Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates

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• Nintendo Dubstep Experience 3D Looks to Reinvent the Rhythm Genre
• Jersey Shore’s Snooki Has Games, Apps Coming to Facebook and iOS
• World of Warcraft (KR)
• 1UP Community Feature: Gaming Problems of the ’90s
• Vessel Review
• Champions Online MMORPG Review
• The Worst Things About the ’90s

Nintendo Dubstep Experience 3D Looks to Reinvent the Rhythm Genre Posted: 01 Apr 2012 09:48 AM PDT Max Payne and I go way back. Throughout the series’ first two installments, I was wholly immersed in its stark shadows, smoky atmosphere, and hard-boiled dialogue. I brandished my pistols and dove sideways more times than I could count. I cherished the horror and violence of his revenge as if it were written by Raymond Chandler himself, and yet, a place that I’d never experience Max Payne’s world was online. That void was quickly remedied when I got my hands on a small slice of the multiplayer portion of Rockstar’s next effort, Max Payne 3. MP3 is attempting to destroy the barriers between single and multiplayer in a wide variety of ways. We’ve written about the solo portion before, but this time we got to spend some time in the online Gang Wars. The story in Gang Wars, the most fleshed out mode of multiplayer, runs alongside that of the solo campaign. The skirmishes you take part in online will oftentimes be set moments before Max’s arrival to a location during the story, or sometimes in the charred remains of where his whirlwind tour of revenge previously swept through. While third-person works fine offline, the perspective can oftentimes lead to ineligent combat that feels more like a frantic crapshoot than a strategic faceoff; even phenomenal titles like Red Dead Redemption suffer in moments of intense action. While I was a bit worried that MP3′s multiplayer would stall under the same stress, I’m happy to report that the impeccable energy from the series’ singleplayer campaigns transfers over quite well into the online arena. Yes, there were still a handful of moments where it seemed like my opponent and I both cracked under pressure, especially once combat became an up close affair, but the game remained a controlled experience for the most part. Rockstar showed off a slew of game matches, most of which were slight variations on genre classics like team deathmatch and king of the hill. One unique mode is called Payne Killer, which starts off as a free-for-all until someone scores the first kill. After this occurs, the killer becomes Max Payne, while the victim transforms into his singleplayer sidekick Passos. These two characters come equipped with special weapons, higher health, and unique abilities. It then becomes the task of the remaining players to work together in taking down these two protagonists. Whoever scores the kill against Max or Passos earns the right to play as the powerful hero. This mode encouraged players to work together in short spurts to take down the two powerhouses, but those alliances you make will quickly be severed once one member gets the kill and joins the other side. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/previews?cId=3186934 Related posts: The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony Experience Weekend Deals: Fable III, Max Payne, and Deus Ex Grand Theft Auto V Brings Back Multiplayer to Southern California

Jersey Shore’s Snooki Has Games, Apps Coming to Facebook and iOS Posted: 01 Apr 2012 08:23 AM PDT Nicole Polizzi, better known as Snooki on Jersey Shore, has agreed to a deal with a developer to release a number of apps and games starting next month. The deal is with Apps Genius Corp, a company whose lone game on iOS is Slap a Friend, an app where you can plaster someone’s face onto a character and proceed to beat them around with a bat, drop bowling balls on them, and so on. It’s an appropriate partnership as I can imagine Snooki’s face has been used in this game a number of times. The other iOS release from Apps Genius is Bed Bug Alert, an app that allows you to keep track and report bed bug infestations. (No, it’s not a game.) Its website lists some of its Facebook projects, which include Bruisers (a “turn based strategy war game” with pirates and ninjas), Drama Llama (“Now you can track who causes the most drama among your friends and family”), and My Mad Millions (a game where you must spend $300 million and have nothing left over at the end). The deal allows Apps Genius to develop and distribute as many as eight social games and mobile apps featuring Snooki. These are planned for release on iOS, Android, Facebook, and Google+. Four apps or games will be released within the next year, with the first coming up at the end of November. “These games and applications are my new favorite accessories, and I love them to death,” Snooki said in today’s press release. “Having worked on these from the beginning, I know Jersey Shore viewers and my other fans will love them. I can’t wait to release the first one that we have been working on with Apps Genius.” Snooki made it big on Jersey Shore, an MTV reality show that debuted in 2009 and is just wrapping up its fourth season this week. She released a book, A Shore Thing, earlier this year, which today’s press release reminds us of by referring to her as a New York Times bestselling author. The book initially sold quite poorly but did make the the Times’ extended bestseller list in January. While the idea of a Snooki game of some sort sounds disastrous, it’s not as if the iOS App Store doesn’t already have its fair share of junk on it. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/jersey-shore-snooki-games-coming-facebook-ios No related posts.

World of Warcraft (KR) Posted: 01 Apr 2012 03:48 AM PDT I am sure you guys have read about the recent Scroll of Resurrection Blizzard was giving out, with current players able to send one to a former-active player, granting him some unique items and a permanent level 80 fully-equipped character. While many see this as a big opportunity for the MMO giant to recoup some of it players, the folks in Korea are not so forgiving about the game’s stale content. With not many biting the bait, World of Warcraft Korea will be shutting down 10 servers come 15th April, transferring the players to the more populous ones. Since July last year, there were already a few reports claiming the number of players in the game is in a steady decline. Some events and raids apparently can’t be carried out due to the lack of players. Similar to TERA, World of Wacraft in Korea currently ranks at No.9/ 10 in the Internet PC cafe chart, about 1/5 the popularity of current and long-running champion, Aion. Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2012/04/world-of-warcraft-kr-gamers-not-biting.html Related posts: World of Warcraft [G*Star 2011] Perfect World teams up with Nexon [BlizzCon 2011] World of Warcraft : Mists of Pandaria

1UP Community Feature: Gaming Problems of the ’90s Posted: 31 Mar 2012 09:48 PM PDT The year was 1998 and I had finally saved up enough money to get a used PlayStation and a copy of Final Fantasy VII. I got a ride to the local game store and went home with a huge smile on my face. Soon after returning home, two issues surfaced. The red, yellow, and white cords didn’t plug in anywhere on the old TV in my room, and the game was prompting me for a memory card that I did not have. This meant that I couldn’t save my progress and I had to take turns using the TV in the family room. It took two weeks to finally get an RF adapter, and another two weeks to finally get that first memory card. Finally, I could progress past the Train Graveyard. Here at 1UP we’ve spent some time recently talking about the ’90s. Saving your game progress on a cartridge or external card isn’t exclusive to that decade, but now it seems almost archaic — something few gamers will miss. Nowadays our consoles have built-in storage and cloud saves, and you don’t normally worry about those things called “memory cards.” Let?s take a look at some of the 1UP Community’s ’90s Video Game Problems. 3rd Party Memory Cards …when I first got my PlayStation, I let the dude talk me into getting a Mad Catz memory card, ’cause you know, five bucks cheaper. Penny-wise and pound foolish is more like it. I got Valkyrie Profile and Final Fantasy IX at about the same time, made it halfway through both games… and my memory card simply quit working. The PlayStation wouldn’t recognize that there even was a memory card inserted. After that, I stuck with Sony memory cards. — San Andreas No Data During the PS2 days, i got a demo disc in the mail from Sony that had a bug in it. If you played to the end of the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo, it would reset and erase EVERYTHING on any memory card that was inserted in the system. Unfortunately, I did not know this at the time, so I lost a lot of stuff. I did complain about it, and they sent me a free game (I think it was Sly 2), but somehow that didn’t seem to make up for it. To this day I’m a little more leery about Sony products. — Cary Woodham The A-Team My little brother was possibly the most dedicated Final Fantasy Tactics player ever. He grinded through every job for every character. His characters were so powerful that he could only play for 10-15 minutes at a time before the game would crash. He gave a copy of his “B-Team” data (only halfway through capping every job) to our friend who was a Square Enix QA Manager. He said my brother had hit levels that nobody in the company had. Which made it easy for his team of testers to fly through the game. My little brother laughed, “You should see my A-Team data.” — BigMex That One Friend… My very first experience of losing my game progress came from Breath of Fire II for the SNES, one of my favorite games of all time (if you haven’t figured that out yet). I was seven years old and quite proud of the four or five hours I put into the game after I got it for my birthday. My memory?s a little hazy, but I recall letting a friend borrow the game while I borrowed his copy of Donkey Kong Country 2. I distinctly remember telling him not to copy or erase my save, to just use his own slot and stick to it. Fast forward a few days later: He comes to my doorstep with his mother, who tells me that my save game got accidentally deleted when he tried to copy a save. He brought his mom over because he was afraid to tell me the truth himself. — Nuka_Cola via his feature Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/features/1up-community-feature-90s-gaming Related posts: The 1UP Community’s Thanksgiving Gaming Memories 1UP Community Feature: Consoles in 2012 Actually, You Can’t Easily Switch PSN Accounts on Vita

Vessel Review Posted: 31 Mar 2012 09:48 PM PDT Fluid dynamics is one of the toughest, most mentally taxing facets of physics. When Creative Assembly was making Empire: Total War for example, it took the studio an entire year just to accurately model the sea and the dynamic way it would react to multiple ships passing through it. So give a hand to inventor M. Arkwright, the genius inventor who hasn't merely predicted the way water moves, but created the Fluro: an automaton made entirely out of any liquid (making them entirely replacable) and who's predictable and malleable nature means they can be put to work on almost any task. Only these watery new beings, born of Arkwright's new turbine device, aren't as mindless as they were initially thought. Some are actually quite wilful and have locked Arkwright out of his workshop, so he sets out to wrest control back from the Fluros and get his workshop back. Seminal indie Braid has inspired a generation of similarly conceptual platform-puzzlers and Vessel is most definitely among them. It has a broody art style, much of the story including the introduction is implied and it's punctuated by occasional journal entries. The way Vessel gets around being explicit about anything, including the control system, is by using precedent and a gently paced difficulty gradient. We instinctively know to use the arrow keys and space bar to move and jump, for example, and having been shown that 'E' grabs and manipulates objects, a world of levers and switches opens up to us. Thus, the basis of Vessels puzzle mechanics are formed. The linchpin of Vessel is the Fluros of course. These are created by hitting switches for Arkwrights magic turbine devices found all over the factory: fill them up, hit the switch and a few seconds of whirring and glowing later, the fluid will pour out and pull together into an amorphous blob with eyes. Arkwright can't control it directly, but most of the time they will help him out by getting to places he can't reach and performing tasks (like hitting switches) he's unable to do himself. Later levels of Vessel introduces new types of Fluro that can explode or glow for a total of five different types, which lend themselves to increasingly sophisticated puzzles in a difficulty curve that's very well-paced. Vessel isa  linear puzzler so unlike Braid, if you do get stuck then there's no popping out to a hub to try something else and coming back to the puzzle later. Although, with these inevitable comparisons to the Jonathan Blow classic, Vessel's puzzles are nowhere near as fiendishly clever or creative. The Fluros themselves are quite charming though, they're never entirely predictable: some will help, some will hinder – either by directly attacking Arkwright with lava or explosive properties, or by countering our efforts – and they'll rarely go about the task we hope they'll perform in the way we expect them too. It's a well executed and polished puzzler, even if it doesn't quite live up to the promise of its initial presentation. 7/10 Find similar article at: http://www.totalpcgaming.com/reviews/vessel-review/ Related posts: Trine 2 Review Wakfu Review Review: Space Marine Is All Out of Bubblegum

Champions Online MMORPG Review Posted: 31 Mar 2012 08:23 PM PDT Champions Online is a 3D, superhero-themed MMORPG.  Create a unique hero using the game's amazing character creation system and play through the game's well-crafted story arcs.  Champions Online boasts a powerful graphics engine that makes use of cel-shading and other interesting features to present a unique visual style.       Publisher: Cryptic Studios Playerbase: High Graphics: High Quality Type: MMORPG EXP Rate: Medium PvP: Strong scenarios / PvP regions Filesize: 2500 MB Website: http://www.champions-online.com Pros: +In-depth character creation. +Unique colorful artstyle. +Fast-paced, action-oriented gameplay. +Tons of variety between characters. Cons: -Odd use of instancing & save points. -Balance issues. -Few missions to complete, lots of grind.   Champions Online is a 3D superhero themed fantasy MMORPG set in Millennium City. The game used to be pay to play with a free trial, but officially went fully free to play with a cash shop and subscriber option on January 25, 2011. For gamers with a love for deep character customization and fast, smooth gameplay, the Champions Online is definitely a solid choice. There are no classes in Champions Online; players are free to choose any power from any powerset to realize whatever vision they have in mind for their characters. These powers are organized into theme frameworks, which are listed below: Might: Your standard super-strength powerset. For characters looking to imitate the biggest and the burliest heavy hitters, though your character need not appear large! Munitions: A framework containing just about every conventional firearm imaginable, from rocket launchers, to gatling guns, to shotguns, to grenades, and to a number of very cool looking "gun kata" style dual pistol attacks. Martial Arts: Choose from unarmed, claws, single blade, or dual blade within the martial arts frameworks, each with unique advantages. Sorcery: From black magic to white magic, from primal sorcery to arcane sorcery, this set contains a great deal of unique attacks and area-centric buffs. Plus, the arcane bolts just look cool! Supernatural: Whether you choose to be a chain-swinging demon with toxic breath, or a creepy creature with supernatural, shredding claws, this set is a grab-bag for every imaginable kind of weirdness. Telepathy: Powerful crowd-control, the best heals in the game, and arguably the best AoE attack in the game. Telepathy has a number of solid powers to choose from! Telekinesis: A thematic favorite, TK is a set for people who want to have psychic blades, a la Psylocke from X-men, or even a Protoss zealot from Starcraft. Some of the best melee damage in the game is in these powers! Gadgeteering: Orbital cannons, laser guns, robot minions, photon mines, shrink rays, resurrection serums… gauntlet chainsaws? Yep. It's all here. Power Armor: You are Iron Man. Just don't name yourself that. Make a suit of awesome powered armor and go nuts. Or make a lizard person that shoots missles out of their chest for some reason. The choice is yours! Archery: A number of surprisingly high-tech looking bow attacks, from arrows with explosives tied to them, to arrows that explode in a pretty sphere of energy. All archery attacks can be used and charged while moving! Energy Projection: From flinging flames, to ice bolts, to lightining bolts, or force bolts. It's all in these four powersets. Set stuff on fire, encase enemies in icy prisons, place forcefields on your allies, or just annihilate whole armies with columns of electricity. Darkness: Summon clouds of fear, attack enemies with blasts of pure shadow, lick at your foes with dark tendrils, drain life, and create nether voids. This set pretty much speaks for itself. Celestial: The consummate "healer" set, many of the attacks in Celestial are pretty balls and beams of light, which can either damage enemies or heal friends.     Champions Online System Requirements Minimum Requirements: OS: Windows XP SP2/ Windows Vista/Windows 7 CPU: 2.5GHz Single Core or 1.8GHz Dual Core RAM: 1 GB HDD: 5.0 GB Free Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 / ATI Radeon X700 / Intel GMA 4 Recommended Specifications: OS: Windows XP SP2/ Windows Vista/Windows 7 (32 or 64-bit) CPU: Intel E8400 Core2Duo or Better RAM: 2GB or more HDD: 5.0 GB Free Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 or Better / ATI Radeon HD 3850 or Better Incoming search terms: medium quality graphics mmorpg (1) Related posts: Cabal Online MMORPG Review Bloodline Champions MMO Review Blade Wars MMORPG Review

The Worst Things About the ’90s Posted: 31 Mar 2012 09:47 AM PDT While it’s easy to look back at the ’90s with rose-tinted nostalgia, the decade still had its fair share of rough spots. Yes, the ’90s gave us great Japanese role-playing games like Chrono Trigger, edgier video games for a maturing audience on Sony’s PlayStation, and a slew of landmark titles in the year 1998, but these four things stood out as some of the worst events of the decade. Sega’s Decline Sega ended the ’80s on a high note by launching a successful 16-bit console that made the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System look old and busted by comparison. This big win helped them finally penetrate Nintendo’s market dominance and, for Sega, the boisterous chest-beating wouldn’t stop there. “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” ads and the debut of their speedy blue mascot, Sonic, in 1991 helped the Japanese company continue to gain mindshare leading up the launch of the rival Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The head start helped Sega start the ’90s as hip and cool, fast and flexible, or so everyone initially thought. By 1995, Sega flooded the market with add-ons that quickly undermined their vision for the next level of video games. These ill-fitting platforms appeared to be quick reactions meant to keep the company competitive against rival console makers. But the Sega CD and 32X both suffered from lack of software support. Developers abandoned working on the 32X in favor of developing software for Sega’s next big thing, the Sega Saturn. Yet, even the Saturn eventually lost huge ground to the Sony’s PlayStation for its quadrilateral-based rendering method, a contributing factor to the consoles’ early demise. These failed platforms lead to a lot of money problems down the road for Sega. Despite the Dreamcast being an amazing little system that helped carry the company into the next decade, Sega’s pockets weren’t deep enough to recoup their previous losses and the company later dropped out of the console manufacturing altogether. Failed Consoles and Ideas It’s painful to think of the number of consoles that failed in the ’90s — although friends tell me that the ’70s and ’80s were just as bad — but the costs of these new systems hurt early adopters even more. The first 3DO console cost $699; the Neo Geo AES cost about $50 less; and the Sega Saturn debuted at $399 — a price point that would later become standard for consoles nearly a decade later. Unsurprisingly, most of the failed platforms had flaws. The Turbografx-16 required a multi-tap accessory just to plug in a second controller. Early CD-based consoles like the 3DO embraced Full Motion Video — video sequences filmed with real actors that were set to button prompts that simulated the act of playing a game — as the future of games, and despite FMV’s increased visual fidelity, their limited interactivity made them obsolete. Although the Atari Jaguar was advertised at the first 64-bit system, the 12-button phone keyboard grafted to the bottom of the controller made it overly complex. The Panasonic CDi had a few video games along with educational and self-help software, but infamously lives on as the platform that brought us the terrible Zelda games Wand of Gamelon, The Faces of Evil, and Link’s Adventures. Falling Out Between Square and Nintendo Nintendo and Square represented the video game industry’s first loving couple, and this Sonny and Cher-caliber relationship delivered dozens of memorable software titles exclusively to Nintendo consoles. Games like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy III (a.k.a. Final Fantasy VI), and Chrono Trigger are fondly remembered as some of the best software of the decade, and if you wanted the next great Square RPG, you had to have a Nintendo platform in order to experience it. In 1996 all that changed and for reasons still debated to this day, Square broke ties with their longtime business partner and began publishing games on Sony’s PlayStation. This move put Final Fantasy VII — the biggest RPG of the decade — on a non-Nintendo system, and this falling out between the two companies wouldn’t be repaired until 2003. Image Credit: pjparlapiano.blogspot.com Death of the Arcade Arcades served as home to some of the best competitive video game experiences in the early part of the ’90s, and arcade culture grew as thousands of players across America duked it out in Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. Anyone who lived in the ’90s remembers the serenade of dissimilar electronic sounds mashing together the moment you stepped in the arcade and act of quartering up — where a player would place a quarter against a bottom portion of the screen — and wait in line to be the next challenger. Sadly, arcades fell out of popularity thanks to the increased power of home consoles. This leap in technology brought ports of the most popular arcade games to your living room and slowly contributed to the eventual decline and death of arcades later in the decade. Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/features/worst-90s_2 Incoming search terms: sega (1) Related posts: All Things Red Dead Redemption Bundled Together for Game of the Year Edition Why Every Elder Scrolls Game is the Best and Worst in the Series Saving the System II: More Failed Consoles that Went Wrong Instead of Right

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MMO Updates

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• Rise and Shiny: Remanum
• One Shots: Botanical bliss
• Previously On MVTV: The week of March 24th
• One Shots is back! Long live One Shots!
• The Daily Grind: What are your favorite jokes of the day?
• Perpetuum expands the sandbox with player-built settlements
• The Tattered Notebook: A scenic tour of the Withered Lands
• The Mog Log: Ishgardbul, not Ala Mhigonople
• The Road to Mordor: Will the instance finder take off?
• Massively Exclusive: Eligium's world history, chapter 1

Rise and Shiny: Remanum Posted: 01 Apr 2012 10:00 AM PDT Filed under: Historical, Video, New titles, Previews, Opinion, Free-to-play, Browser, Hands-on, Casual, MMORTS, Rise and Shiny, Miscellaneous This week I was lucky enough to come across a pretty cool browser-based MMORTS that offers no combat whatsoever. That's right -- this game is all about trading, conquering your neighbors with prices, and building a reputation that is better than everybody else's. Remanum is brought to us by the makers of the famous Travian set of games. Slowly, but surely, the developers are trying out different styles of gameplay that all offer an art style that is obviously their own. I was thrilled to see them again try out something different with Remanum. So how boring is a game that offers nothing but trade wars? Well, that all depends on how much you care for scratching your chin, sitting back, and plotting. It's a game of patience and working with others. I never pretend that most MMORTS titles are supposed to move at the same pace as Vindictus or Guild Wars; games just have different styles. Remanum is a great game to enjoy any place and any time, from a few minutes to a few hours a day. I had a few issues with the game, so let's cover those as well. Continue reading Rise and Shiny: Remanum Rise and Shiny: Remanum originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

One Shots: Botanical bliss Posted: 01 Apr 2012 09:00 AM PDT Filed under: Screenshots, Events, real-world, Humor, Miscellaneous This is a picture of a plant in Fisherman's Haven in Guild Wars, one of my favorite zones for accessing my storage vault when I'm /invisible and hiding out from my friends, who are probably trying to drag me along to vanquish zones or do Zaishen dailies or something. I mean, seriously guys, I think you forgot that MMOs aren't supposed to be about fun. They're supposed to be about spending $60 and then complaining on the forums and quitting in a huff. Behind me is a beautiful vista with gentle waves swirling on a beach nestled in an exotic cove, but you can't see any of those things because I chose to focus on this plant, darnit. It's my very favorite plant. I stand next to this plant while accessing the storage vault referenced earlier. I don't have to comport with your oppressive "beautiful screenshot" paradigm. This plant has deep meaning. Deep. Meaning. Something about standing alone in a wasteland of sand. It's about the very essence of MMOs, see? Do you have a picture of a favorite MMO plant? The very first thing you should do is not send it in to us at oneshots@massively.com, along with your name, the game, and a description of the scene, and we won't publish it. Bring back One Shots! One Shots: Botanical bliss originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Previously On MVTV: The week of March 24th Posted: 01 Apr 2012 08:00 AM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Previews, Opinion, Free-to-play, Browser, Hands-on, Casual, MMOFPS, MMORTS, Massively Hands-on, Community Q&A, Miscellaneous, Previously on MV TV Ah, spring is in the air. You know what that means! That means that we get to sit inside, away from all of the sunshine and pollen, and watch others play through video games that we just don't have access to or haven't given a chance yet. This week, we worked hard to bring you some more of our digital adventures and got some of our biggest viewership numbers ever! Remember, if you come across a game we haven't covered yet or want to see a certain title covered, take the time to tell us. Give us the website, why we should look at it, and any other information you think we need to know, and you just might see it live on MVTV! First Blake jumped into Global Agenda for his Lunchtime Livecast; then Richie took some time to try out the Mists of Pandaria beta for World of Warcraft. Adventure Mike explored some content in Final Fantasy XIV, while plain old Mike burned some space dust in EVE Online and cast many spells in RIFT. I decided to look at Nadirim because it's been a while and gave the Rise and Shiny treatment to Remanum. Be sure to bookmark our livestream MV Guide, a sort of TV Guide for our livestreams. That way you can blame only yourself when you miss one of our awesome streams! Continue reading Previously On MVTV: The week of March 24th Previously On MVTV: The week of March 24th originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

One Shots is back! Long live One Shots! Posted: 01 Apr 2012 07:00 AM PDT Filed under: Screenshots, Massively Meta, One Shots, Humor, Miscellaneous You made your voices heard and now we're listening. That's right, One Shots is back after enjoying a bit of a self-discovery period in the tropics with its secretary, and we're proud to kick off the screen-shotty goodness for you today. Throughout the day today, you'll see several entries from the new One Shots series. Be sure to let us know what you think of the new format! One Shots is back! Long live One Shots! originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Daily Grind: What are your favorite jokes of the day? Posted: 01 Apr 2012 06:00 AM PDT Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Humor, Miscellaneous All right, we admit it, you probably haven't seen any April Fool's jokes just yet. It's early. But every year, MMO developers -- and the rest of the Internet -- delight in the absurd, the strange, and the blatantly false. Yes, the first of April is when everyone gets to troll the world just a little bit. And while some people are stalwartly opposed to a day during which you can trust no news and be sure of no announcements, the rest of us just accept nothing useful is getting done today and enjoy it. So go ahead and see what the various jokes are around the internet. Seriously, we'll wait. Then, let us know your favorites. Maybe it's something everyone loves, maybe it's something no one has seen yet, maybe you're just going to link something on YouTube. The point is, we want to know -- what's your favorite April Fool's joke this year? Every morning, the Massively bloggers meet to discuss the dark ritual required to summon back the most missed of all features: One Shots. So we're bringing it back today. If you can't trust the footer text today, then who can you trust? In other news, this is today's Daily Grind! The Daily Grind: What are your favorite jokes of the day? originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Perpetuum expands the sandbox with player-built settlements Posted: 31 Mar 2012 07:00 PM PDT Filed under: Sci-fi, Previews, PvP, Perpetuum, Sandbox Perpetuum's sci-fi sandbox is preparing to go from your basic Toys-R-Us plastic pool to a full-on professional playground setup in the near future. Its team of 10 developers are slaving away at creating 24 brand-new "Gamma" islands for players to colonize and fight over, as well as the tools with which to stake their claim. This chain of two-dozen islands will be the foundation for Perpetuum's Player-Built Settlements (or PBS, if you miss Sesame Street). Everything from the buildings to the land they're built on can be created and modified by players to make a real and lasting impact on the game world. Settlements will be color-coded to represent its parent corporation and are incredibly complex in regards to how the buildings are linked to each other. Of course, this being a PvP game, other corporations will certainly have motive to destroy and conquer enemy territory. [Thanks to Roy for the tip!] Perpetuum expands the sandbox with player-built settlements originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Terraforming dev blog, Building and planning dev blog, Island control dev blog

The Tattered Notebook: A scenic tour of the Withered Lands Posted: 31 Mar 2012 04:00 PM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest II, Patches, Previews, PvE, Opinion, Free-to-play, The Tattered Notebook As we get closer to April 17th, more and more is being revealed about what's in EverQuest II's Game Update 63. Fortunately, much of it is on the test server, so players can pop in, check things out, and not have to worry about an NDA. I decided to head over, and since I already had a character test copied to the server, I was able to get in and see the new zones and some of the new additions to the game. Read on for highlights of my journeys through the Withered Lands and Skyshrine! Continue reading The Tattered Notebook: A scenic tour of the Withered Lands The Tattered Notebook: A scenic tour of the Withered Lands originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Mog Log: Ishgardbul, not Ala Mhigonople Posted: 31 Mar 2012 02:00 PM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Lore, Opinion, Consoles, Final Fantasy XIV, The Mog Log There are three cities that players can select to call home in Final Fantasy XIV, but there are five cities of importance. Over the past few weeks I've looked at the former group, but that leaves two important places to be covered. At the same time, those cities are by necessity harder to talk about because we haven't set foot in either. Everything we know about them is secondhand, via quests and inference and in one case the ability to longingly gaze over an ornate stone bridge. Ishgard and Ala Mhigo both cast long shadows over Eorzea, but neither one is accessible to players. There are details about both swimming through the game, but it's always secondhand, always with one or two pieces gleaned from outside sources. In its own way, this makes both cities more alluring -- because one we know to be the heart of darkness and the other could be almost anything when the gates finally swing open. If, in fact, they ever do. Continue reading The Mog Log: Ishgardbul, not Ala Mhigonople The Mog Log: Ishgardbul, not Ala Mhigonople originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Road to Mordor: Will the instance finder take off? Posted: 31 Mar 2012 12:00 PM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Free-to-play, The Road to Mordor, Dungeons When World of Warcraft released its dungeon finder in late 2009, the online gaming community fractured into two distinct camps. There were those who loved and embraced the dungeon finder for its ease of grouping, its bonus rewards, and its accessibility. Then there was the other camp, whose members grew to loathe this system, claiming that it fractured the community (especially when it went cross-server) and trivialized the teamwork and bonding that dungeon groups cultivated in the past. Love it or hate it, the dungeon finder was a massive hit and quickly became a staple in many other MMOs, such as RIFT and yes, Lord of the Rings Online. I've always been a huge proponent of the system because LFG tools and channels are typically insufficient and inefficient. Plus, dungeon finders cater to those of us who aren't as naturally outgoing and chatty when it comes to finding or starting groups, and I think this is why it became so embraced. Many of us felt denied this content simply because we weren't in a gung-ho guild or weren't proactive enough to build a group, but this became a game-changer. Instead of releasing LotRO's instance finder in its full glory all at once, Turbine's rolled out the replacement to its lackluster LFF interface in stages. With Update 6, we now have an improved system to examine, although there's certainly work that needs to be done. Continue reading The Road to Mordor: Will the instance finder take off? The Road to Mordor: Will the instance finder take off? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Massively Exclusive: Eligium's world history, chapter 1 Posted: 31 Mar 2012 11:00 AM PDT Filed under: Fantasy, Lore, Previews, Free-to-play Maybe you've been following Eligium since it was first announced. Maybe you've been interested after reading our impressions of the title from GDC. Maybe you're only just now hearing about it. Whatever camp you fall into, the game is continuing along with its testing and nearing an official release. And while some players might be interested only in leveling particularly involved mounts and enjoying some wide-open exploration, others want to know a little more about the world the game inhabits. We've seen snippets of the game's lore from the various racial reveals, but the team at Frogster is putting together a series on the game world's history in more detail. The first installment gives a quick and broad overview of the pre-history of the game's setting; it's just after the cut. If you're interested in the game, enjoy, and keep your eyes peeled for future installments in the history updates. Continue reading Massively Exclusive: Eligium's world history, chapter 1 Massively Exclusive: Eligium's world history, chapter 1 originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 31 Mar 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

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General gaming

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Nintendo Dubstep Experience 3D Looks to Reinvent the Rhythm Genre Posted: 01 Apr 2012 12:00 AM PDT The world was stunned today with the unveiling of Nintendo Dubstep Experience 3D, a new rhythm-based game for the 3DS. As you can see from the trailer below, the game is set to combine a wealth of Nintendo icons with the recent musical phenomenon known as dubstep. For those who may not know, dubstep is a fairly young sub-genre of electronica music that features heavy bass and a myriad of looped samples to create a resonating, and sometimes overwhelming sound. The game looks to take a cue from the Nintendo DS hit Elite Beat Agents by utilizing the bottom screen for rhythmic touch movements while the top screen displays the character action. The initial teaser revealed Nintendo absolutes like Mario, Samus, and Pikachu, though we can't help but notice the absence of a few key players. With the recent success of Kid Icarus Uprising for the 3DS, the lack of Pitt is a bit of a surprise. Likewise, Link and Zelda are MIA, which seems strange considering the characters' affinity for dancing. And in a genre built upon strong bass, completely excluding a hulk like Donkey Kong in the trailer seems like a misstep for Nintendo.

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MMORPG News

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General: MMORPG.com PAX East 2012 Meet 'n' Greet! Posted: 31 Mar 2012 04:31 PM PDT Come meet the MMORPG.com staff and your fellow readers at Lucky's Lounge during this year's PAX East convention in Boston! We've set aside a couple of tables from 7-9PM on Saturday, April 7th so be sure to stop by! We may even have some swag from the show to give out!

Divina: Exclusive Weekly Comic #6 Posted: 30 Mar 2012 03:15 PM PDT This week we bring you the sixth part of Divina's weekend comic series -- the exciting prelude to the upcoming MMORPG's in-game storyline. Has Ragnarok truly come or is there still a reason to hope, even in the midst of the surrounding death and destruction?

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