FireFall - MMO(?) Shooter from Red 5 Studios (Ex-Blizzard + Tribes Creator)

[MechDeus]

I hate you all. But only a little bit.

[epmode]

I have an extra key if you want it! I didn't even know I had any in the first place.

[MechDeus]

Sure! One day I'll return these favors.

One day.

[Opaque]

I'm up to 10 as an engineer, this game has some serious issues thst will need addressed but for a beta its great.

This morning the AI was all wonky and you could solo Light Thumpers, it was awesome.

[Brand X]

This game had insane lines at PAX and I wasn't quite sure why since the demo videos they were showing were kind of awful. Is this actually worth the hype it's getting?

[Opaque]

I wouldn't wait in line to play this since, like most MMOs, the part that's fun is leveling up and getting new gear and stuff and that takes time you wouldn't have in a showroom.

Really though, yes this game deserves some hype. It's better in this early beta stage, with only one zone open and only one playable race, than most MMOs ever become. I'll break down how the game works for you and you decide how it sounds for yourself:

When you create a character that is your character, but you're not cemented into a class, at least not now, that might change after beta but I doubt it. You can switch between classes at terminals in cities and spawn rooms on PVP maps. There's an assault class that's exactly what it sounds like, a medic that's exactly what it sounds like, a dreadnaught which is basically a heavy from team fortress, an engineer which is also like it's team fortress counterpart and a sniper which, again, pretty team fortress. That being said they each have enough things that make them different from the archetypes you're used to and leveling them up really fleshes them out. For example at level one my engineer had nothing he could build but now at level ten I could drop a one way force field, turret and repair station. At higher levels my turrets will do more damage, my repair station will give out ammo and so forth. You character equips four main items: a battleframe (think armor), a class pack (where you equip abilities or in my case equipment) a main class specific weapon and an alternate weapons. There's green and blue quality things for each of those slots, with colors working like diablo or wow. Each one of those slots could have, if the item is high enough and good enough, up to three slots to attach enhancements of different types.

Now the thumpers are the real meat right now for PVE. Basically you get a hammer that scans for minerals and you get, from a quest, the ability to craft a tiny thumper. You could solo that and get more materials to craft other things, like weapons and enhacements and eventually a Light Thumper (and likely bigger versions later one). The light thumper gives significantly larger rewards, about 15 times more it seems, but you need a group of people. So you call it in and for 8 minutes you fight swarms of enemies attacking it with your party and collect your ores. Once you have enough ores you can refine them and use refined ores to make better gear and so forth and so on. When you craft you drop blueprints into this large machine at a town and it takes X time to do your print. So maybe you can make a turret in one minute but it'll take an hour to turn 100 brimstone into refined brimstone, but this runs without you needed to be at the terminal. So you drop off two brimstone things and go do some thumpers, or PVP or later on once dungeons are open a dungeon, and come back later to unload what you've made. Right now you can get two of the four shown slots, so obviously it will increase later.

PVP is, as of right now, two deathmatch maps, one team skirmish and one big team battle map, to use halo 2 terms I know you're familiar with.

Also the world is constantly at war with these chosen guys that come down in drop pods and fuck your shit up. Sometimes you find "crashed thumpers" that throw out parts you can scavenge but you have to fight off lots of chosen. There's also a few areas where large world boss type encounters spawn endless chosen as you try to take down some large creature in a shield. The main towns have turret, anti air and glider stations and eventually it looks like what will happen is large scale wars will threaten towns and your army (clan) will fight on one side or the other, though that isn't in the game yet for obvious reasons.

The amount of stuff they plan to add, the fact that it's free, and just how fun and deep this very limited beta already is, makes me think this game is going to be fucking huge.

[Brand X]

You just sold me on it, sounds like this could turn into a really kick ass game as it grows! This may be the first MMO aside from PSO (if you even consider that an MMO) that I will play. And now I'm especially glad I didn't wait in line to play this, because after reading that it totally isn't the type of game that you can give 20 min to at an expo.

[Opaque]

Yeah that's the whole thing, a 20 minute demo expresses none of this game properly.

If this beta is any indication I genuinely think this game has a great shot at being the next WoW of the shooter MMO world. It's got some of the right people behind it, it has a solid premise and the fact that it's completely free right from the start and has SO much hype this early into it's life means it should have a huge user base. The bigger the user base the more money they'll make and the bigger the game gets. I see this game being a self fulfiling cycle and pulling in a lot of people that want a huge multiplayer game but don't want mmorpg raiding anymore.

[epmode]

This isn't the most stable thing in the world but I like what I've played so far. The in-game map system is so goddamned stylish too.

[Opaque]

I think the biggest thing stability wise is the jump to the 24/7 servers and all the extra traffic. Sometimes it fucks with AI and textures/objects pretty bad because of how little is currently stored on your computers.

My name is Opaque in the game btw, so if you guys ever see me around invite me up and we'll thumper or suck at PvP (until level twelve when I get my drain gun and apparently become A FUCKING GOD) or whatever.