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Sex and sexuality: The Jane Austen game breaking the MMO rules
Ever, Jane is an online role-playing game set in the dramatic, romantic worlds of Jane Austen. It invites players to attend sophisticated dinner parties and fancy balls, share gossip, keep secrets, fall in love, get married and climb the ribbon-lined social ladder of Regency-era England. It is definitely not a sex game, though sometimes players get wrapped up in this universe of exquisite gowns and forbidden desire, and they simply can't help themselves. "Let's just say that we had to put in private chat," Ever, Jane creator Judy Tyrer says with a laugh.
'Star Trek Online' launches for free on consoles
Star Trek Online arrived on PC in the busy MMORPG scene in February 2010, just as the sun started to set on the genre. But the game followed industry trends to keep its playerbase, relaunching in January 2012 with a free-to-play tier and releasing semi-annual "season" expansions of new content at no cost. Today, it's landing on PS4 and Xbox One, following other FTP titles in the move to consoles.
Ubisoft delays 'The Division' DLC to fix the base game
Ubisoft's survival shooter multiplayer title The Division had a successful launch back in March, but unpolished design choices erupted into outright game-breaking bugs in the free content additions released in the months thereafter. While the game's DLC roadmap pegged its second paid expansion Survival to be the next out the door, the studio will push that back until later in 2016 and dedicate the upcoming October update to fixing the core game. That leaves the third planned release, Last Fall, delayed until sometime in 2017.
Blizzard considers running classic 'World of Warcraft' servers
Do you miss the early, headier days of World of Warcraft, before endless changes turned it into a different beast? You're far from alone -- hundreds of thousands of people were playing on Nostalrius, a fan-run server that went back to basics, until Blizzard shut it down early in April over intellectual property jitters. However, the game studio isn't deaf to your cries. It's telling WoW fans that it has been mulling the idea of running its own "pristine" servers, without the boosts and tweaks that have slipped into the online role-playing title over the years.
Ubisoft to ban 'Division' players who exploit its shoddy coding
A community manager for Ubisoft's hit game, The Division, warned players against exploiting in-game glitches to gather extra end-game loot. The issue first appeared last week with the debut of the game's Falcon Lost expansion map pack, which offers large-scale raid missions and valuable rare items for players that beat the dungeon. That loot was only supposed to drop once a week; thereby requiring users to play through repeatedly to collect the full armor/weapon sets.
The massively multiplayer online role-playing orgy I never had
It was supposed to be my first orgy. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.
'EVE Online' now rewards you for helping science
At last, playing a ton of EVE Online can do a lot of good in the real world. As promised, the massively multiplayer space title now includes a Project Discovery minigame that has you contributing to real science. If you offer to classify proteins in between space flights, you'll both help scientists understand the proteins' roles in the human body (especially relating to disease) and earn in-game rewards ranging from ISK currency to loyalty points. You don't have to be a paying EVE subscriber to participate, so it won't hurt to give the project a go if you're eager to advance medicine while you explore the virtual cosmos.
Here's a sneak peek at the new 'Warcraft' movie trailer
Legendary Pictures today released a 16-second clip of the trailer for Duncan Jones' upcoming World of Warcraft movie. The trailer itself will debut this Friday at Blizzard's BlizzCon event while fans will have to wait until June 10th to see the movie in all of its CGI-dominated glory.
Poorly-named 'League of Legends' players get psychology surveys
League of Legends has roughly 67 million players, so the developer has a big challenge when it comes to monitoring the community the size of a small country — and curbing the worser elements. While it's involved itself with how players interact with the game, this time it's doing something more: it's recently started asking ill-named players to take psychological self-evaluation tests. LoL players can report others for inappropriate character names that don't gel with the game's terms of use. However, this week, some players noticing a different naming process for characters that weren't okay the first time around. Gamers now have to complete a survey, play 50 matches, then follow that up with another survey. After that, players can change their name to something that follows the rules. (Before, cheekily-named users got a temporary name until they picked a better one.)
Dear Veronica: My video game addiction
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-919275{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-919275, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-919275{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-919275").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Boy... I asked about weird places you guys have overheard cellphone conversations, and you did not disappoint in your responses! From asbestos-filled crawlspaces to family wakes, there are some pretty weird people out there that need, NEED, to take their call right that moment. Speaking of addiction, we have a great question from a viewer about video games! Since I'm not qualified to speak as a doctor (and as a highly-functioning video game addict myself) I've brought on Dr. Anthony Bean to fill you in. Then I proceed to answer two more questions about video games, so I guess I'm just an enabler. Keep sending in those question to me via email, and on Twitter using the hashtag #DearVeronica! You can also subscribe in iTunes and by RSS. See you next time!
'Guild Wars 2' cheater faces public humiliation before ban
Most cheaters in online role-playing games face an ignominious end. The developers ban them, and that's all she wrote. Not one particularly egregious Guild Wars 2 offender, however. When game developer ArenaNet finally took action against a hacker who had been terrorizing player-versus-player battles for weeks, the security team decided that some public humiliation was in order. It stripped one of the player's characters naked, jumped this persona off a ledge, and proceeded to delete every character linked to the account -- all recorded for posterity on video, as you can see below.
Sony has sold the MMO division responsible for 'EverQuest' and 'Planetside 2'
Sony has sold its online gaming division Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). SOE has been making games since the late '90s, and is probably most famous for developing the EverQuest series. Most of its games have been released for both Windows and Sony platforms, but as a result of the acquisition it'll apparently be bringing future titles to Xbox and mobile platforms as well. The buyer? A relatively unknown investment firm called Columbus Nova.
Ask Massively: Ridiculing e-sports is bad for MMOs
I don't love e-sports. I've never really been a fan. I used to enjoy spectating Guild Wars matches, but only in short bursts. Truth is, I prefer playing in PvP to watching it. I feel that way about real sports too; the ones I like, I'd rather play than watch. (Except tennis. I have no idea why, but I could watch that all day.) And if the MMORPG community's comments are any judge, I am not alone in my indifference to e-sports. Actually, "indifference" is probably too tame a word; some MMO gamers are outright hostile to e-sports, be those e-sports jammed into proper MMORPGs or waaaaay out on the fringes of the online gamosphere. That hostile ridicule of e-sports, however, degrades online gaming, our corner of it as much as anyone's.
MMO dev: Steam Greenlight still 'a big black box' for indies
Fairytale Distillery is an independent studio based in Munich, Germany, with four full-time developers and a handful of freelancers who help out as needed – and they're all making an MMO for PC, Mac and Linux called Das Tal. It's not as massive as EVE Online or as intricate as World of Warcraft, but it's a huge project for such a tiny team to tackle. Fairytale Distillery co-founder Alexander Zacherl seems to have a solid development and launch plan that sees Das Tal thriving until the late 2020s, when he expects it to shut down. With just two founders and two developers who work on the game daily, Fairytale Distillery is overextending itself trying to handle all aspects of launching an MMO. Everyone on the team has hands in designing, developing, marketing and selling the game, Zacherl says. Part of promoting and selling Das Tal was the game's Greenlight campaign on Steam. Das Tal was approved for sale on Steam on November 6, after 91 days on Greenlight. During this process, Zacherl noticed a shift in Steam's approach to Greenlight – approved games aren't announced in batches anymore. Instead, it seems as if games in the top 100 are constantly getting the go-ahead with no official announcements, he says.
'Goat Simulator' is becoming an extra-absurd role-playing game
Believe it or not, Goat Simulator is about to get even more ridiculous. Coffee Stain Studios is teasing the launch of Goat MMO Simulator, a massively multiplayer "simulation" add-on for its anything-goes animal game. How absurd is this barnyard role-playing saga going to get? Let's put it this way: it revolves around faction warfare between goats and sheep, and one of the character classes is "Microwave." That says all you need to know, really. It's not clear if Goat MMO will hold your attention any better than the core game, but it won't cost you much to give this a whirl -- the expansion will be free for Goat Simulator owners when it arrives on November 20th.
The Think Tank: Confronting the 'unbundling' of MMORPGs
Last month, the long-running, scholarly virtual world blog Terra Nova updated with a post suggesting that the blog, like the worlds it covered, might be coming to an end (the blog, at least, has been saved in the interim). Founder Dr Edward Castronova argued that virtual worlds and MMOs have seen a recent "unbundling," with sociality, story, multi-player combat, and economy splitting off into different directions and platforms instead of staying unified in MMOs. The only MMO element that stayed were the people, and "it proved impossible to construct mechanisms that allowed people to find fulfillment from their fellow-players rather than frustration. In the end, the concept of a multi-player fantasy world broke on the shoals of the infinite weirdness of human personality." It's pretty depressing. But is it true? Are MMOs and virtual worlds doomed to forever splinter apart thanks to niche-ier media and be ruined by their own players? That's what I asked the Massively crew in this week's Think Tank (and our writers rose to the challenge -- every single one of them).
Layoffs hit Infinite Crisis developer Turbine
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment confirmed today that a round of layoffs will soon affect The Lord of the Rings Online developer Turbine, Inc. "As part of our normal business process, we're routinely looking at the strategic alignment of our company," a Warner Bros. representative told Joystiq. "Unfortunately, in order for us to invest in growth areas at Turbine, we have to eliminate some positions. These are always tough decisions, which we don't approach lightly, but it's crucial that Turbine is structured in a way that reflects the current and coming marketplace." After debuting its landmark MMORPG Asheron's Call in 1999, Turbine continued with a string of successful PC follow-ups and expansions, including The Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online. The studio's latest project, the DC Universe-based MOBA Infinite Crisis, is currently in open beta, with a final release due by the end of the year. [Image: Turbine]
RuneScape getting Hearthstone treatment with new card game
RuneScape developer Jagex revealed a new complementary game to the studio's MMO today, Chronicle: RuneScape Legends. Set in RuneScape's primary world, Gielinor, the game is of the collectible card-battling variety and "focuses on quest building, allowing players to craft their own miniature RPGs against enemies." The game first debuted at Jagex's RuneFest event in London over the weekend, and the developer said it's been quietly working on Chronicle: RuneScape Legends "since the start of the year." Jagex's announcement follows the recent success of Blizzard's Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a card game based on the World of Warcraft universe. Hearthstone reached 20 million players as of September on PC, Mac and mobile platforms. Likewise, Chronicle: RuneScape Legends will launch in 2015 for PC and Mac as well as mobile and tablet devices. [Image: Jagex]
Ascent: The Space Game's Kickstarter will fund updated graphics
When we last checked in on Ascent: The Space Game, the indie sci-fi sandbox MMORPG was already eminently playable, having launched on Desura and angling for a Steam greenlight. Now Fluffy Kitten Studios has posted a Kickstarter intended to fund specific upgrades for the game -- specifically, improved graphics and UI. In fact, the complete budget breakdown is provided on the Kickstarter page. Backer rewards include premium access time, credits, Steam keys, and ships. You could even get a planet named after you. The Ascent sandbox emphasizes freedom, colonization, exploration, trade, combat, farming, mining, ship customization, starbases, and co-op play with fully consensual PvP. The Kickstarter boasts of the game's 270 billion star systems. Massively spoke to James Hicks, founder and CEO of Fluffy Kitten Studios, back in April, when he explained to us his business model, his target audience, and how he's come so far by himself. As he put it then, "Have a look at what we've done, with one developer, in one year, on a shoestring budget for art, music, and sound. Do you want to see what we can do in another year, with more?" The Kickstarter seeks $35,000 and is already at 51% of its goal with 25 days to go as of the time of this writing.
Blizzard cancels its next-gen online game despite seven years of work
Have you been anticipating Titan, Blizzard's first online role-playing game since World of Warcraft? Unfortunately, you're going to have to pin your hopes on some other title. The studio tells Polygon that it has cancelled Titan despite pouring seven years of effort into the project, which was never officially announced. As Blizzard's Mike Morhaime explains, Blizzard just "didn't find the fun" during a reevaluation -- the game was extremely ambitious, but it "didn't come together" as a cohesive work that you'd want to play. The developers were also nervous about defining themselves as an online RPG company. They want to build "great games every time," even if that means switching genres.
