MechWarrior Online - Likely Prospect or Bust?

[Centurion13]

Just wondering about this game...

I signed up for it, but that and the forum are about all that is active.

1) How long 'til it's up and running?

2) I hear it is F2P, but there've been murmurs that this will quickly degrade into P2W, if it doesn't start there already.

3) I have discussed this game with a Tank! playing buddy and have been told this MWO is going to be based on the Crysis (sp?) engine. Said engine requires a Baby Cray for the video card alone, several gigs of memory, a multi-processor motherboard (at least a duo-Core and probably a Quad-Core of CPUs) and a broadband cable connection in order to function in real time without wossname, 'lag' or 'three-barring'. That sounds like a lot of money to invest just to play a 'Mech online.

The new art is probably a deliberate attempt to get out from under the desperately greedy grasp of Harmony Gold. Besides, Alex does good work. Not classic BT, but this is not classic BT - it's MW Online.

Cent13

[Juton]

Just wondering about this game...

I've been following it as well. They've mentioned Summer 2012 as the release, even if that slips they should have a closed or open beta running by then. On the pay to win front, I think Team Fortress 2 is in the vanguard of showing that people will pay good money to make their avatar look pretty. I'd expect pay options to let make C-Bills and gain XP faster, special camouflage and access to special mech variants. If they design the system right none of those should really affect your likely hood of winning an individual match.

As for computational power, I know the Crysis engine can be demanding, but with a F2P game they will want it to work on as many machines as possible. I'd imagine if you can run any AAA game released in the last 3-4 years you should be able to run MWO.

I wonder if anyone here remembers Multiplayer Battletech Solaris and MPBT 3025. They pre-date this game by more than a decade but had solid fundamental game play. My hope is that MWO matches the quality of that game play, although my expectation is they will not.

[Zinegata]

There's a strong suspicion that they will use the World of Tanks engine for this actually.

[Centurion13]

There's a strong suspicion that they will use the World of Tanks engine for this actually.

You know, I said the same thing to Bill. I just asked him and he says he probably confused the new one with that MW:5 game they quietly killed a few years back (reportedly) due to Harmony Gold's threatened litigation.

(After all, it was about that time they made the abortive re-introduction of some of the previously Unseen, then withdrew for similar reasons. Or have I confused the two?)

He says they have not actually said what engine they are using, but you are probably not far off - they do have to appeal to the widest number of platforms, though it is anyone's guess whether they will show the WinXP crowd any love (I have at least three compys in the house with that OS, so no diss here).

Okay, it is official: CryEngine 3 (Crysis, Crysis 2, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2) Crysis 2 came out in March of 2011 and required 3 gigs memory, duoCore or equivalent, NVIDIA Gforce 8800 GT 512mB, or the ATI Radion HD3850 - 512. Has to be Direct X compatible.

I think it is... interesting.... that they are reported to have in excess of 17,000 handles already registered as of a month or so back. I am trying to understand why that would be so. There just are not that many BT players out there and the MW fans all grew old a while back. But Bill says he hears about it in out of the way places, so there must be a new crop.

Seventeen grand.... I thought I caught a whiff of Basement Nerd with this one, but the idea of a gang of the BT faithful slaving day and night for a week, doing nothing but registering names on the server in order to drive the apparent number of interested parties up... is improbable.

And Bill agrees with me - Iglesias has the cachet and the skillz to morph the old school images that cause so much trouble with HG into something the company owns AND which is popular with the grognards AND appeals to the new guys and gals rolling in for a look at the game.

We were gonna do something similar: make our own minis, redo the Unseen so they were still sexy but not lawsuit material. But it would run us a couple thousand and I have to finish my TRO first.

Cent13

[Juton]

You know, I said the same thing to Bill. I just asked him and he says he probably confused the new one with that MW:5 game they quietly killed a few years back due to Harmony Gold's leeching effect.

While I love to bash HG as much as the next fanboy, the official story is that MW5 died because they couldn't find a publisher who would put up enough money to start/complete the game. The youtube clip from two years ago wasn't in-game footage, the game hadn't progressed far enough to have a presentable engine.

[Centurion13]

... the official story is that MW5 died because they couldn't find a publisher who would put up enough money to start/complete the game.

Two years ago? Yeah, the timing would be about right... but of course, all the buzz at the time was about HG getting into high dudgeon about the similarities between the machines in that demo and their own precious properties, etc, etc. So my confusion is natural.

Cent13

[Zinegata]

The new MW game already has a registration site. They're taking in early sign ups for people who want to reserve their handle/name.

The World of Tanks engine is considered a likely candidate as there are already two announced games working under the same engine (World of Warplanes, World of Battleships), and it delivers pretty good tank models for very little processing / graphic card power.

Hell, the way they describe Scout mechs (who act as spotters) is already very reminiscent of how scout tanks in WoT works.

[Centurion13]

The new MW game already has a registration site. They're taking in early sign ups for people who want to reserve their handle/name.

The World of Tanks engine is considered a likely candidate as there are already two announced games working under the same engine (World of Warplanes, World of Battleships), and it delivers pretty good tank models for very little processing / graphic card power.

Hell, the way they describe Scout mechs (who act as spotters) is already very reminiscent of how scout tanks in WoT works.

I think the one thing that will bring me to play the online game would be the usefulness of spotters. In a standard game, you have a commanding view of everything - something most folks take for granted unless they are playing double blind.

Double blind is most realistic, but the bookkeeping is a chore. With MWO, the computer does the bookkeeping. I look forward to actually using a Jenner as a spotter or recon. I will probably never be very good at it, but Bill can always coach me.

Cent13

[Zinegata]

The new MW game already has a registration site. They're taking in early sign ups for people who want to reserve their handle/name.

The World of Tanks engine is considered a likely candidate as there are already two announced games working under the same engine (World of Warplanes, World of Battleships), and it delivers pretty good tank models for very little processing / graphic card power.

Hell, the way they describe Scout mechs (who act as spotters) is already very reminiscent of how scout tanks in WoT works.

I think the one thing that will bring me to play the online game would be the usefulness of spotters. In a standard game, you have a commanding view of everything - something most folks take for granted unless they are playing double blind.

Double blind is most realistic, but the bookkeeping is a chore. With MWO, the computer does the bookkeeping. I look forward to actually using a Jenner as a spotter or recon. I will probably never be very good at it, but Bill can always coach me.

Cent13

Spotting in World of Tanks is a bit tough though. Scouts usually die early and horribly and it takes real skill and terrain mastery to pull off.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, this is what we are getting instead of MW:3015.
Official News say it WILL Use the CryEngine 3. Which is the Engine that CRYSIS TWO(2) runs on. Which runs on Consoles. So it should not tax your Systems all that hard to begin with . .
Also, they had an Interview with Randall Bills of all people . .
Wish they's keep their greedy paws out of this so they don't fuck it up more than it already is by going F2P/P2W MMO x.x
And it's said to start in 3 Months or so, i think.
Spotting in WOT is not spotting, it's suicide rushing between enemy tanks hoping that they can't follow with the gun or they will block each others line of fire . .
You try and sneak around as a scout, you get one shot killed by most anything above medium tanks . .

[Vebyast]

I'll stick with Living Legends for now, I think.

[Stahlseele]

I'll give MWO a try, once it's out, but right now, MWLL seems to be the better game.