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At this year's August game conventions, WildStar came away with two prestigious awards!

From Gamescom, the Best MMORPG award from JeuxVideo!

And from PAX, the Most Anticipated award from MMORPG.com!

Thanks so much to both sites for these great awards! We'll keep working on WildStar to make sure we beat your expectations!

Future of online game design defined at gamescom
Cologne, Germany - 17 August, 2011

NCsoft®, the premier global leader in massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, staked its claim to the future of online gaming with some of the most innovative entertainment properties at gamescom, the world's largest tradeshow for interactive games and entertainment. NCsoft revealed one of the best kept secrets for the show, WildStar™, its latest MMO, with a polished three-act playable build on the day of the announcement, unheard of in the video game industry. The company also showcased a new playable build from the highly anticipated Guild Wars 2® featuring several new races, professions and Player vs. Player combat. Attendees at gamescom can experience the magic on the show floor in the NCsoft booth (A11/B10, Hall 9.1.)

"WildStar and Guild Wars 2 showcase the innovation coming from NCsoft's development studios, paving the way for the next generation of videogames and setting a high bar for the entertainment industry to follow," said Matt Turetzky, executive vice-president of publishing for NCsoft West. "We are focused on delighting players by delivering fun, immersive experiences that rival traditional forms of entertainment through personal expression, best-in-class gameplay mechanics, and social engagement."

Developed by NCsoft's Southern California-based Carbine Studios, WildStar offers epic high adventure, where players make their mark as Explorers, Soldiers, Scientists or Settlers and lay claim to a mysterious planet on the edge of known space. WildStar's iconic visual style and "Momentum Mechanics" immerse players in a deep world stacked with content, challenges and rewards that respond to the play style choices of individual players. Depending on a combination of faction, race, class, and path, WildStar will present gamers with unending surprises, mini-quests and challenges, ensuring that their experiences are fun and fresh.

Since winning Online Game of the Year at gamescom 2010, ArenaNet® revealed several new elements of the highly anticipated Guild Wars 2 including the Engineer profession, dungeons and underwater areas of the world. This year at gamescom 2011, NCsoft and ArenaNet give players the opportunity to get hands-on with several new and exciting aspects of the game including an encounter with an Undead Dragon boss, Player vs. Player combat, character appearance customization as well as a glimpse into the charr starting area and asura and sylvari mid-level content, which are all playable on the show floor.

For more information about NCsoft's presence at gamescom, please visit http://us.ncsoft.com/en/events/

About NCsoft

NCsoft, headquartered in Seoul, Korea, is the world's premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games, including the critically acclaimed Aion®, Lineage®, Guild Wars®, and City of Heroes® franchises. Announced in August 2011, WildStar™ is the newest MMO being developed by internal team Carbine Studios. NCsoft West is a division of NCsoft that holds operating responsibilities for North America, Europe, South America, and Australia/New Zealand. More information can be found at http://www.ncsoft.com

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Remember last week? We do! That's when we announced we'll be revealing our project at gamescom! Well, guess what? Two Carbine Studios staffers will be speaking this year at GDC Online in Austin, Texas. Here's more information:

Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney will be talking about the wild world of MMO production in a 60-minute lecture entitled "My Producer Really Sucks: Inside the Twisted Minds of MMO Producers." This talk is for everyone interested in MMO production and promises to have some intriguing stories of errors past and successes present. You can read more about this session by visiting this link.

And speaking of killer ideas, Carbine Studios Senior Writer Cory Herndon will show GDCO attendees how to overcome the wall-of-text beast with his session "TweetQuest: Telling Stories in 140-Character Chunks." The talk will cover examples from advertising, comics, movies, and games to show how Carbine is telling their story without dropping lore bombs on the player. You can read more about this session by visiting this link.

We'll see you in Austin!

Carbine Studios' unannounced MMO makes MMORPG's top ten "Tightlipped MMO Projects"! Here's what they had to say about Carbine Studios:

"At this year's Game Developer's Conference, I had an interesting meeting with the guys from a studio that I had never heard of before. Carbine Studios is the name of the company and they're working on a project with the good people at NCsoft. My guess is that you're going to start hearing bits and pieces out of this studio after the launch of Aion, and once Guild Wars 2 PR starts rolling downhill and gaining momentum.

Talking to Jeremy Gaffney, the Executive Producer of the project, I was able to glean the fact that they are working on a sci-fi MMO, but beyond that, the details have thus far escaped me. So, what do we know then? We know for fact that Carbine has been picking up folks from almost all of the recent crop of MMOs. In the interview, for example, he mentions that they have at least two MMO innovators on their team. Specifically mentioned were the diplomacy system designer from Vanguard and one of the guys behind the public quest system in WAR.

In the rare case that Producers mention the games that their staff members have worked on in the past, it can actually be an indicator of what kind of game might come out the other side. For Carbine those games include: EQ2, Warhammer Online, Vanguard, Gods and Heroes, Pirates of the Burning Sea, City of Heroes, while management (or at least the guys that founded the place) is made up of ex World of Warcraft developers. Oh, did I mention that Fallout Producer and Designer Tim Cain is also on board?

I hope I'm not the only person looking forward to hearing more from this team."

Many thanks to our friends at MMORPG! You can check out the rest of the list by visiting this link!

Enjoy!

Carbine Studios Producer Eric DeMilt took a moment to discuss all things Carbine in an interview with our friend Andrew "Tamat" Beegle from the Zam Network. Here's a sample of what Eric had to say, with more after the link!

ZAM: Hey Eric. Thanks for joining us to chat about Carbine Studios. Any chance you'll be announcing your first project with us today!?!

Eric DeMilt: Thanks for having me. Unfortunately today won't be the day we announce the project.

ZAM: Over the course of your career you've worked on such games as Stonekeep, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Fallout II to name a few. What kind of challenges have you come across leading a team developing a big budget MMO?

Eric: The biggest difference and challenge has been the sheer scope and magnitude of a project like this. At launch this game will have more hours of gameplay in the box than all of the games I've worked on combined. Take that huge scope and add the variations of gameplay; solo, grouped, tradeskillers, casual players, hardcore raiders, guilds, PvP, etc. all in a massively multiplayer environment, the challenges are incredible. It's a lot of fun though.

For a great behind-the-scenes look at our studio, continue reading by clicking this link!

Enjoy!

Our friend Dana Massey chatted with Carbine Studios Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney at MMORPG.com. Here's a snippet of the conversation you'll find at the link!

MMORPG.com: You have a lot of talent gathered from some pretty prominent MMOs. Can you give us some examples and some idea of their positions within the team?

Jeremy Gaffney: Obviously, we have a bunch of guys with WoW experience, but we also have folks who worked on EQ2, Warhammer Online, Vanguard, Gods and Heroes, Pirates of the Burning Sea, City of Heroes and a number of other MMOs. Those people have positions throughout Carbine, with many of them in senior positions in programming, management, art, and design. In general we think that most of the games that come out have strong points in one area or another - being geeky fanboys ourselves we've tried to get people who worked on systems that excited us. F'rinstance, the gent who was behind that neat Diplomacy minigame in Vanguard is working on our tradeskill minigames, and one of the guys behind Warhammer's cool public quest system is heading up our content team and working on our own unique content systems. Oh, and I shouldn't forget Tim Cain, our design director, who is also pretty well-known for his work creating Fallout."

The article, titled "Behind Carbine Studios" can be found by visiting this link!
Enjoy!

Victoria Moran, Associate Systems Designer at Carbine Studios, was recently interviewed at Killerbetties.com, a site devoted to discussing gaming news and related issues for the female gamer. Here's an excerpt from that discussion:

Killer Betties: "What's your earliest memory of video games? Did you grow up on games or did you find them later in your life?"

Victoria: "My first memory of video games would probably be unwrapping my Nintendo Entertainment System, which was the first system I personally owned. I remember games like the original Super Mario and Zelda and being excited to receive new cartridges on my birthday. My parents were very hesitant to buy me any video games, which is humorous considering they met each other while working at Atari in the early 80's.

We were definitely no strangers to video games during my younger years, especially with arcade games that I played with my cousins. We also had an Atari pinball machine in the house up until I was around 14, which was always a hit at birthday parties. During my free time, I played computer games like King's Quest and the Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes, which were sometimes quite challenging for a 9 year old. After my NES, I had a SEGA Genesis, which I absolutely loved because of games like Sonic the Hedgehog.

From the time I was about 10 until age 15, I didn't play many video games because I was so focused on sports. Around age 15 I got really excited about ice hockey, which is when I got reintroduced to console gaming with the PlayStation, playing EA's NHL games with my dad and cousins. From there by chance I happened upon the Final Fantasy series, and I was permanently hooked on stories and narrative in gaming.

From there I branched out and played all types of games through high school and college, from Pokemon to Dance Dance Revolution to Phantasy Star Online to Final Fantasy and Warcraft. I loved all different types of games equally until I got sucked into the gigantic machine that is the MMORPG, when I started playing Final Fantasy XI seriously. I was skeptical at first about a traditionally single player RPG series being converted into an MMORPG, but as I gave the game a chance, I started to find not only the game growing on me, but the other players as well. I found that in MMOs, I wasn't just consuming a story that a writer had written to be spoonfed to me through cutscenes, but that stories occurred between real players as well. Joy, achievement, drama, and strife were part of the story that was my character's life in that game, created not by the game but by my interactions with friends and enemies.

I started my linkshell (guild) in Final Fantasy XI roughly 6 years ago; many of the players I played with in Final Fantasy XI have and still play a variety of online games and MMORPGs with me now, including Guild Wars, City of Heroes, and World of Warcraft."

You can read more about Victoria in her Killer Women feature, which can be found by visiting this link!

Congratulations Victoria!