Advertisement

MMO Roundup: Massively's week in review


Joystiq's sister site Massively.com is back from E3 2010 this week with more news and opinions from the world of MMOs. While there were no earth-shattering announcements this year, the interviews, demos and hands-on experiences should be enough to keep you reading until next week's roundup. Follow along for the latest.

Bobby Kotick muses about a Call of Duty MMO
Activision Blizzard owns one of the most profitable gaming franchises in the world with Call of Duty, and Bobby Kotick knows it. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Kotick was open about his ambitions with the series, saying that he wishes that they would create an online subscriber version. It's not a new sentiment from Kotick, as he's been saying as such for years, although it certainly is pretty straight-forward.

SWTOR closed beta beginning this weekend
A thread on the official SWTOR forums began this morning, claiming that players have received invitations for a June 25 - 27 closed beta. A post added shortly afterward made further clarification that only 100-200 invitations are going out. Within seven hours the thread reached nearly 200 pages.

APB's voice chat feature will contain advertisements
While looking through the payment options in his account management page early this morning, one APB forum poster spied a strange button that set off a few warning bells in his head. Marked "VOIP Premium," the option removes adverts from APB's in-game voice chat for 30, 90 or 180 days in exchange for payment.

E3 2010: Your complete Massively coverage roundup
The 2010 edition of the gaming nirvana known as E3 has come and gone, and Massively was there to bring you three days of exclusives, firsts, and hands-on impressions for all your favorite MMORPG titles, studios, and developers. This year's Expo saw plenty of news and announcements regarding highly anticipated games, as well as plenty of information on assorted titles large and small.

Massively's Best of E3 2010
E3 2010 has wrapped up and we're still recovering a bit from the shiny overload that's bombarded us for the event's long three days. While many MMO development studios and publishers weren't in attendance (NCsoft, Funcom, CCP, Mythic, etc), there was still a significant presence for MMOs this year. Whether through demos or hands-on play, we spent time with each and every MMO on the show floor this year.

Server merge hints are confirmed for Aion
Aion confirmed the server merge and character transfers today with more details as well as a comprehensive FAQ covering all the details. The merge will happen on July 7th, and character transfers will begin on the 8th.

Wizard101 announces 10 million registrations
Subscriptions, registered users, unique users, unique players, characters created, accounts created, boxes sold -- there really is no set standard to measure a MMO's popularity and success against these days. The only thing that's for sure is that the bigger the number, the better. Fortunately, Wizard101's claim to fame is more solid than most, as they recently announced their 10,000,000th registered wizard in Wizard City and are throwing a party in honor of the game's growth.

SOE confirms subscription model for DCUO
Fans of Sony Online Entertainment's highly-anticipated DC Universe Online title can chew on an additional piece of news to go along with all the goodies revealed at E3 last week. Several websites have run unconfirmed reports on the game's pricing model, so we went straight to the source to get the skinny.

Allods Online will replace harsh death penalty with Patch 1.1
Since launch, the free-to-play Allods Online has had a very unpopular death mechanic. When a player is killed in the game, Fear of Death is applied to their character. This debuff is a 25% hit to offensive stats for a duration based on level up to 51 minutes. And it stacks, so if the player dies again, they get a 50% debuff. Players must use a special item (incense) to remove the effect early. They can buy incense using the cash shop or in the auction house from other players who have already paid for it with real money.