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Free for All: Why MMOs are still the greatest value in gaming
If you are the type of gamer who has access to a number of ways to game, then you probably do not need me to remind you that the hobby can be an expensive one. Consoles are becoming slicker, and the games they run are sure to go up in price, maybe someday soon close to $100 for a single game. A good gaming PC can still be an expensive thing to build and maintain especially as newer and better graphics cards and processors are introduced at a higher rate than we've ever seen before. Luckily, we have outlets like Steam that offer staggering sales and indie titles that can be bought for close to nothing. There's also the mobile market with its tens of thousands of games that can be played essentially for free. So while the prices at the highest end of technology go up, there are still plenty of places to get a cheap yet fulfilling gaming fix. Even with all of the deals out there, however, there is no better value than a modern MMO.
Free for All: The truth behind the importance of community
I've talked about community in the past, and it's still an important topic. The fact is that defining community or what makes a good community -- or even what qualifies as an MMORPG -- has come up for discussion many, many times on this site. For those who might still be confused, I can say that the reason the discussion keeps cropping up is due to the ever-changing market. If we didn't attempt to dissect the new genres and changes that come to this genre, then we would be doing a disservice to our readers. That's why we cover MOBAs, pseudo-MMOs, semi-MMOs, MMO-like games, social games, multiplayer shooters, and even the occasional lobby-based action title. The only thing I can assure you of is that Massively (and that includes me, of course) knows the true meaning of MMORPG. When I say true meaning, you either know what I mean or you don't. Having said that, I'd like to ask whether community and the multiplayer aspect is really that important beyond the reason that it must be considered in order to categorize games. Is having many other players around you really that big a deal?
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.
MMObility: What needs to happen to make the mobile market shine
I've recently written about what the MMO future might look like, but in case you haven't read that piece yet, I can sum it up for you. Essentially I see the new generation being so used to gaming and communicating on portable yet powerful devices that the sit-down keyboard and mouse setup might very well be doomed. Even major PC manufacturers and sellers are noticing the trend. Take a visit to your local Gamestop or equivalent game shop and you will notice that the chains have started to sell tablets as well. All of this tablet gaming might wound the current style of MMOs. I suspect that within the next decade or two it will all come full circle back to massive three-dimensional worlds on tech that becomes even more powerful and common, so we have to look at what the mobile market can do currently to keep MMOs in the lineup.
Free for All: My five favorite MMOs for exploration
There's nothing more important to me than the ability to freely explore MMOs. Heck, exploration is the reason I got into MMOs. I remember grabbing that box of Ultima Online (man, I wish I still had that box!) from a shelf at the local game store and looking in wonder at just how vast this virtual world seemed to be. I'm still the same way, although after years of doing this, I am a bit more cynical about games. I've heard so many promises that never came true, but I know that even the worst of titles offers the chance to explore a brand-new world. There are a lot of exploration mechanics out there. Free Realms has an adventurer "job," The Secret World needs players to explore to solve mysteries, Guild Wars 2 offers experience based on discovering new areas, EverQuest II entices people to explore by offering collectible items embedded in the ground, and there are so many MMOs that allow players to gain experience just by approaching areas they haven't before. But I have my favorites. These are games that just make me feel like an explorer.
Free for All: Debating the current state of classic MMORPGs
This will not be another column dedicated to deciding the true meaning of "MMORPG." We've covered that plenty on Massively, but it's safe to say that we allow a lot of different styles of multiplayer gaming to be covered on the site. Half the staff are old fuddy-duddies when it comes to these virtual worlds, but even the fogiest of the fogies sees the writing on the wall: The meaning is changing or at least becoming something different to different people. We can fight it like fighting the latest wave of musical styles, or we can search for the good in all of it and keep up a sense of humor. I tend to cover whatever I feel like covering, as long as my bosses agree that the games I am writing about do not stray too far away from the MMO core. Some of my readers see my writing as supporting games that are not MMOs, promoting developers who want to ruin true MMOs by selling power, or elevating social games that are anything but MMOs. But I believe I have covered and will continue to cover "true" MMOs. I try to recognize the current state of MMOdom, and I want to capture it all at the same time. It has to be possible.
Free for All: The second annual Frindie Awards
It's time once again for the Frindie Awards, my attempt to shine some light on the best indie, browser-based, free-to-play, and unusual MMOs that are all-too-often ignored by press -- and players. This one is for the little guys! Well, mostly. It's also for those games that seem to have passed under the collective radar of Massively readers or that seem to be very misunderstood. Picking the winners this year is just as hard as it was last year, maybe even harder. 2012 was an incredible year for MMOs, so I would rather have just put together an article that highlights every single favorite. In the end, it's more helpful to make myself pick out a winner. It's a rare thing for some of these games to even receive a nod on a major website, something I still can't figure out. Either way, it's best to think of all of the MMOs on this list as my favorites from 2012. Anyway, let's get to the awards!
Female avatars are likely to be more exposed than their male counterparts
You really needed to be told this, right? You may not have been sure whether a lady-type avatar was more likely to be closer to naked than a manly-type avatar. If you were dying to know and really had no idea, there's an actual study now to get you all informed. Anna M. Lomanowska and Matthieu J. Guitton went into Second Life and examined 404 (192 male and 212 female) avatars of the humanoid-but-not-furry type. They found that 57% of lady-type avatars had less than half of their skin covered, compared to only 10% of masculine-type avatars being similarly exposed. Lomanowska and Guitton were not privy to the actual sex of the folks controlling the avatars. Do you feel enlightened?
Linden Lab preps four releases for November
The boys and girls of Linden Lab are expanding their operation. Rapidly expanding, as it turns out. The Second Life studio announced that it has not one, not two, not three, but four titles scheduled for release in November. We've already heard about the first, which is the Minecraft-wannabe Patterns, but the others are just now being revealed. The second is the iPad-only (for now) Creatorverse, which allows users to draw shapes, have them interact via physics, and then share them on the cloud. The final two are Dio, a room creator, and Versu, a storytelling toolset. Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble affirmed that Second Life will remain important to the studio, but it will need to make room for all of the new children coming into the family.
Linden Lab reveals its next game, Patterns
Where does a company like Linden Lab go after Second Life? Obviously any other titles from the studio need to be creative and offer players a wide realm of personalized options... but Second Life is so open that it's difficult to follow up with something that's any more open to player creativity. Nevertheless, the company is certainly aiming for that with its upcoming new title, Patterns. And while the game looks at a glance like Minecraft with triangles, there's more to the concept than that. As explained in the trailer, Patterns is focused on an experience not dissimilar to Minecraft but with a heavier focus on creativity. The game will sport a real-time physics engine as demonstrated in the trailer, giving objects physical properties that come into play as they enter the world. While the game is still in very early development, you can get a sense of what's in the future by glancing at the trailer just past the break.
Rise and Shiny: There
I remember years ago staying up very late, usually on the weekends, chatting about politics or religion in a wonderful social MMO called There. My wife and I would join a bunch of online friends to haunt parties and other gatherings, often getting booted out because we would bring up sensitive topics or would act too silly. There was a great world to cut my social MMO teeth on. I had already been playing Ultima Online and EverQuest starting around '99, but There was a brand-new experience. I loved it. Social MMOs are a rare thing, often ruled by half-naked people and driven by mature themes. While There did have its "private parties" (if you know what I mean), it was generally a friendly place with a better creeps-to-normal-people ratio than other social MMOs. The game shut down in 2010, and I honestly thought it was gone forever. Somehow I missed the fact that it relaunched not so long ago, and this past week I was able to not only log in to the game but resurrect my avatar from all those years ago. Unfortunately, the game seems largely empty, but I do normally visit MMOs during the day. Still, I took a few screenshots and compared them to older ones just to show how things have changed. What a week. What a nostalgic, wonderful week.
Free for All: Xulu Universe is more than Second Life-lite
Xulu Universe is a new world built with far-reaching horizons. In reality, those horizons are within reach for anyone who wants to take the time to travel. If you see it, you can go to it. Xulu Universe is also a world of endless building opportunities as in Second Life, although comparing it to Second Life wouldn't quite be accurate. Where Second Life is a sandbox with no set boundaries, Xulu Universe is more of a standardized experience. Sure, there are plans to allow players to add unique touches to creations, but initially, creators will have access to a limited toolset. Don't let that fool you; the tools are quite robust and easy to use. Last week I joined Xulu Entertainment's co-founders, CEO Nanci Solomon and CTO Joe Santos, for a tour around the new building MMO. We drove, flew, ran, shot, stacked, and jumped through the physics-based world thanks to a new peer-to-peer-styled server plan. What does all of this mean? Click past the cut and I'll do my best to explain what Xulu Universe is all about. %Gallery-164207%
Iran blocks Guild Wars, World of Warcraft
Reports are coming in that Iran is moving to block access to several MMOs, including World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. This comes following a conference by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance earlier this month. At the conference, the Islamic Revolution Game Designers Community was formed and decided to ban games that promote superstition, mythology, violence, and revealing clothing. Following the decision, the government started cracking down on various services and MMOs, such as Battle.net's library and ArenaNet's Guild Wars series. Other games targeted include RuneScape, Second Life, Dofus, Evony, and Entropia Universe. It's unclear to what extent the government is attempting to enforce these bans, and Iranian players are looking into workaround solutions to access their MMOs. It's interesting to note that Blizzard does not authorize downloads of its products or services in Iran.
MMO Blender: Bree's big-budget sandbox
Writing MMO Blender feels like getting three wishes from a magical lamp and having to think very, very carefully about what you ask for. You have to word it just right and ponder the consequences of each wish on the others because you just know that Genie's going to screw with you. If I were stronger, I'd reject the wishes (here, the 1000 words) outright, knowing they're a trap, but I just can't resist a turn at this column. I want a new sandbox. A good one, not one made by gank-obsessed fanboys on a shoestring budget. I don't think sandboxes are dead; I just know it takes money to make money, and modern indie sandboxes are forgetting that rule. Fortunately, I don't need money for this column. I'll take my MMO Blender wishes and build a sandbox that's more than just a pile of sand and an empty box.
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.
Free for All: Second Life, the little 75 million-dollar engine that could
Do not call Second Life a game. If you find yourself in the position of describing the game at all publicly, be prepared to be corrected: Second Life is not a game; it's a world. Let me amend that: Second Life is an experience, a world, a game, or whatever the players, residents, and consumers want to call it. In fact, the Linden Lab baby is whatever you want to make of it, and I have seen many, many sides of it over the last eight years since I joined the experience. Don't worry; this column will not be a fanboy rehash of the successes of Second Life and will not be a recount of my favorite memories. Instead, we'll focus on facts to prove just how incredible this latest ninth anniversary is.
Free for All: Looking at Second Life's mesh with Bernhard Drax
I've been hearing the word "mesh" thrown around the Second Life community for quite some time now. I'm no dummy, so I have a pretty decent idea about what it is and how it works. Essentially it is a modeling tool that allows creators more flexibility when it comes to building in Linden Lab's sandbox. Mesh creations can seem more realistic, flowing, and smooth when compared to much of their prim counterparts. But I'm getting ahead of myself already and now need to explain what a prim is. I decided to get some help from Bernhard Drax, known in Second Life as machinima artist Draxtor Despres. He works with Bytegang, a group responsible for Flufee and the first series of fully-mesh avatars in Second Life. Even with his explanation, it won't be easy for me to explain mesh, but let's have a go at it. Mesh is important to understand because it represents a huge shift in not only how Second Life residents build, but how they play as well.
The Daily Grind: Are virtual worlds still important?
As part of the recent Massively Speaking bicentennial, we were reminiscing about the fact that Massively used to have a much heavier focus on virtual worlds. While we still touch on those from time to time, these types of "games" don't seem to be as hot as they once were. Or maybe they are and we're just not seeing it! From Habitat to The Sims Online to Second Life, there have been many attempts at constructing vibrant, community-driven virtual worlds that would draw in players looking to create dual lives that were flashier and more fantastic than their real lives. These games once were heralded as the wave of the future, but it seems as if that wave has since moved on to bashing things with their +4 Clubs of Exquisite Suffering. So what say you: Are virtual worlds still important? Are we trying to return to the concept by embracing sandbox principles? Are they best left to wither and die in the annals of history? 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!
Previously on MV TV: The week of April 28th
Ah, another fine week of streaming videos! Who needs television when you have such killer content right at your fingertips, for free? Well, we need Game of Thrones, but other than that, we'll stick by Massively TV! Be sure to bookmark our livestream schedule page so that you won't miss any of the cool videos. Sign up, join in the chat room, and participate! This week we had Mike back with his EVE Online and RIFT streams, followed by MJ with a ton of great stuff, including Aion, Lord of the Rings Online, TERA and City of Heroes! Woo! I finished up by showing viewers how to build clothing attachments in Second Life. So stop reading this and click past the cut. Check out the videos and let us know what you think in the comments section. Here, have some popcorn.
