jonah mentioned it in a youtube review of upcoming games from E3?) Its for free at the moment on steam 🙂
Regarding the backwards compability on PS5: this would be awesome! i would pay very much money for a ps5 which plays ps1,2,3 and 4 (and 5 of course) games. The only problem will be the chip for PS3 afaik.
Red Dead Online? I only see the promotions / advertisments all the time on twitch, but have no intention to play it 🙂
WoW: i really love this game, loved it in the beginning and still love it … problem is, that my friends are not playing it anymore …. and playing a MMORPG on your own is not that fun 🙁 I played the last expansion (as far as possible without a raid / group) and it was great gain. I listen to the music very often and like to see the cut scenes and updates. For sure the vanilla version was harder (in my opinion) but that was great … 40 people in a raid .. defeating Raganros for the first time … what an amazing feeling, so much emotions, better then the first time s** 🙂
First question of the week: The last game which has been released and i did not noticed it was Hollow Knight. I noticed it 1 year (or 2?) later and it so awesome, that i was wondering, i did not notice when it came out 🙂
Second question of the week: I think the game i will still play in 20 years or will not age is Magic The Gathering. But its a card game, so i dont know if this is a “real” game regarding to your question 🙂 If i had to pick a second game, it would be sth like WoW .. i started playing it in 2004 .. thats already 15 years ago 🙂 or one of the so called retro games, like Musha Aleste, Mushihemasama or any of this bullet hell shooters for the 16 and 32 Bit consoles. I still love to play them today 🙂
Thats all for this one. Sorry for this big and long one, i hope that´s ok 🙂
When i will be in the U.S. the next time, i will invite you guys for dinner to thank you for all your work you put into this podcast. Thanks for that!
Greetings,
Ralf