A far-reaching developer Q&A sheds a lot of light on plans for the upcoming Mechwarrior Online.
A brand-new Mechwarrior game is in development, which is awesome, set one year ahead of the Clan invasion of 3050, which is awesome, and will be built around free-to-play online combat, which is somewhat less awesome but certainly not cause to give up hope. And now we’re finally getting some details about what’s in store thanks to an in-depth Q&A session with a half-dozen of the game’s principal developers.
Mechwarrior Online will feature “persistent game world information” such as match results and planet ownership, but each game will run on its own dedicated server rather than through a single, overarching persistent world. Matches are currently expected to take about 20 minutes to run, although that could change as the game is tweaked, and because it’s still early in the development process, features and technologies like head tracking, destructible terrain and pilot injury have not yet been locked in.
The devs also touched on what they described as “the beauty of the F2P model,” as Game Systems Lead Designer Paul Inouye put it. “We will be releasing the compact but well-developed game that we want players to experience with the ability to expand on the core presentation to give you the triple-A quality title that we want to share with the awesome community that has been waiting for so long,” he said. “Our use of agile project development and listening to community feedback allows us to steer and correct our designs and implementation as needed.”
Mechwarrior Online will launch as a PvP-only game, although post-release options for PvE gameplay are also being considered. As to the question of the Unseen, the devs were somewhat evasive despite the presence of a Warhammer in the original announcement trailer but said that all mechs in the game, regardless of their origin, are getting a design overhaul by concept artist Alex Iglesias.
The Q&A covers a lot of ground, so if you’re at all curious about the game it’s definitely worth your time. Check it out in full at mwomercs.com.
Published: Nov 16, 2011 08:51 pm