Not every day I get a scoop like this, being one of those folks who does this sort of thing for personal catharsis, the ability to set my own working hours, and of course, no remuneration at all. But this week I managed to take some time out of being ill enough to be grumpy, (but not ill enough for professional medical help, or any kind of sympathy,) to actually play a Alpha MMO Test Client.
I don't remember having to sign anything NDA-ish, and am far too thick to imply one, although to be fair, one of the least successful ways I can think of to keep things secret about an In Development MMO, would be to have three PCs running what you have so far, at the Eurogamer 2008 Expo, and then let people with 'Press' wristbands (however improbably justified) near it. I went expecting little; a nice day out and a chance to meet some jolly decent folks who had previously only existed as pseudonyms or podcast voices, and basically, a room full of consoles which were interesting, but not my chosen field.
Bearing that in mind, I was delighted to find Jumpgate: Evolution on display, tucked away at the back of the hall, as part of some kind of Dolby In Games showcase, and for an Alpha stage product, it seemed pretty playable and surprisingly complete.
Before gushing off into impressions, its worth noting that their own FAQ suggests a Spring 2009 Release, four months away or more, so pretty much anything or everything I saw could be tweaked, changed or pulled entirely.
That caveat aside, what I saw looked very 'finished'. Jumpgate was always a game primarily about The Dogfighting, and that all seems spot on; space seems lavishly deep and colourful, full of interesting radiant and pitted rocks, wobbling glowing anomalies (the Jumpgates of the title, I believe), intricate and light-studded stations and all that good stuff. Player and enemy ship designs (that I saw) seem interesting and are easily up to the high bar set by EVE Online's recent Trinity Upgrade; shiny, sleek, and of an obviously high quality.
More importantly, the thing really moves well. I didn't have the presence of mind to note the PC system specs of the demo machines, but suspect whatever it was, will be 'standard' by next spring. Gone is the counter-intuitive, inaccessible and often inadvertently fatal 'Newtonian-esque' drift-n-gimbal flight model of it's predecessor, and instead, JG:E seems to now be fully fitted out with a very comfortable and familiar 'Mouse-flight' system, which owes much to Freelancer, DarkStar One and similar, where the pilot uses the mouse to drag an 'aim-point' around the screen, and the ship turns to follow automatically. WASD to move and strafe, Shift to Boost, etc. Its probably all remappable anyway - these things usually are.
No idea if the thing has Joystick Support; there didn't seem to be any there on the day, and frankly, I'd see no need, much preferring this Freelancer style Mouse system anyway. The other hazy nightmare memory I had of the first one seems to have been thoroughly addressed too; docking. The faintest mistouch of the joystick would usually spell instant, complete and utter destruction, costing you whatever the ship cost, and effectively keeping me in the newbie ship (Value; 0cr) forever. To dock now, simply fly near the waypoint and the auto-pilot takes over, which is a good thing. The white-knuckle bit should be Fighting The Enemy, not Entering Your Own Front Door!
No noticeable lag, but then again, for all I knew, the 'server' could have been just through the other side of the display stand on the same LAN, or all the way in the US some place. Be interesting to see how lag affects the thing, (and player density), since that was the main reason I never pursued the original beyond Beta; dial-up just didn't cut it in dogfighting, and back then, dial-up was all I had.
Once inside, the Other Main Bit of the game, the Station Interface, is very well presented; clean, elegant, futuristic but in an understated way. It offers all the standard services one would expect; equipment, missions, market trading. There seemed to be some kind of manufacturing/crafting interface (I can't remember how that worked in the first one, but possibly was very similar). Interestingly, the Ship Shop only had art/models for the fighter types of ship, and 'not found' images for the medium/heavy/cruiser types of ship; still to go in, I expect. Alpha, remember.
Being an MMO, there has to be levels somewhere, and the character sheet showed progress in a variety of different pools. I got lost a bit, but I think this means that there are different levels in different aspects of space flight - shooting, mining, haulage, etc? Might be wrong there, but at any rate, equipment, and ships, have a cash price, a level requirement and possibly a specific certification requirement too.
One of my favourite parts of the previous game was the Medal Case, which seems to be in the new version in force too, with medals for almost everything, and then some. Possibly these tie into the purchase and use of equipment this time around. Not entirely sure, but certainly some long-term character development to be had, in what otherwise might just be a very quick shooter.
The chap shepherding the display (whose name I forgot to ask; I fail at Journalism!) told us that only the starting area, tutorial and early missions for the Solrain faction were in at the moment, which is fair enough. Octavius and Quantar to add, along with whatever extras and Others there might be.
I think it looks very promising. Looks being the operative word, of course, and its almost impossible to get a feel for the deeper elements of MMO gameplay, community, progression and such from a quick five minute fling at an Expo. What I saw however, looked like a significant jump ahead of my memories of Pre-NGE Jump to Lightspeed, and would give EVE Online: Trinity a run for its money too.
Mind you, from what I saw, while looking broadly quite similar to EVE aesthetically at least; dark, shiny and lavish futuristic space combat, it is likely to play far more like Jump to Lightspeed; this will be in-the-cockpit dogfighting all the way, with no menus (Right-Click > Orbit At > 5000km, F1, F2, F3, F4, Go Get Coffee...) and maths (If {Transversal Velocity * Range / Tracking Speed * Signature Radius + n...) doing the hard work for you.
Whether that frenetic pace means that it can't then also capture something of EVE's majestic depth and intricate complexity, remains to be seen, but if you've ever, as I have, felt so divorced from the action in EVE combat that you end up setting the camera to follow your own drones (and then felt immensely jealous that they seem to be having a much more interesting time than I am!), then this might well be the game for you.
There have been on and off rumours that CCP are going to add this kind of twitch combat to EVE for ages, but NetDevil look to be pretty much there with the flight engine, and now filling in the backstory. I suspect the two titles will compete for subscribers, but I think unnecessarily so, being quite different kinds of gaming experience. EVE may lose quite a few of its finest Interceptor Pilots come the Spring though, as this kind of thing looks to be far more up that kind of alley to me.
I guess the biggest question to my mind, is 'Is the market ready for this kind of game at all?' The Stats Site for the original Jumpgate lists, as I type, 26 players online. Its old, sure, and unpromoted, of course, but clearly it will take a lot more than just migration from the old version to make Jumpgate: Evolution a success. I hope it is; we could do with more spaceships, and to me, it seems like it would complement EVE very well.
Anyway, whatever the ruminations, definitely one to watch over the coming months; there's always room for a bit of Different!
Oh, and yes, it had very nice, er, Dolbies! Probably!
Here's some Video of JG:E being played, (and also me kicking Cohost's arse at Little Big Planet!) courtesy of the Limited Edition chaps, who are as a rule, much better organised than us!:
Limited Edition: Video Blog - Eurogamer Expo 2008
M'Cohost is still editing our own aural trawling of the day, but should have those stitched together like a Sackboy of Confusion by next week!