looks awesome, going to buy it when it comes out... hope it doesnt turn out like Age of Conan! :)

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My question is:
If it's an 'MMO', and not a singleplayer game, nor just a usual 'multiplayer' game, what exactly does one do outside of these space combat sections?

*tumbleweed*

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what i want to see is how this "dogfighting" will work with 300 people on each side...

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Looks sexy imo.

If they can make it deep and involved and still retain that form of combat, it will be a blockbuster for sure.

Definitely a lot of potential

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From what I saw at PAX, there are missions of various natures (exploration, faction-based, blow stuff up) and also crafting/trading etc.

Can't get out of your ship, though, which is a bummer. I liked E&B for that, and my snazzy purple hair. Still, it was really fun flying around shooting things with skill instead of clicking and relying on my stats to do it.

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The dogfighting and handling of the ship didn't look as slick as X-Wing did 10 years ago...

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Looked a bit, no, alot like it was on rails, hope this isnt the case, or it will turn out to be like another on the rails space shooter we all know.

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Understand a few things before you QQ (listen up, it's important). You are looking at a newbie mission - in a Solrain newbie shuttle. This is the equivalent of "Go out and collect me 10 boar tusks young one; gain a level while you're at it. Congratulations, you're two!"

The flight mode is using "dampeners". That's a jargon way of saying flight-assist mode is turned on. This allows new players to spend their first few missions learning the game instead of learning how to fly. Once you disable dampeners you enter into a Newtonian physics based flight sim in Space.

The video on this screen is awful, it's grainy, but it's something to look at while we wait for the game to get out of Alpha (yes, that's right, alpha testing). Watch some of the videos that aren't shot on hi-8 looking at a flat screen monitor for a better sense of the graphical experience.

Finally - if you don't like the UI, the whole thing is Flash based. This means that dev-minded gamers will be able to tap into an API, download the original .fla files, and totally re-write the look and feel of the controls. The dev team has openly admitted that a few guys in a vacuum are no match for the innovation found in a game community. Their goal is to give us - the gamers - a structure to work with in order to create a better game experience.

This doesn't even go into the new public quest system... where gamers can even get really cool quests designed and enter them into the universe.

All in all, this is a group with a lot of experience trying to deliver us a true MMO experience right down to interface and universe design. Personally, I'm really looking forward to it.

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I just hope this doesn't end up like the original did. The original was pretty cool in beta. Lots of faction fighting, etc.

Because the gameworld was so huge and the population was so low, they introduced these Flux things (purple squids, snails, manta rays, eels, etc) for people to shoot at for missions. The AI behind them was really bad (very very easy to learn their patterns) and they practically killed off faction->faction combat. Faction->Faction combat was pretty impossible anyway: the three factions each were the best at only a few items (ie, one faction had the best engines, another had the best missiles, another had the best power sources) and after getting podded you had to spend about three hours flying all over the place getting refitted.

There was one guild that got together and decided to be a real pirate nation. They hung out at a neutral station, and had friends truck in equipment. They set up camp in different sectors, demanding a toll paid. Other guilds didn't like this, and there were quite a few really cool PvP battles that actually mattered (as opposed to 'woo, we got the flag' type dealies).

Then everyone in said pirate guild was banned. Seriously. They weren't cheating or anything. They weren't breaking the ToS. But bam. They were "interfering with the spirit of the game." If the game is a newtonian-physics space-sim with dogfighting combat, what the hell do you expect people to do? Stand around and shoot giant purple space fish?

Oh. Wait.

I really hope it's managed differently than the first...

Console version would be cool, too :)

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I'm more concerned in the game play that has to do with it being an MMORPG. like were you spend most or your time and how are guilds or whatever going to work.

And I would not wamt to have 300 against 300 anyways because it would be you killing some one and them not shooting back or reversed.

And I hope it goes on sytems on the ship getting destroid and still be able to warp off, so you can at least get a pice of someone and not do a buch of damge that means nothing because it just repairs it self.

it seems a lot like SWG PvP I hope the space is as interesting.

But most of all it better feel like a real world and lots of exploration or it wont realy be an MMO.

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I was in the original Jumpgate and one of the main reasons I gave up on it was because the differential between newbie and veteran was huge but there was nothing to stop the vets killing newbies by the dozen just to relieve the boredom.

When I say 'by the dozen' I am only exaggerating a bit because a mid level player could pop into a system and launch a multi-warhead guided missile that would take out several ships then jump out again without bothering to see what he had hit. Each missile cost more than a newbies ship and left them drifting with nothing but an escape pod. Sure they could use insurance to get another basic ship but they lost all their upgrades and cargo which often meant they lost everything they had spent days building up. Imagine if in Everquest you spent a day getting up to level 5 then a bored level 20 player could just casually punch you once and send you back to level 1 again with nothing in your inventory!

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