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MMObility: A handful of games for your portables
To be honest, there are not nearly as many true MMOs available for your iPhone or Android device as I would like. It's a new market, of course, and the number of offerings is growing, but typically a lot of the MMO gaming you will be doing on your phone will be through your browser. This isn't a bad thing when you consider the quality of many of the browser games out there, but more MMOs cannot come quickly enough. So when I find one that I like, I would like to tell as many people as I can. And when I find more than that, I have to say something about all of them. Normally I would do a report on each game individually, but in this case, I have not had as much time with each game to give a full and decent report. It will be up to you, fair reader, to investigate these games with me. Don't worry -- they won't cost you much at all. Click past the cut and let's take a look!
iPhone MMORPG Empire Online comes to North America
When it comes to the iPhone and other mobile platforms, MMOs are thin on the ground. Technical limitations make developing an MMO for a mobile platform difficult at best, but with titles like Pocket Legends doing so well, there's still an obvious demand for massively mobile games. Mobile game development studio Lakoo announced today that that its popular Asian iPhone MMO Empire Online would be released in the North American app store later this week on Saturday, January 15th. Empire Online supports PvE with parties of up to five players at a time and five-versus-five PvP battles. Features include turn-based combat and an open skill-based character advancement system. Lakoo is hopeful that the game does well in North America, suggesting that over five million players have already registered in China, Taiwan and Australia. Skip past the cut to watch the Empire Online trailer.
GDCO 2010: Spacetime Studios' Cinco Barnes talks mobile design
Spacetime Studios, the developer of the popular mobile MMO Pocket Legends, was started back in 2005 to create large-scale MMOs. Its founders decided to make a mobile platform MMO upon seeing the obvious marketing opportunity that the iPhone provided. After all, the players would already be connected and would be accustomed to microtransactions through exposure to iTunes and the app store. Of course, development could prove disastrous if the wrong game plan were followed, so Spacetime decided to keep it simple. How simple? Cinco Barnes of Spacetime was on hand at GDC Online to explain how his team members did it. What they found was a chance to do more than they'd initially planned on -- and an audience ready to gobble up everything the studio could create.
Massively Mobile: Pocket Legends evolves
Every two weeks, Massively Mobile brings you the latest news, guides and analysis about MMOs on mobile devices. Covering iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad platforms, we're on the lookout for the next generation of MMOs. Much has changed with Spacetime Studio's free-to-play, mobile, 3D MMO Pocket Legends since we posted our first impressions of the game last month. Since then, it has seen a number of updates, content patches, refinements and improvements. It has evolved from a multiplayer Diablo-esque dungeon runner to sporting the kinds of bells and whistles one expects to find in an MMO. In this inaugural Massively Mobile column, I catch up with the game that's blazing the trail for mobile MMOs. Before I jump into the big patch that came out this week, I want to touch on a particular small improvement that was patched in recently. They restricted loot distribution and experience gains to only those within range of the monster kills. This prevents people from having their friends go /afk at the dungeon instance. But, for me, the main benefit is that it will hopefully stop parties from splitting up at intersections in dungeons. Seriously, people, it's a simple rule: follow the tank. Divided parties are dead parties. Ok, grumpy healer frustration vented. On with the show.
MMOGology: Will mobile MMOGs evolve genre expectations?
What makes an MMOG an MMOG? When we talk about massively multiplayer games, certain expectations immediately form in our minds. Looking at the components of the acronym itself it seems pretty straightforward. We know that MMOG stands for massively multiplayer online game. The qualifications of what constitute an MMOG seemingly describe themselves right in that acronym. MMOGs are games that, on some level, support a large number of players in an online multiplayer environment. Despite that simple definition we often have preconceptions about MMOGs that are much more specific. Preconceptions like level grinding, subscription fees and a dearth of willing healers.Early in their existence MMOGs were easy to define by example simply because there were far fewer games available. Games like Ultima Online and Everquest clearly helped set the standards of the genre. On their terms, massively multiplayer means hundreds of other player avatars running around and whacking mobs in the same environment. They also established gameplay standards based on computer roleplaying game staples such as gaining experience to level up, upgrading gear and growing the character's skills and abilities. But as the genre has expanded and evolved so has our definition of what constituents an MMOG. As I discussed in my last column, mobile MMOGs have very unique challenges to overcome in order to prove successful; but their success will undoubtedly come in time. As those successes arrive, our expectations of MMOGs will likely change. Today I'll be looking at a specific game that claims to be an MMOG for the iPhone and iTouch. It defies the typical conventions of what we'd consider an MMOG. I'll describe some of the interesting features it offers after the break and you can decide whether or not it qualifies as a true MMOG. One thing I'll tell you right off the bat though; even though it's unconventional, it's fun and addictive.
Intel technology research may lead to mobile WoW
The idea of mobile MMORPGs has come up before. Blizzard is on board with the idea of a mobile WoW interface of some sort, and have even hired mobile engineers and designers. Second Life has started down the path too. Still, for all the promise of being able to run Deadmines while you're stuck in the back of a car on a cross country drive, or churning out Netherweave Bags while you're waiting at the clinic for your semi-annual medical checkup, it seems like there's hurdles yet to overcome. The biggest one, of course, is getting a mobile device to pack enough power to render WoW's graphics and keep track of all the information that WoW needs to run. Luckily, it looks like Intel and Comverse are on the case for us. The two companies have worked together to create a 3D streaming system that compiles and renders all the graphics and data of an MMORPG on a central server, then sends it to the mobile device. You can read their researcher's post about it on the Intel blog site. You can also see the process demonstrated with Second Life in the video above, although there's not really a good shot of the mobile device screen to show us how well it actually works, unfortunately. Still, if they can get the technology working feasibly, it should definitely put us one giant step closer to a relatively full fledged mobile WoW client. When the day comes that we can grind dailies on our iPhones, it may be that we'll have Intel to thank. [Thanks to Bitterzoet for the tip!]
