MMO Updates

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• Rise and Shiny revisit: Star Stable
• One Shots: A flock of Beholders
• The Daily Grind: What type of animal do you like as a pet?
• BlizzCon 2013: Warlords of Draenor panels dish out details on raiding, garrisons, and more
• The Tattered Notebook: Dishing out memories for EverQuest II's ninth birthday
• Diving back into Marvel Heroes
• The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's patch 2.1 on the endgame
• Wurm hit with DDoS attack, Jansson posts update
• BlizzCon 2013: Diablo III's adventure mode, avenger kills detailed
• The Stream Team: Neverwinter Foundry exploration

Rise and Shiny revisit: Star Stable Posted: 10 Nov 2013 09:00 AM PST Filed under: Video, Game Mechanics, Opinion, Free-to-Play, Hands-On, Casual, Roleplaying, Humor, First Impressions, Kids, Family, Rise and Shiny, Livestream Sometimes you just need a place where you can chill out, jump on the back of your favorite four-legged friend, and go off on an adventure. During my week's revisit to Star Stable, I've simultaneously been researching zombie MMOs for an upcoming article, and after the third post-apocalyptic game filled with cursing juveniles, I had to cleanse myself by jumping back into the friendly, non-competitive world of Star Stable. It's a world in which you'll play a young girl who is loaned a horse. It's your job to work your way through a series of linear, story-based quests until you pay the horse off, save the town from evil corporations, help build a bridge to a new area of the map, explore, make friends, join clubs, and take care of your horse. And fashion. Let's not forget fashion. It's hard for me to find fault in the game, at all. Seriously. That's because I'm playing the game exactly as it's meant to be played. Continue reading Rise and Shiny revisit: Star Stable Rise and Shiny revisit: Star Stable originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 10 Nov 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

One Shots: A flock of Beholders Posted: 10 Nov 2013 07:00 AM PST Filed under: Screenshots, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Culture, One Shots, Star Wars: The Old Republic, RIFT, Final Fantasy XIV, Miscellaneous Did anyone else watch that absolutely horrid Dungeons & Dragons movie from 2000 starring one of the more annoying Wayans? Just about the only redeeming part of that film was seeing a brief glimpse of a Beholder. I mean, there are few things more D&Dish than Beholders, unless you're going to pull a gelatinous cube out on me. Reader Don sent in today's featured screenshot that has not just one Beholder but a flock of them. "Here is a shot of me in the Delirium drinking contest on my new DDO Shadar-kai," he writes, "featuring the one and only Pumpkin Beholder from Xoriat." Pumpkin Beholder: Next Halloween, he comes for you! We've got this and plenty of other great eyecandy for you as you gorge on the leftovers from Halloween, so check 'em out in this week's One Shots. Continue reading One Shots: A flock of Beholders One Shots: A flock of Beholders originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 10 Nov 2013 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Daily Grind: What type of animal do you like as a pet? Posted: 10 Nov 2013 05:00 AM PST Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Miscellaneous I love pet classes that allow you to capture, tame, and use an animal as your new combat buddy. It adds a lot of variety and choice to playing the class compared to pet classes that just stick you with the standard pet that everyone else gets. This was perhaps why I played a Hunter in World of Warcraft for so long. I was just nuts about collecting the most interesting and most unique pets. The highlight of my career was using a bunch of taming tricks to snag a Spectral Wolf back in Burning Crusade era that wasn't supposed to be tamable. I felt like the bee's knees when I had that guy running around with me. So when it comes to pet classes that fling animals at enemies, what type of beastie do you prefer? 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! The Daily Grind: What type of animal do you like as a pet? originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 10 Nov 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

BlizzCon 2013: Warlords of Draenor panels dish out details on raiding, garrisons, and more Posted: 09 Nov 2013 09:00 PM PST Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Events (Real-World), Game Mechanics, News Items, Dungeons, Housing, Subscription BlizzCon 2013 continued on Saturday, hosting more panels and Q&A sessions that offered players additional details about World of Warcraft's newly announced Warlords of Draenor expansion. Designers working on the expansion held a Q&A session for fansites that dished out morsels of news from garrisons to looting to buying high-level characters. The Systems Panel, on the other hand, laid out more details about raiding, dungeons, gear, and the leveling experience. Continue reading BlizzCon 2013: Warlords of Draenor panels dish out details on raiding, garrisons, and more BlizzCon 2013: Warlords of Draenor panels dish out details on raiding, garrisons, and more originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 10 Nov 2013 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: WoW Insider, WoW Insider systems panel liveblog

The Tattered Notebook: Dishing out memories for EverQuest II's ninth birthday Posted: 09 Nov 2013 05:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest II, Opinion, Free-to-Play, The Tattered Notebook, Anniversaries Like its older sibling before it, EverQuest II doesn't show any signs of slipping quietly into the night as it ages. Another year has come and gone for the middle child in the EverQuest franchise, and plenty has transpired in those 52 weeks. You'd think after all the goings on of the game's eighth year that things might slow down a bit; after all, how do you top monumental occasions like going free-to-play? But no, the content train just kept rolling in. If you thought that there was already too much to do in EverQuest II when the ninth year started, I'm sorry to say that it just got worse -- or better, depending on how you look at it. That's not to say it was all rainbows and kittens and unicorns (although there were those, too!), but there were definitely plenty of positive happenings throughout the year. From demonstrations of great community spirit to updates galore, the past 12 months have been filled with things both big and small. Take a stroll with me down memory lane as we celebrate EQII's ninth anniversary. Continue reading The Tattered Notebook: Dishing out memories for EverQuest II's ninth birthday The Tattered Notebook: Dishing out memories for EverQuest II's ninth birthday originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 09 Nov 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Diving back into Marvel Heroes Posted: 09 Nov 2013 03:00 PM PST Filed under: Super-hero, Screenshots, Game Mechanics, Previews, Opinion, Free-to-Play, Comics, Marvel Heroes, Hands-On, Casual, Humor, First Impressions When I first heard that Marvel Heroes, by Gazillion Entertainment, was not going to allow players to make unique, customizable heroes to fight alongside classic Marvel characters, I felt the same as many of our readers did. I was shocked, hurt, and then angry. What on Earth would inspire a developer to skip not only one of the most important aspects of an MMO -- character customization -- but skip it in an IP that is begging for character customization? Instead of checking the game out, I walked away and played other titles. But I've given it a chance over the last few weeks and had a discussion with Jeff Donais from Gazillion, and now I realize that the developers were never attempting to make an open-world sandbox with infinitely customizable characters. Instead they have made a linear story-based romp with tons of loot, plenty of explosions, and more classic Marvel characters than you can shake an adamantium claw at. Getting over preconceptions and imagining a dungeon-crawler that is set in the Marvel universe will bring you closer to understanding Marvel Heroes. Continue reading Diving back into Marvel Heroes Diving back into Marvel Heroes originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 09 Nov 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's patch 2.1 on the endgame Posted: 09 Nov 2013 01:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Patches, PvP, Endgame, Opinion, Consoles, Final Fantasy XIV, The Mog Log, Dungeons Two months out from Final Fantasy XIV's launch, I haven't had a chance to talk about any of the information we've seen about patch 2.1. That is kind of great. I haven't been thinking extensively about what the next big thing will be because I'm too busy enjoying the game right now. But that patch is approaching, and you'd better believe that it's going to include enough stuff to shake things up again -- enough that I could really write four or five columns just looking forward to what's coming next. First let's look at some of the elements that are going to seriously affect the endgame this week. Continue reading The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's patch 2.1 on the endgame The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's patch 2.1 on the endgame originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 09 Nov 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Wurm hit with DDoS attack, Jansson posts update Posted: 09 Nov 2013 12:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, MMO Industry, Wurm Online, News Items, Sandbox Wurm Online was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack yesterday, which caused the browser-based sandbox to go offline for nearly 24 hours. Wurm co-creator Rolf Jansson updated fans with a post on the official forums this morning. "It appears that we have been the subject of some sort of DDoS attack. This caused issues for the hosting company's other customers, so they had to unplug us," he wrote. "We are back now on a throttled line. Hopefully this means that we should not affect the other customers. We will take other measures as well. Those should take up to an hour at best, then we should be able to bring the game back up. I'll make another post when that happens." [Thanks Cista!] Wurm hit with DDoS attack, Jansson posts update originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 09 Nov 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Update

BlizzCon 2013: Diablo III's adventure mode, avenger kills detailed Posted: 09 Nov 2013 11:30 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Events (Real-World), Expansions, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, News Items, Diablo III At this year's BlizzCon, eager attendees learned that Blizzard is adding myriad new features to Diablo III's Reaper of Souls expansion; specifically, the PlayStation 4 version of Reaper of Souls will enable legendary item gifting. "Even though you and I are not adventuring together," explained level designer Matthew Berger to Polygon, "I can give you something and still make it feel like we're playing together." Reaper of Souls also features a new mechanic called Avenger Kills. In a nutshell, it allows for monsters who kill one player to teleport into the game of a player on the deceased's friends list. Whenever player two comes online, the NPC will appear via a special event. If the monster kills player two as well, the cycle continues. Whenever a player manages to slay the creature, the victor and the friend who spawned will get a piece of loot. Also at the con, Blizzard released more information about the game's adventure mode, and our sister site WoW Insider has a special look at the Reaper of Souls BlizzCon preview panel, at which the team addressed concerns over the post-Auction House economy, lag spikes, and the possibility of an offline mode. Massively's on the ground in Anaheim during the weekend of November 8th, bringing you all the best news from BlizzCon 2013. Whether you're anticipating World of Warcraft's and Diablo III's next expansions or reveals from Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, we aim to have it covered! BlizzCon 2013: Diablo III's adventure mode, avenger kills detailed originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 09 Nov 2013 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Adventure mode Via: Polygon

The Stream Team: Neverwinter Foundry exploration Posted: 09 Nov 2013 10:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, PvE, Opinion, Free-to-Play, Massively Meta, Hands-On, Livestream, Neverwinter, The Stream Team, Player-Generated Content The readers have spoken. They want to see the Neverwinter player-created adventure "Sleepless Dream" come to life. Earlier this week, the Choose My Adventure column introduced the adventure like this: Your friend the budding sorcerer suddenly falls over during one of your visits to his house. When you discover the books that he has been reading, you suspect that he might be trapped in his dreams. With a simple spell, you are able to enter his dreams and conquer each of his personality blocks in order to wake him. Join Massively's Larry Everett at 1:00 p.m. EST as he dives head-first into Cryptic's player-generated content system. Game: Neverwinter Host: Larry Everett Date: Saturday, November 9th, 2013 Time: 1:00 p.m. EST Enjoy our Steam Team video below. Continue reading The Stream Team: Neverwinter Foundry exploration The Stream Team: Neverwinter Foundry exploration originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 09 Nov 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

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