What’s the best part about playing Civilization? Playing all night with your friends online. So Civilization Online is good news then, right?
Developed by XL Games, Civilization Online will be bringing the popular franchise into the persistently online genre. CEO Jake Song, known for his work on Lineage, spoke with Massively on the game’s details.
First and foremost, the game will be an MMO. Players will be able to create custom avatars and work with four different civilizations (more will be added after launch). They’ll advance through six different eras: Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, and Modern. This all takes place in a seamless game world and each world is considered a session. Play in each session is over until victory conditions are met and a civilization wins.
The first question that has to be on the minds of fans is how the strategy elements of Civ will transfer over to the MMO environment.
“All those really core features that you’d expect the Civilization game to have will represented in this game, just in slightly different ways,” XL Games Senior VP Jung Hwan Kim told Massively. “For example: In the package game it’s mostly done conceptually, but in this game players actually have to do the stuff.” Kim is talking about how players in Civilization Online will actually have to gather resources to construct buildings.
It seems that the game will focus on performing the tasks we take for granted in the strategy franchise. The resources players gather appear to determine the future of their civilization. It’s an interesting concept, but remains to be seen how the game’s transfer to the MMO genre will work. After all, it didn’t work too well for Age of Empires Online.
The Massively interview continues to explore how PVP, crafting, progression, and the game’s economy works. It’s worth the read to see the plan XL Games has for the game. Here’s to hoping for the possibility of a local release.
Source: Massively.com
