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Arena Pass 2013 how-to video
As our own Olivia Grace wrote about not too long ago, registration for the 2013 Arena Pass is currently open for those interested PvP players. Quickly put, the $20.00 Arena Pass grants players access to a separate server in which you can create up to eleven level 90 characters and purchase high-quality PvP gear in order to compete in 3v3 arena matches. Participants can earn the Armored Murloc pet for completing 50 matches on the same character, and those in the top 1000 teams at the end of the rated phase can also earn the "Vanquisher" title for their characters on live realms. For those who might still be feeling a bit confused by how all this works, Blizzard has released a video tutorial that walks you through the process of signing up for the Arena Pass. If you're thinking about the 2013 pass, but still unsure, you might want to check it out embedded above. And for those of you who will be competing this year, good luck!
Registration for the 2013 Arena Pass now open
At long last, registration for the 2013 Arena Pass has opened. This pass, which you have to purchase for the princely sum of $20. Once you're in, you can create brand new level 90 characters with full sets of PvP, and usually some PvE gear, and join arena teams to duke it out with your friends and enemies. There are various rewards to be gleaned from getting good ladder positions, such as titles, but there's also a Murkimus pet that players can earn just for participation in 50 rated games. The tournament is done in phases, starting off with a practice phase, then moving into the ranked phases. After the practice phase ends, after about 5 weeks, there is a rating penalty of 150 for team roster changes, so be sure to have your teams set by that point. Once the rated phase is over, Blizzard will leave the realms open for players to practice and try comps for the rest of the year. It's a great place to go to just have a play around with characters, classes and comps, and do some PvP!
The Daily Grind: Is maintenance mode better than nothing at all?
In the last few years, long before rumors that Vanguard would be heading down the F2P path were confirmed, players groused about the state of the game, complaining that SOE was allowing the game to languish with no devs and no updates. Those were exaggerations, of course, but the players were vocal about their perceived neglect, throwing around dirty words like "abandonware," and worse, "maintenance mode" -- the idea that an MMO is just kept as is with no updates and only enough attention to keep the servers running. Of course, players whose games were sunsetted entirely (Tabula Rasa, Asheron's Call 2, and The Matrix Online, to name a few) might have wished for maintenance mode rather than death. Getting no updates might suck, but at least you still have a game to play. What say you -- is maintenance mode better than nothing at all? 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!
PlanetSide 2 website features new Terran Republic lore
It's been a while since we've featured a PlanetSide 2 lore update, mainly because more interesting gameplay info was on offer from Sony Online Entertainment. In the absence of new vehicle screens and Matt Higby Q&A's, though, we'll happily tell about the latest story-centric update to the official site (hey, some PS2 news is better than no PS2 news, amirite?). Last night's blurb features one Tom Connery (presumably no relation to Sean, since it's the year 2640). Connery is prone to making holovid records of his life in the Terran Republic, and his latest is a somewhat harrowing account of a collapsing wormhole and the plight of the 40,000 colonists stuck on the wrong side of it. Click over to the official PS2 website for the full report.
Richard Garriott: 'Exceptionally unusual pressures' helped tank Tabula Rasa
What truly happened with the sad tale of Tabula Rasa, the scifi MMO that had the full backing of Richard Garriott and NCsoft -- and yet lasted only 15 months before being shuttered? For the full scoop, it's good to go right to the source: General British himself. Garriott sat down with Eurogamer for a candid dissection of what went wrong with Tabula Rasa. Ultimately, he feels that he did not do enough to make the game the best it could've been. Initially, Garriott's team brought on several Asian developers to help shape the title to be appealing to the Eastern market. The partnership didn't work out, and after two years the team basically started over. By then, Tabula Rasa was already struggling. "So Tabula Rasa started its two-year late restart under exceptionally unusual pressures and with understandable corporate discontent, which made it very difficult to finish," he said. Garriott then acknowledges that the MMO's failure has caused players to be wary about his future projects: "Since Ultima Online was a fair time back and Tabula Rasa had its troubles, it makes perfect sense that people would go, 'I'm cautious as to what my expectations are.'"
The Soapbox: Be here now
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Games die. It's an unpleasant reality but a reality just the same, with the highest-profile death on the horizon being Star Wars Galaxies. Business decisions get made, and unfortunately, sometimes those decisions boil down to "this game is no longer worth the money to keep it running." If you're lucky, the announcement comes with a great deal of time for you to wrap up what you've always wanted to do in the game; if you're unlucky, you might have a couple of weeks before the servers go dark. So what do you do as a player? How do you cope with the fact that the game is shutting down? There are a lot of approaches, but I think it's unfortunate that most of the reactions seem to center around some last-ditch effort to save the game from oblivion. It's entirely missing the point to try and pull the game back from the brink of death, and it does a disservice to both the game and the players when you spend your last days desperately fighting a foregone conclusion.
The Mog Log: The natives are restless
Allow me a little bit of woolgathering. When I started working for Massively, it was October of last year, and Final Fantasy XIV had just been announced as the official title for the game code-named "Rapture" and unofficially codenamed "the sequel to Final Fantasy XI" by everyone else who had seen a single screenshot. About four days after you read this, the game is going to be officially live for players around the world willing to shell out an extra bit of cash for various doodads and a headstart. This is kind of baffling. Objectively, you know that the game is getting close to release, but it's not made real until the release is right at your doorstep. So before I go too far off the deep end and start thinking about things like the franchise having started when I was four, let's move on to the discussions coming out of the impending launch. And really, do come back next week when Final Fantasy XIV comes out, as I'm sure we'll have plenty of things on launch day. (Very sure, in fact.)
Richard Garriott and the choppy waters of social gaming
The term "social games" or its frequently-used cousin "Facebook games" is one that gets talked about a lot by MMO gamers these days. Specifically, it gets talked about in a similar tone to the UbiSoft DRM nightmare or the entire Infinity Ward fiasco. So it's going to turn some heads -- and raise some hackles -- when Richard Garriott moves into the social gaming scene. Creator of the genre-setting Ultima Online and the much-discussed Tabula Rasa, Garriott has explained in an interview with Gamasutra why he made the shift and what he thinks of the social gaming scene as it stands now. In short, he sees in social and mobile games the same things that marked other major shifts in the overall philosophy of making games, making them the next big wave. It's not an uncommon sentiment, but he goes on to point out that many of the virtues these games have, such as no installation and no up-front cost, are desirable traits in any game. He goes on to discuss stories in games and how he thinks that even social games can have them, even as he advocates less emphasis on freeform player-generated narratives. Take a look at the full interview to get a clearer picture on what we can expect from Garriott next -- and considering his place in the field of MMOs, it should be notable.
Garriott's Mission trailer offers a sneak peek before SXSW
You may love him, or you may hate him; but nobody can deny the influence Lord British has had on the MMO industry. Many feel that Ultima Online was a shining example of MMO mechanics, not since repeated in quite the right combination. Later, Richard Garriott went on to create Tabula Rasa for NCsoft -- a game beloved by some, reviled by others. As part of his own trip to space, he launched Operation Immortality, in an attempt to draw more interest to Tabula Rasa. He went up in space, he came back down, NCsoft released him. We all know the story by now. But what you may not know is that Garriott had a crew filming the entire time he was involved with the space program. They've compiled the footage into a documentary called Man on a Mission, which is slated to be released later this year at South by Southwest. However, for those who would like a little taste what life was like for Garriott during those hectic days juggling public appearances and training in Russia, you can check out the trailer on his Facebook page now. [via GameSetWatch]
The Daily Grind: 2009's defining moment
The look back has already started here and there, and we've got only two days left -- assuming you count today. And we've seen a lot of things happen over the last year, which everyone on-staff has their own opinion about. To some, it was the year of free-to-play. To others, it was the year of dying games. But there's no way to encapsulate everything about 2009 into just one statement, with the industry still changing and evolving. Sometimes even seemingly small changes are what we remember (fondly or otherwise) when viewed in hindsight. Out of all of the things that happened this year, what struck you as the most defining moment? Was it something major, such as the end of Tabula Rasa or The Matrix Online? Or was it something minor that other players might not even notice? Did it make the whole year better, worse, or was it simply a turning point? What seems like it's going to stick in your memory when you think back on the year as a whole? And as a connected topic, what seems like a big deal at the moment that you're pretty certain isn't as important as people say?
Avoiding a sinking game
With the holiday season usually comes a healthy dose of gift money, and what comes with extra money for many people reading the site is new games. It's not as if the past year has been exactly spare on game releases, although the success of several is a bit up in the air. But be forewarned -- if you needed the reminder, 2009 could very well be the year we learned that no title is immune to being shut down, with Tabula Rasa and The Matrix Online being among the highest-profile games to finally be shut down for good due to sales figures. Bio Break has an excellent post on what is termed "avoiding the Titanic" -- in short, making sure that you're not signing up for a game that's going to just leave you high and dry. The recent announcement from Vanguard is among the examples cited, although some fans would be quick to point out it's not a death knell for the game. But it doesn't sound like the game is going to advance far beyond its current state, and for many games, that means a slow bleeding-out. Of course, avoiding titles that are perceived as hopeless can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it's worth keeping in mind that perhaps that money might be better spent if you question a game's near future.
Producer letter addresses the future of Warhammer Online
It's funny how times change. Not so long ago the most disconcerting thing that players of Warhammer Online players had to deal with were the numerous changes introduced in patch 1.3.2. Now, however, the recent layoffs that have hit EA and Mythic are far more worrisome. Executive producer Jeff Hickman has taken the time to try and assuage the community fears with a recent letter to the community regarding the future of Mythic's franchises and the game's ensuing viability. Hickman doesn't address the layoffs directly, instead using the letter simply to try and reinforce the image that the game is going to continue and keep being improved upon. The letter becomes a bit more unsettling when Hickman calls the response to the aforementioned patch 1.3.2 "great." It's quite likely nothing negative is going to happen to Warhammer Online, as it has been making an earnest effort to turn around a disappointing first year, but time hasn't yet healed the wound of "triple A and here to stay." Different companies and different games, but it's fresh in our collective memory, and only time will tell what the ultimate impact of recent events will be upon WAR.
The Daily Grind: What kills your confidence in a game before you play it?
There are elements of games that are turn-offs for all of us. Some of us love PvP, for example, and a world with virtually none of it isn't very appealing. But sometimes we don't event start playing the game before our feelings about it go straight into the dumpster. It's hard to argue that Tabula Rasa's frequent shifts during development inspired players to expect any longevity out of it, and whether or not it's the case Warhammer Online's frequent server merges and population shuffling have given the impression of a game that's struggling a bit. Sometimes you hear of a developer or project head assigned that makes you cringe, sometimes it's a choice of IP or business models, or sometimes it's just the number of issues you have patching the game to try out the free client. We ask you, readers, what makes you start losing faith before you've even loaded up a game for the first time? It might not be a dealbreaker, and you might even look back at it and laugh, but there are certain things that make you more nervous about committing to a game. What does it for you?
The Daily Grind: Do you buy lifetime memberships?
On Monday we told you Cryptic had announced a lifetime membership for Champions Online. For $199 you get access to the Star Trek Online closed beta, special costumes not available to anyone else and other juicy perks. Cool huh? Now while lifetime memberships are not new (LotRO springs to mind), it's a lot of money to try a must-play game but, in a way, it also binds you to said MMO. You're buying before you try, in effect, and promising to invest a large amount of time in a particular game based on screen shots, lore or the IP.The problem is, it's hard to tell whether a game will be hit and miss and if it ultimately goes the way of Tabula Rasa and The Matrix Online. At the same time, the really popular MMOs like WoW never seem to offer lifetime subs, as if they know they will be so popular that subscriptions will keep the game going well into the next decade. I'm wondering, constant readers, do you buy lifetime memberships and did you do it because it would work out cheaper or because you genuinely love that MMO?
Richard Garriott blasts NCsoft with $24 million lawsuit
When Tabula Rasa shut down in January, we thought we'd heard the last of NCsoft and Richard Garriott in the same sentence. Oh, how wrong we were. Yesterday, Kotaku broke the news that Garriott was suing his old pals at NCsoft to the tune of $24 million for fraud, and generally being a bunch of fetid arsebiscuits. Details were decidedly skimpy, however - why would Garriott go after the company so long after his departure? What had gone rotten in the state of Denmark? This morning, GamePolitics added their .02 to the mix and upped the ante with the legal documents involved - and boy, are they illuminating. According to Richard's side of the story, it goes like this: Richard & co form Destination Games, and are bought out by NCsoft in exchange for some very hefty stock options. After Tabula Rasa launches, Richard gets tapped for a space flight he signed up for some years prior. After talking to NCsoft higher-ups, he is approved for, and goes on, extended leave to take his space flight. During this time, he continues doing PR for Tabula Rasa, including Operation Immortality. Flight (and PR stunt) successful, Richard touches down to Earth, goes into quarantine in Russia, and NCsoft calls him to drop the hammer - while he's stuck in Russia, decontaminating. No choice, no warning, nothing. "So long, and thanks for all the Bane."
One Shots: A final salute
While Tabula Rasa may have shut down all of the servers, this game is by no means forgotten. As many people head into their favorite gaming spaces this weekend to spend time with friends, at least one group will be missing their favorite MMO haunt. This salute to the end of Tabula Rasa comes to us from Mort, who sent along the follow brief note: [This is] a final salute to the fallen Earth from clan Kaka, [taken] at the Empire State Building. We have a few other final Tabula Rasa contributions, so we'll be adding those in the mix in the days to come - if you'd like to send yours and join the fun, feel free! If you're playing a game we haven't seen in a while - or likely won't see again - why not send in a screenshot? We like to see everything from rolling landscape screens to the intense heat of battle. All you have to do is email it to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the game it's from, and a quick note about what we're seeing. We'll post it out here and give you credit for sending it in!%Gallery-9798%
Dismissed! The final moments of Tabula Rasa
Despite any glimmer of hope from fans that the game could somehow be saved, NCsoft's Tabula Rasa closed down last night in a truly epic display of community and developer involvement. It's not often that we get to see the last second of an MMO's life, so it's important that we showcase those videos depicting the final moments. Quite a few videos have popped up already, with many more out there on YouTube. We've collected and embedded a few of the very first videos available just below the cut, courtesy of iRacerMatt, our reader Poozle, Plukh and the wonderful tribute video at WarCry. Plus, be sure to check out our visual tribute to TR through a gallery of player screenshots.%Gallery-39348%
One Shots: Raising a glass
Those brave soldiers of the AFS have been battling bravely against the Bane as the final days of Tabula Rasa tick to a close. Where these recruits will head next is anyone's guess, but we're glad to see a Tabula Rasa screenshot showing a little slice of life from the servers before they're gone. Today's One Shots comes to us from one AFS recruit, Kazmanchoy, who sent this in along with the following note. With the end of Tabula Rasa coming at the end of this week, there's never been a better time to head to one of TR's taverns to drown your sorrows with some fine Corman ale. The well-stocked bar seen here is in the Staal Nightclub in Crucible, on the planet Arieki. Are you taking part in the final days of Tabula Rasa? If so, we'd love to see some of your screenshots and hear some of your thoughts on this game. Just email them to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name. We'll post your pictures for everyone to see and give you the credit for reporting in from the front lines. %Gallery-9798%
Tabula Rasa honors biggest fans by naming in-game items after them
As I mentioned in an earlier post regarding Tabula Rasa's Deployment 16 hitting the test servers, one interesting feature included with this patch was this tidbit: 40 unique weapons named after players. This might be something you glanced over as you searched for more info on the PAUs, but this simple addition has made so many people excited, including myself.The official list of immortalized players hasn't been released yet, but from the buzz at the PlanetTR forums, the ones who were honored are quite happy. I've skipped the plural narrative here to gush a bit about how much something like this means to me and presumably, the other 39 people honored as well.
TR's Mechs have arrived on PTS with Deployment 16
Tabula Rasa's Public Test Server just received a brand new shipment of Mechs, and the AFS recruits are pumped! With the highly-anticipated Deployment 16 hitting the PTS last night, Personal Armor Units are finally here. The CELLAR Arena and the Edmund Range Training Grounds have both been expanded to accommodate the Mechs, as well as some newly available combat technology installed.This patch also brought about some other goodies, including three new armor sets with level 50 stats that can be worn by any level, new pets, new emote items, hyper-EXP tokens and probably the coolest thing of all time: 40 unique weapons named after some of the game's most involved players. Look for a post later today regarding more on that. In the meantime, if you don't already have the PTS installed, check it out for these latest changes to the game before they go live.
