| The Stream Team: Healing adventures in Aion Posted: 28 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Aion, Free-to-Play, Livestream, The Stream Team It's no secret that Massively's MJ prefers to play healers. Other than her Assassin, all the classes that she plays with regularity in Aion are ones that can give your health bar a boost. No, the real question is: Which one should she play now? She has an Asmodian Songweaver slowly inching up the level ladder, an Elyos Chanter that never sees enough play time, and of course her Elyos Cleric that needs a few more levels herself to hit max. So who will the lucky healer be that gets the love and attention (not to mention the air time) today? Join us live at 11:00 a.m. to see. Game: Aion Host: MJ Guthrie Date: Saturday, December 28th, 2013 Time: 11:00 a.m. EST Enjoy our Steam Team video below. Continue reading The Stream Team: Healing adventures in Aion  The Stream Team: Healing adventures in Aion originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 28 Dec 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| WRUP: Look guys I finally found another picture of a man with a hat edition Posted: 28 Dec 2013 07:00 AM PST |
| The Daily Grind: Is there an ideal patch schedule for games? Posted: 28 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST Filed under: Patches, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Miscellaneous Guild Wars 2 is very proud of its every-two-week patches, but I find that those frequent patches wind up being so small that they're not really engaging. This is no fault of the developers, really; two weeks is not much time to design anything substantial. It's fast, but is that enough? By contrast, Final Fantasy XIV packed a lot into its first major patch post-launch, which is a good thing, as it was released nearly four months after the relaunch and came when a lot of people were pretty burned out by the options in the game at that time. Having gotten most of the relevant content into farm mode myself, I can say that the next update definitely needs to come along faster than the last one. That put me to thinking: Is there an ideal patch schedule for games? Is there a sweet spot with enough time to develop new content and not enough time for people to get bored with what's there? Should it be all about the content when it's done, or should it be a fast cadence even if things need to be tweaked later?  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: Is there an ideal patch schedule for games? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 28 Dec 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| The Stream Team: Questing through TERA's dead zone Posted: 27 Dec 2013 05:30 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Video, PvE, Free-to-Play, Massively Meta, Hands-On, TERA, Livestream, The Stream Team, MMORPG Massively's Mike Foster prefers to level by running dungeons. Unfortunately for him, TERA has several dead zones in which characters are too high to queue for one dungeon but too low to queue for the next. This means that Mike must step into that thing he dreads so much: lore. Tune in tonight at 8:30 p.m. EST as Mike begrudgingly quests through TERA's storyline, gathering XP and items all the while. Game: TERA Host: Mike Foster Date: Friday, December 27, 2013 Time: 8:30 p.m. EST Enjoy our Steam Team video below. Continue reading The Stream Team: Questing through TERA's dead zone The Stream Team: Questing through TERA's dead zone originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 27 Dec 2013 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| The Stream Team: Tis the season for World of Warcraft dungeons Posted: 27 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Video, PvE, Massively Meta, Hands-On, Livestream, The Stream Team, Subscription, MMORPG Massively's Mike Foster is still on the hunt for epic gear and items good enough to get him ready for World of Warcraft's lower tier of raid instances. Tonight, he's continuing his sometimes-frustrating habit of healing pickup-group heroic dungeons in the hopes of sweet loot drops. Perhaps he'll end up with a talented, over-geared group that clears dungeons in seconds. Perhaps he'll end up with a Death Knight tank who doesn't know he has more than one presence. Either way, it's going to be an adventure. Tune in for the action at 7:00 p.m. EST. Game: World of Warcraft Host: Mike Foster Date: Friday, December 17th, 2013 Time: 7:00 p.m. EST Enjoy our Steam Team video below. Continue reading The Stream Team: Tis the season for World of Warcraft dungeons The Stream Team: Tis the season for World of Warcraft dungeons originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 27 Dec 2013 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| Betawatch: December 21 - 27, 2013 Posted: 27 Dec 2013 03:00 PM PST Filed under: Betas, MMO Industry, News Items, Betawatch, Miscellaneous If you had fond memories of Sevencore during its brief original run, you'll be happy to know that the game is getting a new lease on life via Ignited Games. Whether or not it will go better than the game's first go-round remains to be seen, but the beta is set to last until January 13th of next year. Otherwise, it's been a quiet week for betas, almost as if some major holiday took place over the week. War Thunder expanded its Ground Forces beta for more players, and Black Desert plans on adding a new region during its next beta test. It's region-locked, for the record. Oh yeah, and we also have that full list of games in testing just past the break as we always do, in case none of the above stories meets with your particular tastes. As always, let us know if something added an active cash shop without our noticing or otherwise switched beta phases. Continue reading Betawatch: December 21 - 27, 2013 Betawatch: December 21 - 27, 2013 originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 27 Dec 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| Second Wind: City of Steam: Arkadia Posted: 27 Dec 2013 01:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Opinion, Free-to-Play, Browser, Hands-On, City of Steam, Second Wind, Steampunk I've been rooting for City of Steam ever since it was first announced, mostly due to my sheer love of the steampunk genre. We've got high fantasy and gritty sci-fi games galore, but steampunk has been largely neglected in the realm of gaming. That's why it was so disheartening to hear that City of Steam's first incarnation (of which I spoke rather highly when I saw it at PAX East in early 2013) would be shutting down after only about five months of opening its doors to players. It was a bold move for Mechanist Games to make the jump to self-publishing, and when I saw the game featured on Kongregate, I decided I'd check and see how the troubled title was holding up in its new form. The question is, does City of Steam: Arkadia manage to stoke the fires or is it just a bunch of hot air? Continue reading Second Wind: City of Steam: Arkadia Second Wind: City of Steam: Arkadia originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 27 Dec 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| Square Enix tweaks Final Fantasy XIV housing prices Posted: 27 Dec 2013 12:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Economy, News Items, PvE, Final Fantasy XIV, Housing, Subscription, MMORPG Thanks to what Square-Enix has called a " prodigious amount of gil in circulation" on certain Final Fantasy XIV worlds, it appears as though new players and those returning from a break are priced completely out of the housing market. In the interest of getting the system under control, Square announced yesterday that it will be dramatically reducing the price of land across numerous servers. According to the announcement, land pricing for legacy worlds will be adjusted to match land pricing of non-legacy worlds. This will result in land values on certain worlds being reduced by 2.5 to 5 times their current value over the course of several weeks. Additionally, Square plans to "re-evaluate" the final price of land across all worlds sometime in late January. Check out the full post to see which worlds have which pricing and how values are about to change. [Thanks to Zengarzombolt for the tip!] Square Enix tweaks Final Fantasy XIV housing prices originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 27 Dec 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| Storyboard: Working without /random Posted: 27 Dec 2013 11:00 AM PST Filed under: Game Mechanics, Opinion, Roleplaying, Storyboard, Miscellaneous Two weeks ago, you might recall, I ranted about using random rolls as a mechanic of resolution when roleplaying in MMOs. For those of you who can't be bothered to go back and read the whole thing now (which I totally understand; you probably have holiday games burning a hole in your pocket), the core point was that random rolls don't actually tie to anything for resolution and wind up coming off as an obvious and unfun kludge for the sake of random resolution. "Well, if you're so smart, why don't you come up with alternatives?" And I did. Readers also had some wonderful suggestions and feedback in the comments last week, which make the article even more worth reading, so really, go ahead and take a look at it. This week, I'm taking a look at how you're going to resolve conflicts in roleplaying without relying on what amounts to a coin flip. And as you may have expected, they're all taking tips from tabletop games. Continue reading Storyboard: Working without /random Storyboard: Working without /random originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 27 Dec 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| Infinite money exploit plagues GTA Online Posted: 27 Dec 2013 10:00 AM PST Filed under: Real-Life, Culture, Economy, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, News Items, Sandbox, Buy-to-Play Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto Online is beset with hackers flooding the game's economy with billions of ill-gotten dollars. Kotaku reports that a networking exploit leads to "infinite amounts of cash," and that dupers have taken to gifting huge windfalls to random players. This is of course problematic since Rockstar flags accounts "holding obscene amounts of money" during its banning sweeps. The company has yet to offer a comment on or a fix for the issue. Meanwhile, some players have taken to hard resetting their consoles so that the gifted money doesn't save. Infinite money exploit plagues GTA Online originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 27 Dec 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Get your Atari 2600 on in your browser
It looks like 2014 might be a profitable year as well 
No release date in sight for firmware fix 
New features include New Stories and 320 snap view
