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It's a lot quieter in City of Heroes these days without all the heroes around. A lot more boring. But it's all right, after a fashion. Bringing over the old Praetorian Police seemed like an iffy idea, but it's turned out to work well, and ultimately the two worlds have learned to work together. Sometimes there's a bit too much zeal involved, but old habits die hard, and everyone's keeping an eye open.

As for the heroes, no one knows quite where they went. Some people are guessing that they ascended to some deific plane of existence; others figured that they just left when they weren't needed. The favored theory is that they're needed elsewhere, that after the Praetorian invasion they found someplace in greater need of heroes. There's no memorial in the city, but that's because everyone still remembers.

Not every random WRUP opening needs to be funny. Don't worry, we saved some jokes for our weekend plans just past the break. Let us know what you'll be up to in the comments.

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Neverwinter soft launched this week. What's a soft launch? It's when a game really shouldn't be launching yet and knows it and yet has to launch anyway for reasons probably involving money. Soft launches are incredibly confusing to old school gamers who are used to a certain kind of testing and release cycle, the uncomplicated kind that involves, you know, some testing and a release. Soft launches make games writers uncomfortable too. Why won't your weird special snowflake of a game launch fit into our perfectly planned box?

Massively reader zmeul expressed his annoyance with us thusly: "I can't understand why some games get this 'soft launch' from you and others do not, even if the criteria are met."

It's a brave new world out there, zmeul!

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At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO or WoW Insider story last week, you've come to the right post.

Every spring for the last 10 years, EVE Online fans from around the globe have journeyed to their MMO Mecca in Reykjavik, Iceland, for EVE Fanfest. This year, Massively's Brendan Drain attended the event to report not just on EVE but on CCP's other inbound titles, console shooter DUST 514 and vampire sandbox World of Darkness. From Brendan, we heard about EVE's virtual reality demo and revamp plans, DUST's launch date, EVE's anniversary collector's edition and TV series, and of course, World of Darkness' early development.

Read on for a peek at the rest of this week's top MMO stories.

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Certain moments force you to re-evaluate certain life choices. Monday evening was one of those nights for me. Specifically, it forced me to re-evaluate the choice to ever eat anything other than saltines, as I was suffering from the most debilitating stomach virus I have ever experienced. You don't want to know the details; I will say that it was about 24 hours before I ate anything approaching food again, and that was a handful of crackers.

Given the pattern of the past couple weeks, I fully expect for everything I love to burst into flame over the course of the next several days. Right now, it's time to stop thinking about the week that's past and focus on WRUP, wherein all of the Massively staffers let you know what they'll be up to for the weekend. Check out the rundown past the break, and let us know your plans in the comments!

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Earlier this month, Massively's MJ sat down with the City of Steam devs and discovered that you, the Massively readers, had actually influenced one of the game mechanics. Wrote MJ,

There is one new feature that was put into game specifically because of Massively fans: jumping! That's right. You made it clear you wanted jumping in game, and the devs listened. Who says you don't have the power to change things?

Leaving aside the implication that we spent one of our precious wishes on jumping, I thought this was really cool, and I tried to think of other examples of players coming up with amazing (or not) design ideas that were subsequently implemented in a game. I can think of certain demands that were met in classic MMOs. World of Warcraft is infamous for implementing the most popular player mods as official features, and in more recent news, there are Guild Wars 2's efforts to split reset times for different continents after much player protest.

How about you? Has an MMO ever implemented your idea or the ideas of a fellow player?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Last week, I promised you a second round of questions and answers regarding the types of calls Massively makes on which games and stories it will cover and why. Let's get to it.

Mike9 wrote, "I will play [State of Decay] because it looks awesome, but I never understand why Massively covers it; it is a single-player game, not an MMO by even the loosest of definitions, not unless Super Mario World is also considered an MMO now (well, I guess that did allow two players)."

I assume you're looking for a better answer than braaaaaiiiiinnnnsssssss!

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Bree's sick, but does that mean that her voice has just become 50% more awesome? We think it does. On this week's episode of Massively Speaking, we deal with cash shop trickery, the ups and downs of relaunching an MMO, and plenty of mailbag topics sent in by listeners!

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

Get the podcast:
[RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.
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Listen here on the page:



Read below the cut for the full show notes.

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If you live in the Northeast, chances are you ignore both the calendar and the furry little four-footed weatherman when it comes to anticipating the arrival of spring. In fact, you just don't believe it until you see it! Plenty of kids in that region are pros at gathering Easter eggs in a snowsuit. Although some might argue that the four seasons are actually Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Road Construction, I contend that they can experience an actual spring. And after a week of sunshine and non-frosty temperatures, I say it's finally made an appearance!

Doh! I spoke to soon: It's back to the 20s. Tricksy weather, you almost fooled me. Oh well, I guess I can dive back under some blankets and watch more Massively TV instead of venturing into that thing called "outdoors." You, too, can take refuge from the never-ending winter by watching The Stream Team visit virtual lands of sun, warmth, even lava. Whom am I kidding? They will probably taunt us in another world of snow!

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At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO or WoW Insider story last week, you've come to the right post.

This week, Massively was focused on two MMO expansion releases whose status was once in question. First, Darkfall's Unholy Wars revamp finally launched, after repeated delays that turned the game into a punchline for many months during its extended beta. We sent in Darkfall veteran Jef Reahard to investigate; he was impressed by its immersive world, PvE, and crafting but not so impressed with its animations, UI, and economy.

Second, Star Wars: The Old Republic's Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion officially launched. We posted a general impressions piece to complement our critique of the update's daily quests, while BioWare contented itself with explaining reworks of all eight of the game's classes.

Read on for a look at the rest of this week's top MMO stories.

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About five years ago, on April 27th, 2008, I joined the Massively team and wrote the very first issue of the EVE Evolved column. Five years later, the column is still going strong and delivering its weekly dose of EVE Online to thousands of readers. I used to worry about running out of ideas to write about, but regular game updates and hilarious player shenanigans mean there's always something interesting going on in New Eden. When EVE hits its 10th anniversary in May, this column will have been running for just over half of the game's lifetime. In that time, I've written over 250 in-depth articles, guides, in-game stories and opinion pieces on EVE Online and a few on DUST 514.

As usual, I'll be celebrating this anniversary by rounding up this year's column highlights and giving away two 30-day Pilot's License Extensions to two lucky readers. To enter the competition, write a comment explaining which EVE Evolved articles from this year you liked best and what topics you'd like to see covered in the coming year. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, so be sure to include your character name in your comment if you want to be in with a chance. If you'd rather not give out your character name or don't have an EVE account but would like to give the game a go, you can sign up a new trial account and use the name of your new character.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the highlights from the column's fifth year!

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This week is not a week for my usual random nonsense. Instead, I'm just going to give you this photo of Abyssinian kittens thanks to the wonder of Wikimedia Commons. Why Abyssinian? Because they're particularly lovely cats. Just enjoy that for a moment you don't have to worry about all of the other insanity that's going on and you can just picture some gorgeous little bundles of mewling fur in your mind.

No punchline this week. Just have some kittens.

Of course, you might consider WRUP a punchline in and of itself, but that is also here, complete with the Massively staff's plans for the weekend. Like every week, you can feel free to let us know your weekend plans down in the comments, even if they don't include cuddling kittens. But kittens would be nice for everyone, I think. (My cat sits on my desk as I work and purrs at me; I would know.)

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WildStar's announcement this week that closed beta players have already started modding the game's UI to their personal preferences got me wondering once again about whether MMO gamers have been influenced by games like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic when it comes to acceptance of modding.

As recently as last November, when SOE outlawed all mods in PlanetSide 2 -- including benign mods that enhanced graphics and FPS -- our commenters seemed split over whether mods were a good thing. One, who specifically singled out Diablo III and Guild Wars 2 as key offenders, argued that developers' "play it how we made it because we know best" attitude stifles player freedom. Another wrote that on the contrary, Guild Wars 2's anti-mod approach was the right one; he liked that everyone is made to play with the same interface because "the fact [that] you almost need different UIs and addons for endgame in WoW" is a turn off.

So let's take this topic's current temperature: Do you like moddable MMORPGs? Why or why not?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Welcome back to Ask Massively. We're all aboard the yacht this week, answering your questions while dressed like characters in Scarlet Blade. Because that's pretty much what the characters in Scarlet Blade should be doing rather than, you know, mortal combat in a thong.

Yes, today we're talking Scarlet Blade. In between all the crazed commenter ranting, several of you guys posed legit questions about why we covered it in the first place. Let me try to answer you without turning this into a debate about sexism. Why? Because it's not really about any one specific -ism.

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One of the beauties of the MMO is that it's ever-changing. This means that the world expands, the community grows, and skills are always being re-balanced. Sometimes this comes in the form of a patch or update, and sometimes it comes in the form of a full-fledged expansion.

But when these changes affect the original game too much, it's inevitable that some players will not like what the devs see as improvements. In the case of the infamous Star Wars Galaxies NGE, players left in droves.

So I threw the question out to the Massively staff to see if anyone had been so turned off by a game update that he or she left for good. Read on to find out who left what and why Patrick might need to leave the country for a bit.

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