MMO Updates |
- Ex-Red 5 staffers blast Mark Kern's 'destructive' behavior
- Player Studio goes international in Landmark and more this spring
- ArenaNet rolls out the Megaserver for Guild Wars 2
- Massively's Elder Scrolls launch diary: Day three - Questing, story, and more
- Landmark's Georgeson 'hugely interested' in VR, Project Morpheus
- The Daily Grind: What was your favorite April Fools' Day prank?
- April Fools' Day around the virtual world
- Massively Speaking Episode 291: Tamriel invaded
- Star Trek Online shows off a revamp to player kits
- Jukebox Heroes: Hearthstone's soundtrack
- World of Warcraft shows off the 'redesigned' female Draenei
- ESO's sub model was a 'mutual decision' between Bethesda and ZeniMax
- EVE Online plans drone renaissance
- Elite newsletter talks alpha progress, to-scale celestial bodies, and more
- Tamriel Infinium: A hitchhiker's guide to The Elder Scrolls Online
- Phantasy Star Online 2 still out of sight for North America
| Ex-Red 5 staffers blast Mark Kern's 'destructive' behavior Posted: 02 Apr 2014 10:00 AM PDT Filed under: Sci-Fi, Interviews, MMO Industry, Free-to-Play, MMOFPS, Firefall  Anonymous former employees of the Firefall studio allegedly came forward to spill the beans about mass layoffs, questionable decisions, and ex-CEO Mark Kern's erratic behavior. One person said that Kern's constantly shifting decisions caused severe stress on the team: "Months of work would be thrown out simply because he would change his mind, or he would have another 'revolutionary' idea." Another anonymous ex-staffer said that Kern was worse than that: "When he did get involved in the production of the game itself he was simply destructive. He would swoop in one afternoon and berate a series of features several teams had spent months on, declaring they begin again and LISTEN to what he told them to do. He'd be back in a few days to see if it was done. This crushed morale, and forced people into spontaneous, isolated crunch mode. He would shout and scream his perspectives." [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
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| Player Studio goes international in Landmark and more this spring Posted: 02 Apr 2014 09:30 AM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Economy, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Free-to-Play, Consoles, MMOFPS, EverQuest Next, PlanetSide 2, Sandbox, Player-Generated Content, Landmark  Designers in select regions outside the United States will be able to submit items for consideration to be sold to their peers in EverQuest, EverQuest II, and PlanetSide 2 as well as Landmark. Approved items will then be added to the marketplace and the creators will make a real-life profit from each sale. In Landmark, Player Studio is a vehicle by which players will submit templates for various building contests, and winners could see their creations end up in EverQuest Next. [Source: SOE press release] Continue reading Player Studio goes international in Landmark and more this spring
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| ArenaNet rolls out the Megaserver for Guild Wars 2 Posted: 02 Apr 2014 09:00 AM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Events (In-Game), Patches, Guild Wars 2, Buy-to-Play  Launching with the April 2014 Feature Pack on April 15th, the Megaserver System will introduce a new metric that will restructure the way servers will work. According to the studio, this system will place players on servers that have more of your friends and guildmates, and more players who speak the same language as you. It hopes to eliminate overflow servers and dead shards. The Megaserver System will start out as a test on the level 1-15 maps, main cities, and the PvP lobby. The team hopes to roll the technology out to the entire game by the end of the year, if all goes well.
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| Massively's Elder Scrolls launch diary: Day three - Questing, story, and more Posted: 02 Apr 2014 08:00 AM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Game Mechanics, Launches, MMO Industry, New Titles, PvE, Opinion, Hands-On, First Impressions, The Elder Scrolls Online, Subscription  Now I'm working my way northeast through the wilds of Glenumbra, stopping occasionally to assist the citizens of Deleyn's Mill and clean up the Vale of the Guardians. Continue reading Massively's Elder Scrolls launch diary: Day three - Questing, story, and more
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| Landmark's Georgeson 'hugely interested' in VR, Project Morpheus Posted: 02 Apr 2014 07:00 AM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Free-to-Play, EverQuest Next, Sandbox, Virtual Reality  "We need to build the game, and then we can talk about virtual reality and stuff beyond that," Georgeson explained.
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| The Daily Grind: What was your favorite April Fools' Day prank? Posted: 02 Apr 2014 06:00 AM PDT Filed under: Culture, Events (Real-World), Events (In-Game), Opinion, The Daily Grind, Humor, Miscellaneous  So what was your favorite April Fools this year? Did you get genuinely tricked by anything or find yourself laughing in delight at the cleverness of developers?  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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| April Fools' Day around the virtual world Posted: 01 Apr 2014 06:00 PM PDT Filed under: Video, Events (Real-World), MMO Industry, Massively Meta, Miscellaneous 
Continue reading April Fools' Day around the virtual world
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| Massively Speaking Episode 291: Tamriel invaded Posted: 01 Apr 2014 05:00 PM PDT Filed under: Podcasts, MMO Industry, News Items, Massively Meta, Massively Speaking, Miscellaneous  Get all of our opinions and analysis on the most important stories of the past week right here on Massively Speaking, the industry's leading MMO podcast. And if you have a comment, question, or topic for the podcasters, send an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. [iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. [Stitcher] Follow the podcast on Stitcher Radio. Listen here on the page: Read below the cut for the full show notes. Continue reading Massively Speaking Episode 291: Tamriel invaded
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| Star Trek Online shows off a revamp to player kits Posted: 01 Apr 2014 04:00 PM PDT Filed under: Sci-Fi, Game Mechanics, Patches, Previews, News Items, Star Trek Online, Free-to-Play, Subscription  The core of the system is simple. Abilities are split into two categories for each profession: Assault and Strategic for Tactical, Medical and Research for Science, and Fabrication and Mechanic for Engineering. Kits will become frameworks that contain skill bonuses as well as slots to equip abilities, with each slot allowing any skill within a given category. For more details on how the new kits can be acquired and how the flexibility will benefit players, take a look at the full development blog.
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| Jukebox Heroes: Hearthstone's soundtrack Posted: 01 Apr 2014 03:00 PM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Opinion, Free-to-Play, Trading Card Games, Jukebox Heroes, Music, Hearthstone  Composers Peter McConnell, Jason Hayes, and Eric Dodds clearly had a lot of fun creating the whimsical, relaxing score for this game, and I must say that the music is perfectly ideal for the material. It hearkens back to the many tavern themes from World of Warcraft without being a complete copycat. You can actually download the entire soundtrack for free on the Hearthstone official site, but before you do that, why not listen to my favorite picks from the score? Continue reading Jukebox Heroes: Hearthstone's soundtrack
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| World of Warcraft shows off the 'redesigned' female Draenei Posted: 01 Apr 2014 02:30 PM PDT Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Expansions, News Items, Races, Humor, Subscription  Among the major changes Blizzard threatens to make to the model are the addition of fur, a slimming of the lower legs and hooves, and the removal of the ridiculously long tail from the model. The eye design also speaks to the ways in which this ancient and mystical race sees things in a way that most of Azeroth's residents can only imagine. It's a bit more of a departure from the existing model than the other redesigns, but take a look at the full diary for a closer look. And then remember what day it is. You don't need to reroll your Shaman as a Dwarf. We promise.
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| ESO's sub model was a 'mutual decision' between Bethesda and ZeniMax Posted: 01 Apr 2014 02:00 PM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Business Models, Launches, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, The Elder Scrolls Online, Subscription  "It wasn't like they decided it, and we didn't mandate it. There was a lot of conversation around it," he told Games.On.Net. Hines also explained that the future of ESO's business model will depend entirely on whether customers see the game as a fair value, and not on prevailing industry trends. "What's going to determine whether or not it succeeds or fails is not really tied to what anyone else has done, it's tied to 'do we make a strong enough argument for the value that you get for your fifteen dollars,'" Hines said. "If we're providing the kind of content people want to see where they're like 'this is awesome, I'm having a blast, this new stuff is totally worth it and I'm having fun,' then the subscription totally works."
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| EVE Online plans drone renaissance Posted: 01 Apr 2014 01:30 PM PDT Filed under: Sci-Fi, EVE Online, Patches, Previews, Dev Diaries, Sandbox  The changes will include balancing drones between the different empires, between quality levels, and between drone sizes. There will also be modifications made to drone skills and sentry drones. These changes will also impact skills and modules for fighters and fighter bombers. After the update, these "larger drones" will have reduced base damage and can only be hosted 10 at a time on a supercarrier instead of 20.
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| Elite newsletter talks alpha progress, to-scale celestial bodies, and more Posted: 01 Apr 2014 01:00 PM PDT Filed under: Sci-Fi, Video, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Elite: Dangerous, Buy-to-Play  There are bits about the state of the game's 3.0 alpha client, a docking tutorial video, and a look at the redesign of the iconic Coriolis space station from the original Elite title. One of the more interesting fan questions relates to the size of celestial bodies. "Celestial bodies and the distances between them will be correctly scaled wherever possible [and] real astronomical data is being used," Frontier says. "To give you an idea we're currently at 116,000 stars from various catalogues and [that] includes pulsars and black holes as well as main sequence stars. Exo-planets are the other big import which we're about to start working on." We've embedded the alpha progress video after the cut. Continue reading Elite newsletter talks alpha progress, to-scale celestial bodies, and more
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| Tamriel Infinium: A hitchhiker's guide to The Elder Scrolls Online Posted: 01 Apr 2014 12:00 PM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Lore, New Titles, Opinion, Guides, The Elder Scrolls Online, MMORPG, Tamriel Infinium  Just like those single-player sandboxes, ESO allows us to do pretty much whatever we want when we want to. It's an explorer's dream, if you ask me. Of course, we might be able to find some of those explorable items on the in-game map, but many of them remain hidden until we just land on them. Today, I'd like to talk about a few of the items that I think every ESO explorer should be aware of. Continue reading Tamriel Infinium: A hitchhiker's guide to The Elder Scrolls Online
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| Phantasy Star Online 2 still out of sight for North America Posted: 01 Apr 2014 11:00 AM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Launches, MMO Industry, News Items, Consoles  The most obvious culprit would be legal issues, but Sega hasn't made any statements to indicate that there might be some sort of legal barrier to launching the game here. All that fans know is that the game is still unavailable, despite now having every sign of being ready for launch. So what's holding it back? We haven't the slightest idea. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
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