MMORTS

Lower the portcullis and man the murder holes -- sieges are coming to Dawn of Fantasy next week! Reverie World Studios announced that it's releasing Siegeworks, the first expansion for the MMORTS, starting next week.

The free expansion will be rolled out in three phases. The first chunk of content will be released on June 16th, followed by the expansion's debut on Steam on the 18th. The studio plans a third phase for the 26th that will include delayed features and additional polish.

Siegeworks will double the number of towns in the game, add siege engines and units, and present a new pathfinding system. On top of that, players will be able to team up for epic batles via the new guild alliance feature.

I couldn't just sit back and let Justin Olivetti have all the fun, could I? When he published The Perfect Ten: My gaming pet peeves, I swept my fist to the sky and screamed "Sypsterrrr!" Literally a week earlier I had jotted down an idea for a similar column. I mean jotted down because I keep yellow pads around the house for late-night ideas or dog-walk eurekas.

Of course his will probably end up the superior article as he is the better writer (and has a good bit of facial hair), but I'm going to present mine anyway. In fact I'll do one better by listing 11 of my MMO pet peeves because, well, I jotted down 11.

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It's been a couple of years since we last heard about Kingdom Under Fire II, so it's good to check in with one of our neighborly MMOs to see... oh hey! You're launching! What are the odds that this would happen during a completely random house call?

OK, so the good news is that Kingdom Under Fire II has been scheduled for a 2013 launch. Unfortunately, the bad news is that so far this release will be limited to Southeast Asia at first. Apparently developer BlueSide wants to see the game in action in that region first before rolling it out elsewhere.

The title is a combination of action-RPG and real-time strategy, promises battlefields with "thousands" of soldiers fighting at once, and will be launching on the PC and PlayStation 3.

[Thanks to Steparu for the tip!]

City-builders rejoice, for Anno Online has gone into closed beta for its English version. The title is an MMO sequel to the Anno 1404 single-player strategy game and will be playable entirely within your browser. The goal is to build up medieval cities over time, establish trade routes, and expand one's empire over multiple islands.

As the beta testing progresses, Ubisoft has plans to implement a guild system next month. Each guild can hold up to 25 people and construct guild halls for gatherings.

You can check out the trailer for Anno Online after the jump!

[Source: Ubisoft press release]

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Would you play an MMO that was more about using your brain than your virtual brawn? Would you be fine with said game resetting every month? If you answered "yes" to these two questions and don't make a habit of talking out loud to a computer monitor, then Genia: Brain Storm wants you for beta testing.

Genia: Brain Storm challenges players to collectively work on constructive projects using real-world knowledge while delaying the opposition as much as possible. It looks like it's an isometric free-to-play MMORTS that will hold 5,000 players per game and will end every 30 days to allow for a fresh start.

"If you want to achieve ultimate victory, you must team up and put your collective knowledge and discoveries to work," the website proclaims. "Not only does this add a clever new dimension to your game, it also sharpens your mind, making your hours of fun time well-spent."

Genia Inc. has been working on this title for four years and is seeking testers for its upcoming closed beta. If you're interested, just head over to the company's website to apply.

My brother called me the other day to tell me that he had just beaten me in Real Racing 3, an EA title that has drawn some criticism for its use of microtransactions. I enjoyed the heck out of the game, and it seems that EA is not worried about the criticism thanks to the overall positive response to the title. I asked my brother about the in-game purchases and he didn't really know what I was talking about. It was only more evidence that the rest of the market -- especially the huge mobile market -- doesn't really appear to care about persistent worlds or immersive lore. The fact is that pseudo-MMOs or games that are barely on the edge of MMO are MMO enough for many people, even people like my brother, who is no stranger to MMO gaming and has spent years in and out of World of Warcraft raiding and leveling.

I was going to write about a game called Raft Pirates for this column, but when I started to look at it, I realized that it didn't quite seem like a "real" MMO, and so I asked the developer to define the game for me. The response I got back only added to my confusion about where the mobile market is going. So in today's MMObility, I want to continue the discussion I started last week, but this time I'll like to look at how the mobile market is keeping things muddy.

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Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Keep that in mind before you tell that me the games that fill out the following list of "best-looking browser-based MMORPGs" are ugly as sin. Sure, some of them are an acquired taste, but I wanted to display just how much variety there is now in browser gaming. It's not the delivery system it once was; we have had fancier-looking Flash-based titles for a while, but now with engines like Unity or Silverlight and even HTML5 coding, we have games that look no different from their client-based counterparts.

There are still some ugly-as-sin games out there as well, but they have endearing qualities all the same. So keep that in mind; this is my top 10 list. If you want to suggest your own in the comments section, I would love to hear them!

Now, on to the list, in no particular order...

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Innogames' hit browser-based game Grepolis has been receiving some pretty exciting updates lately. It's one of my favorite MMORTS titles because it's simple to learn and can be played on practically any schedule, so I've really been enjoying the updates that have added music and sound effects, holiday mechanics, and more animations. There's a lot more to come, however, according to Grepolis' developer crew.

What sort of things? Well, besides the usual updates and additions to gameplay, the team is promising that how players interact with the community will change as well. Sure, plenty of developers have promised better communication and more interaction, but what Grepolis is promising might just be some of the coolest community tools yet. If they work, of course.

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I've written before about how to accept your fate as a permanent newbie, international game explorer, or constant PvP victim. It has always come down to accepting the fact that many MMOs require hours of dedication in order to become skilled. Sure, we can break down what "skilled" really means and examine what sort of timetable is realistic for most human beings, but let's just say that we're past that. We're well into the territory of accepting our fate as a digital traveler, someone who simply cannot say no to a new MMO.

This time I thought it would be better to list some lessons on how I learned to love the MMO explorer lifestyle. It worked for me! (Cheesy theme music starts in the background.)

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The stack of games made about World War II is pretty thick at this point, but Petroglyph is hoping to add another game to that lineup with its newest Kickstarter project, Victory. Fresh off of its departure from the End of Nations project, the studio is trying something different with the game's formula. It's a strategy game in real-time, but it's not an RTS; rather, it's closer to playing World of Tanks with control over an entire squad.

As the project page outlines, players will be given control of a squad of units, which has to either defeat the enemy units or capture and hold key locations. Units that are killed are gone, with no base management or tech trees to worry about in the thick of gameplay. The game is not being designed as a free-to-play title, but it is meant for online competitive play. If this sounds intriguing enough to cut through the fatigue of endless World War II games, take a look at all the details on the Kickstarter page.

Selling power is a much quieter controversy than it used to be. I've been in gaming long enough to remember when selling anything desirable at all was taboo. At the same time, it's always been OK to sell some things like subscriptions or special boxed editions, proving that MMO gamers and others are brilliant at segmenting their rage. If it's a cool, special box with a neat virtual item inside, it somehow does not fall under the same umbrella as selling powerful, useful items in game. I think it does. But geeks in general are good at justifying poor behavior if they get what they want; just ask the hackers and file-swappers.

Still, it doesn't matter how we feel about selling power because the industry is already moving in the direction of selling power, lots of power. EA recently announced that every title it produces from now on will feature microtransactions. While that doesn't guarantee the sale of powerful items, I can promise that it will include some. This train ain't stopping. Sure, the console community seems a bit late to the party when it comes to the power-selling controversy, but that's likely because of MMOs' always-on multiplayer mode.

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There are several things that Game of Thrones Ascent, a social game by Disruptor Beam, does right. At the top of that list is the way the game works as a vehicle for easily digestible content, content that comes from some of the densest reading material in modern fantasy. For the record, I still haven't read any of the books that the Game of Thrones television series is based on, but luckily I have a wife who will simply burst with excitement when she reads some new tidbit... unless she tells the nearest person (me).

It must be hard making a game based on such a popular piece of fiction. The fact is that I didn't expect the little-known developers to do much good. I thought players would be smashing through a game that served as nothing but a cheap commercial for the HBO series. I was very wrong.

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Is there a serious need for more games in your life based on World War II? There are a few options out there already, but very soon you'll have another as Nexon brings Navy Field 2 into closed beta testing on March 27th. Unlike many of the other options, this one isn't meant as an action-based game; it's an MMORTS focused on naval engagements and the more strategic pace of sending ships into confrontations.

Players will be able to choose between 500 different ships from World War I and World War II to build their own fleets, entering huge engagements of up to 64 players at a time. The ships can also be customized with new weapons and armor. If this sounds like your cup of tea, check out the official trailer past the break and sign up for the beta, which will run until April 10th.

[Source: Nexon press release]

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I'm Jef, and I love Star Wars. This is the part where the rest of you addicts chime in with "hi Jef," before we go about trying to cure ourselves of a life-long obsession. Except we're not going to do that today, are we? In fact, I'm going to dangle another death stick that you may not have considered as of yet.

It's called Clone Wars Adventures.

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One of the greatest parts of my job is having the ability to take a peek into the minds of some of the industry's most creative developers. If an interview goes really well, I come away from it with not only a deeper understanding of mechanics or policies but some knowledge about the creative process. For me, MMOs represent a perfect storm of writing, music, art, and math; they click my creativity into hyperdrive. I couldn't write about MMOs if I didn't love them so much.

I'm not sure why I didn't notice German-based developer Innogames until relatively recently, but its lineup is more varied, challenging, and immersive than many of its rivals. It makes titles that offer a variety not only of gameplay but of accessibility. All of its titles can be played in a browser, and now a handful are available even on mobile.

I sat down with Innogames' Fabio Lo Zito during a livestream earlier this week to discuss what makes it all work.

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