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Alganon: Hands-On Preview
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
In Phoenix, we had some hands on time with Alganon and a chance to talk to the team that built it. What we found is a potential hidden gem due out this fall. Here is our hands-on preview:
Another nice feature is the Studies system. Alganon took a page from EVE Online and made some of the game’s progression offline in origin. This system works in conjunction with traditional advancement and lets players study, in real time behind the scenes, to improve in specific areas. This balances things out and lets more casual players who might not have thousands of hours to dedicate to keep up with their comrades.
Studies predominantly take on two forms. They can either gate content, such as studying to unlock a new ability or chain of quests, or they can be used as an alternative to another form of advancement, such as studies that improve stats.
;)
Read it all here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Sounds solid. I especially like the kudos system.
I'll definitely give it a try.
Some of its ideas remind me a lot of Guild Wars though. Sort of a marriage between GW and WoW it seems.
The "Sylvan" race sounds a lot like the Sylvari in Guild Wars 2 :P
Hmm..Sounds almost as they try to use the "We are not trying to reinvent the wheel spin" as a marketing slogan for a game that is just another "soloable and easy style" MMO's that has been released to the MMO scene lately...
WoW
EverQuest 2
LOTRO
Runes Of Magic
Warhammer Online
Age of Conan
Aion
+ a boatload of asian titles with identical gameplay but with online store
Are but a few already existing "easy mode MMO's", how many more can the market handle ?
Sure "Kudos" is a nice feature and all, but that is all it is, a small feature. Every new games comes with small features that no other game has, EQ2 has a unique and splendid mentoring system for example, but no one will call EQ2 unique because of that small feature.
Maybe it's just me, but it saddens me that the market in MMORPG's has been corrupted in this way, It blocks all atempts to make a true next generation game.
Good luck with Alganon
Looks nice. I looked at the UI screenshot in their screenshots section.
lol
WoW anyone?
Sounds like this could be a great game. Only drawback is starting with only two races. I like to play Dwarves or Elves, so when they decide to finish (er, "expand") their game, I will check it out.
Although you might be right about the "dont reinvent the wheel" part, there is a major difference between Alganon and all the other P2P MMOs out there. QOL is an independant company, we are only 40 people. We do telework all over the world, connected through a deeply thought out and streamlined collaboration system. We really mean what we say. There is the real prospect of an indie MMO. There is the real prospect of a fun multiplayer game in a persistent world, created by avid MMO players for avid MMO players. Yes we play WoW, yes we played EQ, GW and pretty much every massive online title since the invention of "akkustic kopplers" as we say in germany. We love what we do, we really believe we can provide a game that is entertaining and is more than worth playing.
There is passion in this game - passion for games and most of all passion for this specific genre. We put everything we got into this experience, may it be financial and/or private risk.
You can say whatever you want, we live in a "mostly" free world. But whatever you say, you cannot change the facts.
The team behind Alganon is enthusiastic, dedicated and talented. We do everything it takes to provide the best game and service we could possibly provide. You are looking at a project that is not vaporware, a WoW clone, or anything you might call it. It is unique in its foundation and every single person work on it is motivated over the limits to make it as enjoyable and successfull as imaginable.
Marketing slogans are not an indicator for a good or bad game. Most of the time the marketing people have nothing to do with the game development or design at all. You have to make a clear distinction there. Just running around calling every new game a copy of an older one is not leading you anywhere. It mostly reflects what you think about your daily life. You need to start accepting the true nature of things, they evolve over time and eventually lead to an open door to the next iteration of your own reality. You can wake up one morning and believe single player games are your thing. Or you can decide MMORPGs with a fantasy setting are you thing and you crave for something unseen and evolutionary. You may not find it the same day, but you might feel motivated to look for it, or even create it on our own.
Chris,
QOL Tools Lead Dev
I am worried about the Kudo's system. Maplestory did the same with the ame system, but it only became a commodity where you could pay people to fame you. It also leads to scams where people get fame and run or people pay for fame and get nothing. Watch out Alganon.
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Not impressed. This will not succeed as a subscription based title. I love smaller teams making good games, but the issue here is not solid games that have been done before, but rather the ones that have not done whats been done before. Clearly Alganon is a generic fantasy mmo that will be so dreadfully average and cartoony, that it wont stand up to any of those who have done the same previously and yet are still successful. In other words, you cant beat WoW at their own game. Just as no diablo clones became more popular or anywhere close to that of the original.
If a smaller team wants to be successful, "re-inventing the wheel" is actually the key to success, the issue lay in the difficulty in such a task. I would rather say, Innovation is the key actually. It is that innovation which will be the selling point, compared to generic titles of bigger companies which use an already known franchise to sell their game. Take LOTR for example. Other titles such as Guild Wars was successful because of their innovation, which involved an unheard of business model and backed that up with a style of play (instances) to keep costs low, but done in such a way where it was not bad at all.
If any of Alganon's devs end up reading this, which no doubt they will. Do not expect much interest or positive reactions. If innovation, major innovation, isnt there and as part of the selling point, then you have no chance at success....unless you consider a maximum of 50k subs (if you are lucky) a success. I would suggest re-examining that business model as well.
Though Rabenwolf's post is well thought out, I say it's still too early to give my opinion one way or another. Me? I'm looking forward to the game, but can't call is a success nor flop until the test of time rears its ugly head.
But I will say Indie all the way
#K
To Chris: Good on you, great to read a genuinely passionate post from a developer here.
I most like the sound of this: They’ve also added Families to the game, which is a choice made at character creation. Families start out as glorified chat channels. Players tell the game whether they’re an achiever, explorer, etc. and then they are grouped immediately in a general chat with like-minded individuals. Over time, this family provides a few alternative quests and achievements related to that style of gameplay. Explorers will be encouraged to see the world, and so on.
Reminds me of the class and race channels in Earth & Beyond, but with added purpose. Designers of the biggest games overlook this kind of feature repeatedly, and at the peril of their games. Just look at WarH'Online.
Yeah, I'm not impressed either... Why would I play a game that is being "traditional" when I can just play the other games that created the tradition in the first place? So no I def won't be playing this.. though at least they are honest about it, so props for that.
Where is the PVP?? No, I don't mean some lame ass duel or arena - Open world racial based PVP.
I'm no fan of WoW graphics, this could be something that turns people off.
The crafting sounds kind of cool, but I don't like getting the same sword from crafting as you can from raiding - A raid sword should be better than a top notch crafted sword, even if it's just a little better.
I'll want to see an open beta. NO not the open beta only for people who pre-order. OPEN BETA.
As a small dev team I'm sure those guys would be happy with 25-50k subs.
Not every game needs 300k+ subs to be a success. As long as the game is fun people will play it, it doesn't need a load of innovative features.
Playing: WoW, EvE
Interested in: TOR, ER, GW2, WoD, Dust514
The game sounds like it has potential. As one above me said, where is the PvP? Throw faction based PvP in it and we might just have a solid game.
I totally blanked on that and forgot to put it in the article, apologies.
PvP should probably get an article onto itself for this game, but basically, there won't be any at launch. Why? The reason is that they want to do a completely concurrent and independent system. IE: Every single skill/ability in the game starts at the same place, but has a way it works for PvP and one for PvE. They are then balanced and tuned independently of each other.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
As a small dev team I'm sure those guys would be happy with 25-50k subs.
Not every game needs 300k+ subs to be a success. As long as the game is fun people will play it, it doesn't need a load of innovative features.
That can be true if you do not include the investors as part of the equation. The money invested in the project doesnt come from no where, investors get on board. All investors want the best return possible with their investments. A development company equally will be limited by the success of a game. Take WoW for example. Prior to WoW Blizzard had a much smaller number of staff, a smaller building...ect With WoW's huge success, the greater numbers and profit, allowed for Blizzard to beef up their staff significantly, hire the best of the best, and actually have their own building built, which is now Blizzard HQ. All this requires millions of dollars, none of it would have been possible if their product was just scraping by.
Furthermore, no doubt the goal of this games developers as well as investors, is to reap as much rewards as possible, which in turn go into building upon the title as well as the company and even worth of the developers themselves.
i don't get it
how is this a hands on preview?
it read as a list of content and features of the game - - - copy and paste from the Alganon website?
i guess there will be more tomorrow so this is a preview of the hands on preview?
anyway, the crafting bit sounded interesting but it always does on paper doesn't it? implementation is usually craptastic, though i hope they stick to giving options for creating the highest gear as opposed to raiding for it (gawd how boring)
as for raiding i have always found this a very sad sad endeavor and i do hope that it is kept to a minimum (unlikely though, look at what happened to lotro for example)
interest in this game for me has gone up and down so often i'm not sure where it is now - the lowest ebb was the chaotic beta process - - - what was it like 10 ways to sign up but only one of the addresses was the correct one? and ultimately i didn't get chosen - WTF? i always get in but i guess my sign up was at an address that sent my request into the ether
ultimately this uhm "preview" has perked things up again - well written anyway
I admit, I thought about what you're saying while writing it. It's called "hands-on," because I sat there for quite a while and played the game. I also interviewed the core people, which in this particular field, is entirely necessary for any kind of on-site preview since there is no way to actually play the full breadth of a game in a few hours.
Definitely could have included more specific things I noticed, but it's not one of those games that has crazy features that people need to get a feel for. It played like an MMO and all the things they told me seemed to be in there in some shape or form... Beyond that, it looked nice (which I noted) and had a good flow (which I noted).
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
While I can't say if I'll really enjoy this game, I'm sure I'll check it out - I always check out new mmos, but I think the team is doing something right from a business perspective. They're not trying to go after the entire market, they've decided on a particular group (hard to say how big it is) and focusing their development on that group. I think to be successful in the current mmo market, you need to go after 1 group of gamers. Trying to get several, or all, seems to be one of the biggest issues we've run into with developers these days. You just can't satisfy everyone, but you sure can spend a lot of money making a game that no one is happy with.
A smaller team and budget focusing on a particular group and not depending (hopefully) on bringing in a huge player base to succeed is probably the best strategy. Personally I think if more developers focused on smaller groups, making that game really give their target group what they've been asking for, we'd have a lot more good (to great) games on the market. Hopefully there would be 1 or 2 that are doing the type of things I want..
Naturally this is my take on our current mmo market.
This. A lot of indies and small firms work like this nowadays. Even large firms, with the exclusion of Bioware and NCSoft, either started out this way with their first mmo, or at least hired a substantial amount of smaller firms that were, like this, borderline freelancers. This is most often how a lot of people get their feet wet in the industry, unless they do java based class projects. So "kudos" to Chris for being honest about how their company is actually run. THAT is revolutionary to some, in and of itself.
Furthermore, yes they aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. Another game recently basically said that, called Aion. It seems to be working pretty well for them, so "if it ain't broke".... That being said, they are trying small things here and there to give it its own spice. Being that they are a decentralized company, this is the best strategy to go with. It gives investors what they are familiar with in turns of return potential confidence, and valuable experience to the team itself.
Besides, a company like this most likely doesn't have deep-pocketed investors. That is a plus right off the bat. It means they are less likely to try and macromanage the dev team, to allow them to better produce the game THEY want. Once profits start turning, and they will for a game like this, IF they can continue to keep overhead/ marketing down, you might find more content/ updates/ bug fixes/generally happier devs than you would a normal AAA title. Little by little, it might suprise you- in a good way, not in a streaking 80yr old aunt/ NGE kind of way...
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Tried- L2, Ryzom, WAR, DDO, PWI, Tab Rasa, Requiem, Champs, AA, JD, PWI, SUN, Dawntide
Played- SWG (pre-cu), AoC, VG, WoW, LoTRO,CoX, EQ2, DAOC, GW, PotBS, Aion, MO,APB, NASA, Fallen Earth, DCUO, Rift
Playing- EVE, Black Prophecy, TOR
Waiting for- Tera, Jumpgate Evo, WH40K, WWE, WOD, TSW
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"Hey, if Activision liked it, then they should have put a ring on it," Double Fine President Tim Schafer said. "Oh great, now Beyonce is going to sue me too."
I was thinking the same thing... There's no way I'm paying to play this. F2P, I'd give a try.. but not on a subscription basis.
Been checking this game out for a while now. So I will be waiting to get into open beta to check things out for myself before commenting on things I haven't experienced.
You can eat pizza from 20 different joints and know it's all pizza, but everyone has a favorite pizza joint......no?
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I don't think this game has any chance of sucess and hopefuly I am wrong on this.
This is much more related to a flawed business model then to the talent of the development team. They could be 40 achieving what an army of 80 would do else where.
Could someone define me what kind of niche gamer population is this company aiming for? The casual gamer right?
Last time I checked the market was overflowed of limonade bamboo blade MMO. If I was an investor I would have pulled out long time ago.
So you haven't tried it and it already failed? Huh?
That's some good stuff there.