Global Agenda: WOAH!

This game totally came out of left field for me.  I think I remember hearing about it like 8m-a year ago but I never looked into it.  I was pointed in the direction of Hi-Rez Studios’ website yesterday and that led me to the Global Agenda website where I immediately went “WOAH!” at everything they’re doing.   Check out this trailer.  [I removed the stream.  It was bothering me.  Visit the link]

Does that not look amazing?  I’m kicking myself for not paying closer attention to the game sooner.  It looks like a Tribes meets Planetside. A Massively Multiplayer Action game with a player driven world. Looking at their features it seems like they’re on the right track:

* Develop your agent – Create, extensively customize, and improve your agent character over the course of your career, complimenting your FPS skills with RPG-style progression and high-tech gear.
* Advance your agency – Join a player-created agency, compete in technology races for advanced equipment, and capture critical locations to increase your influence in the world.
* Compete in fast-paced PvP combat – Work with your allies to gather reconnaissance data, then raid or capture enemy-controlled facilities during objective-based missions. Equip yourself from a powerful array of weapons, armor, and strategic devices like triggered explosives, deployable turrets, stealth suits, holographic decoys, and remote control robots.
* Experience a dynamic, player-driven world – Agency leaders navigate through a global conflict of other player-run groups, striving to reach their goals first. Territory, resources, technology, and influence are all valuable commodities, with agencies engaging in politics, intrigue, and outright deception to control them.

The game is in alpha right now but from reading their FAQ it seems like they’re really in touch with what the MMOG scenery needs.  When they talk about how they’re different from other MMOG’s I found myself nodding in agreement.  They’ve even come up with a way for guilds (or Agencies) to have their own headquarters where they can hang out as well as social areas to trade and network with other players where you won’t be in the fray.  It seems like a really cool idea and hopefully they can turn out a fantastic game.

I’ve added Global Agenda to my ‘games to watch’ list because it’s trying to do something different and, so far, showing that they just might pull it off.

  • I’ve been watching GA for awhile now. I was disappointed that it’s third-person only so far; I’m more a fan of first-person when it comes to shooters.

    I’m intrigued to eventually hear how they’re handling the instanced battles yet allowing territory control with a persistent war in the background. It sounds similar to a “what if?” article I wrote awhile back suggesting the Warhammer IP could be very well-suited to this type of setup in addition to (or rather than) the MMORPG. Not sure if I managed to get across the points I was trying to describe though.

    Not every game needs to be an MMOG and not every MMOG needs to be a [censored] DikuMMORPG. Bring it on and expand the MMOG genre as a whole!

  • In a way, I see what you mean Shnipa. Where WAR would accomplish that goal in ideologically, Global Agenda (because of the style of game) could accomplish it more on the surface as a fundamental part of the game. In theory, it looks promising.

  • I must say my interest has been piqued, though I would like to see if there will be any combat against npc’s…or, can agencies HQ’s have npc guards and such? I am a bit weary of a completely player-run story line. My worries stem from the idea that the player created story would just fall to the background while rampant and nonsensical combat took place. To me that’s just as unmotivating as npc driven nonsense.

  • I’m going to be the pessimist.

    I’ve never seen a capture and keep based game truly work, WAR included. Because who whats to wait around and guard a keep. Planetside gave no incentive to sticking around to guard a base, WAR gives a little but its not enough.

    There needs to be a way to jump straight into the action and not travel around only to get to a place of action and its all gone. Planetside figured this out by porting you to an area of action, but they figured this out far to late in the games life. War should take a note from this, and I’m not talking about scenarios.

    My other fear is an overpopulation of snipers. In every FPS, MMOFPS. The sniper population is out of control.

    Also, how will they keep large battles from becoming an unplayable slide show, WAR is bad but at least you know you may be still hitting something because you have it targeted. That won’t fly in an FPS where what you have your sights on is what you hit.

    I would love to see a game like this work, I just haven’t seen it happen yet.

  • @Scott – The third person view is good for me. I actually get head aches and motion sickness playing FPS games after awhile.

    I was just mentioning to a buddy of mine that we need more third person shooters. Time to bookmark this game.

  • Oh, and if it helps Keen/Graev get into the beta, I linked them here as how I found out about it. 😉

  • I found out about this game a month or so ago and I was also very impressed with that video. I played a lot of Tribes, some Planetside and what GA seemed to be doing was just that.

    Well, the game has not a lot of Planetside really. I was disappointed by that. It doesn’t have a big persistent world like in Planetside. It all revolves around instances where you have missions to fight other players or bots (that’s the PVE side of it).

    They will have several missions of small scale battles (10vs10), with objectives like Capture the Flag, Territory Control. If you’ve played BGs and Scenarios, that’s just what that is, and they will also have the 60vs60 Agency battles. Everything is instanced and you have a lobby where you walk around, buy equipment, form teams…

    It has potential. I was expecting something different. Right now it is a 3rd person shooter with a 3D lobby of sorts but it can turn out to be something really fun.

  • @howdy doody: No idea. I would imagine not that large, but given they will be using some form of instancing I bet they’ll be able to pull something impressive off.

  • It’s a multi-instanced setup. They’re calling it a Hex Map or something. Many will be 10v10 but some of the larger Alliance battles will be (they’re shooting for) 100v100.

    Certain points are open for attack during certain times of the day so casual players still have plenty of options to play without being either overwhelmed.

    Alliances (guilds) are a big attraction but you can also “solo” as a Mercenary and get hired to help defend any given realm as well.

    It’s also got integrated VOIP, always a plus.

    Not sure how exactly they’ll handle the conquest and battle frontlines, but I suspect it will be something similar to how Ubisoft handles Tom Clancy’s EndWar where each battle I fight is up to 4v4 but at the end of the day the master server tallies up the total activity and determines which realms frontlines moved, who owns what post, or which realm had its capitol sacked.

  • Eww, instancing. It’s not epic if fights are separated into little skirmishes.

    Potential’s there, though.

  • Sweet!

    I’ve been looking for a good MMOFPS for ages. Now I have a backup for when Huxley inevitably fails to materialise.

  • I dunno, any type of sci-fi themed mmorpg has been pretty fail so far. Alot of it is due to lack of interesting content on the pve front. This is a pitfall I can see this game falling into. The best I can see it as is a sci-fi’d out BF2 mmofps. Which is fine I suppose but far from a traditional mmorpg. That said sure it might be fun to try but mmofps from what I’ve experienced lack in the incentive department too much to even waste my time with. Multi instancing is total fail as well. Did they take developers straight from AoC? lol. Anyways that alone kinda kills it for me already. It did look kinda purty though, but then again it’s running on Unreal 3 engine go figure.

  • I was super excited about this game for about 5 minutes. Then it came to my attention that it was HIGHLY instanced in terms of combat. Which seems to me means its going to be more like Unreal Tournament with a graphical lobby.

    It might be a little deeper than that, but my understanding is that it isn’t going to be the big open world type things that a lot of us would like it to be.

  • You can’t really think of it as a MMORPG. It’s more of a MMO FPS with persistent instances of combat, if I understand it correctly. It’s a mix of planetside and tribes, although not as open as planetside. It’s like a MMOActionGame (MMOAG).

    It’s definitely not going to be a LOTRO or a WoW or a WAR or an AOC in terms of world persistence (What little these games have of it anyway…)

  • Right. We really need to broaden our horizons and stop automatically assuming anything with “MMO” in the label is also an RPG. Even within the RPG aspect, if we don’t allow for some branching out then what we’ve got is all we’re ever going to get: a rut of DikuMMORPG clones.

    GA is a 3PS with tons of RPG elements to progress your persistent characters and a persistent war in the background. The actual battles themselves will be in “instanced” maps just like any shooter would, rather than an open world like Planetside attempted — UE3 simply doesn’t do that very well.

    I don’t mind the concept at all, but it remains to be seen, regardless how fun it may be, if it’s “worth” the monthly fee. Especially when I own two “persistent war” games on the 360 that don’t charge extra to play.

  • It looks like it could be good but I’m still very skeptical this early in the game. Okay, it’s a shooter that essentially offers what WAR was shooting for. It could turn out great but, like others, it’ll be on my “watch but don’t get excited about” list until a little bit down the line.

    They have the chance to make it something worth excitement though, so let’s keep our fingers crossed 🙂

  • Looks a lot like Webzen’s Huxley… which is about a year and a half late being released. Be interesting to see which one comes out first because they’ll likely be competing head-to-head…

    -nick / reroller

  • Sounds like a good thing if they haven’t got much publicity. This community loves to take a new game, hang all their hopes and expectations on it and then deride it once it launches and it doesn’t meet those expectations.

  • I’m detecting a hint of emo there Levi! Did we badmouth your favorite game? AoC perhaps? 😛 When games fail to live up to the promises set forth by their dev team, marketing, suits, or even their potential then this community will certainly be the first to let people know. I think that’s a fantastic thing.

    Keepin’ it real since ’07.

  • Nah mate. My favorite game is either Streets of Rage 2 or Unreal Tournament, I’m undecided.

    I should probably clarify some of the ambiguity in my post. By ‘community’ I mean the majority of gamers who post on various boards and sites around the web. And it certainly isn’t limited to MMOs. Assassin’s Creed and Halo 3 spring to mind as recent examples.

    While marketing certainly plays a part in what people are led to believe about a game, you would think that by now we would take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps I am just getting old and jaded.

    The intention of my post was to suggest that the gaming community as a whole tends set unreasonable expectations of games, which are of course assisted by marketing, and then be disappointed when they are not met. And the fact that ‘Global Agenda’ hasn’t succumbed to ‘nerd fever syndrome’ yet is a good thing.

    When high expectations are not set, we are ‘pleasantly surprised’ as opposed to ‘bitterly disappointed’ (or ‘slapped in the face’ as I believe the popular dysphemism goes).

    Emo – No. Frustration – Yes. People need to learn to think more critically and realise that expectations rarely meet reality. They also need to be more aware of what is and isn’t possible from a developers perspective. A splash of patience wouldn’t go astray either.

    The post wasn’t intended to be aimed at you, and one of the reasons that I enjoy your blog is that you do think critically and constructively about games. So keep ‘keeping it real’ as you say.

    Peace