Posts tagged tso 
Jukebox Heroes: The Sims Online's soundtrack
The recent SimCity is by far not the only botched product that EA's launched with the Sims name on it. The truth is that The Sims Online had a great potential and franchise behind it, but it let the ball drop, big-time. It was already visually obsolete by the time it launched, and that was the ...
The Game Archaeologist and the year that was 2010
Earlier in the year when I started this column, I realized two things. First, I'd be giving myself as much as any of you a crash-course education in older MMOs, particularly with some of the more fringe titles that I'd never really explored up to this point. And second, it would be a challenge to ...
The Game Archaeologist and the Legend of the Sims: Our memories
Last week marked the beginning of a brief foray into the world of The Sims Online -- "brief" because the title is defunct (meaning no hands-on experiences to share these days) and I doubt that any of the game's creators are itching to reminisce about this lackluster entry into The Sims franchise. ...
The Game Archaeologist and the Legend of the Sims: The history
The Sims Online was one of the odder entrants into the MMO genre this past decade, an online iteration of an immensely popular game franchise that promised deeper social interaction. With EA at its back and the Will Wright name affixed to the front, TSO (not to be confused with Cryptic's STO) had a ...
Charting crafting changes in EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey
Alongside the new dungeons and deep EQ lore that the developers have pushed out to EverQuest II with their latest expansion, there have been a load of new changes and updates to the game's crafting metagame. We touched briefly on those changes in our full on tour of The Shadow Odyssey, but Emily ...
The Daily Grind: How important are friends to MMO gaming?
Over the last week or so we've been asking you how you've managed to decide between the big releases hitting the MMO genre these days. Last week's Lich King launch, followed by this week's launches of EverQuest 2: The Shadow Odyssey and Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria seem like ...
Your quick-start guide to EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey
The EverQuest II team hopes to continue its string of upward-momentum expansions with today's launch of The Shadow Odyssey. After the landmark success of Echoes of Faydwer and the mixed reaction to Rise of Kunark, this new dungeon-heavy expansion hopes to recapture player excitement for the original ...
EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey Launches!
It's not often that an expansion to an MMO launches, and it's even rarer that two do so in the same day! But that's the case, with EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey hitting the live servers today at noon PST. Massively has been following the expansion's lifecycle since it was announced at this ...
EverQuest II designers on The Shadow Odyssey expansion
The latest EverQuest II expansion, The Shadow Odyssey, will launch this week on November 18th. In advance of the launch, Stephanie Morrow of Beckett Massive Online Gamer recently interviewed some members of the EverQuest II design team -- Noel Walling (Design Supervisor), Paul Molina (Game ...
The Daily Grind: Do expansions cheapen all that hard work?
It happened with The Burning Crusade -- players had spent months raiding at level 60 to get the very best gear, and when TBC came out, people were getting green drops with better stats than the best raid drops after only a couple of levels. A lot of hardcore players were annoyed, while some just ...
