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Lord of the Rings Online lets you add a game wallet by lightening your real wallet

Eliot Lefebvre — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Patches, News items, Free-to-play

If you're a Lord of the Rings Online veteran, you've probably accumulated a large number of different barter items for various upgrades. Skirmish tokens, regional tokens, festival tokens... all vital to getting various gumballs, all clogging up inventory space that could go toward other items. The development team has heard your cries for a solution, and thus, the improved barter wallet has come into existence. Unfortunately, this upgrade comes at a price -- just about $10, specifically.

Needless to say, some players and subscribers will be rather galled by the fact that this feature is being sold. On the other hand, player testimonials indicate that the upgrade works wonderfully, and it's a single account-wide purchase for all of your past, present, and future characters. Whether or not you prefer to grab the account-wide upgrade or wish to abstain on matters of principle is a personal decision, but there's no denying that the freed inventory spaces are certainly appealing.

Lord of the Rings Online lets you add a game wallet by lightening your real wallet originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Secret World's engine takes center stage

Eliot Lefebvre — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:00:00 EST

Filed under: Horror, Real life, Game mechanics, Interviews, News items, The Secret World, Miscellaneous

Unified engines for MMOs have long been a rarity, simply due to the time needed to develop a game and the number of different companies developing separate products. The Secret World manages to buck this trend, using the same core Dreamworld Engine as Funcom's Age of Conan. A recent interview with lead programmer Øystein Eftevaag discusses the way that the engine interacts with the newer game, how the unified engine helps both games, and what special features the game is using in a technical sense.

Eftevaag explains that the Dreamworld Engine benefits chiefly from cross-pollination; improvements made in terms of optimization for Age of Conan can be imported to the engine on The Secret World with minimal extra legwork. The engine also uses a series of dynamic equations to determine what player characters should be able to see, subsequently leaving obscured areas blank to save on processor cycles. It's an interesting look under the hood at the technical side of Funcom's upcoming conspiracy and horror title, even if this particular dream world is tilted toward a nightmare.

The Secret World's engine takes center stage originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Matter of pact

Eliot Lefebvre — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Events, in-game, Game mechanics, Opinion, Free-to-play, A Mild-Mannered Reporter

We're back online in this neck of the woods, and that means that I can catch up on all of the things that I missed over the past week. And even within the fairly focused sphere of City of Heroes, there was a lot going on -- a headstart for subscribers, the removal of leveling pacts, more details on the rewards you can uncover for Signature Arcs, and the lowdown of the Seed of Hamidon event. Interesting stuff, all around, but it was the pact removal that first jumped out at me.

One of the things that CoH has been loath to do over the years is remove things. That's part of why the game has become so all-encompassing for so many players -- every new system has built upon its predecessors, adding new options, moving in new directions. So the removal of one of the game's interesting features struck me as a little odd just because it's something that's nearly without precedent in its lifespan.

Continue reading A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Matter of pact

A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Matter of pact originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily Grind: What's your favorite post-launch feature?

Eliot Lefebvre — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Game mechanics, Patches, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Miscellaneous

Single-player games can occasionally get major DLC or expansions to change the face of the game, but for the most part MMOs are the field where a game can change between two patches. Champions Online recently made a major change with the addition of hideouts, adding in a form of housing to the game that hadn't existed at all when the game launched. It's a recent example, but it's hardly the only time that a game or a expansion has gone live and later had a major addition to its features list.

Sometimes features are added in shortly after launch as promised features not quite ready at the time the game went gold, but far more frequently an entirely new feature is developed and added. So what's your favorite feature that was introduced after the game's launch? A player-generated content system a la City of Heroes or Star Trek Online? The addition of instanced PvP such as World of Warcraft's Battlegrounds? Let us know!

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!

The Daily Grind: What's your favorite post-launch feature? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Global Chat: Tough decisions edition

Rubi Bayer — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Opinion, Massively Meta, Global Chat, Miscellaneous

Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat!

Today's Global Chat focuses on developer decisions. From business models to mechanics and even platforms, our readers had some interesting things to say. Follow along after the jump to read, then add your own thoughts!

Continue reading Global Chat: Tough decisions edition

Global Chat: Tough decisions edition originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Steal this tape

Eliot Lefebvre — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Game mechanics, Opinion, A Mild-Mannered Reporter

A while back, I took the opportunity to talk about things that City of Heroes would do well to steal. After all, there's no reason that you can't make an existing awesome game even more awesome, right? It was a fun article, if a bit silly, and it leads naturally into this week's outing, because I'm feeling just a little bit silly this week, and I'm looking at other games with amazement. So many of them just don't get it.

Seriously. City of Heroes is approaching its seventh anniversary, and so many bits of brilliance in the design are not found in every game in the world. To be quite honest, it's ridiculous. I'm not just talking about little bits of clever design like attack tags to help differentiate defenses; I'm talking about parts of the game that just run so well and so intuitively that it's a wonder everyone hasn't copied them. So let's look at the stuff that the game gets so right that everyone ought to just use it as a standard.

Continue reading A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Steal this tape

A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Steal this tape originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily Grind: What cool feature was still a disappointment?

Eliot Lefebvre — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Expansions, Game mechanics, New titles, Opinion, The Daily Grind

The problem with the barrage of information coming out before any major expansion or game is that you wind up with an idea of what the game will contain that isn't always accurate. Sometimes that's a matter of promotional materials containing features that were later quietly dropped (something Wrath of the Lich King suffered from), and sometimes the feature in question just winds up getting lost in the shuffle. At other times, the system is in the game -- but less cool than you imagined, even though it's functionally exactly what you were told it would be.

You might have been really looking forward to making the moral jump in City of Heroes, but when Going Rogue went live you were disappointed by the fact that shifting from rogue to hero (or vigilante to villain) is a notable jump. You might have really looked forward to Final Fantasy XIV's class-blending, only to find that the combat classes and the gathering classes are firmly segregated. It doesn't make a cool game bad, but it means that one of the things you were anticipating isn't there after all. What cool game feature have you heard about only to find that in practice, it's not quite as great as you hoped?

The Daily Grind: What cool feature was still a disappointment? originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Evolution as it does and doesn't apply to MMOs

Eliot Lefebvre — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion

A few days ago, we discussed the lack of innovation in the MMO market at the moment, as well as some of the underlying reasons behind it. The topic prompted We Fly Spitfires to postulate the idea that we needed an MMO that broke most if not all of the established and accepted rules of the genre. In his own parlance, we needed a mutation instead of a steady evolution.

Those of you familiar with evolutionary science might be quirking your eyebrow a bit, as did Of Teeth and Claws, where it was pointed out that mutation is a part of evolution. Continuing the analogy, it's a part of the slow improvement we see in our genre of choice, as the source leading to feature implementation and improvement. And as Killed in a Smiling Accident added, evolution is not a straight line, nor does it select features based on inherent quality -- the current "standard features" have evolved because they're best at succeeding in the current environment (that is, the market).

Ultimately, aside from fascinating extension of the analogy, the biggest point to be taken away from both this discussion and the previous one is that change in the genre isn't something which will happen overnight. While the powerful influence that World of Warcraft has placed upon the genre is beginning to abate a bit, it'll be quite some time before it's discarded wholesale.

Evolution as it does and doesn't apply to MMOs originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MMO features that haven't made it into Warhammer Online

James Egan — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, Warhammer Online, Opinion

Among the legions of fortunate Warhammer Online fans that have played through beta and the preview weekend is Syp from the Waaagh! blog. He's always entertaining and it's clear he's passionate about Warhammer Online. So when he writes about features in other MMOs that he'd like to see in WAR, you know he's not bashing a game that's not even out of the gate yet. Rather, he's genuinely looking at ways the game could be better.

Syp puts forth his ideal WAR feature set, which includes capturable and trainable pets similar to World of Warcraft's system and the player-created content and sidekicks of City of Heroes. Syp would also like to see WAR include an in-game music player like EVE Online, and other features drawn from Everquest 2 and Lord of the Rings Online. Have a look at the Waaagh! "10 features" post and see if you agree with him on what could make Warhammer Online a better title.

Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out all of our previous Warhammer Online features, and don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

MMO features that haven't made it into Warhammer Online originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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