The Hokfig, it’s bigger than you think.

A little more information was released yesterday with an update to The Repopulation Bestiary. These 7 critters will be making Rhyldan their home and will be the wildlife players can expect to run around with when they log into the game.

For more information on The Repopulation, check out their webpage. http://www.therepopulation.com

Personally I think it’s a great addition.

In other news The Repopulation crew will be at PAX East this year! Anyone who is going be sure to stop in and say hi.

Also, if you haven’t already, the End of January 2013 Update is posted at the website. Folks who get the e-mail newsletter will have seen this already, but feel free to check out the link if you don’t get the newsletter. Big notes in this release include changes to stealth and the addition of new devs.

It’s an exciting time for The Repopulation.

Here’s the information available so far:

• There will be 3 categories of housing plots Instanced Neighborhood housing plots, Persistent Non-Instanced housing plots and Nation City housing plots.
• Houses will be either whole housing units or modular units players will be able to place together to build homes. 
• Players will be able to move their homes
• Players will not have to worry about other players destroying or stealing from their homes. 

Instanced player housing will be the easiest and cheapest option. The two NPC factions, OWON and FPR will have instanced neighborhoods where players will be able to set up homes.  Having a more neighborhood feel will give players a chance to showcase their homes to other players, just on a smaller scale. Sadly though OWON folks can’t be neighbors with FPR folks, so you’ll want to make sure that all of your friends join the same faction if you want them to visit your Instanced house. Instanced player housing will give anyone who wants to try out the housing system a chance to buy a plot and build a house.

The Persistent Non-Instanced housing will give players a little more of that Star Wars Galaxies feel by letting them put a house down in the open world. There won’t be a lot of these housing plots and they’ll be more expensive than the instanced housing. The Devs plan to release Persistent Non-Instanced housing plots slowly over time and restrict purchase of the housing plots to one plot per account.  The reasoning is that this will give more players a chance to have open world homes. This option is mostly for people who really want to have homes out in the open game world but do not want to risk building a home in a Nation city as these will be in PvP areas.

Nation housing plots are the third option available to Repopulation home builders. So not only will players be able to build their own cities out in the open world, but they’ll be able to have homes within those cities. These housing plots will be tied to the city. This means that if the city falls to another Nation, or the city Mayor decides to reallocate a housing plot, the houses on the Nation plots are released and the houses are packaged.

Here’s the really nifty bit, in The Repopulation houses are mobile.

All houses in The Repopulation are tied to the player, not the property they sit on. This means that players can move their house from one housing plot to another. This gives players flexibility in where they want to place their homes and also means that players can invest their time and resources on building and decorating their home without fear of having someone show up and try to destroy it.

Players will also be able to give others the ability to manipulate the items in their homes. Though apparently if you give someone else permission to re-arrange your house they can put things wherever they want.

That’s just the basics of the housing system and personally I can’t wait to get a chance to work with a home of my own. Chances are I may even try getting in with a player nation just so I can see how it works when you plunk down a house in a Nation city.

For more information check out the Player Housing System write up over on The Repopulation website. Also, if you have some questions about the system you can ask the devs directly on this forum thread Player Housing 1-25-2013 – Questions.

Sonja Austrene

I am still avidly awaiting the release of The Repopulation, but I needed a chance to get some gaming in on the side.

About a month ago I set up a trial for EVE Online. I figured I’d give it a shot and see what has changed much since my last experience with the game in 2011.

I created Sonja Austrene, a Minmatar Sebiester. None of that bit really matters except for the part that says Minmatar. So far I’ve really enjoyed flying and engaging in combat using Minmatar ships.

I’m not in PvP right now and there’s a few reasons for that. Most of the reasons revolve around my High Sec corporation.

I do like where the game is right now, and CCP has gone out of their way to try and improve the new player experience. I think I’ll stick with EVE for a while, at least until I’m so busy with The Repopulation that I have no time for it any longer.

Relevant Links:

• EVE Online
• The Repopulation

It gives a little teaser on where the team is going with in game crafting.

Sometimes they get cash from private investors, sometimes they get cash from publishers. Sometimes they crowd-fund cash through projects like Kickstarter.

Crowd-funding through companies like Kickstarter lets average gamers like you and me pledge cash to a game project. Kickstarter helps a lot of independent developers get that little extra cash their project may need to pick up art assets or maybe hire professionals that cannot afford to volunteer their skills.

Not all of the projects people pledge for on Kickstarter make it off the ground. This is a sad reality of start-up companies. Not all start-up companies make it in their first year. People who invest money in start-up companies know there is a risk. Even with that risk, investors still work with start-up businesses, but they do a little extra research about the product and the company before they invest. This helps investors minimize their risk.

Most of us gamers that pledge on Kickstarter are not professional investors. We just want to put in a little cash to play a new game. When the company fails to deliver the game for whatever reason, we’re all disappointed. When putting money into Kickstarter, we all should know that there is a risk. The money we pledge does not guarantee that a game will be made.

While we can’t guarantee that the game will make it, we can minimize our risk. We can invest wisely, or like the title of my post suggests, invest like a boss.

Investing like a boss means thinking less like a gamer and more like an investor. If we invest like a boss, we don’t rely on the Kickstarter page alone.  Just like those start up investors, we do additional research on the company and the product we are investing in. We take a look at the game’s website and forums. We watch their videos. Also, where we can, we look at third party websites and see what other players are saying about the game.

Read the game’s website and forums asking yourself:

• Is there a lot of information about game play and in game systems?
• Are screenshots available?
• Are the same things highlighted on the website, the forums and the Kickstarter page?
• Do they have regular updates on how the game is progressing?
• Do they have links to interviews and other press statements?
• Does the team give a professional image?
• Does it look like the game has a solid plan for game production and a timeline for  release?

Watch the game’s videos asking yourself:

• Does the game have videos available to watch?
• Are you seeing the features talked about on Kickstarter and on the game’s website?
• Does the game look like it will be fun to play?

Reading 3rd Party Websites asking yourself:

• What are other potential players saying about the game and are they raving fans or do they have solid interest in the game?
• Are there any postings by the game team and do they have valid statements and sound professional (sound like they know what they’re talking about)?
• Are people flaming the game without good information or do they have valid concerns for the game that are not being addressed?

Bottom line:
Keep in mind that you are taking a risk. Sometimes the game you are pledging for will not be exactly the same at launch and sometimes it will not launch at all. There are risks.

You can minimize that risk by doing extra research. If the game and the company building it look solid there is a greater chance the game will release. That is investing like a boss.

I want to thank Victor Barreiro Jr. (aka iamstillwater of http://www.gamesandgeekery.com) for this post’s inspiration via his article on MMORPG.com When Kickstarter Works. I also want to thank my hubby for the graphic, he linked that over to me.

The Repopulation on Hero Engine 2

So here we see The Repopulation on the Hero Engine 2. The big deal about the Hero Engine 2 is a large update to the graphics engine.

The Repopulation looked good under Hero Engine 1 as far as I was concerned. The pre-alpha videos displayed graphics that were similar to those found in Fallen Earth, a game I played and enjoyed for some long time.

Other additions to the Hero Engine with Hero Engine 2 include a new middleware called Awesomium® which is a web UI browser framework.

From a player perspective it’s an interesting addition since it allows players to see web hosted content in game. Developers could post in game news, or post upcoming in game events to a web host such as the game website. Then the content would be visible to players both in and out of the game (without using the alt+tab option). I’m not 100% sure about how it’s implemented, but it still sounds like a fun addition. I know I wanted to use something like this when working with the OpenSim project for web driven story lines.

From a developer perspective though Hero Engine states that the integration assists with micro transactions and subscriptions. Hey, games have to make money or they don’t stay live.

Another middleware addition is SpeedTree® for Games 6. This middlware addition makes it quicker and easier for developers to add animated trees and foliage to a game. From a player standpoint, it’s not a huge deal, though it is nice seeing wavy grass in game. From a Developer standpoint though, something like SpeedTree® would cut down the back end work of adding custom animations to trees and foliage. Kind of a bonus in my book.

Despite some random MMO forum rumblings, it looks like the Hero Engine 2 is solid. It offers some very interesting features for building games, monetizing games, and giving games the ‘polished’ look that MMO gamers demand. It will be interesting to see what happens with games created on the Hero Engine platform.

Personally, I’m just looking forward to playing The Repopulation.

Resources used for this Post:

• The Repopulation Pre-Alpha video

• Hero Engine 2 Press Release

• The Repopulation

A lot of people are voting for their favorite game of 2012. Including the folks that are battling it out to see if The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 or Star Wars The Old Republic will be the top game of 2012.

For me, I’m putting bids in for The Repopulation. Who wouldn’t have guessed that right?

It’s not a bad look over to see what players are thinking here at the end of the year.

Check out the voting here -> MMORPG.com Player’s Choice Awards

PS there’s also MMO Site’s -> Most Anticipated MMO’s of 2012

MMO Site has quite a few games listed there that you might not see at MMORPG and vice versa, so it’s not a bad idea to take a look at both. Well if you like scoping out all the MMO’s available.

Mister November The Repopulation

Are you looking forward to the upcoming MMORPG The Repopulation? Haven’t heard of it? Well good news, here’s a quick overview before I give you the down low on the latest Alpha phase updates.

The Repopulation is a sci-fi MMORPG that is in the Alpha testing phase as we speak. The team hopes to have the game released by Q4 2013.

You may think of this as a long wait, but if you’re one of those folks that just haven’t found what they’re looking for in an MMORPG, you may want to take a look at what The Repopulation will have to offer.

Even in the Alpha phase The Repopulation already has some features that many games can’t boast. We’re talking about an in depth crafting system, player housing, multi-player vehicles, open world PvP, PVE that changes based on player activity, and last but not least city building.

I could go into details about these features, and I’ll probably do just that in other posts. What I want do to today though is talk about the latest updates posted by the Development team for the month of November.

The Repopulation development team posts monthly updates of what has been accomplished the previous month. You don’t see that a lot. So here’s some of the biggest features of the November 2012 update.

Engagements:

In The Repopulation Engagements will be spawning events that occur in the world. Players will have the option of participating in the Events or not. In November the team set up Engagements so that players will be grouped by their faction (OWON or FPR).

Entertainment Skill Line:

This is a big part of the update notes. The Entertainment skill line will offer long term buffs to players. It’s sort of an incentive to visit social areas and gives you a nice buff for having been there. Certain camps will also convert an area to a social area. This will give folks with the Entertainment skill line the ability to give buffs out in the field.

The neatest part about this skill line is that it was a suggestion made by the players on the forums. It made enough sense to have the skill line in the game so the developers added it in. How cool is that?

Harvesting Nodes:

One cool addition to the game is that if you’re not high enough level to harvest something, you won’t see it as a harvestable item. It will just look like part of the background. This was also a player suggested feature.

Increased GM Functionality:

More tools were given to GM’s. The tools include GM logging features to monitor GM activity. There were also some changes that will make it easier for GM’s to spawn NPC’s on the fly and manage NPC’s.

These are just a few of the updates listed in the End of November 2012 Update. Check out the details for yourself over at The Repopulation website. Keep an eye out for more information about the game as the Developers continue to work through the Alpha phase of development.

How did you get that wolf up there?

I have noticed an interesting trend in the MMORPG.com forums. People are posting that they just don’t believe independent developers can build successful MMO’s. Some of these posters are stating that if the big names can’t pull it off, how will the little guys be able to make it?

For what it’s worth I feel like Independent Developers bring a lot to the table. They usually have some fresh ideas on game play that perhaps games with investors can’t take a risk on developing.

So I’m putting this out there for the general community to postulate, ponder, blog about, rant about, what have you. Do you feel that there is a place for Independent MMO developers? Do you think they add to the genre?

I’d love to hear what anyone has to say on either side of the argument.