Posts tagged instancing 
Anarchy Online celebrates 10 years this weekend
It seems like there's an MMO anniversary happening every other day around these parts. While it's indeed commendable for some of these games to last a year or three, Funcom's Anarchy Online has just reached the lofty summit reserved for the likes of EverQuest and Ultima Online: Yep, Rubi-Ka is 10 ...
The Anvil of Crom: Server merges, separation, and why both are potentially swell
Last week I mentioned that the Age of Conan Unrated announcement has given us a lot to talk about. There's the 800-lb. free-to-try elephant in the room, there's a bunch of new content that's both coming soon and already here, and there's also an endlessly fascinating quote from Funcom game ...
The Daily Grind: Why don't you like PvE?
You might know that it's not real. You might be reminding yourself that all you're fighting are lines of computer code sitting on a server somewhere with no connection to a real heroic struggle. But if you're even remotely a fan of fantasy, when you find yourself drawing your weapon of choice ...
GDCO 2010: Spacetime Studios' Cinco Barnes talks mobile design
Spacetime Studios, the developer of the popular mobile MMO Pocket Legends, was started back in 2005 to create large-scale MMOs. Its founders decided to make a mobile platform MMO upon seeing the obvious marketing opportunity that the iPhone provided. After all, the players would already be ...
The Mog Log: We interrupt this broadcast for a conversation
The verdict on our Chains of Promathia trial is... postponed for a little bit. (I did warn everyone.) With the revelations of E3 and the new Final Fantasy XIV benchmark, not to mention the upcoming June version update, we've had plenty to talk about in the community of late. There's news about how ...
The Daily Grind: Want a private server?
When someone says 'private server' with respect to MMORPGs, it's hard to avoid mentally swapping a few letters and coming up with 'pirate server.' Rarely, if ever, have game companies licensed their software to individuals or groups, preferring instead to maintain tight control over the end user's ...
GDC10: Land of Chaos Online interview
MMOs are a strange genre without many of the clearly-defined borders for something that is or isn't a part of the field. Not surprisingly, there's a lot of innovation in the field that's confined strictly to the absolute edges of what could be considered an MMO. Games such as MAG and Global Agenda ...
Anti-Aliased: Yu rack disriprine pt. 2
CasualLolz player, meet OMGHARDCOREBBQ player The last part of odd group dynamics comes from how much our genre has grown since the days of EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI. Back in the days pre-Warcraft, the MMO community was a small group of gamers who, for the most part, had the same play ...
The Daily Grind: Is phasing the new instancing?
Yesterday our very own Marc Nottke devoted his column, MMOGology, to the new technology of phasing and the effects it can have on gameplay. For those of you who are out of the loop, phasing is the new technology that World of Warcraft (and Lord of the Rings Online, to some extent) makes use of to ...
Tabula Rasa's Deployment 12 hits public test server
Some potential changes to Tabula Rasa have arrived on the Public Test Server in the form of "Deployment 12," which we recently hinted was on the way. NCsoft has posted the patch notes for Deployment 12 which include changes and improvements to much of the game. One of the more significant updates ...
