Archives for Oct 6th, 2011
Winning the Star Wars Galaxies GCW
We sometimes joke about the impossibility of "winning" an MMO, but in the case of the doomed Star Wars Galaxies sandbox, it's an impending reality. A brand-new dev post today divulges the details of how the Galactic Civil War that's been raging across the game's servers for the last eight-plus...
Behind the Mask: The separation of newbie and expert
Last week on Behind the Mask, we got into a little discussion about why Champions Online's Elite difficulty needs to be buffed (and possibly also the very hard difficulty as well). This led to a discussion of whom Elite would be tailored for. I'm sure this is a big issue over at Cryptic right now...
Jump into Recursive Colony with a free booster code from Massively and Global Agenda! [Updated]
Global Agenda's Recursive Colony expansion has been up and running for a few weeks now, and if you didn't get in right away, you might think it's too late to catch up. In the spirit of "it's never too late," we've partnered with Hi-Rez Studios to offer you just the thing to bring you up to spe...
The Guild Counsel: Making a new guild work in an old game
Running a successful guild is a difficult challenge, and I'm defining successful as a guild that, regardless of playstyle, can accomplish its goals and endure for years. There are thousands of guilds created, but very few of them last more than a year, and even fewer can boast of being around for...
The MMO Report: Taunting beta-testers edition
Welcome to another edition of The MMO Report, where everything's made up and the points don't matter. That's right, the points don't matter, just like those emails you got for the SWTOR beta. You're still not in it. First up on the agenda is Blizzard, which recently announced that the Foo ...
Snikt! Wolverine enters the fray of Marvel Universe Online
Shh! Everyone, do you hear that? It sounds an awful lot like something going "snikt!" You know what that means, right? Everyone's favorite Canucklehead with an anger issue is coming to Marvel Universe Online. That's right, players will be able to take on the claws of Weapon X himself in th...
Prime: Battle for Dominus gets professional with new crafting details
A few months back, we got our first look at Prime: Battle for Dominus' profession and crafting system, but it was a bit scant on details. Thanks to the game's updated profession page, however, we're absolutely drowning in details. Drowning, I say! To recap, for those of you just joining us, the...
Captain's Log: Testing out the future
Captain's Log, Stardate 65264.3... Hello, computer (and players)! As you have must have seen by now, open beta testing of Star Trek Online's new F2P model is well underway; the developers have been posting dev diaries about the impending changes for the last couple of days. Because testers on ...
Otherland dev talks timelines and Tad Williams' influence
MMORPGs based on pre-existing intellectual properties are a tricky business, and for every Lord of the Rings Online -- which at least makes an attempt at remaining faithful to its source material -- there's a Star Wars Galaxies or a Star Trek Online that sacrifices canonical authenticity on the a...
Ask Massively: Unpopular decisions edition
Ask Massively is apparently the mouthpiece through which Massively communicates its reasons for unpopular decisions to you, the reader. And by "Massively," I of course mean "Eliot," since I'm the only person who writes this column (and have been for over a year, apparently). So instead of my usua...
The Perfect Ten: Excuses for ditching a dungeon run (from least to most insane)
I never knew I suffered from narcolepsy before I started playing MMOs, but it only took a few late-night dungeon-runs before I started to experience extremely rapid transitions between being an active member of my team and snoring somewhere in the vicinity of the WASD keys. I'm not saying that...
Preparing for the apocalypse (again): GamersFirst on Fallen Earth's F2P shift
Today was my last day in Fallen Earth. My subscription ran out, so I was cut off from everything: glorious crafting, expansive exploration, black humor, and gas mask fashionware. Fortunately, my adventures will resume on October 12th, when Fallen Earth officially makes its transition to a hybrid ...
Fighting the EverQuest hacking wildfire
While hacking and botting may not be a source of frustration to you in your daily MMO, to the denizens of EverQuest, it is a real and ever-present headache. In what is already not the easiest MMO on the planet, players are experiencing an onslaught of hackers who go out of their way to ruin the f...
Trickster Online's Episode 6 woos players with magic!
The world's most epic love story is coming to a close, a treasure map is discovered, and celebrations galore are on the way. It's not a soap opera; it's Episode 6 for Trickster Online, which has landed on the servers today. Trickster's latest update features the final part of its current story...
Dark Age of Camelot quest revamp in the works
Big changes are in the offing for Dark Age of Camelot fans. The latest Mythic dev diary sets the stage for a "return home to the Albion, Midgard and Hibernia of old." While the diary is long on pseudo in-character prose, it's short on specific details. What we've gathered, though, is that extensi...
EverQuest II adds dungeon finder, double Station Cash weekend on tap for Europe
Love it or loathe it, the increasingly popular dungeon finder mechanic has finally made its way to Norrath. Today's EverQuest II patch features a variation on the random grouping tool initially made famous in World of Warcraft. Adventurers can queue solo or as a group by clicking the dungeon f...
Trion announces Red Door publishing and development platform
Trion is the latest development firm to try its hand at a large-scale publishing platform, according to a new company press release issued this morning. The beast is called Red Door, and it "will consist of a consumer platform and a full-scale publishing and development platform based on the prop...
Face of Mankind looking for storyline gamemasters
Nexeon Technologies is looking for a few good storytellers, according to a post on the Face of Mankind forums. The sci-fi sandbox has long been a theoretically rich roleplaying environment, and the devs are looking to put that theory into practice. "We are currently looking to bring back an of...
World of Tanks retail box coming to Europe in November
World of Tanks boxed editions landed in American brick-and-mortar stores last month, and a new press release indicates that European retailers are about to join the party. Deep Silver has secured the publishing rights to Wargaming.net's World War II-based action MMO, and the company will be br...
Firefall dev says new MMO shooter will transcend the 'circle of suck'
Red 5 Studios CEO Mark Kern has been around the game development block a time or two. With a resume that includes StarCraft, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and World of Warcraft, he's no stranger to successful multiplayer titles. So why is he heading up the development of Firefall, a free-to-play MMO/s...
The Daily Grind: Should games be region-locked?
A reader named Sam recently wrote in to Massively with a concern: He's a U.S. expat who moved to South Korea only to find he cannot log in to his North American Age of Conan account. The reason? Funcom employs region-blocking. Customers in Korea simply cannot connect to the U.S. game servers. ...
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