Interviews (Massively's)

Final Fantasy XIV is doing something that has never been done before. After launching to poor reception, the MMO appointed a new producer and director, Naoki Yoshida, who has been working tirelessly for two years to rebuild the game from the ground up. The launch version shut its servers down in November of last year, and since then players have been eagerly awaiting the release of the game's revitalized relaunch, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

In preparation for this relaunch, Yoshida spent the last week and a half touring the globe and meeting with the press to show off FFXIV in all its glory. After playing the game since launch and writing about it for three years, I was glad to attend the event and see the full spectrum of what the game has to offer in its relaunch. And there's a lot to be said about the game as a whole. It's the sort of thing that can't be contained in just one article or two.

So how about half a dozen? And a trio of videos to accompany the new benchmark program?

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The recent Final Fantasy XIV press event in San Francisco didn't just mean a chance to sit down and play the game amidst a lushly decorated room, although that was certainly on the agenda. It also meant a chance to ask director and producer Naoki Yoshida some questions about the game going forward and the plans for development down the line, diving beyond what we see and into more fine details about the game's mechanics.

While players will have access to a sizable chunk of the revamped game when the beta goes live on February 25th, there's still a lot that's hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Yoshida's answers help illuminate more details about what's going on in Final Fantasy XIV that might not be playable right now but will be in the near future. And even beyond the foundation that's visible from the beta, the promise of more expansion only adds to the game's overall quality.

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Having a conversation with Naoki Yoshida can be a very intimidating exercise. It's not because of his demeanor; he's friendly, genial, and has an obvious sense of humor. No, it's because there's an unmistakable level of energy to him, a huge amount of passion and ambition that drives everything he talks about.

He's exactly the sort of person who would try something completely insane like remaking a game from the ground up after burning the first version to the ground, for example.

I had the opportunity to sit down for a one-on-one dinner with Yoshida at the Final Fantasy XIV preview event, during which we talked a great deal both about the upcoming relaunch of the game as well as his own experiences in remaking everything. For those of us who play Final Fantasy XIV, it's obviously an exciting time, but for Yoshida, what's happening now is the culmination of work that started only a month after he took over control of a game that he had to revitalize after a horrible flop on launch.

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Last week, we revealed WildStar's Exile faction -- a Firefly-esque group of rebels, pirates, and vagabonds. Today, we're finally able to put our eyeballs on the game's Dominion faction, including three of its four races, plus a newly unveiled class, the Stalker.

My instinct was to assume that the Dominion faction was meant to be a parallel to Firefly's Alliance -- space cowboys versus authoritarian aristocrats. But having explored them in more detail, I saw a lot more of Star Wars and Allods Online than I expected, and that's brilliant. Allods also has two factions, the "evil" one of which is a unique blend of Imperial Russian industrial dieselpunk and high-society technocracy. Blend that with Human High Culture propaganda from the Star Wars Extended Universe and maybe a dash of Brazil's dystopian humor and you've got WildStar's Dominion.

But don't take just my word for it. Let's have a look at the videos!

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Action-MMO TERA officially went free-to-play last week, and with the transition came a number of questions regarding payment tiers, transition plans, and En Masse's vision for the future of the game. Will TERA turn into a "pay-to-win" graveyard, or will it be another shining example of how to do free-to-play just right?

We sat down with associate producer Patrick Sun to find out.

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WildStar has won Massively's "most anticipated MMO" award for the past two years, even edging out Guild Wars 2 for the title in 2012. No pressure or anything, right? Fortunately, the game won't have an opportunity to go for three: As announced in this morning's state of the game letter, we can expect WildStar's closed beta within the next three months and a launch at the end of 2013 if all goes well during the testing process.

To mark the occasion, Carbine Studios invited press to the equivalent of a video game debutante ball in San Francisco to see just how much the sci-fantasy sandpark MMO has grown since our last tour (nearly two years ago). I escaped my Editor-in-Chief cage to attend the event and play the game, interrogate the developers, and judge whether those anticipated awards were well-deserved after all. Enjoy the fruits of my sneak peek!

	The 'biggest game on the planet': WildStar's boundless ambition Who better to explain WildStar's philosophy and mechanics than Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney? I give my impressions of his talk, the demo, and my hands-on, then ruminate on the game's iterations, innovations, and ambitions.
	Slap a rocket on a pig: WildStar's modding and PGC community Carbine's Troy Hewitt outlines WildStar's grand plans for a massive modding community, a UI developer tool for the masses, player advisory committees, and player-generated content. "Social" is clearly not just a buzz-word.
	You can't take the sky from me: WildStar's Exiles You can't dip into a setting like WildStar's without hearing the familiar chords of Firefly's opening theme; the game's two factions brazenly mimic that IP's rustic space cowboys and refined imperial aristocracy. Here's a look at the Exiles.

At January's WildStar press event, I had the opportunity to chat with several of Carbine's developers about something near and dear to my heart: modding. During my personal demo, Jeremy Gaffney remarked offhandedly -- twice! -- that people don't really want to play the UI; they want to play the game. I know that he's right about some people, and I'm glad game developers are devoting resources toward designing a seamless blend of UI and gameplay that makes actually healing party members as fun or more fun than playing Grid-style healer whackamole. But whackamole or not, I do want to play the UI. I want to tinker.

Fortunately, WildStar intends to accommodate me in a huge way. Read on for the scoop on WildStar's planned modding tools, player councils, and player-generated content.

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Jeremy Gaffney runs on Diet Coke. A lot of it. He's boundless energy, and he's got boundless ambition to match. "We are trying to be the biggest game on the planet," the executive producer of Carbine Studios declared boldly to the handful of people in my WildStar demo in San Francisco last month.

But he's clearly no fool: "Our goal is to have the biggest game on the planet, not to have a crappy game that we shove out early." He's at ease when discussing the studio's two-year live plan, PAX East demo (there will be one), and the upcoming business model reveal ("fairly soon"), but even with closed beta coming in the next three months or so and a launch window targeted for the end of 2013, he clings to the mantra he must have learned from fellow NCsoft studio ArenaNet: "It's ready when it's ready."

It's not completely ready yet, but I did get a little tour of what is.

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It was no coincidence that Mark Jacobs was open to talking about his Warhammer Online experiences with us recently. If you deduced that it was the prelude to his MMO comeback attempt, you were right.

Jacobs' City State Entertainment announced today that it's working on a new MMO under the working title of Camelot Unchained. And yes, it will be RvR-focused with three realms duking it out: Arthurian, Tuatha Dé Danann, and Viking. Camelot Unchained will tie RvR conflict into player housing and a dynamic economy as well.

Because this tightly focused concept may prove to be too difficult to draw publisher support, the 13-person studio is turning to a future Kickstarter campaign for support. Obviously, we have no shortages of questions about this project, but we contained ourselves to the 10 most burning queries that we presented to Jacobs. Read about the future of Camelot after the jump!

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Is there anything more fun than massive suits of mechanical armor smashing into one another and firing lasers all over the place? MechWarrior Online, the free-to-play MMO-like set in the MechWarrior universe and developed by Piranha Games, would argue that the answer to that question is pretty obvious.

Piranha has just today announced the addition of a new Command Hero Mech, christened Death's Knell. The mech is tiny by MechWarrior standards, weighing in at only 25 tons, but it packs four powerful lasers on each arm and is quite fast to boot. Piranha also confirmed the addition of the familiar Bitching Betty startup sequence, which should give longtime MechWarrior fans a jolt of nostalgia straight through the eardrums.

We sat down with Russ Bullock, president of Piranha Games, to talk mechs, MMOs, and the future of MechWarrior Online. Check out the full interview and a video of Death's Knell in action after the break.

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When it comes to the 2008 phenomenon of Warhammer Online and the story of its rise and fall, there's one obvious source for the full dish: Mark Jacobs. The former big kahuna of Mythic Entertainment is now CEO of City State Entertainment, and while Jacobs is no longer in the WAR business, he's still passionate about making games and talking about his past experiences.

We sat down with Jacobs to look at WAR and what he thought went right and wrong with the title. Even today, many gamers are passionately divided on the game's build-up to release and design decisions. Some lay the blame at Jacobs' doorstep, while others admire the passion and vision of this MMO creator. So what does Jacobs have to say when put to the question about WAR's outcome? Find out in this exclusive interview!

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My first experiences in the MOBA genre went something like this: "What do you mean last-hitting and how come these towers keep shooting me? I'm a hero, for freak's sake!" to which my teammate would respond, "Quit feeding and die in a fire." It was a confusing and tumultuous time. Thankfully, the genre has taken a turn for the better, adding more in-depth tutorials, bot matches, and various other aids to help new players transition into the game and beef up the competitive numbers.

Heroes of Newerth is no exception. S2 Games is preparing to globally launch (yes, everywhere at the same time) patch 3.0 on January 31st, 2013, and it will include a lane full of visual enhancements, bots with customizable AI, and a stronger emphasis on teaching new players the ropes.

Could HoN establish itself as the MOBA for new players of the genre? We trekked to a demo in San Francisco last week to find out.

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Grinding Gear Games is finally gearing up (pun intended) for the launch of Path of Exile, an MMO dungeon-crawler that hopes to satisfy fanatics and casual gamers alike. The new title has been in closed beta for just the last few months of its six-year development cycle, and on January 23rd, it will hit open beta -- surely a relief for players eyeing the closed beta wistfully. Unfortunately for those who have been grinding away (yep, pun intended again) at hordes of monsters during the beta, there will be a character wipe, one that sets all characters, levels, items, experience, passive skills, active skills, and everything else back to zero.

I recently attended a live demo and got to chat about the game with reps from Grinding Gear in Los Angeles. Read on for my take!

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To keep a burgeoning community of 45 million registered users happy, the developers behind World of Tanks know to keep the content coming. After the overhauled graphics, physics, and sounds brought about by patch 8.0 last September, we're already on the cusp of version 8.3. It's out tomorrow, and that means 17 new tanks for the as-of-now-underserved Chinese tech tree.

"The Chinese are a middle-of-the-road tree," says Paul Hobbs, content manager with Wargaming.net. "They don't excel in any one attribute. They have high firepower, a fair amount of maneuverability, and decent armor and aim speed."

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I promised you that we would be doing interviews next time, but astute readers would note that I did not say "next week." So welcome to our special extra installment of the column looking at two different sides following the City of Heroes shutdown.

We've already seen two projects coming from the ashes of CoH; The Phoenix Project and Heroes and Villains are both currently being assembled by passionate fans of the now-departed game. But we'd be remiss if we failed to note the impact that the game's closure has had on existing games like Champions Online and DC Universe Online. Rather than just speculating on any of this, we decided to just ask.

So today you've got two interviews. One is with Brad Stokan, Executive Producer at Cryptic Studios, about how the City of Heroes shutdown has affected Champions Online and the studio that helped bring the game to life in the first place. The other is with the lead staff at Missing Worlds Media, the team behind The Phoenix Project. So let's take a look behind the scenes, yes?

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