Archives for Jun 26th, 2010
Boardwalk, booze, and bean cakes: It's almost time for the Guild Wars Dragon Festival
It's that time of year again. The Guild Wars Dragon Festival is nearly upon us, bringing quests and special missions, re-opening the Monastery Boardwalk, and putting a huge amount of sweets, alcohol, party supplies, and presents into circulation. The festival, which celebrates the survival of th...
Funcom's Morrison talks MMORPG evolution
Age of Conan game director and executive producer Craig Morrison has something of a reputation for interacting with fans and fellow gamers. He continues the tradition with a post on his personal blog in which he discusses both his favorite MMORPGs as well as the evolution of the genre. "I thin...
The Mog Log: For bidden knowledge
It's easy to get jaded about Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV at times, right up until you open your eyes and see how immense the worlds of both games can really be. The scope and the sweep of both games is dwarfing. One human being could spend quite a bit of time studying them to try and int...
Runes of Magic introduces new mount, brings back old favorites
Mounts are a hugely popular item in the majority of MMOs, and Runes of Magic is no exception. Frogster has offered a fun variety of mounts in the past, giving players the opportunity to ride everything from a ferret to a flying disc. This weekend, several of those mounts are back, so if you miss...
Waging WAR: The Nagaryth Chronicles, part one
This week, Waging WAR starts the first in-depth career review with a three to four column exposè on Warhammer Online's shadow warrior. We'll take a look at the career as it progresses through each of the tiers, as well as consider key tactics, abilities and masteries that are learned along t...
Rise and Shiny recap: Pandora Saga
Each week Rise and Shiny asks you to download and try a different free-to-play game, chosen by me, Beau Hindman. Some of the games will be far out of your gaming comfort zone, and some will pleasantly surprise you. We will meet each Tuesday and Friday night at 8 PM Central time, followed by this ...
One Shots: Returning to the oldschool
It's definitely been a while since we've had a look inside SOE's original MMO offering, EverQuest. Some things are comfortingly familiar, like the flat planes of floors and furniture. Other things seem strangely updated, such as Ryan's character and pet. He sent in a longer note to explain, so we'l...
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2004)
2004: Features, bugs and Tringo In 2004, versions 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 brought a slew of new features and enhancements: new group tools and abilities, expanded estate controls, new prim shapes and settings, audio streaming on parcels, custom animations, XML-RPC communication with scripted objects from ...
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2002-2003)
2002-2003: Beta, taxes, layoffs and the road to economy In November 2002, closed beta testing of the newly dubbed Second Life began, and open beta followed in April 2003. The user interface was primarily green in color. Second Life initially suffered from a tragedy of the commons, so a rudimentary ...
The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life
Second Life has just seen its seventh anniversary (called its seventh birthday, only it technically isn't -- the original birthday is in March, but the anniversary is in June. There's history there). It's also traditionally a time when Linden Lab and Second Life users most often treat each other as...
Free Realms celebrates 12 million registered players
Free Realms, the family-themed virtual world from Sony Online Entertainment, has just announced its 12 millionth registered user in a press release. Yes, we know that's not 12 million players, and your guess is as good as ours as to the actual number of individuals logging in. Regardless, a lot o...
New video takes you to San Paro for a closer look at APB
This morning marks the official headstart for those All Points Bulletin players who pre-ordered, and if you haven't had the chance to check out Realtime Worlds' upcoming action MMO for yourself, then this video is for you. It gives us a great look at the setup of social districts and action distric...
WRUP: Post-E3 edition
Here at Massively we're just about recovered from the information avalanche that WAS E3 2010. We had a great time, picked up every piece of information we could, and shared all the best MMO news with you guys. Now we've all had some time to process it and we're ready to relax and jump back into som...
Rumor: Twisted Pixel working on Turbine's console MMO
Ever since we learned that Turbine's been dabbling in console game development, our speculation has run amok as to what that game might be. A Harry Potter MMO? Another Lord of the Rings title? A DDO port? While we could be waiting a while longer to discover what the name of the title, Twisted Pi...
The Daily Grind: Does summertime affect your playing time?
The weather has warmed up, the kids are home from school for the summer, and Steam is urging us to stay out of the big blue room. Summer is here -- for part of the world, anyway. Does summer vacation affect your play time? Do you save it for the evening after a day of enjoying the warm weather, ...
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