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Apple celebrates 5 years of the App Store
The App Store is about to turn 5 years old, and Apple is kicking off a new promotion to celebrate this milestone. Earlier today, we noticed the prices on several popular apps dropped to free and thought Apple has something up its sleeve. Now that sale has been made official with a new "5 Years of the App Store" promotional page in the iTunes App Store. Apple's latest sale features "five landmark games and five groundbreaking apps" that defined the App Store over the past several years. The list of apps now available for free include: iOS Apps Barefoot World Atlas [iOS Universal; Category: Reference; Now free, down from $4.99] Barefoot World Atlas is a magical interactive 3D globe that invites children to explore the regions and countries of the world, discovering hundreds of fascinating features and immersing themselves in the rich wonders of our planet. Over [iOS Universal; Category: Photography & Video; Now free, down from $1.99] Add beautiful text and artwork to your photos and share them on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. Day One (Journal/Diary) [iOS Universal; Category: Lifestyle; Now free, down from $4.99] A new way to journal. Enter your memories, ideas, events and photos to have them synced to your iPhone and iPad using iCloud or Dropbox. Traktor DJ for iPhone [iPhone; Category: Music; Now free, down from $4.99] The world's #1 pro DJ software brings high-impact DJing to iPhone. Touch your tracks and create stunning mixes in seconds. How To Cook Everything [iOS Universal; Category: Food & Drink; Now free, down from $9.99] This first-of-its-kind app of the bestselling cookbook How to Cook Everything from New York Times columnist Mark Bittman has 2,000 recipes, 400 how-to illustrations and a host of features that appeal to cooks on the go. iOS Games Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP [iOS Universal; Category: Games; Now free, down from $4.99] Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is an exploratory action adventure with an emphasis on audiovisual style. Traverse a mythic little realm, use a sword to do battle and evoke sworcery to solve mystical musical mysteries. Badland [iOS Universal; Category: Games; Now free, down from $3.99] Badland is an award-winning atmospheric sidescrolling action-adventure platformer taking place in a gorgeous forest full of various inhabitants, trees and flowers. Where's My Water? [iOS Universal; Category: Games; Now free, down from $0.99] Help Swampy by guiding water to his broken shower. Each level is a challenging physics-based puzzle with amazing life-like mechanics. Infinity Blade II [iOS Universal; Category: Games; Now free, down from $6.99] The continuing journey of young Siris unfolds as you delve deeper into the world of the Deathless tyrants and their legion of Titans. Can you unlock all the mysteries and successfully wield the power of the Infinity Blade in this timeless swordplay adventure of champions and villains? Tiny Wings [iPhone; Category: Games; Now free, down from $0.99] You have always dreamed of flying, but your wings are tiny. Luckily the world is full of beautiful hills. Use the hills as jumps -- slide down, flap your wings and fly.
EVE Evolved: Five years of EVE Evolved
About five years ago, on April 27th, 2008, I joined the Massively team and wrote the very first issue of the EVE Evolved column. Five years later, the column is still going strong and delivering its weekly dose of EVE Online to thousands of readers. I used to worry about running out of ideas to write about, but regular game updates and hilarious player shenanigans mean there's always something interesting going on in New Eden. When EVE hits its 10th anniversary in May, this column will have been running for just over half of the game's lifetime. In that time, I've written over 250 in-depth articles, guides, in-game stories and opinion pieces on EVE Online and a few on DUST 514. As usual, I'll be celebrating this anniversary by rounding up this year's column highlights and giving away two 30-day Pilot's License Extensions to two lucky readers. To enter the competition, write a comment explaining which EVE Evolved articles from this year you liked best and what topics you'd like to see covered in the coming year. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, so be sure to include your character name in your comment if you want to be in with a chance. If you'd rather not give out your character name or don't have an EVE account but would like to give the game a go, you can sign up a new trial account and use the name of your new character. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the highlights from the column's fifth year!
The Daily Grind: Tell us stories about the past five years!
It's that time again, a time that comes but once a year -- the anniversary of this site! Yes, as of today Massively has been around for five years, and just like every year we don't want to spend our time talking to you about what it's been like for the past several years. We want you to tell us your stories as our regular readers, whether you've been coming to the site for the whole time or just now realized this place existed. A lot of things have changed since those first posts in years past. We've gained and lost columns, games have launched and shut down, staff members have come and gone (and occasionally returned to us). So on this anniversary, what sticks out in your mind? What columns have you particularly enjoyed? What feature do you wish we'd bring back? What anecdotes do you have about our half-decade of operation? 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!
Flameseeker Chronicles: Waiting for Guild Wars 2
There are two weeks left until the official launch of Guild Wars 2. That's a little nutso because a significant portion of my (and a great deal many other folks') energy in last few years has been dedicated to anticipating the game. Seeing it live will be something of an adjustment. I keep wanting to talk about memories of development and standing in lines at PAX and meeting devs and other fans as a way of describing my involvement with this game up 'til this point. I sometimes feel that that's odd, saying that the most exciting part of following Guild Wars 2's development has been the people I've met rather than the game that we're all congregating around. ArenaNet seems to agree with my take on things, though, if global brand manager Chris Lye can be trusted. He says of ArenaNet, "We're not a video game company; we're a community building company. We just happen to have one of the coolest ways to build a community, which is through a video game." Be it trite or not, I find that that kind of statement aligns nicely with the reason I, someone who plays MMOs largely for the sense of shared experience, have enjoyed Guild Wars 2 and its community so much.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 2007 to 2012 in warrior years
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. This was the first column I ever wrote for WoW Insider. A lot of things have changed in that five-year period; for one thing, I got five years older. In that time, I've written about tanking shortages, about dungeon etiquette, about killing Cyclonian and rage normalization. Together, we've tanked and DPSed our way through The Burning Crusade, Wrath and now Cataclysm. (I did vanilla before I joined the staff here, so I was woefully alone. Well, OK, my wife helped me out.) There have been a lot of ups and downs over the years. Warriors had some dizzying highs and some painful lows. Our tanking was weak in The Burning Crusade, with lots of AoE needed that we didn't have, yet later, certain raid bosses were designed to be tanked best by a warrior, putting all those paladins and druids who put us out of work earlier in the expansion suddenly out of work watching us tank. Wrath balanced things for all tanks, but DPS warriors got to ride the roller coaster of rage starvation until getting geared, the big Ulduar nerf, and the ascendency of armor penetration. Cataclysm has had peaks and valleys for us, but on the whole, we've weathered this expansion as a strong tanking class (once you're familiar with all we can do), and both fury and arms have been contenders for best DPS spec at one point or another. Strange as it may sound, Cata was probably the best overall expansion warriors have had. We've had issues (PvP), but overall, we've been in the hunt if not top of the pack. I wanted to take the opportunity of having a milestone like this to sit back, reflect and consider the pros and cons not only of the class but of my demented love affair with it -- and your participation in it. After all, without you, this would just be me writing these things to myself.
4 lessons from 5 years of Officers' Quarters
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. Amazingly enough, exactly five years ago today -- at 11:15 a.m. on May 7, 2007 -- the very first Officers' Quarters went live on WoW Insider. It was so long ago that I actually used Thottbot links. Since then, yours truly has composed more than 250 OQs. At about 1,000 words per column, I've written enough words on the topic of guild leadership to fill up a large fantasy novel. (Of course, I've also written an actual book on the topic.) For this column, I briefly thought about pulling out the best and worst of OQ to share my personal favorites (and my shame) from the past five years. I decided against it. Maybe some day I'll do that -- maybe right before I hang up my WoW Insider columnist sash -- but that day is not today. Rather, I thought I'd do something more personal. OQ has always been about learning how to do a better job as an officer and a guild leader, both for your members and yourself. During the past five years, I've done my best to give advice on exactly that. However, I've never claimed to have it all figured out. I've also learned a lot, too. On this anniversary, I'd like to share four things that I've learned over the past five years. (Five would have been better, but I'm long-winded.)
The Xbox 360 turns five years old... in a purely theoretical sense
Show of hands: how many of you bought an Xbox 360 in its first month or so of release, five long years ago? Alright, now how many of you still use that same Xbox regularly, with zero RRoDs getting in your way? Yeah, we thought so. The Xbox 360 has been an astounding success for Microsoft and for gamers, a particularly strong feat when you consider that it was Sony's race to lose going into this console generation. Still, when you talk Xbox history, it's hard not to see that huge red smudge on an otherwise stellar record. In hindsight, perhaps it was wise for Microsoft to do such a stellar job of taking the console online, beyond all the obvious reasons: the overheating hunk of plastic and silicon in our entertainment center didn't really mean much anymore, sentiments-wise. Instead it was our Gamertags and Gamerscores and cutesy Avatars that really mattered, the true "heart" of our console. We can't even count how many Xboxes we churned through in the past five years, with only Microsoft's most recent attempt finally solving some of the machine's egregious noise issues, but most of us stuck with the Xbox all the way through because that's where our friends were. Cute trick, Microsoft, but let's pick a slightly less expensive way to fail for the next generation, alright? Oh, and happy birthday Xbox; we'll meet you at 8pm with the pizza and the wine and the Black Ops... you just bring the sexy. Want to re-live a bit of the launch day insanity? Check out this little trip down Engadget memory lane: Live Xbox 360 shot! Engadget's live coverage of the Xbox 360 launch Xbox 360 hands-on preview Unpacking the Xbox 360 Xbox 360 gutted! Engadget Podcast 053 - 11.22.2005 Xbox 360 backward-compatibility list (1.0) released Boy, didn't we look young and naive back then? The world was our oyster. There were so many Halos yet to come.
AT&T's original deal on iPhone was for five years
It's what we thought... until the Wall Street Journal told us we were wrong. It's what USA Today originally reported, although nobody else was ever able to confirm it... until now. Nilay Patel at Engadget has unearthed some 2008 filings in a 2007 class-action lawsuit that clarify the matter: the AT&T/Apple deal for exclusive domestic service on the iPhone, which has caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth, was originally set for a five-year term. That would put the earliest appearance of a Verizon iPhone into the summer of 2012 -- assuming that there wasn't any reason for one or the other party to break off the agreement. Those disclosures are a couple of years old now, and the circumstances may have changed a bit (exclusivity may have been extended since then), but at least there's some grounding for what the original half-decade setup was intended to be. Even though recent analyst musings led to the surmise that the iPad's bargain data plans, which are delivered sans contract, might have been a carrot in extending AT&T's hold on the iPhone for a few more months, it's not at all clear that an extension would have been necessary to lock in sales through the end of this year.
Blizzard: Arenas were a mistake.
John Funk of WarCry recently interviewed Blizzard's VP of Game Design, Rob Pardo, about WoW's five-year anniversary, and he shed some light on a number of topics, including their total subscriber numbers (twice to three times as much as its current 12 million), what audience their new MMO is meant for, and what he thinks WoW's greatest successes were. But some other very interesting information came up when the interviewer asked what he thought WoW's biggest mistakes were. He begins by saying that he wishes that the servers had been more stable at launch, and that there had been more of them, but he says that in terms of design, Arenas were the single biggest mistake in WoW's history.
Celebrating five years of Tobold
In the MMO genre, celebrating five years of anything is quite a feat. If you think about it, what games were you even playing five years ago? Everquest? Ultima Online? So we acknowledge that the industry is still fairly young, and blogging about it is even younger. This makes Tobold's fifth year anniversary of his MMO blog something to celebrate.It's a natural fact that blogs come and go. When there's a hot new topic and someone feels passionate about it, they let it all loose in the first few days, weeks or even months, but a very low percentage make it further than that. Tobold is the exception to this, and we respect him for the fine work he's done thus far. The future progression of MMOs and their close relationship with community-driven blogs only makes sense. They go together like tanks and aggro. So here's to many more years of Tobold, and many more years of blogging about MMOs. Cue sappy music.
Mythic's efforts aided by WoW, planning ahead
In a recent interview Warhammer Online senior designer Josh Drescher remarked that World of Warcraft has actually made it considerably easier for other MMOs to succeed in the market, contrary to popular belief. While nobody has come close to dethroning the Blizzard juggernaut and its 10 million subscribers, WoW has done a lot to expand the the potential user-base, and for that Mythic is grateful. Drescher notes in the interview the rate of success in a post-WoW world is considerably higher than it was before, making for a more friendly marketplace to release a game.It's this kind of mind for market dynamics and future-planning that's really coming to define the modern MMO game designer. For them, retail release is only the beginning of a long process that can extend as far as ten years into the future. So when it appeared during the interview that Drescher suggested that the Warhammer Online team had content planned out five years in advance, some people were understandably confused about the scope of Mythic's development efforts. Was the game delayed to implement content intended for half a decade from now?
