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WRUP: Epic-quality tinfoil hats
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how Blizzard totes lied about those DDoS attacks because that doesn't make you sound crazy at all.
WRUP: Blizz Fortress
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us that at least Titan's assets didn't go to waste.
WRUP: Vampir safety
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and we all practice vampir safety for Halloween. This... is a bizarre genre.
Why I Play: ArcheAge
Addicted may be too strong a word when talking about my relationship to ArcheAge... but not by much! Have I logged in every day since the early access? Do I look forward to logging in? Have I said, "I'll go to bed right after I plant a couple more things" only to find more hours have slipped by before I finally do sleep? Do I get excited about the next trade run? Have I set alarms to wake up to try and nab a prime piece of land? Have I had dreams about ArcheAge when I sleep? The answer to all of these is yes. ArcheAge may not have everything I have ever wanted in a game (entertainment classes should be a requirement), but it checks more than a few of my boxes. I haven't had this much fun throwing myself into a game in a very long time. I look forward to each play session, and I tend to spend hours in game each day enjoying whatever I happen to be doing, be it sailing, trade runs, sneaking into enemy territory, or even just staring at my plants waiting for them to grow.
WRUP: WildStar's sadface
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how WildStar still totally justifies its subscription fee.
WRUP: Good news is no news?
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how a subscription upswing for one of the biggest MMORPGs in the world is totally not news that an MMORPG website should cover.
WRUP: Anybody going back to WoW?
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how World of Warcraft has gone at least eighteen years since a content release... wait, what's that? There's one coming next week? Dammit. Does this mean we go back to poking fun at Blizzard's orc obsession?
WRUP: Registered users, shmegistered users
Welcome back to What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us why the industry still seems to think people are fooled by "registered users" numbers in a free-to-play world.
Ask Massively: Dancing on WildStar's grave
This week's revelation that WildStar Design Producer Stephen Frost is quitting his role is not the first and likely won't be the last blow to the beleaguered game. Carbine lost several high-profile developers before and after launch, and with raiding guilds abandoning the title, server merges on the way, endgame grind being scaled back, updates being heavily delayed, and Christmas being canceled, even more players are losing faith in the title. That's nothing new in our industry. MMOs are big and unwieldy and sometimes launch with terrible underlying problems. They can usually pull out of a nosedive, given time. So let's give them time. But there's a whole contingent of gamers already dancing on WildStar's grave when it's not even dead. It's one thing to deeply oppose a game's design, but if you take delight in watching major MMOs flounder, you don't really deserve this genre at all.
WRUP: The gods have disconnected you
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us... actually, what are you doing typing here? Your five-minute ArcheAge timer is up, and you're about to get booted for idling.
WRUP: Queue zen
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how long you waited in the queue to post on this article.
WRUP: LFG for joy, PST no noobs, link achieves, no reply = noty
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you remind us that games are supposed to be about joy, dammit. How did we go so wrong?
WRUP: Lore lawyers
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you answer this riddle: If a studio reboots the lore for a MOBA, will anyone notice?
Ask Massively: Destiny is not the boss of me
Bungie's Destiny launches next week, and since it is by most appearances an MMO (or possibly a fragrance), we've been covering it, albeit lightly since our primary audience is not a console-only audience. But hasn't Bungie said that Destiny isn't an MMO? That was Massively reader icnoevil's primary objection to our coverage: So if the devs themselves have said the game is not an MMO, why does it keep showing up on this site? There's a little thing I repeat to myself every once in a while when studio reps are being pushy about our coverage: I don't work for them. I work for Joystiq.
WRUP: WoW's next-next expansion
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you try to guess what World of Warcraft's sixth expansion's theme will be. If you say pandas, time-travel, or orcs, you lose.
WRUP: Limited-time reunion show edition
That's right, ladies and gentlemen! Because you demanded it, or because we were pressed for time and needed something to show for our efforts, Eliot is back on WRUP for one week only! Featuring all of your favorite acts, such as flying whales that hate pizza, ducks, animal photos, and repeating a single word multiple times in a truly baffling display of what can sometimes be done in this format! This is only available for this week, so act now! But wait, there's more! If you click past the link right now, you can also find out what the Massively staff is up to over the weekend, which is ostensibly the point of this feature in the first place! You can also let us know what you'll be up to in the comments. And now, the part you've been waiting for, the return performance, which is... Ah, never mind, out of space. Sorry! Same time next year?
Ask Massively: Emergency soccer practice
Today's Ask Massively question comes to us from a reader named Chris, who has had it up to here with you quitters! Yes, you, guy who just AFKed out of Warsong Gulch! After playing my fifth consecutive round of SMITE with an AFK player, I am fed up. AFKer, quitters, or whatever you want to call them -- they suck. Why is it unreasonable to expect gamers to commit to finishing a simple (even possibly enjoyable) 30-minute activity? Why can't they stay in their seat and just freakin' click some buttons? Leaving doesn't cost the quitter anything, but it certainly sucks for the team you leave short-handed. If this were a little league baseball game, we wouldn't say, "It's just a game, so you go ahead and eat pizza with your buddies instead of playing with us." And why can't game companies find a way to make this problem go away? Reporting systems are just a small step away from absolutely useless! I know that real-world stuff happens. The doorbell rings, the power goes out, or the kids set the kitchen on fire. But AFK rates seem way too high for just that. Gamers seem to conveniently forget what it really means to finish what they started. And if you can't do it for a simple game, how in the hell will you do it when it is something truly hard? Unfortunately, I know this problem well. In my guild, we call it "emergency soccer practice," an actual reason someone once gave us for quitting a dungeon group.
WRUP: Standardized commenter clones
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how what we should really do is enhance our comment section with "model standardization," replacing our commenters with standardized human models in order to help us predict the tropes, memes, and cat gifs being used.
WRUP: I'll take 'Things Only Blizzard Can Get Away With' for $500, Alex
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us that you will reveal what you'll be playing this weekend... next week. Because that is how you and Blizzard roll.
WRUP: Every MMO needs a theme restaurant
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game in which we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us which MMO needs a theme cafe more than Final Fantasy XIV. I'm thinking an EVE Online greasy spoon would be a hoot.
