MMO Updates

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• Choose My Adventure: World of Warcraft High
• The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar's past year and future
• One Shots: Today is a good day to fly
• The Daily Grind: What MMOs will you be playing in 2015?
• Massively Speaking Episode 327: More bloopers, outtakes, and tomfoolery
• The Stream Team: Final Fantasy XIV's white magery
• EVE Online player loses $1,500 in a ship attack
• The Elder Scrolls Online quietly removes six-month subscriptions
• World of Tanks introduce pixel-tastic Winter Showdown
• MMOs and gaming psychology, part two: Interview with a researcher
• Early enrollment comes to Pathfinder Online tomorrow

Choose My Adventure: World of Warcraft High Posted: 31 Dec 2014 09:00 AM PST Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Polls, Expansions, New Titles, PvE, Hands-On, Choose My Adventure, Subscription, MMORPG Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft launched on November 23rd, 2004. For anyone having a hard time putting that date into context, consider this: My sister, who's now in college, was eight years old when WoW's gates first opened. Some of our readers with nice jobs and adorable children were still in middle school or high school. I've personally been playing WoW off and on since 2005, giving me about nine years of history with the game. This month's Choose My Adventure was two parts adventure and one part nostalgia. And as it turns out, sometimes the past really does belong in the past. Continue reading Choose My Adventure: World of Warcraft High Choose My Adventure: World of Warcraft High originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 31 Dec 2014 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar's past year and future Posted: 31 Dec 2014 08:00 AM PST Filed under: Sci-Fi, Game Mechanics, Opinion, WildStar, The Nexus Telegraph, Subscription, Buy-to-Play A year ago, I was excited for WildStar's future. Now I'm sitting here wondering how things went so very, very wrong. That's not true, though; I know exactly how things went wrong. I don't like thinking about it, but I do know. And so here I am, with a game I was hugely excited to play out and in the wild, and so much has gone wrong. It's easy to think that I've pretty much clocked out altogether. But that's also not true. I'll be the first to point out that I've said some decidedly unkind things about the state of the game and the choices that have been made thus far in terms of fixing them. The last column I wrote even posited that it might be too late for several of the changes being proposed to make any sort of impact when it comes to the game's image. This is why I really want the game to prove me wrong. Continue reading The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar's past year and future The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar's past year and future originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 31 Dec 2014 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

One Shots: Today is a good day to fly Posted: 31 Dec 2014 07:00 AM PST Filed under: Screenshots, Culture, Star Trek Online, One Shots, Miscellaneous Klingons have long been the second-class citizens of Star Trek Online, although as of recent expansions they've come into their own in both content and culture. Reader Sean sends us in his wicked-looking avatar to be our final One Shots of 2014. See you all on the flip side! "Behold, my alter-ego, Shia'Tor of House Breknar, who is busy making plans aboard the IKS Heart of Praxis," he wrote. "There are plenty of Federation carebears to troll -- I mean, hunt." Want to be featured in a future edition of One Shots? Send your favorite MMO screenshots to oneshots@massively.com, and don't forget to include your name, the name of the game, and a description of the scene. Large, colorful, UI-free shots that tell a story and really show off the game make for the best images. Look ma, we brought back One Shots! One Shots: Today is a good day to fly originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 31 Dec 2014 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Daily Grind: What MMOs will you be playing in 2015? Posted: 31 Dec 2014 05:00 AM PST Filed under: Betas, Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Miscellaneous This is it, folks, the end of 2014. As we count down the final hours and minutes of the year, 2015 looms ahead of us full of possibilities and potential. So we might as well ask, what MMOs will you be playing next year? Maybe you'll continue your journeys in your current favorite games. Maybe you'll be looking at accomplishing goals in other MMOs. Or maybe you'll be anticipating diving into one of the newer titles that are on the way. What do you think you'll be doing come 2015? 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 MMOs will you be playing in 2015? originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 31 Dec 2014 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Massively Speaking Episode 327: More bloopers, outtakes, and tomfoolery Posted: 30 Dec 2014 05:00 PM PST Filed under: Podcasts, MMO Industry, Massively Meta, Humor, Massively Speaking, Miscellaneous Once again, our podcast editor is out for revenge by collecting our best bloopers, outtakes, and tomfoolery from 2014 and putting it all in a single episode for our embarrassment. But if you're not Bree or Justin, then you might be entertained by our missteps and general weirdness. Get all of our opinions and analysis on the most important stories of the past week right here on Massively Speaking, the industry's leading MMO podcast. And if you have a comment, question, or topic for the podcasters, send an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. [iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. [Stitcher] Follow the podcast on Stitcher Radio. Listen here on the page: Read below the cut for the full show notes. Continue reading Massively Speaking Episode 327: More bloopers, outtakes, and tomfoolery Massively Speaking Episode 327: More bloopers, outtakes, and tomfoolery originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

The Stream Team: Final Fantasy XIV's white magery Posted: 30 Dec 2014 04:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Video, PvE, Massively Meta, Hands-On, Final Fantasy XIV, Livestream, Dungeons, The Stream Team, Subscription, MMORPG Massively's Mike Foster has finally unlocked his Final Fantasy XIV job and he's ready to heal some dungeons. Tune in tonight at 7:00 p.m. EST as he cures his way through FFXIV's duty finder as a white mage, the core single-target healing job available to FFXIV players. Dungeons and guildhests are both on deck! Game: Final Fantasy XIV Host: Mike Foster Date: Tuesday, December 30th, 2014 Time: 7:00 p.m. EST Enjoy our Stream Team video below. Continue reading The Stream Team: Final Fantasy XIV's white magery The Stream Team: Final Fantasy XIV's white magery originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

EVE Online player loses $1,500 in a ship attack Posted: 30 Dec 2014 03:00 PM PST Filed under: Sci-Fi, EVE Online, Culture, News Items, Sandbox, Subscription You would think that no one in EVE Online would ever risk carrying around a huge pile of PLEX these days, especially after the last dozen times that something went south while someone was transporting large sums of money. But Ozuwara Ozuwara was not the kind of player to be deterred by the very real possibility of having his precious cargo destroyed. So he loaded $1,500 worth of PLEX into his ship, set off for deep space, and then got blown up by fellow player Diorden without ever making his way out of high-security space. Yes, all of the PLEX was destroyed, all 84 pieces, which comes out to roughly 70 billion ISK on the open market. The bright side is that this might at least teach the lesson that this cargo is too valuable to cart around unguarded, by which we mean that you can check back in here a couple of months from now to see the same thing happen again to another player. EVE Online player loses $1,500 in a ship attack originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: MMO Fallout

The Elder Scrolls Online quietly removes six-month subscriptions Posted: 30 Dec 2014 01:00 PM PST Filed under: Fantasy, News Items, Consoles, The Elder Scrolls Online, Subscription Players are just a little bit leery of the fact that The Elder Scrolls Online has removed the six-month subscription option from the game. Oh, sure, it seems innocent enough; it's just a change in billing options. But it's also one of those changes that's happened in more than a few other games indicating that the game was removing the need for a subscription... or that the game was no longer going to be playable at all, in the case of Warhammer Online. The official ZeniMax response on the French forums is simply that players indicated they preferred the shorter billing options, so the six-month option was removed. General sentiment in the thread is that this answer is not entirely credible. If it really is a harbinger of something more to come... well, we'll find out about it in about six months. Maybe five. [Thanks to Siphaed for the tip!] The Elder Scrolls Online quietly removes six-month subscriptions originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Forum thread

World of Tanks introduce pixel-tastic Winter Showdown Posted: 30 Dec 2014 12:00 PM PST Filed under: Trailers, Video, Culture, News Items, War, Free-to-Play, MMOFPS, World of Tanks Ready to take on some blocky other tanks in blocky arenas with your own blocky tank? World of Tanks wants to endorse your readiness, not block you. The development team behind the game has announced the approaching Winter Showdown mode, an homage to the simpler games of youth -- assuming that you were growing up between 1985 and 1995 and the games of your youth featured online connectivity and pixels rendered in three-dimensional space, anyway. This mode is more than just a simple graphical overhaul, featuring three exclusive tank types, platoons of five tanks, and special gold rounds that hurt enemies or heal your allies. If you can't wait to start rolling in your pixel-based tank, good news: The mode will be available for play starting on January 26th in the United States. Take a gander at the trailer just past the break to see the blocky action in... um... action. [Source: Wargaming.net press release] Continue reading World of Tanks introduce pixel-tastic Winter Showdown World of Tanks introduce pixel-tastic Winter Showdown originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

MMOs and gaming psychology, part two: Interview with a researcher Posted: 30 Dec 2014 11:00 AM PST Filed under: Culture, Interviews, MMO Industry, Opinion, Virtual Worlds, Miscellaneous Following yesterday's article discussing current research on psychology and MMOs, we have today our conversation with Dr. Rachel Kowert herself, the lead author on the paper that originally prompted these articles. Kowert, unlike many other researchers in her field, has established gamer cred; her earliest experiences were playing basic games on a Tandy computer with her brother, but the first game to really grab her was Super Mario Brothers. Her favorite game of all time is Final Fantasy 6 (Final Fantasy 3 in the US), and most recently she's played Banished and The Sims 4. Late in Kowert's Master's degree studies, her supervisor told her about an influx of parents expressing concern about their children's gaming habits. Finding information on the topic to help ease concerns proved difficult due to a severe lack of on-point research. This is what prompted her to switch her research focus to game studies. Continue reading MMOs and gaming psychology, part two: Interview with a researcher MMOs and gaming psychology, part two: Interview with a researcher originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Early enrollment comes to Pathfinder Online tomorrow Posted: 30 Dec 2014 10:00 AM PST Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, News Items, Crowdfunding, Pathfinder Online The hour has come at last! Almost. The hour of Pathfinder Online's early enrollment approaches swiftly with a scheduled start time of 1:00 p.m. EST on December 31st, assuming some horrible bug doesn't crop up between now and then. More posts will appear on the official site to detail how, exactly, one takes part in Early Enrollment if eligible; there will also be detailed information on how the game world moves and behaves so that no one is caught off-guard. The last day of the alpha servers won't be quiet either; testers will be given access to developer powers, allowing them to make whatever ludicrously overpowered superheroes they want for fun. This starts today at 1:00 p.m. EST and runs until the servers go down for the last time before early enrollment. So have some fun today, and get ready to start in on the real thing tomorrow. Early enrollment comes to Pathfinder Online tomorrow originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Dec 2014 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: 48 Hours and Counting!

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