MMO News |
| SD Gundam Capsule Fighter Online Gameplay #2 Posted: 03 Dec 2011 02:49 PM PST
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MMO Updates |
| WRUP: And now, a final close-up edition Posted: 03 Dec 2011 07:00 AM PST Filed under: Massively Meta, Miscellaneous  Orcas live on mountains, right? Anyway, let's get down to brass tacks and talk about what the Massively staff will be playing over the weekend. And as our usual bonus, we've also included our feelings on whether or not the weather really matters... in-game, of course. So click on past the break to see our plans, and let us know what you'll be up to in the comments! Continue reading WRUP: And now, a final close-up edition
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| The Daily Grind: Do you read MMO novels? Posted: 03 Dec 2011 05:00 AM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, Culture, Lore, MMO industry, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Miscellaneous  So do you read game-related novels? Do you think they help you immerse yourself in the game, or do you just read them for fun?  Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
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| EverQuest to hackers: You've been served Posted: 02 Dec 2011 07:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest, Culture, News items  In a suitably ominous speech on the EverQuest forums, Sony Online Entertainment's Piestro delivered a word of warning to the cheaters, hackers, and exploiters of Norrath: "Stop now." Piestro goes on to reveal that the team has been quietly performing some clandestine work that helps "[detect] cheaters quickly and accurately." This should be good news for fans of the old-school title who enjoy playing the game on a level field. Hackers, however, should back down at once, because -- as Piestro warns -- "there will be no second chances." Also, because cheating makes you a jerk.
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| Runes of Magic to receive Turkish and Latin American localization from Aeria Games Posted: 02 Dec 2011 06:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Culture, MMO industry, News items, Free-to-play, Runes of Magic  No details have been disclosed about the timeframe for the launch of these new localizations. According to Len Hoang, CEO of Aeria Games, the release is part of the company's overall ongoing strategy -- "We believe emerging markets will continue to rise in importance for Aeria Games as we commit to growing our global community of power players." Keep your eyes peeled for more news about the release. [Source: Aeria Games press release]
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| Betawatch: November 26 - December 2, 2011 Posted: 02 Dec 2011 05:00 PM PST Filed under: Betas, Massively Meta, Betawatch, Miscellaneous  Are you looking for a new beta to tinker with? We distributed beta keys for three titles over the week: Archlord X: The Chronicles' closed beta; Mythos Global, whose current round of closed beta runs through Monday; and Rosh Online's closed beta, which we announced last week. That should keep you busy if you weren't one of the lucky few to be invited to this weekend's Star Wars: The Old Republic beta round. The full Betawatch roundup is just beyond the cut! Continue reading Betawatch: November 26 - December 2, 2011
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| A Tale in the Desert VI begins tomorrow Posted: 02 Dec 2011 04:30 PM PST Filed under: Historical, A Tale in the Desert, Patches, News items, Free-to-play, Sandbox  A Tale in the Desert V is coming to a close, and of course that means that A Tale in the Desert VI is just over the horizon. For the uninitiated, this means that the current arc of events will be coming to an end and players will be starting from scratch. However, that doesn't mean that all was for naught. Though the players themselves have to start anew, the achievements of Tale 5 remain in place. Players succeeded in building four new monuments, which will lead to four new Tests designed by the team's Oracles for Tale 6. The new Tale goes live at noon EST tomorrow, December 3rd, so you have one more night to prepare yourselves before another unique Tale begins. To get in on the action yourself, just head on over to the game's official site.
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2011 04:00 PM PST Filed under: Game mechanics, Opinion, Roleplaying, Storyboard, Miscellaneous  For those of you who haven't yet heard about the system, please let us know how you're getting the site in 1980s Siberia. But I'll gloss over anyway: The core element of the system is that when you hit a certain point with a character, you pick a surname to unlock as your "Legacy" for all characters on that server. As you advance with more characters, you gain more benefits from the Legacy and so on and so forth. What we're really concerned with is the surname part because that's the part that matters to roleplayers. Being able to make a character's overall tree a tangible thing is a powerful element. It allows you to actually play a family, or at the very least, a linked coalition of characters. Unfortunately, while the idea works well, the problem is that surnames are so important that I almost wish that the system had a different way of tying the elements together. Continue reading Storyboard: Family legacy
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| Star Trek Online offering perks to subscribers before the business shift Posted: 02 Dec 2011 03:30 PM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, Business models, News items, Star Trek Online, Free-to-play, Promotions  Subscription deals are also being offered through December 19th for players who subscribe for longer than one month. Picking up a three-month subscription will come out to around $36, and a six-month subscription will run about $66, both cheaper than the regular pricing. You can also pick up a lifetime subscription as well, if you're willing to drop $200 up front. While some players will doubtlessly be taking advantage of the shift to stop subscribing and keep playing, there's certainly no shortage of deals being offered to keep subscriptions after the switch.
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| Darkfall devblog addresses Darkfall 2.0 progress, lack of communication Posted: 02 Dec 2011 03:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Darkfall, News items, Dev Diaries, Sandbox  Darkfall fans, rejoice! More news about Darkfall 2.0 is upon us. Tasos Flambouras stopped by the game's blog today to mention that the team does "notice the anxiety on the forums concerning development progress, timing of Darkfall's re-launch, speculation about a wipe between Darkfall and the re-launch, and our spotty communication as of late." He then set out to make amends for these transgressions by giving fans an update on Darkfall 2.0's development progress. Flambouras noted that "the remaining work is broken down... and supported with a clear timeframe... so at this point we know exactly when we're done with the development." More details on Darkfall 2.0 will be revealed in upcoming updates. But Darkfall 2.0 isn't the only thing on the Aventurine head-honcho's agenda. He also takes some time to talk about whether or not there will be a full wipe when 2.0 launches (the team hasn't decided yet), business deals (the studio is in "final stages of cooperation with several partners"), and the studio's lack of communication (the studio says it's sorry and promises to do better). For the full, unabridged dev blog update, just head on over to the game's official site.
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| LotRO's Devs of the Roundtable sally forth on Update 5's instance cluster Posted: 02 Dec 2011 02:30 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Previews, Free-to-play, Dev Diaries  Update 5's five instances -- including an epic raid confrontation with Saruman -- presented unique challenges and exciting opportunities for the team. Worldbuilder Dan Ouellette says that Turbine didn't want to limit itself to merely Orthanc: "After looking at all our ideas we knew we didn't want to have them all in the tower, because that would be a very boring cluster. It's a very small space and in general... just really long." Instead, the team branched out to focus on the surroundings, inner workings, and underneath of Orthanc for the five instances. The different types of instances -- three-, six-, and 12-person -- allowed the team to try out different tricks as well. "It's an exciting and difficult demand when working on a three-man," Content Designer Bob Hess says. "The types of challenges you present to people have to be a little more outside-the-box." It's a smörgåsbord of delectable information, so if you're craving good group content in LotRO, you'll definitely want to scoop this up.
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| Star Wars: The Old Republic pits the Jedi Consular against the Imperial Agent Posted: 02 Dec 2011 02:00 PM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, Video, Classes, News items, Star Wars: The Old Republic  Ladies and gentlemen, this match is scheduled for one fall! In the blue corner, weighing in at 200 pounds of pure Force, we have the Jedi Consular. In the red corner, we have the conniving Imperial Agent. Who will come out on top? Well, that's for you to decide, but the folks at BioWare want to make sure everyone is making informed decisions. In light of that, the studio has released a new Star Wars: The Old Republic video in which a number of devs (verbally) duke it out in hopes of proving that their class is the best class. So jump past the cut and check it out, then decide for yourself who comes out on top (protip: it's the Agent). Oh, and while you're at it, don't forget that you can now preorder The Old Republic peripherals, so if you're in the market for a new mouse, keyboard, or headset, you can declare your allegiance for the Empire or Republic with a new gadget. For the full details, hit the SWTOR official site. Continue reading Star Wars: The Old Republic pits the Jedi Consular against the Imperial Agent
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| City of Heroes producer letter details Freedom transition, Fall Player Summit Posted: 02 Dec 2011 01:30 PM PST Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Culture, News items, Free-to-play  City of Heroes Freedom has been going strong for some time now, and Paragon Studios seems understandably pleased with the game's F2P transition. In the latest producer's letter on the official City of Heroes site, executive producer Brian Clayton states that "the Freedom initiative and Issue 21: Convergence have significantly increased our active player base and our revenues, and have invigorated our game with amazing new content including monthly Signature Stories, weekly items in the Paragon Market, Paragon Rewards, a kickin' Halloween event, and plenty more!" Clayton also speaks about the Fall Player Summit the studio held on November 19th. During the gathering, the team took the time to listen to players about what they liked and disliked about Freedom so far. In addition, artist extraordinaire David Nakayama hosted a Create a Costume Set panel, in which he worked collaboratively with players to create the Retro Sci-Fi costume set, which will be introduced to the game sometime next year. For the full letter, just click on over to the City of Heroes official site.
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| EVE dev diary crunches the numbers on New Eden violence Posted: 02 Dec 2011 01:00 PM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, MMO industry, PvP, News items, Sandbox  Sure you can become a captain of industry, a respected (feared?) trader, or a profit-seeking miner, but at the end of the day, many EVE fans care little for the gameplay that exists outside of spaceship on spaceship violence. CCP's latest dev blog reflects this obsession, and CCP Diagoras presents a load of statistics culled from the end of 2007 to the present. Among the interesting (if esoteric) factoids: Something blows up in New Eden once every six seconds. Head to the game's official website for more numbers.
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| War of the Immortals celebrates open beta with new trailer Posted: 02 Dec 2011 12:30 PM PST Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Trailers, Video, News items, Free-to-play  Perfect World Entertainment's War of the Immortals (not to be confused with the company's other title, Battle of the Immortals) has entered open beta. Two new servers -- Gaia and Midgard -- have been brought up in order to accommodate the influx of new players sure to arrive with the open testing. War of the Immortals puts players in the role of one of eight classes, then sends them on an epic journey during which they must battle fierce monsters, solve diabolical puzzles, and generally be heroic. To top it all off, PWE is giving away 2500 USD in prizes to War of the Immortals beta testers, so head on over to the official site for the full details, and click past the cut for the game's open beta trailer. [Source: Perfect World Entertainment press release] Continue reading War of the Immortals celebrates open beta with new trailer
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| MMObility: Tiny Speck explains Glitch's big unlaunching Posted: 02 Dec 2011 12:00 PM PST Filed under: Betas, Business models, Interviews, News items, Free-to-play, Browser, Casual, MMObility  Even after speaking to him, though, I am still a bit confused about the announcement. Is my confusion due to the fact that many developers would never do such a thing as going back to beta, or is it the offer for full credit and subscription refunds that boggles me? Either way, players have to find their comfort zone with the announcement and decide what they want to do. Click past the cut for my thoughts on the interview and feel free to leave your own in the comments section! Continue reading MMObility: Tiny Speck explains Glitch's big unlaunching
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| Super Hero Squad Online reaches the one-million-player mark Posted: 02 Dec 2011 11:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, News items, Free-to-play, Kids, Super Hero Squad Online  SHSO, which launched just back in April, has been a big hit with the younger crowd (and presumably with parents) by offering up free and easily accessible gameplay as well as a focus on a kid-friendly environment. Jay Minn, vice president of Gazillion's Amazing Society, is predictably happy with the number and promises to keep the updates coming: "We'll keep adding new content and characters all the time, it's truly wonderful to see the game alive with over a million registered players having fun brawling, battling, exploring and making super heroic friends!" [Source: Gazillion press release]
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| Nexon's Min Kim on the 'Free2pocalypse' Posted: 02 Dec 2011 10:00 AM PST Filed under: Business models, Economy, Interviews, MMO industry, News items, Miscellaneous  He also talks a bit about Nexon's new Live Games division, which consolidates the company's operations, marketing, and communications groups into a single entity under his direction. Finally, Kim explains the logic behind the decision to remove Nexon's name from its uber-successful retail store game cards. In a nutshell, the benefits of unifying the virtual item currencies across a diverse selection of games outweighed the name recognition afforded by the Nexon banner.
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| DCUO Lightning Strikes update to feature superhero origins content Posted: 02 Dec 2011 09:30 AM PST Filed under: Super-hero, Video, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Patches, News items, Free-to-play, DC Universe Online  In addition to a new Central City map and a new set of electricity-based superpowers, DCUO is adding some origin content designed to titillate DC Comics fans and introduce newbs to the canon's long and storied history. Sony Online Entertainment creative director Jens Andersen told PC Gamer that the Flash's Cosmic Treadmill is the first of several origins-type devices slated to appear in the superhero MMO, and SOE plans to let players revisit "the origin stories of DC's biggest villains and heroes." The initial origin story occurs in one of DCUO's duo instances, where you and a friend will be whisked back in time to the night that Barry Allen rode the lightning and became The Flash. Head to the PC Gamer for the full article text, and check out the Lightning Strikes teaser video after the break. Continue reading DCUO Lightning Strikes update to feature superhero origins content
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General gaming |
| Review: Fishing Resort Tries Hard to Make Fishing Un-Boring Posted: 02 Dec 2011 05:30 PM PST Fishing games are one of the bigger portions in the routine school lunch that is the Wii library. Realistic ones, unrealistic ones, some with controller shells to add to your pile of Wii accessories... and at the tail end of the system's life, they keep coming. XSeed's Fishing Resort, developed by Prope (Let's Tap) tries to spice things up by letting you do some things that aren't just fishing, and they do add a cute Japanese touch to an otherwise bland genre, but it still has trouble standing out. The point of Fishing Resort is to let you do whatever you want -- as long as it's related to fishing. Your customized character arrives at the Hotel Fishing Resort and, after a control tutorial, can either keep fishing, take a run down the shore, or go back to the hotel and sign up for special events. Don't expect a Skyrim level of freedom, though -- you're bounded by all sorts of paths and walls, and you still need to keep fishing and be good at it. The game opens up bit by bit, and in a couple of in-game days, you can freely check out of the hotel and visit the neighboring resort, and many more all across the island are unlocked as you build your collection of catches. |
| Import Play Test: Rocket Slime Brings Happiness to the Third Dimension Posted: 02 Dec 2011 05:15 PM PST Rocket Slime! Not everyone played that little DS masterpiece, but everyone who did has one thing in common: They loved it. (If you somehow managed to dislike Rocket Slime, please let us know; rarely does one have the opportunity to see the living incarnation of misanthropy.) A simple sprite-based game in the style of old-school Zelda adventures, Rocket Slime focused on the exploits of Dragon Quest's iconic sprites. You know, those little smiling blue dudes with few enough hit points to count on one hand, whose death is worth all of one EXP and two gold. An unlikely hero for a game to be sure, but it worked: The protagonist, the eponymous Rocket, used his gelatinous elasticity to take on a horde of much more powerful creatures, rescuing his fellow slimes from a gang of Mafioso platypuses, the Plob. This involved reciprocal abductions and occasionally driving a giant slime-shaped tank-fortress into massive pitched battles. The end result wasn't anything mind-blowing, but it was so fun and earnestly good-natured that no one cared. To know Rocket was to love Rocket. For the sequel -- Slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest 3 in Japan, which we'll call Rocket Slime 3DS for convenience -- the Dragon Quest crew isn't exactly reinventing the wheel. At first glance, Rocket Slime 3DS doesn't look particularly different from its previous-generation predecessor. The most notable change is that the backgrounds (but not the characters) are rendered with polygons. These look pretty barfy in still images, but they're quite nice once you turn the 3D slider up. Besides that, though, Rocket Slime 3DS is pretty much business as usual. Rocket possesses the exactly same repertoire of skills: He snaps into foes and objects to send them flying, and he can snag and carry up to three stunned foes or other kinds of debris at a time. He jumps, floats to a rest, and can perform a super attack by charging up briefly. And that's about it! |
| Microsoft Flight Needs Beta Testers Posted: 02 Dec 2011 02:11 PM PST Unless you were specifically looking for information on it, you may have thought Microsoft Flight had been killed given how quiet things had been. Instead, the development team has continued to give occasional updates on its status through its official website and now it's turning to gamers to beta test the game beginning next month. Those who are interested will need a Windows Live ID and an Xbox Live/Games for Windows Live Gamertag to sign up. Not everyone who applies will get in, and the information you're asked to provide isn't especially specific, so it doesn't sound as if it matters how fast your computer is or what beta testing experience you have. The beta will begin sometime in January; testers will be bound to an NDA and therefore disallowed from sharing any impressions, screenshots, or anything else. |
| The EFF Wants Console Modding and Jailbreaking Deemed Legal by the DMCA Posted: 02 Dec 2011 01:14 PM PST Just over a year after winning several exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anti-circumvention provisions (which saw jailbreaking cell phones acknowledged as fair use), the Electronic Frontier Foundation is now trying to expand those exemptions. This time around it's interested in gaining something similar for those who want to mod their videogame consoles. A request for this, along with three other issues, was filed this week. Exemptions are considered by the Copyright Office during a rulemaking process which takes place every three years. The exemption is for the DMCA's "prohibitions on 'circumventing' digital rights management (DRM) and 'other technical protection measures' used to protect copyrighted works." The EFF and many others feel these rules are not used properly, hence the need to seek this out in the first place. |
| Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition's Ver. 2012 Update Detailed Posted: 02 Dec 2011 11:43 AM PST Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition Version 2012 is a very long title, no doubt, but what it is not is the name of yet another re-release of Street Fighter IV. As previously announced, it's a huge patch being released -- for free! -- for the Arcade Edition of the game. Arcade Edition was the third version of Street Fighter IV released following SFIV itself and Super Street Fighter IV, and is the only version this patch is being released for. It is said to be the final version of the game, and that seems to be proven by the large number of changes being made in this patch. |
| Four Gameplay Mechanics That Should Have Caught On Posted: 02 Dec 2011 11:12 AM PST
Feature  Four Gameplay Mechanics That Should Have Caught OnIn spite of their potential, these ideas somehow slipped through the cracks.By: Dennis Farrell December 1, 2011 All creative endeavors are informed by those that came before. Experiences of all kinds are absorbed, filed away in memory, and considered -- sometimes subconsciously -- in terms of how their building blocks might be expanded, altered, or fit into an entirely different framework. In game design, the result of this process is often a slight tweak on an existing mechanic. Given the number of interconnected systems that make up even the smallest title, this is something of a necessity. Reinventing the wheel sounds noble, but try doing it a thousand times while balancing on the wobbly, ever-growing column of wheels. Which is on fire. I'm not sure why, but there it is. This was your idea. Sometimes, however, a truly unique concept emerges and, with a lot of hard work, surpasses the "don't break everything" barrier to take a starring role in a game. If such an idea proves popular it is often co-opted rather quickly by the rest of the industry, becoming a new foundation for others to improve upon. |
| NeverDead Amuses us With Its Head-rolling, But Concerns us With Its Shooting Posted: 02 Dec 2011 10:30 AM PST At one point in NeverDead, I'm told to go against every instinct in my video game playing life by actually touching the electricity. That is, I'm explicitly told to grasp onto an electrical panel to shock myself into death. Well, death for a traditional character -- the trick with NeverDead is that your character, Bryce Boltzmann, is an immortal fellow who simply can't die. Whether blown up, torn in half, or in this case shocked with massive amounts of electricity, Bryce keeps on going with only mild impairment -- well, as mild as, "lacking in limbs or perhaps even an entire body." A cursory look at NeverDead reveals what looks like a pretty typical third-person shooter. There's a dash of Max Payne, in that time occasionally slows down (if you purchase that specific ability), but overall, the game alternates between walking, talking, jumping, and shooting. But rather than die, Bryce just falls apart. Bad guy chop his arm off? It lays on the floor while he switches from firing guns akimbo to using a gun singlehandedly. A different demon blows a leg off? Now he's hopping to-and-fro on one foot. Get caught in an explosion that blows his entire body apart? Now you control just his head as it rolls on by in an attempt to re-combine with the rest of his body. It's like if Katamari Damacy starred The Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail rather than the Prince of All Cosmos. |
| Minecraft Creator Moving on to New Projects Posted: 02 Dec 2011 10:22 AM PST Markus Persson, better known to fans of Minecraft as Notch, has stepped down from his role as lead developer of the sandbox building game. This move comes just a few weeks after the first-ever MineCon, during which time the game finally reached a final version 1.0 state. That is not to say updates for the game are done -- there is still much to be done, it'll just be handled by Jens Bergensten, who is taking over as lead developer. Persson says Bergensten, who is going to be working alone for right now, "will have the final say in all design decisions." |
| Fortune Street is Fun for All, Dull for One Posted: 02 Dec 2011 10:02 AM PST Fortune Street stands as one of the best video board games I've ever played. It's far more traditional (read: "Monopoly-like") in feel than the likes of Culdcept Saga, but as an old-fashioned board game concept rendered as a video game it's hard to top. However, Fortune Street brings with it a single significant caveat: If you don't like board games and don't have a few friends who share your enthusiasm for the medium, there's really nothing here for you. Sure, you can play Fortune Street solo, but you won't enjoy it. Not for lack of effort on the developers' part, though; the game sells on the strength of its Mario and Dragon Quest cameos, and those really come to the fore when playing the single-player game. Each CPU-controlled opponent burbles with a constant stream of unique dialogue to liven things up. Mario characters like Toad and Peach riff on their one-dimensional in-game personalities, while the Dragon Quest crew carry forward their various whimsical personalities (Slime makes lots of puns on the words goo and ooze, while Platypunk talks like a wiseguy gangster in reference to Rocket Slime) from the recent DQ localizations. The problem is that after a few rounds of this, you'll have seen all the dialogue and will no longer care. |
| Xenoblade Chronicles Confirmed for North America [Update] Posted: 02 Dec 2011 09:08 AM PST Update: If the information below seemed to too good to be true, Nintendo has now confirmed the news: Xenoblade Chronicles is coming to North America next year. The game's page on Nintendo's website only lists an April release date, while GameStop's website has been updated with a listing that shows it as coming out on April 2. Whatever the exact date may be, at least we now know it's coming. |
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