UNIVERSE 2.0 Revealed!

The embargo of being able to talk about Universe 2.0 ended this morning, from official word from THQ.

So, the very second that it did, a notable sports gaming forum, and guy who was at the community event, started posting all the details, now that he is legally able to, and the floodgates were opened by THQ via twitter.

So, here's what some of what this administrator on the sports gaming forum is saying...

"Titles can be defended on any show. Storylines make sense now and blend together better. ALSO, DRAFT!!!!! And it looks just like it does on TV with the wrestler faces flipping through until one is picked. Even has the same music.

Everything just feels tighter, no more inferno matches for 8 straight PPV's. Tag teams/stables stay together, some may still split up, but not anything like it was last year. EVERYTHING can be edited. We'll get to that here in a few

(PERSON ASKS HIM: You said there are three shows? WCW? ECW??)

It's Superstars.

BUT.... I did say everything is editable. So, you can make that show, whatever you want. Name it whatever you want (Same with Raw/Smackdown).

For instance, I made Nitro on Monday, complete with logo, arena, belts. Then made TNA Impact on Thursday (didn't have logo or arena, but those will obviously be created by the community probably in a matter of days after relase). Then I put Raw on Friday night. You can then remove entire shows from the draft and for titles. So only wrestlers on TNA can complete for whatever titles you set for that show, no cross over unless you let it. When you set up the show, you name it, set the belts for it, etc.

Or you can have all 3 shows open and compete on other shows here and there.

Unfortunately the title rankings still isn't editable, so you can't just put Cody Rhodes as the #1 contender for every belt But you can give him a title shot whenever you want and for whatever show you want.

So as you can see, the ideas here are pretty much endless. Want an all ECW show? Sure! Want an all Legends show? Sure! Want Raw/Smackdown/Superstars as it is now, SURE!. Want John Cena and Randy Orton to be stuck together on GLOW on Friday nights? Go ahead.

Yes, it's that cool!"

Well now that sounds very cool to me.

WWE RAW Supershow on Monday Nights
CXA on Tuesday Nights
WCW Nitro on Friday Nights

That'll work for me.

Hey, that's cool. I wouldn't have thought they'd let you change around Raw & SD, but I'm not complaining.

Is there a name for the CXA weekly show?

MOOORE INFOOOOO....


Matches were 5 a show, up 1 from last year. Superstars only had 3/4 I believe. So whatever show you make on Thursday will have less matches.

Did not see new cutscenes that I noticed, but they were better placed than a guy sitting front row randomly every show.

Still in wrestling gear, reason is that the character models are caked on, so can't just add clothing options. That's why the Nexus armband last year couldn't be moved or adjusted for Wade Barrett and others. It was actually a part of him.

1. If I take the World Title off Smackdown, what happens on their show? Do I have to replace it with something? You can replace Smackdown's title with whatever belt you want.

2. If I assign them one of the other belts, say the WCW championship, will they have rankings for that belt or are rankings still only for WWE, World, US, Intercontinental and Tag belts? Ranking are set for each show's titles.

3. Can you split the tag belts like they used to be and have two separate sets of rankings? Did notmess with tag belts, sorry

4. Is there still just one announce team? Yes, just Cole/Lawler

5. I saw one of the achievements has something to do with getting 75% momentum in Universe with a caw... how does that work... is this like the popularity thing in GM mode? God I hope not. I'll let the IGN review explain that better, I didn't mess with actually doing too many matches myself in Universe, did mostly simming through it and played outthings like the Rumble, MitB, and the Draft night (winner gets the draft pick).

6. Can you still give a caw any ratings you wish... we don't have to build them up through pointless grinding do we? Yes

7. Do you still see like the World champion competing for the US belt? Possible, but not as bad. The ratings are still not perfect.


Pretty sure PPV's had 6 or 7 matches, can't remember, it's more than a regular show.

Cannot move the date unfortuantely, Always a Monday, Thursday, Friday show.

There's a global setting, so if you change Monday to Nitro, it'll always stay that way until you change it back.

Can't edit PPV's.

Draft occurs after Mania.

I'll try to clarify this.. So Raw has the WWE Title and USA Title. ROH (Thursday show) has Random belt and Random Belt. Smackdown has World title and IC Title. Each show will have their own rankings for their own titles. Then you can lock down each show so only the participants onthat show can compete for those titles.

Draft: All the matches occur on Raw. And no, it's completely random. You can obviously move them back. I didn't try if I cut Smackdown off from the draft what would happen, but my Thursday show was cut off and none of their wrestlers were involved. So each match was a Raw (nitro) guy vs. Smackdown (raw) guy. Winner got the draft pick for their show.

All 3 shows still on one PPV?: Unfortunately, it is. Since out of the box it recognizes that it's WWE. But you have the editing power to make it 3 different brands that don't intersect except for PPV's. You can obviously change all the matches though. It's a limitation I know they
are looking to change, but not sure if it'll be ever given the green light by WWE. They don't have multiple PPV's a month so why would their game to accommodate other fed's. So the dev's basically found a way around the limitation. It works well.

Arenas: Every PPV, Raw, Smackdown, Superstars, NXT, Nitro, Clash of the Champions and Starrcade.

Editing matches on PPVs: Yes, you can edit each match. If you want Raw only PPV January, then a Smackdown one in February, and then a ROH one in March, you can do that. Just have to edit before the show.

Special Shows: Draft is the only special show. There is a Tribute to the Troops though.

For me, I loved Universe mode last year, kept me playing the game, but at the same time, I HATED how limited it was. I expressed this when I met with the devs of WWE '12.

Most, not all mind you, of my issues have been fixed and this will eat up TONS of time.

I still wish I could book matches better and keep better track of feuds.Still needs to steal or buy a text sim to really get Universe to where it needs to be. And still needs to get it online!

We tried to get that across as much as possible.

But in the mean time, Universe 2.0 will make many "sim" guru's for wrestling very happy."

Sounds good. And Starrcade in as well.

This is interesting: "Belts that you win or unlock or even create" ?????

It was confirmed via Twitter that this was a mistake and a typo, in general.

The author clarafied what he meant...

He meant that you can "create it" as far as taking the unlockable titles into Universe and then making them be the "standard" title for that show.

Much in the way that you can take the, the Million Dollar Belt (if it's in the game) and "set it to be the main, or secondary title for your "Thursday Night Cash-In" show, (like, let's say if you created a show for that)

But yeah, it was quickly taken back as a typo and that there is no -create-a-belt". The author meant it as "title for your created show."

Nice! Hopefully they'll have the WCW Thunder set and the modern Nitro set with the weird pendant looking thing at the top of the ramp. Some WCW PPV sets would be nice too (other than Starrcade & Clash, but they're a good start). Road Wild was a good set, so was Spring Stampede, Hallowe'en Havoc etc.

Regarding the tag titles, do the actual wrestlers still carry around both belts? Or is there a unified pair of belts? The setup last year was rubbish, the tag team champions couldn't even enter together! If they haven't touched much on tag team dynamics, the stables feature may not be brushed up. Well, we'll see.

You know every WCW/ECW/TNA/ROH/AWA/NJPW etc etc etc Show or PPV ever will be recreated at some point and up for download.

MORE NOOSE.

Ledesma: "New Streamlined Match Flow in #WWE12 Universe allows u to go from match to match to match in the same card without going back to the menu."


Good. That was a pain in the ass. Match, go back to menu, match, go back to menu, match....

Now it's one continuous card. That will make Universe so much more compelling, when it's cutscene, match, match, cutscene, match, cutscene, match, cutscene, end of show, and THEN back to the menu.

Also, he says that apparently, it IS possible to go back to the menu between matches, but only if you ask it to, by hitting the "Press X to go back to the card" button. Nice. I love choices like that.

Nice touch. It'll be much better to set the card up, including angles and run-ins during CPU .v. CPU matches, and then just play it out. All adds to the presentation.

You know what would be great?

COMMERCIAL BREAKS.

I don't think it should go to actual commercials. ...I mean, Lawler and Cole start making it look like they're going to a commercial, or actually show that wide-shot of the ring with graphics on it, and some advertisement while it loads.

Maybe sometimes, it could go to one of those promo's or an in-game commercial for an upcoming PPV, or a wrestler vignette. OR it could do a "THQ's Slam of The Week" by showing one of your pre-recorded Highlight Reels.

Or "Earlier in the show" recaps.

It's those little touches that I would really appreciate seeing.

Provided you had the option to turn them on or off, or if they just came up during the loading screens, I wouldn't mind that option to add to the presentation.

Basically though, I shan't touch WWE Universe until I've got everything else in place. First order of business is to play a few matches to get used to the grappling system.

Then its into the create a finish mode to make one of each that my RTWM CAW can use. Once I've made him and sorted an entrance and moveset, I'll take him through RTWM, as well as doing the HHH and Sheamus chapters obviously (I may tinker with both their movesets along the way)

RTWM done, I'll then make some more CAWs, and some CXA designs to use on the arena. Only once all that is done will I actually start on Universe.

For me it was: play match, build CAW, rinse Universe, more CAW's then when starting to get a bit bored, play through RTWM.

I never used Create-A-Finisher or Create-A-RTWM-Storyline, it's unlikely I will do this time around either, tbh.

Going straight into Create-An-Arena.

gonna mess with that.

Then, I don't even know.