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Free for All: The rising cost of early access and exclusivity
Here I sit, waiting to log into Aura Kingdom, a new Anime MMO by Aeria Games. The beta I am going to log into is the Founder's Beta, an exclusive early-access pre-closed beta that had an entrance fee starting at $19.00 and topping out at $299.00. Yes, 300 US dollars. I'm not trying to appear judgmental in my emphasis, but I do think that this provides more proof to the theory that prices for virtual items are continuing to climb. And why shouldn't they? I've talked before about selling power and how its slow climb will likely not stop. Just like selling exclusive or early access, selling powerful, useful in-game items most likely makes money. Something like a Founder's Pack offers useful in-game items and exclusivity, a very tempting concoction that many find too hard to resist. Is it fair to offer early access for such a price, and will other titles have to respond to the success of such sales by creating their own?
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Free for All: Ten of my favorite in-game items
I love things. Truly I do. Only specific things, though. Over the last year I have doubled my efforts to catalog most of the best things in my life, from pictures and artwork to writings and songs I have played on. It's a sort of meta-hobby. As part of the effort I want to organize many of my favorite MMO in-game items, simply because I have played MMOs for so long and they are such a part of my life. I have a lot of favorite items, but some tend to stick out in my memory like a favorite smell or place. After I finished an initial list of MMO items (it was well over 50 items in the beginning), I was surprised at how much variety there was in the items and in the games I listed. I think it reflects my character a lot, but also shows that I am a sentimental plod most of the time. I cut the list down to these 10, but I am sure I will wish to adjust the list again in the future. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments section!
Free for All: The 10 best-looking browser-based MMORPGs
Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Keep that in mind before you tell that me the games that fill out the following list of "best-looking browser-based MMORPGs" are ugly as sin. Sure, some of them are an acquired taste, but I wanted to display just how much variety there is now in browser gaming. It's not the delivery system it once was; we have had fancier-looking Flash-based titles for a while, but now with engines like Unity or Silverlight and even HTML5 coding, we have games that look no different from their client-based counterparts. There are still some ugly-as-sin games out there as well, but they have endearing qualities all the same. So keep that in mind; this is my top 10 list. If you want to suggest your own in the comments section, I would love to hear them! Now, on to the list, in no particular order...
Free for All: The continued standardization of selling power
Selling power is a much quieter controversy than it used to be. I've been in gaming long enough to remember when selling anything desirable at all was taboo. At the same time, it's always been OK to sell some things like subscriptions or special boxed editions, proving that MMO gamers and others are brilliant at segmenting their rage. If it's a cool, special box with a neat virtual item inside, it somehow does not fall under the same umbrella as selling powerful, useful items in game. I think it does. But geeks in general are good at justifying poor behavior if they get what they want; just ask the hackers and file-swappers. Still, it doesn't matter how we feel about selling power because the industry is already moving in the direction of selling power, lots of power. EA recently announced that every title it produces from now on will feature microtransactions. While that doesn't guarantee the sale of powerful items, I can promise that it will include some. This train ain't stopping. Sure, the console community seems a bit late to the party when it comes to the power-selling controversy, but that's likely because of MMOs' always-on multiplayer mode.
Free for All: Casual is as hardcore does and the daily gaming list
It's always a lot of fun to compare casual players to hardcore players. We've all seen many articles and had our own discussions on the topic and it never seems to stop being entertaining. After all, how much or how intensely a player plays an MMO can help predict how that player might react to market changes or to new titles, so we can easily see how developers will always be interested in the information even when we tire of it. For me, personally, I would rather skip the whole discussion and just talk about how I play casually. I can list hours played and titles accessed, but I think it would be a better idea to sketch out a rough but typical day or week in my household to illustrate just how someone who considers himself casual is actually quite committed. Does that mean I am hardcore in certain cases? I don't care anymore, frankly. What I care about is seeing if how I play is completely alien or if there are other players out there who love to do what I do. Let's call it a cry for help... or at least information.
MMObility: Finding the fun within the browser
Fun is an odd thing to define. I have to be honest and say that I don't often have fun when playing MMOs. I don't. I enjoy myself, sometimes to an amazing degree, but I don't have what I would call "fun." When I play a game like Wurm Online or Parallel Kingdom, I am not having fun but am having something closer to the feeling you get when you read a good book. You know the feeling: You're breathing deep, lying on the bed, possibly, very relaxed. OK, I understand how dirty that sounds, but you know what I mean. Playing a good MMO is often like playing chess. It's not really fun, but it is still a very good thing. Browser-based titles can often be enjoyable, but the normally limited graphics and sometimes click-and-wait gameplay means that I get more of a scratch-my-chin sort of feeling when I leap into Illyriad or other games. Of course, in-browser graphics are changing and becoming more and more like standard client-based MMOs. Thanks to Unity and other engines, we can play in immersive, three-dimensional worlds in our browser. Smartphones are becoming more tablet-like, and mobile games are quickly becoming more like standard gaming as well. So what do we play when we want to have simple fun?
The Soapbox: There's no such thing as pay-to-win
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. I hate it when MMORPG players completely misrepresent this hobby. I cringe every time I find myself in the middle of a discussion about "MMOs" when most of the people chatting are pulling only from their experience as a World of Warcraft raider and nothing more. There are hundreds -- actually, thousands -- of MMOs in existence. Discussing MMOs without knowing about as many as possible is really talking about specific titles, not a genre. You wouldn't catch a group of "foodies" basing all of their passions on a few items from a handful of menus. The same should apply to MMO discussions if we ever want the genre to be taken more seriously by outsiders. MMO players love to pigeonhole titles. What are some of the worst descriptions? "Hardcore" is one. What does that even mean? Does it mean a title is hard to play? In what way is it hard? Does it mean that it takes time to play? How much time equals hardcore? "Facebook game" is another term that drives me crazy, and it's often used by many MMO fans to dismiss all sorts of titles. While I know that the term generally refers to FarmVille-style gaming, using the term literally reflects how little the person knows about the variety of games that actually appear on or are connected to Facebook. The term that drives me the craziest of all is pay-to-win.
The Soapbox: The death of AAA
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. I think we're all pretty familiar with the tragic story of 38 Studios by now. If not, take some time to familiarize yourself with it. Essentially it is a tale of massive dreams, botched plans, and hundreds of job losses. I'm not yet sure exactly what went wrong, but I have a feeling that the lackluster response to the studio's stand-alone title might be to blame on top of the poor performance in the high-end of the company. Either way, I have seen many comments exclaiming the end of the big-budget title or at least more trepidation from governments that feel the need to get into a game (no pun intended) they were unfamiliar with. If we could take a poll of the several million "AAA" MMO players in North America, it's my bet that most of them simply go from one title to the other. The RIFT players who are now enjoying Star Wars: The Old Republic came from World of Warcraft, and before that (if they played MMOs before WoW) they might have been City of Heroes fans and EverQuest players before that. For a long time, large studios held all of the players. Then, AAA started rolling down the steep hill to where it is now.
MMObility: What Microsoft Surface means for mobile gaming
This week, Microsoft announced Windows Surface, a new tablet that comes in two basic flavors. Immediately the social mediasphere lit up with speculation, but specifications were limited. We know that there will be a lighter, more affordable version that will run Windows RT with an Tegra-based Arm chip, and a chunkier, more expensive one that will run on a Intel Core i5 (Ivy Bridge) processor and sport a nicer screen. It seems that the Core i5 will come with at least a few gigs of RAM, but here's my question: Don't we need to be moving in the direction that we talk about experience more than hardware specs? I imagine that someday the specs of the machine will be largely unknown... ask an iPad user what's in his. It makes sense if you think about it. This basic, $500 laptop that I am writing on right now has enough power to do certain things, but it runs those same common apps like Twitter or email services as fast as any other gaming PC in my house. When it comes to basic internet usage, does it matter that one device runs an app quickly while the other runs it seemingly at the same speed? Fast is fast. Still, I wonder how the new Surface devices will fit into the tablet gaming sphere.
Battlestar Galactica Online inches toward 10M players, hands out swag for anniversary
Battlestar Galactica Online has quietly but surely expanded its reach across the cosmos, netting nearly 10 million registered players as the title hits its first anniversary. To celebrate the dual achievement, Bigpoint is dishing out goodies to all of its players over the next week. From today through May 6th, Bigpoint is handing out in-game gifts and bonuses to players. Players need to log in each day to grab these prizes, however. In addition to distributing freebies, BSGO is increasing the daily merit cap and offering special deals for its item shop. Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz sees Battlestar Galactica Online's first year as both a success and the beginning of a great run: "We are thrilled with the tremendous growth of BSGO and how the game has performed over the past year. We're excited to move forward with this momentum, celebrate our achievements, and reward all of our players in the community who helped us get to this point." [Source: Bigpoint press release]
Free for All: New browser-based converts shine light on issues
I recently threw out a prediction that within five years, most of our MMO content will be coming through our browsers. To be more specific, I think that most players in the United States will be enjoying their favorite MMOs within a browser. That can mean several things but does not refer to games like Free Realms, a client-based game that is only signed-into at the browser level. As with any discussion about genres, mechanics or styles in the MMO world, I have to be very specific. It's pretty likely that a very large percentage of the US playerbase is already playing browser-based games. Look at the American market for games like RuneScape, Battlestar Galactica Online, Club Penguin, Drakensang Online, Evony, and Ministry of War and you might just find millions of players. Next we need to consider that there are more games coming into the browser market. This new batch is essentially a group of standard, client-based MMOs that are porting themselves to the browser. I tend to be a little skeptical about some of these in the short-term, for several reasons.
The Soapbox: If you want to sell special items, just do it already
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. I've argued before about the merits of being an honest cash-shop salesperson. You have to be upfront, blunt, and willing to take some heat. Bigpoint is one of my favorite examples of a cash-shop dependent developer simply because it says what it means and means what it says. It sells items, sometimes powerful items, in several different titles. Granted, the studio usually offers a way to get those same items through in-game means, but that doesn't make for as good a story. We reported on Bigpoint a while ago when its reps essentially said that if a developer is going to make an effort to sell in-game items, it should do it the right way by making those items have a significant impact on the game by being either powerful or desirable. I cannot agree more. Bigpoint is a car lot that sells beautiful luxury automobiles. It also sells junkers and even gives out a lot of cars for free, but its charity once again does not make for a good dramatic write-up. I tend to think that if you you are going to make a cash-shop, depending on the style of game, of course, you as a developer have got to consider just what sort of impact you want that cash-shop to have on your players, and you can't be afraid to push your idea from the beginning. But just get on with it.
MMObility: Utilizing Windows 8 to help with MMO chores
Not so long ago, I told you about my acquisition of an Inspiron Duo netbook, a 10-inch device that was not only a small laptop but also a touchscreen tablet device. It is a very sturdy device, and the flip-around screen works well. The main problem with the device was that it came with Windows 7 while only sporting a dual core processor and two gigs of RAM. The other main issue was that the 10-inch screen has a 1366x768-pixel resolution, meaning that it was often uncomfortable to read on it or play games unless I zoomed in. Recently Microsoft released the Windows 8 public preview, so I downloaded it after reading that it was really geared for tablet or touchcreen devices. Sure enough, the same 10-inch netbook that was not getting a lot of use around here suddenly became faster and much more friendly to the eyes. It's perfect timing, as well, especially since I will be starting my "chores" experiment in which I see whether scheduling my gameplay each day will help me with an issue I have been having.
Bigpoint teases Battlestar Galactica Online carrier ships
Bigpoint has let us know that it's about to kick off what it calls "space trials" for some new carrier-class ships in Battlestar Galactica Online. The craft will be visible on the Kobol beta server today in both Colonial and Cylon variants. Carriers function as support and supply vessels and can also serve as mobile outposts with repair and recharge capabilities. What's that? You say you want to pilot one of these shiny new vessels? Well, this is Bigpoint, so you'll need to enter a lottery via the community forum for your chance to jump in the cockpit of BSGO's latest and greatest. If you're not up for that, the ships will be available to all players on all servers after the completion of the trial period at the end of this month. You'll need to be level 40 (and in possession of nearly 500,000 in-game cubits) to get one for yourself.
Leaderboard: Free-form space combat vs. on-the-rails shooter
If mankind's exploration into outer space has taught us anything at this point, it's that sooner or later we're going to need to strap big guns on our bubbles of life support and blast each other out of the cosmos. It's already a prevailing theme among MMOs, with titles like EVE Online, Star Trek Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Black Prophecy, and Battlestar Galactica Online allowing us to jump forward a few hundred years of technological growth so we can have some space shootin' fun. As of late there seems to be two camps developing regarding MMO space shooters. With the advent of SWTOR, some are warming up to the cinematic on-the-rails style of its space combat game. Tunnel shooters allow for a more scripted -- and potentially more exciting -- experience, and this type of combat has a long history in single-player games dating back to Starfox and before. Of course, the other camp just loathes rail shooters, much preferring the ability to fly anywhere one wants and engage in combat on one's own terms. The freedom of this style of space combat appeals to the inner individualist who doesn't want to conform to what everyone else is doing. In which camp have you struck your tent? Are you for free-form space combat or on-the-rails shooters? Let your vote be heard after the jump!
The Soapbox: Bigpoint's cash-shop policies and why they are OK
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. I have been tasked with explaining to Massively readers why I am OK with Bigpoint's very public policy on selling "advantages." I imagine that this will not be an easy task. After all, we gamers aren't much different than the rest of humanity in the way we tend to care about things that have little or no effect on us. We all have an opinion on "selling power," but I think it's high time that someone attempts to explain why it really isn't always power that Bigpoint is selling -- and why it would be fair even if it were. I will attempt to stick to the specific topic of Bigpoint's policies, but much of what I say will probably apply to any game developer that sells practically anything for real world money. Yes, I am talking about those wonderful collector's editions and favorite cash-shop mounts. They all fall under the same category that Bigpoint's ships or special drones do. Click past the cut and I'll explain why.
Win a life-size Cylon statue from Bigpoint and Battlestar Galactica Online
Bigpoint's in the news again this week, and for once the company is steering clear of microtransaction controversies. It seems as if there's a giveaway afoot, and Battlestar Galactica Online fans will be pleased to note that they have a chance to win a life-size Cylon statue (settle down guys, it's a Centurion, not a Number Six). The browser-based sci-fi MMO also features 15 new paint jobs for Cylon and Colonial ships, each of which may be purchased with real money or in-game credits. Bigpoint says more color schemes are on the way, and oh yeah, if you want a chance at the statue, you'll need to log in at least five times during the month of December. Head to the official BSGO forums for the official contest rules.
MV Guide: December 5-11, 2011
MV Guide is a weekly rundown of the MMO gaming events planned on Massively TV. Every week, the Massively staff logs in to play various MMOs live and in person, and we'd love for you to drop by the channel and visit. We have a combination of regular weekly games and new surprises, so you'll find a variety of titles to take a look at. During our streamed events, you can participate in the live chat, ask questions to learn about the game, and simply spend some time with Massively staff and readers. (Of course, streaming is subject to the whims of outside forces like server-side gremlins once in a while.) Follow along after the jump to see what's on this week's schedule!
MMObility: The rise of the browser
Over the last week I have been obsessing over Glitch, the new browser-based MMORPG brought to us by Tiny Speck. I will go into details of why in my Rise and Shiny column, but for now, let's just say that I think it is one of the greatest things I have come across in a long time. For the record, I was talking about Glitch before it was popular (that hipster cred should get my a free pair of glasses in Glitch!) and was excited about starting this column because of games like Glitch. In short, I knew that the browser market was huge, and I knew it was only going to grow bigger. Yes, I know what you're thinking, and yes I am claiming that we are starting to see the end of the heavy-duty client and demand for expensive hardware and upgrades. It's a big prediction, but click past the cut and let me explain.
Battlestar Galactica Online adding new ships this month, surpasses 5M registered players
Bigpoint just can't seem to stay out of the news today, and whether its the incendiary pay-to-win remarks of an executive or an update to its Battlestar Galactica browser MMO, there's a lot of interesting buzz swirling around the company of late. The devs are adding a new line of fleet recon ships to Battlestar Galactica Online, and the craft will enable both Colonial and Cylon players to jump directly to their targets while "in proximity of an erupting battle." The ships will debut in mid-September and are modeled on the Raptor and Heavy Raider craft from the beloved Syfy television series. Bigpoint's latest press release also mentions that the Brimir-class carrier will be "available this fall, though its size, complexity, and impact on game balance must be optimized before its general release." Finally, the company is trumpeting some new metrics, and the release says that BSGO has surpassed the five million registered player mark. [Source: Bigpoint press release]
