Mechwarrior News

[Moz]

I thought MechWarrior fans might find this interesting:

According to an article on Gamasutra, Fasa founder Jordan Weisman has bought back the liscense for the Mechwarrior games and several other Fasa titles from Microsoft. His new company, Smith & Tinker has big plans for the Mechwarrior franchise, but they're not saying exactly what yet.

From the article:

"Smith & Tinker is pleased to announce that it has licensed from Microsoft the electronic entertainment rights for Mr. Weisman's previous creations of MechWarrior, Shadowrun, Crimson Skies and the other properties of the FASA catalog.

We’re not quite ready to announce our plans for each property, but please be assured that our goal is to surprise and delight old fans, while welcoming new fans to these fantastic worlds."

Link to the Gamasutra article

Smith & Tinker's website

[Urragra]

That is  brilliant.  Maybe they will do something useful with them.  I have been fairly unimpressed with MS's stewardship of the FASA franchises...

[Moz]

From what I've read, MS had no plans to make another MechWarrior game. They basically just shelved it, even though all the MW games have sold over 11 million copies worldwide. Guess it just wasn't enough for em.

It'll be interesting to see what Smith & Tinker come up with. Not sure if it'll be MechWarrior V, a MechWarrior MMO, or what. According to Smith & Tinker's website, they're all about connecting unconnected entertainment products, like books, toys, games, movies. What we get might be something really offbeat. Like you get a big box with your video game and a big toy mech, or something like that.

[Frehley Starchild]

i want a real life mech so i can shoot urragra

[Moz]

That's a long shot, from AZ to NJ. Some sort of clan or lostech railgun might work. 

[Urragra]

I want a good Multi player BattleTech title so I can play with you mooks.  Maybe they'll be able to do it for us...  And Freh... You couldn't hit me if you wanted...  *grins*

[Connor Altinus Mcleod]

A mmo should not be that hard for Mw? I mean look at the universe a bit of Clan and Inner Sphere battles.


Connor

[Moz]

A MechWarrior MMO could be great. The setting is already there, a large area of space with a lot of planets, different factions battling for control of territory. The only problem I see is that the setting might be too large. I think the last BT stellar map I saw had over a thousand planets in the inner sphere alone. But I guess they could scale the map down a bit, just the border worlds, or maybe a bunch of key strategic planets.

[Urragra]

As long as it doesn't look like that silly Inner Sphere Wars the amature hour is putting together...

[Gilgamoth]

I don't know if any of you are console gamers, but there is a suprising good Xbox360 game called Chromehounds that is basically like the old Mechwarrior multiplayer PC games, only with extra awesome.  (The single-player mode of the game is only so-so.  Multiplayer Chromehounds was pretty great.)

[Moordoom de Darkhold]

Reviving an Old Topic 
Mechwarrior Living Legends http://mechlivinglegends.net/ is building a complete Conversion for the Crysis game. This will encompass Almost every facet of the Mechwarrior universe, from playing an Infantry Man or Elemental , vehicles and tanks, thru 88 planned Mech Models, plus VTOLs, Aerospace Fighters and a few Dropships. The only thing missing are Jumpships, Space Naval Vessels and Water Naval Vessels.
Plus they got a complete License Blessing from Microsoft to do this. I am not sure how far the license extends in so far as Smith and Tinker are concerned. But It will be capable of 64 online players on a single battlefield, and with what ISWars is doing would make for a great Persistent Game.

An MMO for Mechwarrior would be kind tough, But a Persistent Universe game would be good. GEnie had one with the Original Mechwarrior game back in the early 90's, and MPBT 3025 was almost a real game by Electronic Arts before the canned it. It was all the way into Open Beta and a couple of months before release.


Food for thought

Moordoom

[Urragra]

and with what ISWars is doing would make for a great Persistent Game.

I was with you up to this point.  ISW is a non starter.  I moved up through regiment commander with House Marik in that game and finally quit due to the developers of the game and the damage poor game implementation did to the house community (drove off all the useful people).

Having said that I am interested in the crysis deal!  Keep us up to speed on that Moor!

[Moz]

I checked out the Living Legends site, and it does look really good, it would be awesome to see a BT total conversion mod successfully completed and released to the public. I read a while back that the mektek.net folks were working on a total conversion for Quake Wars: Enemy Territory. As far as I know, it's still in development. A couple of years ago I read about a group that was developing a Battlestar Galactica (modern) total conversion for the Freespace 2 engine. They had a demo video on their site with vipers in combat that was totally awesome, but alas, to this day no actual game that we can play. The City of Doors initiative to make the Planescape setting available for Neverwinter Nights is another example of talented gamers coming together with grand ideas to develop an awesome mod for an existing game, and nothing ever coming of it. I would really love to see one of these community efforts come to fruition, but so far, no luck.

[Moordoom de Darkhold]

I moved up through regiment commander with House Marik in

Yea, me too. I still subscribe to the House Marik Yahoo group, since there are a few people I have played Battletech with there since 1992. And I was a Regimental Commander there too. At one time, back in the 90's I was a Military District Commander but.....

I was also an Admin for ALFA in the NWN community who were developing a persistent world of the Forgotten Realms, and we came up with some great Ideas, like the character transfer to differing servers, but the community kept tearing it apart because it was not the "perfect" picture they were looking for.

I looked into Smith and Tinker, and there site has not changed since the February announcement so I am holding out for Warhammer Online for the time being, and playing Crysis and WOW when I have a few minutes to spare.

Moordoom

[Ravenhulll]

Mechwarrior is okay, but I would love to see something new for Crimson Skies.

[Urragra]

*drools* crimson skies