Sci-Fi

It can be hard to get close to someone. Especially in MechWarrior Online, where the people you want to get close to are riding walking battle tanks designed to vaporize you at long range. But the newly added Quickdraw is all about getting in close, at which point it can unleash the full might of its short-range missile launchers and medium lasers. Which is probably why people don't want to get close to one another in the first place, really.

Fortunately for Quickdraw pilots, the machine is quick, jump-capable, and generally very able to get in close and unleash its payload. This new 'Mech is available in three variants alongside the new Champion Hunchback, and you can take a look at the precise loadouts in the patch notes. Or you can take a gander at the preview video for the machine embedded just past the cut.

[Source: Piranha Games press release]

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Are you ready to start leveling in Star Wars: The Old Republic? More to the point, would you like to level a whole lot faster? That's good, because you're going to have the chance to do just that starting this weekend. Double experience weekends are back for the next three weekends, including an extra-long version during the fourth of July, so that all of your characters can enjoy the freedom to scream up in levels and possibly skip some of the more tedious planets.

The first weekend starts on June 21st at 2:00 p.m. EDT and runs until 3:00 a.m. EDT on June 24th, while the second weekend runs at the same hours from June 28th to July 1st. The third and final weekend starts at 7:00 a.m. EDT on July 4th and runs all the way until July 8th at 3:00 a.m. EDT, which should give you ample time over the holiday to buff up your levels.

Amidst the critiques and patch reviews, the reasons I stick with Star Wars: The Old Republic sometimes get lost in the shuffle. Despite being irritated by the way BioWare handled specific parts of this Star Wars MMORPG, I still find the setting and the storytelling to be superb. These interwoven tales of adventure and chaos provide an incredible platform for my favorite thing to do in an MMO: roleplay.

I've covered several topics about roleplay in this column. From breaking into the community to an RP wishlist to resolving RP-related conflicts, I've might have covered everything except for one of the most basic of roleplay elements: How do you host a roleplay event in SWTOR? Although Star Wars: The Old Republic varies in its presentation and tools, the types of events you can throw are pretty similar to the ones you can throw in any other MMOs. The tiny details vary, but the three basic type of events can be narrowed down to social, PvE, and PvP.

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Earlier this month, Cryptic hinted at some big changes to fleet holding projects in Star Trek Online. Executive producer Daniel Stahl went on the record in the company's Ask Cryptic column and explained that the STO team had something planned involving "dilithium-based mechanics." Today's dev blog finally explained what all that means: Starting soon, fleets will have the option of working on the Dilithium Mine, a brand-new fleet outpost.

The Dilithium Mine features both indoor and outdoor environments and is accessible through the Beta Ursae Block or through an unlockable transwarp. If you play Star Trek Online, those are probably words that make sense to you. The mine's appearance will change as fleet members upgrade its facilities by following its three progression tracks.

Completing the main progression track for the Dilithium Mine will reward fleets with discounts on project dilithium input costs, new construction projects, daily missions, and a daily repeatable that allows fleet members to refine ore beyond their normal cap. The sub tracks offer a variety of bonuses, mostly related to discounts on fleet projects.

Fleets will have access to the Dilithium Mine the moment it goes live but will need to reach the first tier of its main track before being granted access to the physical space.

It's a well-known fact that the ghost of Tabula Rasa haunts the Massively offices. I think it's because Shawn keeps feeding it ectopellets because he's not quite ready to let his beloved MMO go. The ghost is driving the rest of us crazy because it's constantly switching the labels on our lunchboxes and whistling the Tabula Rasa theme through the air ducts while we're trying to get honest work done.

So while the MMO no longer exists outside of a few forlorn collector's editions picking up dust on store shelves, the music persists. Tabula Rasa boasted a strong score thanks to the work of Tracy W. Bush. Bush is a name you should know when it comes to MMO soundtracks: He had a huge hand in the World of Warcraft score and contributed to several NCsoft titles (which are all dead, but that's probably not his fault). [Edit: Several readers wrote in to let me know that Curse Mackey, Stacie Cline, Chris Vrenna, and Clint Walsh also contributed to the score. Thanks!]

I find that sci-fi MMOs, particularly shooter-based ones, tend to elicit heavier tracks and more synth work than orchestral, and they are sometimes relentlessly grim. All of the above certainly can be applied to Tabula Rasa, up to and including its final surprising track.

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Last week the unstoppable Jasmine Hruschak was one member of Massively's crack team who braved the traffic of Los Angeles to take in the sights, sounds, hawking, yelling, and craziness that was the Electronic Entertainment Expo. While she was there, she interviewed Star Trek Online's Executive Producer, Daniel Stahl, and put forth a few questions from the Massively team.

Stahl was able to drop a few hints about the future of Star Trek Online in his responses, so join me past the jump as I deliver the highlights from their conversation!

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I like WildStar a lot. You knew from an early time that I liked the game's aesthetic and sense of humor, and as time went on it became clear that I also liked the mechanics and the approaches it has toward an endgame. When I finally got my first hands-on playtime with the game, I liked that, too. What I'm getting at here is that WildStar is currently fighting with Final Fantasy XIV for the title of my absolute favorite MMO, and they both coexist in a space of I want to play you both all the time.

But some people aren't in that boat. Some people aren't that wild about the game, even some people whom I work alongside. And that is totally fine.

Last week's events made me decide to do one of my periodic column-topic-switches to discuss the fact that there is going to be bad press about WildStar out there, sometimes even bad press that complains about things that you don't think are relevant. And the best thing you can do is be cool.

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Tech 1 ships in EVE Online used to be arranged in tiers that determined the cost and power of the ship and what level of the appropriate skill was required to fly it. This gave a sense of progression back in 2004 when all we had was frigates, cruisers, and battleships, but developers have since filled in the gaps between ship classes with destroyers, battlecruisers, strategic cruisers, and tech 2 ships of all shapes and sizes. In a recent game design initiative, CCP has been removing the tiers from within each tech 1 ship class by buffing the lower-tier ships up to the same rough power level as the largest ship in its class.

The recent Odyssey expansion saw the humble battleship buffed beyond all recognition. The Megathron, Raven, Tempest, and Apocalypse all became extreme damage-dealing powerhouses, but the Dominix, Scorpion, Typhoon, and Armageddon were buffed the most. Each of them can now fit several monster setups, dealing upward of 1,000 damage per second or completely disabling enemy ships with energy neutralisers and electronic warfare. The build costs of these tier one battleships were more than doubled in the expansion, but prices are only slowly rising due to the existing stock on the market. That makes the tier one battleships incredibly cost-effective PvP powerhouses at the moment, and players are beginning to take advantage of it.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I experiment with PvP setups for the newly revamped Typhoon, Armageddon, Scorpion, and Dominix battleships.

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So E3 happened this past week. If you're a Massively regular, you're no doubt aware of that since we spammed up our front page and your RSS feed with gobs of hands-on coverage including everything from racing games to The Elder Scrolls Online.

One thing we didn't cover was Star Citizen, because thankfully, Cloud Imperium's upcoming space sim sandbox didn't bother with an official E3 presence.

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To an outsider, CCP Games' focus on EVE Online's player panel, comics, incoming television series about player adventures, and museum induction show just how much the company works to earn its players' respect, which might sound weird for studio running a cutthroat PvP sandbox. But I've always felt as if I made stronger personal attachments through high-stakes PvP than through most other gaming activities. I don't play EVE or its console cousin DUST 514, but after stopping by the CCP booth for my interview and hands-on at E3 yesterday, I feel as if I should be doing more than reading and writing about it.

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SEGA has released a high-def trailer for Phantasy Star Online 2's Episode 2 update. The clip introduces the Duman race, a new planet, and new weapons, too.

The trailer runs for a solid four minutes, buy you'll need to bring your mad Japanese language skills if you want to understand the voiceovers and the UI. There's plenty of combat footage on display as well as glimpses of the game's character creation and various environments. Check it out after the cut.

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Ubisoft's claim that its new MMO shooter The Division will have a "persistent world" piqued Massively's collective interest. At E3, we chatted briefly with Game Director Ryan Bernard, who has previously worked on EverQuest, EverQuest 2, and Warhammer Online. I asked what about the game and its persistent nature would appeal to MMO players and was told that actually, the team doesn't plan to make it "too persistent" at all. Each player will have his own little chunk of the world. Everything in that part of the world is persistent for him, and his friends can come over and help him out, kind of like Animal Crossing without the talking tanuki. The developers believe this will allow for a strong single-player experience while still having a visible impact on the player's slice of the world. There are places in the world that are persistent for everyone: the PvP areas. You won't want to travel around them without friends, but unfortunately, Bernard couldn't reveal more.

The game is being released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but Ubisoft hasn't ruled out other platforms or cross-platform play just yet.

Massively's on the ground in Los Angeles during the week of June 10-13, bringing you all the best news from E3 2013. We're covering everything from WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online and ArcheAge to FFXIV's inbound revamp and TERA's latest update, so stay tuned!

Massively returned to the WildStar demos at E3 on Thursday to chat one last time with the team from Carbine. As we noted in yesterday's Q&A article, Carbine had already declared it wasn't making any big announcements at E3. It always intended a low-key presence, sharing a booth hosted by Alienware and offering the same demo gamers are at PAX East, just brought to the west coast.

Why Alienware? WildStar runs really great on a laptop.

Good news, though: Carbine plans to have a big WildStar presence at Gamescom and PAX, and the team is working on demos that will show new content, new races, and new classes.

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Just because SOE didn't have many new games to showcase at E3 this year doesn't mean that the studio didn't have a lot to talk about. In fact, there was plenty to be said about two of the existing games porting to the new PlayStation 4. And while some of it is good, sadly there's some not-so-good thrown in as well. Joystiq caught up with DC Universe Online's Creative Director Jens Andersen and Adam Clegg, a game designer on PlanetSide 2, to get the scoop.

Mirroring the executive producer's sentiments from our interview, Andersen noted that DCUO has an advantage thanks to being currently available on the PS3. And while not having specifics to announce, Andersen added that he'd be very surprised if the game didn't take advantage of PS4's social functions. However, the game will not (at least initially) be able to use the console's streaming and quick installation features, remaining a download and install title.

For PlanetSide 2, the big news is that the console will allow optimization of the graphics "1,000 times better" according to Clegg. The big bad news is that it will be impossible to have cross-platform play, so folks who want to play on the PS4 will not have access to their PC characters. In a separate interview with Rev3Games, Art Director Tramell Isaac noted that the PS4 version would feel like a native console game, not just a jerry-rigged PC game.

Massively's on the ground in Los Angeles during the week of June 10-13, bringing you all the best news from E3 2013. We're covering everything from WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online and ArcheAge to FFXIV's inbound revamp and TERA's latest update, so stay tuned!

We've received several tips over the last few weeks about a petition players are circulating in the hopes of resurrecting NCsoft's ill-fated MMO shooter Tabula Rasa. Even Richard Garriott himself tweeted about the campaign. But inside the Massively virtual offices, most of us just shrugged sadly. We've seen how these petitions go. Every once in a while, a sunsetted game returns from the dead, but MMO players are awash in petitions for games that never came back. Just ask the 21,845 gamers who signed the Save City of Heroes petition last autumn.

So what do you think -- are petitions to resurrect or save MMOs a waste of time? Or do you sign them anyway, just in case there's a tiny chance they might work?

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!