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The Matrix Media Movies Role Playing (Games)

24 Hours In The Matrix 71

Posted by Zonk from the jackburn dept.
Both E! Online and Gamespy have looks at the most recently launched Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying game, The Matrix Online. From the Gamespy article: "Since the close of the beta, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced that it has employed a troupe of 20-odd people whose job it will be to enact narrative scenarios in The Matrix Online live. These people will assume the roles of popular characters, interact with players, and generally move the stories in ways that only live "actors" can."
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24 Hours In The Matrix More

24 Hours In The Matrix

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  • Tough choice (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @07:32PM (#12041498)
    E! Online and Gamespy... hard to say which company's game reviewing I respect most...

  • Good and bad... (Score:4, Funny)

    by tha_mink ( 518151 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @07:32PM (#12041502)
    While it sounds like a cool job...imagine trying to explain to your non-computer related friends and family what you do for a living. It's almost like working in one of those costumes at Disney_World...

    "You see...I am an actor in an online game which was made from a movie...aw...forget it"

  • After reading this, I can say but one thing. (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @07:35PM (#12041519)
    "Whoa..."

  • End of Beta was excellent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Red Moose ( 31712 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @07:39PM (#12041549)
    I got in the beta around 3 weeks before it ended. It was buggy as hell and missions were bugged, graphics, fighting was bugged, etc., . However, the concurrently ran a QA server which was a good few patches ahead. A lot of criticism that arrived at the open beta was because of the sudden influx of people bitching abotu stability when in fact the open beta change was a Stress Test for the servers.

    In the 72hrs prior to shutdown of the beta, it was patched up to the QA server updates. There was immediate improvements across the board in tability, etc., . The initial criticism of Matrix Online being a bugfest was no longer warranted but it did suffer the labelling because of Stress Test.

    The end of the beta - the almighty Matrix system crash that happened in game was amazing and a very involving MMORPG experience. Agents were spawning from game characters, major player controlled characters were being hunted down which was interaction at a pretty intense level. Major clans that had been involved over the months were summoned to appearances of Morpheus, etc., . Basically, we all got a glimpse of the plot and how it would work with the game.

    At the same time, we had Radio Free Zion streaming in with live actors. This was excellent immersion and was not as cheesy as you think. It was all very "real" with this added element, plus with great music streaming in the background on this station.

    So it built up over a period of hours, with sightings of Neo, the machines and the zionists breaking a truce with Morpheus insisting on the return of Neos body, etc., . Very well scripted and shows a lot of story potential. I was surprised at how well it actually all came together in the end but I'd recommend it definitely.

    WHile the key to the start of the game proper is you being a freshly freed human you choose your side - Merovingian, Machinist, Zionist. Characters from the movies come into play in your missions as you go up in rank. Also, the traditional warrior/magician classes remain but the magician is represented by matrix "hackers" who can fuck with the matrix world, etc., . Very well implemented.

    OK, so the whole breakdown of the human-machine truce from the end of Revolutions based on Morpheus demanding Neo's body is a bit lame it's better than humans starting a trade war or something equally Lucas-esque.

    • "OK, so the whole breakdown of the human-machine truce from the end of Revolutions based on Morpheus demanding Neo's body is a bit lame it's better than humans starting a trade war or something equally Lucas-esque."

      Lucas-esque? Come to think of it, those dreadlocked ghost twins were sort of like Jar Jar.

    • The coding system is absolutely terrible in MxO. You get your raw resources (bits) by decompiling items. From there, you create code fragments which can be used to create items and abilities. A major problem is there is no way to tell the chance you have to succeed in crafting. It tells you nothing about whether your coding skill really has an effect on the outcome of your crafting attempt. Also, the rarity of the bits is very skewed, with some of the most necessary bits for even low level items and abiliti
      • Well, for starters I have no ideea what you're talking about, never having played the game.
        BUT...

        "You get your raw resources (bits) by decompiling items."
        Ok, I can barely understand that.

        "Also, the rarity of the bits is very skewed, with some of the most necessary bits for even low level items and abilities being rare."
        Now you lost me.
        Ain't there only TWO types of bits there ? Like... uh... "0" and "1" ?
        I'd understand if you would have "bytes", "words" or even "floats" (heh) with some of them hard to come
        • The crafting system uses code bits as its base resource. There are 8 types of code bits, each labeled as code bit 1, code bit 2, etc. You combine code bits into code fragments, then use the code fragments to make an item code (similar to a template). You then compile the item code into a usuable item, which costs a certain amount of money. Each item code can only be used 15 times before it vanishes and you have to craft another one.
      • You can somewhat gauge your chances of success by looking at your WriteCode skill. If an item requires a WriteCode skill of 15 and your skill is at 15, I've seen a 50/50 shot at creating the item. You can boost this by coding near the booster antennas (although a small part of me wonders if the rumors of the antennas helping coding are true or not)

        The rarity of bits 1-8 isn't an issue at all. The best way to obtain a bit stock pile, as well as some of the less common bits, is to decompile Redpill Specia
      • Is it just me, or is this "coding system" a little stupid...
        It's like having a game about sex...

        (19:57) OI! Shag me!
        (19:57) OK
        (19:58) *You have both attained nakedness*
        (20:02) *You have reached orgasm*
        (20:03) *She has reached orgasm*
        The End.

        It's like... it's an abomination to sex, like this is an abomination to real coding!

  • Actors don't work (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yasth ( 203461 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @07:46PM (#12041604) Homepage Journal
    The whole idea of actors has been tried before, it is really hard to pull off, though. 20 odd people at 40 hours a week, yields 800 hours 48000 minutes. Given that they probably hope to have about that many players that means about a minute of interaction a week.

    Also wouldn't the interactions mostly be a bunch of comic book guy type questions? I mean cool it is neo and some guy is playing him, but what is he going to say? "Good job on that bunny, now watch me do my superman thing?".

    • Re:Actors don't work (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Quarters ( 18322 )
      The process of distributing TV and radio is call broadcasting because a small amount of data can simultaneously be distributed to a large viewer/listener group. Your "minute of interaction a week" conclusion is flawed in that it depends on each in-game actor only interacting with, and being seen by, one player at a time. This, obviously, won't be the case. At the worst the # of actors will generate "about a minute of interaction a week". The greater the parallelism with the player base achieved, the more
      • The key is the -interaction- the individual will directly have with one of the actors. Being broadcast to is not interaction. I'm guessing this is going to be somewhere in a gray area inbetween, where mostly you'll be talked -at- by these actors, with the main difference they are actually there and can do things.

        What'd be particularly goofy though is if they are there, but multipled across instances and can't really interact one on one at all, then it'd be a bit more like live television. The prospects
        • While that would work, and is a good idea, I had kind of pictured an actor making speeches and stuff. You know, rallying troops, staging battles, stuff like that. Or if they just walked around, you could just have them talk to a few lucky people. So you would be saying "So, did I tell you I talked to Neo? He kept saying 'whoa'. It was weird." And your friend would be like "Really? Cool. I saw Trillian once."
          • you saw Trillian once, wow that would be cool, a Hitchhikers Guide/Matrix crossover. Oh wait you meant Trinity.
          • That's exactly how it works. A character will privately contact "special" people (usually members of high-profile factions) and have them meet somwhere. He'll talk at them, they'll give some responses, then he goes away. In beta, there were a couple of open meetings where Morpheus showed up in a park and started ranting against the machine oppressors. Seraph also dueled a couple of people at some of the dueling tournaments.
      • Really, that's all we're talking about. More and more and more lag. Truly awful lag. Server killing connection swamping videocard toasting lag.

        At least, that's what happend in Asheron's Call when there were dev-run events. It's what happens in CoH. I can only assume it happens the same in other games.

    • Too bad MxO's designers never learned the basics :

      "...using real, live people to make your content interesting is like an admission of defeat. It says that virtual world is neither sufficently compelling to be interesting in its own right, nor sufficiently rich to enable players to make it interesting themselves."

      [Designing Virtual Worlds, Richard A. Bartle, 2003, New Riders Games, ISBN: 0131018167]

      Definitely a must for anyone interested in MMO design [amazon.com].

      • Not every feature is an admission of defeat. Perhaps they thought character interaction will improve the game and therefore included it regardless of whether the game can stand on its own? When you've made something good, that doesn't mean you have to stop improving it.

  • How Cool? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dubpal ( 860472 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @07:59PM (#12041713) Homepage
    While it's a nice idea, 20 actors over a massive environment containing thousands of players seems to be spreading it a little thin. For the average user, are these actors going to have any real impact on a player's experience? Seems to me if the game gets anywhere as popular as other MMORPGs, you're going to have little chance of interacting with an actor.

  • Graphics, how is it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @08:10PM (#12041792) Journal
    The only review I see in detail is here.
    http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameId/8 8

    Downloaded the videos from the website, didnt seem that impressive compared to what I'm playing in World of Warcraft.

    Anyone have any experience? How does it look and play compared to WoW? I know I tried City of Heros after playing WoW, canceled my account to CoH after a week.
    • I found the graphics to be nothing special, and the camera swings around too much, i prefer the graphics and camera in WoW. WoW has better gameplay too.
      • The camera is being worked on, and you can already stop it from swinging around most of the time. I've found the graphics to be most impressive, and think a lot of people are confusing Matrix industrial bleakness for poor image quality.

  • Great, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cluke ( 30394 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @08:31PM (#12041922)
    This is great and all, but the problem is that in games like this, everybody is determined to exist *outside* the game. People aren't playing against the game, they are playing against the rules - as if the designers have set them a challenge of how to defeat the system. This renders all role-play bogus. It is all the worse in MMORPGs like this (as opposed to single player RPGs), where peer pressure ensures that highest level = the winner.
    I mean, let's not kid ourselves, for all this fancy talk, we know that this game is all about whomping mobs and collection phat loot, whilst "omfg wtf lolling" with strangers. A few role-playing actors aren't going to fix that.
  • The Matrix... Online.

    Seems they could just about pass the entire series off as building up to just the online game. Even having the game be the final plot twist, which would explain everything else in the series: It was all just in a game.

    The architect, the other "ones", Neo developing powers in the "real" world... All because the whole thing was an entertainment simulation for our level of reality.

    It explains everything. It also nullifies any point the franchise had.
  • When someones kills them what happens, or are then invinsible, that'd either make them really popular (stand behind them) or hated (that bastard killed us all, but he's invinsible, cheating bastard)
  • It won't let me register a new account. When I clicked on support, it also gave me a "The page cannot be displayed" error.

    I think their webserver is being pummeled, or they got hacked
  • I don't understand, what is the Matrix?
  • I keep hitting RELOAD but its just the same thing over and and over. Why can't I get this Matrix to reload?

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