Sandbox

I try to take deeper looks at certain titles at least once a year. These are special games that prove to me that MMORPGs are still the best gaming you can participate in, pixel for pixel. Mabinogi is one of those titles. It's also one of those titles that almost makes me want to quit writing about games. Ironically, the more you write about games, the less time you have to play specific titles, games that could easily suck away hours of your life every day. These are virtual worlds with open character development and grand, sweeping storylines. If I had the time, I'd probably spend most of it in Mabinogi.

During this week's revisit, I knew I had to accomplish several things. First, I needed to clean up my quest list. Mabinogi is wonderful in the way it offers a player tons and tons of content and storylines, but they can be visited in a non-linear fashion that leads to confusion. Second, I wanted to revel in the glory that was the newly free extended inventory. Third, I wanted to check out the new systems and tweaks that have come along since I last dived into the game.

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Having a settlement you worked hard to build be under constant attack just isn't fun. Pathfinder Online realizes this, which is why settlements are normally defended by large numbers of respawning NPC guards. Not too many to prevent players from scouting a town or stealing a few things, but enough to make a frontal assault fruitless unless you want your corpses to litter the outskirts of town.

If that were always the case, though, attacking a settlement would be pointless. So during a brief window every day, the guard respawn rate decreases, numbers thin, and suddenly the town looks much more vulnerable to attack. A well-developed settlement will still have guards, but a coordinated force will be able to eliminate them... unless players step in to defend the settlement. This also solves the problem of having massive attacks come when no one is awake to know what's happening. Read the full details in the latest development blog on the official site.

Party like it's 2013! Snail Games invites players in the world of Jianghu to join in a special Age of Wushu Royal Celebration starting today. This celebration will have various events sprinkled throughout the month, from earning rewards just for just logging in to chances to face and fight world bosses for their loot. And the rewards themselves range from gift packs to buff items to VIP bonuses.

Want to earn a special gift pack? Log in for one hour a day and you'll get one for each day. Players who manage to spend at least two hours online every day for the entire week will earn a much larger reward that includes a 30-day mount and a number of buffs and bonuses. Gain even more rewards for leveling school inner skills and for being a VIP. The event is open to all players regardless of school or skills. For a full listing of the events and their accompanying rewards, check out the official event schedule.

[Source: Snail Games press release]

Break time's over! Now it's time to roll up our sleeves and get back to work building our latest Choose My Adventure. The first order of business is to establish the framework for the rest of our Darkfall Unholy Wars (mis)adventures.

Of course, we can't just build willy-nilly; we need to follow a plan. And as with any major construction project, we couldn't really move forward until said plan was OKed by the planning commission. So while we waited for the foundation to set, we sought approval for which type of structure to base our continuing adventures on. And as is wont to happen with committees, there was trouble coming to a consensus; even though the proposed models were all pretty similar, disagreement arose as to which to pick.

However, after some debate (one proposal won by only one vote!), we finally got the go ahead: The final word was to build a Mahirim Deadeye. I'm on it, boss!

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After a thank-you post on the Star Citizen site earlier this week clarified how lifetime insurance would work in the highly anticipated space MMO, a follow-up post was needed to further answer many of the fan questions.

With the helpful use of graphs and bullet points, CEO Chris Roberts clarifies that LTI will apply to three different groups: Original backers who pledged before November 26, 2012; Veteran backers who pledged between November 26, 2012 and the launch of the new website; and regular ole backers who will have pledged after the new site launches.

Be sure to check out the entire post by Roberts on his website for more information.

[Thanks to Jon for the tip!]

There is no question about it: Bringing games online has fundamentally changed the way we play and interact with one another. Thanks to the web, we can share games with our friends from thousands of miles away. We can hang out with people who live in other countries and learn about human beings who exist in completely different realities. Playing MMOs is an incredible, unique experience that gives players an honest chance at turning their favorite personal hobby into a full-on social engagement.

For any of these experiences to be possible, a game must be connected to the web. Without a server humming away in someone's basement or the cold, dark corridors of an MMO developer's hushed office, the games we talk about here on Massively simply wouldn't exist. The side effect of this online requirement is that every online game, no matter how popular it may be at the moment, has a finite lifespan. Eventually, your favorite game is going to die.

This is a good thing. Here's why.

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If you are hanging your hopes and dreams on World of Darkness coming along to rescue you from the humdrum of life and your precious mortality, well... be prepared to settle in for a good long wait. Executive Producer Chris McDonough said in an interview that the title is still in pre-production and that players shouldn't expect to see it for a few years yet. However, CCP did show a few technical videos to the press to assure folks that the game is still alive.

McDonough did have good news to share, however. World of Darkness has a 70-person crew that is currently building the framework for the title, and according to the producer, they are "making phenomenal progress." The team plans to host the entire game on a single server where active combat and politicking between vampires will be the crux of the content.

"We're making sure this is a next-generation MMO. It's very focused on movement and motion and capturing what it's like to be a vampire," he said. "People ask about our high level designs for World of Darkness, and we've called this a vampire simulator. What's it like to be a vampire. Not a superhero, but a super-powered individual. The way the characters move around the city feels very vampiric."

Sci-fi MMO EVE Online has seen phenomenal success recently, from breaking through the 500,000 subscriber boundary to successfully relaunching in China. The game officially turned ten years old today, and CCP celebrated the occasion with events and gifts for all current subcribers. The part-jovian Gnosis battlecruiser was given to every subscribed account at midnight last night and can be claimed before the end of the month, and players logging in yesterday or today will have found a whole slew of bonus gifts.

EVE smashed its previous Peak Concurrent User total during the festivities by a clear margin, replacing 2011's record of 63,170 with a new figure of 65,303 players logged in simultaneously. Part of the reason for the record was the huge number of player-run events taking place that evening, such as the ever-popular Flight of a Thousand Rifters. The event saw almost 2,500 players join together to take down player Marlona Sky's expensive supercarrier. Most of the participants were in small frigates like Rifters and ended up being easy prey when a nullsec sniper Loki fleet turned up. The event was nevertheless a massive success and huge fun for those involved. Continue reading for a gallery of screenshots from the event and video footage from player Scott Manley.

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If you've wanted to get in on developing a game, now could be your chance. In Embers of Caerus' April dev letter, technical director Dave Belcher invites folks interested in filling newly opened positions on the dev team, from programmers to animators to sound designers, to send in an email and apply. Positions are also available in community and PR roles.

Along with the job opportunity announcement, Belcher notes that the team's first on-site weekend of code crunching was successful and that another is planned for the end of May. This time, however, more of the team is invited and the event will be livestreamed. More details for that will become available as the time draws closer.

Tomorrow marks a huge milestone in MMO history as sci-fi sandbox EVE Online officially turns ten years old. Released by a tiny icelandic development studio whose only previous release was a board game featuring Reykjavik's favourite cross-dressing mayor, EVE has slowly grown over the past decade to become one of the industry's biggest and most stable subscription titles. Following 2011's monoclegate scandal that led to around 8% of players quitting and CCP Games shedding 20% of its employees, this year saw EVE Online climb to new heights as it regained the playerbase's confidence and smashed the 500,000 subscriber barrier. As a special side-note, the EVE Evolved column also turned five years old last week; it has now officially been running for over half of EVE's lifetime.

The past year has been remarkably successful for CCP, with both of the year's EVE expansions being extremely well received and console MMOFPS DUST 514 finally starting to take shape. The Inferno and Retribution expansions fixed a staggering number of small issues that were broken in the game while also making big changes to bounty-hunting, piracy, and PvP across the board. We also saw huge emergent events like the Battle of Asakai, a $6,000 ship kill, and the five trillion ISK faction warfare exploit this year. With DUST 514 officially launching in just over a week on May 14th and players fired up about the upcoming Odyssey expansion, the future's looking bright for EVE Online as it heads into its second decade.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at some of year's top EVE stories, stories that touched real life, and what the future holds for EVE's second decade.

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You know, Star Citizen occasionally seems too good to be true. Take this past week, for example. It saw not one, not two, but three major news releases focused on the fledgling space sandbox, all of which were well-received by most in the community and all of which generated even more buzz and positive word-of-mouth for Chris Roberts' crowdfunded juggernaut.

I'm certainly not complaining, mind you; it's just that Cloud Imperium's game is doing a damned fine job of turning a cynic hardened by years of sub-standard MMO releases into a wide-eyed game-loving kid again. So let's talk after the cut about the Aurora, our new space suits, and lifetime insurance, shall we?

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Vendetta Online has a long history. You can play the game across many platforms and access the same universe as all other players no matter which device you are on. That's right, you can jump on your Android device and kill a few enemies while on a lunch break and then go home to switch to the PC, for example. I looked at the game for Rise and Shiny last year, and we got our hands on it again at this year's GDC Online. It's always been an impressive enough experience for the most part, but the game is definitely aging. It's still not a newbie-friendly title, and the smaller playerbase makes the game seem like a ghost town a lot of the time.

I have been poking around the game for a bit now only to encounter mostly the same experience I found before. That's not a bad thing, but it's not exactly a good thing, either, because if there is one thing I do not like, it's bumping into a rough newbie experience. Sure, there are tutorials and missions to help you get started, but once you make your way into the greater universe, you might find yourself a bit lost, or worse -- bored.

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[Thanks to moxious internetter Festano for the tip!]