MMO Updates

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• The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's year in review
• Perfect World founder seeks to take the company private
• The Repopulation looks back on December and Early Access
• RuneScape player raises over $1200 for a pizza delivery tip
• The Daily Grind: How do you define triple-A?
• MMO Week in Review: The fastest way to lose $1500 in an MMO
• EVE Evolved: Fitting the Confessor for PvE and PvP
• Final Fantasy XI laps the Year of the Sheep

The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's year in review Posted: 05 Jan 2015 09:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Opinion, Consoles, Final Fantasy XIV, The Mog Log, Subscription A year ago, Final Fantasy XIV was in a weird place. The game had already done the impossible one time around, taking a title that had failed badly and re-launching to actual attention from the world at large. Barring a slight misstep with housing, it had done all right. But a year ago, it had to do the hard part: sticking the landing. Sure, re-launching was rough. But at that point it had to bank on that goodwill and shape itself into a respectable game within the MMO space. And it managed that. What still astonishes me about the game's year of history is that despite making mistakes and bad choices, the game has continued to earn praise from players and onlookers, more so as each month rolls on and it continues to not collapse. That alone seems surprising, especially after a year like 2014. So let's look back over the year, see what the game did right, and look forward to the new year as well. Continue reading The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's year in review The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's year in review originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Jan 2015 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Perfect World founder seeks to take the company private Posted: 05 Jan 2015 08:00 AM PST Filed under: MMO Industry, Legal, Miscellaneous Perfect World may be going private in the future, if its founder and chairman of the board Michael Yufeng Chi has anything to say about it. Chi submitted a proposal on December 31st of last year to buy up all remaining shares of the studio. He already owns some of the company's stocks, although it is unclear what percentage he has. The company has put together a committee to evaluate the proposal. Perfect World is the Chinese parent company of North America's Perfect World Entertainment, which in turn oversees Cryptic Studios. It recently appointed Yunfan Zhang as its new COO. Perfect World founder seeks to take the company private originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Jan 2015 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: GamesIndustry.biz

The Repopulation looks back on December and Early Access Posted: 05 Jan 2015 07:00 AM PST Filed under: Betas, Sci-Fi, Bugs, Game Mechanics, Patches, News Items, Sandbox, The Repopulation For the first time in testing, The Repopulation didn't quite keep pace with its normal biweekly update schedule for the test client. Why, you ask, were the developers being such lazy bums? Because of the holidays? Or was it because the game was busy launching on Steam as an early access title, thus requiring extra work by the team to make sure that previous backers and newcomers alike were having fun? Mostly the latter, as it happens; not so much with the lazy bums. Of course, a slight schedule slip doesn't change the fact that the team was hard at work on the game, with the biggest focus being bug fixes (as the new influx of players has resulted in many more bug reports). There are also improvements to the game's missions, with a focus on more challenging variations and the possibility of random fitting rewards from clearing them. Check out the full recap for a picture of everything that's been added or improved over the past month. The Repopulation looks back on December and Early Access originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Jan 2015 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

RuneScape player raises over $1200 for a pizza delivery tip Posted: 05 Jan 2015 06:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Culture, News Items, RuneScape, Free-to-Play, Browser Charlie McCormick wasn't having a particularly good holiday season. For starters, he was a pizza delivery driver, which isn't a grand ball of fun at any point of the year. His mother had also recently passed away after a prolonged illness, meaning that even if he had somehow felt festive, there wasn't money to be festive with. At least, not until he made a delivery to Joey DeGrandis and was given a $1,230 tip for his service. DeGrandis is an avid RuneScape streamer who wanted to do something nice for a deserving delivery driver, as he feels the job isn't particularly respected for its hard work. Over the course of an 18-hour streaming marathon, his viewers raised the money for McCormick's tip while DeGrandis played, with more donations coming in even after McCormick got his initial tip. Sure, it plays into the stereotype that MMO players all sit at home and eat delivered pizza constantly, but if that stereotype includes being exceptionally charitable tippers, we can probably live with it. RuneScape player raises over $1200 for a pizza delivery tip originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Jan 2015 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Ann Arbor News Via: Polygon

The Daily Grind: How do you define triple-A? Posted: 05 Jan 2015 05:00 AM PST Filed under: MMO Industry, Opinion, The Daily Grind Triple-A is a label you hear quite often in MMO discourse. Like most MMO terms -- and even the term MMO itself -- AAA seems subjective or somewhat ill-defined, at best. Does it mean "not indie?" Is it related to pretty graphics or production quality in general? Does it denote a certain budget? If so, what's the magic number? What do you think, Massively readers? How do you define the term triple-A? 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: How do you define triple-A? originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Jan 2015 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

MMO Week in Review: The fastest way to lose $1500 in an MMO Posted: 04 Jan 2015 05:00 PM PST Filed under: MMO Industry, Massively Meta, Week in Review, Miscellaneous At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO or WoW Insider story last week, you've come to the right post. This week, a player in EVE Online, most likely someone involved in an RMT deal, managed to kick off the new year right: by getting his unprotected ship and its cargo, $1500 worth of PLEX that didn't need to be transported that way to begin with, blown to smithereens. Is there an MMO Darwin award yet? Read on for a look at the rest of this week's top MMO stories, though I promise that none will make you facepalm as hard as this one. Continue reading MMO Week in Review: The fastest way to lose $1500 in an MMO MMO Week in Review: The fastest way to lose $1500 in an MMO originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 04 Jan 2015 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

EVE Evolved: Fitting the Confessor for PvE and PvP Posted: 04 Jan 2015 03:00 PM PST Filed under: Sci-Fi, EVE Online, Classes, Expansions, Game Mechanics, Patches, PvP, PvE, Opinion, EVE Evolved, Sandbox, Player-Generated Content, Subscription, MMORPG December was a great month for EVE Online players, with the Rhea update opening new wormhole systems for the first time since 2009, updating the star map and all ships with amazing new visuals, and advancing the Sleeper storyline with mysterious cloaked structures appearing all over EVE and Sleeper NPCs making incursions into normal space. The update also brought us a ship-carrying freighter called the Bowhead and the first of a new line of tech 3 tactical destroyers called the Confessor. While every race will eventually get its own tech 3 destroyer, the Amarr Confessor was the first to be released due to the Amarr winning a research race player event. Tactical Destroyers are a completely new class of ship in EVE with the ability to transform between three different combat modes in the middle of a fight to adapt to changing circumstances. Defense Mode boosts armour resistances and reduces the ship's signature radius, Propulsion Mode increases the ship's speed and agility, and Sharpshooter Mode increases turret optimal range and boosts the ship's sensors. With Confessor prices having now dropped below the 100 million ISK mark and more pilots finishing the skill training required, people have started figuring out some interesting ship setups for it. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I check out a few of the Confessor setups players have devised so far and look at what makes this transforming terror tick. Continue reading EVE Evolved: Fitting the Confessor for PvE and PvP EVE Evolved: Fitting the Confessor for PvE and PvP originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 04 Jan 2015 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Final Fantasy XI laps the Year of the Sheep Posted: 04 Jan 2015 11:00 AM PST Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Events (In-Game), Lore, Anniversaries, Subscription Here's a fun Final Fantasy XI fact: When the game launched in the west in 2003, it was the Year of the Sheep on the Chinese zodiac calendar. Now it's 2015, and the Year of the Sheep has arrived once more, putting the team in an interesting position. "When we first created the new year's event, we never imagined that it would ever come full circle, and thus the festivities are especially moving for me," writes Producer Akihiko Matsui. To celebrate the new year, the team posted a short story on the site and is in the midst of a sheep-related new year's event. Players are encouraged to "consort and cavort" with sheep for prizes until the event ends on January 14th. Final Fantasy XI laps the Year of the Sheep originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 04 Jan 2015 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Source: Producer's Letter

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