MMO Updates |
- RuneScape turns 12, releases gaudy statistics
- ArcheAge open beta vids detail dungeon, trade market, and more
- Storyboard: To be the jerk
- MMO Burnout: Revisiting Gotham City Impostors
- The War Z attacked, then attacked again
- The Daily Grind: What was the MMO screw-up of the year?
- A video retrospective on 38 Studios discusses 'star-struck legislators'
- The Summoner's Guidebook: Controlling space in League of Legends
- Age of Empires Online ceases content development
- Richard Garriott throws end-of-the-world party, world survives in style
- Researcher would rather hire WoW players than Harvard MBAs
- ArenaNet bans Guild Wars 2 exploiters in nefarious snowflake incident, discusses upcoming updates
- The Perfect Ten: New MMOs to watch in 2013
| RuneScape turns 12, releases gaudy statistics Posted: 04 Jan 2013 08:30 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, MMO industry, News items, RuneScape, Free-to-play, Browser  Jagex's browser title turns 12 years old today, and the company has queued up a list of impressive statistics that include more than 486 million hours of gaming achieved by RuneScape players in 2012. Those players killed each other over 3.2 billion times, too. Jagex also says that the game passed the 200 million account mark last July. Today's press release isn't all about gaudy numbers, though. Updates for 2013 will include a Grandmaster-level quest, Wilderness Warbands, Construction skill revamps, an improved grouping system, and a customizable UI. Finally, Jagex is running a number of events this month as part of its birthday celebration. [Source: Jagex press release]
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| ArcheAge open beta vids detail dungeon, trade market, and more Posted: 04 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Video, Game mechanics, MMO industry, New titles, News items, PvE, ArcheAge, Sandbox, Dungeons  Check out this last clip after the cut, and head to Steparu's website for the rest. Continue reading ArcheAge open beta vids detail dungeon, trade market, and more
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| Posted: 04 Jan 2013 07:00 AM PST Filed under: Opinion, Roleplaying, Storyboard, Miscellaneous  But also so many ways to play one correctly. Heck, you can play a character who takes pretty awful actions from time to time without issue -- why not a character for whom "awful" is the default setting? There has to be a way to make a jerk who works, right? The answer is yes, most definitely. Jerks are playable. But you have to be a bit more careful about it because as I've mentioned in previous weeks, if your first impression is "pointless jerk," no one will want to hang out with you. So let's talk about playing one in such a way that your character comes across correctly while still being worth a closer look. Continue reading Storyboard: To be the jerk
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| MMO Burnout: Revisiting Gotham City Impostors Posted: 04 Jan 2013 06:00 AM PST Filed under: Super-hero, Game mechanics, PvP, Opinion, Free-to-play, Massively Hands-on, First Impressions, MMO Burnout  And for all you MMO historians in the crowd, yes, that's the same Monolith that originally developed the late, great Matrix Online. Continue reading MMO Burnout: Revisiting Gotham City Impostors
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| The War Z attacked, then attacked again Posted: 04 Jan 2013 05:30 AM PST Filed under: Horror, MMO industry, New titles, News items, Sandbox  "First we were hit with an attack that would [reset] our DNS IP so that you could not connect," the company said. "This morning we are being hit, again, with a DDoS attack on our login server. We are implementing additional DDoS protection and hope to have this resolved asap. Unfortunately with these types of attacks it is very difficult to give a good time frame of when it will be resolved." If you're still playing The War Z, there are further status updates to be found on the game's official forums.
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| The Daily Grind: What was the MMO screw-up of the year? Posted: 04 Jan 2013 05:00 AM PST Filed under: Polls, MMO industry, Opinion, Massively Meta, The Daily Grind, Humor, Miscellaneous  But 2012? 2012 is trickier. I mean, you've got charging for hotbars, $50 hobby-horses, pandas, NCsoft closing a profitable game, the TERA lawsuit, the implosion of 38 Studios, the clownshoes of The War Z, innumerable banning scandals... we have a lot to choose from. So let's get busy choosing. What do you think was the MMO industry screw-up of 2012?  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!
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| A video retrospective on 38 Studios discusses 'star-struck legislators' Posted: 03 Jan 2013 03:00 PM PST Filed under: Video, MMO industry, News items, Legal, Miscellaneous  Curt Schilling started 38 Studios at the end of his baseball career, but it was a well-known fact that his attempts to court venture capitalists were unsuccessful. The video goes into depth regarding the political climate that encouraged Rhode Island legislators to sign the historic and ill-advised loan, as well as the factors leading to the company's ultimate demise. If you're interested in a broader view now that the smoke has cleared, take a look at the full video past the cut. Continue reading A video retrospective on 38 Studios discusses 'star-struck legislators'
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| The Summoner's Guidebook: Controlling space in League of Legends Posted: 03 Jan 2013 02:00 PM PST Filed under: PvP, Opinion, Free-to-play, Guides, MOBA, League of Legends, The Summoner's Guidebook  While Shurelia's video is well worth the watch, there are some areas she didn't cover and a few things that could be explained in a little more depth. I would consider this more of an addendum to her excellent tutorial, and you should watch it before you continue on. Controlling space effectively is incredibly powerful in League. Skillful use of zoning can lead to lots of free damage, and even if your opponent is good at avoiding you, zoning can allow you to last-hit in lane or win a teamfight. If you've ever wanted to drive your opponent completely out of the lane, continue on. We've got a lot of ground to cover. Continue reading The Summoner's Guidebook: Controlling space in League of Legends
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| Age of Empires Online ceases content development Posted: 03 Jan 2013 01:30 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Historical, Business models, MMO industry, Free-to-play, MMORTS, Age of Empires Online  That doesn't mean the game's getting cancelled, however. The announcement emphatically states that Age of Empires Online will continue to operate as is, will have future community events, and it is not "dying." The move from development to support was explained as follows: "Creating top-tier content, as we have been for the last year and a half, is very expensive -- too expensive to maintain for long, as it turns out. We can no longer afford to keep creating it. Age of Empires Online already has a very large amount of high-quality, hand-crafted entertainment, and adding more is no longer cost-effective."
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| Richard Garriott throws end-of-the-world party, world survives in style Posted: 03 Jan 2013 01:00 PM PST Filed under: MMO industry, Humor, Miscellaneous  "We thought this date shouldn't pass without an interactive soiree," Garriott explained. The creator of Ultima Online is famous for throwing strange elaborate parties, including a Titanic get-together where he sunk the boat with the party-goers on it. Garriott created a 30-foot Mayan pyramid as the centerpiece of the event. Around the pyramid were four apocalypse-themed tents, including an alien tent with a Sputnik replica and a hedonism display with naked zebra ladies prancing about. The $1,000-plus door charge for the party went toward the X Prize Foundation.
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| Researcher would rather hire WoW players than Harvard MBAs Posted: 03 Jan 2013 12:00 PM PST Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Culture, MMO industry, News items  Veteran researcher John Seely Brown says some accomplished World of Warcraft players would probably make great employees. "I would rather hire a high-level World of Warcraft player than an MBA from Harvard," he states at the top of a video republished this week for Big Think.Brown says that WoW achievers stand out because of their passion for the game and their willingness to succeed in an environment that is largely devoid of meaningful bonus-based structures. He also comments on the nature of guild politics and their usefulness in preparing people. "These guilds are truly meritocracy-based," Brown explains. "So even if you were the leader of this particular high-end raid, at the end you do an after-action review, and [during] the after-action review each person is open to total criticism by everybody else." Massively's Karen Bryan offered her own take on Brown's assertions in a fall 2012 edition of The Guild Counsel. Check out the original video after the cut; the new edition of the video is available only on YouTube. Continue reading Researcher would rather hire WoW players than Harvard MBAs
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| ArenaNet bans Guild Wars 2 exploiters in nefarious snowflake incident, discusses upcoming updates Posted: 03 Jan 2013 11:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Events, in-game, News items, Guild Wars 2, Crafting  Guild Wars 2's Wintersday is drawing to a close, but drama stays with us in every season. Late last night, ArenaNet started leaving presents on the accounts of certain players: permanent bans! These bans were in response to a certain exploit that cropped up early in the Wintersday event. Players were able to use a single high-level snowflake, a Black Lion salvage kit, and a bit of metal to generate effectively limitless globs of ectoplasm (which are kind of a cornerstone of the economy, as they're used in the majority of high-end items). The exploit was closed, but not before an apparently large number of people took advantage of it. Players might recall that not long after launch, there was a mass banning in response to a karma exploit. ArenaNet relented, with certain conditions, but warned players that the incident was kind of a community-wide final warning. In happier news, Game Director Colin Johanson took to the forums a short while ago to talk about upcoming updates. He stated that the January release will be "relatively small" and set the scene for the February and March releases. Additionally, he mentioned that no new races, professions, or regions will be added with the larger releases but that "an expansion's worth of content" was a reference to the number of new features in PvE, WvW, and PvP that will be appearing. [Thanks to intrepid tipsters Joseph and Adam!]
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| The Perfect Ten: New MMOs to watch in 2013 Posted: 03 Jan 2013 10:00 AM PST Filed under: Marvel Heroes, DUST 514, Perfect Ten, Miscellaneous, ArcheAge, World of Warplanes, WildStar, Defiance, Neverwinter, The Elder Scrolls Online, City of Steam, Age of Wushu  Let me give you a few notes on today's list because I sense that I'm going to tick more of you off than normal here. My goal was to sift through the possible releases for 2013 and pick the 10 most promising, both in "will it actually launch this year?" and in its potential for success. The combination makes it a tough call because some of these will undoubtedly be delayed to 2014 or beyond and some of these we still don't know as much as we'd like about them. But who cares? Let's have some fun and kick this year off right. Here are my picks for new MMOs to watch in 2013. Continue reading The Perfect Ten: New MMOs to watch in 2013
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