Australian MMO fans will no doubt be pleased to hear that the upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will not only debut down under at the same time as the US and Europe, but that local servers will be set up to ensure a better playing experience. We chatted to EA Mythic associate producer Josh Drescher about the decision to set up an Aussie server, what's next for the game's closed beta, and more.

GameSpot AU: You've decided to set up an Australian server for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, is that right?

Josh Drescher: This is something that we've wanted to do basically from the beginning of the project. We wanted to make sure that in terms of localisation and offering support for players around the world, that we try and give as many people as possible home turf servers to use. And the Australian fans were actually extremely vocal early on in the process. It's been something we've wanted to do for quite some time, and when we were bought by EA it became something that was a lot more viable for us, so we're very excited to get some dedicated servers over there.

GS AU: So it will locally hosted?

JD: I don't know the exact location, but we'll be hosting the server somewhere in East Asia, so it will be in the correct time zone. At the moment we are targeting it squarely at Australia and New Zealand. Once you get outside of those two territories you run into linguistic problems, which will need independent servers elsewhere.

GS AU: Why did you decide to do this when other MMOs haven't?

JD: From the very beginning the Australian fans were very vocal. One of the first strange packages that we got in the mail a couple of years ago was from an Australian fan who sent us a bunch of drop bear stuffed animals, and he attached fangs to them and there was blood all over their faces face--and was basically threatening [producer] Jeff Hickman and letting him know that if there weren't Oceanic servers, that he would send a drop bear invasion to attack the developers physically.

Australians have just been a group of fans that have been very vocal in our communities, in fan sites, and in terms of beta applications and so forth. It's clear to us that it's a completely viable new market that hasn't got the attention it deserves. So we're really excited to be out in the front of the market there saying "Yes, they deserve their own server equipment and so forth".

GS AU: Did you keep the drop bears?

JD: Actually yes. Jeff Hickman has it on his desk, along with the letter the guy wrote.

GS AU: WAR has had a long gestation. After all the delays, are you convinced now that you've got enough to please the hardcore Warhammer fans?

JD: Pleasing the hardcore fans was something we've actually been pretty confident about all along. When we first started the project, one of the directives that Mark Jacobs--the GM of the studio--gave us was that we had to keep the Warhammer faithful happy and feel like we've respected their hobby. One of the first things we did as soon as the game was playable--and this was about two years ago--we just started taking a version of the game to games day festivals all over the world, and just putting it in front of the true faithful and getting a sense form them about what they thought of what we were doing, whether or not they were happy with direction we were taking the game. And they were overwhelmingly positive.

GS AU: What about those not so familiar with the Warhammer universe?

JD: That's another thing you have to be careful about when you're working with any IP. While you want to respect the people that have been fans of it in the past, you want to make sure you're developing something accessible for the more standard player.

So our game has all the things that your typical MMO has--it has the quests, it has exciting adventure in perilous locations, and things of that sort. But we're really hanging our hats on what's making us different from other games, and primarily that's our realm vs realm (RvR) system. It offers a dynamic large-scale competition that you can't get in any other game, where you're working with thousands of other allied players, fighting against thousands of enemy players for true control of the world. That's a message that's really appealing to people on a core, human level, it appeals to that competitive focus that people have.

GS AU: Only a few months to go now before release. What's the focus now?

JD: At this point we're deep in the throes of closed beta, and so we're focusing on finding bugs, finding systems that need additional polish. The vast majority of design and content development is in the past at this point. We're really focusing on spending a lot of time making sure that things are polished, stable, all the systems play correctly, that the major functions of the game are there, and that they make sense. We're doing a lot of overhauling right now of things like the UI, trying to make sure that the interface players have looks really great but also makes sense, is intuitive, and has everything a player needs.

This is very interactive with our beta community. We regard them as part of the development process--they're not just their for stress testing and to look for bugs. We look to them for critical feedback. We need the testers to be offering us more than just praise and more than just bug testing--we need that constructive criticism to make sure we're headed in the right direction.

GS AU: Will there be an open beta?

JD: We will not be having an open beta in the sense that anyone who wants to can join the beta. Because we regard beta testing as part of the production process--it's not intended to be some sort of free trial experience--we will be letting on a lot more people late in the stages of beta prior to the point where we launch the game. So that will be orders of magnitude more players, but we will never have a point where we just let in everybody who wants to join willy nilly.

When we say open beta, what we're generally referring to there is that the non-disclosure agreement is lifted, and players who are in the beta test at that point are free to discuss it with the outside world and share their experience publicly.

GS AU: Do you have a date for the expansion of the closed beta?

JD: Unfortunately we're not publicly announcing that yet.

GS AU: Realm versus realm looks to have capacity to be overwhelming for some players. How do you introduce players to it?

JD: This is not our first game of trying to implement RvR in the MMO space. With Dark Age of Camelot--which was seven years ago at this point--we really introduced RvR for the first time. One of the lessons we learned with the implementation of Camelot is that in order for that system to make sense, you have to make sure that it is an integrated part of the world and that it serves a purpose all throughout a player's lifespan as a character.

So the first major distinguishing feature of what Warhammer offers from, for example, what Camelot offers, is that the RvR territory exists everywhere in the world. So from the very beginning, the very first zone that you are in as a brand new character, there's a section of that zone that is currently contested. You can go in and compete control for that area against enemy players that are of a comparable level. So the first thing you do is offer people a fair fight right from the beginning. You offer them a challenge, something they can do right from the early stages of the game that gives them a sense of that competitive purpose without forcing them into a cut-throat world without where they're facing off against players who are dramatically more powerful than themselves.

The second thing we do is offer a simplified version of the overall RvR experience and gradually make it more complicated over time. So the first thing you're going to be doing in RvR won't be as complex as a full city siege. That's something players will take part in after they've progressed through most of the content in the game. They'll have at that stage mastered their characters, they'll understand all of the siege mechanisms, they'll understand all of the strategic components of the world.

GS AU: How big will these RvR battles get?

JD: RvRs can be very small. If you're passing through the persistent world, and you're just moving through an RvR flagged area, and you run across a single enemy player, that's what we call a skirmish. It's a very small, incidental fight that takes place--it's not planned, it's not strategically oriented, it just revolves around see the enemy, kill the enemy.

Then there are battlefield objectives. There are strategic control points which exist persistently in the open world--those are going to take larger groups of players to accomplish. To successfully attack a battleground objective, you might need six, 10, 12 players to do some of the early ones. To actually take over an entire keep, you'll need several groups of players, so you're looking at that point 20, 30, or 40 players. Obviously that will scale up if there's a significant amount of defenders at the time. By the time you get up to city siege, the various types of RvR interactions there can have hundreds of players on both sides interacting simultaneously in an effort to take control or defend the city.

GS AU: How have closed beta testers responded to the very big sieges?

JD: We've actually just started testing that section of the game with them over the past couple of weeks. The feedback has been very energetic because it's obviously a new thing they haven't had access to previously. At the moment we're treating it in a very controlled way, we're sending them in under very strict circumstances, We automatically leveled their characters up so everybody is evenly matched, we put them in the cities simultaneously and then just say "and fight" to see how it's all working. At the moment we're still at that honeymoon phase we're everybody's excited about everything. We're hoping that some of that more critical feedback will roll in over the next week or so.

GS AU: Tell us more about public quests.

JD: They are cinematic, story-driven events that take place in the world. So as you're moving through the world in a typical way, you're going on a normal quest, you're traveling between locations, you're going to run across these events that are taking place in the open world regardless of what's taking place elsewhere. As soon as you enter this geographic area that this event is taking place in, you'll get a little widget that says "there's a public quest here, here's what the current stage involves--you're attempting to repel a chaos invasion of this empire village". And you can choose to stop what you're doing and take part in that quest. If there are other players in the area that are engaged in it, you are automatically cooperating with them towards that larger-scale common goal.

As you move through the quests, the stages become bigger and more difficult, until they culminate in a major boss encounter--some sort of monster that's truly epic in size appears--something like a chaos giant comes storming out of the woods, for example.

The idea here is a little bit sneaky. One of the things we're worried about is the tendency amongst a lot of MMO players to play it as a solitary, solo experience. While there is a lot to do solo in the game, for something like RvR, it really is all about large-scale assaults on huge numbers of enemy players. At the end of the day the game is all about working with other people. So we tried to introduce systems in the game that would convince people to cooperate without them realising that's what happened. You walk into a public quest, and the next thing you know you're actually participating with these other players, you're probably talking back and forth with them, you're coming up with strategic plans. Before you realise it you're actually a social game player as opposed to a solo player. And because we have hundreds of public quests throughout the world, it's going to nearly impossible to avoid cooperatively playing with other people.

GS AU: We've talked a lot about PvP. How much PvE content will there in the game?

JD: There's a huge amount. What we really wanted to do was create a fully-realised PvE experience, in addition to the really exciting and dynamic content that comes from the RvR side of the things. If you really are a PvE-oriented player and that's the only stuff you're interested in, you're going to find that the game has a tone to offer you. Our hope is that people will experience a combination of gameplay.

At the end of the day, as a PvE player, the highest level content in the game is actually targeted at you. By the time you use the RvR campaign to push into an enemy's capital city, break down the gates, burn down the buildings, fight your way to the king, break inside his palace, go in and fight him, that's actually a massive PvE boss encounter. The highest level raid in the game is part of that RvR campaign. We really wanted there to be a sense that the RvR campaign and the PvE experience was really intertwined. To achieve the greatest levels of success in either, you actually need to accomplish both.

GS AU: Finally, you're only a few months away from shipping. Any nerves?

JD: Obviously everybody is really excited about wrapping the project up and getting it to the public. But of course there's always that sense of anticipation, a little bit of nerves associated with it. We want to make sure the public gets to see our product and it gets to as many people as possible, and that they really get a chance to enjoy what we've been working on for years now. We're not nervous about its quality, we're nervous about sending it out on the world. It's like sending your kid to school for the first time.

GS AU: Josh Drescher, thanks for your time.

Ladies and gentlemen, put a black cross in your diary against Thursday 15 May 2008. Do so as a sign of respect and remembrance, and to honour the memory of a fallen friend. Today marks a sad day in the annals of history, and represents a cruel dagger in the wholesome bosom of the internet. I'm of course speaking expressly about the death of Percy--an animated pony so full of life and hope our heart swelled to bursting point with pride. We were proud because we knew (s)he? carried a flame for vigilance and justice, even in the face of the seemingly insurmountable task of advocating truth in the minefield that is videogame violence education. It is the ultimate irony then, and a travesty to Percy's unwavering message, that rather than spread the good word down below, our pink message-carrying equine bastion of justice has gone to frolic in the eternal fields of cartoon heaven.

We won't perpetuate the heartache of the sad news further by giving the outlet responsible for the news and ultimate "take down" of Percy the satisfaction of another ill-gotten page view. A major Australian newspaper is reporting an alleged intellectual property infringement is to blame, and as a result of the paper bringing it to the copyright holder's attention, Percy was subsequently put down. Only time will tell what effect the loss will have on the community--the real victim here is truth. Instead of angry pitchforking waving and hurling of flaming torches, we call for the support and intelligence of gamers the world over to unite and shine their collective understanding just a little brighter as one candle is snuffed out in the night. We do this in hope of continuing the message of love and understanding. R.I.P Pony, forever in our hearts and minds.

Offset The Evil

At its European media event last week Sony announced that its highly anticipated PlayStation 3 exclusive title LittleBigPlanet had been pushed back a month to October 2008. Shown at just about every major game conference in the last year or so, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who isn't excited for this game--a title that seamlessly mixes single-player, four-player cooperative play on or offline, and a user-generated content building system limited only by the player's imagination. We trapped three members of the Media Molecule team: studio co-founder Alex Evans, audio designer Kenny Young, and the game's producer Siobhan Reddy to pick their brains on everything LittleBigPlanet.

GameSpot AU: This is a fair whack of Media Molecule sitting at the table here. How is it that a team of just 25 has managed to do so much with so few people?

Alex Evans: Yeah, this is around a fifth of the team. Well the thing is, they're all super talented. On some level we've picked our battles--that's the honest answer. We couldn't have made a Final Fantasy or a GTA IV, both incredible games, but we picked our battles and then picked our people and that's what we tried to do.

Kenny Young: Another thing is that a small team facilitates quick decision making and allows for good communication.

Siobhan Reddy: When you have a small team like that and you have someone like the character guy who's in charge of the characters, they're the best person at them, and it becomes really easy to work out who should be making the calls.

KY: It can be brutal too because you can't hide. You can see everyone and you're on first-name terms with everyone. I know that sounds silly, but I've worked on teams of a hundred people where you just don't know what's going on at the other side of the office. But when it's a bunch of people based in a room you just can't hide anywhere.

SR: It's like the game. The game has co-op versus competitive and that's where we are as a team [laughs]. We're really ultra co-operative and collaborative but everyone is really very good at what they do and you can't have that without there being a bit of "oh, wow, that's excellent, that means I have to raise my game and be more excellent". The bar just keeps getting raised. There's no time to rest.

AE: That's one of the things about the game; it makes you pick it up. The cool thing is, there's going to be a dark side to our game too, and it's exactly the same as our company. If you read our blog, it's the same vibe as the company. We do this Friday feature where one person has to show off what they've done that week--there's pressure, it's serious pressure, but it's good natured.

SR: When you get good people in a small room you all just want to work. We've all left other places and chosen to work here by choice. We all collaborate together and make sure we're constantly getting better and achieving our enormous goals.

GS AU: User-generated content plays a huge role in LittleBigPlanet, would the title have been possible without its rise in popularity?

AE: Yes. When you say user-generated content I trace it back to God games and loads of other things like shoot-em up construction kits.

SR: I think of building blocks, Lego, and sand castles.

AE: I'm a total Lego geek. Siobhan always makes a point about character design. Every game that has character design in it--and ours is obviously more awesome than everyone else's--is user-generated content. When we pitched the game to Sony it was mental. We didn't realise the bandwagon. You're right, in hindsight it's this massive, massive thing, but I don't think we were that canny, we just knew we wanted to do creativity. Less of the bandwagon, more of the "we enjoyed these other games, let's do this thing".

SR: Everyone at Media Molecule comes from a background or has a personal interest in some kind of creation. So it wouldn't necessarily be them being involved with user-generated content programs somewhere, but it would be about people creating something. We make games, so the most natural thing is for creative people to bring that into the games medium.

AE: We scaled that right back in the pitch to Sony. When we pitched to Sony we were like "OK, it's going to be this core gameplay and it's going to have this tactical element". I think that's the really important message we fail to get across to people now, there is this great fun game to play, and you don't have to make stuff. That's what we pitched to Sony and then we were like "oh, yeah and it's creative, cough". The cool thing was that Phil Harrison--who we were pitching to at the time--at the end of it was like "That was cool, but I wish you'd talk more about the user-generated content side" and we were like "OK…" and then realised. The meeting was literally booked for 45 minutes, and it ended up taking three hours in the end. We've always been passionate about users and making it fun.

GS AU: Without sounding like the creative industry's death knell, how long will developers play a major role in making games if user-generated content is getting so big?

AE: Forever

GS AU: Is it changing then to a scenario where developers are just creating the tools and the building blocks to let the users make their own games?

AE: Yeah, there's always room for editorial decisions. The thing with user-generated content is that it changes the game. There's always space for professionals, and I don't mean trained, I mean people who have chosen to commit an insane amount of time to something.

SR: In that same argument we would say that people who write blogs will take over newspapers, and amateur photographers will take over professional photographers. There will always be a role for game developers.

AE: Modders are matching the quality of professionals and Flickr photos are often professional quality, and blogs are often the same. It doesn't remove the need for other channels. I'm really hoping the quality of the stuff made in LittleBigPlanet will be beyond the quality of what we ship with the game. We're not going to be out of a job, but there will be loads of people with the same talents we have, and maybe more of it.

GS AU: It wasn't until we saw the alternating camera views in LittleBigPlanet that we considered a kind of hybrid Echochrome meets LittleBigPlanet spin-off. Is creating a game like that possible with your current game engine?

AE: The funny thing is the engine in LittleBigPlanet is full 3D. But anyway, yes.

GS AU: But you're not offering a full 3D camera view?

AE: One of the biggest challenges we've had since we first showed [the camera] was actually adding walls to push off. The decision to go side-view was a conscious, not a technical constraint, but rather one of simplicity and ease of use. It was a really good game decision. We could do Echochrome, I think the funny thing about LittleBigPlanet is we can change it over time. When the community starts doing stuff we'll be there to support it, and I would love to do crossovers with other games, that would be really fun. There are loads of ideas we've had to shelve or put on hold for a while but will surely see the light of day.

GS AU: What are your plans to update the user-generated content tools once the game ships? How will you evolve them over time?

AE: That's definitely a direction we see it going. We have the ability to patch as much code as we like, but I think what's interesting is more the way people abuse stuff. I don't know if you've ever seen Line Rider on YouTube, but people totally abuse the tool without the tool needing to change. The more I see someone abusing something in a really cool direction we just go and help them out. The funny thing is people are making levels now in LittleBigPlanet that I hadn't expected to be made, and to me that's the sign of a good tool. You watch professionals use Photoshop and everyone has a different way of using it, or if you're using a sound editing package, everyone will have a different way of using it. People are already using LittleBigPlanet in different ways, so we just have to make sure that we can patch in stuff, and I don't think it'll be new features per se. There's a niche here, we should just support that. The community can help itself as well, because you can make unlockables in the game. You can construct items that we never thought of and start trading them and collaborating. We've given quite basic building blocks, but someone might be known as the car dude. You'll have levels that aren't really levels, it's just a garage full of 30 or 40 awesome cars and if you're his friend you can go and unlock it and use them yourself. That's exciting.

GS AU: You mentioned abuse, and it's an issue we've seen handled a few different ways, in many cases managed by the title's community. What are you doing as a team to manage a potential influx of inappropriate content into the gameworld?

AE: I'm a bit relentlessly positive about that stuff. At baseline we have griefing, we have moderation systems in place, and we have ways to report content, and that's the stick side--but we also have the carrot side. I'm actually more interested in stuff like the rating up system, like if you look at the way comments work on so many websites, they solved a lot of the griefing problems by just screening stuff people said was rubbish. It just vanishes. It's like the positive version of moderation, the positive stuff bubbles to the top. We give people more opportunities to say "hey that was awesome!" and push people in that direction. When I was saying abuse before I meant it in the positive sense of things I hadn't thought of.

SR: More like manipulate, or take advantage of.

AE: It is a total fuzzy area. You see people exploiting a physics bug, and it's really hard to know where you go with that. If it's not destructive to people then we want to help the community. You see communities online, and some of them work, and some don't. It's all about not being too draconian and at the same time helping the good guys out to be good guys. It's not just constant ban hammer, ban hammer, ban hammer. That has to be there, we have to deal with them, and that's part of the Internet. There's a form of community based moderation, and ultimately there are super moderators that are internal to us, but we certainly could do little features that help the community moderate itself.

GS AU: What are your plans for integrating Sixaxis gameplay mechanics?

AE: We're not actually affecting gameplay with it except in one really crucial way. Whether multiplayer is online or on your sofa, one of the important things, especially when you're online is that you can point your finger at something, and nod or shake your head. Obviously there's voice chat and text chat and all the other ways of doing it, but we purposefully left it so you could see all the characters all the time, even when you're in the menus, even when you're in the lobby screen. So you're choosing a level to play and people are going "yeah! yeah!" and nodding their heads. It sounds bizarre, but you forget it's there. We're not doing the whole "Ooh balance on a rope thing" and there's no reason we couldn't do that in future, but we didn't need that. We're using it for this thing that's actually more direct and intuitive, plus we don't have to do so much animation! [laughs] We put it in pretty quickly and we didn't expect it to be so well received. It doesn't feel bolted on.

GS AU: What sort of balance challenges have you come across trying to build both a compelling single-player campaign and an online title with up to four strangers interacting?

KY: There are challenges, but I think we've tried to address them. If you're playing it single-player then it's still a great experience, but we're trying to encourage people to play together by making some stuff--which isn't a requirement to play the game--only accessible to people who are collaborating and playing with other people. For example you can create a little physics problem with a seesaw so that only if someone is jumping on the other end do you get flung in the air. You don't need those things to complete the levels that come with the game.

AE: We always talk about co-op versus compete. Every level you play you're competing with the rest of the world to get the top score, but you get the top score collaboratively. So three of you playing a level, you're going to be lumped together and get the top score together, so it's like there's this delicate balance. We realised people were playing the game and they were fighting over who was going to get the next score points. So we put the multiplier system in that basically tracks who got the points, so even though you get a collaborative score at the end, all the way through you see if you collect an item (we call them collectible bubbles) you get that, not the other guy. So there's this co-op with an underlay of competitiveness and that really helped us with the one-player versus multiplayer thing. If you play as one-player you can play the level, you get to the end, you can get all the items, and you can unlock the story, and then [the development team] have effectively done another pass over the levels where they add the underlying competing.

SR: The multiplier you'll need other people for.

AE: It's chaining. It's just classic chaining. It's really one for the hardcore gamers. Getting the high scores now is Jedi. It really is a case of replayability, because you're working out a route. Then you realise chaining is collaborative. We can do a single-player version where you'll never get the full chaining because you can't be collecting continuously all the time. What you do is get one guy to get a bunch, then another guy to take a different path and get the next bunch. You take the low road and I'll take the high road. Even in single-player you'll never be able to do both. The scoring has really allowed us to do one, two, and three-player games.

GS AU: It's interesting to see the reaction of both casual and hardcore gamers to LittleBigPlanet. How do you as a team categorise this title in terms of its intended market?

SR: We've been asked that actually, and I think it comes back to that idea of play, create, and share. Everybody will experience each of those parts of the game in different ways. Some people will probably be able to get into the casual side and some will be able to get into the hardcore side and that's why you get a broad audience, because it's not just one audience.

GS AU: Conceptually who was it designed for?

AE: Mark [Healy] (the other co-founder of Media Molecule) used to say "who is it for?" and then we'd say "anyone with hands". But seriously, it was broad from the beginning, and it's not trying to be a hardcore game, but on the other hand it's a PS3 game and it needs to appeal to that audience. It's presented in a certain style that really disarms you. Personally I'm a huge Metal Gear Solid fan, and it was the first game I ever completed. I'm not a huge gamer, but I got MGS and I was hooked on that. It's that onionskin thing, that if we can disarm you then whether you're casual or hardcore you're laughing and having a good time. Before long you're chaining and wanting to be number one, and we have community ranking features, so you can face off against people and know you're better on this level. On the creativity thing though, people might just make costumes, or make a cool t-shirt, or a cool car. Or they might decide to make the best skateboard run every created and will get 20,000 people to play it in a week and then get the best score and beat them all.

KY: You just need to be able to run, jump and grab to play, but then there's this whole layer of customisation, but also the way you can emote. The first time someone picks up the game they learn how to wave the hands and start motioning with the character, but then there's the other layer. Some people will embrace that and learn how to do dance moves with their sack person.

AE: The reason it's a broad audience and why it will appeal to both is that we're insanely ambitious and I hope we pull it off. I remember playing a really early build just after GDC with a well-known game designer whose opinion I respect. He put the controller down and he said "you are insanely ambitious, and it's awesome", so having that person say we were insanely ambitious is a sign that oh dear, we really are ambitious. We are trying to reach a very broad audience, and I think we can do it, but we'll just have to wait and see.

GS AU: Kenny, Alex, and Siobhan, thanks for your time.

Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures for the PC is one of the newest competitors to World of Warcraft's MMO crown, with the online game giving life to the brutal world of fantasy icon Conan. After years of development, the game is finally slated for release in a few weeks. GameSpot AU chatted with senior systems designer Andrew Griffin--himself an Aussie--about wrapping up duties on Age of Conan, the type of classes in the game, and feeling like a lethal killing machine from level one.

It's not long to go until Age of Conan ships globally.

GameSpot AU: SO you're an Aussie, right? How long have you been with Funcom?

Andrew Griffin: I've been here nine years now, and I originally came from Adelaide. I started working here on Anarchy Online, and I've progressed from a world designer to a system designer, so now I'm the senior system designer on Age of Conan.

GS AU: So with launch just around the corner, what's left to do?

AG: We're in the polishing phase now, just tidying everything up and making sure it looks and plays as well as we want it to.

GS AU: Tell us more about single-player in Age of Conan. Are you still locked to that for the first 20 levels of the game?

AG: That's been changed a bit. You still have the core destiny quests which is where you swap into a single-player quests where you're doing you're own destiny quests to progress you through the story. You get the bulk of that through levels one to 20. But we found out in beta testing that players wanted more interaction with other people, so now you can switch back to the multiplayer mode during that period so you're not actually locked in to single-player gameplay. The first five levels are tutorial, and that's just you progressing through the beach until the city. But once you get to the city at level four or five, then you can switch into multiplayer mode.

GS AU: You worked quite extensively on classes in Conan. What can you tell us about that?

AG: We went with a broad archetype system. So you have the warriors and the mages and the rogues and the priests as the archetypes, and then you have specific classes for each of those. An archetype fills a basic role--the soldiers, for example, can be guardians, dark templar, or conqueror. They're the main tanking classes that can withstand lots of hits and basically hold monsters onto them while other classes attack them. And then character development continues with the feat system, which is basically how you spec out your character. Do you want to be greater area of effect damage, for example, or better survivability, or reactive damage.

GS AU: How many different classes will there be?

AG: There will be 12 in all, with three under each archetype.

GS AU: How hard was it to find the right balance between the different classes? We know one of the major complaints from other MMOs is that some classes can feel vastly overpowered compared to others?

AG: It is quite a challenge, but we have a good team here who are very knowledgeable in MMOs. Using the archetype system made it slightly easier that what it normally would be, because we had a base on which to build all the classes from which we could then differentiate from one another. But at the same time it's actually harder to make the classes unique at the same time rather than getting that balance perfect. It's important to make the different classes unique from each other and still fun to play. The Dark Templar, for example, even though he's still a soldier and a tank, plays much differently to a guardian because he's a life tapping class that heals himself depending on the damage that he's dealing. The templar is more of a block of steel that you're trying to whittle down.

GS AU: Another common complaint of MMOs is grind. How will you go about making sure that monotony is out of the game?

AG: We have a relatively fast leveling speed--it's not slow, and it's more in the WoW type speed. We do give out a significant amount of XP via quests. So pure grinding with monsters isn't the most efficient way to level up. If you get a quest which takes a certain amount of time, you'll get the same amount of XP if you were just pure grinding at 100 percent efficiency for the same amount of time. You won't be sitting there just doing mindless grinds--you'll be doing interesting quests.

GS AU: While we're on the topic of other MMOs, a fairly common occurrence is people getting bored and not being able to make it past level 20, for example. How are you planning to keep players interested in Age of Conan in those crucial first few levels?

Multiple enemies at once will be the norm in this game.


AG: Getting people through the first few levels is actually pretty hard--you need to make it exciting enough, and we've tried to do that by immersing you in the type of combat we're trying to do with Conan right from the start. SO instead of fighting one monster at a time over and over again, you're fighting multiple monsters and doing area damage, so you're feeling powerful right from the beginning. You're encountering multiple enemies coming at you at the same time, which you haven't seen in other games like this, but you're overpowering them because you are a hero in this world.

GS AU: So the aim is to make it visceral?

AG: Exactly. This is a physical world that you're entering, that you're always going to be outnumbered, but at the end of the day you'll probably be victorious with a bunch of bodies strewn around you.

GS AU: Andrew Griffin, thanks for your time.

As you probably read last week, GameSpot AU was lucky enough to fly to the US last month to check out some of Sierra's upcoming games at the Sierra Spring Event. If you haven't read Part One of our extensive peek—where we talk about World In Conflict, The Bourne Conspiracy, and Sea Life Safari--check it out by clicking here. But for now, check out the rest of the games that were on show by reading below!

One of the demonstrated titles we're closely following the development of is Prototype, a new IP from Radical Entertainment promising an open-world slaughter-fest as you take control of angry biological experiment subject Alex Mercer. We had a chance to check out the latest pre-alpha build of the game, and it's already looking very polished. If the expansiveness of the GTA series cities appeals to you, the climb anything concept of Assassin's Creed tickles your fancy, and you're looking for the odd Grisham story twist, this could well be for you. For our full impressions, check out our full GameSpot preview here . Prototype is slated for a 2009 release for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Fiddy just wants his bling back.

Rapper 50 Cent will soon be back stalking the Xbox 360 and PS3 with 50 Cent: Blood In The Sand. At the 50 Cent booth at the Sierra Spring Event we were met by our guide, a dude straight from the whitest projects we've ever seen, and sporting an urban camouflage G-Unit shirt. 50 Cent's latest adventure sees him playing a show somewhere overseas, at the end of which the gig promoter pays him with a diamond-encrusted skull. The super-bling is subsequently stolen by "international gangsters" (yeah, you read that right) and Fiddy is pissed off enough to bust up the place to get it back. The game is a gangster-themed ultra-violent shooter with a smattering of features cobbled together from various other titles. There's the cover and the blind fire systems, timed kills with multipliers ala The Club, 20 different and brutal unlockable quick action counter-kills, and the dev team has thrown in Gangster Fire Mode (read: bullet time) for good measure. If you like your shooters a bit on the crazy side, this one is worth checking out, if only to solve the mystery of the missing diamond-skull.

Suck up zombies with a vacuum cleaner in Zombie Wranglers.

There was no shortage of big name games at the event, but nestled between 50 Cent's latest adventure and World in Conflict we came across a couple of nifty little Xbox Live games: Zombie Wranglers and Assault Heroes 2. Zombie Wranglers is being developed by Frozen Codebase and puts you in charge of a crack team of kids who bust zombies when no one is around to catch them at it. The game is a kooky cell-shaded title with an emphasis on fun. You'll spend your time punching through garbage cans and other environmental objects looking for hidden cash, running around, and stunning the living impaired before sucking them up in your magical soul vacuum cleaner. You're not philanthropist kids mind you; this is all about raising cash--in this case Zombucks--to spend on upgrades to your gear. During the game you'll choose from one of four characters, each with their own unique abilities. Uju is your resident mystic/voodoo worker, Monica is the local Goth, Amy plays the part of an audio specialist and rock music chick, while Dean knows his way around a weapon or two and handles the tech. The game is a lighthearted zombie romp with chapter names such as "The Zombie Code" and "Zombie Reloaded", each with distinct themes related to their names. There's even an homage to Katamari Damacy with a giant zombie ball boss to battle against.

Big action awaits in Assault Heroes 2.

Assault Heroes 2 also flew the flag for the Xbox Live Marketplace, offering new-comers to the series and those already familiar with the original the chance to battle in this top-down shooter. Like many arcade games it uses the left analog stick to drive your vehicle and the right to fire your weapons. The addition of three hijackable rides including a helicopter adds a new dimension to the established Assault Heroes gameplay. The title supports two-player co-operative play either online via Xbox Live or offline with two controllers. You'll also be able to tag team with your buddy, focusing fire by bouncing bullet streams off each other to achieve a weapon with huge spread and increased damage. The tried-and-true: shoot things, drive around, shoot some more, mechanics are easy to pick up and offer plenty of fun regardless of whether it's your first time or you're looking for another tour.

Slimer's back baby!

Our last game demo (which was unfortunately hands-off), was Ghostbusters running on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 . The team from Terminal Reality says the game will follow on from the Hollywood movies, and sees you take on the role of the fifth Ghostbusters team member, a recruit joining three years after the events of the films. As a result, you'll revisit classic locations such as the New York library and the Ghostbusters' fire station headquarters between levels. After a brief tech demo to show off the internally developed "Infernal" game engine, we were shown an office block play through complete with destructible environment burning walls as we chased that kooky green ghost Slimer. Once on the rooftop, we battled several construction worker ghosts with tool belts and hard hats, relying on our teammates to help us wrangle the tough ones into the waiting traps we kicked out. Ghost catching is almost a mini-game in itself, with players having to wrestle apparitions Bass Fishing style. The team also confirmed the PS3 version of the game will include Sixaxis motion controls for this function, making wrestling a wrist bender. So authentic is the progression from big screen to home console that stars Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis are lending their voices as well as writing the game's dialogue. Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts are reprising their roles, but Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis will unfortunately not be featured. The game looks to be incredibly faithfully recreated, and even at this early stage we're cautiously optimistic fans of the film will be able to get their Ghostbusters 3 movie fix from this title.

All this hard work had certainly helped the media work up an appetite, and keen to help where possible, the Sierra team ushered the crowds of media to a downtown San Francisco bar that had been decked out in an elaborate Ghostbusters theme. Dark and moody inside, bookshelves were covered in spider webs, while off to the side marshmallows and an open flame let visitors create their own Stay Puft Marshmallow man, complete with melted face. Even some of the drinks behind the bar had been renamed to fit the spooky surroundings. Check out some of the photos from the event here.

When Rockstar confirmed that Australian versions of Grand Theft Auto IV had been modified to better fit with local classification laws, many gamers cried foul and demanded to know exactly what had been taken out. Rockstar has so far refused to reveal exactly what the difference is between Aussie versions of their hit game with other versions around the world, saying only that the changes were "not significant."

GameSpot AU can now explain in some detail at least one change that has been made. Having just received a region one version of the game, we tested out a few scenarios and only found one difference so far: how the game deals with prostitution. In Australian versions of GTAIV, Niko can indeed pick up prostitutes, but once he takes said sex worker to a secluded area, the game camera shifts to a tight shot of the rear of the vehicle the pair are in and cannot be moved.

In the region one version, once Niko finds a secluded spot, an extra option pops up, asking whether Niko wants the $20 or the $50 service. Once the appropriate "service" is chosen, the act begins, but instead of a static camera, players can freely rotate the game camera around the vehicle.

But in all other aspects, the Australian version and the region one version seem identical so far. GameSpot AU will report any further differences it spots as we explore the overseas version of the game.

Sierra Spring Event 2008

A few weeks ago, Sierra Entertainment held an event in downtown San Francisco, USA, with the purpose of giving local and international games media a chance to see how some of their biggest titles of 2008 are shaping up. GameSpot AU flew halfway around the world to get our eyes, and in some cases our mitts, on the latest development builds of games such as Ghostbusters, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant, The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, Prototype, The Bourne Conspiracy, World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, and a swag of Xbox Live titles. We were also originally meant to see Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust, and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, but both dropped out ahead of the event to be shown at a later date. Given Australia's current classification quagmire--particularly with mature-themed games--and the fact that the last Larry title was denied sale in Australia, not showing it may not turn out to be a huge loss for Aussie gamers.

The event was held over the course of a day in the bowels of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, with black cloth booths erected to demo code away from the prying eyes of impatient journos. With Ghostbusters The Video Game on show, we had hopped there would be some kind of ballroom trashing party complete with green slimed overalls, petrified hotel staff, and flaming toilet paper rolls on room cleaning trolleys, but it wasn't to be--after all, think of the cleanup costs. Sierra did, however, throw a rad Ghostbusters-themed party, complete with bookshelves covered in spider webs, ghostly cocktails, and marshmallows to toast over an open flame. We'll talk more about that later, complete with photos. Yes, that's right, these are the kinds of tough assignments we here at GameSpot AU put ourselves on the line for, all in the name of bringing you the latest game news and previews. It's a tough gig.

For now, let's talk about some of the games on show, starting with The Bourne Conspiracy. After its success as both a spy thriller novel series and trilogy of Hollywood blockbuster films, it was only a matter of time before someone snapped up the licence to create a game (or series of games) based on Robert Ludlum's Bourne universe. Currently in development by High Moon Studios, the guys behind 2005's fantasy first-person shooter Darkwatch, the team has put a lot of work into blending traditional third-person run-and-gun shooting mechanics with smooth hand-to-hand combat. They certainly aren't doing things in halves, with some great looking next-gen graphics, chunky sound effects, and a big-name soundtrack from well-known club DJ Paul Oakenfold. Action events play a big role in Bourne, with everything from defeating bosses to sliding under security gates Indiana Jones-style requiring a sequence of controller buttons to be pressed in order to complete goals. The developers have made a conscious effort to not punish those with limited thumb dexterity too much, stopping short of requiring you to begin battles over if you miss one combo, with many long events having a save point just before they occur. During gameplay you'll build up adrenaline, filling one of three zones on the HUD. Using your built up power activates one of several takedown moves, damaging your opponent with either your hands or an environmental object, including throwing them into an air conditioner unit, slamming their head through a photocopier, or soaking up bullets by using them as a human shield. Be warned though--bosses can also use counter-takedowns to block your moves. When used, gun takedowns are a single bullet instant kill, and we saw them used to great effect in situations where we were surrounded or enemies were at long range.

While our demo was limited to the same three levels that have been trotted out since January this year (and are the same ones included in the upcoming Xbox Live and PlayStation Network demos), the team did give us a sneak peak at an as yet unseen level of the game set in Lithuania. The scene opened with a scripted action button assassination at a university. Once the deed was done and the action was a bit too hot to handle, we were forced to escape. In the process of exiting we came across a mini-boss we had to fight bare knuckled, backing him in front of our character to protect us from enemy gunfire from a distant balcony, before kicking him over a railing. Further along in a courtyard we used Jason's "Bourne Vision" to find the weak spot in an armoured tank, dispatching it with precision shooting. The end of the chapter saw us moving through a distillery, dodging fires before needing to escape the building by racing a countdown timer.

Sierra also trotted out a couple of Massive Entertainment developers at the event to show off World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, a soon-to-be-released add-on pack which will expand the existing WiC single-player campaign. WiC: SA also marks the game's first outing on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 home consoles. To be perfectly honest, we were pretty sceptical about porting an already successful RTS franchise to a game controller. We've seen it done before with some pretty lousy results. The good news is we were pleasantly surprised at how well it looks and handles. We've covered the title and its control intricacies extensively in our hands-on impressions preview which you can find here.

Sitting in a corner booth, Sea Life Safari may not have been pulling the crowds of curious gamers like Prototype, Ghostbusters, or Bourne, but it was there in all its fishy glory. It's probably most comparable to the N64's Pokemon Snap, a game that sees you traversing the ocean in one of five different undersea locations. Along the way you'll encounter more than 60 types of fish and other marine life, with the sole purpose of not blasting them to kingdom come, but rather the innocuous task of taking their photo. The whole adventure is on-rails, so you won't need to blow your mind steering and snapping at the same time, but we're told each dive will vary depending on what you've already managed to capture on film. Each level includes a "gizmo" which you can throw at fish to get their best side. Not surprisingly, many of the animal photos in our demo turned out a little shocked after we pummelled the creature with a flare. The game doesn't feature Pokedex-style information like Endless Ocean for the Wii does, but your goal isn't to learn, just snap. Once you've taken 24 photos you'll need to surface, and depending on your subject composition and level of zoom, your pics will be marked accordingly. Designed for younger gamers after a family friendly ocean frolic, the visuals are cartoony and colourful. Sea Life Safari is due to swim its way onto the Xbox Marketplace later this year.

There was so much to see at Sierra's Gamers' Day 2008 we had to split our thoughts into two blog entries. Check back shortly for the second part of our feature.

Some of you may have seen people raising money for Starlight Day today, by selling pins, pens, or stars. Money raised goes to improving the quality of life for seriously sick children and their families. If you missed out on your chance to donate, but still want to contribute, EB Games are donating 10% of the trade value for everything traded-in this weekend to the Starlight Foundation.

If trading in your precious gamers isn't your thing, you can also make donations to the Starlight foundation in-store. This promotion ends on May 4 and is available at every EB Games around Australia. For more information about this promotion, check out the EB Games website .

By now you've probably read GameSpot's full review of Grand Theft Auto IV and know that as a site, we've awarded the latest epic from Rockstar a 10 out of 10, the first perfect score from GameSpot in many years. Unlike other sites, GameSpot does not fracture its final thoughts on a game into regions, so that 10 represents the site's view as a global entity (and was arrived at after thorough consultation with editors in all GameSpot territories).

For Aussie readers, that leaves only one question (well, two if you include the so-called "minor" content changes made to our versions): how does multiplayer stack up? As many of you know, multiplayer experiences can vary from region to region (*cough*Medal of Honor Heroes 2 Wii*cough*), so the crew here at GameSpot AU have been diligently hammering away at both the 360 and PS3 versions of GTA IV online to see how the experience plays out. To make sure our testing matches the average consumer's experiences, we've been playing full retail copies (the same versions you pick up in stores) from both our office network and homes to simulate a wider variety of possible online multiplayer scenarios.

The quick verdict? GTA IV is a gem to play online as an Aussie, with few connection and stability problems to be had. It's by no means flawless, but the majority of your experiences will be of easy to join matches with plenty of other players to compete against (or with).

For both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, we found no hassles in finding matches to join, with the most popular modes--deathmatch and team deathmatch--seldom having free spots despite both offering the maximum 16 player cap. Straight-up deathmatch is particularly exciting, especially when the host disables competitor locations on your minimap. Team deathmatch is slightly more strategic, although choosing to run-and-gun as a solo maniac can still prove an effective strategy.

The game's other mission-based online modes such as Mafiya Work, Cops and Crooks and Car Jack City were often less populated and tend to be harder to find a game of. This is probably to be expected, however, with most players probably still engrossed in the single-player campaign in the game's first few days of release (and only venturing into simpler deathmatch modes for the occasional break). We're expecting these modes to become more popular as time passes, however, they require a lot more coordination and teamwork to perform well. Cops and Crooks, in particular, needs a certain degree of planning with a good crew in order to be successful, as does Team Mafiya Work. One tip--a headset is practically mandatory in these types of games, so come prepared. Both the deathmatch and mission-based multiplayer modes we tested ran mostly lag-free, even when there was a full complement of players duking it out. The frame rate sometimes dipped during particularly hectic fights (involving multiple players on screen and with several cars being used as battering weapons), but never enough to become frustrating.

GTA IV's race modes are where we saw the most noticeable image and performance quality drops. In GTA Race (the same vehicular-based mode as Race, but with weapons in play), we encountered several instances of opponent cars popping in and out of view, as well as completely shifting position at times. Textures would also sometimes pop in quite late. Again, though, lag was never an issue, and we never experienced dropped connections in either Race or the other modes. Most of the opponents we came up against during our play testing turned out to be Aussies, but that's also to be expected as most of our testing happened before the game's full release in other countries. That said, GTA IV features a fairly robust matchmaking system where you can create games exclusively for people in your friends list if you feel like limiting your partners to those from Australia.

Of course, there have also been reported problems of late with multiplayer, with reports from both the Xbox 360 and PS3 camps of some serious downtime over the past 24 hours. Indeed, we were unable to connect at all with the PS3 version of the game today (although the 360 still seems to be running smoothly). We've asked our local Rockstar reps for a comment and will report back with any more findings.

The bottom line is that GTA IV, while not featuring as complex or customisable an online experience as the likes of Call of Duty 4, is great fun as a multiplayer game, and its guaranteed sales success means there should be plenty of other Aussies to match up against in the coming months.

Australia was one of the first countries to officially have Grand Theft Auto IV released, with plenty of eager gamers lining up at midnight launches across the nation. We were there in the thick of the action to witness the shenanigans of the loyal fans waiting for their Grand Theft Auto IV fix.

For a while now, Aussie Nintendo fans have pleaded for Nintendo to bring Club Nintendo to Australia. Up until now, the request seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. This morning, Nintendo Australia announced that they would be bringing Club Nintendo down under, with the first game to support it, being Mario Kart Wii.

Club Nintendo is a customer loyalty program, which rewards people for buying Nintendo products. Once you buy a game that supports Club Nintendo, all you have to do is go to the official site, which isn't quite finished yet, and enter in your details and unique product code. Each code gives you Star Points, which can be used in exchange for exclusive goods, like toys or Nintendo Memorabilia.

So far, the only other title that supports Club Nintendo is Wii Fit, which comes out in Australia on May 8.

When Alone in the Dark came onto the scene in 1992, it instantly become a success and spawned three sequels, none of which were as popular as the original. Skip forward a few years to 2008 and Atari are on the verge of release a new Alone in the Dark game, for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PC. On top of that, Atari Australia has just announced that the PC and 360 iterations of Alone in the Dark, will be getting Limited Edition treatment.

The Limited Edition pack includes: a copy of the game, Edward Carnby action figure, original sound track, art book, and marking of DVD. The Xbox 360 LE will cost A$119.95 ($112.92), while the PC version will cost significantly less at A$79.95 ($75.26).

Developed by the French-based Eden Games, Alone in the Dark puts you in control of Edward Carnby, who has set out to discover the mysterious occurrences that are happening in Centennial Park. Currently, Alone in the Dark is expected to hit retail on July 3 and judging by our latest impression, its shaping up quite nicely.

Nintendo Australia have hit another big milestone today, as it sees the number of games available on Virtual Console tick over the 200 mark in Australia. The two games released today were Wonderboy and Fantasy Zone, both from Sega Master System and worth 500 Wii points. These two games make it a total of 201 games currently available on the service.

Fantasy Zone is a side-scrolling game, which sees players take control a space ship, as you blast your way through levels. In Wonderboy, you play as the games main protagonist--Tom-Tom the Wonderboy--as he fights his way through different levels, trying to rescue his girlfriend who has been kidnapped by monsters.

This announcement puts Nintendo ahead of the competition as far as downloadable games go. Currently only 120 titles available to download on Xbox Live Arcade and less than 100 on the PlayStation Store.

Nintendo Australia also listed the top 10 Virtual Console games downloaded by Australian Gamers. Not surprising, half of the list is comprised of various Mario games. The full lit of games can be seen below.

1. Mario Kart 64
2. Super Mario Bros.
3. Super Mario 64
4. Super Mario World
5. Super Mario Bros. 3
6. Donkey Kong Country
7. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
8. Sonic The Hedgehog
9. Paper Mario
10. Lylat Wars

At time of publication, Nintendo Australia are yet to respond to our emails in regards to how many games have been sold over VC since its release in 2006.

Last year saw more games expos pop-up around Australia than ever before. What's even better, is that they were spread from coast to coast, as opposed to traditionally only being on the east coast. Go3 was in Perth, Game1 in Sydney, and Games & Entertainment Expo in Melbourne, which also coincided with the Game Connect Asia Pacific conference. Despite now being detached from GCAP, the organisers of eGames--Australasian Exhibitions and Events--have today confirmed that the expo will be returning to the Melbourne Exhibition Centre on November 14, for two days.

Aside from having the latest games from publishers and developers there to play, this year's convention will see an increased focus on home entertainment products. "Buyers of the latest generation consoles are also updating their home entertainment systems and screens in order to realise the full potential of the new graphics so having a substantial home entertainment presence will provide an excellent synergy on the show floor." said Noel Gray, managing director of Australasian Exhibitions and Events.

Last year's exhibition attracted over 16,500 visitors and included exhibitions from some of the industries larest companies, including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Be sure to check out all of GameSpot AU's coverage from the event when it rolls around in November, or click here to view photos from eGames 07.

With the PlayStation Store out of action for the next two weeks, it's up to Microsoft and Nintendo to pick up where Sony left off.

The '90s saw a variety of Mario spin-off games come out; Dr Mario, Yoshi's Island, and Wario Land are just a few that come to mind. Slowly, but surely, Nintendo are re-releasing them via Virtual Console and this week sees the release of Yoshi's Cookie. The premise is quite simple, mix n' match different cookies into rows of the same type, which are then cleared from the screen--Tetris anyone? Yoshi's Cookie will set you back approximately 500 Wii points.

The sole release on Xbox Live Arcade this week is Mr. Driller. The game is really easy to pick up, all you do is, drill your way to the bottom of the level, while avoiding falling blocks and running out of air. The difference between this version and previous iterations is its addition of online play. Up to four players can battle it out in a battle-esque mode, where the best score wins, or in a tag team mode, where two players team up to beat the other pair. Mr Driller came out on Wednesday and costs 800 Microsoft Points.

Violent videogames, do they really have an effect on kids? That's for the courts to decide.

Never let it be said that game developers and publishers aren't giving back to the community. Sega is doing their part in helping balance the fun of bludgeoning a hobo to death with a hunk of wood covered in rusty nails, or crushing a dude's head in a vice, with the real world social responsibility of pony ownership and heart collection.

For more information on how you can become a more even-handed gamer, visit the Offset the Evil website, and check out the video below. Sega is also promising they'll be adding new games and videos to help rid you of that filthy feeling you have that just won't come off.