The week in Massively features
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Player vs. Everything: Analyzing the Wrath of the Lich King news explosion Wow. Or more accurately, World of Warcraft. It's all over the internet today in a big way. Blizzard released a ridiculous amount of information about their next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and some of the changes they've announced are pretty major. I thought I would use today's article to go over some of the most exciting announcements, discuss what makes them so interesting, and talk about what it means for the game (and for you). |
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Guild Wars: A guide to Heroes Guild Wars has been an innovator in so many different aspects of the MMO genre, but none more than the introduction of ally NPCs to fill out a party and make soloing easier. |
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The Digital Continuum: The Lich King made me do it Even with the original announcement of Wrath of the Lich King, I felt complete disinterest in the expansion as it seemed to be more of the same. More raids, more high quality content that was probably going to be locked away behind hoops, barrels and fire pit traps. Yet that all changed yesterday with the icy cool wake-up blast of new information that jolted my interest — something I thought could never happen again with World of Warcraft. |
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Exclusive Vanguard Game Update 5 mounts video SOE's Vanguard: Saga of Heroes keeps marching forward with its upcoming Game Update 5. GU5 features a bevy of new features, including new "anti-hitching" code which will cut down on the number of times the game needs to read from disk, smoothing out the gameplay substantially. |
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EVE Evolved: EVE's skill system demystified, part 1 Most MMOs, among them the popular favorites World of Warcraft and Everquest, employ a level-based character progression system where your player accumulates levels during play. Killing enemies and completing quests reward the player with experience points toward their next level. |
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TurpsterVision: Why do we fall, sir? After last week's trouncing I decided I would have to find a friendlier bunch of gamers to have a laugh with and try to have an insight on what playing their game is like. |
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MMO MMOnkey: MMOs as conditioned learning engines (Part 2) Positive reinforcement occurs whenever an action is accompanied by or results in something pleasant or enjoyable. |
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Massively.com interviews Star Wars Galaxies producer Lorin Jameson In the wake of the Chapter 9 publish for Star Wars Galaxies, we had the chance to pass a few questions to the game's producer. |
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Player vs. Everything: Age of Conan closed beta impressions Everyone and their brother seems to be writing about Age of Conan over the last few days, but hopefully you're hungry for a little more. |
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Age of Conan beta guide: The priests Continuing our examination of the spellcasting classes in Age of Conan, today we're going to investigate the situation with the priest archetype. |
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Are you an MMO fanboi? We all love massively multiplayer games. Otherwise we wouldn't be here reading this right now. |
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CoX Issue 12: Inside the Midnighter Club City of Heroes Issue 12: Midnight Hour is now in Open Beta. We've brought you a tour of Cimerora, and now venture into the Midnighter Club, home of the Midnight Squad. |
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CoX Issue 12: Journey to Cimerora City of Heroes Issue 12: Midnight Hour has finally reached Open Beta, and in the first of our articles covering the new issue content, we're delighted to bring you a scenic tour of the Cimerora zone. |
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Exclusive Vanguard Game Update 5 interview with Lenny "Tiraslee" Gullo Last week we had the chance to talk to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Game Developer Lenny "Tiraslee" Gullo about the new racial mounts and spell graphics being introduced for the upcoming Game Update 5. |
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Exclusive video of updated Vanguard GU5 spell effects With a good group casting and using special moves, all with their own flashy graphics, it could get a little hard to see what was going on. Game Update 5 brings new spell animations for druids, sorcerers, disciples and others, which are both faster and better-looking than the old ones. |
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Player vs. Everything: Pointless mini-zones How pointless are so-called "pointless mini-zones," really? |
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Ask Massively: The Alpha and the...um... Beta? of MMORPGs Here at Ask Massively, I tend to lean towards old school ways of thinking. I remember the days when hype for an upcoming release consisted of a snazzy video trailer and ads on just about every gaming site known to mankind. |
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The Gaming Iconoclast: Taking Sides What about you? Bastion of righteousness or purveyor of deceit? |
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Anti-Aliased: Don't worry, no one will read it anyway... How many quests have we done in our careers in MMOs? Too many, right? That's usually the answer. |
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Have Clone, Will Travel: Ambulation in the EVE tutorial EVE Online is like no other MMORPG. In this sci-fi virtual world you are your ship, and the ship is you. |