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Epic is shuttering ‘Paragon’ following success of 'Fortnite'
Last week, an Epic Games representative explained Paragon's uncertain future on the game's subreddit, which worried fans -- especially as it confirmed that developers had been siphoned off to assist with the massively successful Fortnite. It turns out those apocalyptic concerns were correct: Paragon is getting shut down on April 26th. To make up for it, every player, on all platforms, can apply for a refund.
A connected cooktop could keep you from burning breakfast
The world needs an app-connected hotplate like ... well, I'm not sure if we need one, but we're getting one, regardless. FirstBuild, the company responsible for a $250-to-$500 coffeemaker, is back at it with the Paragon setup. Promising precision cooking via an array of built-in sensors that automatically adjust the induction cooktop's heat output automatically, FirstBuild hopes you'll think the granular temperature adjustment settings are worth the price of admission.
PS Plus members get free early access to 'Paragon' on July 5th
In more Games That Aren't Overwatch news, Epic Studios is offering PlayStation Plus members a $20 Starter Pack for its hero brawler Paragon for free. That includes early access to the game over a month before the open beta launches on August 16.
'Gears of War' studio is making a MOBA for PS4 and PC
Epic Games, the studio best known for the Gears of War franchise, is building Paragon, a new multiplayer shooter for the PlayStation 4 and PC. It's a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena), meaning its gameplay is reminiscent of titles like League of Legends, Smite or Dota -- two teams of five players fighting for control of a single map. Paragon includes a card-collecting aspect, too, because if you're going to make a game that appeals to a large online audience (Hearthstone, anyone?), it might as well have all the bells and whistles. Paragon enters open beta on PS4 and PC in summer 2016, followed by a paid "early access" launch in early spring. Epic announced Paragon during today's PlayStation Experience keynote address.
Epic Games' new PC shooter is called 'Paragon'
Thought the new Unreal Tournament was Epic Games' only upcoming PC shooter? Think again: today the company quietly announced Paragon -- but truth be told, we know almost nothing about the new title. Epic is giving the game a slow reveal, teasing a new playable "hero" character for the game each week until December 3rd. Unfortunately, the game's reveal doesn't explain what the what kind of game Paragon actually is.
One Shots: The last superhero
I've been holding onto this screenshot for the better part of the year for a time when the world entire would need a jolt of City of Heroes to get it through the next day. I think that today is that day. Behold! A superhero! Reader Michelle said that she was still traumatized by the game shutting down: "This particular screenie was of my last 50. He was a Fire Armor/Electric Melee tank named Demolition Companion. He was a clockwork that the Resistance attempted to reprogram but didn't complete, so he was broken (hence why he was on fire all the time) and very, very dangerous. In this shot he's standing in the sewers ready to wipe out some Resistance scum. (He was one of my only Loyalists.) I wish I'd gotten to RP him more." 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!
Paragon scores world first mythic Highmaul clear
Paragon scored the world first clear of mythic Highmaul this weekend. Method, the first to slay 6 out of 7 Highmaul bosses, was anticipated to finish first, but Paragon came from behind to win the day. Congratulations to Paragon! Hopefully this means their raid team will be able to take a break for the holidays -- assuming the pursuit of mythic gear doesn't override their celebrations. Blackrock Foundry isn't slated to open until early 2015.
NCsoft might allow players to resurrect the City of Heroes IP
There's good news for City of Heroes fans to celebrate now, even if it's not a finished thing yet. Nate Downes, President of Missing Worlds Media, has posted about a project wholly unrelated to City of Titans and yet entirely tied to it: the quest to resurrect the City of Heroes IP. He explains a story that began in September of last year, starting with a few contacts within NCsoft who led to the ultimate goal of resurrecting the last version of the game as well as licensing out the IP to its spiritual successors. The proposal currently on the table before NCsoft would allow the game's spiritual successors to drop the "spiritual" portion of their title, enable a restoration of the game's servers for the last update (albeit with no saved character data), and create the potential for a "transition" server between the original game and its successors. While it's far from a done deal, it's the best news that the former residents of Paragon City have heard since the lights went dark -- there may be brightness on the horizon.
Players allegedly negotiating with NCsoft to buy City of Heroes
Instead of spending gobs of volunteer development time and money on City of Heroes knock-offs, wouldn't it be better to simply acquire the real deal? That's the thought behind a fan effort to purchase the rights to the superhero MMO from NCsoft, while proving to the publisher that the team has the talent and capability to handle the property. According to a poster named Ironwolf on the Titan Network message boards, progress is being made on this front. Ironwolf wrote the following on August 13th: "I did contact the team yesterday and got this reply back: Things are moving along. We should have things worth showing fairly soon, made a great leap forward yesterday." The efforts to purchase City of Heroes started in early March, according to a timeline on the same thread. On March 12th, Ironwolf noted, "Got letter back from [former NCsoft executive] Chris Chung -- it showed that is WAS possible to buy the game." On April 5th, he wrote that the general range of the price is "very doable." [Thanks to Duane for the tip!]
Why testing matters
People often look at things like the current Friends and Family Alpha test and wonder why they exist. Why not go straight to beta, or even just do everything via internal testing? Well, there's lots of reasons. One of them is one expressed very well in this tweet by Russ Petersen. You tend to repeat your own content so many times during development that it's hard to see things through fresh eyes, no matter how you try - Russ Petersen (@nite_moogle) June 10, 2014 What we've seen happen through several betas is that content has been changed, reworked and redesigned based on Alpha or Beta feedback. I'm reminded of the Cataclysm expansion and Paragon's effort to be World First on Heroic Sinestra, a fight that simply hadn't been tested very much externally, in order to keep it relatively unknown. This meant that it was a heroic-only boss, being attempted for world-first status, while the fight was being hotfixed. It was necessary to preserve some of the mystery of the fight, because let's face it, if it had been open to testing someone would have written up the strategy and Paragon would have been going in knowing what the fight was and wasn't. But it also meant that Paragon had to learn what the fight was and wasn't while it was being changed, during the attempts. Similarly, the drastic revamp of the Jade Forest during Mists beta can't be undersold here. This happened right in the middle of the beta -- players who were testing out content had to be moved to the next zone and leveled up while the Forest was completely redesigned. In both cases, we see how the presence or absence of testing can have wide consequences for everyone.
Perfect Ten: The MMOs that influenced me greatly
Every one of us has an "MMO resume": a list of titles that we've played, whether briefly or extensively. Some of those are just games, casual flings that meant nothing. But others can take a more meaningful role in our lives, influencing how we experience and view MMOs. I would scarcely say that my resume is one of the most robust you'll ever see; I'm sure plenty of you have played more than I. However, I like to think that I've had a journey over the course of a decade or so that's shaped who I am as a gamer. Since it's my birthday today, I'm going to share 10 of those influential MMOs with you and what they've done for me. You're going to get me cake.
The Daily Grind: Is there an MMO you're too wary to play?
Ever since City of Heroes was abruptly and unjustly sunsetted, I've toyed with the idea of giving Champions Online another spin. It can never be everything City of Heroes was to me, but it has a lot of the same ideas behind it, and it's closer in spirit and gameplay to my beloved CoH than the admittedly few other superhero options on the table. But Champions Online has been so spottily supported by its developers over the last few years that I have a nagging suspicion I'd just be wasting my time, that the game is locked into a cycle of decay that will only frustrate me in the long run if I invest too much time, money, or emotion into it. And that's enough to keep me away. How about you -- is there an MMO you'd like to play but that just makes you too wary to actually jump back in? What specifically is holding you back? 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!
City of Titans updates trailer for City of Heroes' 10th birthday
Today would have been City of Heroes' 10th anniversary, believe it or not. And while fond memories and colorful screenshots are all that remain of the former superhero MMO, the spiritual successor City of Titans is being built to fill in the void that was left behind. Missing Worlds Media, the team behind City of Titans, released a new version of the teaser trailer for the Kickstarter project on this solemn occasion. It mostly consists of concept art and unpainted models being plunked down to make a city, but if you're looking to the future for your superhero fix, it might be an early glimpse at your future home. Give it a watch after the break. [Update: Not to be outdone, Heroes and Villains also released new work-in-progress screenshots of its own spiritual successor to CoH in honor of the original's anniversary.]
Working As Intended: Change for change's sake in World of Warcraft
MMORPGs struggle to meet two contradictory goals: They want to provide stability, permanence, a world you feel you can always come home to, and they want to provide dynamism, change, a world that always has something fresh and new. Lean too hard to one side -- change too much or too little -- and the backlash from fans and former fans and future fans can be overwhelming. That's something Blizzard has never learned. With World of Warcraft, Blizzard is constantly chasing different demographics to maximize its playerbase, and those different demographics typically want different things out of the game, be they veterans or returnees or hardcores or casuals. Most of the game's expansions have retooled combat and classes and specs in some way, but in Cataclysm, and now again in Warlords of Draenor, the class revamps have been so far-reaching that they actually manage to turn off both veterans and returnees. Gamers, it seems, are willing to tolerate only so much dramatic change to their precious characters before rebelling. This is a lesson City of Heroes could have taught World of Warcraft had Blizzard been listening.
The Game Archaeologist: The danger of expecting lightning to strike twice
It's no secret that many of the more successful Kickstarter projects over the past few years have heavily capitalized on player nostalgia, brand names, and former dev gods who are back for another round. The formula for drawing in the big bucks seems to be the following: Take something players hugely loved back in the day, dangle the concept of a sequel (spiritual or otherwise), and promise some measure of iterative improvement. I once wrote about how we really can't go back again to recreate a particular game experience because it was usually a confluence of several factors that were related to where the industry was then and where you were then. I'm not saying that there isn't value to retro gaming, playing classic MMOs, or involving the past in future development! But there is a danger in how we as gamers become so beholden to our nostalgia that we dare lightning to strike twice -- and we're paying big bucks to see that happen. But can we? Will it?
SOE's Georgeson on City of Heroes and the future of EQ
IGN has released another snippet of its recent interview with EverQuest franchise lead Dave Georgeson. Earlier today Georgeson talked up his enthusiasm for virtual reality, while this latest cut focuses on EverQuest, EverQuest II, and City of Heroes. Yeah, you read that right, as apparently the late great superhero title was one of Georgeson's personal faves. "Everybody who plays any MMO never wants it to die," he says. "You invest a little bit of your soul in an MMO, you spend a lot of time in it and so on and so forth, so of course you never want one of them to die." As for EQ and EQII, Georgeson says that SOE has "no intention of ever shutting those games down."
MMO Mechanics: Predicting the future of MMO game mechanics
I've been thinking heavily about the future since our parent network's budget cuts were announced, so I decided it would be very apt to pen my last edition of MMO Mechanics with that same train of thought. The industry has changed remarkably over the last decade with trends like the free-to-play revolution and innovations in everything from loot distribution to quest design. In my previous article, I looked at the trend toward using procedural generation and what that might mean for the future of MMOs. In this article, I'd like to give a better overview of where I think the genre is headed in the coming years and what that means for game mechanics. My predictions are based on market patterns and technology developments, including the great indie revolution, the effects of declining subscriptions on investment, and upcoming virtual reality technology. Pie-in-the-sky fantasy or an accurate predictor of things to come? Let me know what you think.
Field Journal: A strong CoHmmunity
Last week a package arrived for me, sent by the incomparable Beau Hindman. He had been clearing out some of his old gaming paraphernalia, and when he happened on his old City of Heroes disks, something spurred him to offer them freely to anyone in the team who wanted them. I gratefully accepted. Ever since they arrived, they've dominated my thoughts, despite some highly dramatic events in the time since, weighty and uplifting alike. It's a game that just keeps inspiring acts of generosity and kindness. I started playing CoH on the very day it went free-to-play, but it struck a chord with me nearly instantly. I soon found it had an amazing community on top of everything the developers were responsible for, and that's when I fell in love. It went from "that old game probably no one plays anymore" to "the best MMO I have ever played" to "the cancellation that broke my heart" in all too short a time. Fortunately, the example set by the incredible community and its determination to carry the torch helped to mend my coronary fractures. As much as there is to learn from all aspects of MMOs, the single most important element will always be community. I can think of no finer example to look to than CoH.
MMO Mechanics: Procedural generation is the future
MMOs are infamous for the exorbitant amount of both time and money that is required to make a fantastic end product. Much of this effort and expenditure goes into producing very specific content such as leveling zones, quest chains, and dungeons. The classic themepark MMO in which all the rides are carefully engineered and maintained is compelling for a time, but the content therein tends to take longer to create than it does to exhaust. This invariably leads to redundant content that ends up on the scrapheap once it has been enjoyed for a time. Procedural generation corrects much of this redundancy by providing essentially limitless variations of content, adding replayability and variety to the usual MMO repertoire. It also opens up some unique mechanics, like Elite: Dangerous' planned procedurally generated galaxy that is a full-scale replica of the Milky Way. In this week's MMO Mechanics, I will look at how the genre is evolving because of how accessible procedural generation techniques have become to developers. I'll also explore how this might affect the future of MMOs by examining the mechanics that upcoming titles will incorporate.
Diablo III's Paragon 2.0 just might be going live today
Although there is no official word on Diablo III's site, Senior Producer Alex Mayberry tweeted that patch 2.0.1 will be going live today. The major feature of this patch, also known as Paragon 2.0, is that it adds more end-game character advancement and replayability with the updated Paragon leveling system. The changes include removing the level cap for earning Paragon experience, making Paragon levels account-wide, and allowing players the freedom to allocate Paragon Points however they want within the category (defense, offense, core, or utility) that each specific level's point is awarded. Catch more details about Paragon 2.0 on the official site. [Thanks to Wesley for the tip!]
