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Wondered what everyone here thought of this upcoming MMO,Gods & Heroes by Perpetual Entertainment (if anyone has heard of it yet).

Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising™ is set in the early days of Rome's eventual march to greatness - circa 300 B.C. Rome is a City State still developing its military and cultural strengths and beginning to feel its ambition for expansion and conquest. To fulfill its goals Rome will strive to extend her borders and influence - creating enemies both near and far.

Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising™ offers vast persistent territory and hundreds of dynamically generated areas that span a wide variety of the known and Mythological worlds - offering a huge range of terrain types including cities, towns, farmland, forests, mountains, high-alpine artic regions, marshes, seashores, northern frontiers, islands, and Mythological Realms.

Featuring;

• * The Gods, Creatures, and Monsters of mythology
  * Squad-based combat in which players hire, train, and lead squads of NPC soldiers into battle
  * Large scale battles where groups of squads form up into player-run armies
  * An intricate quest system with over 1,200 quests
  * A game-spanning epic quest path for every player
  * An action animation system delivering the most realistic and visceral combat action of any MMOG
  * Gauls, Barbarians, Samnites and more classic enemies of Rome
  * Dynamic Zone™ technology and hundreds of scripted adventures providing the best of single-player game mechanics - all unfolding in private, uncontested world-areas for individuals and groups to experience
  * Future game expansions will add new territory that expands across the map of the world - North, South, East, and West - adding new player races, mythologies, Gods, and creatures.
  * Deep, rich "skills-based" character development and player investment systems
  * Fully integrated social systems and player-to-player interaction tools

Screenshots and videos aren't amazing, but it is an MMO, and there's a lot of features from what I can see.

The same studio is currently developing Star Trek: Online, though using different graphics/phsyics engines and a different development team, so I guess this is one to watch.

Uhh, squad-based combat in ancient Rome?

Darth Wong wrote:Uhh, squad-based combat in ancient Rome?

Magic.

....Elf magic.

Okay, I seriously don't have a clue. It's probably just the 'Rome Was Badass' kick the world is on. Everything can be set there now. I imagine it's only a matter of time before we get Colleseum Tycoon and Sims: Pompei.

SirNitram wrote:Sims: Pompei.

That would be the 2nd worst sims expansion ever. the top spot going to Sims: Titanic

Chardok wrote:

SirNitram wrote:Sims: Pompei.

That would be the 2nd worst sims expansion ever. the top spot going to Sims: Titanic

You must be one of those freaks who don't try to kill your Sims.

SirNitram wrote:

Chardok wrote:

SirNitram wrote:Sims: Pompei.

That would be the 2nd worst sims expansion ever. the top spot going to Sims: Titanic

You must be one of those freaks who don't try to kill your Sims.

Heh. You, sir are...well....Dif'rent Strokes I suppose. I expect nothing less than a contemptible Sim-killer out of a power-mad, egomanical, Supremacy-drunk, homicidal ubermage. You're Wickedness makes me both cringe and stare at the same time. You slaughter the poor innocents of Sim-ville while simultaneously installing burglar alarms in their sim-homes. Fascinating!

You see something that looks good and then this shit happens!


The least they could do is have made a MMORPG style game with a political bent so that you could actually get something innovative, instead of a brainless "Wander out into the wilderness, hack/slash/wander back."

Gods... and you know they're just going to go "Yoink!" to greek mythology and transplant it to Rome for this era.

Straha wrote: Gods... and you know they're just going to go "Yoink!" to greek mythology and transplant it to Rome for this era.

By Jupiter no! They couldn't possibly do that . . . again.

Darth Wong wrote:Uhh, squad-based combat in ancient Rome?

Instead of players controlling individual characters and teaming up to form parties, you have players controlling parties and teaming up to form armies. It could work, but I'd be concerned about the per-player character inflation exacerbating the inevitable lag problems.

What has me skeptical is the fact that I've never heard of Perpetual Entertainment, and the fact that they're touting a huge amount of content in the form of quests and scripted events. The MMO genre has a hideous propensity towards vaporware, and individual features that either get pushed back into expansion packs, or never finished at all.

World of Warcraft had a pretty solid and content-rich launch for an MMO, but then again it also had a production budget of a hundred million dollars. I have to question whether Perpetual has the money to put where it's mouth is.

EDIT: I checked the company's site. While they have a number of veteran developers aboard, the company itself has yet to release a single game. Furthermore, they appear to have received a total of $11 million in investment capital. I have a bad feeling about this.

Ave, but that's a damn weird concept. I don't see it working.

The company has been around now for about four years, I've personally been following their progress for about 14 months (since Star Trek: Online was announced and I went and did that terribly no0bish thing of starting a fansite about it straight away :p) and in that time G&H has moved along significantly, though the beta date of Fall 2005 has obviously been missed.

The $11 Million was secured on top of their investment already made,this is an interesting article about the technology they had already developed and invested significantly in during the last 4 years. I would assume as ST:O enters full scale development (which is happening right now) more (cash) will come.

But indeed, G&H will be their first release and will paint the picture for a lot of people in a few years time when ST:O hits the shelves, as to what they are capable of (even if literally everything aside from the backend server tech is different, including developers).

The squad based combat stuff looks interesting, you still do control a single character, you just have the ability to 'hire' NPCs and have limited control over their actions- I reckon this wil translate to STO to some extent in taking NPC away teams on missions of no player characters are around to join you.

G&H was touted pretty well at E3 earlier this year, and got some good coverage and nice previews, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Jon wrote:The squad based combat stuff looks interesting, you still do control a single character, you just have the ability to 'hire' NPCs and have limited control over their actions- I reckon this wil translate to STO to some extent in taking NPC away teams on missions of no player characters are around to join you.

Unless you're nothing more than petty thieves preying on travelers, I don't see how squad-based combat is supposed to fit with the period. Squad-based combat in Ancient Rome would be as anachronistic as massed infantry formations in WW2.