Lego Universe

LEGO Universe
Developer(s)	The LEGO Group
Publisher(s)	Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Composer(s)	The Deviled Eggs (Old/Beta Music), Brian Tyler (Current)
Platform(s)	PC, Mac
Release date(s)	October 26, 2010
Genre(s)	MMOG
Mode(s)	Massively multiplayer online game
Rating(s)	ESRB: E10+ PEGI: 7+
Media/distribution	DVD, download
System requirements PC recommended specifications: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 (32- or 64-bit), with the latest Service Packs Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 1 GB RAM (2GB RAM with Windows Vista and Windows 7) 10 GB free HD space NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or ATI Radeon X800 or better – 256 MB VRAM or more DirectSound compatible sound card DVD-ROM Drive Broadband Internet connection required PC Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32- or 64-bit), with the latest Service Packs Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz / AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 512 MB RAM (1 GB RAM with Windows Vista and Windows 7) 5GB free HD space NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 series / ATI Radeon 9600 series / Intel Integrated GMA 950 or equivalent –128 MB VRAM and latest video drivers PC audio solution containing Dolby DigitalLive required for Dolby Digital audio DVD-ROM Drive Broadband Internet connection required Mac Recommended Specifications: Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard / 10.6.3 Snow Leopard or higher Intel Duo Core 1 GB RAM 10 GB free HD space NVIDIA 8600 GT or ATI Radeon HD2400 or better - with 256 MB VRAM or more DVD-ROM Drive Broadband Internet connection required Mac Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard / 10.6.3 Snow Leopard or higher 1 GB RAM 5 GB free HD space Intel Integrated GMA X3100 or NVIDIA 7300 GT or ATI X1600 with 128 MB VRAM or more DVD-ROM Drive Broadband Internet connection required

LEGO Universe was a massively multiplayer online game developed by NetDevil released on October 26, 2010, with an early opening (October 8, 2010) for LEGO "Founders", which consisted of users who pre-ordered the game. It was globally distributed by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Its release was delayed from original estimates of 2009, late November 2008, and mid-2008. The game was available in English and German. The servers were shut down permanently on January 30, 2012.

Story

Plot

LEGO Universe takes place in an alternate universe populated by LEGO minifigures.The premise is that years ago, a team of four minifigures went on a great journey to seek the last essence of pure Imagination: Doctor Overbuild, Duke Exeter, Hael Storm, and Baron Typhonus. After having found it on the mysterious planet Crux, the greedy tycoon of the expedition, Baron Typhonus, was pulled into the source, fusing with it to create a maelstrom of chaotic dark energy. However, even though Doctor Overbuild plugged the hole, the stress caused Crux to explode into thousands of other worlds. After the incident, the explorers decided to form their own factions, Doctor Overbuild creating the Assembly, Duke Exeter forming the Sentinels and Hael Storm leading the Venture League. The factions worked together and created the Nexus Force in order to destroy the Maelstrom and its minions. A few years later, The Venture Explorer, a ship carrying new recruits is being attacked by the Maelstrom. The player, aboard the ship, escapes to Avant Gardens with the aid of Sky Lane. Here, a disaster involving Paradox, a fourth faction which studies the Maelstrom, has infected Avant Gardens with Maelstrom and released a beast called the Spider Queen. After travelling through the world and discovering the Spider Queen's location, the player destroys the Spider Queen at the Block Yard and claims their first Property, where they can place collected models and bricks. Now, members (not free to play) can travel to Nimbus Station, where they choose which faction to join. From there, the player can travel to other worlds like Forbidden Valley or Gnarled Forest.

Factions

There are four factions, only one of which a player can join. Each Faction has three specialties that have 3 different ranks and gear. There are two valiant weapons per faction which can be bought at the Nexus Tower. The Sentinels are combat based, using heavy weapons and armor. Their specialties include Knight, Samurai, and Space Ranger. The Venture League is based on exploring, utilizing combinations of strong weapons and fast attacks. Their specialties include Daredevil, Buccaneer, and Adventurer. The Assembly focuses on building and creating, using gear that builds weapons. Their specialties include Engineer, Summoner, and Inventor. The Paradox relies on studying the Maelstrom, and using it against itself, mainly using ranged attacks. Their specialties include Space Marauder, Sorcerer, and Shinobi.

Worlds

Venture Explorer

After creating your minifigure, you came to the Venture Explorer. It acted as a tutorial for any newcomers, teaching the basics of running, jumping, and smashing. You ultimately built a rocket and headed off to Avant Gardens with help from Sky Lane. Also, members were able to participate in a "Return to the Venture Explorer" with difficult enemies such as Hammerlings, Corrupted Sentries, and Elite Dark Spiderlings; though this was not part of any tutorial.

Avant Gardens

This is the second world players will visit. It introduces newcomers to the basic mission scenarios and gets them prepared for what they will soon come to face. In addition to the storyline missions, there are side missions and bonus activities such as survival and foot races. Players with memberships will see this as the first zone to see tamable pets in. The Maelstrom minions here are easy, such as the Stromling, Stromling Mech, and the Dark Spiderling, born from the Block Yard's boss, the Spider Queen. The mini-game here is Avant Garden Surival, here you must survive against Stromlings, Dark Spiderlings, Stromling Mechs, and other enemies more difficult to destroy. Avant Gardens is where you can tame the Doberman, Triceratops and Buffalo Pets. The two properties where you can build your creations in Avant Gardens are Block Yard and Avant Grove.

Nimbus Station

Nimbus Station acts as the Hub for members and is the third world players will visit. Here, you can access most of the other worlds. After the seventh mission, you must select one of the 4 factions (The Assembly, the Sentinels, the Venture League or Paradox.) Here you can enter yourself in a race against other minifigures in the Vertigo racetrack. You can also participate in the Battle of Nimbus Station, an event similar to survival in Avant Gardens but incorporating a wave system and taking in Nimbus Station's past, fighting off stronger enemies (Such as Stromling Invader.). Members will enjoy many numerous amounts of features in Nimbus Station, including more pet choices. Also there is a rocket pad to Frostborough near Christmas, the portal to Starbase 3001, and the Club Door. The properties here are Nimbus Rock and Nimbus Isle. The tameable Pets here are Robot Dog and Skunk Pets.

Pet Cove

Pet Cove is the key to everything about Pets. It is primarily a hub for players with memberships to learn how to tame Pets and do stunts with their Pets. Obviously, this will be the zone where a large variety of Pets will be available. The Pets here are Rabbit Pets. If you are in one of the Factions you can also tame your faction Pet here.

Gnarled Forest

Gnarled Forest is a pirate infested forest-styled zone in which players can experience the shift from beginning features to regular features. Minifigures will learn many new abilities here and unlock many new weapons. This is the first zone that introduces players to guns. Being the child-friendly company it is, LEGO has made fun and ticklish names for these weapons such as the "Plunger Gun." The pets that you could get in this world are a tortoise, a boar, a crocodile, an elephant, and a hermit crab.

Nexus Tower

Nexus Tower is the hub of everything informational in terms of factions. Here one can accept missions from the faction leader and interact with other things within Nexus Tower. The last piece of the Imagination Nexus is kept here.

Crux Prime

Crux Prime was the largest of the planetary fragments created in Crux's explosion, and is positioned directly opposite of the Maelstrom. Here can you meet many enemies you have met before but in stronger form along with bosses of all varieties (such as Stromling Invaders), and also a myriad of Ninjago Skeletons, straight from the Ninjago Monastery, attempting to mine Maelstrom Crystals. There are only 7 characters that the player can interact with in Crux Prime. Enemies also included the 'leaders' of types of enemy ( e.g Butterscotch, the dragon leader). All leader enemies show up in a slightly different colour from other Crux Prime invaders. The only tameable pet here was the Skeleton Dragon which was tamable as part of the main story line on Crux Prime.

Ninjago Monastery

The Ninjago Monastery was a new LEGO Universe world added to the game within a new build of the game on September the 20th, 2011. It saw the addition of the LEGO Theme, Ninjago to the game.

The world in comparison to the other worlds was one of the largest. It included the Ninjago Monastery, Skeleton Battlefields and the Ninjago Caves. Players upon arriving followed a chain of missions to learn all four elements of Spinjitzu, from the four ninjas in their temples within the monastery, and help defend the Monastery from skeletons. With the world also came a new crafting feature known as game cooking. A vendor in the Ninjago Monastery traded a special consumable item in exchange for common consumable items found around Lego Universe. Aside from the main mission chain that was to lean Spinjitsu, there were several other sub-plot mission chains available to players. The Ninjago Monastery world included many new daily missions.

The Ninjago Monastery introduced new puzzles that required two players to complete a certain task that would allow them to proceed to a new area. Two player puzzles were shown to the player by a "two minifigure heads icon" shown above any two player puzzle. A new feature that allowed the "purification" of new maelstrom weapons into purified weapons was added. This purification feature was introduced in a mission chain. Many of the mission chains including the main plot involve the Skeleton bosses in the Ninjago Caves. These Skeleton Bosses were taken from the LEGO Ninjago toy line. One of these Boss Skeletons, Frakjaw, was within the minigame: "Battle against Frakjaw!" and is involved at the end of the main mission chain.

As with other worlds, The Ninjago Monastery came with its own models and items. The Ninjago Monastery also included an "Earth Dragon Pet" That can be tamed after completing certain missions. The Ninjago Monastery was the most recent major addition to LEGO Universe. A battle against Lord Garmadon in the fire temple was going to be added into the game but this project was canceled as a result of the server shutdown.

Gameplay

Lego Universe brings players from around the world together to build and fight against the Maelstrom and its minions. The player assumes the role of a Lego minifigure and travels to various themed worlds, each with different enemies and challenges. Players collect and earn gear that can be worn and fought with to aid them in achieving a wide range of set goals. Also, players can have Specialties, each one with their unique gear. In addition, minifigures can gain ranks which allow them to use more advanced gear.

The currently accessible full worlds are the pirate-themed Gnarled Forest, faction-oriented Nimbus Station, green and festive Avant Gardens, high-tech Nexus Tower, maelstorm based crux prime, Ninjago's world ninjago monastery and the ninja-based Forbidden Valley. Custom-built rocket ships are used by players to travel between these worlds. Three racetracks are found on these worlds that allow players to race against each other with custom race cars.

Throughout the game players collect Lego pieces that can be used to freely build models on their personal properties. Properties can be set to only allow in certain friends or to give access to anybody in the game.

Promotion

Trailers

The original trailer, leaked around early 2008, showed early concepts of the game. These include character customization using the traditional Lego method, a workshop where a car is created from Lego bricks, a Lego city populated with sets from numerous different themes, and a short theatrical battle between an eye-patched Lego minifigure and a "Darkling". In January 2010, six new gameplay videos, an interview, and another trailer were shown at CES 2010 and released on the internet. A theatrical-style trailer depicting the background story was revealed at the E3 Gaming Expo.

Bradford Rant

In November 2009, a website for the fictional "Bradford-Rant Institute for Cosmic Kinesis" was linked on the LEGO Universe web page. The institute was supposedly tracking seven LEGO "Pods", which landed in various parts of the United States and Europe. Fans could track and find these pods, all of which landed between November 2009 and early January 2010. Once a pod was found, its data was put up on the Bradford-Rant page. After all of the Pods were found, a new trailer for Lego Universe and the tagline for the game, "Answer the Call: Save Imagination," was released.

The Great Minifig Mission

In January 2010, the Bradford Rant promotion then was turned over to "The Great Minifig Mission" promotion in which LEGO account holders complete missions in order to help minifigs enter the universe. The missions are released at an approximate rate of one every week when the site is updated. When the promotion started, it had a timer ending on April 2, 2010, at 12:00am midnight, GMT, which is April 1 at 8:00pm ET. On March 27, the timer reset to June 2, 2010, at 12:00am GMT, or June 1 at 8:00pm ET.

E3 2010

On June 15–17, 2010, the LEGO Universe Team hosted an event at the 2010 E3 Gaming Expo, where attendees could play in the Beta. It was during this event that the global distributor of LEGO Universe was announced, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, along with the official release date.

Testing

Alpha

Beginning December 8, 2009, members of the LEGO Kids Inner Circle who had been members before December 7 were invited to test the game before the beta started. Before this, the only people who could play the game were Lego employees and their friends and families. The game was in a very early state; only a few worlds were ready for testing, and the parts that were playable had several glitches. As time went on, glitches were fixed, and more worlds were opened. Several concepts tested in the Alpha test did not make it into the Beta and were scrapped.

Beta

In January 2010, LEGO announced that, at the Consumer Electronics Show, there would be a demonstration and sign-ups for beta testing.

The link to the Closed-Beta signup page was originally leaked on an LU Producer's Twitter page, allowing some people to sign up for the game before anyone else. The February issue of the LEGO Universe newsletter, released soon after, also contained a link to the Beta sign up page for LEGO Universe, wherein subscribers were able to sign up for a chance to be in the Beta Test for PC only (though a Mac version was released later on during testing.) Members of My LEGO Network on LEGO.com also received a message inviting them to the Beta sign ups. In March, the LEGO Universe website featured a link on an article directly to the Beta sign ups. Lego Universe Beta invites were sent out to the first round of non-Alpha Testers on March 10; the Beta Test then ended on September 26 at 7:59 PM EDT (September 29 at 1:00 PM EDT, on the German Server) to prepare for the "Founders" Launch on October 8.

Purchase

LEGO Universe is based on a subscription known as "Game-Time". A player can choose from one, six, and twelve month subscriptions (the six and twelve month subscription times rendering special in-game bonuses when bought). Once a user buys a subscription, the Game Time refill code is sent periodically based on the subscription that was purchased, using a process known as auto-renewal. Game Time can also be purchased in the form of non-renewed game cards.

Normal Order

LEGO Universe became available for normal order on September 27, 2010. The Normal Order ships with only the LEGO Universe DVD and one month of free game time, though promotions did occasionally arise which provided additional exclusive items. The game is also available for download online, through services such as Steam.

Free to Play

Aside from the normal membership packages the game also offered a free to play option with certain limitations, such as there being only two worlds available for free play (one being Venture Explorer — a Tutorial world) and Avant Gardens. You could take part in the fight against the Spider Queen and have temporary gear which involves armour and weapons for each Faction. There was a button which asks players if they want to become a full member, where they got access to everywhere in the Universe and got to do more missions & achievements. Free to play required the user to enter a Lego ID & password and create a character with a jazzy name, such as SwiftMagmShadow, AwesomeStormyShadow, or HybridGravitySensei. One limitation was that players playing free-to-play (F2P) could not talk with other members / players. They were also limited on having a maximum 10,000 coins to buy items and food. They did have access to Block Yard where they could build their own creations. They were not allowed to trade with other minifigures, or have more than five friends on their friends list.

Many players thought it challenging to increase in level after completing the main story line, nevertheless many players participated in the Free-to-play option.

Game server shutdown

On Monday, January 30, 2012, the LEGO Universe servers shut down, and the game is no longer available to purchase or play. Jesper Vilstrup, Vice President of LEGO Universe, stated, "Unfortunately, we have not been able to build a satisfactory revenue model in our target group, and therefore, have decided to close the game." For the last month of LEGO Universe, players with membership were offered a month of play at no cost as a "Thank you" from the LEGO Universe Team.

External links

• Universe, Lego, http://universe.lego.com/ .
• Lego Universe, NetDevil, http://www.netdevil.com/games/lego.php 
• Lego Universe at CES 2010, Game trailers, http://www.gametrailers.com/video/ces-10-lego-universe/60652 .
• LEGO Universe, Twitter, http://twitter.com/LEGO_Universe/ .
• The LEGO Universe Wiki, Wikia, http://legouniverse.wikia.com .
• Bradford Rant Institute, Lego, http://www.bradfordrant.org/en/home.html .