One of my favorite MMOs was based on free intellectual property. It was Dark Age of Camelot. Their success proves that free IP works, if done right. As with any IP though, the developers have to create an entertaining setting or it will fail.
But even DAoC was based on a story, multiple ones at that: The Camelot saga/Norse Mythology/I dont remember Hibernia's
It was a fantasy MMO, but it narrowed itself down to three stories. Does the relatively small steampunk following have any themes or storylines with comparable popularity to King Aurthur?
Hibernia was Celtic/Irish. The point is that free IP works. They made their own story based on a setting which has been in the public domain for a long time. They had some story elements which tied in to stories created around the three IPs, but most of the game had a unique story.
BioShock is the most popular steampunk setting I know of. If someone wanted to use an existing IP in the steampunk world, Vash the Stampede is the next most popular one that comes to mind. It may not be true steampunk, though. Creating a new story is the best bet.
I've created short stories myself, based on steampunk for my creative writing class. It's not as hard as some people would think. I used London as a setting a lot (for obvious reasons... think steam in the old days), and using that just added the steam-mechanical aspect of it. If you try and simplify it instead of making it overly complicated it can be done. That's what most mmos don't seem to get. Is that it doesn't need to be complicated to be good.
Black Gold is a new Steam Punk MMO thats comming out.
"It''s like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG''s NGE
I once prayed to God for a bike, but quickly found out he didnt work that way...so I stole a bike and prayed for his forgiveness.
"Some people play tennis, I erode the human soul." -Tycho
The most famous is of course FFVII,but the master minds from Sqaure are no longer in the forefront of PC gaming.
Tanaka and Sakaguchi are veery long time friends ,so no wonder their games were creative in similar ways.Sakaguchi is more responsible for FFVII but he now does game design for consoles and phone apps for Sqaure.Tanaka the other master mind took unjust heat for FFXIV so he is out also.
EA/SOE/Blizzard do not have the history to make such a game.SOE does house some good devs who might pull it off but they are also in the console division so things look bleak for PC gaming,if you hope for a good Steampunk game.
Torchlight is listed as Steampunk because of it's engineer class.
Neosteam is one.
I find it hard to put Wow in that category,i think of Wow i think of stone and hammers and fire pits not steam power.They do not have airship travel but there is some references to steam i guess inside of Wow.They tend to mix lore and genres all over the place in Wow..FFXI is a little closer to reference with it's ariships and the Galkan home of Bastock.Even the crafting elite stations are about steam power.The waterbound ships are also steam power.However i cannot think of any steam reference in it's combat weaponry.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The most famous is of course FFVII,but the master minds from Sqaure are no longer in the forefront of PC gaming.
Tanaka and Sakaguchi are veery long time friends ,so no wonder their games were creative in similar ways.Sakaguchi is more responsible for FFVII but he now does game design for consoles and phone apps for Sqaure.Tanaka the other master mind took unjust heat for FFXIV so he is out also.
EA/SOE/Blizzard do not have the history to make such a game.SOE does house some good devs who might pull it off but they are also in the console division so things look bleak for PC gaming,if you hope for a good Steampunk game.
Torchlight is listed as Steampunk because of it's engineer class.
Neosteam is one.
I find it hard to put Wow in that category,i think of Wow i think of stone and hammers and fire pits not steam power.They do not have airship travel but there is some references to steam i guess inside of Wow.They tend to mix lore and genres all over the place in Wow..FFXI is a little closer to reference with it's ariships and the Galkan home of Bastock.Even the crafting elite stations are about steam power.The waterbound ships are also steam power.However i cannot think of any steam reference in it's combat weaponry.
Again... NEO is not a steampunk mmo. They can slap that label on there all they want, but it can never be called a true steampunk mmo. As for FFVII, I'd have to look up videos on it. I didn't think any of the Final Fantasy games were steampunk.
I gotta agree that it shocks me that we don't see more steampunk genre MMOs. It baffles me. There is a lot you could do with a world setting where Victorian age technology meets magic and fantasy.
Curse my bad memory, but I recall seeing a game announcement for one. All I remember is a dense victorian era cityscape (birds eye view) with brown-orange lighting, and thinking how the f**** did they get the environment models so dense with geometry. The shot was quite impressive.
Not sure if it was City of Steam. Could have been this screenshot.
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Curse my bad memory, but I recall seeing a game announcement for one. All I remember is a dense victorian era cityscape (birds eye view) with brown-orange lighting, and thinking how the f**** did they get the environment models so dense with geometry. The shot was quite impressive.
Not sure if it was City of Steam. Could have been this screenshot.
I played in the Cit of Steam's beta, and I can tell you all, it is not the steampunk mmo that the genre deserves. It's okay for a browser game, but I couldn't play it for long before it got way boring.
To me Steampunk is currently a genre with a lot of amazing individual ideas, but so much of it is just built on top of traditional fantasy, religious fantasy, or alternative history.
For Steampunk to truly be compelling as an MMO setting in and of itself -- with the necessary depth, scale, and scope -- I think one needs to be able to create a world that is unique to what steampunk offers. That includes races, cultures, and quest objectives. It can't just be a fantasy retread with a Steampunk skin on it. It will happen some day, but I just don't know if there's enough imagination in the industry to do it right now.
To me Steampunk is currently a genre with a lot of amazing individual ideas, but so much of it is just built on top of traditional fantasy, religious fantasy, or alternative history.
For Steampunk to truly be compelling as an MMO setting in and of itself -- with the necessary depth, scale, and scope -- I think one needs to be able to create a world that is unique to what steampunk offers. That includes races, cultures, and quest objectives. It can't just be a fantasy retread with a Steampunk skin on it. It will happen some day, but I just don't know if there's enough imagination in the industry to do it right now.
That's exactly the problem that a couple of mmos have made when calling themselves "steampunk." They've just put in a fantasy setting with a steampunk skin. Even worse are the ones that pit nature against machine (ARGO Online *cough*). I don't consider that to be truly steampunk. I just want to see a steampunk mmo that has a setting that could actually be real, and not some fantasy.
Steampunk is after all an alternate reality where things run on steam. They need to make it so it looks like "wow this could actually be." Instead they try to make it too much about the fantasy aspects of the game, which is old to me, as most mmos are into the fantasy genre today.
New Crobuzon is probably the steampunk most free of traditional fantasy tropes, although its also quite urban fantasy as well. You might not be able to get any rating under the most severe one though, considering what is described in the books.
New Crobuzon is probably the steampunk most free of traditional fantasy tropes, although its also quite urban fantasy as well. You might not be able to get any rating under the most severe one though, considering what is described in the books.
That's actually the sort of thing that I thing would be awesome for an mmo.
Comments
Ever since I first heard of the Antikythera mechanism, I've tended to think of clockwork stuff as Greekpunk
I've created short stories myself, based on steampunk for my creative writing class. It's not as hard as some people would think. I used London as a setting a lot (for obvious reasons... think steam in the old days), and using that just added the steam-mechanical aspect of it. If you try and simplify it instead of making it overly complicated it can be done. That's what most mmos don't seem to get. Is that it doesn't need to be complicated to be good.
Smile
Black Gold is a new Steam Punk MMO thats comming out.
"It''s like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG''s NGE
I once prayed to God for a bike, but quickly found out he didnt work that way...so I stole a bike and prayed for his forgiveness.
"Some people play tennis, I erode the human soul."
-Tycho
The Extraordinary Voyages Online.
Set in the world of the Jules Verne novels.
Players can build and control all the types of vehicles you find in those books, aircrafts, submarines, etc...
You also have a Steampunk 64x64 texture pack for Minecraft...
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/45534-glimmars-steampunk-v5-32x125-animated-cogs-alchemy-at-work-in-a-dark-victorian-industrial-world-many-new-pics-for-update-v6-pg-436-or-438/
Respect, walk
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The most famous is of course FFVII,but the master minds from Sqaure are no longer in the forefront of PC gaming.
Tanaka and Sakaguchi are veery long time friends ,so no wonder their games were creative in similar ways.Sakaguchi is more responsible for FFVII but he now does game design for consoles and phone apps for Sqaure.Tanaka the other master mind took unjust heat for FFXIV so he is out also.
EA/SOE/Blizzard do not have the history to make such a game.SOE does house some good devs who might pull it off but they are also in the console division so things look bleak for PC gaming,if you hope for a good Steampunk game.
Torchlight is listed as Steampunk because of it's engineer class.
Neosteam is one.
I find it hard to put Wow in that category,i think of Wow i think of stone and hammers and fire pits not steam power.They do not have airship travel but there is some references to steam i guess inside of Wow.They tend to mix lore and genres all over the place in Wow..FFXI is a little closer to reference with it's ariships and the Galkan home of Bastock.Even the crafting elite stations are about steam power.The waterbound ships are also steam power.However i cannot think of any steam reference in it's combat weaponry.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Again... NEO is not a steampunk mmo. They can slap that label on there all they want, but it can never be called a true steampunk mmo. As for FFVII, I'd have to look up videos on it. I didn't think any of the Final Fantasy games were steampunk.
Smile
The last time I heard Blizz are hiring a lot of Steampunk artist.
Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language
This would interest me greatly!
Until then, the next "steampunk MMO" attempt will be City of Steam. We'll see.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
I love steam punk, and I'd love to see a AAA attempt at an mmo with it as the theme.
I gotta agree that it shocks me that we don't see more steampunk genre MMOs. It baffles me. There is a lot you could do with a world setting where Victorian age technology meets magic and fantasy.
We'll see what City of Steam has to offer.
Curse my bad memory, but I recall seeing a game announcement for one. All I remember is a dense victorian era cityscape (birds eye view) with brown-orange lighting, and thinking how the f**** did they get the environment models so dense with geometry. The shot was quite impressive.
Not sure if it was City of Steam. Could have been this screenshot.
I played in the Cit of Steam's beta, and I can tell you all, it is not the steampunk mmo that the genre deserves. It's okay for a browser game, but I couldn't play it for long before it got way boring.
Smile
To me Steampunk is currently a genre with a lot of amazing individual ideas, but so much of it is just built on top of traditional fantasy, religious fantasy, or alternative history.
For Steampunk to truly be compelling as an MMO setting in and of itself -- with the necessary depth, scale, and scope -- I think one needs to be able to create a world that is unique to what steampunk offers. That includes races, cultures, and quest objectives. It can't just be a fantasy retread with a Steampunk skin on it. It will happen some day, but I just don't know if there's enough imagination in the industry to do it right now.
That's exactly the problem that a couple of mmos have made when calling themselves "steampunk." They've just put in a fantasy setting with a steampunk skin. Even worse are the ones that pit nature against machine (ARGO Online *cough*). I don't consider that to be truly steampunk. I just want to see a steampunk mmo that has a setting that could actually be real, and not some fantasy.
Steampunk is after all an alternate reality where things run on steam. They need to make it so it looks like "wow this could actually be." Instead they try to make it too much about the fantasy aspects of the game, which is old to me, as most mmos are into the fantasy genre today.
Smile
New Crobuzon is probably the steampunk most free of traditional fantasy tropes, although its also quite urban fantasy as well. You might not be able to get any rating under the most severe one though, considering what is described in the books.
Blizzard's Titan will be steampunk. I'm calling it right now.
That's actually the sort of thing that I thing would be awesome for an mmo.
Smile
Where is Our Truly Epic xxxxxxxxxxx MMO?
problem is,they dont do epix MMOs anymore. Steampunk,Cyberpunk,Oi Punk,high fantasy punk ,scifi punk,whatever punk or without punk,nope
Let's internet