[MUD-Dev] Ballerium: Interesting Game

[Valerio Santinelli]

From: "Adam" <ceo at grexengine.com>
> John Arras <jra at cs.umd.edu>

>> I was surfing and I came across this site:

>>   http://www.majorem.com/

>> and their game: Ballerium. I am not sure what to make of it, but
>> they're trying to make a MMORTS, where you don't leave the world
>> when you log out, but instead stay online controlled by AI.

> I'd been watching their website for about a year, and noticed them
> change from a focus on MMOG technology to a focus on their game,
> Ballerium.

I've never been on their site before meeting them at ECTS, so I
didn't even know they were focusing more on technology than on the
game itself. That's quite weird. I would have thought that they
could have done the opposite.

> At ECTS last week, I went and had a chat and a quick guided tour
> of some of the game elements (but alas I didn't stay long enough
> to learn much).

I've had a short guided tour, too. I was on hurry so I could only
speak to one of the guys and watch him play for a few minutes.

> Very brief notes I took were (hopefully majorem are on the list
> and can correct all my misconceptions? :) :

>   - You do have *some* base buildings a la warcraft etc, but you
>   don't build up a permanent base - you're supposed to wander
>   around with your army and ?move your base about?. I discussed
>   the base aspects and it seemd the emphasis was very much on your
>   army as opposed to your base-building skills, but they didn't
>   mention the concept of "cities" where you might have permanent
>   buildings. I should have probed more :) but I had a meeting to
>   go to :(

Yes, I noticed the same. You are merely wandering around without a
real home.

>   - all units get XP and go up levels etc yadda yadda (ISTR the
>   quote was "like in Diablo")

Yes, they were quite proud of this feature, even if it's nothing new
on the scene.

>   - There are approximately ten races to play as, which are all
>   very different (allegedly - quote was "not like warcraft where
>   there are only a couple and they're the same anyway") - ISTR the
>   website used to be quite proud of how much they had
>   differentiated the races, with substantial backstories, and
>   inter-relationships etc.

Have you seen their trading cards representing the different races? 
:) The game I've seen at ECTS was not showing anything peculiar
about the different races. Apart from their visual representation,
there was nothing special about any of them. I think this is due of
the code being still in development.

>   - Apparently it (will eventually..) takes place on one huge map
>   - they were only showing a small map at ECTS but emphasised this
>   was for practical demo purposes only

Yes, they're saying that the map is more than huge. It's
infinite. As you travel around the world, if you reach a boundary,
the server creates a new randomized piece of map so you can never
get to the end of the world.

>   - ...the demo looked pretty solid and fluid and seemed to be
>   working pretty well, FWIW.

Even if it was working well, there was not that much to play with
and the user interface was almost not existent.

--
c'ya!

Valerio Santinelli
tanis at mediacom.it
HateSeed Gaming Magazine http://www.hateseed.com/
My Lab http://tanis.hateseed.com/
In Flames Italia http://www.inflames.it/

P.S.

Adam, I wish you answered to my post on the META list, so we could
have meet at ECTS. I was there with Richard Bartle and it would have
been fun to get together for a few words. :)




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