For those of you who remember the Gaia Online announcements from Boston Anime 2008 in March and zOMG! closed-beta announcement in July 2008.
I was tickled pink to take a personal tour of the upcoming zOMG! MMO game with senior producer and director of zOMG!, Dave Georgeson. The game looks amazing. Don’t let those little saucer-eyed marshmallow puffs of cuteness fool you. From the preview demonstration Georgeson and his team gave, its nothing I’d wanna hug or hang around with but its a world I can’t wait to explore.
If you think Gaia Online is amazing, you will be more than pleased with their newest game scheduled for the end of Summer 2008. No exact date as of yet since they are still in the testing phase of quality assurance.
“The clients are all in flash for a full feature MMO with a lot more. No cost to play, no downloads. Just play as long as you want to,” Georgeson said during the presentation. “We’re driving! Gaia Online has been growing over the past few years with unique players every month (and) millions of posts a day. Its an active community with features on the site that’s really rich. When we asked the community what they would like to see most of all and they asked for an MMO to make Gaia come to life ... so we have been working (on the project for) the past year and half.”
He said the one thing they didn’t want to do is create an MMO that would separate the Gaia users from their friends or a game where they had to create an entirely new identity or avatar to play.
“The site is really cool and have a lot of MMO features on it already with thousands of costume options, houses and we knew the players have already created their identity which is preserved in the game,” Georgeson said. “Its definitely the most easiest MMO to get into. It wouldn’t mean much if it weren’t a fun game. All thing things you’d expect from a regular MMO but there’s a lot of social features, mini games, guilds, crews [groups] and things like badges, recipes and tons of things to do. But we had to start from a different spot than most people do and most MMOs begin from a cookie cutter start.”
In the demonstration, he explained that since most Gaia users are used to the community aspect of the site that they would want to maintain the community aspect of Gaia within the MMO world which also included staying in contact with friends.
“It is easy to find your friends in this game,” Georgeson explained. “ In [regular] MMOs you have to create a character in [a game-assigned] server. In our game we don’t care where you go, but what we do care about is you finding your friends. So you can log in, click on a button and find your friends. So that its easy to make friends, easy to find your friends and easy to play. Our audience is 55 percent girls and 45 percent guys, our audience is different so we needed to do things differently. The flexibility is really serious and we stepped up what your characters do in advance. The goal is to make the game easy to play at any level. Everything is designed to be casual (when it comes to) picking up the game. I don’t want to label this game as casual, but it’s causal in how you pick up (and understand the game). It will become more complex as you go.”
While Georgeson’s avatar began battling the creatures of zOMG! he discussed the many options players can choose for their avatars and how to advance in the game whether you decide to visit the NPC (non playable characters) for quests or go on an adventure with your friends.
“We have had to do some things differently by putting efforts into the storyline and characters themselves,” Georgeson said. “I’ve mentioned the mini-games… we’ve developed these mini-games that players can play regardless of who is around them. You can find flags or fight monsters its more of a social experience. It’s social in that it tries to introduce you to other players and allow you to make new friends by talking to other people to help build clans and groups. We will continuously evolve the game in the coming years as the world itself is fairly large.”
He said in the world of zOMG! there are areas within the game that are only accessible after achieving certain events and added that the best thing about the game is that its free but there are options to make donations for certain items and perks.
“The game is really free and we’re serious about that, you can play without spending a dime but one of the things you can do to support the game is buy superchargers that help restore your avatar’s stamina,” he said. “Players can take any item and sell them in the marketplace if they choose. For now we’re shooting for a release by the end of Summer but I can’t guarantee a set date. Unlike a lot of companies I’ve ever worked for and I’ve been in games for more than 20 years, I’m really happy and feel better about this game.”
According to the site’s fact sheet, the game will allow players to explore the world of Gaia in a new way with features that include streaming music, stylish worlds that are already familiar to Gaia members, interactive game play and side quests. Features I can’t wait to explore myself once it releases and being a member of Gaia Online for awhile, I can honestly say this site has grown and evolved into something totally awesome.
Read [Anime Boston] Read [Gamertell] Site [Gaia Online] Site [zOMG!]
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