MMO Updates |
- The Road to Mordor: Convenience, not advantage
- Big faction changes coming to Fallen Earth
- WRUP: What happens when you add sound to chat edition
- The Daily Grind: What's your favorite item-quality system?
- This Week in MMO: Hey guys have you heard about Ilum? edition
- Grab a closed beta key for Jagged Alliance Online
- Betawatch: January 14 - 20, 2012
- Storyboard: We are (among) the champions
- MMObility: Two new MMOs, one tiny screen
- SWTOR to get ability delay fixes but no Valor rollback [Updated]
- Guild Wars 2 devs name their nine favorite skill combos
- The Firing Line: What ever happened to that game?
- The Force is with SWTOR: EA stock bounces back, budget revealed
- Warner Bros. invests in Korean publisher to 'co-develop certain online games' [Updated]
- Taun-taunts: Damion Schubert teases future SWTOR vanity pets
- Champions Online reveals new Mountain archetype
| The Road to Mordor: Convenience, not advantage Posted: 21 Jan 2012 09:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Business models, Economy, Free-to-play, The Road to Mordor, Crafting  That phrase has echoed in my head over the past week, ever since we heard that statted armor was coming to the in-game store. I've been among those who have championed Turbine's F2P model as the way to do things right -- to offer fluff, a la carte content and convenience without straying into so-called "pay to win" territory that has plagued cheaper games. But now I wonder if the new motto is "convenience and advantage," especially in light of several other questionable store selections that have been pushed through despite player resistance. But let's concentrate on one topic today, that being the stat armor that's now available in the store. Is this strictly a "convenience" item that is meant to aid struggling lowbies, or does it represent the sale of a clear advantage for those who are OK with letting their money game for them? Are we making a mountain out of a molehill by discussing this, or is it far past time that something like this needs to be brought into the public discourse? Continue reading The Road to Mordor: Convenience, not advantage
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| Big faction changes coming to Fallen Earth Posted: 21 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Patches, News items, Free-to-play, Post-Apocalyptic, Dev Diaries  The current faction dynamics can be confusing, she explains, and GamersFirst feels that Fallen Earth's learning curve can be smoothed out "without dumbing it down." To do so, shoulder factions are being removed, and wastelanders will need to pick a faction and remain loyal to it in order to earn points. Missions may be accepted from three factions, but only the primary faction will determine PvP objectives, missions, and faction channels. Finally, the devs are removing factional friendly fire except in cases of clan wars, bloodsports, or dueling gameplay. Croall says this is intended to curb same-faction griefing, and ultimately contribute to "a less jarring PvP experience in Fallen Earth."
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| WRUP: What happens when you add sound to chat edition Posted: 21 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST Filed under: Massively Meta, Miscellaneous  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on your views about such shenanigans, this week's WRUP does not include sounds. Instead, it just contains what the Massively staff members will be up to over the weekend, as well as whether or not they would pay money for a mobile app. 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: What happens when you add sound to chat edition
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| The Daily Grind: What's your favorite item-quality system? Posted: 21 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST Filed under: Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Miscellaneous  I think he's right. I miss the days of Ultima Online (which not coincidentally was Koster's baby), when players geared up with basic platemail of invulnerability, chainmail of fortification, and katanas of vanquishing. Halfway through UO's lifespan, that system was gutted in favor of a Diablo-esque item that turned wearables into a numbers game. The charm of my deadly poisoned kryss made by a Grandmaster Blacksmith was gone, replaced by a few dozen stats to juggle. Do you agree with Koster? Are color-coded item tiers a design shortcut that contributes to the loss of immersion in MMOs and other games? What game has your favorite item-quality system?  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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| This Week in MMO: Hey guys have you heard about Ilum? edition Posted: 20 Jan 2012 07:00 PM PST Filed under: Video, Opinion, The Secret World, Humor, Star Wars: The Old Republic, TERA  Another week is drawing to a close, and that means it's time for yet another This Week in MMO. On this edition of the show, host Gary Gannon, along with guests Mike B and Mike Schaffnit, takes a more-than-adequate amount of time reminding players of the blistering failure that is Star Wars: The Old Republic's Ilum and ponders whether or not any corrective measures will be too little, too late. Meanwhile, En Masse Entertainment is gearing up for the impending beta test and subsequent release of its newly westernized action-focused MMO, TERA. Is the beta test going to be enough to eradicate the vaporware mindset many of the game's fans have gotten into, or will it take more than that to convince players that the game is going to see the light of day sometime in the next couple of millennia? We'll just have to wait and find out. For all this and more, hunker down and click past the cut for this week's installment of This Week in MMO. Continue reading This Week in MMO: Hey guys have you heard about Ilum? edition
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| Grab a closed beta key for Jagged Alliance Online Posted: 20 Jan 2012 06:00 PM PST Filed under: Betas, Contests, War, Free-to-play, Giveaways  Just visit our giveaway page to get your key, and if you haven't already created an account at JAO, do so at the official site. Once you've gone through account creation, log into the gamigo account system, scroll down to Jagged Alliance Online, and enter your beta key. That's all there is to it. Now you're ready to jump into closed beta testing -- squash those bugs and have fun! 
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| Betawatch: January 14 - 20, 2012 Posted: 20 Jan 2012 05:00 PM PST Filed under: Betas, MMO industry, Betawatch, Miscellaneous  Finally, Massively reader Odericko tipped us off to ongoing back-in-beta Glitch dev Q&As. The question segment is over, but the second session -- the answer session! -- kicks off at 8:00 p.m. EST tonight, precisely when Betawatch goes live. Go get your Glitch on! The full Betawatch roundup is tucked behind the break. Continue reading Betawatch: January 14 - 20, 2012
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| Storyboard: We are (among) the champions Posted: 20 Jan 2012 04:00 PM PST Filed under: Culture, Lore, Opinion, Roleplaying, Storyboard, Miscellaneous  But then I finished the quest. This problem is not unique to Star Wars: The Old Republic at all, though. By the end of my career in World of Warcraft, I had slain several unique individuals dozens of times on multiple characters, including several kills that were noted by NPCs as being once-in-a-lifetime achievements. Final Fantasy XI made me a pivotal figure in historic events that I could then jump right back into any time I had a friend doing the same quest. And let's not even get into the chronological strangeness that can erupt in Lord of the Rings Online. What's to be done when there's an ongoing story that your character is part of and not a part of? Continue reading Storyboard: We are (among) the champions
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| MMObility: Two new MMOs, one tiny screen Posted: 20 Jan 2012 03:30 PM PST Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Sci-fi, New titles, Previews, PvP, Opinion, Hands-on, Casual, Humor, MMObility  So you can imagine how happy I am when I find real, persistent MMOs that are available for my HTC Inspire Android phone and iOS. Yes, there are more of them out there than you might think. Let's take a look at a couple of new ones that I have found. Continue reading MMObility: Two new MMOs, one tiny screen
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| SWTOR to get ability delay fixes but no Valor rollback [Updated] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 03:00 PM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, Bugs, Patches, News items, Star Wars: The Old Republic  Oh, happy day! BioWare's Georg Zoeller has posted a new entry on the Star Wars: The Old Republic official site addressing the incredibly frustrating ability delay that has had players up in arms. Zoeller states that the team has found a number of issues, including abilities on cooldown being displayed as usable, unreliable instant abilities, and significant input delay in "certain game situations, most notably (but not limited to) fast-paced PvP." The team has worked out the two former bugs and is scheduled to get the respective fixes onto the public test server in the next update. Work on the latter issue is in "the later stage of testing," and the team hopes to be able to roll it out onto the live servers "very soon." Here's to hoping that when Zoeller says soon, he means "soon" and not "soon[TM]." [Update: A second dev blog, this one by BioWare's Jeff Hickman, explains the situation with Ilum PvP and why the team decided not to rollback Valor points in the wake of recent exploits. He does promise that the team will use game metrics to take action against the worst offenders if merited.]
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| Guild Wars 2 devs name their nine favorite skill combos Posted: 20 Jan 2012 02:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Previews, News items, Guild Wars 2  We've heard plenty about Guild Wars 2's dynamic content, branching storylines, and lack of a holy trinity, but one feature that hasn't seen a lot of coverage is the game's combo system. The combo system is really exactly what it sounds like: It allows a player (or multiple players) to meld different abilities into one powerful gestalt of an attack. A new article over on IGN gives players some insight into the ArenaNet devs' favorite skill combinations, such as the mixture of a Necromancer's Well of Darkness and an Elementalist's Churning Earth. Used separately, the Well of Darkness blinds players within its area of effect, while Churning Earth causes large amounts of AoE damage. When cast together, though, the addition of Well of Darkness adds another powerful AoE attack to ensure that anyone standing in the area of effect has a really bad day. To get a look at the other eight favorite developer skill combos, just click on through the link below.
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| The Firing Line: What ever happened to that game? Posted: 20 Jan 2012 01:30 PM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion, Free-to-play, MMOFPS, The Firing Line  It's easy to lose track of all these titles, and it's even easier when some of said titles are fairly niche to begin with. In this week's edition of The Firing Line, I'm going to figure out something to write about until I get into the PlanetSide 2 beta. Er, I mean, I'm going to do a little detective work in an attempt to figure out what happened to a few of the MMO shooters that have dropped off my radar. Continue reading The Firing Line: What ever happened to that game?
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| The Force is with SWTOR: EA stock bounces back, budget revealed Posted: 20 Jan 2012 01:00 PM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, MMO industry, Star Wars: The Old Republic  The project was such a massive undertaking that BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk likened it to "teaching elephants to do ballet." One of the interesting details of this behind-the-scenes expose is that BioWare said that certain movies and TV miniseries influenced class storylines, such as Big Trouble in Little China for the Smuggler and Band of Brothers for the Trooper. There's also some good news following yesterday's word of EA's stock hit. MarketWatch reports that several brokers have defended the title, resulting in a 2% bounce back in EA's stock. As part of that, a Pacific Crest analyst raised his predictions of quarter sales for SWTOR from 1.5 to 2.2 million, with 800,000 subscribers. Another analyst claims that over two million units of SWTOR have been sold since launch with an expectation that 75% to 90% of players will stay on as paid subscribers following the first free month.
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| Warner Bros. invests in Korean publisher to 'co-develop certain online games' [Updated] Posted: 20 Jan 2012 12:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Super-hero, MMO industry, New titles  Inplay is a developer that's worked on F.E.A.R.: Origin Online and SNK All Stars Online but is now poised to rapidly expand its portfolio. [Update: We've learned that our original source was mistranslated. Warner Bros. has indeed invested in Inplay Interactive with intent to "strengthen the Korean development capability of online games to the world." The partnership "Intend[s] To Co-Develop Certain Other Online Games by utilizing Warner Bros. Properties," but the specific properties have not as yet been disclosed as originally reported. We apologize for the confusion.]
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| Taun-taunts: Damion Schubert teases future SWTOR vanity pets Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:00 AM PST Filed under: Sci-fi, Game mechanics, Interviews, Star Wars: The Old Republic  While Schubert admits that vanity pets, such as the Hutt Observer and Mouse Droid, weren't at the top of BioWare's priority list in beta, he said the team knew they wanted them as part of the launched game. There are only a handful of pets in the game at this time, but more are to come in SWTOR's next big update. "I don't want to give out too big a hint, but they smell kinda bad on the outside," Schubert teased. He confirmed that currently pets are not limited by faction, although there are some that are restricted to dark and light side players. Schubert said that BioWare will be using vanity pets as rewards for many aspects of gameplay, including the social and legacy systems. Getting them in the future may be more complicated in a good way, however: "One of the things we want to do a lot more of is adding items that take a bit of communal exploration to discover - we're well aware of how popular datacrons and the magenta lightsaber crystal are - and minipets is one place where we've identified adding fun things like that could really pay off."
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| Champions Online reveals new Mountain archetype Posted: 20 Jan 2012 10:00 AM PST Filed under: Super-hero, Classes, Game mechanics, MMO industry, News items, Free-to-play, Champions Online  The Mountain is "an embodiment of the rocks and earth that surround us, standing firm in the face of [his] foes," and Cryptic says that the archetype boasts knock-downs and considerable damage-soaking abilities. The devs have also provided a handy power listing that details everything from 1 to 40, as well as a few concept phrases -- like rock golem, earth elemental, and primordial entity -- to give you an idea what you're in for if you make a Mountain.
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