I've been lucky enough to have a friend of a friend who had a private beta account, and from what I've seen your decisions and actions really affect the gameplay. Although I've only seen screenshots and heard rant after rant of how good the private beta is, it has definately caught my attention.

The open beta begins on the Monday 31st, but the client has been available for open beta testers to download since Saturday.

Face of Mankind is an MMORPG set in the 24th century. You are invited to play out the ageless battle of good vs. evil, and witness all shades of gray in between. Role-playing and your real-life skills are the raw ingredients of game play.

Website: http://www.fomportal.com/ (Apply for an open beta account).

A snippet of the story,

By the end of the 22nd century, the overcrowding of Earth’s cities, the growing drain on natural resources, and the memories of recent violence caused mankind to desire new and remote locations to start their lives over again. The International Space Administration’s colonization efforts provided the perfect solution – distant havens for hundreds of thousands of Earth’s citizens to take up residence. However, as colonization efforts spread and the Vortex-Net brought humanity to the stars in ever-greater numbers, mankind’s footprint became more noticeable on a galactic scale. By the mid-24th century Earth’s spreading population had become obvious, attracting the attention of a very hostile and aggressive alien race.

promoted forum item

the screenshots look fairly boring, but i'm interested by the futuristic storyline and such

what's gameplay like?

(edit: just watched the trailer, the models and physics look pretty s***, they didn't show nearly enough of the first person perspective. Even the battle scene looked fairly crap... maybe there's more to this game that they're not showing or there's people out there with money to waste on developing different MMORPGS with no luck)

last edited by Melissa at 22:15:48 30/Jan/05

Role-playing and your real-life skills are the raw ingredients of game play

I have no real-life skills:(

It's an fps styled game, when I first heard of it it reminded me of planetside (? whatever that one was) but when I saw in-game screenies the textures reminded me of half-life.

as for the gameplay itself, well I've only seen screenies and talked to people who play it, and it sounds vaguely like morrowind's attempt at the rpg genre, except in a modern setting and with a lot more emphasis on the outcomes of what you do.

Here's what the website says about the gameplay stuff,

Face of Mankind is not a typical RPG: the most important difference is that you are the game. Your actions will affect the next available tactical decision for you and your fellow players. Your actions will affect the economic system. Your actions will determine the balance of power each and every second.

You have control over an intuitive First Person Shooter style interface. The cutting edge graphics engine will present a world of five huge cities on earth, 20 colonies in outer space and two special places.

last edited by eXemplar at 22:18:36 30/Jan/05

wouldn't u just feel so demoralised being a mmorpg dev knowing that youre gonna get 2/3's of f***all subscribers now that wow is just taking over the world. especially when the wow graphics are a million times better then this.

Haha, cutting edge graphics engine? Yeah, it might have been cutting edge 5 years ago.

Also, I'd have to agree with cainer, I'd hate to be releasing an mmorpg right now and having to compete with WoW.

People need something to play during WoW server downtime though.

the models and physics look pretty s***,

its an mmorpg, what the f*** did you expect? doom 3 graphics? (seeings though doom 3 has the best visual engine out there and it looks like) and pontefex physics?

uh daoc was pretty, WoW has it's own cartoony prettyness, eve online is f***ing superb

do i need to go on?

All the graphics and such are purely client side, so yes, it could be as pretty as you want. The only real limitation is the specs of the person's PC. As long as it scales well, theres no reason why it can't look amazingly jaw droppingly awesome on high end PCs, and scale down to generally good looking on lower specced machines.

I mean, for example, they could have used the Serious Sam engine. Its a few years old now, and would run awesomely on todays hardware, and has a proven track record of being capable to render huge levels and s***loads of enemies on screen at once, so I can't imagine it having too much trouble as an mmorpg. It also scales down well and still looks good on lower hardware.

The graphics on those screenshots remind me of System Shock 2, which wasn't even what I would call "cutting edge graphics" even when it was first released.

point taken.

it is still an mmorpg, so they don't really need to spend time(money) on the graphics just to look the best.

Thats the point though, they DO need to spend time on the graphics, they need to spend more time on everything these days just to stay competitive. Maybe 5 years ago when the only mmorpg you had to compete with was Everquest, you could afford to put out any old dodgy product and people would play it because there were no alternatives. Now though, with so many top quality titles available in the mmorpg genre, you're going to have to put in the extra effort to get people's attention and get people playing your game over all the others.

Its harsh, because the people behind this game have probably poured years of their lives into making it and many many dollars, but unless they turn up with something special and grab people's attention they're doomed to fail. The mmorpg market isn't a huge market, they aren't the sort of games that really have the wide-ranging appeal of something like Doom 3 or Half Life 2, so you can't really hope to grab the part of the market that isn't playing WoW or isn't playing EQ2, because there probably isn't any. If you really want your game to do well, you're going to have to offer something that will lure players from the mmorpgs they're currently playing, and considering the time investment and the committment that a lot of people have to their game of choice, you're going to have to be offering something pretty damn special that they can't get anywhere else.

last edited by Khel at 08:27:42 31/Jan/05

EVE-Online is still going strong even with 12,000 People on the same server.

I wouldn't call 12,000 people "going strong", I'd call that "eeking out a meagre existence".

I wouldn't call 12,000 people "going strong", I'd call that "eeking out a meagre existence".

I think he means 12k on one server at any one time. One of my old flatmates still plays it.

but that was back when graphic cards were flat out displaying 256 colours let alone having a 3d engine on its own.

I'll side with gameplay over graphics anyday. A game centered on graphics you will only play once or twice to check it out, but a game based on the gameplay, you can play forever. It's just an added bonus if the game comes with a good smattering of both.

WoW though only fills a certain part of the market for mmorpg's (a rather large portion, though). But being based around science fiction rather than a fantasy genre, I'm pretty sure there'll be a devoted following and enough to keep the game going.

Yeah, I used to play MUDs too, back in the day. Would I choose to play a MUD now over an mmorpg though? Hell no. The genre has evolved, and theres so much more on offer now. Its like saying why play Morrowind when you could go play one of the Zork text adventures.

I wasn't trying to say graphics are more important than gameplay, but these days an mmorpg doesn't really have the luxury to rest on the "gameplay before graphics" argument. They have to offer top notch quality in ALL areas, in gameplay and in graphics and in everything else. People's expectations are a lot higher now than they were 3 or 4 years ago, and while graphics dont make the game and concentrating on the graphics to the detriment of everything else is a bad idea, you still have to be offering up some nice looking stuff. The game might be the most awesome game ever made, but if it looks crap, its not going to hold my attention (or a lot of other people's attention) long enough to make an impact.

I guess my point is, why would you even bother making a game like this unless you were fully committed to making it awesome. Sure, you might get a few thousand people playing, enough to cover the bills, but whats the point of that? It would have to be one of the most time consuming, difficult types of game to make (on a technical level, and with all the balancing and s*** involved to get the world working properly), and then you have to actually run servers and have support and everything once its launched. Why would you go through all that trouble just to get by with a few thousand people playing?

last edited by Khel at 16:37:23 31/Jan/05

learn to use your edit button. it looks like this: and is below your post.

When you boil away the graphics, there isn't much difference between the underlying mechanics of a science-fiction MMORPG and a fantasy MMORPG. (Science-fiction MMORPGs even find a technological excuse for implementing magic.) Furthermore, even within the same genre, there isn't much that differentiates one MMORPG from another.

I don't agree with this. Yes, some scifi ones do, but it's only mixing the best of both worlds :).

FoM doesn't have magic. Also, no stats/levels, it's not based on how many hours you put into leveling, which is good sometime players.

Game skills, not level skills.

last edited by eXemplar at 18:34:12 01/Feb/05

Game skills, not level skills.

MMORPGs require plenty of game skills; watch a person playing a level 60 character in WoW, then give someone who has never played the game before and has no "game skills" the chance to play the same character, and theres going to be a huge difference between the two.

Also, if theres no levels, whats this page all about?

http://www.fomportal.com/index.php?page=ranks.php&lang=en§ion=1

They sure look like levels to me...

For each new and higher rank attained, the budget the player is responsible for grows, creating real tension within the high-ranking player, as profitable accountability begins to accumulate.

Definatly sounds like levels to me.


One thing that anoys me with MMORPG's across the board is the lack of world interaction, something that will only get better with each mmorpg released tho :D
To me, what makes WoW > everquest is there are chests that can be opened..


last edited by Tollaz0r! at 23:08:55 01/Feb/05