Events (Real-World)

It may seem like a while has passed since we last experienced City of Steam, the fantasy steampunk MMORPG that fits in your browser. That's because it has! The game's last closed beta testing round was back in December, and fans have been eagerly waiting to get back into the city-state of Nexus. Of course there has been some news to tide us over in the meantime while developers have been turning all of that beta feedback into fixes and updates, but that's not the same; people want to play. Luckily, it's GDC to the rescue!

While the rest of the world won't actually get to access City of Steam until it launches open beta (which is anticipated to be within the next two months!), I was able to dive in and explore the fruits of the devs' winter labors. And let me tell you, they've put their time to good use! I met with Communications Manager Gabriel Laforge and Operations Director Andrew Woodruff from Mechanist Games who showed off all the work that has gone into the game since the beta closed, from graphics to crafting to airships. They also highlighted the game's cash shop and revealed numerous rewards players can earn simply by playing the game.

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At a GDC panel titled "Next Generation Character Rendering" last week, research and development staffers at Activision-Blizzard showed off some stunning computer-generated portraits. The catch? They don't represent in-game assets; instead, they showcase the tech behind the graphics.

So while these we won't be seeing the lady above as the protagonist of Titan, it's reasonable to expect that the characters of Blizzard's future games could look just as convincing and real. As I looked on from the audience, my iPhone's camera focused on the projected slides as if they beheld actual faces.

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Grabbing one of the year's hottest tickets will be a tricky prospect, especially considering how fast BlizzCon typically sells out. However, Blizzard is giving everyone a fair chance at grabbing one of these tickets by announcing the dates and times that they'll be going on sale.

Dates plural? Yes indeed! BlizzCon tickets will be sold in two batches, first on Wednesday, April 24th, at 10:00 p.m. EDT and second on Saturday, April 27th, at 1:00 p.m. EDT. The tickets for the two-day convention are $175, although if you want to package in the Children's Hospital benefit dinner with the show, you'll be looking at parting with $500.

The studio also assured fans that it will once again be selling virtual tickets to BlizzCon, although specifics regarding these have yet to come. BlizzCon is taking place on November 8th and 9th at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.

When we talk about getting our hands on a game at GDC for a little playtime, we don't usually get to literally grasp said game in our fingers. But that's exactly what happened when I tested out Vendetta Online on an iPad 3; instead of just relating to the space-based sandbox through the standard accessories like mouse, keyboard, or joystick, I held the entirety of the game universe in the palms of my hands. My own 10 digits were the only accessories. And the experience impressed me!

I had the opportunity to sit down with John Bergman, Founder and CEO of Guild Software, to talk about the new iOS platform for Vendetta Online while doing my best Goose impersonation (he's way better than Maverick) playing it.

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Acquisition. Though it sounds pretty benign on its own, when used in reference to one developer taking over another, the word can inspire fear in the hearts of gamers. Questions quickly arise about the future of titles that fall on the acquired side of the equation. How will the games and players be affected by the change? Will there even still be a game?

I sat down with Claas Wolter (European PR Manager) and Deanna Peter (Marketing/PR Associate) to discuss just this topic regarding the recent purchase of Gala-Net (the parent company of gPotato) by Webzen and how that acquisition will affect Allods Online, Age of Wulin, Terras Militaris, and the company's other MMORPGs.

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As I wound down my time at PAX East recently, I couldn't help but notice how different this convention was compared to when I went a couple of years ago. Yes, the exhibition floor was bigger, and there were many more in attendance, but the overall feel was different as well, and part of that was the increased presence of children.

We normally don't think of a video game convention as a family activity, and yet the fact that so many adults brought their children is telling. And whether you agree with it or not, there's something to be learned from the presence of kids at game conventions.

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MJ returns from her grand GDC adventure, and boy does she have stories to tell! Most of those stories will be to her therapist who will help her overcome the trauma of five days of non-stop interviews, but some of those tales will be related in this podcast. Also, you won't hear her sing the baby monkey song, but she totally did before we started recording and it was awesome. You had to be there.

Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air!

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Read below the cut for the full show notes.

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World of Warplanes is still in testing, but it's been playable at a few events now and has staked its claim as a distinct entity from World of Tanks. Wargaming.net's CEO Victor Kislyi and global operations director Vlad Beloserov were at GDC recently showing off more highlights from the game, which promises to deliver exactly the sort of high-energy dogfights you would hope for.

As it stands now, the game has about 10 maps and 100 planes. Each of the planes can be fully customized, while each map is meant to play differently rather than just being different background scenery -- some maps are foggy, some have skyscrapers or mountains, some are set at different times of day, and so forth.

Actual gameplay has continued to receive polish tweaks; the game retains both easy and expert control modes, with the latter playing more like a flight simulator and the former allowing you to simply point your mouse in the direction you want to fly. Enemy planes and your own can be riddled with holes that show the sky through your shredded wings, and the UI allows you to track your plane's optimal speed and altitude to maximize performance in combat.

One extra tidbit revealed on the show floor was that players of both World of Tanks and World of Warplanes can reap extra benefits from both games, as experience earned in the former can be used to improve in the latter. While there's no set release date for the game at this time, the game continues to impress and will be flying into more open testing as soon as Wargaming.net's teams are happy with its performance in smaller test venues.



Massively sent its ace reporters to San Francisco to bring you back the biggest MMO news from this year's GDC, the largest pro-only gaming industry con in the world! Whether it's EVE Online or Star Wars: The Old Republic or that shiny new toy you've got your eye on, we're on the case, so stay tuned for all the highlights from the show!

If our awesome Massively Online Kickstarter project didn't clue you in, it's April Fools' Day and liars, fibbers, and jokesters are everywhere. Some might be annoyed with the constant misdirection, but we find that it brings out a lot of creativity and humor in an industry that often needs more of both.

You probably saw Guild Wars 2's incredible (and playable) Super Adventure Box, but that's not the end of the pranks that went around in the virtual world. There are strange new offerings in DDO's store, The Repopulation has an insane list of patch notes, SWTOR announced dance combat, and Puzzle Pirates is allowing players to sail... a barrel. Then there's Super Hero Squad Online's Bag-Man, World of Warcraft's Crabby, World of Tanks' zombies, EVE Online: Odyssey's new features, Razer's Mousephone, and TERA's small-ass monsters trying to get you to turn that frown upside-down.

Those musically inclined will undoubtedly enjoy RuneScape: The Musical, and those in need of a bedtime story should turn to The Elder Scrolls Online. And if you haven't played League of Legends: CHEW, then you haven't lived. Just saying.

So March's gaming convention madness is in our rearview mirror (although some coverage is still trickling in during the early part of this week). There were plenty of big reveals and plenty of smaller details, too, and chances are there was something that caught your eye from our GDC and PAX East coverage over the past two weeks.

For today's Leaderboard, let's pit a few of the noteworthy reveals against one another to see which game excited the Massively commentariat the most. Vote after the cut.

Ever wish that you could put to rest a long-standing MMO debate once and for all? Then welcome to the battle royal of Massively's Leaderboard, where two sides enter the pit o' judgment -- and only one leaves. Vote to make your opinion known, and see whether your choice tops the Leaderboard!

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Martial arts superstar Jet Li put in an appearance at Age of Wushu's first global PvP tournament last week. The competition drew virtual fighters from North America, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Malaysia, according to MMO Culture. The tourney winner took home 1,000,000 CNY (approximately $161,000).

Li has been involved in various aspects of Age of Wushu's pre-release marketing campaign, including a brief teaser that you can view after the break.

The fantasy wuxia MMO officially launches in North America on April 10th.

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We all know that "MMORPG" stands for massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, but have you ever heard of an MMMORPG? Well, you are going to a lot from now on because a Massively massively multiplayer online roleplaying game is in the works!

Here at Massively we've been reporting on MMOs for years, but we feel it's time to dip our toes into the other side of the lake. It's time to put our great ideas and complete lack of development experience to use and actually make a kick-ass game. We're going to make the MMO we all want to play -- and we need your help. Just because we are obviously paid off by every major and several minor game studios out there doesn't mean we have infinite resources (that yacht isn't paying for itself, folks). But collectively, you do!

So we're taking a cue from the cool kids by appealing to crowdfunding to make Massively Online happen. It's going to have swords so big that you'll need a prehensile tail just to hold one. It's going to have particle effects so mind-blowing that the console crowd will be weeping on their knees in envy. It'll have sexy voice-overs done by the Massively team. It'll have sixteen pillars of gameplay. And it's going to have levels. ALL THE LEVELS.

And you can get in on the ground floor by supporting our Kickstarter project! Just check out those special rewards and become a backer today.

By now, pretty much everyone knows the story of how GamersFirst swept in to save the DOA All Points Bulletin by relaunching it as APB: Reloaded. Since then, the title's done immensely well for the company and has prompted Reloaded Games to look into turning APB into a bona fide franchise.

How this happened was explained to us by PR Manager Darek Connole at GDC. Connole said that the devs are constantly taking suggestions from the community and sorting them into different buckets. While some of the buckets represent doable ideas, one bucket is full of great ideas that are impossible to implement in the current game.

"We're taking the NPCs from APB: Reloaded and bringing them into their own game," Connole said. "It's going to be a traditional first-person shooter, but it's also going to have non-traditional elements."

Read on to discover how APB's world is going to get a lot more crazy with APB: Vendetta -- and how the team is even thinking about future games in the same world.

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Hey, is that CEO Chris Taylor from Gas Powered Games? By jove, it is! At GDC this past week we had the opportunity to catch up with Taylor and see how his studio is doing following its acquisition by Wargaming.net. He said that the synergy between his studio and Wargaming.net is powerful: "Our overlap is enormous between what we believe in as a company and what Wargaming believes in."

We were most curious about the "mystery MMO" that Taylor and his team is constructing. "We are doing research and prototyping on our first Wargaming game," Taylor said, "which will be a huge PvP, free-to-play MMO. It's going to take a little while to get it rolling, and we'll talk about it more once we know it is exactly. We'll announce it down the road."

Is there anything else that he was willing to share about it? Taylor paused and said, "It's going to be the biggest game we've ever made."

Massively sent its ace reporters to San Francisco to bring you back the biggest MMO news from this year's GDC, the largest pro-only gaming industry con in the world! Whether it's EVE Online or Star Wars: The Old Republic or that shiny new toy you've got your eye on, we're on the case, so stay tuned for all the highlights from the show!

Everyone at the completely fictional Massively office seems to have some kind of schoolgirl crush on Carbine Studios' quirky upcoming sci-fi title WildStar, and I can understand why. The setting is fresh, melding some aspects of our favorite sci-fi properties (cough Firefly cough) with a a healthy dose of fantasy and a not insignificant amount of witty comedy, and the list of features the game boasts is rather extensive. I mean, did you even see that housing trailer? Holy wow, guys.

In spite of all of that, though, I was still a little cautious about giving in to the hype. After all, I'm sure there's not an MMO fan in existence who hasn't gotten super excited about a game and become a devoted fanboy only to have his hopes and expectations shattered when the game didn't live up to the hype. So I let myself be excited, but reservedly so, until I could get my hands on the game for myself to complement Eliot's earlier PAX hands-on with the game. As it so happens, on the last day of PAX East, I got to do just that. Though it was only a short 25-minute demo (thank goodness -- otherwise the lines would have circled the convention center), I think I was able to get a pretty solid idea of what we can expect from WildStar, and let me tell you right now, we can expect some great things.

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