MMO News |
- Dirty Bomb – First Look
- World of Warships Naval Legends: USS Yorktown
- Orcs Must Die! Unchained: The Master Reveal
- World of Tanks: Personal Missions Review
- RuneScape BTS #135: The Dragonkin’s Den
- Tree of Savior: Fan Site Reveals Class & Companion Info
- Predictions 2015: The Indie & The Mega-Corp
- Xsyon MMORPG Event Season Kicks Off Today
- Google’s Ingress Introduces Recruiter Medal To Enlist New Agents
- New World of Tanks Mission System Gets Personal
| Posted: 16 Jan 2015 04:35 PM PST Dirty Bomb – First Look Having recently transitioned over to closed beta on steam, Dirty Bomb sets itself apart from other FPS titles with its flavorful mercenaries and objective based gameplay. Dirty Bomb (once under the name Extraction) is a free-to-play multiplayer online first-person shooter (FPS), developed by Splash Damage, the studio behind Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Brink. Designed with a cooperative, team-focus in mind, players will be able to choose from dozens of unique roles and defend or attack key objectives. The game also boasts ECHO, an analytics and telemetry system, which will offer a fair playing field. The game is developed by Splash Damage and published by Nexon an is currently in closed beta on steam. Get more information about Dirty Bomb at the MMOHuts game profile HERE! |
| World of Warships Naval Legends: USS Yorktown Posted: 16 Jan 2015 02:35 PM PST Learn about this historic aircraft carrier in this short documentary.
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| Orcs Must Die! Unchained: The Master Reveal Posted: 16 Jan 2015 02:29 PM PST The once disappeared Master has returned to Orcs Must Die! Unchained.
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| World of Tanks: Personal Missions Review Posted: 16 Jan 2015 02:13 PM PST 375 tasks await players ready to tackle World of Tanks‘ new personal missions system.
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| RuneScape BTS #135: The Dragonkin’s Den Posted: 16 Jan 2015 02:06 PM PST This week’s Behind the Scenes welcomes RuneScape players to the Dragonkin’s Den.
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| Tree of Savior: Fan Site Reveals Class & Companion Info Posted: 16 Jan 2015 02:00 PM PST Our partner TreeofSaviorGame.com has sorted through the information for Tree of Savior and presented a summary of the four base classes, along with a preview of the companion system and emotes currently available. Check out the information at the links below: |
| Predictions 2015: The Indie & The Mega-Corp Posted: 16 Jan 2015 01:26 PM PST By Jaime Skelton (MissyS), Senior Editor
2014 was a little like the story of David and Goliath for the online gaming industry. We saw the rise of the indie developer and the humbling of the giant mega-gaming corporations. As gamers, we're starting to embrace the idea that the little guy can actually win and that success can't simply be measured in subscriber numbers. This year, I think we're going to see more balance: the giant will get up from the fall and continue with lessons learned, while the unlikely hero will gain more even footing for the future. Comparisons to ancient stories aside, allow me to look forward and predict what the next chapter in both their stories are for 2015. Kickstarter Reclaimed By Indies In late 2013 and most of 2014, the video games industry saw a heavy surge of crowdfunding both on and off Kickstarter. What started as a trend for smaller game studios to gain some awareness and funding became a bandwagon, and the indie studios that had previously earned their success on crowdfunding platforms were becoming obscured by larger companies. Leviathans swept through, gamers gave, and now gamers wait for giants like Shroud of the Avatar, Star Citizen, and Camelot Unchained. While I love the potential of crowdfunding when it comes to video games, it's also proven an unsustainable fad. Kickstarter has made many of us small-time investors with no experience or education in investing. In short, gamers have become easy prey. We're easily swayed by promises of early access and extra goodies by becoming "founders," easily wooed by celebrity names in the field (note the games listed at the end of the last paragraph), and easily forgetful of the fact that we don't get our money back once funded even if the developers up and disappear without fulfilling their promises. Even without a funding progress bar, founder's packs have not only become plentiful in the field, they've also sometimes jumped to unreasonable levels (like $500 for a free to play game already developed). Pocketbooks and patience are becoming exhausted. As a result, sites like Kickstarter are seeing less big name titles and more indie projects. Certain games, like Shards Online, are making second rounds on Kickstarter after initial failures. I'm sure this trend will continue through 2015, and small video game developers will again start seeing success while the leviathans return to their hoards. Video game crowdfunding needs to return to its origins, especially when it comes to MMOs – where we seem to be happy to throw millions of dollars to industry celebrities in hopes of the next big thing.
Blizzard Regains Dominance It seems everyone has intense feelings toward Blizzard Entertainment these days. Still, there's little argument that Blizzard doesn't produce high quality games that appeal to large audiences, even with stacks of criticism enough to wallpaper their offices many times over. Heck, I wouldn't even label myself a fan, but here I am playing World of Warcraft and Diablo III again, along with an occasional match of Hearthstone. ("Dammit, Blizzard" might be one of my most regularly uttered phrases. Even I hate myself sometimes when I find myself launching Battle.net.) 2015 is shaping up to be the biggest year yet for Blizzard. On top of a successful new WoW expansion that does a lot to rekindle old flames, and Hearthstone becoming a household name with growing success as an eSport, both Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch are slated to see beta testing this year. Heroes of the Storm may not be able to knock the top three MOBAs out of their nest, but it will certainly succeed well enough to support itself for at least a few years. Meanwhile Overwatch's hype train took off at hyperspeed from the first moment the game emerged at Blizzcon 2014. Even for a major company like Blizzard, six online games (yes, Starcraft, you aren't completely forgotten) and millions of players is a lot to ask any company to manage. So far, Blizzard has survived with a grace that often makes you forget one company rules them all. Will HotS and Overwatch be enough to break that calm? That I can't predict. What I can predict is that Blizzard will once again regain the lion's share of the online gaming market, with two new products and a diverse portfolio that keeps old players coming back and new players coming in.
More Mobile, More Console It's pretty obvious that online multiplayer is taking off on both mobile platforms and consoles. Technically both adapted to online play early, but in limited genres: consoles had their shooters and iOS and Android had social games. Large scale multiplayer has been, until recently, the domain of the PC. Within the past few years, however, the demand has grown. Mobile online gaming has significantly bloomed in the past few years, to the point where MOBAs like Vainglory have braved the challenges of mobile technology and come forward as champions of a new era of mobile gaming. Even the traditional MMO publisher Snail Games is now introducing its W3D mobile gaming device. Consoles are taking longer to take to adapt to the demand for MMOs. The reasons why are long enough to deserve their own essay. Suffice it to say, console MMOs are complicated from approximately every aspect imaginable. Despite this, more developers are taking the challenge: for example, SMITE and Neverwinter are headed to Xbox One, H1Z1 and Planetside 2 to PS4. Prepare to see more announcements of console releases coming this year, even if cross-platform play's future is looking bleak.
More of the Same It's a boring prediction, but it's also the one I'm most confident in: despite everything, the year will generally be more of the same patterns, trends, and games that we saw in 2014. It isn't that the online gaming industry is stale, although from year to year it may appear that way. It's that change is slow. Video games take time to produce, and it may be months or years before developers can react to new trends. Take the sandbox voxel genre, for instance. Minecraft saw its alpha release in 2009, but it wasn't until 2014 that our inboxes were suddenly inundated with announcements for sandbox voxel MMOs like Trove and SkySaga. The pattern has been repeated many times over the years – look at the gaps between EverQuest and World of Warcraft, or League of Legends and the current surge of pop-up MOBAs. Overnight innovation just isn't possible when it comes to MMOs: there's too much work involved at every level of the game's existence. So when you look at this year's predictions, don't feel glum if the outlook is bleak. Just take a look at the bigger picture, and realize that change is happening and always will be. |
| Xsyon MMORPG Event Season Kicks Off Today Posted: 16 Jan 2015 12:21 PM PST The apocalyptic fantasy sandbox MMORPG, Xsyon kicks off its guide run Event Season this Friday starting with an always popular Treasure Hunt event! Players will search for hidden treasures scattered around the central lake basin on both the War (PvP) and Peace (PvE) servers. This Season, events will run on weekdays and weekends at different times to accommodate players from every time zone. Planned events include timed battles, team navigation competitions, scavenger hunts, a special Valentine's Day event and capture the flag tournament where teams will build their own fortresses. All players are welcome to join in these events, participate in the fun and of course win valuable in game prizes! A full schedule of events is posted on the official Xsyon website. The apocalyptic fantasy sandbox MMORPG, Xsyon kicks off its guide run Event Season this Friday starting with an always popular Treasure Hunt event! Players will search for hidden treasures scattered around the central lake basin on both the War (PvP) and Peace (PvE) servers. This Season, events will run on weekdays and weekends at different times to accommodate players from every time zone. Planned events include timed battles, team navigation competitions, scavenger hunts, a special Valentine's Day event and capture the flag tournament where teams will build their own fortresses. All players are welcome to join in these events, participate in the fun and of course win valuable in game prizes! A full schedule of events is posted on the official Xsyon website. http://www.xsyon.com |
| Google’s Ingress Introduces Recruiter Medal To Enlist New Agents Posted: 16 Jan 2015 12:00 PM PST Today, Google's Niantic Labs introduced the Recruiter Medal to Ingress, a new way to reward Ingress Agents for successfully recruiting new Agents to the global fight. Ingress players on Android and iOS now have the opportunity to invite and enlist friends and family to their faction by accessing the "Recruit" tab in the Ops menu of the game. The Recruiter Medal will have five tiers, rewarding players based on the amount of new Agents they successfully enlist, including:
Following the upcoming anomaly season in which thousands of Ingress Agents will take to streets of their cities and neighborhoods to capture control of key real-world locations (dates and cities of the next anomaly player tour are still to be announced), Niantic Labs will also reveal the Top 100 Recruiter leaderboard, highlighting how many recruits joined each faction and rewarding the winning team with points in the overall event series. |
| New World of Tanks Mission System Gets Personal Posted: 16 Jan 2015 11:41 AM PST Wargaming today announced the all new personal mission system for the free-to-play online action game World of Tanks is now live worldwide. The intricate system gives tankers the opportunity to personalize their mission experience by selecting specific missions from a variety of different campaigns and offers unique rewards upon completion. Each campaign in the new setup is composed of a collection of missions for players to choose from. Players are not restricted to one single campaign, and they may opt to complete missions from different campaigns without playing them in succession. After completing a chain of missions in a campaign, tankers will be awarded unique prizes specific to each mission. These new rewards include credits, Free Experience points, and high tier vehicles, the StuG IV (Tier 5), T28 heavy tank concept (Tier 7), Т-55 NVA DDR (Tier 9), and Object 260 (Tier 10), all with 100% tank crew, as well as the Sisterhood of Steel perk and female crew members. |
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