Computer Games Issue 156

cover story:

• EverQuest This! (A look inside the world of EverQuest, from the real-time strategy game Lords of EverQuest to versions for handhelds and the PlayStation 2. You're in their world now, and they're not letting you leave--ever.)

featured:

• New Location, Same Fragging (Camping for kills at iD Software's QuakeCon 2003. Also this month: 3DO sells itself, Magic: The Gathering 2.0 fizzles, and gamers find God.)
• Nightmares For Sale (Hands-on with the frightfully beautiful Doom 3.)
• Massive! (It's raining massively multiplayer online games out there right now. With no end in sight, it's clear that no one ever has to play alone again.)
• The Media War (If you think the attention given to violence in the media is a recent occurrence, think again. Inside the history of the controversy, and a look at what's in store for gamers down the road.)
• Taking Off (The ninth time's the charm for Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight.)
• Turn It Up to 64 (AMD's next-generation processor turns the heat up on Intel, again.)

departments:

• up front: (Editor-in-chief Steve Bauman wants to talk about how "massively multiplayer" games are massively mundane.)
• rebound: (The letters we get, and the replies we sometimes offer.)
• mods & ends:
  • "Natural Selection" for Half-Life
  • "Colosseum" for Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
  • "Troopers: Dawn of Destiny" for Unreal Tournament 2003
  • "Galactic Conquest" for Battlefield 1942
  • "Stair Dismount" and "Truck Dismount" demonstration 'games' for Unity Engine
• applied game theory: (Using violent video games to help us make sense of senseless acts in real life.)
• road to nowhere: (Writer Cindy Yans takes developer Trevor Chan to task in this editorial which compares his studio, Enlight Software, to the Tortoise in Aesop's classic fable.)
• view from the middle: (Vaunted developer Ken "System Shock" Levine enlightens the masses with his own personal 10 Commandments of Gaming".)
• out of the box: ("Now that I'm married, where will I find all the time I need to finish all the games I need to play?" wonders Brett Todd.)
• technicalities: (Editor Jason Cross pens his final column for the magazine, and offers a few parting thoughts.)
• three finger salute (Tom Chick takes developer Kuma to task for their usage of real, ripped-from-the-headlines ideas in their upcoming titles.)

incoming (a.k.a. Previews):

• Doom 3
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi
• Silent Hill 3
• Railroad Tycoon 3

opinion (a.k.a. Reviews):

• Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight (4.5/5)
• Nexagon: Deathmatch (2/5)
• Endless Ages (2/5)
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (3.5/5)
• Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader (2/5)
• Emergency: Fire Response (4.5)
• Madden 2004 (5/5)
• GROM: Terror in Tibet (2/5)
• Ghost Master (3.5/5)
• The Great Escape (2/5)
• Air Raid (2/5)
• Knight Rider: The Game (2.5/5)

hardware:

• AMD Opteron processor (no rating)
• PNY Verto GeForce FX 5900 Ultra (4/5)
• Hy-Tek TekPanel 300G (2.5/5)
• Sennheiser headsets (3/5 - 4.5/5)
• Kenwood HTB-506 home theater (4.5/5)

this month's demo CD:

• Lords of EverQuest: Dawn Brotherhood demo
• Warlords IV demo
• Madden 2004 demo

Ads (in order of appearance):

• War Times
• Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
• Sim City 4: Rush Hour expansion pack
• Magic: The Gathering CCG
• Lords of EverQuest
• TRON 2.0
• XIII
• Age of Mythology: The Titans
• Final Fantasy XI Online
• Ghost Master
• EverQuest: Lost Dungeons of Norrath
• Empires: Dawn of the Modern World
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Alienware Area-51 gaming laptops
• Halo (PC)
• Commandos 3: Destination Belin
• PlanetSide: Core Combat
• Dark Age of Camelot: Trials of Atlantis
• Neverwinter Nights: Hoards of the Underdark expansion pack
• Call of Duty
• Etherlords II
• X2: The Threat
• Wars & Warriors: Joan of Arc
• Restaurant Empire
• Warlords Battlecry 3
• Warrior Kings: Battles
• Civilization: Conquests
• Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour
• Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring
• The Hobbit
• Voiceglo IP Telephony software
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi
• Railroad Tycoon 3
• Kingston brand RAM
• EverQuest: Evolution
• The Hornet brand gaming hardware
• One Must Fall: Battlegrounds
• EarthLink online service
• BYC Vision gaming computer systems
• ESRB ratings system
• Chips & Bits store
• Voiceglo IP Telephony software
• Homeworld 2
• Dungeons & Dragons: The Temple of Elemental Evil

Interesting Stuff:

• Steve Bauman's editorial rant about how MMORPGs are designed to literally waste your time while taking your money is still as relevant today as when he penned it seventeen years ago.
• The ad for Empires: Dawn of the Modern World is a double-sided fold-out poster. Bet that was expensive real-estate.
• The "Galactic Conquest" mod for Battlefield 1942 was Star Wars Battlefront a couple of years before there was a Star Wars Battlefront.
• The web page for "Stair Dismount" and "Truck Dismount" (http://jet.ro/dismount) not only still works and contains all the files necessary to download them as of this writing (January, 2020), but has been updated to include a third physics demo called "Sauna Dismount" in case you've ever wanted to simulate what slipping and falling in a sauna looks like.
• The PC versions of Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 2 should be officially considered the HD Collection, not the re-voiced, patched-out abomination we received for the PS3 and 360.
• "EverQuest This!" is a great historical look back at the franchise, extending from the original release of the game in 1999 to the then-forthcoming Champions of Norrath for the PS2.
• A truly crushing number of MMORPGs were available for PC owners at the time this issue went to print. "Massive!" covers damn near all of them, A-Z, from the obvious choices like Asheron's Call 2 and Ultima Online to now-forgotten relics like A Tale in the Desert and Jumpgate. There's even a section devoted to trailblazing pioneers like Legends of Kesmai, Dark Sun Online, and Majestic, which took the online component of games to new heights and lengths, and a look at future would-be titles like Gary Gygax's Lejendary Adventures Online and Guild Wars, some of which made it and some of which...did not. There's even a monthly subscribers chart that shows who was playing what when, where you can see the rise and decline of the top 13 MMOs of the time. No shock, EverQuest is #1, boasting around 425,000 monthly subscribers. Runner-up Ultima Online's numbers are considerably less impressive, with the game struggling to hold on to 250,000 players. Of course, there's no World of Warcraft on the scene yet...
• Equally impressive is the "Media Wars" article, which traces the history of when and how the public turned to blaming various bits of media, from comic books to feature films, for all of society's failings. This is relevant even today.
• Knight Rider went off the air in 1986. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to create a video game based on the property in 2003?
• The way different developers use video games as platforms to address increasingly complex sociological issues is truly stunning, even in 2003, as the "insider" article by Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire of the Playful Learning Project at MIT shows.
• Software development would truly go much more smoothly if everyone followed Ken Levine's commandments.