8 replies to this topic

[Gnoll]

I know the information is out there, I googled several articles and ran searches on this forum but didn't find answers to my questions.

Last news about MW5 before finding this forum was that it ran into legal troubles because of using some mech in the trailer video that is owned/copyrighted by some other company. Then there was silence and I never actually got to know what happend. Now I discovered this forum and saw the title Mechwarrior Online and am sort of starting to put things together. However I still don't know what really happened Can anyone tell me why it's not MW5 anymore and what happened to the harmony gold issue?

Is it that piranha games had to change the title solely because of legal issues? I really like the online idea and the name that includes the word "online" is absolutely a good choice but as I am eagerly waiting for this game I would like to know the full story.

[Blackjack Jones]

It was never really going to be called MW5, it was just going to be a rebooted Mechwarrior. MW5 is what people at large called it.

The legal business was the whole legal history between Harmony Gold (the IP company with the rights to Robotech and Macross in the US), and the IP holders for Battletech due to who had the final say in who could use the images from Macross in the US. Both parties had licensed from what they thought were the proper parties, but the legal issues led to Battletech dropping or redoing the artwork from sources outside the tabletop and video game developers. The whole trouble with the trailer was the Warhammer shown wasn't distinct enough from the Macross Tomahawk design in HG's eyes, but that of course is matter of legal debate.

this link is to PGI's first developer's blog, which describes the process the game has gone through so far.
In a nutshell, the game went silent because Piranha Games couldn't find a developer to back them, no more or less.
The name change is in all likelihood part marketing move, part trying to impress on the fanbase it isn't the single player campaign with multiplayer tacked on that the previous Mechwarriors have been, to various degrees.

Edited by Blackjack Jones, 16 November 2011 - 01:35 AM.

[Bansheedragon75]

First of all it was never called Mechwarrior 6, that was the players and community's description of the game.
Piranha called it mechwarrior reboot.

Second.
If you have done all the reasearch you claim to have done I find it odd you have not found the information about it, it was mentioned in the Dev Blog 0.

InnerSphereNews, on 23 October 2011 - 07:32 PM, said:

Oh Yeah, Harmony Gold

Contrary to all the press and speculation that Harmony Gold was getting in the way of a deal or development, this had no impact whatsoever on development or signing a deal for MechWarrior.

http://mwomercs.com/.../13-dev-blog-0/

[ice trey]

Supposedly, before the 2009 promo vid, Microsoft had been working on a Mechwarrior 5 project.

However, it was abandoned and scrapped sometime around 2004 or 2005. There wasn't much more than a few screenshots. Again, nothing hugely impressive, and it seemed to keep to the "bright and colorful" scheme they started.

[Gorthaur]

ice trey, on 16 November 2011 - 02:01 AM, said:

Supposedly, before the 2009 promo vid, Microsoft had been working on a Mechwarrior 5 project.

However, it was abandoned and scrapped sometime around 2004 or 2005. There wasn't much more than a few screenshots. Again, nothing hugely impressive, and it seemed to keep to the "bright and colorful" scheme they started.

it got scrapped and rebuilt into mechassault.

[Knt Maverick]

Gorthaur, on 16 November 2011 - 02:10 AM, said:

it got scrapped and rebuilt into mechassault.

MechAssaul, as we know, was another flop on Microsoft's part to do what they would probably call "capitalizing" or even "improving" an already great gaming system. It had saddened me in 2001/02 to have heard that FASA Interactive had sold their rights... but MW3 (lead by MicroProse--MechCommander--gave me hope in the series. Yes, Microsoft had a hand in that development.. but just a hand. MS seen that it did quite well.. and then took over completly... and flopped it up..... Finally, some members of the original creating team of BattleTech are retaking their baby and are gonna bring it back to life. Thanks to Pirhana Games...(not sure if Smith&Tinker are still a part or not, but) we will have a truer form of battletech/mechwarrior than ever before... i hope...

[ice trey]

Knt.Maverick, on 16 November 2011 - 02:27 AM, said:

*snip*

I agree that S&T will be hard pressed to mess the game up worse than Microsoft did, but there are still some things that make me wary.

For example, one of the heads of S&T is Jordan Weisman - one of the original creators of Battletech, if not THE original creator. He had a great idea for Battletech early on, but sort of went off and did his own thing. Later, his entrepreneurial mind decided that he should go with the flow and make Battletech like Mage Knight - a game his kid had been playing. What we got was Mechwarrior Dark Age, a clix game in which much of the canon designs were horribly mutated and made to look like diesel-powered chainsaw-wielding abortions from the british Robot Wars television show. The canon was supposed to be set in the future, but it was like a horrible rehash of the succession wars all over again, except this time, the clans were involved at roughly the same tech-level. In the end, the clix game flopped, but by imperial decree, the game was permanently canon, and any future holders of the franchse (Namely Catalyst) had to play "follow the leader" for the horrible story arc.

On the plus side, CGL have proven they - like Radio Shack - can turn s**t into solid gold, and have done the best that they possibly could with the Jihad period. Personally, I find it one of the best eras to play battletech in. Maybe not the best for story, but it gives great potential for actual tabletop gaming, and reading the sourcebooks aren't a snorefest as with older eras like the one detailing the Fedcom Civil War or the Reunification war. Of course, it would be a great help to them if they were able to finally churn out a full-length Jihad era novel, rather than all these 20-page short stories on Battlecorps.com

[EGG]

MechWarrior 5 was the Microsoft follow-on to MW4, it was canned in 2003. The 2009 reboot was called just "MechWarrior".

Some of the MW5 concept art was released:

[feor]

ice trey, on 16 November 2011 - 02:50 AM, said:

Stuff about MW:DA

Just FYI, Jordan Wiseman was the founder of Wizkids, and the inventor of Mage Knight. SO it wasn't just "something his kid were playing" (though I'm sure they played it).

Clix-tech, as a game mechanic, was not as that horrible. It consolidated the entire battletech record sheet into something the size of a large coin, and gave you a game where you could resolve battles between a dozen mechs, vehicles, and infantry groups each over the course of tens of minutes, rather than tens of hours.

Even the story wasn't horrendous, it was just kinda poorly fleshed out, and when they did start to flesh it out in the MW:DA novels it was frowned upon by Battletech purists because all the original characters & most of the original factions from battletech were missing. And those that were in did not match their characterizations in BTech very well. People also got annoyed, I found, with the weird pseudo-factions they got. Steel Wolves and Swordsworn, and so on.

I think the biggest failings of the game were that it was "collectible", the figures were of poor quality (finding a straight gun barrel in you booster box was as rare as the rarest unit in game) and it should have been marketed to a slightly older audience. (took me forever to try Heavy Gear Blitz or any of the GW games specifically cause when my friends in High School talked me into playing Mage Knight they were all rather lax about measuring movement and exact placement of their models)

With a little more refinement and QA I think the system had excellent potential as a parallel game system to Battletech, but it was too late, opinions had been formed and no one liked it.