By Alec Meer on May 31st, 2010 at 11:42 am.
File under ‘slightly spurious’, but it’s worth having a chin-scratch about the mounting evidence. Back in January, a Crytek level designer revealed via LinkedIn that he was working a “Not announced Online MMO FPS” (so that’s doubly online?), at which point the gates of silence swung shut. Now LinkedIn’s at it again, with a Crytek senior IT manager proclaiming to the world his involvement in “Designing, testing and implementing as part of the development team the systems infrastructure for an MMO online game.” On top of that, Crytek have recently registered a clutch of domain names involving the word ‘Kingdoms.’ Something is up. Something… Planetsidey?
31/05/2010 at 11:51 ChaK_ says:
I’d like to play a MMOFPS, though they’re nothing to my taste on the market.
Let’s see how it goes. Curious. And optimist.
31/05/2010 at 11:57 Michael Struwig says:
I’d love to play an MMOFPS, but the thing that tends to prevent this from happening is the fact that I live in South Africa, and while a 200-500 ping isn’t a problem for MMOs like WoW, LOTRO, WAR, etc, it will be a problem for an MMOFPS.
Which is a pity, as I’m a huge Crytek fan.
31/05/2010 at 12:00 Batolemaeus says:
The department of redundancy department approves of an mmorpg online rpg.
31/05/2010 at 12:33 jsdn says:
Not an RPG game, though. It’s a FPS shooter in first person. I’m interested to see if a multiplayer MMO game will actually work with a FPS shooter. The two don’t seem to blend too well in large doses.
31/05/2010 at 13:02 Philip says:
I think jsdn missed the point slightly.
31/05/2010 at 15:22 jsdn says:
I think Philip missed the point entirely. [insert Philip's avatar here]
31/05/2010 at 16:16 DrGonzo says:
Nope I’m pretty sure it was you jsdn.
31/05/2010 at 16:57 Mark O'Brien says:
@Philip @DrGonzo
That’s not fair. jsdn clearly did get the point, seeing as he referred to “RPG game” “multiplayer MMO”, “FPS Shooter” etc.
I think he was just trying to make the point that it would have been better if the original comment had been “The department of redundancy department approves of an online multiplayer MMO FPS shooter.”
31/05/2010 at 18:40 Koozer says:
I hereby declare this running joke as a failure.
01/06/2010 at 00:10 Batolemaeus says:
Indeed. I’m aborting this one. *pulls a giant lever*
31/05/2010 at 12:06 Larington says:
I’ll believe it when I see it. Half expecting to find out that a suit pulled the plug on it a year from now…
31/05/2010 at 12:22 Hallgrim says:
A crytek MMO eh? I’m sure the 100 people who can run it will have a lot of fun.
31/05/2010 at 12:29 ChaK_ says:
Cryengine runs fine now.
And if that game ever comes out, it would be by 2011 or 2012, it will run even better
31/05/2010 at 12:31 airtekh says:
I’d also love to try an MMOFPS.
Having missed the boat with Planetside (my internet connection wasn’t up to scratch back then), either this or a possible Planetside 2 should fit the bill.
31/05/2010 at 12:38 Inverness says:
I can not wait for the next PlanetSide, I hope this will do.
31/05/2010 at 13:25 SwiftRanger says:
Don’t forget Crytek also bought Black Sea Studios, the Bulgarian developers behind the heavily underrated Knights of Honor (a simpler 2D version of Medieval Total War but with a twist, the knights, and loads more atmosphere). I am hoping ‘Kingdoms’ is a gorgeous Middle Ages RTS using the CryEngine to be honest.
Of course, a PlanetSide-like game would be awesome as well. Kingdoms wasn’t the only IP they registered…
31/05/2010 at 13:29 Sp4rkR4t says:
An MMOFPS done by Crytek sounds good but I don’t know if I could take a Online MMOFPS, that’s just weird. :p
31/05/2010 at 13:32 Surgeon says:
For the love of God!
Please!
Someone make another decent god damn MMOFPS!
One so far (PlanetSide) clearly isn’t enough.
31/05/2010 at 15:13 klumhru says:
http://www.globalagendagame.com/freetrial/
It’s crap, but its a shootey game, massively online.
31/05/2010 at 16:17 DrGonzo says:
If by massively online you mean 32 player servers. So I guess by that standard Battlefield 2 is an mmo.
31/05/2010 at 16:24 Jim Rossignol says:
The basis for the “MMO” moniker is not numbers, it’s persistence of characters and meta-game of global conquest. Lots of games doing similar stuff now.
31/05/2010 at 16:46 DrGonzo says:
Again, Battlefield 2 had persistent characters and unlocks.
31/05/2010 at 16:53 DrGonzo says:
Just realised how irritating I’m being. Was trying to make a point. Some games like Eve are genuinely trying to do something interesting by being an MMO. But some games, like Global Agenda are just a bit shit/dull and are trying to have a selling point so they make it an MMO.
31/05/2010 at 13:58 The Pink Ninja says:
An MMO FPS is needed ;___;
31/05/2010 at 14:22 Kazang says:
This would super duper awesome if it’s true. A good mmo fps is a huge niche wanting to filled, I’m really surprised there are none besides planetside.
31/05/2010 at 15:05 afwqad says:
Considering that Crysis, especially Crysis: Warhead were exceptionally good games, both critically and from my perspective, I trust in Crytek to deliver a great experience in recreating an Online Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter (which is played online).
Some of you are going to think I’m trolling because I put a controversial opinion with sarcasm about Crytek’s word choice. Just to clear things up, I did rather enjoy the Crysis games a lot. I believe that the Crysis games were like open world games in that creativity in the player is the leading force of enjoyment out both types of games. You either loved it or you hated it, and I loved it.
01/06/2010 at 02:35 torn says:
Completely agree. I thought Crysis was one of the best shooters I’ve ever played, and I started back on Wolfenstein! Pity it wasn’t more difficult though, I played it on the hardest level several times though and thought it was a breeze. Also strange that you liked Warhead more, I thought it was rather weak compared to the original.
Regarding Planetside…. we can only hope!
31/05/2010 at 15:25 Nerd Rage says:
Online MMO’s are a lot like GPS Systems, PIN Numbers, ATM Machines, and GUI Interfaces, only somehow they’re backwards in their order of things.
31/05/2010 at 16:29 bob_d says:
I know a programmer who specializes in MMO server architecture who interviewed with Crytek a few years back; it was pretty clear they were building MMO tech at the time. I had assumed they were mostly interested in getting in the MMO middleware business, but even if that were the case, to successfully do so they’d have to make a game with it as a proof-of-technology.
31/05/2010 at 16:49 Soundofvictory says:
When I first read this, I started thinking along the lines of… ‘OMGOMGOMGOMG.’ As I started reading through the comments it dawned on me that there are already a few game modes in Crysis Wars that feel one or two steps away from MMO. I don’t remember what the mode is called but there are huge huge maps with power plants, research centers, nukes and more. The only thing missing would be the character persistence and bam. Crysis Wars becomes Crysis World Wars.
Also this article reminded me to get hyped for CCP’s Dust514 all over again.
31/05/2010 at 18:51 mandrill says:
don’t gety too hyped, its console only. :(
31/05/2010 at 17:02 Till says:
“MMO” explicitly describes a game that is Massively Multiplayer. “Persistent world” is an overlapping, but distinct type of game.
Guild Wars is persistent. MUDs even more so; they’re everything that MMORPGs are, minus the graphics and the large number of simultaneous players. But neither are actually Massive. If you can’t support 1000+ simultaneous players in the same world (ie, same world = they could all plausibly go to the same place, even if it would cause the server the crash), you ain’t massively multiplayer.
31/05/2010 at 17:24 Pew says:
At least it can’t be worse than TA: Kingdoms…
31/05/2010 at 17:38 Unaco says:
Ooooh! Something PlanetSidey? That could be good.
31/05/2010 at 18:36 Delboy says:
Re: MMO using CryEngine … isn’t Entropia Universe using that now?
It’s still a money pyramid game though … good graphics doesn’t make a good game remember :)
Dez
31/05/2010 at 22:08 killingbutterflies says:
What is it with all these employees jumping the shark? Haven’t they heard of NDAs?
31/05/2010 at 23:19 bit_crusherrr says:
If anyone could make a game as awesome as Planetside its Crytek.
31/05/2010 at 23:43 Kevbo says:
Well the shooting side should be solid so its all how they implement the MMO side of things. Also wondering if they are going to have a monthly fee…. That is the main barrier of most MMOs for me, just can’t justify spending a monthly fee when I play too many different games. Guess time will tell but I’m cautiously excited.
31/05/2010 at 23:53 thenagus says:
Planetside isn’t the only MMOFPS. There’s WWII Online – Battleground Europe
http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/
I think it actually predates Planetside by a year or two, but was a buggy mess on release, and never really took off. On the other hand, its still in development and being continuously updated, which Planetside isnt.
I used to play it a couple years ago when I had loads of free time. It takes a more sim-y approach than Planetside, with lots of effort put into the flight simulations and armour penetration models and so on. All on a single server too, a halfscale map of western europe. `Wars` would last maybe 4 or 5 months until one side won, and then the server was reset.
Thier handling of a lot of the issues of being an MMOFPS isn’t elegant though. eg, to avoid problems with lag, your client decides whether you’ve landed a shot or not, rather than the server. Which often leads to cases of two soldiers running into each other, and both killing each other at the same time. Which isnt as bad as it sounds in a game where most combat takes place slowly over 100s on meters distance, but it would be a mess for any sort of a twitch FPS.
Also, the graphics are pretty poor. Even on a good computer, the game has trouble displaying more than 128 (iirc?) people/vehicles at the same time, and makes its own questionable judgement about which particular soldiers/vehicles its going to display.
I think the graphics are a performance thing basically because the game puts so much work into calculating bullet penetration and sim-y details rather than drawing pretty graphics. Which isn’t generally neccessary for an MMOFPS.
But I think the graphics are also contrained a great deal by the fact that the game draws landscape out to a 4km or so if youre infantry, up to 20km for navy. And I’d argue that having large draw distances *is* almost neccessary for a MMOFPS, if you want to put a lot of people on one large map. I cant imagine getting a sensible result if you try to pack hundreds of players together in the sort of map size/deaq distance you’d get in, say, COD. And the lowest spec of computer is going to have to be able to handle it, else those with machines that cant handle the largest draw distance are at a huge disadvantage.
I think performance is going to be a huge issue in making this work, and I’m not sure it’s Crytek’s strong point.
Still, I really hope this works out well. MMOFPS is a tragically underutilized genre.
01/06/2010 at 03:23 garrett says:
I remember Crytek stating somewhere that their net code in one of the cry engines was so good that it could run a mmo.
01/06/2010 at 07:33 Magic H8 Ball says:
No.
And whatever Crytek’s doing will probably be on consoles too anyway, so who cares.
01/06/2010 at 13:36 Dean Learner says:
I dont know exactly why, but the thought of an MMOFPS always reminds me of a Chris Rock standup where he talks about upping the price of ammo to reduce gun crime.
”Man, l would blow your fucking head off, if l could afford it. l’m gonna get me another job, I’m gonna start saving some money…’and you’re a dead man.”
03/06/2010 at 23:06 Araxiel says:
Kingdoms of Codename – The first and only online MMO FPS first-person shooter action game in the world!
Shoot frozen Koreans from Outer-Space! Have not only an open world, but also an open ending!