Massively

Pando Networks trumpets global download data

Brianna Royce — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: MMO industry, Massively Meta, Miscellaneous

Whether you're a fan of Pando Networks or you're still trying to scrape its last vestiges from the dark corners of your poor, beleaguered computer, there's no arguing that it collects some interesting usage data while doing... whatever it does that MMO companies can't seem to do on their own. In fact, Pando has released to us an eye-catching infographic and interactive chart to illustrate its compiled statistics on download speeds gleaned from 27 million downloads on 20 million computers across the globe. The victors won't surprise most gamers. "South Korea has a faster download speed than Great Britain, Turkey, Spain & Australia combined!" declares the chart, letting it slowly dawn on the reader that the United States doesn't fare quite as well as we might hope. Pando's also included a handy map breaking down speeds by state, the better for you to go forth and mock your neighbors.

There's a whole host of socioeconomic and political reasons for these data over which armchair gameologists can salivate, but we should note that Pando is by definition tracking only game-related downloads, not the greater internet. Why not click past the cut to check out the charts for yourself?

Continue reading Pando Networks trumpets global download data

Pando Networks trumpets global download data originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

ZAM opens up a full database for RIFT

Eliot Lefebvre — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Culture, New titles, News items, RIFT

Databases are a good thing for an MMO. When you have buckets of different items, quests, stats, enemies, bosses, and so forth, it's good to be able to reference a wide variety of different data on the fly. Wowhead is pretty much the gold standard for database services, giving World of Warcraft players the opportunity to use talent calculators, compare items, and browse a comprehensive quest database with ease. ZAM, the parent company of Wowhead, is porting that same all-encompassing database over to RIFT with today's launch of the appropriately named RIFT Database.

Although the system has just gone live, it already includes a robust listing of abilities, items, and quests for players to browse, as well as details on the various collections available in-game. Complete with a soul calculator, the new repository of knowledge should be welcome for any and all RIFT players looking for quick and easy reference. About the only thing it currently lacks is an option for integration into browser, but given time, it seems inevitable that the database will just keep improving.

ZAM opens up a full database for RIFT originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Lost Pages of Taborea: A peek behind the fountain rune

Jeremy Stratton — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 12:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, Opinion, Free-to-play, Runes of Magic, Lost Pages of Taborea

Runes of Magic's fountain rune is one of many slottable runes that fall outside the standard attribute boosters. Its job is simple: It increases the rate at which you regenerate mana points. It doesn't fill up one of the six statistic slots that are burned onto an item. It gets plugged into one of up to four slots that are found randomly or drilled on accessories. It's also a great eater of time and resources to tier it in the arcane transmutor.

I've been testing a tier 4 fountain rune on two of my characters that are different levels in order to see the difference in output. If you look on the Runes of Magic Database, you'll see it says a fountain 4 adds +22 MP recovery rate. Those who use the addon StatRating will see the same figure. Now I know that the numbers that equipment and runes show are not indicative of what you actually get. I also know that StatRating is there to tell you the actual numbers you get for any stat, but 22 for a tier 4 rune sounded like a lot. It doesn't really tell you how that number is applied, but I think of mana regen in terms of ticks. If a tier 4 fountain gave +22 mana per tick, and we can upgrade it to tier 10, and we can stack different tiers on five different accessories... there's just no way that number can mean that, can it? This week I found my own answers to what the fountain rune gives you. I also share some thoughts on using -- or not using -- the fountain rune.

Continue reading Lost Pages of Taborea: A peek behind the fountain rune

Lost Pages of Taborea: A peek behind the fountain rune originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Lost Pages of Taborea: The Runes of Magic Database

Jeremy Stratton — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Free-to-play, Runes of Magic, Lost Pages of Taborea, Guides

A long long time ago, I wrote about community resources for Runes of Magic. In that article is a handy resource that gathers collected data from RoM called the buffed database. Key personnel from buffed.de started a new venture called Playata to provide content services to game publishers. The point of this boring news snippet is that Playata, in conjunction with Frogster, has created the official RoM database. This shiny new official site could be viewed as getbuffed 2.0. The official version is streamlined, runs better, and has a few nice extras that the original never had. This week I put together a guide explaining what the database is, what you can do with it, and some of the extra fun stuff it offers.

Continue reading Lost Pages of Taborea: The Runes of Magic Database

Lost Pages of Taborea: The Runes of Magic Database originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Hands-on with Star Trek Online's early levels

Kyle Horner — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Betas, New titles, Star Trek Online, Massively Hands-on

There's been a lot of Star Trek Online coverage lately here at Massively, which is only normal given the looming early February release date. This particular feature is a look at the game over the course of around seven or eight "levels" of play. Sadly, that means I haven't acquired my first non-starter ship, although that goal will soon be reached even if it costs me more sleep. Still, you should check out the brand new beta gallery, because I was still able to catch plenty of cool stuff -- plus a classic Enterprise.

Now, onto the preview!

Gallery: Star Trek Online beta

Continue reading Hands-on with Star Trek Online's early levels

Hands-on with Star Trek Online's early levels originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

GamerDNA and Massively offer up Death Knight data goodness

GamerDNA — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Culture, Expansions, MMO industry, Massively Meta, Academic

By Sanya Weathers for GamerDNA

Back in October, we ran a couple of articles that gave you a snapshot of the kind of person who played the various classes in World of Warcraft. Now that the Death Knight class has been out for nearly three whole months, we figure the flavor of the month kids have had their turn at bat, and the real fans of the new class are settled in.

The sample for today's column is a little more than 500 people, all of whom were active WOW players before the launch, and now continue to actively play their Death Knight. "Actively" as measured by playing sessions - just having one of the new class in the character list isn't enough to count here. Read on to see how the Arthas' legions stack up!

Continue reading GamerDNA and Massively offer up Death Knight data goodness

GamerDNA and Massively offer up Death Knight data goodness originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

GamerDNA shows their year in review graphically

Alexis Kassan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, MMO industry, Consoles

In the spirit of the season, GamerDNA is giving the gift of insight to all its users in the form of a year in review column. Part one of this column describes several interesting metrics about the number of new titles tagged in user profiles by release month, platform, or specific game (no hard numbers given).

Some interesting notes:

The top title added by users was Age of Conan. It was released in May and correlated to a month of lower unique titles being added. No mention is made of how many users subsequently removed titles from their profiles... but maybe they're saving that for part two.
There is a noticeable drop in game titles being added for the months of June and July, around the time of the re-branding effort and subsequent server issues.
The largest uptick in titles added (by release date) was in September, presumably due to Warhammer Online. November is still creeping up on the September numbers with the Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Mines of Moria, and World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King still gaining traction.

We are promised more phat numbers in the next few days so keep your eyes peeled... well, not literally.

GamerDNA shows their year in review graphically originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

World of Warcraft's Horde and Alliance fight it out in data sets

Michael Zenke — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, MMO industry

Sanya Weathers (who you may recognize from Massively Speaking Episode #25), continues the march to data-fueled enlightenment with her Market Trends column over at GamerDNA. She's been using the site's great player database to draw some conclusions about the overall World of Warcraft gaming populace. You may recall last week's discussion of WoW avatars based on their Bartle Type? Or perhaps (prior to that) how your Bartle choice influences your pick of a Warhammer class? Or their data-driven examination of the Warhammer Online launch?

This lastest article tackles World of Warcraft players with gusto, specifically looking at Horde vs. Alliance choices based on classes and real-world gender differentiation. The results are interesting if not earth-shattering. Fun facts:

There are still slightly more Shamans on the Horde-side than Alliance.
Warlocks are significantly more popular on the Horde side than the Alliance side.
Women are preferentially drawn to Druids and Hunters.
Women prefer Alliance characters to Horde, even over the general statisical preference for Alliance over Horde.

And of most import to the single male player out there, straight from Sanya Weathers: "The moral of this story, gentlemen, is that if you want to talk to a woman in game, find yourself an Alliance Druid. Half of them are actual females." Well worth a look.

World of Warcraft's Horde and Alliance fight it out in data sets originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Making/Money: Auctioneer Wishlist

Alexis Kassan — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Economy, Making money, Making/Money

WARNING - MATH AHEAD!

A few weeks ago, a reader e-mailed me with questions about some Auctioneer data that they have been collecting. Though the question was regarding trying to determine inflation patterns on their server, it got me to thinking about what Auctioneer actually captures. And what other data points would be most helpful in making evaluations of item pricing or looking into economic trending.

While I'm not about to go through all of Auctioneer's algorithm rules, I would recommend that anyone who uses this mod check them out on Norganna's Wiki. They explain where the recommended prices come from. Basically, it's a comparison of the historical data accumulated from all of your auction house scans and the most recent snapshot data. The market value ends up being either the median of historical or recent data, flavored with the user-set preferences for markup or markdown.

Continue reading Making/Money: Auctioneer Wishlist

Making/Money: Auctioneer Wishlist originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Which WAR faction favors more mature players?

Chris Chester — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Polls, Forums, Game mechanics, New titles, Warhammer Online, Races

It's generally accepted as common knowledge that Horde players in World of Warcraft are, by and large, the more mature of the two factions. Whether or not this is actually supported by hard data is a matter of debate, but the logic says that older players are the ones best able to overlook the stigma of playing races long-perceived to be the "bad guys." There are mouth-breathers no matter what faction you roll, but perception is what it is.

We've been watching a poll over at Warhammer Alliance that sought to identify a specific age correlation between the two factions amongst the hardcore Warhammer Online community. With just over 2100 votes cast at the time of writing this, we did find an interest trend. Although Destruction was more popular than Order in every demographic, the disparity between the two become decreasingly pronounced as you move up in the age bracket. The ratio went from 1.7:1 in the 12-16 bracket to 1.5:1 amongst those 17-25 to 1.3:1 for ages 26-35, finally to 1.1:1 in the 35+ bracket. Does this mean Order will be the faction of choice for older players? Definitely too early to tell, but this early data is intriguing.

Which WAR faction favors more mature players? originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Dungeon Runners releases characters in XML

Mike Schramm — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:30:00 EST

Filed under: Dungeon Runners, MMO industry, Tips and tricks, Free-to-play

This isn't quite the idea of MMO-to-go yet, but it's the first step towards something really huge in MMO gaming: a character API. An API is an Application Programming Interface-- basically a document or method of how to get computers to talk to each other through different applications. Facebook apps are made with the Facebook API, applications that hook into iTunes use the iTunes API, and so on. With an API, programmers can take information from one source, and do almost anything they want with it in other programs. Players have already done some amazing things with World of Warcraft's Armory (even without an actual API-- I'm pretty sure most of that is just HTML scraping), but now NCSoft's Dungeon Runners has upped the ante-- they've made all the character data in the game available to anyone as an XML file. With just a URL, you can access info on any player in the game, already marked up in XML.

What does this mean to you as a player? It means that programmers can create any number of applications using this data-- they can display your DR character's info almost anywhere at any time. And a skilled programmer could even track the info over time-- tell you how fast you leveled, how often you change your armor or gear, or how fast you've earned gold in the last day. And who knows what else people could come up with-- the best part about opening up information like this is that it gets used in all sorts of ways that no one could ever predict.

Jeff Freeman's exactly right: "This is really cool... just in case you don't get that." We're just scratching the surface of this stuff, but eventually you'll be able to do things like get text messages on your phone when your WoW auctions sell, or be able to monitor your guild's bank or your PvP team's wins via RSS (which itself can then plug into almost anything) When developers break out data like this for players, the possibilities are endless.

Dungeon Runners releases characters in XML originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Nielsen ratings say WoW is top dog of the PC domain

William Dobson — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:13:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Culture, MMO industry, News items, RuneScape

GamesIndustry.biz has their hands on the latest data from the Nielsen Company that tracks game usage from April to November this year. It isn't a big shocker that World of Warcraft has the highest percentage of PC players in an average minute, as they are doing amazingly well by everyone's estimation, but Nielsen was able to provide a figure on the average amount of hours played per week: just over 17.

This seems like a huge amount for the average. Obviously there is a large quantity of very heavy users that are skewing it that way, but it must mean that it's not uncommon for even the most casual players to sink in a few hours here and there. The closest competitor to WoW for people playing in an average minute was The Sims, and its average usage was 5 hours a week. Not even close.

It is worth noting that Runescape comes in at third place for the PC, above Halo and Halo 2. Oh, and forget the big 3 in current-gen consoles -- the Playstation 2 is still where it's at, taking up 42 percent of all console-gaming time.

Nielsen ratings say WoW is top dog of the PC domain originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

STO devlog 4.0 reveals nothing except the dev team's geekiness

Samuel Axon — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:29:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, Star Trek Online

Star Trek Online news is still sparse. We've heard nothing since we read the third devlog over a month ago. Now the fourth devlog is out, and it completely lacks new information about the game itself. However, it does eliminate any fears you might have had that the team at Perpetual Entertainment were not true Star Trek fans. We already assumed they were. After all, they're computer programmers and/or sci-fi artists. Plus, they're making a Star Trek MMO.

The individual members of the development team answered questions like, "What's your fondest Star Trek-related memory" and "If you could bring one character from the Star Trek universe into Star Trek Online, who would it be?" The latter of those was the most amusing question. "We got a lot of requests for Q, Data, and Khan," the devlogger writes. "That explosion you just heard was the design team's brains trying to figure out how to integrate two dead guys and an omnipotent space god into the game."

Indeed. As for the omnipotent space god, though, we think Richard Garriott might have a big enough ego to roleplay the part. Just a thought!

STO devlog 4.0 reveals nothing except the dev team's geekiness originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments