MechWarrior Online announced......

[Randil_Keeper]

so this may be interesting, what does anyone else think, bit early to say?

mwomercs.com

[LordMond63]

I still have the Mechwarrior 2 and 3 games around here somewhere and played the pen-n-paper version of it as well for several years so I find the prospects of such a game pretty exciting.

Have to say though that I sign onto your last choice: "bit early". I saw that the review sites were estimating a summer 2012 release. But then Diablo 3 was supposed to be a, what, summer 2008 release?- and we're still waiting.

[twiliteslayer02]

OHELLYEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Been looking for a cracked crysis to run mechwarrior living legends for like three years, and now its on, i can happily wait till 2012, itll give me time to upgrade my computer and get an up to date controller, my old one is beat from hours n hours of mw4 mercs!

[RPGMasta]

dust off your gauss rifles and reflective armors!

[FuzzyDuck81]

I don't play warforged, i play halflings in battlemechs, and have only been dreaming of controliing a proper sized one like those titans.. so it'll be nice to upgrade to a proper sized battlemech from time to time

[BOgre]

sorry Gary, BattleTech was the best PnP ever. I'll definitely be giving MWO a try. And digging out my Titans, MadCats, and doing some new paintjobs... oh the wasted years Blake's Blood!

[dunklezhan]

I don't want an MMO. I just want either:

a: The original Mechwarrior: Mercenaries to be made compatible with Win7 or;
b: A new Mechwarrrior: Mercenaries game to come out.

Now this looks like they're steering playing into playing mercenary companies (they're actively trying to avoid player guilds being called Clans, I think because they want the Clans to be the main factions), with parties (which can only be made of fellow Guildies) called Lances. So they're doing the merc thing.

But what I loved about the old Win95 game (god was it that long ago, its still awesome!) was the mech, salvage and supply management you could do while on missions. Capturing was more important than outright destroying - it was actually pretty easy to destroy an enemy mech. It was capturing them that required skill.

I couldn't give a monkeys about fighting other players. I'd be quite happy with another singleplayer game. And if I was to play it as an MMO, then I'd want there to be just as much outside the mechs as in them, so we could actually explore the universe and politics a bit more. This game explicitly won't do that... so count me out.

[Uska]

it can never be as good as the battletech centers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleTech_Centers

and to B.Ogre I never really felt like the pnp game was much of a rpg just a battle sim we tried to do it as a rpg and it felt hollow and boring except for the combat with mechs.

[Lithic]

I can't imagine this would be much of an RPG, more like counterstrike with bigger vehicles.

Still might be fun. I've been craving a space combat battle sim MMO since they scrapped Jumpgate: Evolution, and this might be close enough to fill the need for a while.

[mikesharpshooter]

is DDO an RPG?

I love Mechwarrior boardgame!!!!

[Uska]

is DDO an RPG?

I love Mechwarrior boardgame!!!!

well more than battletech game would be I think but I cant really think of any mmo that is a true rpg.

[BOgre]

it can never be as good as the battletech centers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleTech_Centers

and to B.Ogre I never really felt like the pnp game was much of a rpg just a battle sim we tried to do it as a rpg and it felt hollow and boring except for the combat with mechs.

Really? With the LUDICROUS amount of lore in the battletech universe? Yes, it was primarily a sim, you're right, and yes my group and I played to fight, but in D&D, we sorta played to fight too...

I guess what I like about BT is/was that it always felt like the world was alive, progressing, history was unfolding and we were taking part in it. Maybe because I played D&D much less, I dunno, but D&D felt much more... isolated? I mean, I didn't ever feel like part of the lore.

From what I read on the PC Gamer pages, it seems like MWO is going to try to move the unerverse's history in real time, and that's just exactly what I was hoping for (without knowing that was what I was hoping for... ). It just seems like a perfect way to go. And it's been a while since I played or read any of the novels or anything, so it's going to be super cool to have historical events crop up in the world that I'd forgotten about.

Anyhow, I'm excited to try it out. If they did even a 60% job of capturing MW2-4 and translating it into an MMO, it's going to be great.

Don't fret Turbine, I don't have any plans of leaving DDO

[SHOCK_and_AWE]

I must do some research into the Battletech universe now. I've played three 'Mech games, and loved each and every one:

• MechWarrior 2
• MechCommander
• MechAssault

I understand that there are even better games out there but if my experience with these titles is any indication, this is going to be a game worth looking at.

I'm extremely curious as to how the RPG portion of combat is going to work, though. Will your pilot (character) gain "levels" of experience and learn new and better ways to control the various systems of their complicated Battlemechs? Will you only be able to use certain features when your pilot learns them?

[Eladiun]

I don't play warforged, i play halflings in battlemechs, and have only been dreaming of controliing a proper sized one like those titans.. so it'll be nice to upgrade to a proper sized battlemech from time to time

Come on! Everyone knows it's Gnomes that are inside Warforged not Haflings.

[LordMond63]

I must do some research into the Battletech universe now. I've played three 'Mech games, and loved each and every one:

• MechWarrior 2
• MechCommander
• MechAssault

I understand that there are even better games out there but if my experience with these titles is any indication, this is going to be a game worth looking at.

I'm extremely curious as to how the RPG portion of combat is going to work, though. Will your pilot (character) gain "levels" of experience and learn new and better ways to control the various systems of their complicated Battlemechs? Will you only be able to use certain features when your pilot learns them?

I had a friend tell me how to maximize my profits in the original Mechwarrior. Once you had acquired the larger mechs for your mercenary group, putfit yourself in a Locust- yes, a Locust- and take a wide looping run towards the enemy. If you loop far enough, they won't bother to shoot at you. Once the rest of your group was in range, circle in behind the closest enemy mech and run into its legs, firing all the while. In short order, you'll shoot their leg off and they'll fall over, taking them out of the fight and leaving you a nice chunk of C-bills in salvage.

Sadly, this did not work in any of the later games. I lost several swarms worth of Locusts trying it.

But to answer your question, yes it appears that your character will earn "levels". I'm pretty sure that Piloting and Gunnery will be among them (though I'm not sure how they'll implement those skills in game- possibly the bounce from the mech mving will be lessened and mebbe your targeting recticle will be larger the higher your skills in these areas goes). Past those, I could see where skills such as Negotiation (to get better contracts), Haggling (better prices to buy and sell your salvage), Engineering (lessen the cost to modify your mech) and who knows what else could be part of the game. I would not doublt that you'd have a skill tree much like in DDO (combination of Feats and Enhancements) that allow you to access certain skills only after getting others.

We'll just see how all of this potential goodness comes about.

[EddieB_TBC]

Interesting. I wonder how they managed to get EA to give up the rights to the online license.
Hopefully they do a better real time combat adaptation than EA did with their trainwreck attempt so many years ago.