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Otherland plans a second closed beta test for February
After hints and rumors, the Otherland dev team is finally prepared to confirm that a second closed beta test is indeed on the way -- and it will be happening next month. "Otherland is starting into the second CBT in February. We don't have an exact date yet and it can be delayed, but we don't want to tease you anymore. We polished a lot of stuff and put a lot of effort in it to provide you with more content, more quests and new features," the team said on the forums. The next closed beta test will include crafting, the auction house, storage, and vendors. Those who didn't get in the first time around can take heart in knowing the team will be handing out more beta keys than the last round.
The Soapbox: Of course I care what you're doing in MMOs
I mulled being positive about the MMO industry as a new year's resolution. Then I remembered that new year's resolutions are silly because if it takes an arbitrary date and a contrived occasion to do something, that something is probably not worth doing! With that in mind, let's kick off the 2015 Soapbox season with a mini-rant about one of the nuttier MMO-related misconceptions of all time. I ran across this gem on a forum very recently, and while it's not a new notion, it's a dumb notion and therefore it's worth blowing up. What's the notion? Here, let me just quote the poster. "Why do you care what other players do in an MMORPG? It doesn't affect you."
Flameseeker Chronicles: Crafting up a storm in Guild Wars 2
Merry Wintersday! Guild Wars 2's non-denominational twinkly winter celebration is in full swing. Despite earlier reports from ArenaNet that we'd get pure repeats of both Halloween and Wintersday, this year has added some new quests and a thematically appropriate relocation to Divinity's Reach. I was wrong last week about the sad Dickensian atmosphere of ruined Lion's Arch decorated with snowflakes, but there are still plenty of unfortunate children, so it all evens out. As your resident Scrooge, I'm going to skirt around the topic of candy canes and jumping puzzles to talk about a game feature that's much closer to my heart: crafting. However, I come to lob snowballs at GW2's crafting system, not to praise it.
Raph Koster explains how WoW changed MMOs
There's liable to be a lot of virtual ink spilled over World of Warcraft as it celebrates its 10-year anniversary this month. You can save yourself some time by just reading famed MMO designer Raph Koster's lengthy and informed analysis, though. He covers a ton of ground, both negative and positive, including WoW's roots in EverQuest and the DikuMUD while also touching on all of the genre features that Blizzard cut in the name of "fun" and accessibility. Among the things left by the wayside were features that were proven. Gone were the richer pet systems that had driven so much engagement from players in earlier games. Player housing, past and future source of endless devotion (and revenue) in other games, absent. Never mind stuff like towns and politics and the like. Crafting took massive steps backwards from the heights it had been developed into in [Star Wars] Galaxies or even Sims Online, and went back to being more like that in EverQuest. Even the robust character customization that we slaved over in Galaxies, a system which today is in every RPG on earth, was gone. Koster credits WoW as the true innovator of the quest-led game, but he also points out that the game stifled MMORPG innovation in numerous ways.
The Otherland MMO has returned from the dead
It appears that the Tad Williams-inspired cyberpunk Otherland MMO has a new lease on life. The first version of Otherland was still in production back in March 2013, when developer RealU laid off most of its staff and work on the title ground to a halt. Now it seems Drago-Entertainment, a Polish outfit, has taken over the project and its assets, having launched a new website and Facebook page earlier in October with the declaration, "Otherland the MMO is back!" Drago-Entertainment was last in MMO news in April 2013 when it, perhaps not coincidentally, canceled its Kickstarter for a Grimlands MMO in favor of working with other investors. Both games were set to be published by Gamigo at the time. According to posts on the forums, Otherland's closed beta has not yet begun, though a registration link is prominently displayed on the website. [Many thanks to tipster Joe.]
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).
The Daily Grind: Will you play time-consuming MMOs when you retire?
Massively commenter grandmoffdaryl came up with this interesting nugget last weekend. "The MMO generation is in the 'I'm busy' part of life right now with jobs and kids," he wrote. "Just wait to see what happens when the MMO generation reaches retirement age: the rebirth of the time-consuming MMO." What do you think, Massively readers? Do you see deeper, more involving virtual worlds coming back into vogue at some point in the future, or do you think the genre will continue its move toward casual and more accessible designs? 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!
Eerie comparisons between MMOs and real life surface
We all joke about how unrealistic MMOs are to our mundane, tax-filled lives, but Redcentric did a little digging to compare how virtual worlds and the real one stack up in various ways. Some of the results proved astounding. With World of Warcraft, Redcentric noted that the population in both the game and the US military have about the same percentage of males (84% to 83%), while EVE Online's male population (96%) is more similar to that of the astronaut crowd (90%). The agency also noted how Second Life has 10 real-world embassies in it and that a previous ban of real-money trading in the game caused a very real financial crisis for a bank that wiped out $750,000. So how do these three titles compare to real-world cities in regards to population? World of Warcraft at its peak was close to Moscow's population (11.5 million), while Second Life almost hit the levels of San Fransisco (825K) and EVE Online barely surpassed Edinburgh's 495,000.
Make My MMO: Crowdfunding February 9 - 22, 2014
In the world of MMOs, no news is not necessarily good news -- especially when it comes to crowdfunding. Silence often denotes a lack of progress on a game, and that can certainly make investors nervous. Thankfully, many games provide players with updates that we, in turn, provide for you here. If no news is bad, then news is good, right? Unfortunately, this doesn't hold true. In the case of Star Rider and Hot Rod Hustle, the news is that neither met its funding goals. So we say farewell to these two games from Make My MMO. And Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's campaign was chock-full of news, but in the end, its Kickstarter didn't succeed either; Pantheon, however, is continuing the fundraising effort on its official site. At least some news is good! War of Omens also leaves this round up, but for different reasons: Players can hop in and play the game! Likewise, HEX: Shards of Fate and StarCraft Universe move on now that both have moved into testing. Another sandbox, Terrayn, also joins the Kickstarter ranks. To hear other good news, keep reading.
Second Life CEO Rod Humble leaves Linden Lab
Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab for the past three years, officially announced via Facebook that he has left the company. Humble has worked on both The Sims and EverQuest, pretty much exactly the two games that you would think could be mashed together into Second Life. Linden Lab has not issued a statement about Humble's replacement at this time. In a statement on the move, Humble wished his former coworkers and customers the best of fortunes, stating that he was moving on to form a startup company to make "art, entertainment, and unusual things." Whether or not this will be another startup in the online gaming space or something entirely different remains to be seen.
NPC pathing and the living virtual world
In the early days of vanilla WoW, I played Alliance. It wasn't until after hitting 60 that I began playing Horde in earnest. Although I appreciated the bare, rough-and-tumble primitive nature of Orgrimmar, I always felt there was something missing -- namely, the NPCs that happily wandered Stormwind all day long. Orgrimmar didn't really have much of that sort of thing, back then. And of all the NPCs that wandered the human capital, none captured my attention so much as Ol' Emma. Emma was at the time part of a quest chain that took place in the Western Plaguelands -- a ghost in the upper level of a house in Felstone Field asked players to deliver a package to her. But Emma's charms weren't just wrapped into that quest. Ol' Emma spent her days -- and still spends her days -- walking the streets of Stormwind. I first found her walking to the well near the flight path in Stormwind, griping about how nobody respects their elders. Laughing, I moved on, but months later on a whim I decided to follow Ol' Emma to see exactly where she takes all that water she's been supposedly hauling. To my surprise, Emma walking into a building near Cathedral Square, went up the stairs, and ... stopped, facing a wall, still talking to nobody in particular. Unfortunately, this was kind of par for the course for NPCs back then.
Some Assembly Required: Virtual world roundup for 2014 and beyond
Just over two years ago there was a great disturbance, as if millions (or so) of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Yes, something terrible had happened: a beloved virtual world was destroyed. And that left a number of sandbox refugees looking for a new place to call home. At that time, Some Assembly Required offered a roundup of the then available virtual worlds that could possibly offer accommodation, depending on what qualities players most desired in their games. But as things are wont to, they changed; a lot can happen in the MMOverse in 24 months, from additional features in existing games to new games to the loss of more worlds. So it's time to update this list of virtual worlds to reflect 2014 and beyond. Take a look and see what titles or titles-to-be have the sandbox features that best make a game a home for you.
Colbert cracks ancient Second Life joke, picks on NSA
I guess we'll forgive Stephen Colbert for not realizing that the Second-Life-users-don't-have-a-first-life joke is older than he is. Mainly because the rest of his segment on Linden Labs' virtual world and its NSA-powered avatars is pretty funny. Colbert follows up Comedy Central colleague Jon Stewart's riff on the NSA in World of Warcraft with a segment heavy on Second Life secret agents. Kotaku has the full story as well as a video embed.
NSA spies infiltrate MMOs to weed out terrorism
News of our government spying on us is not actually news at this point, but recent reports suggest that governments are also spying on us in our online games. The reason? Suspected terrorism, of course! Former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, ProPublica, The Guardian, and The New York Times report today that American and British intelligence agencies have infiltrated Second Life, World of Warcraft, and Xbox Live to weed out militants that may use the games to communicate, move money, or plot attacks under fake identities. So that noob in your PUG last night who just wouldn't heal the tank may have been a CIA agent getting paid ungodly amounts of money to level his Priest at the taxpayers' expense. Most interestingly, Blizzard denies any knowledge of such activities: "We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission." [Source: ProPublica press release]
Make My MMO: Crowdfunding November 17 - 30, 2013
One thing gamers can definitely be thankful for this year is crowdfunding! Thanks to this phenomenon, we have many more options opening to us than ever before. And there are definitely some good gaming prospects on the horizon, even if news about all but one is seeming a bit scarce lately. While it's true that a few funded projects tossed out a news morsel or two, two new campaigns replaced two unsuccessful ones (neither The Zodiac Project nor Omuni Online made their goals), newcomer The Mandate already made its goal, and another hopeful -- Ever, Jane -- has secured three-quarters of its goal with only a couple of days left, the majority of the spotlight has been stolen the upcoming space sim Star Citizen, which continues to blast the crowdfunding record to smithereens. If you missed any of the news, you can catch up on it all right here in Make My MMO.
The Daily Grind: Does your MMO character reflect you or the other way around?
Last summer, we reported on research that suggested people's behavior changes because of the proportions of the characters they were assigned to play. This week, we saw related results from a Stanford/OSU team that posed a similar question in relation to sexualized avatars in online settings like MMOs. The researchers tested the "Proteus effect," finding that subjects who were assigned hyper-sexualized avatars in a virtual setting "internalized" their avatars' appearance, focusing more on body image and expressing more "rape myth acceptance" than the control group. Setting aside the obvious implication that playing a sexed-up toon in an MMO might temporarily darken our mental health, I have to wonder what other bad habits we might be learning from our characters. How much control do we really have when we roll up a new avatar in an MMO? Did I choose to roleplay a snarky pirate in that last game because it would be fun or because I have a problem with authority and a rude attitude I needed a way to express? Worse, did her negative traits and wardrobe rub off on or change me? Do you think your MMO character reflects you, or do you think you subconsciously reflect your MMO character? Have you ever found yourself picking up or dwelling on the attributes of your characters? 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!
Smaller virtual bodies affect how people see the world
How much does the size of our virtual bodies influence our behaviors? It doesn't seem like it'd have much of an effect, but according to a recent study it can cause a greater impact than you might speculate. Researchers placed several subjects in special motion-capture suits, then presented the subjects with a body that had adult proportions or childish proportions, even though both bodies were the same size. The result was that participants in the childlike bodies were more likely to identify as children rather than as adults, exploring more child-like environments and behaving less like adults. It's worth keeping in mind that these behaviors happened within motion-capture suits designed to simulate actual movement in virtual bodies, so how much of this would transfer to MMOs is questionable. But it's an interesting set of variables to consider, especially in terms of how much we identify with our avatars in the game. [Thanks to David for the tip!]
Second Life's Linden Lab expands with digital distribution service
Second Life's Linden Lab has announced this week that it has acquired the digital distribution service Desura. What's Desura? Think of it as a lesser-known version of Steam, yet without the DRM headaches and more focused on player mods. So, not really like Steam. Linden Lab's CEO, Rod Humble, is optimistic about Desura's offering to the 14-year-old virtual world company: "This acquisition gives us a global platform for serving creative developers of all kinds, and we're looking forward to growing both Desura's global community of gamers and its fantastic portfolio of thousands of games, mods, and other content. Our aim is to invest and support the Desura team in making it the most open and developer-friendly platform in the world."
Second Life readies for 10th anniversary, celebrates a million active users per month
Second Life hasn't gotten much respect in MMO circles since the genre went mainstream (yes, yes, get a first life, aren't you clever!). Still, Linden Lab's virtual world is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary on June 23rd, and it boasts user numbers that most MMOs can only dream about. An anniversary infographic says that Second Life has amassed 36 million registered users as well as more than 400,000 new accounts per month. Oh, and don't forget "a million monthly active users," according to Linden CEO Rod Humble. Those users typically rack up 1.2 million virtual goods transactions per day and have accounted for $3.2 billion worth of transactions over the life of the game. You can find more nifty stats like those on the the graphic after the break.
World of Warcraft's Stormwind Keep gets a price tag
Have you ever sat down with a realtor and tried to haggle down the price of a house based on the fact that it previously housed a scheming black dragon? Hopefully not, as black dragons do not actually exist. But if you have, you'll be happy to know that World of Warcraft's Stormwind Keep has now been priced out by what we are assured are reputable realtors with an eye toward setting this in-game structure's retail price in US dollars. About $10 million, as it happens. So why? Well, based on how much space it seems to cover and the value of a comparable real-world castle in Wales, the Keep winds up with a fairly modest price tag for a castle. Then again, there's only one accessible floor, and as we mentioned it does have a bit of a problem with dragons. (Exterminators can never really get all the eggs out.) So if you find yourself transported to Azeroth with $10 million that becomes the equivalent in gold, you can walk up and... well... not buy it, because it's not for sale. But you'd know how much it was worth.
