Archives for Dec 27th, 2011
2009 lawsuit against Final Fantasy XI dismissed
If you're a longtime player of Final Fantasy XI, you might have some problems with the way that the game's been handled over the years. Those problems are usually complaints about issues such as balance or the way that the game has handled updates, though, and they certainly don't extend to legal...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Brendan Drain
Star Wars: The Old Republic has had a successful launch, but being the big Christmas MMO release will have artificially inflated its first-month figures. I predict that BioWare will stop releasing subscription numbers by the end of January when the free month period expires, as well it should becaus...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Jeremy Stratton
Star Wars:The Old Republic will continue to be a success, through the three-month mark. Voice-overs and an extremely solid build won't be enough to push it to the top without a major redesign to focus on future trends. It won't prove to be a replacement for World of Warcraft, damage any other MMOs s...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Shawn Schuster
Guild Wars 2 will launch on the 7th anniversary of Guild Wars 1 (April 28th, 2012) with just under one million players. Everyone will then claim that he's always been a huge fan of the original Guild Wars, and major gaming news sites that now ignore the fantasy title will change their tune when they...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Eliot Lefebvre
Mists of Pandaria will launch late in the year as World of Warcraft spends the year slowly losing subscribers. Expect about one million fewer by the end of the year, with the expansion trying to bill itself as a reason to return to Azeroth. Sub numbers, however, will not swing back up in a big way -...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Bree Royce
Mists of Pandaria will launch this year and will actually do very well in spite of all the "waaaaaa Kung-Fu Panda" and "talent tree dumbing-down" idiocy. It won't, however, bring World of Warcraft's subscription numbers back up to peak. Guild Wars 2 will launch and be really cool and do very well...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Justin Olivetti
It's no fun playing it safe and predictable, so here are my wild and crazy predictions for next year! The Secret World will come out of (mostly) nowhere to become a monster smash hit of the year. Funcom will redeem itself with its storytelling, skill-based character system, and the conspiracy-hor...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Jef Reahard
I think 2012 is going to be somewhat of a down year for MMOs. Sure, we're probably going to see a couple of noteworthy launches (The Secret World, TERA, possibly/hopefully Guild Wars 2 and ArcheAge), but I think we're also going to see the market bottom out a little bit. We saw the beginnings of ...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012: Beau Hindman
I think that one of the most surprising movements to happen in 2012 will be the mass development of browser-based MMOs. Already the browser is the launcher of choice for millions and millions of gamers in games like RuneScape, Club Penguin, Battlestar Galactica Online and others, but we have also be...
Massively's MMO predictions for 2012
2010 will be the year to change it all! No wait, I mean 2011 will be the year to change it all! Darnit. OK, 2012, help us! You're our only hope. While picking stocks or guessing baseball playoff scores is probably more lucrative, in our little corner of the world, we enjoy nothing more than pr...
Analyst claims that Star Wars: The Old Republic points to a healthy MMO market
The gaming industry is pretty morbid when you get right down to it. 2011 has seen several people predicting the death of the MMO market and the death of subscription games, often times in the same sentence. But according to analyst Colin Sebastian, the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic makes ...
Newest patch notes Star Wars: The Old Republic highlight bug fixes
Bugs are frustrating, and inevitably some of them seep through to launch with a new MMO. Star Wars: The Old Republic produced a fairly polished end product, but there were still issues, most notably certain memory problems with Taris and some harvesting nodes that couldn't be harvested. As a resu...
Silkroad-R adding new server, gearing up for re-launch
When we heard about Silkroad-R, our first thought was buhwhat? Is Joymax getting into race cars or something? As it turns out, the "R" stands for rebirth, and the free-to-play fantasy MMO is being groomed for a new launch in 2012 (sans some of the problems that plagued it in its original run). ...
Hyperspace Beacon: Force reflection
"Always in motion is the future," Yoda reflected to Luke Skywalker in the greatest of all Star Wars movies, The Empire Strikes Back. Even for a Jedi master, the future is unpredictable and always fluid. Likewise, I made predictions about Star Wars: The Old Republic that were completely off base a...
SWTOR's Reid hosting Reddit AMA tomorrow
Got a few burning questions for BioWare on the heels of Star Wars: The Old Republic's blockbuster launch? Get them ready, because community manager Stephen Reid is throwing himself to the wolves preparing a Reddit-based AMA event for this Wednesday. What's AMA? It stands for ask me anything, a...
The Soapbox: Adding story to SWTOR
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. I'd like to take a few moments this week to prognosticate about s...
The Game Archaeologist crosses Meridian 59: A chat with Brian Green (part 2)
Welcome to the second part of our interview with former Meridian 59 developer Brian "Psychochild" Green as he reminisces about running one of the oldest graphical MMOs in history. If you missed the first part, I heartily recommend you catch up on it before continuing further. And now, for the ...
The Daily Grind: Did you get gaming gifts for the holidays?
The holiday season is winding down and the gift-giving days are done. People are sitting back and enjoying their break from school or work, and maybe enjoying some new items that Santa dropped in their stockings. Last weekend the Massively staffers talked about what gaming-related goodies they we...
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