Fallout 4 announced

[Kommander]

While I also think it would make for a great MMO the actual Fallout Online as it was being developed was a con job by the asshat running Interplay at the time, a last ditch gambit to hold onto the IP rights that he had sold to Bethesda.

My wallet is ready

[Steamforger]

I read through some of the wikis about the brouhaha surrounding Fallout Online. That sucks, as it would make a great MMO.

I don't know. SOE dumped a ton of money into The Agency. Vids at SOE Live looked pretty good for the time is was being made (amazing to think that a few years makes such a difference in this industry). Of course, they cancelled it entirely when they closed down the Seattle office and a couple of others. It's been chucked onto the scrap heap where they have 3 versions of EQ Next, Free Realms, Vanguard, and Star Wars CWA. EQ Landmark turned out to be Minecraft, but where you develop game assets for them while paying them for the privilidge of doing so. Haven't figured that one out yet.

Blizzard are the only folks doing it right at the moment, and if Bethesda got with them, which they won't, there could be some merit here. What Bethesda will do if they do a MMO is another F2P shit show "that's completely unlike anything you've ever seen before" while simultaneously turning into an in-game market place, sparkle pony cash grab while real bugs go unfixed because we can't sell /that/ in the store.

My hopes. They are not high.

[Kommander]

MMO's are a mess right now. I read an article a few weeks ago that claimed that WoW essentially, and accidentally, ruined MMO's in a manner similar to how Jordan ruined basketball. The essential point was that WoW was so well done and so wildly successful that any attempt to deviate from the WoW formula would simply not be funded as the WoW way became the one and only right way. There is currently only one single MMO that does not follow the WOW formula in any way, shape, or form, EvE. Very few MMOs have been willing to deviate significantly from the WoW formula. The last one I played was The Secret World. The combat was nothing special, but the writing was top notch, for an MMO at least, it it had plenty of non combat puzzles that led to interesting things.

For some time now I have thought that a proper MMO hybrid of EvE and the theme park MMO's could be wildly successful. Fallout COULD be a perfect setting for such a place, but it would take an absolute A team to pull it off. Given the crapfest that was Elder Scrolls Online I don't think Bethesda has it in them. Now there is some light glimmering faintly at the end of the tunnel here. The collapse of The Old Republic is proof that you can't simply show up with a famous IP and a theme park MMO and expect to rake in the cash. Sadly the primary lesson that seems to have been learned is that free to play is the way to go, with only old stalwarts like WOW and EvE being able to resist, and Guild Wars and The Secret World using a different payment model.

Now as I said, a Fallout MMO is very doable. They key would be letting people actually impact the wasteland. This could be done by making large tracts of the wasteland into something similar to 0.0 space in EvE, but not as hardcore. Build settlements, town, mines, factories, and protect them from hostile NPCs and players alike. The rest of the wasteland could be a more conventional story driven MMO experience. Take a hell of a dev team to pull it off, and frankly I don't know if anyone has that kind of mojo right now.

[scipioafricanus]

I still don't understand how The Old Republic collapsed. Did everyone just want to be a Jedi? If anyone could make it work besides Blizzard, I would assume Bioware could.

SA

[Kommander]

I still don't understand how The Old Republic collapsed. Did everyone just want to be a Jedi? If anyone could make it work besides Blizzard, I would assume Bioware could.

SA

Did you play it? It's an awesome single player game, I just could not figure out what all those other people were doing in MY game! Seriously though, that was the problem. Because they made it so plot heavy Bioware actually managed to make a MMO that had an ending! Once someone levels a character or two and runs a few dongenous, whats the point of sticking around. What they should have done is just made a few rather epic single player sequels to KOTOR, which would have been a hell of allot cheaper and probably made them just as much money.

[Steamforger]

Yeah, there was no end game. The run up and leveling of toons was one of the best I'd ever seen. The lore and story telling going along with progression was very well done. The problem was once you max leveled a toon, that was about all there was to do with it except to level up an alt.

That and the space combat was on rails. Who the f#$% approved that????

[Kommander]

That and the space combat was on rails. Who the f#$% approved that????

Um, well, if it was anything else it would have required allot more work, time, and money that they didn't seem inclined to give it.

[MiddleAgedKen]

That's why I always preferred the Warbirds/Dawn of Aces/Aces High style MMO. Story, schmory. See dots on the horizon, stub out your Benson & Hedges on the cowling, throw your white silk scarf over your shoulder, and "Tally ho!" (or "Horrido!", or "Banzai!").

Although I am tempted to give Firefly Online a try when it launches....

[Aaron]

There's a persistent world, PvP mod in the works for kerbal space. Just saying

[JohnOC]

So from info released at E3.. You create your character before the bombs fall.. and then you come out of the vault 200 years later the only survivor inside..

Speculation: cryogenic (or other) suspended animation of some kind?

We know from other Fallout games that the vaults were massive experiments on human test subjects. How many survivors of vault 111 were there supposed to be?

Timeline-wise.. Fallout 4 is almost contemporaneous with Fallout 3, Boston and Washington are also close enough there could theoretically be lines of communication weeks or months long instead of years... maybe the wasteland survival guide from MEgation makes it to Boston..