Two games are at the starting line, set to race off into the open frontier. We take a look at Criterion's Need for Speed Most Wanted and Playground Games' Forza Horizon and size up these two contenders.
Back in 2010, two racing games, Black Rock Studio's Split/Second and Bizarre Creations' Blur, went head-to-head on store shelves. Although the titles...
I'd rather spend one lump sum for a game experience instead of continually monitoring my bank account to make sure I'm not overspending on microtransactions. The way publishers are talking right now, we may not have that choice for many games in the future. As evidenced by the frequent layoffs of talented development teams and shrinking pool of revenue, the...
The Journey Down was a classic-style, 2D pixel art adventure game which you can still play for free. Now it's a slightly larger, fully voiced, gorgeous adventure game that mixes 3D animated models with painted backgrounds. The result is a visual treat. It's a bit unusual to see a remake of a series that only had one episode, but this new direction is a very welcome one.
Square Enix announced a new PC release of Final Fantasy VII with several new features, including 36 achievements. Additionally, the game supports cloud saves and offers players to increase their HP, MP and Gil levels to their maximum with this "Character Booster" if they run into a difficult section.
Final Fantasy VII PC also supports English, French,...
Netflix is home to the first three seasons of Sons of Anarchy, as well as all eight seasons and 249 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, named after the main character who would go on to star in Matlock and, unfortunately, just recently passed away (R.I.P. Andy Griffith). The point being, there's a healthy selection of streaming content available on Netflix, and subscribers...
Samsung is having a crummy week. After losing a court battle in which Apple was successfully able to convince an appeals court to ban sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the U.S., Samsung learned a day later that it would also have to pull its Galaxy Nexus smartphone from store shelves. Adding insult to injury, Samsung has just been denied a preliminary injunction against...
Samsung is having a crummy week. After losing a court battle in which Apple was successfully able to convince an appeals court to ban sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the U.S., Samsung learned a day later that it would also have to pull its Galaxy Nexus smartphone from store shelves. Adding insult to injury, Samsung has just been denied a preliminary injunction against...
Everyone knows you 'don't do the crime if you can't do the time,' or in Toshiba's case, if you can't pay the fine. The only problem with that is Toshiba is innocent, or so the company claims, just like every single person serving hard time will tell you. Legally speaking, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco found Toshiba guilty of collaborating with other liquid crystal...
Google figured out the key to fighting fire -- Amazon's Kindle Fire, that is -- is with a similar sized Nexus 7 device rocking Jelly Bean (Android 4.1). That strategy may ultimately work, but don't expect Amazon to roll over and concede defeat as the one offering the second best selling tablet in the world. Instead, Amazon is reportedly getting ready to fire back with a...
[More info] Call of Duty Online is currently still the topic of the gaming industry after its official reveal yesterday. Although only for the China region, the English media and fans are nonetheless weighing in on the game's announcement. China media website, 17173.com, managed to grab an interview with Mr Dannie Suarez, Vice President of Production at Activision Blizzard....
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The Secret World creative director Ragnar Tornquist recently checked in with Rock, Paper Shotgun for a post-launch interview. The first half of the piece offers up some interesting commentary on the state of MMOs, non-combat gameplay, and inevitable comparisons to the genre standard.
"Have we been traditional in some ways? Sure," Tornquist says. "But I think those who say that our combat is like WoW's combat, they really haven't gotten beyond the surface. At the beginning maybe it feels like that. But if you play for 12, 15, 20 hours, it's quite clear that it's radically different."
Tornquist also muses on non-combat gameplay, of which TSW has a fair amount. In a nutshell, though, conflict is what drives games, and so combat will always be a primary focus. "I think solving puzzles all the time, it's not going to last hundreds of hours. I think people would get bored a lot quicker," he says.
What do you do when hard-core gamers start having families? If you are KingsIsle Entertainment, the makers of Wizard101, you don't worry about gamers leaving the market; instead, you harness "the Pixar effect" and make a game that will bring all generations together to interact and play in the same world. That game is the upcoming Pirate101.
What is the Pixar effect? KingsIsle VP of Marketing Fred Howard points to the success of the Pixar movies like Toy Story and explains, "They were successful because not only do they cater to what would be a younger core audience but very much to an adult and more mature audience." Pirate101 will incorporate elements that will appeal to the different generations, including a good story, professional voice acting, and turn-based combat to equalize the playing field. And be on the lookout for various references and puns when Pirate101 launches later this year.
With the free-to-play revolution (or plague, depending on your point of view), MMO gamers now have so many more options for inexpensive play than ever before. But that's never good enough for us; we always want more, more, more!
So let's take F2P to an extreme and tackle this hypothetical: Suppose every current MMO was completely free -- no box price, no subscription, no microtransactions, nada. Would the freedom from any sort of financial consideration change what games you play and how you play them, or would you pretty much be doing what you're doing now?
Personally, I can't see it radically changing my gaming lifestyle. I play what I want to right now, as either subs or microtransactions are affordable enough to keep down to just a few bucks a month at most. But maybe that's just me. What about you?
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!
Welcome to Jukebox Heroes, a new biweekly column in which we jam an 8-track cassette into the deck and rock out to the best of MMO scores. I've been a huge soundtrack fan since about forever, and I collect both movie and video game scores like crazy. You may have seen this fanaticism peek through in a few of my Perfect Ten columns, and we thought it was time to give the sounds of MMOs their own dedicated space on Massively.
Before we go into today's featured soundtrack, I want to establish two ground rules for this column and the discussion that may follow. The first rule is that even though many players turn off MMO music due to repetition, that doesn't mean that the score itself is forgettable. It's just that no music is good enough to listen to 1,047 times in a row. The second rule is that we're going to focus on the music itself without a larger commentary on its MMO. Good games can have terrible music and vice-versa, so it's important to divorce game opinions from musical analysis.
Without further ado, I'm going to kick off this series by examining the latest MMO soundtrack I've acquired, Aion's. Aion is a gorgeous game to look at, and its music is just as -- if not more -- beautiful (and if you're not reading MJ's excellent Wings Over Atreia column, shame on you). Let's give it a listen.
If you're completely done with your account for a game, you may be tempted to sell it... but doing so usually nets you the wrath of the publisher and a ban on the account, rendering it useless. But that may be changing in the near future. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled today that publishers must allow the resale of digital licenses for software by the user, regardless of what was stated in the original EULA for the game.
While the precise wording might be confusing for those members of the audience not versed in legalese, the upshot is that services such as Steam must allow a way for users to sell their existing games to others, even if the EULA forbids it. This precedent could easily extend to resale of game accounts, since the key used to activate your Star Wars: The Old Republic account qualifies as a license enabling play of the game. No word yet on whether or not this will extend to the US, where many of the game companies in question are based.
Currently in Star Wars: The Old Republic, I am leveling up a couple of alternate characters. My main is a Sith Marauder, but I felt like trying the other Sith class and at the same time try the Jedi Consular class that I didn't finish during beta, mostly to see for myself whether the story gets any better. (It doesn't.) The mechanics are extremely awesome, though, and that's enough to keep me playing the class.
But that's not the only thing that keeps me playing it. In fact, I think I can safely say that I would not still play the class if it weren't for update 1.3, which is just one of the reasons I believe players should consider coming back to SWTOR. Whether you're an altoholic or not, update 1.3 has finally completed the game. If the game had launched with the features that now exist in game, I don't believe we would have seen such a sharp decline in subscriptions after launch.
I'm urging you to try the game again, not because I'm being prompted to but because I think these quality-of-life additions really make this game what it should have been all along.
Do you love beer and pizza? Do you love MechWarrior Online? Do you loveit enough to write up to 100 words about how much you love the game and deserve to attend a special event celebrating MWO?
You do? That's so weirdly convenient because on July 27th, Nvidia will be hosting an invite-only MWO Community Day, and the only way to to score an invitation is to write 100 words or less about why you are so very special and should totally be part of this event. Each entrant has to be at least 21 years old, available on the July 27th, and able to travel to and stay in Santa Clara, California, on his or her own dime. If you fit those qualifications and are selected to be an attendee, you'll enjoy a chance to meet with the development staff, view demos, learn more about the tech behind the mechs, fight in-game for a chance for prizes, eat pizza, drink beer, and be merry.
Interested? Check out the official forum thread for full details on the community day and contest.
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column.
Every now and then, a game comes out of nowhere with such incredible financial success that it causes the games industry to completely lose perspective. All it takes is one game to start raking in the millions for developers, publishers and investors to stumble around with dollar signs in their eyes for years to come. Innovation grinds to a halt and everyone starts blindly copying whichever game just hit the jackpot. It's like some huge industry-wide superstition takes over and convinces people that if they do the same dance the same way, it'll rain again.
World of Warcraft has consistently had this effect since shortly after its launch in 2004. To this day, several studios per year excitedly announce yet another fantasy MMO that lifts its entire feature set and every gameplay mechanic wholesale from World of Warcraft as if it were a model for automatic success. The same thing is happening again in online gaming today, not from MMOs but from MOBAs, a new genre based on the competitive gaming classic DotA. Developers are still chasing the massive money made by yet another hugely successful game, and this time it's League of Legends.
I've had it up to here, ArenaNet. We, your community, are dying for some real information. You can't keep putting out flimflam posts and expect us to be happy. We've given you our money, for goodness' sake, we deserve a --
Did a Linux app result in a permanent ban for several Diablo III players? Those affected say yes; Blizzard says no.
Players who were using a program called Wine to run Windows applications on Linux machines flocked to the Diablo III forums to report that they were finding their accounts banned. "I got banned last night as well," one player wrote. "Other than running under Wine, I can't imagine why. Level 30ish char and not so much as a gaming keyboard."
A Blizzard CM said that the studio investigated the claims and found that this wasn't the case: "We've extensively tested for false positive situations, including replicating system setups for those who have posted claiming they were banned unfairly. We've not found any situations that could produce a false positive, have found that the circumstances for which they were banned were clear and accurate, and we are extremely confident in our findings. Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you banned -- cheating will."
While the upcoming Riders of Rohan expansion for Lord of the Rings Online promises a great wealth of content for players, undoubtedly its keystone feature is mounted combat. This system became the centerpiece of a filmed discussion between CM Rick Heaton and Producer Aaron Campbell.
One of the concerns that Heaton addresses is how player classes will translate once on horseback. Campbell says that the team has created ways for those roles to continue, albeit in a slightly different form. One example given was how Guardians can taunt, except that on horseback, it means that the enemy will then start riding alongside of you. "You can bring them in and control the battlefield," Campbell says.
Other points of discussion include how Fellowships work while mounted, the different stances (aggressive, utility, and defensive), the speed of combat, and situational awareness. The pair also gives us a first glimpse of mounted combat in action.
Premium membership will cost $14.99 a month, which will buy you such perks as access to all of the races and classes (as opposed to only six and seven, respectively), extra character and bag slots, unlimited gold, full item access, and more. Along with the ability to create guilds (instead of only joining them) and full access to unlimited banking slots, fishing, and in-game mail, premium customers will also receive full customer support and no in-game pop-up advertising.
Players with ongoing Vanguard subscriptions will find those accounts automatically converted to premium status; these accounts will become free once that subscription runs out. As a special thank-you to loyal players, anyone with a past or present Vanguard subscription will be able to play all of his or her characters (even if that character would normally be blocked from a free account) and will have 12 available character slots (even though free accounts normally have only four).
How do you think Guild Wars 2 came about? Mystic dream-journeys to consult with unicorn sages atop mountains of inspiration? Late-night voodoo with developers dancing around a bubbling pot of inactive World of Warcraft accounts? Well, ArenaNet game designer Ben Miller is here to set the record straight. In a recent blog post, Miller outlined some of the golden rules that have served as ArenaNet's polestar on the journey of creating Guild Wars 2.
The first and most important rule is to make the world come alive and lay the foundation of the game's design philosophy. The world of Tyria has been thoroughly established, from geopolitical histories to cultural development to ecosystems. This kind of planned-out depth makes certain that game-world elements added in throughout the design process fit in the world being created and that the game has a consistent and coherent feel, which adds to its liveliness. The second rule, that cooperation is key, is behind mechanics like individually tracked resource nodes, a universal revival ability, and loot and XP rewards for everyone who helps kill a foe or complete an event.
The light has dimmed, the prophets have spoken, and the dark days are upon us all. And ain't it just peachy, listeners? Justin and Bree return from their vacation in Narnia and have brought back a native MJ to share with you all. In this episode, we chat about The Secret World's early access launch, some piddly news regarding Guild Wars 2, and why goats are so very, very awesome.
Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to Massively Speaking directly in iTunes. [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. Listen here on the page:
Say bye-bye to the Baubbleshire. Anyone wanting screenshots of his favorite EverQuest IIboroughs will want to log in and get them quick because Sony Online Entertainment has announced the day that Qeynos will be reborn on the live servers. On July 24th, players will log into to find a city with more intrigue and conflict as the Queen and the Circle of Ten struggle for power. Familiar boroughs (such as the Baubbleshire and the Willow Wood) will be replaced by instanced zones accessible only via new racial and class quest chains. The remaining zones will be consolidated, and the entire city will receive a graphical facelift.
The announcement also highlights other July plans for EQII, including a preview of the changes coming to PvP and the battlegrounds. There are also tidbits about the changes in class focus effects, notes about tweaks to the New Halas and Neriak starting areas, and a reminder that playing as your character in the dungeon maker should launch this month using the same level-agnostic gameplay as the battlegrounds.
Netflix is home to the first three seasons of Sons of Anarchy, as well as all eight seasons and 249 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, named after the main character who would go on to star in Matlock and, unfortunately, 
Samsung is having a crummy week. After losing a court battle in which Apple was successfully able to convince an appeals court to ban sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the U.S., Samsung learned a day later that it would also have to pull its Galaxy Nexus smartphone from store shelves. Adding insult to injury, Samsung has just been denied a preliminary injunction against...
Everyone knows you 'don't do the crime if you can't do the time,' or in Toshiba's case, if you can't pay the fine. The only problem with that is Toshiba is innocent, or so the company claims, just like every single person serving hard time will tell you. Legally speaking, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco found Toshiba guilty of collaborating with other liquid crystal...
Google figured out the key to fighting fire -- Amazon's Kindle Fire, that is -- is with a similar sized Nexus 7 device rocking Jelly Bean (Android 4.1). That strategy may ultimately work, but don't expect Amazon to roll over and concede defeat as the one offering the second best selling tablet in the world. Instead, Amazon is reportedly getting ready to fire back with a...
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 
