Huxley is back with a new publisher

[eastmen]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6191966.html?part=rss&tag=gs_all_games&subj=6191966

When Webzen first debuted Huxley to great fanfare during the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo. At that time, the game garnered its fair share of attention thanks to the promise of addictive first-person shooter combat made even more so by massively multiplayer online role-playing game sensibilities.

However, though the MMOFPS was initially slated for release on the Xbox 360 and PC in 2006, development has taken far longer than Webzen initially anticipated. Details on how Huxley has been shaping up have been few and far between since GameSpot was given its last look at the game--way back in March 2007.

That information dam may soon break, however, as NHN USA has announced that it has picked up the rights to publish Huxley in North America and Western Europe. NHN USA expects to release the PC edition of the game through its online portal ijji.com in late 2008. The company did not elaborate on its plans for a traditional retail release of the game.

NHN USA currently only has the rights to distribute the PC game. However, a Webzen representative has confirmed for GameSpot that NHN USA has also secured first-look rights to publish the Xboxx 360 version. As previously announced, Webzen plans to launch the Xbox 360 edition at least six months after its PC counterpart.

This game worries me for the same reasons that the playstation 3 game worries me. But still hopefully its good

 

[Nesh]

Which PS3 game are you referring to?

This is not coming to the PS3 AFAIK. Are they making a game for the PS3?

 

[eastmen]

What is it MAG or something? That 256 player game. I think large fps games like these simply wont work well.

 

[Skrying]

What is it MAG or something? That 256 player game. I think large fps games like these simply wont work well.

Entirely different. MAG is not an MMO, MAG just takes games that are already out there (games have done upwards of 128 players already) and pushes it even further. Huxley on the other hand is an MMOFPS. There might not even be battles with 64 players in Huxley, but the world they interact in could have many, depends on how the game is instanced. Planetside for instance was an MMOFPS and it's not at all comparable to say Battlefield.

With that said I don't think Huxley will be any good nor do I think it ever was going to be good. Frankly these super ambitious projects without good foundation hardly ever work out. Now that they're having publisher troubles says a lot of the state of the game I think. The big delays is also telling that they had little clue as to what they were getting in to from the start and only luck and good management can get you through that.

 

[Nesh]

What is it MAG or something? That 256 player game. I think large fps games like these simply wont work well.

Oh I didnt know it was they who were doing MAG.

Yes indeed. The ambitions they have for MAG are very big. It hasnt been done before and so its like a first experiment. It will involve lots of trial and error and even then, it is uncertain if it will end up well. The scale is too big so I wonder if they can tweak and fix the arising problems during development enough to make it good.

 

[Skrying]

MAG is a Zipper game, the SOCOM people. Huxley is a Webzen game they've made... nothing of importance. So no, they're not the same people.

 

[eastmen]

Entirely different. MAG is not an MMO, MAG just takes games that are already out there (games have done upwards of 128 players already) and pushes it even further. Huxley on the other hand is an MMOFPS. There might not even be battles with 64 players in Huxley, but the world they interact in could have many, depends on how the game is instanced. Planetside for instance was an MMOFPS and it's not at all comparable to say Battlefield.

With that said I don't think Huxley will be any good nor do I think it ever was going to be good. Frankly these super ambitious projects without good foundation hardly ever work out. Now that they're having publisher troubles says a lot of the state of the game I think. The big delays is also telling that they had little clue as to what they were getting in to from the start and only luck and good management can get you through that.

Both have massive amounts of people. If you've read up on huxley you would see that they limit the amount of people per zone to 200.

Huxley's Persistent World, a space where players can grow and live, can support up to 5,000 players per server. PvP battle fields are separated from Persistent World areas such as villages, and the scale ranges from the usual 4 vs. 4 battles to massive 100 vs. 100 battles.

The maximum number was not fixed at 200 for technical restrictions. After a variety of settings and testing to figure out which scale could maximize enjoyment while ensuring effective control of characters, we reached the conclusion that 100vs100 was the most ideal. This is, of course, bigger than the scale of current FPS games like Battlefield 2, which are 32 vs. 32 battles.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/704/704750p2.html

So while huxley is a persistant world these games will both have similar problems. I.E how to make large scale combat in a fps fun to do.